RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/27/in-restoring-civics-start-with-the-basics/

In a bit of good news for this Thanksgiving, it appears that many would-be shapers of education policy are plugging for the return of civics to the curricula of schools and colleges.

The bad news is that many of the prime movers and shakers behind a “new civics” still cling to the old progressive hostility toward a knowledge-based approach to teaching and testing American students about representative government and its historical roots in this exceptional nation.

A little more bad news: A survey released this fall by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni added to a mountain of evidence that adults, including many who attend college, don’t command much civic knowledge. For example, fewer than half knew that John Roberts is the current chief justice of the United States. More than one-quarter thought Brett Kavanaugh was.

Term lengths of U.S. senators and representatives? That is a piece of information any informed voter should know; however, fewer than half of college graduates could give the correct numbers. (The answer, by the way, is six and two, respectively).

Now for some better news: Five years ago, a coalition of prominent leaders assembled by the Arizona-based Joe Foss Institute launched a Civics Education Initiative intended to ensure that all young Americans are taught basic civics and tested on their grasp of the fundamentals. Former U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein were among the participants.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/bizarre-delicacy-is-cruel-de-blasio-signs-bill-banning-foie-gras-in-nyc

Whew! We have until 2022! By then we may be dining by candlelight and using our fingers instead of utensils.rsk

Foie gras will soon be pulled from menus across New York City after Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation that bans sales of the French delicacy.

De Blasio signed the bill into law on Monday. It had been widely supported by the New York City Council, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning the food over concerns of animal cruelty. The ban will go into effect in 2022 and is expected to have an impact on the approximately 1,000 restaurants that serve the dish, according to the New York Times.

Foie gras, created through a process called gavage, is made from the liver of a duck or goose that is force-fed a fatty mixture through a tube inserted into its throat. During the 20-day feeding process, the bird’s liver becomes engorged for human consumption.

Allie Feldman Taylor, president of Voters for Animal Rights, hailed the decision.

“New York has sent a clear message to foie gras producers that shoving a foot-long pipe down a bird’s throat and intentionally diseasing and enlarging their liver up to ten times its normal size in order to create some bizarre delicacy is cruel and has no place in our compassionate city,” Taylor said in a press release.

Marco Moreira, the executive chef and owner of French restaurant Tocqueville, criticized the law and said that it would damage the city’s fine dining scene.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/28/what-the-democratic-candidates-should-be-reading-over-the-thanksgiving-break/

If the Democratic presidential candidates can take a break from their campaigns over the long holiday weekend, they should catch up on their reading. We have for them a few suggestions that might give them a new perspective.

Declaration of Independence. If they were to actually read and internalize this founding document, the Democrats might accidentally learn that the policies they are so set on imposing on this country are hardly different from many of the cruel acts committed by the crown the Founders rebelled against.

U.S. Constitution. There’s no greater reminder that we have guaranteed freedoms, that Congress’ power is limited, that this nation was intended to have a “republican form of government,” not a democracy, which is easily transformed into mob rule, than our Constitution.

“Economics in One Lesson,” Henry Hazlitt. This Thanksgiving happens to coincide with the 125th anniversary of Hazlitt’s birth. As Pepperdine University economist Gary Galles notes nearby, Hazlitt was one “of America’s most prolific public intellectuals (who) published roughly 10 million words as a journalist, literary critic, philosopher, and economist.” “Economics in One Lesson” ought to be required reading for Democrats. In this seminal work, Hazlitt explains in clear and compelling fashion why their prescriptions will make the country worse off. He also explains why we should be thankful for our free market system.

“Breaking Point,” C.J.Box. Washington needs to understand how its policies affect everyday people across the country and Box shows them. The novel is based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s vicious harassment of the Sacketts of Idaho, who, says Box, went through “a nightmare” just trying to build a modest home that was to be their dream house.

“The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It,” Timothy Sandefur. We should not have to have our rights cleared by government before we exercise them. This might seem like a new idea to the Democrats, who not only want to the authority to grant fundamental rights to petitioners, but wish to shut them down whenever possible.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-will-turn-over-the-2016-rocks-11574812212?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

A forthcoming report by the Justice Department inspector general will look into the FBI’s formal handling of the Steele dossier and its launching of a counterintelligence investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign. Far more consequential, though, was the FBI’s informal role in allowing itself to be used to inject the dossier into the political sphere to spark the Russia collusion folly.

And where is the similar report on the CIA under John Brennan ? His promotion of the Russia collusion canard was bad enough. Unexamined is his role in promoting the still-secret Russian “intelligence” used to justify FBI Director James Comey’s chaotic intercessions in the matter of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The story is worth retelling. Mr. Comey’s rationale, not disclosed until after the election, we may suppose was of crucial importance to somebody who makes himself out to be such a stickler for doing the right thing. Yet his public explanations have been a tissue of absurdities. He claims the secret Russian intelligence might have leaked and discredited a Justice Department decision to clear Mrs. Clinton, but how did his usurping the DOJ’s decision improve matters? The information still could have leaked. Plus didn’t his own actions discredit the DOJ?

He says he was protecting the FBI, that an FBI decision would be more credible than a Justice Department decision. This is laughable. On the eve of the convention, the FBI was going to deprive the president’s party of its nominee even as the reviled Mr. Trump was storming to the GOP nomination? It would have been institutional hara-kiri. Nobody believes the FBI’s decision was any less foreordained than the Justice Department’s.

Making further mincemeat of Mr. Comey’s rationale, the inspector general has revealed that his FBI colleagues judged the Russian intelligence to be “objectively false” and possibly a Kremlin plant. If the Russians can fake one email chain to discredit the Justice Department, they can fake another to discredit the FBI. Again, how did Mr. Comey fix any problem?