EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Trojan Horse for Woke Education  The Educating for American Democracy project’s “action civics” is the latest in the Left’s efforts to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”  By John Fonte

Posted By on March 2nd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/28/a-trojan-horse-for-woke-education/

A massive new national project called “Educating for American Democracy” will be launched on Tuesday with the explicit aim of “redefining” and then “harmonizing” American civic education nationwide.

From the days of Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Horace Mann, and the McGuffey readers to Ronald Reagan’s farewell address and the controversy over national history standards, citizenship education (broadly understood) has always been a vital function of American schools for the perpetuation of the American way of life. That’s about to change for the worse.   

Educating for American Democracy (EAD) is a coalition of educators that aims “to transform teaching of civics and history to sustain our constitutional democracy and meet the needs of a diverse 21st century K-12 student body.” EAD in 2019 received start-up funding of $650,000 from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). 

Under a cooperative agreement with the federal agencies, iCivics will lead an EAD collaboration in partnership with four other organizations: Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Tufts’ Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE); Tufts’ Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life; and Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.     

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fauci’s Failures Are Firing Offenses

Posted By on March 2nd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/02/faucis-failures-are-firing-offenses/

Dr. Anthony Fauci has impressive credentials and a lengthy tenure as a top-level government health official dating back to 1984. But his performance during the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal, with politicized non-science-based edicts and frequently reversed “medical advice” that have confused and frightened Americans.

Just a week ago, Fauci made what to some was a stunning admission: “We’ve done worse than most any country” in managing the outbreak, he said. We say “stunning” because Fauci, as head of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is the official most responsible for the U.S. response.

His 2019 pay of $417,608 makes him the nation’s highest paid federal official. As a scientist, he’s held in very high esteem by many, particularly those on the left, who see his sweeping powers – lockdowns, masking, social distancing – as a nifty means of social control. It’s control of 330 million people via social isolation and nonstop browbeating of those who dare to diverge from the oppressive “new normal” we all now experience on a daily basis.

The big problem has been Fauci’s pronunciamentos are often nonsensical, not supported by science or contradictory. “These are my principles,” Groucho Marx once said. “If you don’t like these, I have others.” That’s Fauci.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Making Every Election Like 2020 H.R.1 mandates ballot harvesting and limits voter verification.

Posted By on March 2nd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/making-every-election-like-2020-11614641809?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

If you thought the 2020 election ran like a finely oiled machine, you’ll love what Democrats plan next. The Senate and House reserved their first bills, H.R.1 and S.1, for voting changes that would make mail balloting in a plague year seem buttoned up. We’ve gone through some details already, but it’s worth another word as the House prepares to vote this week.

Advocates present the legislation as a good-government reform that won’t favor either party. But H.R.1 is packed with provisions that would federalize election rules to dubious result; unsettle longstanding practices; end security measures that local officials think prudent; undermine public confidence; and increase the odds of contested outcomes.

Start with permanent pandemic rules. H.R.1 would create a federal right to a mail ballot, no excuse necessary. Registered voters couldn’t be made to submit “any form of identification as a condition of obtaining an absentee ballot,” except a signature or “affirmation.” State laws requiring mail votes to be notarized or signed by witnesses would be trumped. Late-arriving ballots, if postmarked on time, would be valid nationwide for 10 days after Election Day.

In other words, the bill would entrench last year’s emergency experiment, further turning Election Day into Election Quarter. H.R.1 would give Americans endless opportunities to relive the fun in New York’s 22nd Congressional District, which didn’t have a victor for 97 days. Out of Pennsylvania’s 10,097 late-arriving ballots last year, an alarming 6.6% did not have legible postmarks. A state Senate seat outside Pittsburgh turned on whether or not to count mail ballots that voters neglected to date. One county tallied them. The county next door did not. What if the White House were in the balance?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A New Crime Wave—and What to Do About It New York City rejected the policing lessons that led to its success, and violence is surging. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on March 2nd, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/new-york-city-violence-surging

For two decades, many New Yorkers had assured themselves that a return to the crime and squalor of the early 1990s was unlikely. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who presided over a 62 percent drop in major felonies from 1994 through 2001, proved that violence was not an urban inevitability. His successor, Michael Bloomberg, drove crime down further, through the 2008 recession and beyond. Both mayors set a benchmark for what was possible, preemptively discrediting any future mayor’s excuse that crime was beyond his capacity to overcome.

That assumption about the permanence of the crime drop was wrong. New York City in 2020 experienced an unprecedented one-year increase in homicides and shootings. Through December 27, 2020, the number of murders was up 41 percent from 2019 and 53 percent from 2018. Shooting victims were up 103 percent from 2019 and 109 percent from 2018; shooting incidents rose 97 percent and 104 percent. In gang-ridden precincts, the spike was even more startling. In Brooklyn’s Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods, there were 170 percent more shooting victims in 2020 than in 2019 and 151 percent more shooting incidents. Murder was up 94 percent in these parts of Brooklyn.

It wasn’t just gang areas that were afflicted. On December 29, a roving pack of young bicyclists in midtown Manhattan attacked a BMW, smashing a bike on top of the car and jumping on its windshield. The same group went after a cab minutes later. Office workers in the area have been chased by similar flash mobs.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Bari Weiss:There Is No Such Thing as “White” Math: Sergiu Klainerman.

Posted By on March 1st, 2021

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/there-is-no-such-thing-as-white-math?token=eyJ1c

I am not at all qualified to introduce today’s guest writer, Sergiu Klainerman.

