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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The ‘Experts’ Cited by the New Censors A leftist professor helps Democrats attack non-leftist media. By James Freeman

By on February 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-experts-cited-by-the-new-censors-11614128309?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Two House Democrats from California, Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, launched a frontal assault on the First Amendment this week with a letter to the CEOs of communications companies demanding to know what they are doing to police unwelcome speech.

A Journal editorial notes that “the letter is a demand for more ideological censorship.” The two legislators write: “Our country’s public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies.”

But it’s clear that they only want to discipline one side. The Democrats claim, “Experts have noted that the right-wing media ecosystem is “much more susceptible…to disinformation, lies, and half-truths.”

The “experts” quoted are three Harvard academics, and the lead author is law professor Yochai Benkler. His take on “right-wing” media is perhaps not surprising given that according to the OpenSecrets website he donates exclusively to left-wing politicians, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).

In any case, Mr. Benkler has assembled an interdisciplinary team at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and purports to have discovered data showing that conservative media is bad.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

No Speech Coddling in Chicago A new journal from students who refuse to be cancelled

By on February 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-speech-coddling-in-chicago-11614125023?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Most college administrators are no doubt exhausted by constant student demands that range from the type of cereal served in the dining hall to the latest intersectional fad. So those running the University of Chicago must be pleasantly surprised by the arrival of Chicago Thinker on their campus this school year. It’s an online journal by conservative and libertarian students who refuse to be canceled.

Their mission statement makes the point: “We demand not to be coddled. Embracing the experience of unfettered inquiry and free expression is precisely the point of these years of intense study: to rigorously confront and challenge our most deeply-held beliefs—and to emerge from the experience as more thoughtful, informed human beings.”

They build on a firm foundation. In 2015 the university released a statement reaffirming its commitment to “free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation.” In 2016 the university’s incoming freshman received a letter informing them that “we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

The Chicago Thinker’s latest posts include stories on the “insane COVID rules and snitch culture” at today’s universities, a definition of conservatism offered “in defiance of egregious caricatures,” and a piece on “how leftism ruined ‘Stargirl,’” a superhero TV series based on the character from DC Comics. Good for the Chicago Thinker—and even more for the university that promises never to coddle the students running the publication.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk Beijing is obsessed with viruses, but not biosafety. We are paying a high price for its lapses. By Mike Pompeo and Miles Yu

By on February 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-reckless-labs-put-the-world-at-risk-11614102828?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Chinese Communist Party is obsessed with viruses. Its army of scientists claim to have discovered almost 2,000 new viruses in a little over a decade. It took the past 200 years for the rest of the world to discover that many. More troubling is the party’s negligence on biosafety. The costs and the risk to world health are enormous, as evidenced by a novel coronavirus that escaped Wuhan. This situation can’t continue. The world must hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable and punish Beijing if it fails to uphold global biosafety standards, including basic transparency requirements.

The most recent example of this malfeasance is playing out around us. The evidence that the virus came from Wuhan is enormous, though largely circumstantial, and most signs point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, as the source of Covid-19. In America, concern about the site is now broad and bipartisan. The Biden administration stated that it has “deep concerns” about the World Health Organization’s investigation into the early days of the pandemic, particularly Beijing’s interference with the investigators’ work.

The world has known for a long time that WIV poses a huge risk to global health. Two 2018 State Department cables warned of its biosafety problems. They even predicted that SARS-CoV-2’s ACE2 receptor, identified by WIV scientists, would enable human-to-human transmission. Yuan Zhiming, then director of WIV’s biosafety level 4 lab, warned, “The biosafety laboratory is a double-edge sword: It can be used for the benefit of humanity, but can also lead to a disaster.” He listed the shortfalls prevalent among China’s biology labs, including a lack of “operational technical support, professional instructions” and “feasible standards for the safety requirements of different protection zones and for the inoculation of microbiological animals and equipment.”

The Chinese public took note, with several bloggers alleging that WIV’s virus-carrying animals are sold as pets. They may even show up at local wet markets. After the Wuhan outbreak, one since-disappeared blogger asked a WIV researcher to debate the lab’s biosafety practices in public. The offer was ignored.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fauci’s mixed messages, inconsistencies about COVID-19 masks, vaccines and reopenings come under scrutiny A look at Fauci’s mixed messages on masks, vaccines and reopenings By Tyler Olson |

By on February 24th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/faucis-mixed-messages-inconsistencies-about-covid-19-masks-vaccines-and-reopenings-come-under-scrutiny

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci’s often inconsistent comments and mixed messages on the coronavirus pandemic are prompting renewed scrutiny as debate rages over reopening schools and businesses nearly a year after the lockdowns started.

“Dr. Fauci is a very good public-health official. His job is to advise policy makers and inform the public,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on Tuesday. “But his job is NOT to decide what we can do, where we can go or which places can open or close And his job is NOT to mislead or scare us into doing the ‘right things.'”

“Why should we trust Fauci with a national plan? Back in March, Fauci famously told Americans, ‘There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,'” wrote David Harsanyi in the National Review. “(Fauci now says we should wear two masks. No thanks, Dad.)”

