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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Data Undercuts Myth of ‘Racism’ in Police Killings John R. Lott

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/22/data_undercuts_myth_of_racism_in_police_killings_145640.html

President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin’s conviction on Tuesday “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how “police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people.”

But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin’s trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if there is such racism, but the administration’s comments sure sound as if they have already determined the study’s outcome.

In the other case, body camera footage released by police revealed that Ma’Khia Bryant was fatally shot as she charged another girl with a knife. The officer shot one black girl in an attempt to save what appears to be another black girl from being stabbed.

Politicians such as Biden as well as the media have helped create a biased perception that is far from the reality of shootings by police. In a study, the Crime Prevention Research Center (where I serve as president) found that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mention the officer’s race. When the officer is black, news coverage rarely mentions that detail.

The ‘COVID-19 Hate Crimes’ Bill Is a Thought Crime Bill Ben Weingarten

https://www.newsweek.com/covid-19-hate-crimes-bill-thought-crime-bill-opinion-

In the Woke America we increasingly inhabit, opposing the progressive agenda is treated as tantamount to bigotry. The modern Democratic Party’s modus operandi is to play up that purported bigotry as a pretext to savage and smear political adversaries, run roughshod over our rights, and ultimately usurp power in the self-serving name of virtue and “equity.”

This manifests itself in all kinds of unexpected ways, with unexpectedly far-reaching consequences.

Consider, for example, the original draft of the recently introduced “COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.”

On its face, the bill, sponsored by Mazie Hirono (D-HI)—the due process-denying, discriminating senator from Hawaii—seemed an almost-parodic piece of show legislation purporting to birth a novel pandemic-based offense.

As Senator Hirono’s related comments made clear, the bill aimed to create the appearance of concern about the rise in anti-Asian hate, while ascribing such hate to Senator Hirono’s political adversaries.

At first glance, the bill’s substantive impact was minimal. The legislation called for the U.S. attorney general to tap a single individual to expedite review of “COVID-19 hate crimes and reports of any such crime to federal, state or local law enforcement agencies.” It also called for the attorney general to direct state and local law enforcement agencies to create online databases of hate crimes or related incidents.

What exactly this would do to combat violence perpetrated against Asians in America was unclear.

The geriatic wokeness of Joe Biden Freddy Gray

https://spectator.us/topic/bidens-rodeo-geriatric-wokeness/

Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States, has never been able to keep his mouth shut. Throughout his absurdly long career in politics, he has always said too much, made stuff up, gone too far. His friends and fans just shrug it off. ‘That’s our Joe.’

The trouble is, Biden is now America’s Commander-in-Chief, leader of the not-so-free-anymore world, and his loquaciousness — and the mental fuzziness it betrays — is becoming a problem.

Take, for instance, his decision this week to intervene before the jury reached its verdict on the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white police officer now found guilty of the murder last year of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ‘I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict. I think it’s overwhelming in my view,’ Biden said. ‘I wouldn’t say that unless the jury was sequestered,’ he quickly added — as if there were nothing untoward in a president weighing in pre-emptively on the most racially charged legal trial in America since the O.J. Simpson case in 1995.

As things turned out, mirabile dictu, the jury agreed with Biden and found Chauvin guilty on all three counts. Yet what ought to have been a calm vindication of American justice was treated as a grubby political show trial. Angry right-wingers will regard the verdict as a sop to left-wing mobs who would have — hell, maybe still will — set fire to cities across America had Chauvin not gone down. Chauvin’s lawyers are expected to claim that their client was not given a fair trial due to the monstrous public pressure surrounding the case.

Opinion: The ADL –  Democrats who happen to be Jewish By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-the-adl-democrats-who-happen-to-be-jewish/

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called for Fox New host Tucker Carlson’s head earlier this month.

In an over-the-top letter to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on April 9, ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt said, “It is time for Carlson to go.” Carlson’s crime? According to the ADL letter, “an impassioned defense of the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory,’ the hateful notion that the white race is in danger of being ‘replaced’ by a rising tide of non-whites.”

