Leftist Mob Targets Law Professor — Guess What the Dean Does By George Leef

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/leftist-mob-targets-law-professor-guess-what-the-dean-does/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=third

On his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith of the University of San Diego Law School wrote a post that was sharply critical of Chinese government policies. Shortly thereafter, the academic mob accused him of ethnic bias against Chinese people.

You would think that law students should be able to distinguish between the two, but either their previous education has left them incapable of making such distinctions or they are so intent on finding a pretext to attack a non-woke professor that they will say any foolish thing.

So, the dean of the law school, Robert Shapiro, has to decide what to do — tell the students that their claims about Smith are ridiculous or appease them with a promise to investigate him for thought crimes. If you guessed the latter, you understand the nature of higher education in America today.

Writing on Legal Insurrection, Bill Jacobson has the story (and links to many similar ones). He notes, “It is [reminiscent] of the worst days of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, in which students were the most aggressive in demanding ideological obedience from professors, with public shaming one of the tools used to humiliate the target and scare others into silence.”

He’s right. The great “progressive” project of turning our education system into one for indoctrinating young people so they’ll unthinkingly do what the revolution requires is far along.

Slandering the U.S. Military . . . Again By Mackubin Thomas Owens

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/slandering-the-u-s-military-again/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The accusation that the military is full of racists and extremists is false, and damaging.

During the 1960s and ’70s, those of us who fought in Vietnam became accustomed to having many of our fellow countrymen slander us as, at best, victims of a government that sent its poor to fight a criminal war and, at worst, war criminals ourselves, complicit in the routine commitment of atrocities. But the pendulum began to swing back the other way in the 1980s, and continued in the same direction through the Gulf War and 9/11 until, by the time of George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers had been elevated to the status of “secular saints.”

My fellow Vietnam veterans and I would no doubt have preferred such reverence to the chilly reception we received after the war, but secular sainthood has created its own set of problems — isolation from American society at large, unequal burden sharing, and a belief in the moral superiority of those who serve over those who haven’t — that threaten to undermine the bond between service members and veterans on the one hand and American society at large on the other. After all, healthy civil-military relations depend on mutual trust between soldiers and the society they serve.

Now, the pendulum seems to be swinging back to the bad old days of slandering the military, as part of broader claims that Donald Trump normalized “white supremacy” and other forms of right-wing extremism. The fact that there were veterans among the rioters who unlawfully entered the Capitol on January 6, the persistent claim that Trump appealed to extremist groups, and Trump’s popularity with the military form the basis for proliferating allegations that the military has become a friend to racism and extremism.

Months after Trump complaints, some courts are finding irregularities in 2020 elections Michigan, Wisconsin and Virginia court actions show some absentee ballot procedures imposed by Democrats violated state laws.By John Solomon

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/thumonths-after-trump-complaints-some-courts-are-finding-illegalities

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

Joe Biden ‘Will Always Tell You The Truth’ (Except About COVID Vaccine, Economy, Border Crisis …)

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/22/joe-biden-will-always-tell-you-the-truth-except-about-covid-vaccine-economy-border-crisis/

Almost exactly a year ago, then-candidate Joe Biden promised something that many apparently believed. “I’ll always tell you the truth,” he said. “This is the responsibility of a president. That’s what is owed the American people.”

So how is Biden doing on that promise?

Not very well, when you consider his inability to tell the truth about the COVID-19 vaccine, the economic rebound already underway, or the border crisis. Biden won’t tell the truth about the first two because he’d have to credit President Donald Trump. And he won’t tell the truth about the border crisis because he himself is entirely to blame for it.

Biden has repeatedly claimed that when he got to the White House, there was no plan in place to distribute the vaccine and that the credit for the widespread distribution all belongs to him. In his prime-time address earlier this month, for example, Biden said that “I have as president of the United States put us on a war footing to get the job done. Sounds like hyperbole, but I mean it, a war footing. Thank God we’re making some real progress now.”

But the former head of Operation Warp Speed, the program created by Trump to speed development and production of COVID-19 vaccines, told NBC’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend that “90% of what is happening now is the plan that we had.”

Of course, all you have to do is look at the data to see that rollout of the vaccine had nothing to do with Biden. By the time Biden took office, daily doses were well above 1 million – for a vaccine that nobody, including Biden, thought would be approved by then.

Biden isn’t telling the truth about the economy, either, or his $1.9 trillion plan to “rescue” it.

