In 2008 I actually did sneak into the US Capitol via the tunnels and railway, after a meeting in Dirksen, to see the historical art. But I wasn't taking part in a violent insurrection at the time.
It wasn't completely on purpose. I just wandered off after my meeting, ended up in the tunnels, and found this weird room that turned out to be one of the stops on the train line.
Anyway, I made friends with the guard, and he gave me two different entry passes. He told me I had to switch one for the other once I passed a certain point. I ended up wandering around exploring. It's a really cool building.
The best way to get to know a legislative building is to wander around aimlessly for a couple of hours!
In this Covid wave, Israel has seen more young pregnant women with no comorbidities hospitalised than before. Of seven serious cases tested so far, six had the British B117 coronavirus variant.
This could just be a sampling issue. The B117 variant is something like 30-50% of all cases in Israel now. And perhaps it's more prevalent in ultra-Orthodox communities where the birth rate is high so there are a lot of pregnant women.
The UK has not reported that the B117 variant was more dangerous to pregnant women. As far as I know, no other country has seen this (yet).
Congress should immediately subpoena Jeffrey Clark to testify on this matter. The Biden Admin is unlikely to assert Executive Privilege, and attorney-client privilege doesn't apply. If Clark wants to refuse to answer, let him plead the Fifth. nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/…
Probably a good idea for the Judicial Committee to hear from Rosen, too.
A senior DoJ official, with Trump's backing, wrote a letter from the Acting AG to the Georgia Legislature, falsely claiming that they were investigating fraud and asking them to set aside their election result. I think we should see that draft.
Ran Balicer explains in more detail the preliminary findings of Israel's Clalit HMO that showed a 33% reduction in positive PCR tests for Sars-CoV-2 among people over-60 14&15 days after the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Key point here: this study suggests *sterilizing immunity* in AT LEAST 33% of over-60s two weeks after the first dose in real clinical practice. People with no virus can't infect others.
In reality, effective sterilizing immunity is probably higher, because PCR is so sensitive it might be picking up vaccinated people with very low viral load.
The biggest pro-Trump forum TheDonald, which was formed after Reddit banned /r/the_Donald, has rebranded as "Patriots".
This change was partly because they didn't have full control over the old domain name. But it points, again, to an attempt to change the MAGA movement into a "Patriot Party", something Trump himself has spoken privately about in recent days.
I wrote about the Patriot Party / Lion Party, Trump and Third Positionism in the first edition of the Hat Tip: arieh.substack.com/p/the-hat-tips…
A personal plea: If you have people in your life who believe in QAnon, today is the day to reach out to them, compassionately, and let them know you still care about them.
It's NOT the day to gloat and say you told them so, how ever tempting that must be. It's not the day to mock them or call them crazy.
Don't let people in your life feel that they have no choice but to go deeper. And don't them feel like they have no choices at all.