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June 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

California Legislature Passes Bill To Put Trans Men In Women’s Prisons, Even Rapists There are no exceptions in the bill to make sure that men who have committed violent or sexual crimes against women are not placed in prison with women. By Libby Emmons

By on June 28th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/28/california-legislature-passes-bill-put-trans-men-womens-prisons-even-rapists/

While it should be obvious that women’s prisons are for convicted criminals who are female, California Senate Bill 132, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Weiner (D–San Francisco), requires men who say they are women to be housed in women’s prisons.

The State Senate passed the bill in May, and it passed the state Assembly with very little opposition on June 25. The bill demands that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ask prisoners their preferred pronouns and gender identity at intake, then house them accordingly. This means that a man need only say at intake that he is a woman to gain access to women’s prison. In passing this bill, California has turned its back on incarcerated women.

In describing the bill, the Legislative Council’s Digest states:

The bill would require staff and contractors to consistently use the gender pronoun and honorific an individual has specified in verbal and written communications with or regarding that individual that involve the use of a pronoun or honorific. The bill would require the department, for a person who has a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth, to only conduct a search of that person by an officer of the gender identity of the person’s preference, and to house the person in a correctional facility designated for men or women consistent with the incarcerated individual’s gender identity, except as specified.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Former President Jimmy Carter Said Trump Was Not Legitimately Elected By Madeline Osburn

By on June 28th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/28/former-president-jimmy-carter-said-trump-not-legitimately-elected/

Former President Jimmy Carter said he believes President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate and that “he didn’t actually win the election in 2016.”

At a Carter Center event in Virginia with author Jon Meacham, Carter said that Russian interference in the 2016 election invalidated Trump’s presidency, reported USA Today’s Susan Page.

“I think the interference, though not yet quantified, should be fully investigated and would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016, he lost the election,” he said.

“He was put into office because the Russians interfered,” he said. Carter was then asked if that meant he believed Trump was illegitimate.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Roberts The Mind Reader Joins Liberal Justices On The Census Thomas McArdle

By on June 28th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/28/roberts-the-mind-reader-joins-liberal-justices-on-the-census/

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling on Department of Commerce v. New York is being characterized as nothing more serious than a temporary setback regarding President Trump’s wish to reinstate a citizenship question in the 2020 U.S. Census; the administration is expected to whip up a new rationale that the high court won’t consider “contrived” and get the question in.

Unfortunately it is far worse than that, and Chief Justice John Roberts is giving further sign that he is yet another unpleasant surprise in GOP appointments to the highest level of the Judicial Branch, following in the footsteps of David Souter (Bush 41), Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor (Reagan), and John Paul Stevens (Ford).

“The Court’s holding reflects an unprecedented departure from our deferential review of discretionary agency decisions,” Justice Clarence Thomas warns in his dissent, joined by Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. “And, if taken seriously as a rule of decision, this holding would transform administrative law … the Court has opened a Pandora’s box,” Thomas declared.

Motivated by politics and ideology, lawyers would challenge all sorts of Executive Branch decisions “with accusations of pretext, deceit, and illicit motives” leading to “an endless morass of discovery and policy disputes,” Thomas cautions. “Now that the Court has opened up this avenue of attack, opponents of executive actions have strong incentives to craft narratives that would derail them. Moreover, even if the effort to invalidate the action is ultimately unsuccessful, the Court’s decision enables partisans to use the courts to harangue executive officers through depositions, discovery, delay, and distraction.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Science as Political Orthodoxy By Peter Schwartz

By on June 28th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/28/science_as_political_orthodoxy_140663.html

There is an intellectual orthodoxy being imposed by the left, abetted by much of the news media. Certain viewpoints are forbidden — not simply regarded as wrong, but not permitted to be considered.

We can observe this attitude at our colleges, where speakers who challenge leftist premises have been forcibly silenced. But it is most entrenched in discussions about global warming, in which non-orthodox views are treated the way religionists treat challenges to biblical dogma. A striking example is provided by a recent New York Times front-page story. 

The print-version headline reads: “In Climate Fight, Trump Will Put Science on Trial.” On the continuation page, the headline is even stronger: “. . . Put Science Itself on Trial.” (The online headline is not quite so aggressive: “Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science.”)

The article presents what it calls the Trump administration’s “attack on science,” which will “undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.” What exactly is being proposed? “[T]he U.S. Geological Survey …  has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040 rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.” Consequently, the reporter notes, “parts of the federal government will no longer be able to fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Debate’s Winners and Losers By Tom Bevan & Philip Wegmann

By on June 28th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/28/the_debates_winners_and_losers_140672.html

MIAMI — Ten candidates shared the stage on the second night of the first debate of the Democratic primary. After two hours of questions and cross talk, of impromptu barbs and prepared talking points, a tentative picture has emerged of the initial winners and losers.

Winner: Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris has arrived.

Pollsters and pundits had wondered whether the freshman senator from California could start to deliver on her well-received campaign rollout. She answered Thursday night by pummeling the front-runner in prime time, questioning former Vice President Joe Biden about civil rights.

Harris pushed the 76-year-old Biden to explain his record on federal busing, which he opposed while a young senator from Delaware, and his association with segregationists, which he has defended as necessary for compromise.