Where’s the Science Behind CDC’s 6-Foot Social-Distance Decree? The new limit for schools is 3 feet. But the public is in the dark about the basis of these recommendations. Scott Gottlieb

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wheres-the-science-behind-cdcs-6-foot-social-distance-decree-11616358952?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance on Friday about how far apart children ought to be while in school. The old standard of 6 feet has been replaced by a 3-foot minimum, which will make it much more feasible for many schools to reopen for full-time instruction in person.

The adjustment applies only to schools, not society more broadly, and only when prevalence is low and schools are taking other measures, such as keeping kids in social “pods.” The preconditions may preclude the guidance from having its full intended effect. The World Health Organization has allowed 1 meter of distance (around 39 inches) both in and out of school. China, France, Denmark and Hong Kong, among others, went with this spacing. If the CDC’s guidance were applied universally—to include work and retail—that one adjustment could restore substantially more commercial activity.

More distance is always better when it comes to contagion. But the 6-foot directive might have been the single costliest measure CDC has recommended, which have been largely followed over the past year. So what science went into making—and, more important, sustaining—the recommendation?

Nobody knows for sure. Most agree the guideline derives from a belief that Covid is largely spread through respiratory droplets, like flu. Old studies suggest that larger respiratory droplets are unlikely to travel more than 6 feet, and therefore close contact with an infected person is the primary mode of exposure. This research was hardly conclusive, but by most accounts it formed the basis for the initial Covid recommendations. More-recent research shows that the novel coronavirus can also spread through airborne particles, known as aerosols, especially indoors.

China’s Warning to Biden A lecture in Alaska shows that adversaries sense U.S. weakness.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-warning-to-biden-11616360915?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

That was some tongue lashing a senior Chinese official delivered last week in Anchorage to top Biden Administration officials in their first meeting. This is the new reality in U.S.-China relations, as adversaries look to see if they can exploit President Biden as they did Barack Obama.

The two sides had agreed to two minutes of opening remarks each. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kept his short and hospitable, though he did say the U.S. has “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, and economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.”

China’s director of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Yang Jiechi, then went on a 20-minute tear (including translation) about the superiority of “Chinese-style democracy” and America’s sins. The latter included a reference to Black Lives Matter, human-rights problems, and that the U.S. “has exercised long-arm jurisdiction and suppression and overstretched the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony.”

Mr. Yang added: “So we believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world. Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” As we’ve noted, the Chinese like to echo the woke U.S. media critique of America.

Mr. Blinken responded that the U.S. “acknowledges our imperfections, acknowledges that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, we have reversals, we take steps back” but then make progress again. This is true enough, but needlessly defensive after a foreigner’s public assault on U.S. interests and values.

Baghdad Bob at the Southern Border . By Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/03/22/baghdad_bob_at_the_southern_border_145448.html

“There is absolutely no immigration crisis on the southern border.” That’s the repeated message from the Biden administration. It simply isn’t true.

Our leaders are telling Americans to ignore the overcrowded immigrant centers and caravans on the way. Don’t look at unaccompanied minors, arriving in record numbers. Those are mere “challenges.” Want to see for yourself? Sorry, no can do. The administration has blocked journalists from inspecting immigration facilities or accompanying the Border Patrol on their rounds. This is not the way to discuss democratic choices. It’s the way to grow mushrooms.

The media blackout and litany of false statements are reminiscent of the most dazzling press spokesman of modern times, “Baghdad Bob.” The mouthpiece for Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War famously told the world press, “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” What made his statement so memorable was that, just behind him on camera, American bombs were exploding. American troops were swarming into the country. He bravely — inanely — denied it all. U.S. soldiers, he said, “hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion.” He was soon captured by those illusory troops.

Bagdad Bob set the gold standard for government flacks and the politicians who hide behind them. But he has plenty of imitators. Donald Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated his boss’s ludicrous claims that the 2017 presidential inauguration was the best-attended in U.S. history. Aerial photographs proved otherwise. But Spicer stuck with his story, to mounting ridicule. He knew who had hired him. Today, his old boss won’t even admit he lost the 2020 election or had anything to do with losing Georgia’s two Senate seats, which cost Republicans control of the upper chamber.

In the annals of public deceit, the Trump administration leaves big shoes to fill. The Biden administration is making an impressive effort to fill them, shoveling steaming heaps of disinformation about its immigration policies. Joe Biden doesn’t do that himself. He avoids answering questions or speaking off the cuff, apparently for good reason. So it’s up to his press secretary, Jen Psaki, and the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, to explain how the administration is handling immigration. Their answers have only a glancing relationship with the truth.

