"Unfazed by data, scientific research, or common sense, the maskaholics are back. In response to an uptick in Covid cases, they've begun reinstating mask mandates. So far, it's just a few places -- a college in Atlanta, a Hollywood studio, two hospitals in Syracuse -- but the mainstream media and their favorite 'experts' are working hard to scare the rest of us into masking up yet again.

"Never mind that at least 97 percent of Americans have Covid antibodies in their blood as a result of infection, vaccination, or both. Never mind that actual experts -- the ones who studied the scientific literature before 2020 and drew up plans for a pandemic -- advised against masking the public. Never mind that their advice has been further bolstered during the pandemic by randomized clinical trials and rigorous observational studies failing to find an effect of masks and mask mandates. Scientific evidence cannot overcome the maskaholics' faith."

Read the entire article here.

"Smash-and-grab robberies are happening in broad daylight at stores throughout California and no one seems to be doing anything to stop them. ...

"California's criminal-justice system is broken and state voters helped to break it.

"But voters had help from deceitful activists and politicians who tricked them into thinking they were voting for greater public safety.

"One of those deceivers is George Gascon, now district attorney of Los Angeles County, where nearly 10 million residents in 88 cities are living with the full consequences of the 2014 initiative Gascon co-authored, Proposition 47.

"The authors named the proposed law The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act."

Read the entire article here.

"Ghoulish scold John Kerry, the White House's climate hobgoblin, has repeatedly warned that the world is not on track to contain a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in global temperature above the pre-industrial level, and this means disaster is looming. Others have made the same point, and the media just goes along for the ride. Their predictions are worthless, though. We know this because the United Nations told us so.

"The rock-solid, undeniable fact is that it's impossible to make long-term climate predictions, because our climate is ever changing and volatile. It says so in the Third Assessment Report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

"'The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.'

"And it has said this since 2001, when that report was put together."

Read the enitre article here.

"Parents across the country are learning the hard way that we have collectively left the American public education system on autopilot for far too long and the results are troubling. ACT scores are the lowest they've been in more than 30 years. 13-year-olds' test scores on The Nation's Report Card are worse than this time last year, 'continuing a decade-long freefall,' and math scores experienced the largest drop in 50 years.

"But rather than push students to achieve excellence -- or even competency -- in basic academics, many public schools have instead prioritized ideological groupthink. One needn't look far to see examples of curriculum or policies regarding gender, sexuality, race, or any cultural topic-du-jour garnering headlines.

"All of this has many parents asking the question, 'who is accountable, and how do we get back on track?' In most cases, the answer starts with the school board."

Read the entire article here.

"On Monday, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 7.48%, marking the highest level since the year 2000. Even prior to this recent surge in mortgage rates, housing affordability, as monitored by the Atlanta Fed, had already deteriorated beyond the levels seen at the housing bubble's peak in 2006. Once this latest mortgage rate surge is factored in, August 2023 will become the worst month for housing affordability this century.

"The journey to this predicament can be traced back to last year's sharp rise in mortgage rates, which escalated from 3% to over 7%. That rate surge, coupled with the Pandemic Housing Boom pushing U.S. home prices up over 40% in just over two years, deteriorated housing affordability (or better put the lack thereof) across the nation.

"'The housing market is at a pivotal point as we head into fall. Mortgage rates are now at more than a two-decade high and for some home shoppers, those higher rates are enough to cause them to step back from the market,' wrote Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, in a statement to Fortune. 'It is likely to be a very slow fall [in the] housing market this year. Home prices, which had rebounded this summer, will dip in some markets as new listing activity increases at the same time a segment of the home buying population sits the market out.'"

Read the entire article here.

"As whale deaths mount on the east coast, the Biden administration can no longer pretend offshore wind farms are harmless to marine life.

"FOX News Digital revealed that the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is quietly offering a grant to study interactions between wind farms and critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Even though government-issued permits allow the offshore wind industry to kill whales, scientists and allied nonprofits have loudly denied any connection between wind farms and dead whales to protect the industry.

"The Biden administration's total and hypocritical, if not illegal, disregard for the welfare of whales is consistent with the regulatory and financial favoritism it extends to foreign green energy companies who are industrializing America's coasts. The government's many accommodations to these entities puts the lie to claims that wind energy is good for the environment.

"The whole path is greased: mandates, subsidies, permits, and see no evil regulators."

Read the entire article here.

"Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others that have been tried.

"Something similar might be said of our democratic and free-market economic system.

"For all its faults, it beats hands down the top-down and autocratically run economies of our main political rivals.

"Anyone who doubts the superiority of our system over that of our rivals has not been paying attention to the wheels coming off the economies of Xi Jinping's China, Vladimir Putin's Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey.

"The one thing these three faltering economies share is autocratic leaders who make their country's key economic decisions without the checks of independent and well-functioning economic institutions."

Read the entire article here.

"President Joe Biden's use of multiple pseudonyms during his vice presidency appears to have hidden some of his communications from that period, including some involving Ukraine policy and his son, Hunter Biden.

"The House Oversight Committee asked the National Archives on Thursday for communications involving three of Joe Biden's aliases: Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware.

"The committee sought correspondence between those aliases, Hunter Biden, and two of his former business partners, Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer."

Read the entire article here.

"Workers in the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco were told to work from home indefinitely given conditions in the downtown area.

The building, at the intersection of Seventh and Mission streets, is home to the office of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as the local branches of several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The area around the building has also become a notorious hotspot for open-air drug dealing.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, building workers received a memo penned by Cheryl Campbell -- an assistant secretary with the Department of Health and Human Services -- on Aug. 4. It advised workers to stay home 'for the foreseeable furture' because of crime in the area."

Read the entire article here.

"FBI Director Christopher Wray has forfeited all grounds for confidence in his integrity. He was caught this week in yet another falsehood, this time about an infamous memo targeting 'traditionalist' Catholics, which appears to mean those who hew to orthodox doctrines and unmodernized liturgies. Wray must be made to clean up his act or clean out his office.

"The memo, produced by the FBI's Richmond field office, said the bureau should particularly monitor 'traditionalist Catholic' people, such as those who prefer the Latin Mass, as potential purveyors of 'violent extremis[m]' who may need to be targeted for 'threat mitigation.' It assumed traditionalist Catholics are particularly prone to becoming domestic terrorists. This is false and defamatory, and the specter of law enforcement targeting a faith community raises serious First Amendment concerns."

Read the entire article here.