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March 2023

FOREIGN POLICY, HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

North Korea Unveils New Nukes as U.S. Argues about ‘Misgendering’ By Catherine Salgado

By on March 29th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/03/28/north-korea-unveils-new-nukes-as-us-argues-about-misgendering-n1682402

As a U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea for military drills, North Korea responded by unveiling new nuclear warheads. I guess that’s what you call an explosive statement.

Photos of the  smaller nuclear warheads, called Hwasan-31s, were released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Reuters reported.

Nuclear experts reportedly said that, based on the photos, North Korea has made progress “in miniaturising warheads that are powerful yet small enough to mount on intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States.” 

Meanwhile, back in America, mainstream media outlets, including New York Times, USA Today, and CNN, are apologizing for referring to a female murderer as a woman because she called herself “he/him,” and President Joe Biden cracks jokes about ice cream before discussing the shooting of six people, including three young children. Somehow, that’s not encouraging.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un visited the Nuclear Weapons Institute to inspect the nukes, nuclear counterattack operation plans, and ballistic missile warhead mounting tech. Kim was further reportedly briefed on an “IT-based integrated nuclear weapon management system called Haekbangashoe,” which Reuters reported means “nuclear trigger.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Has Trump Won The Free-Trade Debate In The U.S.? I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on March 29th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/29/has-trump-won-the-debate-over-free-trade-in-the-u-s-ii-tipp-poll/

Trump’s ideas resonate even among Democrats

In recent decades, Americans have shown strong support for the idea of free trade, based on the belief that they would benefit as much as or more than our trading partners did. But in recent years, as trade and geopolitical conflict with China grew and economic growth slowed, Americans’ support for free trade has waned, as the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Given recent public debates over trade, the online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,358 adults, taken from March 1-3, asked Americans three questions about current trade policy proposals. All come from recent proposals made by former President Donald Trump, as he presumably moves to run again for the presidency in 2024.

The results clearly showed a strong shift toward greater trade protection for domestic markets and workers, and a shift away from free trade.

The three questions all began identically, as follows: “Thinking about America’s trade and tax policy, please indicate the extent to which you support or oppose the following ideas:”

Respondents were then given three policy proposals to react to, including: 1) “Placing new tariffs on foreign goods;” 2) “Imposing strict controls on trade and investment with China;” and 3) “Cutting taxes for American workers and companies.”

The available answers included “Support strongly,” “Support somewhat,” “Oppose strongly,” “Oppose somewhat,” and “Not sure.”

Surprisingly, the answers showed a strong turn in favor of more protectionist measures for trade.

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EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Shining Light on Science Education’s Dark Age By Gregory Wrightstone

By on March 29th, 2023

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/03/27/shining_light_on_science_educations_dark_age_889136.html

The science teachers’ bureaucracy is driving climate education into an unquestioning adherence to unscientific methodology. The cost will be measured in students without facility for the more than 400-year-old scientific method and lacking the critical thinking necessary for sustaining civilization and advancing humankind.

Many observers of education have been concerned for some time about the state of science education in America. Teaching, it seems, has drifted from open inquiry to an indoctrination of students into a political agenda. Members of the science-based CO2 Coalition of Arlington, Virginia were concerned enough to launch an education initiative to provide scientific knowledge for elementary and middle school-age students without the climate alarm that permeates the public-school curriculum. 

Their concern spiked to alarm with the publication of “The Teaching of Climate Science,” a position paper of the 40,000-member National Science Teaching Association (NSTA). In it, the NSTA advocates that teachers conform to the “consensus” opinion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide will cause dangerous overheating of Earth. Possibly even worse than the promotion of “consensus” was their endorsement of censorship of any scientific information that deviates from the consensus groupthink. 

A critical review of the NSTA Statement was recently completed by a select panel of CO2 Coalition experts and summarized in their publication Challenging the National Science Teaching Association’s Position Statement on Climate Change. The panel was comprised of some of the most esteemed scientists and experts in the field including three members of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The review found that the NSTA’s Position Statement on Climate Change promotes the education of students through indoctrination instead of critical thinking skills and the scientific method. Throughout the document, promotion of “consensus” is advanced, while all dissenting scientific facts are censored or derided. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

DEI at Law Schools Could Bring Down America After the Stanford episode, Ilya Shapiro sounds a warning: The threat to ‘dismantle existing structures’ is an idle one in English class. But in legal education it targets individual rights and equal treatment under the Constitution. By Tunku Varadarajan

By on March 29th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woke-law-schools-could-bring-down-america-ilya-shapiro-dei-bureaucracy-stanford-supreme-court-rule-of-law-34c402c2?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Wokeness, or what used to be called political correctness, once seemed merely harebrained, the product of shallow ideas and immature passion. The common view was that undergraduates would outgrow it once they left campus and faced the rigors of the real world.

