From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Lewis

If you were to ask the question: Why are so many drones the size of cars flying over New Jersey? You would think someone in the government might know.

Alas, this is the “deep state” era and after a history of coverups (from Russian collusion to COVID lab leaks to Hunter Biden’s laptop), the Feds are either lying or incompetent. If it is a high-tech repeat of the Chinese balloon fiasco, you have to wonder what Xi Jinping has on the Biden family.

OK, not really.

Regardless, the drone sightings have spread across the Northeast, near sensitive locations and even temporarily shutting down a local airport — yet federal officials insist there is no security threat. But how would they know unless they are the ones putting them up?

Which, by the way, is one of the so-called conspiracy theories that suggests the Feds might be looking for something nefarious they don’t want the public to know.  The bottom line is no one is being told what is going on, but more and more folks know exactly what they would like to do about it.

Shoot the damn things down.

Predictably, craven New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (who had eagerly reiterated there were “no public safety risks,”) quickly reminded his constituents they don’t have authority to shoot down unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

It is indeed illegal under federal law to shoot at aircraft within the National Airspace System (NAS). And for good reason if you’re talking about protecting lives engaged in military, commercial or personal air traffic.

But as we are witnessing, the centralization of power has its limits. Especially when it comes to preventing state officials from doing their duty. Relying on bureaucrats in Washington to handle local exigencies is still a fool’s errand.

The main obstacle to giving local authorities more leeway has been the largest and most powerful of commercial (and hobby) interests. Amazon and Google haven’t been shy about flexing their lobbying muscle in support of federal preemption of state law that might get in the way of delivery drones constantly buzzing over your house en route to your neighbor’s.

The invasions of privacy could get even worse. Imagine a perverted neighbor with a camera mounted drone hovering outside your bathroom window?

So, who ‘ya supposed to call? Why, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), of course. They’ll get right back to you.

Above and beyond the bureaucratic inertia, homeowners are supposed to count on an FAA that fast-tracked Alphabet’s Wing Aviation drones for consumer-goods deliveries? That was 2019, about a year and a half after I introduced the Drone Innovation Act preventing the Feds from authorizing UAS within the “immediate reaches” above someone’s property without the owner’s permission.

Navigable airspace above 400 feet was left in the hands of Washington, but the legislation allowed for the traditional “police powers” of state and local government to protect common law rights to privacy from an aerial nuisance or trespass.

Not surprisingly, the special interests marshaled their forces to block a bill that would have put reasonable limits on federal preemption of state and local laws, which are especially prevalent in areas “affecting commercial UAS operators.”

Somewhere, Jeff Bezos must still be smiling.

Former Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.) writes at jasonlewis.substack.com and is the author of Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics & the Partisan Press now out in paperback.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said Thursday night that the Democratic Party could face a “tea party” movement after the Biden administration concealed the truth about President Joe Biden’s health.

A Wall Street Journal article published Thursday revealed White House aides “insulated” Biden, even from Cabinet members, from the first year of his presidency. Roginsky said that the “lying” about Biden’s health would have consequences for Democrats.

“There is a bigger problem here, and that is that I think Democrats are at the point where Republicans might have been right after the Bush election or after the Bush term was up, which is that I think Democrats are starting to mistrust their institutions,” Roginsky said. “And this goes back to a bipartisan effort to lie us into the Iraq war, not just by George Bush, but also by a lot of Democrats.

WATCH:

“It has to do with the fact that Barack Obama did not hold anybody accountable after the 2008 crisis, which also happened on George Bush’s watch, but he became president, he never threw a hostage on the tarmac from Wall Street,” Roginsky continued. “You saw the rise of Bernie Sanders as a result of that, and you saw a lot of institutional Democrats, me included, saying, no, no, no, this is not the time. We have to stick with the institution.”

Similar articles published by the Wall Street Journal earlier in the year to their Thursday article generated pushback from some media outlets, with many pundits claiming Biden’s health was not in decline.

“I think you have a lot of Democrats now, me included, who are pretty sick of the institution and trusting people in the institution and this is just one example, the most recent example, I think of people institutionally lying to the American people and what you’re ultimately going to see,” Roginsky continued. “And I don’t have a problem saying this as a Democrat, is that you’re going to see a tea party version rise up in the Democratic Party based on the fact that this is yet another marker of people just not trusting our leaders anymore. And I’m sorry to say that, but I think we brought this on ourselves.”

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington told the Wall Street Journal about having difficulty reaching Biden during the disastrous August 2021 pullout from Afghanistan. The only time Smith spoke with Biden directly during Biden’s term in office was after a heated exchange with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

On multiple occasions during his presidency, Biden has said he spoke with people who had died, including claiming to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996. In September 2022, Biden asked for Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana at a conference on hunger that took place several weeks after Walorski and two staffers were killed in a car crash.

Biden also has suffered multiple falls during his term in office, including one at the Air Force Academy in June 2023, falling down while on his bike in June 2022 and stumbling on the steps of Air Force One on multiple occasions. Biden now takes a different set of stairs onto the VC-25 used as Air Force One, among other concessions to his age.