Friday's Final Word

hotair.com

Everybody's closing tabbies for the weekend ...

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday fired Pamela Hicks, the general counsel for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

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“Earlier today, I was served official notice from the Attorney General of the United States that I was being removed from my position as the Chief Counsel of ATF and my employment with the Department of Justice terminated,” Hicks said in a statement on social media confirming the news. ...

Gun Owners of America said that Hicks “oversaw the enforcement of every Biden infringement of the Second Amendment since taking the position in 2021.”

Ed: This is what happens when the White House changes parties. Political appointees, especially hyper-political appointees, have to find new jobs. The most notable aspect of this story is that Bondi is actively looking to replace these political appointees with people who will support the current administration.

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Ed: It's not "really wild," it's disloyal. And we're not at all surprised that nutcases like Crockett are only loyal to the US when Democrats are in office. 

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The 52-48 vote to adopt the fiscal 2025 budget resolution is the first step towards writing a filibuster-proof reconciliation package, which GOP senators want to use for appropriating more than $340 billion in military and immigration enforcement spending.

Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said his goal was for the bill to be fully paid for with cuts that other committees come up with in their jurisdictions, although there’s no binding requirement for more than $5 billion in offsets.

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“We’re one step closer to fixing a problem that all Americans want us to fix,” Graham said, stressing the need for a quick infusion of border security resources.

Ed: I don't have too many thoughts on this, mainly because this set-up has no real chance of succeeding in the House. Graham's right about ICE funding, but the Senate should have waited for the House to deliver what Trump wants first. 

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Ed: This project has been underway for almost two decades, has run through at least $11 billion, and still hasn't laid a single mile of high-speed track. And the mob is angry at the Department of Transportation for demanding answers over that failure? 

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“One thing has been certain for almost three decades,” said Andrew Hoan, CEO of the Portland Metro Chamber, the city’s chamber of commerce. “As the U.S. economy grows, Portland, Oregon, grows faster. And as the economy across the United States shrinks or contracts, we shrink harder and contract harder. The news today is hard to share, but that is no longer the case. While the U.S. economy continues to expand, our community is not.”

Among other economic indicators, Wilkerson’s report looked at changes in population and employment.

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Portland’s population declined for three years in a row before a modest uptick last year. The data also shows some of the people who left were high earners, with Wilkerson saying “more than $1 billion in income” left Multnomah County in each of the last two years.

Ed: John may pick up on this too, but it's interesting in a Great Realignment context. Capital is fleeing these progressive-urban hellholes, and the effect over time will be as dramatic as it was in the 1970s for Rust Belt cities and cities wracked by racial tensions and overtaxation. Cities like Cincinatti and Detroit have never recovered, and Portland is now on the same 'doom loop.'

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Ed: Other than the error over $71 billion a year -- it was over a seven-year period -- this is an excellent riposte to this question. If the executive branch isn't supposed to audit and track spending and eliminate fraud and abuse, who is?

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The Great Jewish Mistake, seared into my mind by reading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, was to believe if Jews became enlightenment liberals, universal humans of no tribe, the world would treat them according to enlightened liberal values.

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Conservatives scratch their heads and ask “why are Jews liberals?” and come up with various explanations. But a big part of the reason surely is that too many Jews still believe that the more they suck up to liberalism the more the world will love them. It didn’t work in Germany; it has never worked. It may be the greatest danger to the Jewish people.

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Ed: Pass the popcorn! And I guess we can assume Trump's not on that list, either.