KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Maui Tragedy Makes a Strong Pro-Second Amendment Point. “Regarding today’s headline, I was thinking about the unquestioning faith that leftists have in the government’s ability to do the right and necessary things when the time comes. We have seen this really blossom in them since the beginning of the pandemic. If Anthony Fauci had told them to all stand outside naked until he gave the word to go back indoors and get dressed, they would have all shrieked, ‘BECAUSE SCIENCE!’ and done it.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: India on the moon! Chandrayaan-3 becomes 1st probe to land near lunar south pole. It’s only the 4th nation to successfully land a probe on the Moon, and it comes just after the Russian effort failed.

Plus: “India’s success today can be attributed to ‘extensive changes’ to its landing strategy after Chandrayaan-2’s 2019 crash, Bhardwaj said.” As Elon Musk has demonstrated, treating failure as part of the iterative learning process instead of a disaster is the path to success.

WSJ: Hunter Biden’s Foreign Dealings Spell More Trouble Ahead: Justice Department opens prospect of pursuing lobbying violations as it presses on with criminal tax probe, while Republicans push to implicate President Biden in his son’s activities.

U.S. relations with China were steady in December 2013 when then-Vice President Joe Biden stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing with a seemingly unremarkable companion: his son Hunter.

Days later, Shanghai authorities approved the formation of an investment boutique, underwritten by Chinese government money, that named Hunter Biden as a director and later cut him an ownership share at a discounted price. Roughly four months afterward, he began earning up to $1 million annually for sitting on a corporate board in Ukraine, a country his father paid special attention to as vice president. Hunter Biden would go on to earn millions more from a brief association with a Chinese energy-and-finance conglomerate trying to break into the U.S.

The younger Biden’s foreign business activities loom larger than ever a decade after that trip, with President Biden seeking re-election as a grinding Justice Department investigation and a determined probe by congressional Republicans scrutinize where Hunter Biden made money overseas and what he got paid to do.

Last month prosecutors told a judge that as they continue to investigate Hunter Biden’s activities, he faces the possibility of being prosecuted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires Americans who talk to U.S. government officials or the media on behalf of foreign parties to register that relationship. A review by The Wall Street Journal of the younger Biden’s business activities shows the areas where he interacted with foreign entities and received money from them.

You might feel that justice is finally on the way to being done. But in fact, when the establishment wanted Biden in the White House it broke the rules to protect him and his son. Now that it wants to get rid of him, it’s turning the pressure up. None of this has anything to do with justice.

STANDING UP AGAINST RACIAL BIGOTRY AND DISCRIMINATION: Racially Discriminatory Youth Programs At Six Private NY Medical Schools Challenged by Equal Protection Project. “‘Erecting additional barriers for some races and ethnic groups in and of itself is unlawful discrimination,’ Jacobson told DailyMail.com. ‘Imagine if the roles were reversed, and these programs explicitly favored Asians and whites — there would be universal outrage and these medical schools would never accept such funding.’”

GUNS: Nikki Goeser at Press Conference at the Tennessee State Legislature’s Special Session on Gun Control.

RACE AND SCHOOL DISCIPLINE:  The Federalist Society is sponsoring a panel discussion on race and school discipline— a favorite topic of mine—on Thursday.  I’ll be watching.  Maybe you’ll be interested too.

LET THE ELECTION YEAR COVID PANIC BEGIN IN FIVE… FOUR… THREE…: Biden admin buys more Covid ‘safety’ supplies in ramp up for new variants. “The revelations come amid speculation that the Biden White House will reinstate Covid mandates and lockdowns as health officials warn about a spike in cases and an alleged new Covid variant.”

Meanwhile: Atlanta college reinstates mask mandate for students, employees on campus.

WELL, THAT WENT BADLY: Charlotte Pride Says No One Will Win 2023 Harvey Milk Award After Convicted Pedophile Winner’s Past Unearthed: Chad Sevearance-Turner served years in prison for sexually abusing a minor boy.

DON SURBER: Killing the Middle Class.

Flashback:

Related: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: New York to Business Owners: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: WATCH: ‘F— You!’ Biden’s Belated Maui Visit Goes Off the Rails: ‘Thanks for nothing!’ protesters shout at president who waited 13 days to visit fire-ravaged island.

Related: ‘You Almost Lost Your Cat? Go F*** Yourself’: Critics Savage Biden After Maui Speech.

JUDAS CONTRADICTION: Skeptics often claim the Gospels of Matthew and Luke give conflicting accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot. But Eric Lyons of the Apologetics Press demonstrates why the accounts are complementary, not contradictory. It’s the latest installment of a new regular Wednesday feature — CONTRADICTIONS — on HillFaith.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: The Progressive Benefactor Who Makes U.S. Barriers to Foreign Cash Look Like Swiss Cheese.

The Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has a profound interest in American politics. Over the years, he has pumped $475 million he has earned manufacturing medical devices into left-wing advocacy groups – $72 million in 2021 alone, according to a new report from the conservative watchdog group, Americans for Public Trust.

