COLORADO: Legislature paying off special interests with taxpayer refund dollars.

With the public distracted by gun control, abortion, and other hot-button issues, the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature is quietly advancing nearly two dozen bills to redistribute your taxpayer refund to special interests.

The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) in Colorado’s Constitution requires the state to refund excess tax revenue back to taxpayers. The state cannot spend this surplus revenue without asking voters at the ballot.

But there’s a loophole.

If legislators give your refund to someone else as a special tax benefit, it’s not considered spending. It’s considered a tax revenue reduction, so they can do it without asking you.

Any time certain people get a special tax break, that reduces total state revenues. If revenues go down, the surplus goes down. If the surplus goes down, your refund goes down.

That’s how legislators are stealing from all taxpayers to give to a few politically favored interests. And they’ve been doing it for years, but never on the scale being proposed by Democrats this year.

Full — and infuriating — details at the link. If you’re a Coloradan, this might be a good time to contact your state representatives.

LET’S CLEAR THIS UP RIGHT NOW, TOO: Rep. Jim Jordan Subpoenas FBI Executive In Conservative ‘Purge’ Inquiry.

MICHAEL WALSH: Bust Go The Boomers.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Dem Bigwigs Caught Hobnobbing With Secret Chinese Police Mole.

ERNST ON BIDEN’S BOONDOGGLE EXPRESS: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is ready to derail President Joe Biden’s billions in federal subsidies for California’s three huge rapid transit boondoggles.

JUDICIAL MATTERS: ‘Let’s Clear That Issue Up Right Now’: Arkansas Judge Orders Hunter Biden to Court To Answer Laptop Questions.

REALLY, THIS IS WHAT IT TOOK? Don Lemon’s fiery exchange with GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy left CNN leaders ‘exasperated.’

WELL, THEY WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE IN: Matt Taibbi: Time to Get Spies Out of Politics: The Michael Morell story demonstrates that the intelligence community needs sweeping reform, beginning with getting spies all the way out of domestic political life.

THEY AREN’T ELITE. THEY AREN’T WINNING. WE’RE ALREADY THWARTING THEM:  A Grand Alliance to Overcome the Elite Betrayal of America.

And this isn’t new. Hasn’t been since the 70s at least. Why do you think people respond to MAGA?

CHANGE: The North Carolina legislature is making attempt to restore classroom decorum by putting teachers and principals back in charge. (Background on how that decorum was lost here and here.)

THIS KIND OF THING WILL BECOME MORE COMMON: Pennsylvania school board closes ALL locker rooms amid controversy over trans student. “Students that take Physical Education classes, or P.E., have been directed by Superintendent Julia Vicente to come to school wearing gym clothes.”

THE SEC HAS BEEN RELENTLESS, BUT THE NCLA IS NOW RETURNING THE FAVOR: NCLA Challenges SEC’s ‘Hotel California’ Administrative Adjudication Regime.

Since 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been inspecting, investigating, and prosecuting Marian Young and her former investment business Saving2Retire, LLC, with no end in sight. SEC’s adjudication regime has deprived them of a jury trial and the Commission itself is now willfully refusing to decide their appeal from an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) initial decision issued back in August 2019, effectively blocking them from access to federal court review for nearly four years.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, filed a petition today on behalf of Ms. Young and her company, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to issue a writ of mandamus against the SEC Commissioners in In re Marian P. Young and Saving2Retire, LLC that would compel them to either dismiss the case or else promptly decide the appeal in the agency’s eight-year-old administrative matter.

Under SEC’s own rules, agency commissioners had to decide our clients’ appeal no later than October 2020. But instead of deciding the case and allowing our clients to seek judicial review promptly in a federal court, SEC has summarily granted itself eleven successive 90-day extensions of time to issue its final decision—collectively delaying the deadline set by its own rules by 990 days thus far (and counting). SEC’s prolonged and willful refusal to decide our clients’ case is depriving them of their right to a fair and timely adjudication under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and under the Administrative Procedure Act.

