EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Teacher Wins in Court After Being Fired for Refusing to Use Preferred Pronouns By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on March 12th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/11/teacher-wins-in-court-after-being-fired-for-refusing-to-use-preferred-pronouns/

On Monday, a teacher in Wisconsin who had been fired for refusing to use the “preferred pronouns” of students who believed themselves to be “transgender” won a legal settlement with his former employer.

As reported by the Daily Caller, Jordan Cernek had been an English teacher with the Argyle School District until his contract was not renewed, after two students in the 2022-2023 academic year demanded that staff refer to them by their preferred names and pronouns. Following his termination, Cernek sued the school district in July of 2024, claiming a violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of religion, as well as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The lawsuit was filed on Cernek’s behalf by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

“Mr. Cernek has a sincerely held religious belief that God makes no mistakes when it comes to sex and gender and that calling a transgender student by a name or pronouns at odds with their biological sex would cause Mr. Cernek to affirm that God made a mistake in creating a transgender person as a male or a female,” the lawsuit read in part. “In Mr. Cernek’s religious view, affirming a transgender person’s identity through the use of preferred names and pronouns would be speaking a falsehood and violate his religious beliefs.”

Court records reveal that the school had initially agreed to a religious exemption for Cernek, before suddenly revoking the agreement and ordering him to use the students’ preferred names and pronouns.

The case was dismissed in February following the announcement that both parties had reached a settlement. The school district confirmed in a statement that it had agreed to pay the amount of $20,000 to Cernek.

RELIGION Comments turned off

Purim Guide for the Perplexed 2025 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on March 12th, 2025

1. Purim is a Jewish national liberation holiday – just like Passover and Chanukah – which highlights the transition of the Jewish people from subjugation to liberty. It is celebrated seven days following the birth and death date of Moses – a role model of liberty, leadership and humility.

Purim is celebrated from the evening of March 14 through the day of March 15, 2025.

2. Purim’s historical background: 

^A Jewish exile to Babylon and Persia was triggered by the 586 BCE destruction of the 1st Jewish Temple and the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria by the Babylonian Emperor, Nebuchadnezzar.
^Persia replaced Babylon as the leading regional power. 
^In 538 BCE, Xerxes the Great, Persia’s King Ahasuerus, the successor of Darius the Great, proclaimed his support for the reconstruction of the Jerusalem Jewish Temple, the resurrection of national Jewish life in the Land of Israel, and the recognition of Jerusalem as the exclusive capital of the Jewish people. 
^In 499-449 BCE, King Ahasuerus established a coalition of countries – from India to Ethiopia – which launched the Greco-Persian Wars, aiming to expand the Persian Empire westward.
^Persia was resoundingly defeated (e.g., the 490 BCE and 480 BCE battles of Marathon and Salamis), and Ahasuerus’ authority in Persia was gravely eroded.

3. “Purimfest 1946” yelled Julius Streicher, the Nazi propaganda chief, as he approached the hanging gallows in Nuremberg (Newsweek, October 28, 1946, page 46).  On October 16, 1946, ten convicted Nazi war criminals were hanged, similar to Haman’s ten sons, who were hung in ancient Persia. An 11th Nazi criminal, Hermann Goering, committed suicide in his cell, similar to Haman’s 11th child, who committed suicide following her father’s demise (according to the Talmud’s Megillah tractate 16a).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our Constitutional Rights and Freedoms Trump Manners and Civility The elite enemies of our freedoms require us to “fight, fight, fight.” by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on March 12th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-constitutional-rights-and-freedoms-trump-manners-and-civility/

Long before Donald Trump berated Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelenskyy, the president has been criticized for his lack of decorum, manners, politesse, and political “norms.” From snubbing Hillary Clinton during his first inaugural address, to discarding “diplomatic niceties” when talking with foreign leaders,” as the AP put it in 2019, Trump’s boorishness and vulgarity has been the Dems’ go-to smear.

But complaints about manners and proper behavior generally reflect the mores and sensibilities of privileged elites defined by birth, wealth, and credentials––all policed by professional and political guilds. In a democratic republic in which all citizens are politically free and equal, such rules often function as gate-keepers to keep hoi polloi in their place, at the expense of crafting policies that serve national interests and security. Worse, they are tools for silencing rival factions’ free speech rights by question-begging labels like “misinformation” or “hate-speech.”

Ever since the birth of democracy in ancient Athens and its enfranchisement of the poor and uneducated, the issue of free public speech had been contested. Indeed, empowering the citizen masses to vote in elections, openly deliberate and speak out about policy, and hold office, was the heart of democracy, the public confirmation of the citizens’ freedom and equality––as the extant ancient antidemocratic complaints from antiquity illustrate.

Moreover, to protect the right of free speech the Athenians had very few restrictions on insults and mockery.  Ancient comedy, performed at state-sponsored religious festivals, and managed by citizens, was also a political institution unbridled by rules of decorum. Classicist K.J. Dover writes of comedy in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. that “every Athenian politician we know of from historical sources was accused by comic playwrights of being ugly, diseased, prostituted perverts, the sons of whores by foreigners who bribed their way into citizenship.”

