Editor’s Note: From the Back Forty is Liberty Nation’s longest running and most popular weekly column.
Could something be in the White House and West Wing water? No one seems to be making any sense of late, from repeating phrases to claiming to have phone calls with long-dead leaders of other nations. Heartlanders must wonder what’s going on. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump drew more support, claiming all of Nevada’s GOP delegates. Oh, and there’s some relief for the little guy in a 17-year-long federal case – a lot to discuss in the pubs and coffee shops sprinkled across middle America.
Biden Proves the Rumors True
Special counsel Robert Hur, hired by the Department of Justice to investigate whether Joe Biden criminally mishandled classified documents, shocked the nation when his report went public. Hur brought up many continuous embarrassments to the president: forgetting when his son, Beau Biden, died and the years of his tenure as vice president. Hur described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur went so far as to say bringing the information to a grand jury was iffy. Jurists might decline to charge Biden out of sympathy for his cognitive decline, so why bother? And then it all went sideways: Number 46 was let loose on the press.
President Biden immediately delivered a fiery speech that had his handlers silently shrieking and rethinking who was in charge and the drive-by media panicking. “I don’t think he did himself any favors in that speech,” Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN host Anderson Cooper.
“He undercut two of his biggest messages: The adults are back in charge, by sort of being dismissive. Yes, he was exonerated. He won’t be convicted or tried for this. But there were some really damning things. He had deliberation of Afghan war plans with him, he spoke to a biographer about classified documents for which [Biden] didn’t have clearance. This showed a decent level of recklessness of handling classified information.”
But it was Jeffrey Toobin who called out the gaffe Biden can’t seem to shake loose from. “Mexico? Where did that come from?” Toobin asked. “I mean, that’s the only thing anyone will remember from this.”
Griffin added, “This is becoming a five-alarm fire for the White House.”
“If he wasn’t such a despicable hateful person. I’d feel sorry for him,” said Jason Anton in Wichita, Kansas. “The last three years haven’t been good,” acknowledged Eric Andrew of Henderson, Nevada. Right smack dab in the middle of America’s breadbasket, Jim Bredemeier noted: “last thing I ever saw fail as bad as Biden’s presser was Christoper Darden and the glove at OJ’s trial.”
Trump Takes Nevada
Former President Donald Trump, as predicted, swept Nevada on his march back to Washington, taking the GOP’s 26 delegates (winning 99.1% of Republican voters) in the February 8 caucus. Nevada is one of those states that have a primary and a caucus. Trump’s opponent, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, chose the February 6 primary. Liberty Nation’s Tim Donner explains what went wrong:
Trump’s former UN Ambassador and the ex-governor of South Carolina was, like all primary candidates in Nevada, given the choice between Tuesday’s non-binding primary and today’s delegate-rich caucuses. She chose the primary – aka beauty contest – and lost by more than 30% to a disembodied opponent – aka “none of these candidates” – on a ballot that also included three unknowns. It was downright humiliating and could certainly be deemed a political miscalculation.”
But she hangs on. As Bill Maher quipped after her poor performance, “She lost to ‘none of these candidates.'” He continued: “She got beat by nobody. This hasn’t happened since Jussie Smollett.”
And Bob Slater in Climax, Michigan, sums it up: “She’s running the bases after strike 3.”
Up in Smoke
After 17 years of suffering for owning and operating a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, Charles (Charlie) Lynch is a free man. The investigation was launched in 2007 when George W. Bush was in the White House, and Lynch was a respected businessman with a three-bedroom ranch-style house in Arroyo Grande. Today, Charlie struggles financially and lives in a single-wide trailer on his mom’s property in New Mexico.
Somehow, in an election year, the federal government ended its destruction and persecution with a $2,500 fine and no jail time to be in effect on April 20. The family will never make up the financial and time losses, as Amanda Garcia, Lynch’s sister, explained to friends on Facebook:
“17 years ago, we got the call Charlie had been arrested. I went to my brother Pat’s house, where my mother was; he gave us the deed to his house and said go get Charlie out. We left the next day. The bond was $400,000 (there is no 10% in federal court). The family pulled it all together and we got Charlie out of jail. Properties from my dad, brother Pat and other contributions from my brother Tom. I signed a surety bond while they were getting the 400k together.”
“I’m really just grateful to my family, friends, and lawyers for standing by me all these years,” Lynch told an LA news outlet. “I kind of felt like it was important for me to take a stand for what I thought was righteous and fair. That’s as true today as it was nearly 17 years ago.”
