IN THE NEWS TODAY
Presidential Election Isn’t Over Yet, Conservative Leaders Say
By Virginia Allen / @Virginia_Allen5 /
The Daily Signal
November 23, 2020
Until “every legal vote” is counted, the presidential election isn’t over, prominent conservative leaders said in a joint statement Monday.
Members of the Conservative Action Project—a coalition of American political, economic, and social activists—say they are standing with those refusing to allow the election to conclude “until every legal vote has been counted.”
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, the founding chairman of the Conservative Action Project, and more than 100 other leaders in the conservative movement signed Monday’s statement, which reads in part:
Ours is a government of laws. Included in those laws are the processes by which elections at every level of government are conducted. The purpose of subjecting the election process to a legal regime is to ensure that results are, and are accepted as, just and accurate. This system works and all Americans should trust it. But, it must be allowed to fully work.
It is not a coup to insist that we follow our election laws. It does not erode the foundations of the republic to remind American citizens that the media does not certify elections. And it is not a stain on our national honor for a candidate to refuse to concede when there are open and compelling disputes about an electoral outcome.
On and after Nov. 7, a number of news outlets, including The Associated Press, declared former Vice President Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, despite several unfinished legal inquiries into the fairness of the election in hotly contested states across the country.
In Pennsylvania, for example, Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Penn., and other GOP leaders are still pursuing a legal battle in which they question the constitutionality of the state’s mail-in voting practices and last-minute election rules changes.
The mainstream media “may think they get to decide the winners of our elections, [but] the people in our country decide, once every legal vote is counted,” Mary Vought, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, told The Daily Signal in an email Monday.
Given that there are still ongoing investigations into the 2020 election, “our Presidential Election has not concluded,” the Conservative Action Project leaders asserted.
“The absolute integrity of each citizen’s legally cast vote for president is at stake in this presidential election,” Becky Norton Dunlop, a former White House adviser to President Ronald Reagan, told The Daily Signal in an email Monday.
Dunlop, one of the signers of the statement, noted that in 2000, it took more than a month for Americans to know for certain whether then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush or then-Vice President Al Gore had been elected. That was just as “difficult [a] time for our nation then as it is today,” Dunlop said.
But the fact remains, said Dunlop, that “only legal votes, and every legal vote, should be counted” to ensure the integrity of America’s election process.
Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/23/presidential-election-isnt-over-yet-conservative-leaders-say/
Sidney Powell was not ‘fired’ by Trump
November 23, 2020
I recommend this LifeSiteNews article:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/sidney-powell-was-not-fired-by-trump
The Mayflower Compact and the Roots of Economic Freedom and Private Property
By Angela Sailor /
The Daily Signal
November 23, 2020
With the Thanksgiving season upon us, a group of scholars is meeting today to discuss the Mayflower Compact, in a webinar series honoring the 400th anniversary of the signing of this quintessential and seminal American document.
Hosted by The Heritage Foundation and the Religious Liberty Institute, the concluding webinar examines the impact of the Mayflower Compact on the concepts of economic liberty and private property in the United States.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars and author of the new book “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project,” calls the document “the conceptual starting point of the American experiment.”
By exploring the historical background of the Mayflower Compact, the webinar illuminates the political ideals that emerged during this pivotal time in history.
Arriving in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November 1620, the Pilgrims brought with them the economic assumptions present within their own religious congregation, which sometimes conflicted with those of hierarchical English society.
Jim Otteson, visiting scholar at the Feulner Institute’s Simon Center for American Studies at Heritage, emphasizes the religious dimension to their social and economic thinking.
“The fact that the Pilgrims wrote an agreement and voluntarily signed it,” Otteson declares, “presupposes that they saw themselves as morally equal. They signed it as peers and equals, and did not ask the king for permission to do so.”
Those religious believers, he says, perceived one another as made in the image of God. That belief created a social equality among their party and established the fertile soil for economic liberty in New England.
Samuel Gregg, visiting scholar at the Simon Center for American Studies, identifies several assumptions that guided the Pilgrims about private property and economic liberty, and influenced the British colonies and later the United States.
Preeminent in the Pilgrims’ economic worldview was the concept of private property. Unlike their Jamestown counterparts in 1607, the community did not undertake the disastrous and utopian approach of collectivization—that is, the idea that their property would be held in common by the entire community.
Instead, the passengers embarked on the understanding that they would have the right to own and develop their property, for their own good and that of the community.
The second assumption was that of economic liberty. The Pilgrims took seriously the command in Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.”
Everyone in their company, Gregg says, shared the “expectation that through creative work, economic freedom would enable people to better themselves.”
This biblical outlook catalyzed the congregants to use the resources available to best improve the conditions of their families and thus their congregation.
Another assumption motivating the Pilgrims was their rejection of the declining feudal regime in England. By consciously removing themselves from the socially rigid class system and its obligations, the Pilgrims ensured a great degree of economic freedom.
“The New England economic relationships that were founded at Plymouth,” Gregg says, “were comprised of contracts, obligations, and private property amongst peers, rather than privileges and obligations to others based on legal or social privileges.”
This community of peers, based on contracts and private property, might not strike modern Americans as particularly noteworthy. However, when compared with other colonial enterprises, it appears remarkably modern.
The French and Spanish colonial empires were centralized operations, controlled by government officials in Paris and Madrid. Those mercantilist and militaristic regimes lacked the economic freedom present at Plymouth, which played to their detriment.
“One sees a tremendous economic development in the English colonies,” Gregg says, “whereas others lag behind.” The effects of these centralized colonial practices are still noticeable in the economies of Central America and South America today.
Scholars agree that the signing of the Mayflower Compact helped to introduce in America the principles of religious freedom, the rule of law, and economic liberty that have shaped the United States for 400 years.
