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March 2021

The Swiss Won’t Miss the Burqa Voters ban the ‘face’ of Islamist separatism in Western society.By Tunku Varadarajan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-swiss-wont-miss-the-burqa-11615332345?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Switzerland voted in a referendum on Sunday to ban face coverings, and it wasn’t a revolt against Covid restrictions. Medical masks are excluded from the prohibition. Its real target is the burqa.

The measure, approved 51% to 49%, prohibits the wearing of full facial coverings in public. No specific garment or religion is mentioned, and the proposal is sex-neutral. The ban includes the balaclavas beloved by anarchists as well as the facial draping worn by some Muslim women. Yet there was never any doubt about the intent. The proposal was introduced by, among others, the nativist Swiss People’s Party, whose campaign featured posters of a black-veiled woman.

Switzerland joins Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany in banning the burqa. A challenge to the French ban was dismissed by the European Court of Human Rights. European democracies differ from America’s in notable ways, and many Americans have reservations about the Swiss prohibition: Aren’t burqa bans an illiberal curbing of religious and expressive freedom? By some reports, fewer than 100 women in Switzerland wear the burqa. Do they constitute so great a threat to the venerable Swiss nation that their constitution, which guarantees freedom of faith and conscience, has to be amended to alter their sartorial practice?

Aware that judgments from afar can sometimes be glib, I put these questions to Elham Manea, author of a book published last month titled “The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism.” A Swiss Muslim of Yemeni descent, she teaches at the University of Zurich’s Political Science Institute and campaigned for the prohibition with “a group of like-minded feminists, leftists and Swiss of Muslim heritage.” (She stresses that she distanced herself from the Swiss People’s Party.)

BEN WEIGARTEN: OUT OF HIS CENSUS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/out-of-his-census/

Biden’s betrayal of citizenship sabotages our republican form of government.

This article will be part of a longer forthcoming series regarding President Biden’s harmful Executive Orders.

President Joe Biden’s flurry of initial actions, on issues from immigration and race to environmentalism and regulatory policy, favor the ruling class, Woke progressives, and non-citizens. They punish the tens of millions of forgotten Americans of every color and creed who are most deeply impacted by their consequences. The longtime Swamp-dweller’s first days in office can best be summarized as: “unity and healing for me, but not for thee.”

One overlooked but significant executive order that demonstrates the administration’s contempt for you, and the principles you hold dear, concerns the census. It suggests that the president not only cares little for sovereignty, and the rule of law, but believes in fragrantly violating such principles, privileging noncitizens—including illegal aliens—and providing them representation to which they are not entitled.

The decennial census count is critically important because it is used for apportioning House seats, redistricting, and allocating hundreds of billions of federal dollars each year. It may strike readers as odd, but historically, the enumeration has included noncitizens, including illegal aliens. Therefore, areas with greater numbers of inhabitants—regardless of their legal status—have garnered greater political power in the way of representation and government largesse. Some American citizens see the weight of their votes augmented, while others see it reduced because of the actions of noncitizens, including illegal aliens—and because of a part-feckless and part-cynical political class that has allowed this policy to persist.

Biden’s Pick For Civil Rights Head Peddled The Jussie Smollett Hate Crime Hoax By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/09/bidens-pick-for-civil-rights-head-peddled-the-jussie-smollett-hate-crime-hoax/

President Joe Biden’s top pick to lead the Department of Justice’s civil rights division peddled the Jussie Smollett hoax on Twitter, criticizing anyone who questioned the black, gay actor’s falsified hate crime in 2019.

“Jussie Smollett subjected to a racist and homophobic attack. 2 white men wearing ski masks attacked him, put a rope around his neck, and poured bleach on him and as they yelled slurs. Prayers to @JussieSmollett for a speedy recovery from this hate crime,” Kristen Clarke tweeted shortly after the alleged incident.

Days after her initial post, Clarke, who will oversee hate crime investigations if confirmed, took to Twitter again, alleging that the Chicago Police Department was “demonizing survivors” after they requested access to Smollet’s cellphone and claiming that they shouldn’t be “casting doubt” on the actor’s claims that his assailants shouted racial slurs and beat him up while yelling pro-Trump slogans.

“To be clear — This is a BAD move by the Chicago Police Department. This is NOT how you treat survivors of a hate crime. Stop demonizing survivors and casting doubt on their claims if you want communities to trust that you will take #HateCrime seriously. @StopHateProj,” she wrote. 

Piers Morgan Leaves ‘Good Morning Britain’ After Criticizing Prince Harry And Meghan Markle By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/09/piers-morgan-leaves-good-morning-britain-after-criticizing-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle/

Piers Morgan, an English broadcast journalist, is leaving “Good Morning Britain” after he criticized Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah.