According to a biography of Wyss written by a sister, Wyss’ goal is not to bend laws to his business’s advantage but to “[re]interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics.”

Although foreigners are prohibited from donating money directly to political causes, Wyss has donated lavishly to progressive political organizations. The New York Times reported in 2021 that these include the “Center for American Progress and Priorities USA, as well as organizations that ran voter registration and mobilization campaigns to increase Democratic turnout, built media outlets accused of slanting the news to favor Democrats, and sought to block Mr. Trump’s nominees, prove he colluded with Russia and push for his impeachment.” Since 2016, some $245 million of his spending on American politics has gone to Arabella Advisors, which controls a vast network of progressive nonprofits which, among other activities, has financed hundreds of smaller groups that campaign for specific issues and candidates. Arabella, which raised $1.6 billion in 2021, was dubbed by The Atlantic “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Critics argue that Wyss’ largesse illuminates a gaping loophole in political finance that essentially allows wealthy foreigners to launder their contributions – one that has been exploited far more robustly by Democrats than Republicans.

Plus: “Almost every expert interviewed agrees that the House investigation will prove challenging. The opaque nature of 501(c)4 independent political expenditure groups makes it impossible to tell whose donations are spent on what.”

Well, yeah — money is fungible, and that’s the whole point of these donations.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Waterpik Aquarius Water Flosser. #CommissionEarned

THE NEW SPACE RACE: The New Race to Reach the Moon—and Find Water: Promise of water draws countries, companies; Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crash is second failed landing this year.

Nations and private companies are racing to send devices to the surface of the moon. Sticking the landing is another story.

A surge in missions planned for the lunar surface is unfolding around the world, driven by renewed ambitions for scientific research and deep-space exploration. Many aim for the moon’s south pole, where scientists first detected hints of water ice in 2008 and 2009.

Water is a critical resource for a future lunar base—it could one day be used for drinking and cooling equipment, or even to make rocket fuel to power missions to places further away in the solar system, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Tapping natural lunar resources could mean future spaceships wouldn’t have to lug fuel from Earth.

“Water is the key for many aspects of living on the moon,” said Csaba Palotai, an associate professor of planetary sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology. “And the suspicion is that there’s lots of it—that’s why we’re going through these missions to verify how much, exactly, there is.”

The presence of water at the lunar south pole is also raising concerns about how such resources may be claimed. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently said he didn’t want to see China land crews on the south pole first and claim water resources there. China has said that space exploration should promote development for all countries and benefit all humankind.

Researchers have confirmed water exists on other parts of the moon, including both the sunlit and shadowed surfaces.

It’s raining soup, for those with a bucket.

WHEN SOCIAL WORK BECOMES ANTI-SOCIAL WORK. “Even as legit practitioners try their best, it’s an ever more uphill battle—pitted not just against deepening social challenges but also idealistic and/or opportunistic academics, bureaucrats and political appointees for whom worse is often better so long as it leads to more authority and funding. Priorities and supposed best practices (not to mention promotions and raises) are increasingly defined by those with grander ambitions than helping empower their clientele.”

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Judge rules three of Andy Ngo’s Antifa attackers must pay him $100,000 each.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Mesha Mainor Reflects on Her Brave Journey to the GOP — and Her Bright Future.

JOHN LUCAS: Mainstream Media Propaganda at Work: Not a “whiff” but a hurricane.

This CNN broadcast is just one small example of how the mainstream media continues to mislead voters daily. Multiply it by thousands and the collaborative grand strategy will begin to come into focus. It is a lie in service of a strategy intended to sway the election, and “fundamentally transform the United States of America” by continuing to drag us into a progressive utopia if the media’s desire to elect more such “progressives” is realized: lockdowns, loss of livelihoods and resulting dependency on the state, loss of fundamental freedoms, the right to worship and the right to travel freely, elimination of combustion engines, 15-minute cities, an increasingly socialist qua communist economy…. And on and on….

Yep.

OPEN THREAD: Go for it.

PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Perseverance Mars rover spies big sunspot rotating toward Earth.

THAT’S THE DREAM: Man Uses Strange Rock as Doorstop For Decades. It Turned Out to Be Worth a Fortune.

SCIENCE MARCHES ON: Physicists Use Vibrations To Prevent Information Loss in Quantum Computing.

THE DAILY CHART: Supplying Racism. “It has been observed that the demand for racism outstrips the supply, and hence the need for defining racism down to sweep up any observable disparity between racial groups or ‘microaggression,’ or the proliferation of outright race hoaxes, such as racist graffiti on college campuses, etc. Academia and the media are driving this trend. Zach Goldberg a while ago charted out the rise in mentions of race and racism in the major media, but worth repeating here.”

HOW MANY OF THOSE “TEENS” ARE GANG MEMBERS? Gun deaths among children and teens in the U.S. reached a new record in 2021, study finds.