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Senate Republicans Just Handed Matches to Arsonist Republicans aren’t just flat-footed in opposition, they are complicit in empowering this destructive regime. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/22/senate-republicans-just-handed-matches-to-arsonist/

“It’s hard to see why rank-and-file Republicans should keep sending the same craven bunch of leftist accomplices to Washington. Maybe one day, they’ll stop.”

One of the most fateful decisions of Donald Trump’s presidency happened just weeks after Inauguration Day.

In March 2017, Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to demand Jeff Sessions, a former Senate colleague and Trump’s new attorney general, recuse himself from anything related to the investigation into alleged Russian election collusion. Sessions’ two brief meetings in 2016 with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak—a figure who appeared often in collusion-related drama—amounted to evidence of collusion, collusion perps insisted.

Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were just a few top Republicans who asked Sessions to step aside—so he did.

Sessions’ recusal put the Justice Department safely back in the hands of anti-Trump operatives just as their malfeasance was being exposed by Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The cover-up of how the agency targeted Donald Trump and his campaign associates was secure while top officials deflected attention to the concocted Russian collusion hoax.

For an added punch, the same Republicans successfully pushed for a House ethics probe into Nunes, which sidelined his work for eight months until he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

A few months later, Republicans fiercely backed the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russians; Robert Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory and the Death of Public Education By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/04/23/the-morning-briefing-critical-race-theory-and-the-death-of-public-education-n1442008

Biden Wants to Make Public Education Even More Worthless

We haven’t talked about the rapidly deteriorating state of public education in this fine country for some time now.

One thing more of the public has learned in this past year is something that a lot of us have known for a very long time: teachers’ unions don’t give a damn about schoolkids. I am not saying that all public teachers are bad and don’t care, but the union higher-ups are pure evil. The rank and file union teachers don’t get a pass, however, because they enable and don’t call out the evil ones.

Public school teachers have made it plain that they’re not interested in teaching kids. If they have to be in a classroom with them they want to be indoctrinating them. That’s really what public education in America has been about for decades. When I wrote “the Death of Public Education” in the headline I didn’t mean that public schools were going away, I meant that education as we once knew it is going to disappear.

Now they’ve got a puppet in the Oval Office who is literally in bed with a union teacher.

The liberal public school brainwash mill is about to get much, much worse.

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Top Ten Most Racist Colleges and Universities: #5 University of Pittsburgh “Color blindness” and “meritocracy” are “microaggressions.”

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/top-ten-most-racist-colleges-and-universities-5-toptenracistuniversitiesorg/

#5: University of Pittsburgh

In the fall semester of 2020, the University of Pittsburgh introduced a new mandatory course for incoming freshmen designed to teach critical race theory and Black Lives Matter propaganda. Titled “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance,” the course aims “to allow students to gain an understanding of the country’s long struggle with anti-Black racism.”

“The course is designed to inform us all about Black history and culture, about the multiple forms of anti-Black racism, and about how we can be anti-racist,” Pitt’s provost and senior vice chancellor Ann Cudd explained in a statement.

But while the Pitt administration claims that the purpose of its new mandatory instruction is to stifle racist thought and action, the content of the course proves that its intent is the exact opposite. Like much of critical race theory, the new class is based on the idea that all whites are inherently racist and seek to perpetuate that racism in society—a blatantly racist and offensive idea. Lectures presented in the class deride truly anti-racist principles such as “color blindness” and “meritocracy” as “microaggressions” while promoting race-based hiring and admissions. 

The course overview, which is proudly displayed on the university’s website, praises the often-violent activities of BLM activists and instigators in glowing terms.

“In the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and many others in recent months, activists and scholars in the United States have taken to the streets, the workplace, and classrooms to decry anti-Black racism and call attention to the ongoing devaluation of Black lives in the U.S. and globally,” it states. “The wave of uprisings that have swept the nation and globe represent part of a long struggle of anti-racist organizing—one that can be traced back hundreds of years. This multidisciplinary course seeks to provide a broad overview of this rich and dynamic history.”

The “course objectives” take key principles of critical race theory such as the existence of “microaggressions” and the ubiquity of systemic racism in American institutions for granted.

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The New Red Guards at Universities Student campaigns to censure and punish professors. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/new-red-guards-universities-richard-l-cravatts/

Seeming to give credence to Bertrand Russell’s observation that “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts,” Michael Saunders, a member of the University of Washington Student Senate, introduced a resolution to create a system for students and staff to serve on an academic jury. The purpose of this jury, according to the resolution filed by Sanders, is to resolve “all discrimination accusations and charges that violate the University of Washington’s mission statement” so that the university is able to “think outside the lens of an oppressive system and think in a mindset of innovation, improvement, and radical change.”

As is clear from the tortured prose of the resolution, complete with its leftist catchphrases, this is another example of woke students trying to seize moral authority and use their newly found power to enforce a radical ideology on an entire campus. More disturbing is the actual ideology of the proposal which clearly is to promote a singular way of thinking to advance social justice, suppress dissent and opposing views, and “chill” the speech and opinions of faculty who dare to veer off the expected and acceptable way of thinking.