While progressive voices decry American institutions as the legacy of a “slave-ocracy,” begun in 1619, when enslaved Africans first arrived in America, the year 1620 offers a more faithful account of the nation’s origins.
“As Thanksgiving approaches, we should recognize that this community at Plymouth was one founded in gratitude,” Wood says. The leftist narrative of oppression, by contrast, “gives way to resentment.”
As Allen Guelzo, a visiting scholar at the Simon Center for American Studies, explains, the signing of the Mayflower Compact—a covenant that helped establish in America a political community of self-governing citizens—ought to be one of the principal reasons for celebrating Thanksgiving.
“Through the murk and confusion of our times,” says Guelzo, “the bright line drawn from the Mayflower still pierces the clouds, and continues to draw us forward today.”
Angela Sailor serves as vice president of The Feulner Institute at The Heritage Foundation.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/23/the-mayflower-compact-and-the-roots-of-economic-freedom-and-private-property/
Former Pfizer VP: ‘No need for Vaccines,’ ‘the Pandemic is Effectively Over’
November 23, 2020
I recommend this LifeSiteNews.com article:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/former-pfizer-vp-no-need-for-vaccines-the-pandemic-is-effectively-over
US Could Reach Herd Immunity by May 2021 If 70% of Americans Get the Vaccine,
Top Doctor Says
By Jake Dima / @dima_jake /
The Daily Signal
November 23, 2020
America could reach herd immunity by May of next year if a majority of citizens are vaccinated, a prominent health expert told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser for President Donald Trump’s immunization program Operation Warp Speed, told Tapper on his show “State of the Union” that if 70% of the populace receives a coronavirus vaccine, the U.S. could reach herd immunity by May 2021.
The achievement of mass immunity is key for the return to “normal life” for Americans, according to Slaoui.
“So, normally, with the level of efficacy that we have—95%—70% or so of the population being immunized would allow for true herd immunity to take place,” the chief scientist told Tapper. “That is likely to happen somewhere in the month of May or something like that based on our plans.”
Major pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna have both introduced potential COVID-19 shots with an effectiveness greater than 90% in initial testing, according to The Washington Post. Pfizer applied for emergency approval for its vaccine, which could make the injection ready for use in the coming weeks, The New York Times reported.
Slaoui projected a similar timeline in his CNN appearance.
“Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization sites within 24 hours of approval,” he said. “So I would expect maybe on Day Two after approval, on the 11th or on the 12th of December, hopefully, the first people will be immunized across the United States.”
A total of 58% of Americans said they would take a COVID-19 vaccination, according to a Tuesday Gallup poll. Fifty-three percent of Democrats and 49% of Republicans indicated they would take an immunization if it was available, the poll revealed.
Slaoui said he was committed to changing the public’s perception of the vaccination.
“I really hope and look forward to seeing the level of negative perception people have about the vaccine decrease and positive perception increase,” he said. “Most people need to be immunized before we can return to a normal life.”
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Jake Dima is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/23/us-could-reach-herd-immunity-by-may-2021-if-70-of-americans-get-the-vaccine-top-doctor-says/
Solomon Islands Plans to Ban Facebook to Preserve 'National Unity'
By Phil Mercer
VOA News
November 24, 2020
SYDNEY - The government of the Solomon Islands has defended its plans to ban Facebook, insisting the move would preserve “national unity.” Ministers say the world's largest social media platform has been “grossly abused.” But critics insist a ban is an attempt to shut down criticism of the government's economic policies.
Facebook helps connect the people of a tropical archipelago that stretches over more than 1,400 kilometers of the South Pacific.
But the government believes the social media platform is being “grossly abused.” Officials in the capital, Honiara, are to discuss blocking Facebook with internet companies because of concerns about defamation and cyber bullying.
Authorities want to regulate users’ behavior to protect the community from “vile abusive language” online. Until new laws can be passed, there would be a temporary ban on Facebook.
Minister of Communications Peter Shanel Agovaka told Radio New Zealand Pacific that tough regulations are needed…….
For more, read: https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/solomon-islands-plans-ban-facebook-preserve-national-unity
China Launches Lunar Probe
By VOA News
Updated November 23, 2020
China successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft to the moon Monday to land, gather soil and rock samples, and return them to Earth.
If successful, it will be the first mission by any nation to retrieve samples from the lunar surface since the 1970s, and the third nation, after the United States and Russia, to retrieve such samples.
The Chang'e 5 probe, named after the ancient Chinese goddess of the moon, will seek to collect material that can help scientists understand more about the moon's origins and formation.
U.S. space agency NASA says the mission’s goal is to land in a previously unvisited area of the moon known as Oceanus Procellarum and operate for one lunar day, which lasts 14 earth days, and return a 2-kilogram sample of lunar soil, possibly from as deep as 2 meters.
Matt Siegler, a research scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute who is not part of the Chang'e 5 mission, told Reuters the area where the spacecraft is to land is 1 to 2 billion years old.
"That is very young for the moon — most of our samples are 3.5 billion years old or more," Siegler said in an email. "We want to find out what is special about these regions and why they remained warm longer than the rest of the moon," Siegler added.
The sample will travel to Earth in the return capsule and land in the Siziwang Banner grassland of the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia in China.
During a brief government-organized visit to the launch center, reporters were taken to a place where they could see in the distance the Long March 5 rocket that carries the Chang'e 5 probe. The launch took place between 4:30 a.m. Beijing time Tuesday (2030 GMT Monday).
The Reuters news service reports that China made its first lunar landing in 2013. In January 2019, the Chang'e 4 probe touched down on the far side of the moon, the first by any space probe. Within the next decade, China plans to establish a robotic base station to conduct unmanned exploration in the south polar region.
https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/china-launches-lunar-probe
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