Uranium prices have shot up by as much as 40% since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

With nuclear power providing about a fifth of our energy, this is another blow for Americans.

Unfortunately our nuclear power plants are dependent on uranium imports from Russia and countries in its sphere of influence because our domestic mining industry was suppressed.

In December 2016, on his way out the door, Barack Obama announced that he was inventing the Bears Ears "National Monument" on over a million acres of land. While California environmentalists celebrated, tens of thousands of locals bitterly protested the move.

Billboards and stickers reading #RescindBearsEars were plastered across Utah towns in the area that expected catastrophic consequences from the destruction of their livelihoods.

Among these was uranium mining.

A uranium mine in the area has the potential to yield 500,000 pounds of uranium. Miners warned that the Bears Ears monument would force us to rely more heavily on foreign uranium.

But the Democrats, still busy blaming their election defeat on some sort of phantom Russian-Trump conspiracy, did not see any problem with making America dependent on Russia.

The Trump administration did not rescind Obama’s power grab, but did shrink the monument by over 80%. It was the latest battle in a long running war between Democrats looking to shut down mining in general and uranium mining specifically, and Republicans limiting, but not undoing the damage done by their abusive environmental regulations and power plays.

The Clinton administration’s euphemistic “mining reform” push already devastated mining in America. As the Wall Street Journal noted at the time, mining firms were “leaving the United States with the blessings, if not open encouragement, of the Clinton administration."

And with the blessing of the Clintons, America became dependent on foreign resources.

In 1980, the United States had produced over 40 million pounds of uranium, but under the Clinton administration that number stood at less than 5 million. Now it's well below a million.

Despite efforts by environmentalists to shut down nuclear power plants and leave Americans reliant on expensive and unreliable Chinese solar panels and other scam green investment vehicles for their donor base, our nuclear plants, which unlike wind and solar are capable of delivering a reliable power supply, still went on needing uranium.

As domestic production virtually vanished, imports skyrocketed. Some 91% of enriched uranium used in nuclear power plants is imported from other countries. While Canada is a leading source of uranium imports, our largest source of uranium remains Russia combined with countries in its sphere of influence like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In 2020, we bought about 11 million pounds of Canadian uranium, 8 million pounds of Russian uranium, around 11 million pounds of Kazakh uranium, and about 4 million pounds of Uzbek uranium.

Putin recently intervened militarily to protect Kazakhstan's leader from opposition protests.

Kazatomprom, the world's largest uranium producer, had partnered with Uranium One, a Canadian uranium mining company that the Clintons colluded to sell to the Russians (more recently, Uranium One was resold to an American company) and has close ties to the nuclear industries in Russia and China. Communist China is pushing aggressively into Kazakhstan to feed its growing appetite for nuclear power. And that will also limit our nuclear power options.

America has plenty of uranium but, like so many other resources, miners aren’t allowed to go and get it. That’s why we depend on China and the Taliban for the rare earths that go into our microchips, on Mexico for copper, and on Russia and its allies for our uranium.

America’s uranium industry used to provide tens of thousands of jobs. Now hardly any.

As Bill Clinton went to war against miners, the mayor of Moab, Utah pleaded for respite.

"We called ourselves the uranium capital of the world. It provided us with a high standard of living," he said. "While we're proud of the tourism base, it cannot provide the standard of living that mining did. Moab needs the jobs that mining will create. It could come back. We still have plenty of low-grade uranium ore throughout the area. It will never come back if they pass this bill."

California environmentalists have been smugly lecturing locals in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming that they ought to forget about having good jobs that can provide them with a middle class life, and just be there to bus their tables and sell them keychains when they go on vacations.

Much as solar panel jobs are no substitute for coal jobs, tourism work is no substitute for mining.

While the Clinton administration didn't manage to pass its preferred bill destroying the mining industry, it used administrative regulations to do as much damage as possible. In the last days of the corrupt administration, Bill Clinton issued a series of "midnight regulations" attacking American industries. And the mining industry was a major target of the administration.

While the Clintons were cheerfully suppressing mining in America, Putin was on the make.

When the Clintons later colluded to allow Uranium One to be sold to Russia, Putin held a meeting with the head of state-owned Rosatom. “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of U.S. reserves,” he told Putin.

When Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 by a Russian investment bank that was promoting Uranium One for delivering a speech, he was personally thanked by Vladimir Putin.

This was only the final betrayal after the Megatons to Megawatts program signed by Bill Clinton which claimed that it would end the threat of nuclear war by taking retired Russian nuclear warheads and turning them into "cheap energy" for American nuclear power plants.