There are, of course, serious issues with the creation of such a tribunal to evaluate and punish faculty expression. For example, how would a faculty member know, in advance, what thoughts and ideas are acceptable and which ones are subject to censure? Who composes this list and whence do the authors derive the authority for creating such a code? Will the creation of a list of forbidden topics be drafted only by liberal students and faculty who feel that they have the moral authority to determine what can be said by whom on campuses now? Will any opposing, conservative views henceforth be tolerated?

Will the subjects questioned and debated by errant faculty—such as affirmative action, the Black Lives Matter movement, gay marriage, abortion, border and illegal immigration policy, gun control, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and other controversial topics—be limited to positions by liberal faculty who have predetermined views on these troubling topics? Does the creation of this jury mean that no opposing views on these or any other topics would be permitted, so that conservative speech and ideology would be effectively suppressed, subject to censure and punishment?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Jihad Murderer Barghouti is Running for Palestinian Authority President Welcome to Israel’s ‘Partner for Peace’. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/jihad-murderer-barghouti-running-palestinian-hugh-fitzgerald/

Mahmoud Abbas must be kicking himself. Why did he ever think it would be a good idea to call for parliamentary and presidential elections? He had, after all, gotten along quite well without them. The Palestinian President-for-Life is now entering the 16th year of his four-year term. But he wanted to show the Biden people that he was, in truth, deeply democratic, and what better way – indeed, the only way – to show that was to insist upon elections. Besides, he figured everything would go according to plan.

His handpicked list of Fatah candidates would win a majority in the Parliament. And he would not face any serious opposition in the Presidential race. Abbas would make sure, with carrots and sticks, that Hamas would not field a presidential candidate. The carrots were “jobs for the boys” – Hamas leaders’ relatives suddenly offered employment with the PA, or other financial inducements (including bribes); the sticks would be visits by Fatah enforcers to Hamas leaders, telling them not even to think of running; both worked, and Hamas announced it would not put up a candidate for the presidency. And Mahmoud Abbas figured that both of his most dangerous, because much more popular, rivals — Mohammed Dahlan and Marwan Barghouti — would for different reasons not be able to run.

Mohammed Dahlan, who for the past decade has lived in the United Arab Emirates, where he became a counsellor to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and is now known as “the Emirates’ favorite Palestinian.” Dahlan once headed a small army of Fatah members in Gaza; at the time some called Gaza Dahlanistan, until Hamas came to power in 2007 and drove the Fatah men out.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islamic State Executes Another Christian on Video And warns all Western Christians of retribution. Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/islamic-state-executes-another-christian-video-raymond-ibrahim/

In a video released last Saturday, April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State executed a Coptic Christian man in Sinai, Egypt.

The slain was identified as 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama.  In the video, Salama appears on his knees, with three masked men holding rifles stand behind him.  The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe:

“All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” — this latter part is said while the terrorist contemptuously points at the bound and kneeling man before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.”

The middle speaker continues by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.”

The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head — even as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him.

It is unclear when the video was made — Salama was abducted over five months earlier — and the timing of its release appears to have been meant to coincide with Easter, which for Copts and other Orthodox communities is just beginning.  (As discussed here, Muslim terrorists have a penchant for killing and terrorizing Christians and bombing their churches during their holiest days, especially Easter, most recently in Indonesia.)

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CAIR and US Islamists Have a #MeToo Problem Rape, sexual harassment, and child abuse in the Sharia states-within-a-state. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/cair-and-us-islamists-have-metoo-problem-daniel-greenfield/

First, Ahmad Saleem, a community organizer for CAIR in Florida, was busted after showing up to molest what he thought was a 12-year-old girl he had met over the internet. When Ahmad showed up in a car with a plate, “Invest in Children”, the cops were waiting for him instead.

The son of Pakistani immigrants had headed up the local Muslim Students Association at the University of Central Florida before moving up the ranks at CAIR. Then it was off to prison.

Now it’s Hassan Shibly’s turn. The Syrian immigrant who headed up CAIR Florida was accused of assaulting his wife, threatening to kill her, and sexually harassing CAIR employees. Shibly was also accused of threatening some of his accusers, and trying to pay them off.

An NPR article noted that CAIR leaders had been aware of the accusations as far back as 2016 and that no action was taken. “CAIR National has a history of turning a blind eye to many incidents over the years, and the information is coming out. No NDA will save them from what’s to come,” a former CAIR employee tweeted.

A forum for CAIR victims on Instagram quickly filled up with stories of a CAIR chapter head who “was found to be sexually harassing a member of staff and other women also complained about his behavior” only to be protected by the local CAIR governing board, a CAIR leader grooming an employee into a sexual relationship, a CAIR leader using “his religious belief that men can have 4 wives to manipulate women into having affairs with him behind his legal wife’s back”, and a “lawsuit with an imam and a little girl.”

This kind of thing happens a lot.

When the various Islamist groups set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar networks operate in this country, they use the laws of Sharia that they intend to impose on Americans.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

US, EU Help to Suppress Journalists, Political Activists by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17303/us-eu-help-to-suppress-journalists-political

The malware, disguised as chat applications, would give the Palestinian Security Services access to targets’ phones, including contacts, text messages, locations and even keystrokes, Facebook said. The hacking operation targeted Palestinian journalists, political activists and dissidents.

