VoxDawg

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Meaning we assume it wasn’t by accident.

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h/t okietiger

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Is it a pain to have to use secure/-approved sources all the time?

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Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett must agree with this, since they used unsecure email accounts not only to conduct official business, but they did so under pseudonyms and could skirt FOIA requests in the process.

We had insiders tell us during the first Trump admin that they were aware of Obama-era FBI/DOJ folks who took it one step further and used GMail's Drafts folder as a means of back & forth communications without ever actually sending the emails.

If memory serves, however, Signal is end-to-end encrypted among users of a given group.

23andMe is another DARPA project cosplaying as a tech startup.

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The handcuffs will never come out.

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Okay. Thanks so much for weighing in.

It's a relief to see that someone so knowledgeable on the matter has settled it once and for all.

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It used to happen all the time, but I thought it was regulated away in almost every state.

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A bit of clarification. I stand slightly corrected. Too many Scrubs reruns for me (all of which predate the ACA):

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In the United States, the legality of pharmaceutical companies rewarding doctors with trips or other incentives for prescribing specific drugs is a bit of a gray area, but it’s heavily regulated. The short answer is: not really, at least not in the way you might be imagining.

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (part of the Affordable Care Act, enacted in 2010) requires pharmaceutical companies to report any payments or "transfers of value" (like gifts Kingston trips) given to doctors. This transparency law doesn’t outright ban incentives, but it makes them public, which acts as a deterrent. On top of that, the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), a federal law, prohibits offering or accepting anything of value to induce prescriptions for drugs covered by federal healthcare programs like Medicare or Medicaid. Violating the AKS can lead to hefty fines or jail time.

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Pharma companies can’t directly tie trips or rewards to prescribing quotas (e.g., "Prescribe 100 units of Drug X, get a Hawaii vacation"). That’s illegal under the AKS. But they can offer indirect perks—like funding for "educational conferences" at fancy resorts, consulting fees, or speaking engagements—where the line gets blurry. These arrangements have to be framed as legitimate business or educational activities, not quid pro quo for prescriptions. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services keeps a close eye on this, and companies risk big penalties if they’re caught crossing into kickback territory.

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One of the many "moments" where it hit me that everyone in DC was on the same page.

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Roberts might not even be slick enough to be the point man. He could be simply leveraged by some more ambitious career swamper like Boasberg. It may be great to be the man, but it's even better to be the one holding all the goods over the man's head to get him to do what you want.

Boo-birds so quick on the trigger....

SFP has used up my single response to his highbrow retardation earlier in the month of March, but in case anyone were curious, here's what Grok had to say on the matter:

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Here are specific examples of government involvement or coordination with social media companies to limit free speech regarding discussion of the 2020 election results, based on available information:

Biden Administration's Communications with Platforms: During the early months of the Biden administration, officials from the White House, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly engaged with social media platforms like Twitter (now X), Facebook, and YouTube. These interactions involved requests to remove or limit posts deemed as misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. For instance, a White House official emailed Twitter staff after a post by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested, without evidence, that Hank Aaron’s death was linked to the COVID-19 vaccine—a claim tied to broader election-related narratives about government trustworthiness. The email asked, "Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP." This example, highlighted in court filings from Murthy v. Missouri, illustrates government pressure on platforms to suppress content, though the administration argued it was to protect election integrity rather than coerce.

FBI and DHS Meetings with Tech Companies: Prior to the 2020 election, tech companies including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon reportedly met monthly with the FBI, DHS, and other government agencies. These meetings, as noted in posts on X and referenced in congressional hearings, aimed to coordinate efforts to address election-related content. While not all actions were explicitly coercive, the regular engagement raised concerns about government influence over content moderation, particularly targeting narratives questioning election results. For example, former Twitter executives testified before the House Oversight Committee in February 2023 that the FBI had flagged content, including the Hunter Biden laptop story, which some argued affected election discourse.

Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) Collaboration: The EIP, a consortium involving Stanford Internet Observatory and other research groups, worked with social media companies to monitor and flag election-related misinformation in 2020. A House Judiciary Committee report detailed how the EIP collaborated with platforms to suppress content, including posts questioning the election’s legitimacy. Internal emails uncovered in Murthy v. Missouri revealed that the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) had "recommended" that the State Department connect with the EIP, suggesting a government-backed effort to influence content moderation. This partnership allegedly led to the censorship of millions of posts, as claimed in discussions on X and by figures like Mike Benz on Tucker Carlson’s program.

State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC): Emails uncovered in the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit (later Murthy v. Missouri) showed that the State Department’s GEC provided technology to social media companies to assist in censoring speech before the 2020 election. This technology was purportedly used to identify and suppress posts challenging the official election narrative, as reported in posts on X and discussed in legal filings, highlighting a direct government role in shaping online discourse.

These examples stem from legal cases like Murthy v. Missouri, congressional investigations, and public statements on platforms like X. In that case, Missouri and Louisiana, along with private plaintiffs, alleged that federal officials coerced platforms to remove content, leading to a district court injunction in 2023 (later modified by the Fifth Circuit and reviewed by the Supreme Court in 2024). The Supreme Court ultimately ruled 6-3 in June 2024 that the plaintiffs lacked standing, leaving the coercion question unresolved but not refuting the interactions occurred. Critics argue these actions stifled free speech, while the government maintained they were necessary to counter misinformation threatening election integrity. The evidence remains contested, with some details supported by court documents and testimony, though the full extent of coercion versus persuasion is still debated.

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its amazing how effortlessly leftists shape-shift from uncompromising civil libertarians to jackboot authoritarians when it comes to free speech.

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Yeah, they were singing a different tune when folks wanted to talk about the 2020 election "results", or the possibility of FBI/CHS/paid agitators at the Capitol on J6, or discuss the potential dangers of an untested/unregulated/unverified experimental gene therapy being mandated under the guise of a vaccine... Where was their staunch defense of free speech then?

Crazy how nature do dat...