Nor was it just poetic license: political debate in the Athenian Assembly, the legislative body of the state, was just as vulgar. Sordid sexual practices, disreputable parentage, and taking foreign bribes were standard charges made in speeches, including in trials. As the philosopher Democritus said, “Freedom of speech is the sign of freedom.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

John Tierney Jay Bhattacharya’s Confirmation Hearing Was an Embarrassment for Democrats Senators who once denounced the NIH nominee’s ideas had nothing to say about pandemic lockdowns, mandates, or lessons learned.

Posted By on March 12th, 2025

ttps://www.city-journal.org/article/jay-bhattacharya-nih-senate-confirmation-hearing-covid-pandemic

Jay Bhattacharya’s confirmation hearing in the Senate last week was as close as we may ever get to a formal surrender in the long war over Covid-19 pandemic policies. While some public-health officials, academics, and journalists continue to defend the Covid restrictions and oppose Bhattacharya’s nomination to direct the National Institutes of Health, Democrats at the hearing unanimously abandoned the fight against his supposedly “fringe” ideas.

Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor of medicine and economics, had been a leading opponent of Covid measures supported by Democrats on the committee, including the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates for federal employees and for workers at private companies. One of the senators, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, had been so worried about the “dangerous” policies in Florida and other states that he advocated a national mask mandate in 2020 and introduced legislation to prod recalcitrant states. Last week, however, Markey and his Democratic colleagues studiously avoided discussing the mandates or any issue related to Covid. Pandemic? What pandemic?

Instead, they used their time to rail at Donald Trump and Elon Musk, leaving it to the committee’s Republicans to address the most consequential public-health edicts ever imposed on Americans. The Republican senators catalogued the costs of the lockdowns, the learning loss from school closures, and the ineffectiveness of the restrictions. They praised Bhattacharya for coauthoring the Great Barrington Declaration opposing lockdowns and school closures, and they thanked him for his court testimony opposing mask mandates for students. They criticized social media platforms’ censorship of his views and the smear campaign egged on by Anthony Fauci and the former NIH director, Francis Collins, who dismissed Bhattacharya and his coauthors as “fringe epidemiologists.”

“You showed incredible courage in speaking the truth about Covid-19 when much of the rest of the world stayed silent about it,” Indiana senator Jim Banks told Bhattacharya. “It’s remarkable to see that you’re nominated to be the head of the very institution whose leaders persecuted you.” Banks then asked him to define the role of the NIH director during a pandemic.

“The proper role of scientists in a pandemic is to answer basic questions that policymakers have about what the right policy should be,” Bhattacharya replied.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Christopher F. Rufo The Anti-Semitic Influencer Problem Narratives against Jews have taken a different turn.

Posted By on March 12th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/anti-semitic-influencers-conspiracy-theories-kanye-west-candace-owens-andrew-tate

In 1991, a motorcade carrying a Jewish rabbi cruised through Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. After getting separated from the group, one of the cars ran a red light and collided with another vehicle, which swerved onto the curb and hit two black children, leaving one injured and another dead. Within hours, the neighborhood had broken out in riots, with mobs of black residents targeting Jewish institutions. Early the next morning, a group of young black men stabbed and beat a Jewish graduate student to death.

As the tensions escalated, the race hustler Al Sharpton organized protests at the scene, portraying Jews as nefarious “diamond dealers” responsible for the global exploitation of blacks. Another round of looting, vandalism, and violence followed.

Flash forward to the present. Hamas launched the October 7, 2023, terror campaign against Israel and created fertile ground for another propaganda war. In the United States, left-wing academics seized the moment to rally support for the “decolonization” of Israel, and in the digital realm, a new anti-Semitism has reared its head. Several influential online commentators—most notably, Kanye West, Candace Owens, and Andrew Tate—have used the attention around October 7 to push conspiracy theories and, especially in West’s case, outright anti-Semitism, on podcasts and social media platforms, ostensibly from a “right-wing” perspective.

The two episodes provide a fascinating point of comparison. Anti-Semitism is an ancient affliction, but it takes a different shape throughout history, depending on the culture, language, and technology of the moment. In today’s case, we see a resurgent anti-Semitism that has scrambled politics and perpetuated itself in cyberspace. In short, the Crown Heights riots have been digitized.

The first thing to understand is that Sharpton’s activism was a form of flesh-and-blood ethnic politics adapted to the televisual era. His narrative in Crown Heights was built on a particular grievance, against particular people, in a particular neighborhood. It generated its power on a left-wing trope: that Jews were oppressing poor blacks, and that the government was favoring “white interloper[s]” over native minorities. Sharpton’s desired outcome was tangible: he sought the imprisonment of the driver and, more broadly, cash for his organization, which operated like a mafia protection racket.