Fox Chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch politely declined, pointing out that Carlson “decried and rejected replacement theory” in the April 8 episode in question. Carlson, for his part, gleefully replayed the segment as part of a longer discussion on April 13.

We have watched the segments closely and see nothing from Carlson worthy of the ADL’s censure.

Neither did 1,500 Orthodox rabbis represented by the Coalition for Jewish Values. They publicly went to the mat rebuking the ADL for “grossly misplaced charges of anti-Semitism.”

Carlson argued that “demographic change is the key to the Democratic party’s political ambitions. … When you change who votes, you change who wins. That has nothing inherently to do with race or nationality. It is the nature of democracy.”

One may or may not agree with this, but it’s not anti-Semitism.

Jonathan Tobin, the dean of American Jewish journalism, said the real weakness of the ADL’s argument “is that up until recently, the ones talking about immigrants replacing or overwhelming white voters have been liberals.”

Woke Medicine Will Destroy the Hippocratic Oath The idea of race-based healthcare is morally unethical and transgresses the oath every medical doctor takes. By Shawn Waugh

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/21/woke-medicine-will-destroy-the-hippocratic-oath/

When I entered into the practice of medicine in 2005, I took what is called the “Hippocratic Oath.”

The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest documents in human history, dating to Greece around 400 B.C. It is an oath of ethics historically taken by physicians and health care providers entering the practice of medicine. There are numerous modern-day versions of the Hippocratic Oath but the message is essentially the same.

Basic Principles of The Hippocratic Oath

The basic principles of the Hippocratic Oath are beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and respect for the patient’s autonomy with its two rules of confidentiality and veracity.

We pledge, in essence, to do no harm to those we treat.

In the modern version that I voluntarily repeated, I did not proclaim that would blindly follow government officials and health organizations in considering treatment for my patients.

I have watched as countless numbers of my colleagues proclaim they are “following the science” over the past year. At the same time, they have not been able to adequately produce the “science” to justify their actions. Thus, the COVID religion was birthed and a massive cult following formed. They faithfully follow the four pillars of the Branch Covidian faith.

The practice of medicine has not been immune from the infusion of wokeism into society. It is under attack from leftists all across the globe.

Woke Medicine

Kamala Harris, the missing czar By Richard Dean Young

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/kamala_harris_the_missing_czar.html

After Kamala got surprised (it seemed) by Joe’s announcement that she was taking over the “crisis” at the southern border, she has made herself almost invisible in the administration — at least in relation to anything that has to do with the mess farther south.

Various pundits have waxed political and psychological in trying to figure out why Kamala has not yet made a trip to the border with Mexico and has said precious little about the emergency she is purportedly overseeing other than indicating that she’s studying the root causes…which, of course, take a very long time to resolve.

Generally, the interpretations go along the line that the border crisis is a lose-lose proposition for anyone in Washington, D.C., who will surely get tainted by an out-of-control mess that nobody can unravel satisfactorily, at least not without returning to Trump-type solutions, which would be far worse for a left-wing Democrat than actually resolving the havoc.

But we have thought of yet another reason that has to be on Kamala’s mind as she makes herself almost invisible.  Our studied interpretation is nothing more than an educated guess, but it has its roots in real history.  And it has much to do with Kamala rejecting the title of czar as she goes missing on the border.

Now, we have noticed that Kamala doesn’t seem to have a broad sense of history, other than a few quotes from famous women in the past and her own declaration that, along with Biden, “we have a chance to change the course of history.”

‘We Don’t Want You Here!’ BLM Protesters Harass NYC Diners After Chauvin’s Guilty Verdicts Julio Rosas

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2021/04/21/blm-protesters-harass-nyc-dinners-after-chauvins-guilty-verdicts-n2588317

BLM protesters harassed diners in New York City during a march that started after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on Tuesday of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. 

The march began in Brooklyn with protesters chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”

Coming upon diners eating outside, some in the BLM crowd began shouting at the patrons. They also targeted the white business owners who make ethnic food.