The deal, hailed at the time as a scheme to save the world, actually freed Russia from having to maintain its older nuclear weapons and instead enabled it to invest in next generation weapons, while dumping a great deal of "cheap" uranium that devastated the American mining industry.

At its peak, Russian uranium provided a third of our fuel. Bill Clinton not only went to war against domestic mining, but colluded to enable the Russians to dump cheap uranium here.

The Russians didn’t just “dump” uranium to suppress our domestic mining industry, they did it with the blessing and support of the Clinton administration and some of its corrupt allies.

Once again, the Americans thought that they had put one over the Russians, but it was the Russians who had the last laugh as we paid them to upgrade their nuclear weapons while becoming dependent on Russian uranium. As the saying occasionally attributed to Lenin goes,

“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Megatons to Megawatts wrapped up during the Obama administration. In 2018, Putin unveiled a new generation of nuclear weapons. Experts now worry that they may be used in Ukraine. And America has become dependent on uranium from Russia and from former Soviet republics.

We could revive our domestic uranium mining industry, but to do that we would have to dismantle the entire system of government and environmentalist lawfare that has been steadily destroying our domestic industries, including mining, under the guise of saving the planet.

The Left claims to want to stop Putin even while making America and Europe dependent on him. Putin wants to leverage control over energy supply chains. If Democrats really want to stop him, then they need to throw out the corrupt Clinton policies, and start drilling and mining again.

While the Biden administration is focused on protecting the borders of Ukraine from Russia, some 8,600 Russians have shown up at our border with Mexico since last August.

Not to be left too far behind, 5,534 Ukrainians have also arrived since October.

Last December, two cars carrying 18 Russian migrants tried to barrel their way through at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. A CBP officer opened fire on a Mercedes driven by the invaders.

YouTube is full of guides for Russians looking to get into the United States through Mexico.

In one video, a man with Asiatic features wearing a Russian Army shirt directs his video to all Russians, describes how he made it to San Diego after a previous failed attempt in which they discussed trying to evade CBP and race to the border crossing, and advises that if you don't leave Russia with a "commanda", close friends, relatives, "like in the army", it won't work well.

He suggested that in immigration detention around 70% were Russian speakers, "Ukranians, Belarusians, Russians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz.”

"Make a decision and make a run for it, in a fraction of a second," he advises. "And it'll be what will be. Even if they catch you, nothing will happen to you."

That ought to be the motto of the Biden Administration’s open borders immigration policy.

That’s why there are encampments of Russians and Ukrainians in Mexico demanding asylum.

Did Putin invade Tijuana while no one was looking? If he tried, a heroic resistance of cartel members with machine guns mounted on Toyota pickup trucks would have sent Russian troops, already suffering from dysentry, alcohol poisoning, and six different kinds of STDs, packing.

How exactly did a town worth of Russians and Ukrainians pop up in Mexico? They flew there. And they didn’t do it to buy hundred peso Rolexes made in China but because they know that if they come up with a timely sob story about fleeing the latest crisis, we’ll let them in.

And it’s working.

According to the AP, of the 8,600 Russians who invaded America, "all but 23 were processed under laws that allow them to seek asylum." When Russians invade Ukraine, we send in the Javelin missiles. When Russians invade America, we throw a parade to welcome them in.

Only four of the Ukrainians who showed up since September were asked to leave.

Every Russian who shows up now claims to hate Putin. But if loving Putin were grounds for asylum, they’d all come dressed in Putin t-shirts. The Ukrainians, regardless of where they live, including one who came from Uganda, claim to be fleeing the Russians. And they’re all fleeing each other to Mexico and demanding that we save them from each other. Right now.

The Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy was supposed to stop this kind of migrant tourism under which migrants from every single country in the world would fly to Mexico and show up at the border, demanding asylum.

Asylum from what? Mexican sunsets?

Despite the Biden administration's open borders plot, state lawsuits and court rulings led the policy to remain in force. Russians and Ukrainians flying halfway around the world to show up at our land border don’t have a credible fear of persecution in Mexico. They’re gaming the system.

“While Moscow to Cancún is the most common route, some Russians fly from Amsterdam or Paris to Mexico City and then go to Tijuana,” an expert relates. Is there a reason these folks can’t apply for asylum in Amsterdam or Paris? Having reached Paris, aren’t they now safe?