The Facebook revelation came two weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration decided to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, including “vital security assistance programs,” a reference to support for the PA security forces.

US taxpayer money, in other words, is going to support a Palestinian security service whose main task is to spy on journalists, political activists and critics of Abbas and the Palestinian leadership. The same, of course, applies to European taxpayer money.

This is certainly not a way to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for Palestinians. On the contrary; by funding the Palestinian security forces, the Biden administration is actually assisting Abbas in his continuous efforts to silence his critics and intimidate journalists and human rights and political activists.

By spying on journalists and political opponents, the Palestinian security forces have violated Article 4 of their own law…..

In the past decade, the PA security forces have arrested or interrogated dozens of Palestinians over critical remarks they posted on Facebook. This crackdown has been largely ignored by the international community, specifically US and European Union donors to the PA…. This indifference has allowed the Palestinian leadership to enforce an atmosphere of menacing intimidation on the Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank.

Now that Facebook has confirmed the PA’s responsibility for hacking the accounts of journalists and political activists, the Biden administration and Western donors are morally obligated to emend their policy of providing financial aid to Abbas’s security services.

The donors must make it clear to the Palestinian leadership that the PA security forces are tasked with enforcing law and order and combating terrorism, not misappropriating American and European money to crush their own people.

The time has come to answer the basic question: Why are Americans and Europeans propping up an authoritarian regime, to the tune of millions upon millions per year, that muzzles free speech and spies on reporters and political opponents?

Palestinians have long been accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) of spying on them by monitoring their activities on various social media platforms, including Facebook. The espionage has resulted in the arrest and persecution of dozens of Palestinians, especially those who dared to criticize PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian officials.

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Comedy Is a Dictatorship’s First Victim By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/comedy_is_a_dictatorships_first_victim.html

Humor has always been one of the first targets of a dictatorship.  It is no surprise that in America, comedians can no longer function because of rampant political correctness.  Thus,  according to Mel Brooks, “we have become stupidly politically correct, which is the death of comedy.  Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks.”  Comedian Gilbert Gottfried says:

Imagine if the most brilliant comedians in history were working today.  They’d never stop apologizing.  Charlie Chaplin would have to apologize to all the homeless people he belittled with his Little Tramp character.

Irony abounded in the black humor that described life under communism.

A farm worker greets Josef Stalin at his potato farm.

“Comrade Stalin, we have so many potatoes that, piled one on top of the other, they would reach all the way to God,” the farmer excitedly tells his leader.

“But God does not exist,” replies Stalin.

“Exactly,” says the farmer.  “Neither do the potatoes.”

After the death of Stalin, jokes were one way people could regain their sanity in a world gone mad under communism.  One joke that made the rounds went like this:

The regional KGB headquarters in Arkhangelsk suffered a major fire and was almost completely destroyed.  Shortly after, a man called looking for help.

“I’m sorry, we can’t do anything,” said the receptionist.  “The KGB has burnt down.”

Five minutes later, the receptionist received another call.

“I’m sorry, we can’t help.  The KGB has burnt down.”

Another five minutes passed, and the phone rang again.  The receptionist recognized the voice as the man who’d twice called previously.

“Why do you keep calling?  I told you that the KGB has burnt down.”

“I know.  I just like hearing it.”

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Keep an Eye on This SCOTUS Labor Case By Janet Levy

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/keep_an_eye_on_this_scotus_labor_case.html

Americans are proud of their right to property, not enjoyed by people in many democracies.  As the Cato Institute puts it, our founding fathers understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom.  But California’s 46-year-old Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) violates that constitutional principle, and it even fails to protect farm workers.  It allows union officials and pickets to invade farms — for three hours every day, for 120 days a year — and harangue, coerce, and arm-twist farm workers into joining the union and engaging in collective bargaining with growers even when they’re happy with their working conditions and pay.  The property-owner is powerless to stop the intrusion, as the regulation does not require the owner’s permission.

Surprising?  That is why a forthcoming decision by the Supreme Court in a case involving a strawberry plant nursery and a packager from California and the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) will be a watershed.  It will signal whether or not America will end up with more laws that stifle productivity and bestow overweening powers on Democrat-backing leftist unions.

The law came to be enacted in the first place because unions have been the most powerful force in California politics.  Public-sector unions together collect over $900 million in annual revenue.  These unions have long controlled the state Legislature, where Democrats have been in the majority for decades.  Non-public-sector unions too — such as the United Farm Workers (UFW), founded in 1962, and known to invade private farmlands — have wielded coercive influence disproportionate to their membership.  Rather than protect and fight for workers’ rights, unions have been busy increasing their power and political clout and pushing leftist agendas.  Worse, with misconceived laws that give them extraordinary powers and immunities, they force workers to accept unwanted representation, bully them into paying dues, and inflict what the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation calls “compulsory unionism abuses.”  They contribute almost exclusively to Democrat causes and give workers no say in how their dues are spent.  And the unions trespass unhindered on employers’ private properties.