Masks

Fauci in an interview on “60 Minutes” in early March of last year warned of “unintended consequences” of masks, saying “people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.” 

On masks, Fauci and former Surgeon General Jerome Adams – who also warned against buying and wearing masks in spring 2020 – said officials recommended against wearing masks early in the pandemic because at the time there was a massive shortage of PPE for medical workers who needed it most. Further, more evidence of asymptomatic spread of the virus later came out. 

Fauci later enthusiatically embraced wearing masks.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

On Free Speech at Stanford:Scott Atlas, Niall Ferguson, and Victor Davis Hanson *****

By on February 24th, 2021

https://stanfordreview.org/atlas-ferguson-hanson-stanford-free-speech/

What is the purpose of academic freedom?

Is it to allow all kinds of ideas to be expressed and explored, protecting even speech that people in the past considered heretical—protecting free expression that some people today would like to “cancel”? Or is it to allow co-workers in the ideological minority to be personally and selectively disparaged with impunity?

The answer for some faculty at Stanford University would appear to be the latter.

In a recent meeting of the Stanford Faculty Senate, four professors (Joshua Landy, Stephen Monismith, David Palumbo-Liu and David Spiegel) presented and then subsequently published a farrago of falsehoods directed against various fellows of the Hoover Institution. Their complaint was, first, that the Hoover fellows’ views were unapologetically conservative and, second, that they appeared antithetical to the majority of those of the Stanford community—and were therefore properly subject to some sort of institutional and personal censure.

Our faculty accusers failed to achieve both their overt and their implicit goals—creating a faculty-controlled committee to investigate Hoover and intimidating us into silence. Some respected faculty members, including the President, the Provost, and the former Provost all forcefully spoke up for academic freedom in general and defended Hoover in particular. They should be congratulated for doing so in these ideologically polarized times.

Nevertheless, our faculty accusers still succeeded in maligning us as individuals. The impression was left even by the President that we might have “behaved inappropriately” or “spoken untruths.” Unfortunately, this is not the first time such use has been made of the Senate. Indeed, it has happened repeatedly in recent years, for example in February 2019.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Purim Guide for the Perplexed 2021 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger,

By on February 24th, 2021

1. Purim’s historical background.  The 586 BCE destruction of the 1st Jewish Temple and the expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria – by the Babylonian Emperor, Nebuchadnezzar – triggered a wave of Jewish emigration to Babylon and Persia.  The latter replaced Babylon as the leading regional power.  In 538 BCE, Xerxes the Great, Persia’s King Ahasuerus, the successor of Darius the Great, proclaimed his support for the reconstruction of the Jewish Temple and the resurrection of national Jewish life in the Land of Israel, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish Homeland.  In 499-449 BCE, Ahasuerus established a coalition of countries – from India to Ethiopia – which launched the Greco-Persian Wars, attempting to expand the Persian Empire westward. However, Persia was resoundingly defeated (e.g., the 490 BCE and 480 BCE battles of Marathon and Salamis), and Ahasuerus’ authority in Persia was gravely eroded.

2. Purim is a Jewish national liberation holiday – just like Passover and Chanukah – which commemorates the transformation of the Jewish people from subjugation to liberty. It is celebrated seven days following the birth and death date of Moses, who is the role model of liberty, leadership and humility.

Purim is celebrated, annually, at a time when the relatively cold and stormy winter shifts into the relatively warm and pleasant spring.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Why is Biden going back to the Iran deal? By David Isaac

By on February 24th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/
Why would Biden go back to the Iran deal? Frankly, we’re baffled.

It didn’t make sense in 2015 when Obama did it. It makes even less sense in 2021. The agreement is a proven disaster, its failings exposed, its critics vindicated.

As Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi write in the January Atlantic: “The agreement did not shut down a single nuclear facility or destroy a single centrifuge.

The ease and speed with which Iran has resumed producing large amounts of more highly enriched uranium – doing so at a time of its own choosing – illustrates the danger of leaving the regime with these capabilities.”

Nor did the deal stop Iran from developing advanced centrifuges and ballistic missiles. Nor did it address the Koran-infused ayatollahs’ malignant designs. (Iran’s parliament even debated a bill to set a time limit of 20 years for wiping out Israel.)

All the deal did was limit Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, and that for 10 or so years. That’s not a prohibition, that’s a countdown.

As John Bolton summed it up in The Room Where It Happened: “The deal was badly conceived, abominably negotiated and drafted, and entirely advantageous to Iran: unenforceable, unverifiable, and inadequate in duration and scope. Although purportedly resolving the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the deal did no such thing.”

If nuclear bombs were skyscrapers, it would be like OK’ing the foundation, superstructure and interior, including the paint – and then telling the builder to hold off on flipping on the electricity until 2026. And here’s $150 million in cash to help you pass the time.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

5 Times Anthony Fauci Proved He ‘Understands Science’ As A Tool To Lie To Americans By Joy Pullmann

By on February 23rd, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/23/5-times-anthony-fauci-proved-he-understands-science-as-a-tool-to-lie-to-americans/

Meghan McCain is right: Fauci should be fired. He should have been a long, long time ago. He is a liar, and he even admits it. So why is he still on TV?

