"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"Garland's naming of Weiss as special counsel not only contradicts any earlier claims that there was no need for such an appointment, but it also contradicts nearly everything we've been told about the investigation and the DOJ's role. We were told that Weiss was the ultimate decisionmaker -- well, except that he obviously wasn't or he wouldn't have needed the appointment. We were told he could take any steps and make any investigative decisions, having ultimate authority over this matter -- except now we're told he is no longer subject to the day-to-day supervision of the Department of Justice.

"Either Weiss had that power, or he dind't. Either he was in charge of the investigation, or he wasn't. Naming Weiss special counsel confirms everything we've been told until now was a farce. And it wasn't just Garland telling us Weiss was totally in charge -- it was also Weiss. Weiss even stuck with that story when contradicted by the IRS whistleblowers who had contemporaneous emails confirming the Delaware U.S. attorney had told upper-level managers on the investigation that he was not the ultimate decisionmaker."

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"Liberal cities and states are continuing to sound the alarm over a surge of migrants into their jurisdictions. Some are going so far as to call on the federal government to declare a state of emergency, while maintaining welcoming rhetoric to all who come across the border.

"Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey last week declared a state of emergency 'due to rapid and unabating increases in the number of families with children and pregnant people -- many of them newly arriving migrants and refugees -- living within the state but without the means to secure safe shelter in our communities.'

"The state currently has more than 20,000 families in its state shelter system and costs are around $45 million a month, her office said."

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"Listening to the Biden White House on economic issues is always a surreal experience.

"It calls to mind Charles Dickeens' famous line -- 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.'

"They can't keep it straight.

"While President Biden claims 'Bidenomics is working,' his Vice President Kamala Harris bemoans the fact that '[m]ost Americans are a $400 unexpected expense away from bankruptcy.'

"So, which is it?"

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"Firms tied to the Biden family collected more than $20 million from foreign sources, including big payments from controversial oligarchs who afterwards had private dinners with Joe Biden as vice president, congressional investigators disclosed Wednesday.

"In its third memo analyzing bank records, the GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee reported it had found a clear pattern of the Biden family and its partners doing business with Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Chinese and Romanian figures who had legal and other troubles and then collecting money around the times of gaining access to Joe Biden.

"The pattern, the congressional investigators noted, corroborates recent testimony from former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer that the presidential son solicited business from foreigners who were seeking influence, access or protection from a family 'brand' that included Joe Biden."

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"A strange trend is sweeping across China. Outside Chengdu, an urban park next to a golf course and luxury villa now sports a sign 'Return to Agricultural Use. In the southeastern province of Fujian, a farmer described having his daffodil fields bulldozed. Reportedly, it's all part of a new directive from the Chinese Communist Party to reclaim arable land, roll back reforestation initiatives, and rapidly increase grain production to achieve 'food security.'

"But as China clears vast tracts of land in service of what some have called a 'New Great Leap Forward,' what may be going into the ground is stolen American technology. Not fiberoptic cable and semiconductors, but something just as important: high-tech seeds.

"Back in 2011, a field manager at a farm in Iowa spotted an unfamiliar man digging in one of his fields. When he confronted the stranger, the man claimed to be from a university and hurriedly excused himself. The field happened to be planted with special seeds from DuPont Pioneer, and the manager passed along the unnerving incident to the company which informed the FBI. The investigation uncovered a Chinese seed smuggling ring and the man digging in the field, Mo Hailong, was charged by the Department of Justice and sentenced in federal court for conspiracy to steal trade secrets.

"But that was just the beginning. Since then, the FBI has investigated many such cases, and the DOJ has secured additional convictions, including one just last year when Xiang Haitao, a PRC national, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit economic espionage and was sentenced to more than two years in prison."

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"The FBI is not the revered institution it once was, but it can be again.

"I was an FBI special agent for more than 12 years and considered it a calling until I walked away at the end of last year. Unfortunately, the FBI changed significantly as it became politically and socially weaponized. I joined the FBI to fight crime but over time found myself being bombarded with partisan politics and social movements swirling around me which I wanted no part of.

"At the same time, Americans lost trust in this important institution and morale plummeted. It pained me that I was no longer proud to say I was an FBI special agent. I realized under the current leadership that no one was going to stop the FBI from continuing on this trajectory, and I lacked faith things would improve."

Read the entire article here.