Despite Gov. Ron DeSantis suggesting, 'If (Putin) went into France, do you think they'd do anything to put up a fight? Probably not”, Paris hasn’t actually fallen again. Yet. It’s safe from Putin (albeit not so much from Algerian or Moroccan Jihadists shouting, “Allahu Akbar.”)

The United States does not share a border with either Ukraine or Russia. Despite that we’re being invaded anyway because the one border we aren’t allowed to protect is our own.

If Putin wanted to invade America, all he would have to do is fly his forces into Tijuana International Airport (if we don't steal your luggage, it's because your clothes aren't good enough) and have all 150,000 conscripts apply for political asylum. Two days later they’d all be on buses heading around the country courtesy of the Lutheran Immigration Services, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, HIAS, and the beleaguered American taxpayer.

He wouldn’t even need to bring any tanks. We’ve already surrendered our border and nation.

The AP informs us that one Russian "narrated his trip from Moscow’s Red Square to a San Diego hotel room, with layovers in Cancún and Mexico City. His YouTube video shows him confessing to nerves after buying a used car in Tijuana, but he says later in San Diego that everything went smoothly – despite two days in US custody – and that others considering the journey shouldn’t be afraid." Maybe they should be afraid. At least just a little.

A few days ago, Biden announced another $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine.

Imagine what $800 million could do on our border. There still isn’t any money to build a border wall. Texas is shouldering the costs of deploying the National Guard to the border. Border personnel are still deprived of the resources they need to deal with the invasion of America.

The Ukrainians are entitled to secure their border. But why don’t Americans have that right?

Anyone who has a legitimate fear of persecution and requires political asylum can file their requests for asylum. The vast majority of arrivals however are economic migrants. The Southern land border now sees a vast horde of international migrants from India, China, Russia, and every other part of the world who fly into Mexico, rent cars, and drive up for asylum.

Open borders mean that we share a border with the entire world. And the world is showing up.

Maybe after spending billions securing Ukraine’s border, the Biden administration and some of its Republican open borders allies can give a thought to securing the border of a beleaguered nation being invaded by the Russians and by everyone else. A country called America.

The existence of a speech by Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, praising Derrick Bell, the godfather of critical race theory, and citing his book, “Faces At the Bottom of a Well”, as an influence has been widely reported. Conservatives have covered Bell's racist views, his praise for Farrakhan, his antisemitism, and attacks on America. Much of this was already hashed out during the exposure of the relationship between Barack Obama and Derrick Bell.

But it's important to specifically focus on Jackson's interest in "Faces At the Bottom of the Well."

In her speech, Jackson mentions that Bell, whom along with his wife she praises throughout her speech, "wrote a book in the early 1990s about the persistence of racism in American life".

The subtitle of the book, which few people have mentioned, is, "The Permanence Of Racism".

Persistence and permanence are not the same thing. But this is another example of Jackson subtly distorting Bell and his book in order to make their extremism seem more moderate.

Jackson goes on to say that, "My parents had this book on their coffee table for many years, and I remember staring at the image on the cover when I was growing up; I found it difficult to reconcile the image of the person,who seemed to be smiling, with the depressing message that the title and subtitle conveyed. I thought about this book cover again for the first time in forty years when I started preparing for this speech." That would have made her ten years old.

As others have pointed out, "Faces At the Bottom of the Well” was published when Jackson was in her early twenties during Bell’s tantrum against Harvard University. It’s unlikely that Biden’s Supreme Court nominee grew up with the hateful text, but it’s entirely plausible that she was influenced by the book which came out when she was at Harvard and then Harvard Law.

Since Bell began his racial strike against Harvard Law before she had completed her undergraduate degree, it’s unlikely that she had taken any of his classes, but the former member of the faculty was clearly an influence on her. Perhaps Jackson’s memory is faulty or she’s deliberately backdating the book’s influence to her childhood to make it seem more innocent. Surely no one could blame a ten year old for being attracted to a racialist text.

"Faces At the Bottom of the Well” is the sort of racist book that could conceivably appeal to a bright ten year old. Bell, despite his position, was never much of a legal or constitutional scholar, and Faces, like the preceding “And We Are Not Saved”, conveys its message that the constitution is just a facade for a white racist agenda through science fiction short stories.

Where "And We Are Not Saved" transports the protagonist back to the Constitutional Convention to denounce the Constitution, "Faces At the Bottom of the Well” indulges in more hyperbolic science fiction scenarios including the rise of a new continent of Afroatlantis and space aliens offering Americans profits in exchange for selling black people into space slavery.

While the scenarios are absurd, they’re there to illustrate Bell’s argument that the Constitution is nothing more than what benefits white people at any given time. This is the same argument that the godfather of critical race theory had repeatedly made throughout his career, contending, for example, that the ban on segregation was not a rejection of racism, only a ploy by white people to defeat the Soviet Union and Communism by showing that they weren’t racist.

(Likewise, Faces, along with a defense of Farrakhan and condemnation of Jews for opposing black antisemitism, portrays Jews as protesting against the plan to sell black people into slavery only because in the absence of blacks, “Jews could become the scapegoats”.)

Such racial conspiracy theories, ubiquitous in the work and thought of black nationalists and supremacists, who always begin and end with the premise of white evil, pervade Bell’s work.

"Faces At the Bottom of the Well” was a way to popularize and communicate this central idea at a level that even a child or a not particularly bright Harvard student, already nursing resentments, would be able to understand by depicting scenarios in which the white society and white people would cheerfully revamp the Constitution to bring back black slavery.

Thus near the end of the “Space Traders'' story, Bell has the Supreme Court unanimously rule that, “if inducted in accordance with a constitutionally approved conscription provision, blacks would have no issues of individual rights for review” and tells us that, “By 70 percent to 30 percent, American citizens voted to ratify the constitutional amendment that provided a legal basis for acceptance of the Space Traders’ offer”. Behind the SciFi is the message that the majority of Americans, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution would allow black people to be enslaved again and that therefore black people should not rely on whites or the Constitution.

The Constitution, according to Bell, is merely the whim of a white agenda that serves its purposes. To the extent that the law has outlawed segregation and slavery, it did so only because it temporarily served white purposes and the moment that it would serve white purposes to enslave black people again, it would be done within the Constitution.

That is the message of "Faces At the Bottom of the Well”: the book that influenced Jackson.

Does Jackson believe that the Supreme Court would rule that black people could be sold into slavery? Like everything about her record, we know we can’t expect an honest answer.

And yet her speech, which touches not only on the racist rants of Bell and his wife, but on the 1619 Project, introduces the idea that our founding documents are racially untrustworthy.

Praising the racial revisionist history of the 1619 Project, Jackson touts Nikole Hannah-Jones' "provocative thesis that the America that was born in 1776 was not the perfect union that it purported to be" and that only black civil rights activism made America "the free nation that the Framers initially touted."

Much like the 1619 Project, this description is rife with historical anachronisms and fundamental inaccuracies that is even less befitting a Supreme Court justice than a New York Times hack, but also implicitly echoes the critical race theory understanding that the civil rights struggle was not about upholding the Constitution, but overcoming it, that America's founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were racist and remain the enemy.

In the process of her lecture, Jackson invokes critical race theory, the pernicious concept of "white privilege", and intersectionality.

The radicalism oozes around the edges of Ketanji Brown Jackson's talk.

The Supreme Court nominee praises Gloria Richardson who, in Jackson's words, "took part in several protests that ended in violent clashes with white residents" and "indirectly challenged SNCC’s non-violent ideology." She quotes Richardson as saying, “[w]hen we were attacked at demonstrations, [we women] were the ones throwing stones back at the whites.”

Gloria Richardson was a wealthy leftist organizer with political connections during the Cambridge Riots who had contemptuously dismissed Martin Luther King and asserted, “We weren’t going to stop until we got it, and if violence occurred, then we would have to accept that.”

Black nationalists hail her because she’s seen as breaking the embargo on local nonviolence in protests. And Richardson had emphasized that to the extent to which she used nonviolence was as a "tactical device". To Jackson, most of the law seems to likewise be a tactical device.

And that’s the problem.

Absorbing the paranoid racism of the godfather of critical race theory during her formative years at Harvard makes for a bad judge and a worse justice. Bell’s approach to the Constitution, like that of black nationalists, was that it was a trick to lure black people into lowering their guard.

White people, he believed, could never be trusted and all that mattered was seizing power.

Any laws or documents made by white people would only serve them. Only black people could secure the rights of black people. Like the Nazis, the ultimate truths were race and power.

Everything else was a distraction.

If that is Ketanji Brown Jackson’s worldview, she cannot be expected to come out and say it. But the highest court in the land is the last place for racial paranoia and nationalism. The Supreme Court is charged with upholding the Constitution. A judge who does not believe in the Constitution, but believes in critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and white privilege is manifestly unfit to decide the fate of a nation and its hundreds of millions of people.

Derrick Bell and his hateful ideology believed that white racism was the only abiding truth.

There’s no room for that kind of thinking on the Supreme Court.