China: What to Do About It? by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17191/china-what-to-do-about-it

Amendments to China’s National Defense Law, effective the beginning of this year, take away sweeping powers from the State Council, which leads China’s civilian government, and give it to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. These powers include the power to mobilize all of society for war.

Everything they do, whether it is seemingly innocuous, such as measuring a mountain or putting a rover on Mars, is a means of claiming sovereignty, of enlarging the People’s Republic. Now, of course, there are, in addition to these incursions, China’s militant, hostile, belligerent acts…. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

China will land a Rover, its Rover, on Mars in either May or June…. China’s officials have been talking about moon and Mars as if they are sovereign Chinese territory — part of the People’s Republic.

They look at near heavenly bodies the same way they do the South China Sea, something that should be theirs. This means that if they get there, China believes it has the right to exclude other nations.

Today let’s focus on three things that China is doing relating to genetics. First, China is collecting the world’s DNA. Second, China is genetically engineering the Chinese to become a superhuman race, in other words, eugenics. Third, Chinese researchers are working on pathogens, new pathogens, artificial ones, to create the world’s next pandemic.

The story here is that we allowed the Chinese to plunder our society for data.

This whole subject was brought to the attention of the American public by John Ratcliffe, then director of National Intelligence, when he wrote that China was trying to grow super‑soldiers. Ratcliffe mentioned that China is already conducting experiments on people in the People’s Liberation Army to enhance their abilities, to create, as he called it, “biologically enhanced capabilities.”

The Chinese regime does not have ethics or morality. It is not restrained by law. It does not have a sense of restraint. The regime is trying to create the perfect communist. China has the ability and the will to do this, which means that the world has got to prevent this experimentation.

China can become number one in two ways. It can enhance its own CNP ranking by becoming stronger, or it can decrease the CNP rankings of other countries. That’s where pathogens come in. This notion of decreasing CNP of others meant that China had no inhibitions about spreading the coronavirus around the world.

Now, China’s ranking of CNP will increase dramatically, of course, if the next disease leaves the Chinese alone and sickens only foreigners.

The spreading of the coronavirus is indeed an application of unrestricted warfare. Many analysts have said that biological warfare does not work. I can understand why they say that, but unfortunately we have just seen a disease kill about 2.4 million people as well as hobble societies across the world.

COVID-19 is the ultimate proof that biological weapons work. If Chinese scientists actually succeed in developing viruses that attack only foreigners, China could end up as the only viable society in the world. This is communist China’s weapon against the world and against the United States as well.

[O]n January 20 — just hours after taking the oath of office — Biden issued an executive order that repealed President Trump’s executive order of May 1st, 2020, preventing grid operators in the US from buying Chinese equipment. This means China is now free to sell sabotaged equipment to the US.

[W]e should impose costs on China for spreading COVID‑19. Recently, we passed that grim milestone of more than 500,000 deaths. This pathogen is not finished with us yet. We have to impose these costs on China to convince Xi Jinping that he cannot spread the next disease beyond his borders.

[W]e need to have the President of the United States impose costs on China for what it’s doing in Hong Kong. President Trump started imposing costs but did not do enough. I hope that Biden, who ran on a campaign of trying to help the people of Hong Kong, will do so.

Right now, the Chinese economy may be growing, but it did not grow at the 2.3 percent that Beijing announced for 2020. It is probably just a smidgen over zero, if it is zero.

We are approaching a point where ‑‑ this will be critical ‑‑ where Biden will have to decide whether to run to the rescue of China’s regime. We know that Nixon in 1972, George H.W. Bush in 1989, and Bill Clinton in 1999 rescued Chinese communism. I hope Biden does not do that a fourth time.

[T]he Biden team — and they have talked about this in public — they say, “We will impose costs on China for those things which are unacceptable, we will criticize them on others, and we will cooperate where there are common interests.” I don’t think we can do that because I do not see that we have common interests with a country that’s trying to overthrow our government. My message is: understand the fundamental nature, the hostility, and the maliciousness of China, and remember one other thing. That is, China deliberately released the disease that has killed more than 500,000 Americans. That alone means there can be no cooperation with China.

We need to say this to France, to Germany, to everybody else, that this is a zero‑sum game. You either work with the US or we do not consider you to be our friend. I think Israel would choose the right side. I am not so sure about some of the other countries mentioned…. [T]his is something where American presidents have not communicated to our friends, allies, and partners how we feel about China. I say we should no longer support China’s Communist regime.. We consider it to be an enemy, and we will act to protect ourselves in an appropriate fashion. Just tell Biden, in May 2019, People’s Daily ran a piece that declared a “people’s war on the US.” That is all Biden should need to know.

We know the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others are dying in these facilities. The only thing that separates the People’s Republic of China and the Third Reich is that China has not gone to mass exterminations — yet. This meets the definition of “genocide” in the Genocide Convention of 1948. If Biden needs another message, this is not just a policy choice for him. We are a party to that Genocide Convention, which requires signatories to “prevent and punish” acts of genocide.

“What should Biden do?” One of the things Secretary Pompeo said that really unnerved the Chinese was talking about in‑person diplomacy, talking to the Chinese people directly. ….Biden needs to do the same thing. Not every solution is military. As a matter of fact, our solutions with China are not military. It really starts with talking to the Chinese people.

What does China really want?

Biden’s firing squad stands in a circle With no one in charge, none of Washington’s recent threats is consistent with identifiable policy objectives David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/bidens-firing-squad-stands-in-a-circle/

The Biden Administration last week set a new historical record by threatening sanctions against Germany, India, Russia and China in the space of 72 hours. Germany and India are, or at least were, American allies.

Washington is angry at Germany for building a natural gas pipeline with Russia, at India for purchasing a Russian air defense system, at Russia for mistreatment of President Putin’s opponents and at China for treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority.

None of Washington’s recent threats is consistent with identifiable policy objectives. On the contrary, recent outbursts from Biden and his cabinet will cement a Sino-Russian alliance against the US, undermine US efforts to rebuild relations with European allies and damage US efforts to create a “Quad” alliance against China in the Pacific.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that no one is in charge at the White House, and that senior officials are jockeying for position in a power vacuum by signaling to domestic constituencies. But the net effect recalls the old joke about the firing squad that stands in a circle.

President Biden March 16 called Russia’s President Putin “a killer” who “has no soul,” and averred that Putin would “pay a price” for allegedly trying to help Trump in the 2020 presidential election—an unprecedented combination of threat and insult that no Western leader ever has uttered except in wartime.

Visiting India last week, Lloyd Austin, “the guy who runs that outfit over there” in Biden’s description, warned India not to go through with its planned purchase of Russia’s S400 air defense system, to “avoid any kind of acquisitions that would trigger sanctions.”

According to news reports, Austin is the US secretary of defense. India is supposed to anchor the “Quad,” a four-way alliance among the US, Japan, Australia and India to contain China’s ambitions in the Pacific. Threatening one’s prospective allies with sanctions is not the conventional way in which alliances are built.

The Collapsing American Family by Linda Goudsmit

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/25228/the-collapsing-american-family

   http://goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: http://lindagoudsmit.com

What explains the radical leftist attack on the American family?

To answer this question we must understand the combatants in terms of competing ideologies. Leftism is rooted in Marxist collectivism and loyalty to the state. Conservatism is rooted in individualism and loyalty to the family. Consider the communist revolution in China. Thousands of years of venerating the family was extinguished and replaced with loyalty to the Communist Chinese Party (CCP).

Maoists instituted a national cancel-culture campaign that burned books, demolished statues, erased history, destroyed culture and cultural norms in a re-education campaign that replaced traditional Chinese culture with Maoist slogans and loyalty to the state.

In contemporary America, the radical leftist Democrats are following the Maoist cancel-culture model. They are targeting the three supporting pillars of American society; the American family, our Judeo-Christian faith, and the U.S. Constitution symbolized by our American flag. Cancel-culture is asymmetric warfare used by the advancing enemy to prepare the population for a replacement ideology.

How is this possible in the United States of America?

Hitler tried it in Germany. Hitler removed the children from their parents and indoctrinated them with Nazi re-education lessons that demanded loyalty to the state. Hitler’s youth actually turned in parents who rejected Nazism.

Marxist cancel-culture is ripping out the foundations of America’s constitutional republic that guarantee decentralized government, individual rights, and states rights. It is leftist preparation for a Marxist-style centralized, federalized, collectivist replacement ideology. According to Karl Marx, the father of Communism, an ideal communist society would have centralized banking, centralized education, and centralized labor. All infrastructure facilities, all agriculture, and all industries would be government-owned. There would be no private property, no inheritance rights, and the government would levy high taxes on everyone to support its programs.