Leftist media is atwitter over Meghan McCain’s criticism on “The View” Monday of Anthony Fauci’s long history of garbling scientific information to control people rather than find and communicate facts.

On Sunday, Fauci appeared on CNN and refused to say whether grandparents who had been vaccinated against COVID-19 could safely resume seeing their grandchildren in person. Instead, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ridiculously communicated doubt about the vaccines — as America faces a high level of vaccine skepticism — rather than clearly communicate the basic and crucial public health message that getting the vaccine is protective for those most endangered by COVID.

Another key public health message his duplicity undermined is the highly motivating assurance that the vaccine is our ticket back to normal. This is not because the vaccines don’t work, it’s because Fauci’s career has hit its zenith and he has strong incentives to keep himself on TV constantly at the federal government’s highest salary no matter how long children have to miss school or how many isolated people kill themselves while he’s there.

“The View” played a segment of the interview Monday. McCain commented afterward: “The fact that Dr. Fauci is going on CNN and he can’t tell me that if I get the vaccine if I’ll be able to have dinner with my family…if I can go to dinner at friends’ houses who are older — it’s terribly inconsistent messaging and it continues to be inconsistent messaging.”

She then pointed out that Israel is communicating to its populace that if they get the vaccine they can get back to normal life: “Is the science in Israel different than the science here in the United States of America?” She continued:

I for one would like something to look forward to and to hope for, because if getting the vaccine means that just nothing changes and we have to wait another few years until everyone gets it — there’s already a lot of people not getting it. We’re already having a messaging problem getting people to take this vaccine. So I’m over Dr. Fauci. I think we need to have more people giving more opinions and I honestly quite frankly I think the Biden administration should remove him and put someone else in place that maybe does understand science or can talk to other countries about how we can be more like these places that are doing this successfully.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Supreme Court Denial Of 2020 Election Cases Invites ‘Erosion Of Voter Confidence’ The Supreme Court’s abdication of its authority to answer important constitutional questions threatens even more chaotic federal elections. By Margot Cleveland

By on February 23rd, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/23/supreme-court-denial-of-2020-election-cases-invites-erosion-of-voter-confidence/

On Feb. 22, the Supreme Court refused to hear two 2020 election-related appeals, falling one vote short of the four needed for the high court to agree to hear the case. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari, as did Justice Samuel Alito in a separate dissent, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

With Joe Biden now a month into his office as president of the United States, Americans may shrug at the court’s decision, but we shouldn’t: The Supreme Court’s abdication of its authority to answer important constitutional questions only encourages further lawlessness by state election officials and courts, undermines voter confidence, and threatens even more chaotic federal elections.

The two cases the Supreme Court rejected on Monday both involved the 2020 election in Pennsylvania and the constitutionality of a state court decision overriding an unambiguous deadline the Pennsylvania legislature established for the receipt of mail-in ballots of 8 p.m. on election night. As Justice Thomas explained in his dissent, “Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days. The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a post mark—that the ballots were mailed by election day.”

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania and several members of the Pennsylvania House and Senate attempted to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in the U.S. Supreme Court before the election, but, at the time, the justices refused to expedite the case, leaving the petitions for review to proceed under the normal briefing schedule. But following briefing, the court denied the petition on Feb. 22.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Big Tech “Deplatforming” Becomes Ever More Audacious Francis Menton

By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-2-22-big-tech-deplatforming-beco

In case your memory doesn’t go back that far, the “deplatforming” thing did not just start in the past couple of months. It was way back in 2016 that Twitter first banned right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos; Facebook followed in 2019. Others getting the same or similar treatment from Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google two or more years ago include Alex Jones of InfoWars and Congressional candidate Laura Loomer.

Then, few on the serious right pushed back. After all, these people are not really our type. Often, they say outrageous things just to provoke a reaction.

But there is a reason why the ACLU, at least in its heyday, thought it was important to defend the rights of avowed neo-Nazis to march in heavily-Jewish Skokie, Illinois. Once the speech-suppression thing gets even a little toe-hold, it can quickly go from seeming insignificance to bold audacity. And thus we had Twitter, in the run-up to the election in October, banning none other than the New York Post — one of the largest-circulation newspapers in the country, and also the oldest — for having broken a story about a laptop of Hunter Biden, a story that happened to be completely true but also embarrassing to the Democratic candidate for President. And then on January 8 Twitter banned Donald Trump, who was not only the then-sitting President of the United States but also Twitter’s singe biggest generator of traffic. That ban appears since to have become permanent. On or about January 10, all of Amazon, Apple and Google took action to deplatform Parler, a web commentary site and alternative to Twitter to which many conservatives had been fleeing.

So, have we come to the end of this wave, or are we just at the beginning? For readers who aren’t following this all that closely, I thought it might be interesting to do a small round-up of some other recent “deplatformings.” The summary is, if you think that there isn’t a concerted effort going on to silence important dissenting speech coming from the right, you are just kidding yourself. A few recent examples:

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