You seldom hear that anymore, as those ideas have run amok in culture- and economy-defining institutions ranging from news organizations and local governments to professional societies and corporate boardrooms. But Ilya Shapiro thinks we’re not alarmed enough about their influence in one important corner of academia: law schools. The professional ideologues who wield administrative authority on American college campuses want nothing less than to “change the American constitutional system,” Mr. Shapiro says. They pose a grave long-term threat to “the rule of law and inalienable rights, and even concepts like equal treatment under the law.”

Mr. Shapiro, 45, is director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Hunkered down in the study of his Virginia home, he’s working on a book, “Canceling Justice: The Illiberal Takeover of Legal Education,” that seeks to lay bare the process by which bureaucrats appointed to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” on campus have “perverted our system of legal education.”

A prime example was in the news as we spoke. Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter had invited Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to speak on campus. Confronted by a vicious leftist student mob, he asked administrators to intervene. Tirien Steinbach, the law school’s associate dean for DEI, arose to deliver prepared remarks, which concluded: “I look out and I don’t ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’ ”

Mr. Shapiro experienced a different kind of DEI humiliation in January 2022. He was concluding his tenure as a vice president of the Cato Institute and due to start a new job as executive director of the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown’s law school. Then Justice Stephen Breyer announced he would retire. Mr. Shapiro tweeted that Judge Sri Srinivasan was the “objectively best pick” for the vacancy but President Biden had already disqualified him on the basis of race and sex. Mr. Shapiro opined that Judge Srinivasan “alas doesn’t fit into the intersectional hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The problem with Israel’s protests This movement is defending the power of an unaccountable judiciary.Daniel Ben-Ami

By on March 29th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/28/the-problem-with-israels-protests/

Many of those watching the footage of the massive angry protests that have been engulfing Israel since the start of the year are likely to feel inspired. It looks like a sizeable proportion of the Israeli public is demonstrating for democracy against a right-wing coalition government, which includes a significant far-right element.

These protests have developed in response to the government’s judicial-reform package. This includes the controversial override clause, piskat hahitgabrut, which gives the elected Knesset the right to override the powerful Supreme Court’s veto on legislation, with a simple parliamentary majority. Many opponents of the reforms accuse Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of wanting to overhaul the judiciary for dubious, personal reasons. He is currently standing trial on corruption charges, which he denies.

On Monday, the protests spiralled into a general strike, affecting airports, hospitals, schools and universities. And now, under intense pressure, Netanyahu has announced that he is to pause the legislation until the summer, in order to prevent a ‘rupture among our people’.

It might seem tempting to draw a parallel between the demonstrations in Israel and the recent protests in France against Emmanuel Macron’s pensions-reform package. In both cases, it seems that the public is on the streets protesting against unpopular measures imposed by an authoritarian leader. But such an impression of Israel’s protests would be misleading.

Aside from the obvious differences between Israel and France (no nearby militias or nations have pledged to destroy France, for one thing), the nature of both protest movements is very different. Above all, the protests in Israel are driven principally by the nation’s elites. These include reserve military pilots and senior intelligence officers, who play a prominent role in Israeli society. It also involves the heads of high-tech firms – the richest section of Israeli society.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Fed Passes the Buck on Bank Failures Michael Barr’s excuses for regulatory blunders are simply unbelievable.

By on March 29th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-michael-barr-senate-testimony-martin-gruenberg-silicon-valley-bank-failure-f16d23d8?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

One certainty in politics is that the Federal Reserve will never accept responsibility for any financial problem. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr played that self-exoneration game on Tuesday before the Senate as he blamed bankers and Congress for Silicon Valley Bank’s failure. This act is simply unbelievable.

No one disputes that bankers failed to hedge the risk posed by rising interest rates to asset prices and deposits. What Mr. Barr didn’t say is that the Fed’s historic monetary mistake created the incentives for the bank blunders. The Fed fueled the fantastic deposit growth at SVB and other banks with its prolonged quantitative easing and zero interest-rate policy that caused banks to pile into longer-term, higher-yielding assets.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg noted in his testimony Tuesday that SVB’s balance sheet more than tripled in size between the end of 2019 and 2022, “coinciding with rapid growth in the innovation economy and a significant increase in the valuation placed on public and private companies.” That’s a cagey way of saying the Fed inflated tech valuations.

Silicon Valley investors cashed out shares at elevated prices and poured their windfall into startups with SVB accounts. SVB had more deposits than it could safely lend, so it loaded up on long-dated Treasurys and Fannie Mae securities that offered relatively high yields and were deemed low or no risk by regulators. What could go wrong?

When near-zero interest rates persist for nearly 13 years with hardly a blip upward, some bankers will bet this will last forever as they hunt for yield. The Fed had also assured the world until very late in 2021 that it had no plans to change its policies because inflation was transitory.

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