ITV quickly announced Morgan’s departure on Tuesday shortly after he walked off the “Good Morning Britain” set, a dramatic exit which broke record ratings, following reprimands from his cohost Alex Beresford about his comments denouncing the ex-royals interview.

“Following discussions with ITV, Piers Morgan has decided now is the time to leave Good Morning Britain,” ITV said in a short statement. “ITV has accepted this decision and has nothing further to add.”

Shortly after the Oprah interview aired, Morgan tweeted out a series of criticisms about the ex-royals, questioning the couple’s intentions and stating that Markle lied multiple times.

Kanye West – Worth $3.2+ Billion – Received $2.4 Million in PPP Funding for His Sneaker Company By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/09/kayne_west__worth_32_billion__received_24_million_in_ppp_funding_for_his_sneaker_company_766558.html

A famous singer’s shoe company, a millionaire actor’s film institute, and the California wineries of a legendary filmmaker, probably were not the “little guys” taxpayers thought Congress was targeting in last year’s coronavirus relief Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

When our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mapped the big PPP loans (the nearly 83,000 loans between $1 million and $10 million), a few familiar names popped up.

Kanye West, who claims a net worth of $3.2 billion, took $2.4 million for his clothing and sneaker company, Yeezy LLC, which the Wall Street Journal noted had a value of $2.9 billion, with $1.5 billion in yearly revenues.

Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute received $3.04 million in PPP loans. The non-profit’s IRS 990 lists $55.4 million in assets (FY2018).

Two affiliated companies of the legendary Godfather director and vineyard owner Francis Ford Coppola received PPP funding including Francis Ford Coppola Presents LLC ($7.3 million) and Niebaum Coppola Estate Winery, LP ($1.2 million).

The Baseless Attempt to Cancel Winston Churchill By Andrew Roberts

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/the-baseless-attempt-to-cancel-win

Woke critics are trying to denigrate the eminent Brit, engaging in falsehoods along the way.

 W hen I started writing books about Winston Churchill and his contemporaries 30 years ago, virulent Churchill-hatred was confined to fascists, Marxists, and the swivel-eyed loons of the “green ink brigade” (so called for their vividly penned letters to the editor). Today, however, it has metastasized into the academy and is in danger of becoming received wisdom on the Left there — which in practice in the modern academy means everywhere.

One might have hoped that this vicious new atmosphere of Churchill-hatred that is being actively fostered in our seats of higher learning would at least not have been furthered at Churchill College, Cambridge, which was created specifically to honor his memory. There, surely, his strengths and weaknesses might have been debated in an atmosphere of objectivity and scholarship. It is, after all, the site of the Churchill Archives Centre, which houses all his papers.

Yet it was at the college, on February 11, that a symposium titled “The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill” was held, featuring a panel of three confirmed Churchill detractors and chaired by a fourth in the person of Professor Priyamvada Gopal, who tweeted that “White lives don’t matter” at the time of the BLM demonstrations last summer.

Where’s the Outrage over Children in Cages? By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/wheres-the-outrage-over-children-in-cages/

In 2018, Joe Biden said that a “policy that separates young children from their parents isn’t a deterrent, it’s unconscionable.” Biden went on describe the child-separation policy first implemented under the Obama administration as “abhorrent,” and one that threatened “to make us a pariah in the world.” The entire media spent weeks contemplating the depth of our collective immorality. Progressives compared detention centers to Nazi concentration camps. Joe Scarborough equated border agents to SS guards. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to the facility and broke down in tears. Charles Blow argued that Donald Trump was a baby snatcher. “These are children!” he wrote.

When Blow wrote his piece there were around 2,000 children being detained by the Border Patrol. This week, according to CBS News, around 3,200 migrant children were being held in Border Patrol facilities – a record — with almost half being held past the three-day legal limit. The coverage, as you can imagine, has a very different tone.

Then and now, it was a complicated issue. The Trump administration incompetently implemented its “zero tolerance” policy, but it certainly wasn’t snatching children like a depraved Gestapo. The fenced detention areas were built before Donald Trump had come into office. Only parents charged with entering the country illegally and who claim asylum after being apprehended were detained. Adults who opt not to be deported after entering illegally had to wait for adjudication of their case. While this happened, the law prohibited children from being held in the same detention centers as adults. This is done to protect children. It was then, and it is now.

The difference in tone, however, tells us that much of what we saw was nothing but performative partisan outrage.

Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due-Process Rights By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/biden-prepares-to-strip-college-students-of-due-process-rights/

Either we believe principles are the best means of fairness, or not. Biden, it seems, only believes in them for himself.

It’s always worth reminding people that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade’s charges, and tossed from office in disgrace.

The New York Times reports today that Biden’s Kafkaesque “White House Gender Policy Council” is “beginning his promised effort to dismantle Trump-era rules on sexual misconduct that afforded greater protections to students accused of assault.” The subhead informs us that, “The Biden administration will examine regulations by Betsy DeVos that gave the force of law to rules that granted more due-process rights to students accused of sexual assault.”

The most disingenuous word here — though the piece is brimming with them — is “more.” History did not begin in 2015, and former education secretary Betsy DeVos did not invent more due-process rights in Title IX; she simply reinstated time-honored fundamental due-process rights that have guided justice systems in the liberal world for hundreds of years. The Constitution says — twice — that no citizen shall be arbitrarily “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” No means no.

It was only in 2011 that the Obama administration instituted fewer due-process rights through the force of law, denying the accused the ability to question accusers, the right to review the allegations and evidence presented by their accuser, the right to present exculpatory evidence, and the right to call witnesses. Basically, the right to mount a defense.

It was the Obama administration that asked schools to institute a system that empowered a single investigator, often without any training and susceptible to the vagaries of societal and political pressures, to pass unilateral judgment on these cases. Also, under the Obama administration rules, colleges were allowed to adjudicate sexual abuse and assault cases using a “preponderance of evidence” rather than a more stringent “clear and convincing evidence” standard.

The Smug Arrogance Of The ‘Science’ Crowd

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/09/the-smug-arrogance-of-the-science-crowd/

Last summer, fed up with Democrats’ claim that theirs is the “Party of Science,” we pointed out that it is in reality the Party of Science Fiction. We hope others have had their fill, too, and public opinion will force the Democrats to grow up.

“Science” is never invoked by the political left to illuminate, educate, or guide. It’s used to terminate discussion, to shut down debate. It’s employed in exactly the same way “racist” has been used for decades. Not as a legitimate charge but a bomb thrown into a conversation in an effort to “other” the person or persons the smear is directed toward. It’s a means closing off further dialogue, a bully’s tactic.

Those who respect an open marketplace of ideas, who believe that more speech rather than less is healthy for society, might wonder why the left wants to halt debate. It’s a good question with a clear and obvious answer: The zealous adherents to progressive politics know their ideas are empty of substance and therefore need to shout down, cancel, and indict those who dare think differently.

That would be the primary but not sole reason for those on the left to incessantly yell “science” and virtue-signal their beliefs. Many who appeal to “science” do so for status. It’s a convenient – and shallow – way of showing the rest of us that they’re intellectually and morally superior. They desperately want to think they’re on the right side of something, anything. Evidently doing so satisfies in them a need to overcome their deep insecurities.

Pfizer and fake news By Ruthie Blum

(March 9, 2021 / JNS) Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials. One ostensible purpose of the visit—slated to coincide with the completion of the delivery to 10 million doses of BioNTech—was to examine the possibility of Pfizer building a vaccine-production plant and R&D center in Israel.
On Thursday, however, Pfizer announced that it was postponing the trip. According to the pharmaceutical giant, Bourla and the members of his team who were part of his entourage are not yet fully vaccinated.
Certain Hebrew news sites pounced on this detail for click-bait effect. Take Ynet, for instance. Rather than opt for the “cobbler’s kids wear no shoes” angle, the online version of the widely popular daily, Yediot Achronot, highlighted misleading key words to suggest that the folks at Pfizer weren’t taking any chances with their health by subjecting themselves to their own concoction—the one that they’ve been pushing on the rest of the world.
The ploy initially worked. The item in question, shared on social media by people who clearly hadn’t read past the headline, began to circulate. Anti-coronavirus-vaxxers couldn’t have been happier or felt more vindicated.
One Facebook user recounted overhearing two women on line at an ATM in Jerusalem talking about the “two Bs, Bourla and Bibi” exploiting the naivete of the Israeli public to “conduct experiments on us.” To add weight to their belief that the vaccine is unsafe at best and a global conspiracy at worst, the interlocutors pointed to Bourla’s “refusal” to be inoculated.
In keeping with the wise saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” these ladies, like fellow skeptics, didn’t bother to widen their horizons beyond rumor. Had they even done a perfunctory Google search, they would have realized that in December, soon after the first shipment of vaccines landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, Bourla explained that he and other Pfizer executives were not going to “cut in line” to receive the shots.
At the age of 59 and in good physical condition, he said, he planned to wait his turn based on the criteria determined by the state of his residence.