“I do not believe you are a racist, and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground,” Harris told Biden.

“But I also believe,” she continued, “it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.”

Although that decades-old legislative record is hardly new, Harris made it personal.

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said. “That little girl was me.”

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE DEBATES….ON FOREIGN POLICY AND DEFENSE….DON’T ASK….DON’T TELL

By on June 28th, 2019

The compliant and biased media lobbed no real questions on present defense or foreign policy and cagily deflected serious questions on national security and immigration.

Again, these tyros want to be Commander in Chief?….rsk

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POLITICS Comments turned off

All Ten Dems at the Second Debate Would Provide Health Insurance for Illegal Immigrants By Tyler O’Neil

By on June 28th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/all-ten-dems-at-the-second-debate-would-provide-health-insurance-for-illegal-immigrants/

In the second round of the first 2020 Democratic presidential debate on Thursday, all ten of the candidates onstage said their government health care plans would provide coverage for illegal immigrants.

NBC News co-anchor Savannah Guthrie asked the candidates — including frontrunners former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg — if they would cover illegal immigrants.

“Raise your hand if your government healthcare plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants,” she said.

Every single candidate raised his or her hand.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UN Global Compact: What Happens Next? by Judith Bergman

By on June 28th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14391/un-global-compact-next

This initiative [to “present a global plan of action against hate speech and hate crimes on a fast-track basis”] should be deeply concerning and is likely to serve only to silence critics of the UN, including its agenda on migration and the GCM.

The EU, for its part, according to statements by Hungary and Austria, does not appear to agree that implementing the Global Compact should be up to every EU member state. Instead, the EU is working on making it legally binding, even for those EU countries who have not adopted the Compact.

“A ‘secret document’ has been published on work by the European Commission’s legal service to formulate ‘lengthy and devious’ legal grounds for suggesting that the compact is, after all, mandatory for EU member states.” — Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

In December, world leaders of 165 countries adopted an ostensibly non-binding agreement that propagates a radical idea: that migration — for any reason — is something that needs to be promoted, enabled and protected[1].

The agreement is named the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and now comes its implementation. The UN has not wasted any time in setting this “non-binding” Compact in motion. Already at the Marrakesh Conference in December, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched the Migration Network (Network)[2], a new addition to the UN bureaucracy, and seemingly intended to “ensure effective and coherent system‑wide support to the implementation of the Global Compact”. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) will serve as the coordinator and secretariat of all constituent parts of the Network in implementing the Global Compact.

The UN, in other words, has set its enormous bureaucratic infrastructure into full motion to see to it that the Compact will have maximum impact across the globe.

IOM director-general Antonio Vitorino has already sent a warning to critics of the UN migration agenda. “If we want to succeed in having a more humane and better world, we should resist the temptation of negative narratives that some want to spread about migration,” Vitorino said recently.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

History Class Presentation Exalts ‘Liberal’ Traits, Vilifies ‘Conservative’ Ones “Liberal” is defined as “tolerant, enlightened” while “Conservative” means “bigoted, regressive.” Sara Dogan

By on June 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274152/history-class-presentation-exalts-liberal-traits-sara-dogan

A teacher at Rock Hill High School in South Carolina has been accused of indoctrination after showing her class a slide presentation which included universally positive definitions of the term “liberal” and disparaging ones of the term “conservative.”

The slide was part of a presentation on the history of America’s political parties. Described as a “meme,” the slide listed synonyms for the term “Liberal” which include “tolerant, generous, enlightened, broadminded, lavish, charitable.” It goes on to state that the antonym of “Liberal” is “Conservative” which is defined as “stingy, miserly, regressive, narrow-minded, reactionary, bigoted, prejudiced, biased.”

The slide claims that the definitions were taken from Roget’s Thesaurus. While these may be true dictionary definitions of these terms in various contexts, the slide in question contains the image of three American flags, making clear that in this instance the definitions are being applied to the political realm.

Unsurprisingly, many parents and others in the district were outraged by this negative characterization of conservative views.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trinidad: The Western Hemisphere’s Jihadist Hotspot The Caribbean island has produced more ISIS recruits than any other western country. Stephen Brown

By on June 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274139/trinidad-western-hemispheres-jihadist-hotspot-stephen-brown

It is difficult to believe that a lush, tropical vacation destination like the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a relatively prosperous country with full religious and legal freedoms, has produced more fighters per capita for the murderous Islamic State (ISIS) than any other country in the Western Hemisphere.

But, unfortunately for Trinidad and the civilized world, that is the tragic fact of the matter. While Muslims constitute only five per cent of the country’s population, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, a portion is “causing outsized global security concern,” states Todd Benson in the publication Center for Immigration Studies.

Unknown to most and largely unreported by the media, Trinidad, with only a population estimated between 1.2 and 1.5 million people, has sent at least 130 of its citizens to join the Islamic State. The United States, by contrast, with a population about 240 times larger than Trinidad’s, has sent about 250 to 300, about one per cent of the 30,000 foreigners who joined ISIS.

T. and T. citizens in ISIS “are high up in the ranks, they are very respected, and they are English-speaking. ISIL have used them for propaganda to spread their message through the Caribbean,” said John Estrada, former U.S. ambassador, to Trinidad and Tobago, adding Trinidadians did “very well” in ISIS.  

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