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Normally, a candidate’s nominee to head the National Archives would be rubber-stamped. We are not in normal times.
President Biden promised “unity” when he was a presidential candidate and again on Inauguration Day, but we have seen nothing but the opposite since. Biden’s DOJ has been weaponized against anyone to the right of AOC, the FBI raided Trump’s home over a dispute with the National Archives, and the President has branded “MAGA Republicans” a “threat to democracy” in his blood-red fascistic speech earlier this month with two marines stationed ominously behind him.
But, according to journos, it’s the Republicans that are making everything a partisan issue.
On Thursday, there was a confirmation hearing for Biden’s nominee to lead the National Archives and Records Administration and it got quite heated.
That’s because the nominee, Colleen Shogan, wrote a lengthy article in 2007 titled, “Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: A Republican Populism.”
ABC News calls that piece just a “scholarly work” that “described how leaders forge connections with the American people through presidential rhetoric.”
Republicans pressed Shogan on her past analysis of presidential speeches, pointing to a paper she wrote titled, “Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: A Republican Populism.” A scholarly work published by Cambridge University Press in 2007, the study described how leaders forge connections with the American people through presidential rhetoric. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri accused Shogan of having “denigrated Republican presidents” in her writings.
In other words, “There’s nothing to see here. The Republicans are just getting upset over nothing again.”
It’s all just about “presidential rhetoric”, is it?
Shogan wrote several disparaging things about former Republican Presidents. According to Shogan, President Ronald Reagan had “less than impressive intellectual capabilities” and “it is widely accepted that George W. Bush was less intelligent than his challenger, Al Gore.”
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like she’s calling both Reagan and Dubya stupid.
At a time that the National Archives has been weaponized, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) rightly asked Shogan, “How can we be assured that you will serve effectively in this nonpartisan role?”
Great question.
That’s where Senator Josh Hawley’s brilliant questioning picks up.
Roll tape:
This video of @HawleyMO grilling Biden's archivist nominee over her explicit anti-Republican bias is just absolutely brutal… pic.twitter.com/bnSGDsgUtD
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 21, 2022
The Associated Press found a way to explicitly “Republicans pounce” the story. In an article titled, “GOP raises Mar-a-Lago search at Archives nominee’s hearing”, AP writer Farnoush Amiri points out that it’s the Republicans that are politicizing the hearing by bringing up the unprecedented raid on President’ Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
“We are living through the political weaponization of the National Archives, the political weaponization of the Department of Justice, the political weaponization of the FBI,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
Hawley and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, latched on to an academic article Shogan wrote in 2007 about Republican anti-intellectualism as they questioned her ability to be a nonpartisan face of the Archives. Shogan pointed to her decades of service at nonpartisan offices.
“And I invite anybody to talk to the people that I have worked with for years in my nonpartisan government service,” Shogan said.
Source: Associated Press
Shogan can say that she has been nonpartisan for years — but that was in an era where nonpartisanship was the standard.
Biden’s administration has shown that those standards have changed.
The National Archives itself has completely changed how they handled Presidential records.
Here is Just the News founder John Solomon and Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch discussing how the Archives let former President Bill Clinton keep audio tapes that he made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch because those were “personal” records. Bubba kept them in his sock drawer and later used them for his autobiography.
Now the Archives has flipped the standard and even explicitly personal documents were seized including Trump’s passport, and as the former President said on Hannity on Wednesday night, perhaps even his will.
But this isn’t just a one-off “scholarly article” that is making Republican Senators concerned that the National Archives will be weaponized under Shogan just as the DOJ and FBI have been weaponized under AG Merrick Garland and Director Christopher Wray, respectively.
The Epoch Times reports that Shogan has posted tweets critical of Trump. She has since made her tweets private.
Shogan has also posted on Twitter about then-President Donald Trump, including a missive on Jan. 5, 2020.
“Isn’t the next move a self-pardon?” Shogan wrote at the time.
That implied Trump committed criminal acts, Portman said.
While Shogan repeated that she would be apolitical if confirmed, Hawley wasn’t convinced.
“You wrote an article basically saying that Republican voters are stupid, that Republican presidents deliberately appeal to anti-intellectualism. You roll it all up in Republican populism, yet you’re trying to present yourself as a nonpartisan,” he said.
“In fact, you’re an extreme partisan, and your record shows that. You’re someone who has denigrated Republican presidents—every two-term Republican president since the Second World War and their voters in this lengthy article.”
Source: Epoch Times
In Biden’s America, anti-Republican partisanship is rewarded.
The press thinks it’s bad for Republicans to notice.
Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.
Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.
This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.