SEC has lost five of its last six cases at the U.S. Supreme Court and is still reeling from NCLA’s unanimous victory in SEC v. Michelle Cochran. SEC has especially good reason to dread judicial scrutiny in Ms. Young’s case. As a Texas resident, Ms. Young and her company would benefit from the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Jarkesy v. SEC. That case held that SEC administrative enforcement proceedings deprive respondents like Ms. Young of their Seventh Amendment jury trial rights, that ALJs enjoy an unconstitutional degree of multi-layered protection from presidential removal, and that Congress violated the nondelegation doctrine by giving SEC unfettered discretion to choose whether to prosecute alleged wrongdoers administratively or in federal courts.

The most appropriate remedy for SEC’s inexcusable dereliction of duty would be a writ of mandamus compelling SEC to dismiss its administrative enforcement proceeding against Ms. Young and her LLC. At a minimum, the Fifth Circuit should compel SEC to issue a prompt final decision enabling the case to progress to federal court.

Reminder/disclosure: I am on the NCLA’s advisory board.

TO BE FAIR, GREENS DON’T MUCH LIKE HUMANS: Joel Kotkin: The inhumanity of the green agenda: The ‘sustainability’ regime is impoverishing the world.

LIGHTNING DEAL: TUREFACE Mens Casual Button Down Long Sleeve Cotton Linen Dress Shirts. #CommissionEarned

JONATHAN TURLEY: Antony Blinken and the ‘made men’ of the Biden administration.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken would really, really prefer to talk about grain in Ukraine this week. But many people are less interested in what Blinken is doing as secretary of state than in what he did to become secretary of state.

This week, Blinken was implicated in a political coverup that could well have made the difference in the 2020 election. According to the sworn testimony of former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell, Blinken – then a high-ranking Biden campaign official – was “the impetus” of the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was really Russian disinformation. Morrell then organized dozens of ex-national security officials to sign the letter claiming that the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Morrell further admitted that the Biden campaign “helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.”

Finally, he admitted that one of his goals was not just to warn about Russian influence but “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”

Help it did. Biden claimed in a presidential debate that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden used the letter to say “nobody believes” that the laptop is real.

In reality, the letter was part of a political plan with the direct involvement of his campaign, but Biden never revealed their involvement. Indeed, over years of controversy surrounding this debunked letter, no one in the Biden campaign or White House (including Blinken) revealed their involvement.

Of course, the letter was all the media needed. Discussion of the laptop was blocked on social media, and virtually every major media outlet dismissed the story before the election.

That was also all Biden needed to win a close election. The allegations that the Biden family had cashed in millions through influence peddling could have made the difference. It never happened, in part because of Blinken’s work.

Related: Bidens’ corrupt web unraveling before our eyes.

Also: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

THEY RIGGED IT AGAINST BERNIE SANDERS TWICE: I Love This Guy: RFK Jr. Slams Dems for Rigging the System.

CHART: Party of the Rich? “The long-time image of Republicans as the ‘party of the rich’ and country club types is no longer true. Both charts demonstrate that Democrats have become the dominant party of upper-income households.”

Republicans are now a multiracial working-class and small business party, while Democrats are the party of the rich, and the rich’s poor client groups.

BUGS, FEATURES, LET’S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF:  Engineering by Management.

YOU KNOW WHAT WORKS AGAINST THAT? CRIMINALIZING THEFT:  San Francisco Target puts entire inventory on lockdown amid shoplifting crisis.

Though frankly at this point a Starship Troopers punishment system sounds good.

IF IT WERE ONLY A SCHOOL. OR EVEN ALL SCHOOLS!  Woke school district in shambles over petty PC obsessions.

AND YOU THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH THE COVIDIOCY:  Georgia Mother of 7 Denied Kidney Transplant for Refusing COVID-19 Shot.

INDEED:  In The Original.

FOX NEWS RIPPED ITS MASK OFF:  Thoughts on Tucker Carlson’s Firing.

DON’T SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO INSTITUTIONS THAT HATE YOU:  Pro-life students attacked with eggs at the University of Arizona.

TO NCOMPENSATE, THEY’RE TRYING TO CREATE EQUALITY OF RESULTS:  Unequal before the law.

The last time this was tried, Madame Guillotine ate very well.