I barely eked out a C+ in high school calculus, while Sergiu is a professor of mathematics at Princeton who specializes in the mathematical theory of black holes. He’s been a MacArthur fellow, a Guggenheim fellow and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences 

Mathematics allowed a young Sergiu, who came of age in Ceausescu’s Romania, to escape to a world where right and wrong couldn’t be fudged, and, ultimately, to a life of freedom in the United States. Without math, his life quite literally would not have been possible.

In the piece below he explains how activists are destroying his discipline in the name of progress. Worse, they are robbing poor children of the opportunity to raise themselves up by mastering it — with untold effects on all of us. Barri Weiss

……”In my position as a professor of mathematics at Princeton, I have witnessed the decline of universities and cultural institutions as they have embraced political ideology at the expense of rigorous scholarship. Until recently — this past summer, really — I had naively thought that the STEM disciplines would be spared from this ideological takeover.

I was wrong. Attempts to “deconstruct” mathematics, deny its objectivity, accuse it of racial bias, and infuse it with political ideology have become more and more common — perhaps, even, at your child’s elementary school.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

CALL ME, AYATOLLAH: Iran Turns Down Biden’s Plea to Negotiate. Biden Asks for 2nd Chance Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 1st, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/call-me-ayatollah-iran-turns-down-bi

In an entirely unexpected turn of events, Biden’s decision to announce that he wanted to crawl back into Obama’s faux nuclear deal with Iran was met with overt contempt by the Islamic terrorist state.

When you announce your negotiating position ahead of time, you should assume that the other side will demand a bigger price. 

And that’s exactly what Iran is doing. It’s turning up the screws with attacks on American personnel. Biden decided to concede Yemen, threw out a weak air strike in Syria for show, and is reduced to pleading with Iran to come and negotiate. 

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that conditions are not ripe for informal nuclear talks between Iran, the U.S. and other world powers.

Why it matters: The Biden administration had proposed the talks as part of its efforts to negotiate a path back to the 2015 nuclear deal. The White House expressed disappointment with Iran’s response, but said it remained willing to engage with Tehran.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Abraham Accords Prevail: UAE Ambassador Arrives in Israel for the First Time Katie Pavlich

Posted By on March 1st, 2021

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/03/01/abraham-accords-live-on-uae-ambassador-arrives-in-israel-for-the-first-time-n2585498

The United Arab Emirates first ever Ambassador to Israel arrived in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Monday, further solidifying the Abraham Accords reached under President Donald Trump.

The United Arab Emirates first ever Ambassador to Israel arrived in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Monday, further solidifying the Abraham Accords reached under President Donald Trump. 

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

This Administration Is Already a Failure Kurt Schlichter

Posted By on March 1st, 2021

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/03/01/this-administration-is-already-a-failure-n2585441

If you’re a Democrat, you have to be thinking about a Harris/Cheney ticket in 2024 because the * administration is a complete disaster. And not just on policy. Obama‘s administration was a policy disaster, but it was at least a competently implemented disaster. The Zombie Administration is a disaster in both form and substance.

What has this desiccated, old weirdo achieved in his six weeks of semiconsciousness in the Oval Office? Well, there’s putting tens of thousands of Americans out of jobs, including union guys who voted for him. There’s telling the American people that their kids can’t go to school because public school teachers take priority over children because of science or something. There’s another war in the Middle East. Those are kind of accomplishments, but not really good ones.

His administration had someone named “Ducklo” who was mean to women. He had another who wants to be a woman and who wants to let your little boys be surgically turned into women. And Neera Tanden’s confirmation was blocked because she was a woman and totally not because she was an inept loudmouth.

If this is normalcy, what’s a freak show look like?

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

You’ll Never Guess Who the New DHS Secretary is Blaming For the Current Border Crisis Katie Pavlich

Posted By on March 1st, 2021

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/03/01/youll-never-guess-who-the-new-dhs-secretary-is-blaming-for-the-current-border-crisis-n2585513

Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room Monday afternoon, newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas attempted to blame the current unaccompanied minor crisis on the Trump Administration, rather than President Biden’s recent open border executive actions. 

Mayorkas invited illegal immigrants to eventually make the trip to the United States, just not right now. He also denied there is currently a crisis at the border, which is false. In fact, the Biden administration recently opened additional detention facilities to handle the overflow of unaccompanied minors. In January 2021, nearly 6000 minors came across, the largest number in years. Officials predict 13,000 minors will come in May, just a few months from now. 

Reporters have been barred from visiting newly opened detention facilities. DHS officials are citing “COVID restrictions” as the reason why. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

VIDEO: United Nations Officials Shepherd Migrants Across Southern Border By Tristan Justice

Posted By on March 1st, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/01/united-nations-officials-shepherd-migrants-across-southern-border/

Officials from the United Nations helped usher Mexican migrants into the United States last week after President Joe Biden reversed his predecessor’s Migrant Protection Protocols, otherwise known as the Remain in Mexico program.

Footage from the Daily Mail below shows migrants being escorted into the states by people wearing vests often associated with UN officials who promote resettlement.

A local CBS affiliate in south Texas confirmed the UN’s presence as migrants began crossing the Gateway International Bridge into the border town of Brownsville, Texas, with the help of UN officials who screened migrants for COVID-19 upon entry. According to CBS, at least 25 migrants successfully crossed into the United States last week, with immigration attorney Jodi Goodwin reporting that more are on the way.