“We don’t want you here! We don’t want your f**king money!” they chanted.

A Troubled Rule of Law The pervasive sense that cities would burn if Derek Chauvin were not convicted raises questions about whether the jury’s verdict was reached dispassionately. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/chauvin-verdict-and-americas-troubled-rule-of-law

America’s cities did not burn last night. But the terrified preparations in Minneapolis and elsewhere in anticipation of the George Floyd verdict—the razor wire and barricades around government buildings, the activation of the National Guard, the declaration in Minnesota of a “peacetime emergency,” the fortified police presence, the curfews, the cancellation of school, the boarded up businesses—raise serious questions about the rule of law in the United States. Had the jury failed to convict Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on all three counts of murder and manslaughter, the ensuing riots would likely have made the conflagrations of 2020 look like a Girl Scout campfire.

This likely outcome was evident long before Congresswoman Maxine Waters encouraged such violence over the weekend. Last year’s precedent, the ensuing 12 months of wildly inaccurate rhetoric about white supremacy, and the recent looting in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, over a fatal police shooting made such rioting a virtual certainty. That inflammatory rhetoric poured forth from every institution in the country—from the presidency, Congress, corporations, law firms, banks, tech companies, academia, and the public school system. The mainstream media pounded home the narrative about unchanging black oppression. And even after the verdict, the White House (perhaps that name will be gone in another year) and the press have doubled down on the systemic racism conceit, despite the coordinated effort to convict among Minnesota’s public officials and the state’s most prestigious members of the private bar.

Going forward, it is an open question whether any police officer can receive a trial free from mob pressure, should he be prosecuted for use of lethal force.

DOJ indicts Illinois professor for secretly working for China while getting US government grants: Jerry Dunleavy

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-indicts-illinois-professor-secretly-working-china-while-getting-us-government-grants

The Justice Department indicted a Chinese-born Illinois college professor on two counts of wire fraud and a false statements charge for secretly working for a Chinese government-affiliated university and concealing those ties when applying for and receiving a $151,099 grant from the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation.

Mingqing Xiao, 59, was accused on Wednesday of “fraudulently” obtaining the federal grant money “by concealing support he was receiving from the Chinese government and a Chinese university” while he worked as a mathematics professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he has been employed since 2000. Prosecutors said Xiao “applied for and received NSF grant funds … without informing NSF about another, overlapping grant he had already received from the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China” and “failed to inform NSF that he was on the payroll” of Shenzhen University.

“Again, an American professor stands accused of enabling the Chinese government’s efforts to corruptly benefit from U.S. research funding by lying about his obligations to, and support from, an arm of the Chinese government and a Chinese public university,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said Wednesday.

The D.C. Statehood Gambit The latest House Democratic power grab is unconstitutional.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-d-c-statehood-gambit-11619045039?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

A week after the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee introduced legislation to pack the Supreme Court by adding four new Justices, the House is set to vote on a bill to pack the U.S. Senate by adding two new Senators. Unlike court-packing, the bill granting statehood to Washington, D.C., has majority support among elected Democrats and the official backing of the White House. But the impetus behind both measures is the same—to tilt the constitutional playing field and consolidate liberal power.

Fashioning an independent seat of government in a federal system while affording representation to its residents is a dilemma dating to the founding. The Framers provided in the Constitution’s Article I that Congress could, “by cession of particular states,” control a small area in which the federal government would operate. In 1790 part of the territories of Virginia and Maryland, two of the 13 states that ratified the Constitution, were delineated for federal control.

Advocates of statehood brush aside the constitutional concerns and frame their cause as a simple question of democracy. It’s true that the roughly 700,000 residents of the District don’t have the ability to elect voting Members of Congress. Many hold influence over the federal government as employees and contractors or in other positions, and in the Founding era proximity to the seat of power was itself considered a form of representation.

Yet the natural remedy for the imperfect status quo, if representation is the real concern, would be for Congress to do something it has done before—return part of the District to the state that ceded it in the first place. That’s what happened in 1846 when Congress reinstated Virginia’s control over the D.C. suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria.