On June 21, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens. In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court found “grandfather clauses” in effect in several formerly slave states — though superficially race-neutral — to be little more than sneaky ways of allowing illiterate white folks to vote while disallowing illiterate black folks.
Six years ago, as we were beginning to unravel the lies at the heart of the coronavirus pandemic, we encountered one doctor’s very specific prevarications about his role in the Wuhan laboratory that had developed the virus. Paul Jacob wrote about him in “Twelve Monkeys in Charge?,” published here on June 18, 2020. The man’s name? Lieber.
In the midst of all this has been one Dr. Charles Lieber, a 61-year-old nanoscience researcher, who recently “has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of making false statements and will be arraigned in federal court in Boston at a later date. Lieber was arrested on Jan. 28, 2020, and charged by criminal complaint.” He allegedly lied about his relationship with China’s Thousand Talents Plan and his role as a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China.
Where SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus of the current pandemic — apparently came from.
The case received scant attention at the time. Paul Jacob took note of this lack of attention in early 2021.
But what happened to Dr. Lieber after that?
Lieber was convicted of six felonies in December 2021, including two counts of making false statements to the FBI and investigators from the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health regarding his participation in the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program, as well as four counts of filing false tax returns. Convicted in December 2021 he was sentenced to one day in prison — time already served (before trial) — as well as “two years of supervised release including half-a-year of house arrest and a $50,000 fine,” according to The Harvard Crimson in early April 2023.
The Lieber case is not directly related to the Wuhan gain-of-funding research, or its funding; it is a separate issue rising out of a Department of Justice investigation of academic espionage at American universities.
Precisely how Lieber’s nanotech work fit in with the Wuhan effort we do not know. The investigations, so far, appear to be focused on following the money.
Sure, this story is about money, too. But a different stream of money. Different from the Fauci-EcoHealth Alliance-Wuhan lab stream.
In April 2025, after exiting prison, Lieber became a full-time chair professor at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, a graduate school of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, China. He has also been employed as SMART Investigator at the newly-established Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation. Some see this as a case of “brain drain” of U.S. talent to China.
To clarify this situation — which Paul Jacob brought up mainly as a way to show the failure of major media to investigate the bizarre relationship between China and American scientists — here we go: there is no direct link between the crimes for which Lieber was convicted and the creation of the infamous “China virus.” Lieber’s crime was hiding money, not hiding a virus; he hid his relationship with China while declaring to his American funder, the National Institute for Health, that he had no such ties.
A kind of fraud? A spy-like fraud, perhaps.
But undoubtedly there is more to uncover.
To understand this unhappy position of a portion of our fellow-citizens, we must call to mind the division which philosophers have made of men placed in society. They are divided into two classes, Ceux qui pillent, — et Ceux qui sont pillés; and we must consider with some care what this division, the correctness of which has not been disputed, implies.The first class, Ceux qui pillent, are the small number. They are the ruling Few. The second class, Ceux qui sont pillés, are the great number. They are the subject Many.
James Mill, “The State of the Nation,” London Review 25 (April–July 1835): p. 6.
This week Tulsi Gabbard stepped down as Director of National Intelligence. But, before she left, she got one more bit of secret government out in the open: the files showing just how evil Anthony Fauci is and was. Here is the beginning of the ODNI press release:
Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID
ODNI News Release 11-26, June 18, 2026.
New Evidence Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress
WASHINGTON D.C. — Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.
Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.
Tulsi Gabbard’s video announcement is well-spoken, as usual:
The release of data (to be found on the ODNI website) has received a great deal of social media attention, one of the most illustrious being a tweet from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “Thank you, Tulsi, for documenting Dr. Fauci’s central role in causing the COVID-19 pandemic — among the most consequential crimes in human history.”
Paul Jacob has covered Fauci’s perfidy and the “lab leak theory” extensively:
The art of paradox can be learned in five minutes, and practised by any child; it consists chiefly in taking two expressions of opinion from different authors, halving them, and uniting the first half of the one with the second half of the other. The result is invariably startling, and generally incomprehensible. When a young society critic knows how to be startling and incomprehensible, his reputation is soon made, for people readily believe that what they cannot understand is profound, and anything which astonishes is agreeable to a taste deadened by a surfeit of spices.
F. Marion Crawford, Saracinesca (1887).
On the 20th of June in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Oliver Ellsworth moved to confine legislative powers to two distinct congressional bodies, and to strike the word “national” from the document. Edmund Randolph of Virginia had previously moved successfully to call the government the National Government of United States. Ellsworth moved that the government should continue to be called, simply, the United States of America.
The final wording eventually became “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
The words “nation” and “national” do not occur anywhere in the Constitution as ratified by the original set of states, or as amended.
John F. Kennedy authored the Encyclopædia Britannica’s article on Ellsworth. This was Kennedy’s only contribution to the encyclopedia.
The image, above, is of a portrait of Oliver Ellsworth by Ralph Earl (1785); it is housed, perhaps with a tinge of irony, in the National Portrait Gallery.
I’m too old, that is, to qualify as a contestant in the “million dollar question” drawing held, this summer, by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). To be eligible to win the million-buck prize (minus taxes!) one must be 18-35 years of age. (I’m a bit older than 35.) FEE is sponsoring this Million Dollar Contest Quiz as a way to promote the idea of a free society and its superiority to never-ending government regulation, taxation and subsidy.
What’s the question?
Nothing other than “what’s behind the affordability crisis?”
The answer, in short, is too much government.
But the quiz format helps explain that better.
“Most people blame capitalism,” we read, “but the reality is different. Healthcare, education, housing, and childcare are some of the most heavily regulated, subsidized, and mandated sectors in the American economy. They aren’t free markets. They’re crippled capitalism; markets distorted by decades of government intervention until they can no longer deliver quality at a price people can afford.”
If you are old, like me, you have probably encountered this case before. (If you read this column, you most definitely have!) But young people? They’re not so lucky. Most have endured public schools and government-regulated and -subsidized universities and received, there, increasingly Marxist nonsense about how capitalism enslaves us all.
When capitalism — basically, free markets with markets in capital goods, making up what Ludwig von Mises called “mass production for the masses” — liberates.
Who? Just white males?
No. Free markets liberate all peaceful people. As the quiz and its answers make clear.
So take the quiz. Learn something. But, if you’re over 35, pass it on to a young person!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Dr. Smith and all of his sensible disciples have believed that people would not strive to do anything well unless there were a reasonable measure of agreement between the success of their efforts and the rewards they would receive.
George J. Stigler, “The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency,” Business Economics (1988): pp. 7-13.
“Juneteenth” (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation Day, is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those held as chattel slaves in the United States. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it has been celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, and on June 17, 2021, it was made into an official national holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.
This is the so-called Parents Decide Act, which would “require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system.”
The honor system, the for-now method of the California law, doesn’t stop ten-year-olds from claiming to be 35. For such laws to “work,” the PC would have to require you to verify your age before you can use it.
That method cannot help but be invasive, like scans of your ID card or your face. Sure, many users of mobile computing devices have private security using their faces or fingerprints, but those users do not intend to share this secret information to third parties — which sure seems like what’s going on here.
PC Gamer observes that, although the method of age verification is crucial “in terms of privacy and data security,” the Energy and Commerce Committee will be deciding such things after passage.
They’d have to pass the bill for us to see what’s in it.
Whatever the method, many users would obey, conscientiously giving the PC — and the PC or OS maker — ID or facial info that might be linked to purchase info in the company’s database.
Could such databases be hacked and provide criminals with new information with which to commit their crimes? Only if the umpteen stories per day on successful hacks of the databases of major companies are any clue.
“Save the children” is the familiar sales pitch, but if government is in charge of saving the children, our children are in trouble.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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