March 8, 2025

CAN SHE PICK ‘EM, OR WHAT? Former illegal immigrant aide to AOC self-deports to Colombia amid questions about employment: report.

An illegal immigrant who once served as an aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, has reportedly self-deported to Colombia, praising the “freedom of movement” in the South American nation after working in Congress despite being in the country illegally.

Diego de la Vega was born in Ecuador and immigrated to the United States as a 7-year-old in 2001 on a visitor’s visa that he overstayed, Migrant Insider reported.

The news raises thorny questions about his employment status for the Queens-based congresswoman.

“It’s bittersweet. I hadn’t left the country in 23 years — from age seven to age 30,” de la Vega told Migrant Insider. “Now, I can’t go back to the US. It feels like exile. It’s a very permanent move. But my wife and I are confident we made the right decision. And, after some time, it’s been a real pleasure to be here.

“It feels surreal to not be illegalized anymore. I don’t have to live in the shadows or constantly worry about paperwork,” he added. “That freedom of movement is incredibly satisfying.”

* * * * * * * *

In 2021, de la Vega was hired by Ocasio-Cortez’s re-election campaign and eventually became her deputy communications director.

“Diego is amazing,” Ocasio-Cortez told the news outlet. “We love him.”

Flashback: AOC chief of staff criticized for wearing shirt touting Nazi collaborator:

“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast,” Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s Green Nude Eel ghostwriter and former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti famously wrote in the “before times,” i.e. early 2019. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” Chakrabarti told the Washington Post shortly before walking the plank, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all…we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

L.A. CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Why is Mayor Karen Bass deleting her text messages?

When flames erupted in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was more than 7,000 miles away, on a diplomatic mission to Africa.

Bass headed home shortly thereafter and was in transit for nearly 24 hours as the fire ravaged the Palisades and surrounding communities.

She and her office have said she was in constant communication during that period. But it’s impossible to know exactly what she was communicating, because her messages were not saved, according to a city lawyer.

“Her phone is set not to save text messages,” said the lawyer, David Michaelson.

Michaelson said that there is “no requirement that a city official or employee save text messages,” despite the fact that the city’s own document retention policies dictate that most records should be kept for at least two years.

Under state law, “any writing” related to the conduct of government is deemed a public record. On Jan. 10, The Times filed a public records request for all text messages sent or received by the mayor while she was in transit on Jan. 7 or Jan. 8 that mention fire response or her travel plans.

Bass has come under heavy criticism for being out of the country when the fire erupted amid a historically dry winter and forecasts of hurricane-force winds.

Related: Mayor Karen Bass fired Kristin Crowley for being right.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 31

THE COVID-ERA SMEARING – AND RESURRECTION – OF TRUMP NIH APPOINTEE DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA:

Jay Bhattacharya was in pretty terrible shape five years ago. He was losing sleep and weight, not because of the COVID-19 virus but in response to the efforts of his colleagues at Stanford University and the larger medical community to shut down his research, which questioned much of the government’s response to the pandemic.

Some of his Stanford colleagues leaked false and damaging information to reporters. The university’s head of medicine ordered him to stop speaking to the press. Top leaders at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, dialed up the attacks, dismissing him and his colleagues as what Collins termed “fringe epidemiologists” while their acolytes threw mud from a slew of publications, including the Washington Post, The Nation, and the prestigious medical journal BMJ.

In the years since, many of Bhattacharya’s scientific concerns about the efficacy of lockdowns and mask mandates have been corroborated. Fauci, meanwhile, accepted a pardon from President Biden, protecting him from COVID-related offenses dating back to 2014, the year he started funding research at a Wuhan, China, lab that U.S. intelligence agencies now believe probably started the pandemic. And this week, Bhattacharya looks set to achieve surprising vindication as the Senate holds a hearing on his nomination to head the NIH, in a Department of Health and Human Services run by science nonconformist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Read the whole thing.

Related: The vindication of a heretic.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 21

“DEMOCRATS, IF YOU EVER WANT TO WIN AN ELECTION AGAIN, THE ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT FIRST STEP IS TO STOP DOING THIS:” Bill Maher Flattens Left’s Land Acknowledgment Farce.

‘I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again—either give the land back or shut the f*** up!’

* * * * * * * *

“Can we please get over this idea that ancient people weren’t just as full of s*** – in fact, more full of s*** – than humans today?’ he asked. ‘This idea that being ancient and Indigenous was always better than us? It wasn’t… The Māori in pre-colonial times were like most indigenous people – quite war-like, frequently fighting other tribes, with the winners enslaving the losers. And even eating them.”

Exit quote: “Can’t win elections if you’re dying on the 20% side of the 80/20 issues.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 101

GOVERNMENT:

End TSA and privatize airport security.

Related:

Posted at 9:28 am by Glenn Reynolds 258

HOW IT STARTED: Sir Keir Starmer has removed portraits of Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, and more British heroes from the Houses of Parliament.

—GB News, February 24th, 2025.

How it’s going:

Last month when CBS’s Margaret Brennan absurdly claimed to Marco Rubio that JD Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” Mark Steyn responded, “I did not think it was possible to despise the ‘mainstream’ media more than I already did. In a society thoroughly moronized by Brain-Dead Brennan and her ilk, Hitler is the sole remaining historical figure anybody’s heard of.”

Churchill only hangs on in history as the man who defeated him; just don’t mention him to Barack Obama, Tucker Carlson — and Starmer’s foreign secretary: ‘Key moment’ — David Lammy ridiculed for not knowing when Churchill became Prime Minister.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 242

AT THIS POINT, THE ABA IS A GARBAGE INSTITUTION AND ESSENTIALLY THE ENEMY OF THE RULE OF LAW:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 59

DUNKING ON HARWOOD IS TOO EASY, BUT SOMEONE’S GOT TO DO IT:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 122