The new anti-Semitism has taken a different turn. The leaders of this movement are not political activists but social media “influencers” who have constructed a narrative based not on a left-wing, oppressor/oppressed framework, but on a diffused, right-coded conspiracy theory. Jews, in these influencers’ telling, have taken control of American media, flooded society with pornography, and organized sex-related blackmail rings to secure support for Israel.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Make Work Great Again? As DOGE Cuts, Majority Want Gov’t Workers Treated Same As Those In Private Sector: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on March 12th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/12/make-work-great-again-as-doge-cuts-majority-want-govt-workers-treated-same-as-those-in-private-sector-ii-tipp-poll/

The Trump administration’s push to streamline the bureaucracy and boost the productivity of federal employees has struck a nerve among voters. A substantial majority of Americans now believe that federal workers deserve the same treatment as private-sector workers, according to the I&I/TIPP Poll.

The national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Feb. 24-26, asked 1,434 adults the following question: “Should federal employees be treated differently than private-sector workers in terms of pay, benefits, and job protections?” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

The answer was a resounding “no.” Of those queried, 65% said “no, they should be treated the same.” Just 22% answered, “yes, they should receive more.” Another 13% responded “not sure.”

The responses by political affiliation showed this is a non-partisan issue down the line. Among Democrats, 63% answered “no,” while only 25% said “yes.” Republicans weren’t much different: 66% said “no,” 24% said “yes.” Independents, a bit surprisingly, were strongest in their response, with 70% saying “no,” and just 14% giving a “yes” to the poll.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century? Part I Dismantling Capitalism, Transferring Wealth, Dismantling the West by Robert Williams

Posted By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21454/climate-change-grift

Perhaps the climate hoax is actually not about saving the environment? What is it, then?

Some environmental problems of pollution are clearly caused by man; the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), as in certain hairsprays for instance, on the ozone layer over the Antarctica. CFCs thin, or make a “hole,” in the planet’s ozone layer that protects the people from harmful ultraviolet rays. There is also the very real man-made problem of insoluble trash in the oceans. Generally, however, the problems of pollution are separate from those of climate change. Whatever can reasonably be done to curb man-made pollution should, of course, be advanced, but sometimes climate change and pollution overlap – seen by many, apparently, as an invitation to muddle and conflate them.

Climate change is largely caused by solar flares. So far, at least, there is not a blessed thing anyone can do about them. Many industries offer grants for papers that support the efficacy of their products that relate to climate change. Solar flares, regrettably, do not offer grants.

[Former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate] Kerry and his family flew on 48 trips and emitted more than 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide in just the 18 months between January 2021 and July 2022. Private jets “are 10 times more carbon intensive than airliners on average, and 50 times more polluting than trains,” according to a 2021 report. Kerry justified his polluting by declaring, unfortunately without a trace of irony, that private jets were the “only choice for somebody like me.”

The answer was supplied as early as 2015 by Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

That would mean the destruction of capitalism and the world economy, however long that takes.

When the global elites arrived in Davos, Switzerland, in 2023 to discuss the urgent need to declare climate emergencies, they did so using more than 150 private jets.

Any journalists or commentators who dare to question or oppose the climate change orthodoxy are immediately shunned as “climate deniers” and met in the legacy media with an instant end to their careers.

“What is, in my view, even more dangerous, is the quasi-scientific form that their many times refuted forecasts have taken upon themselves.” — Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus, The New American, December 22, 2009.

Klaus stressed that environmentalism disguises itself as science. Under this disguise, it attempts to force its precepts on humanity. When it comes to global warming or climate change, that process is made easier: the topic is scientifically complex, which makes it hard for most people to refute the climate scammers.

“For the last 16 years, temperatures have been going down and the carbon dioxide has been going up and the crops have got greener and grow quicker. We’ve done plenty to smash up the planet, but there’s been no global warming caused by man…. I still say it’s poppycock! If you believe it, fine. But I don’t and there’s thousands like me.” — David Bellamy, English botanist and former BBC broadcaster, The Daily Mail, January 22, 2013.

It is no wonder that the climate change scam won the day. Few people have been willing to risk their livelihoods to fight against the manipulation.

Meanwhile, at the latest UN Climate Conference, COP29, which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024, the agenda to destroy the world’s economy and the West by forcing wealth redistribution made new strides…. [Developing countries] apparently demanded $1.3 trillion annually. In the words of energy expert Alex Epstein: “The basic idea here is what they call ‘climate reparations,’ which is the idea that the US and others have ruined the world with fossil fuels, and so we have to pay a trillion dollars a year to make up for it, which, by the way, if the US paid that, that’s $7,700 per household per year.”

Notably, China retained its status as a “developing country” at the COP29, thereby exposing the enormous extent of the climate hoax. According to the International Energy Agency, “China’s total CO2 emissions exceeded those of the advanced economies combined in 2020, and in 2023 were 15% higher.” In addition, while China continues to build more coal-fired power plants than the rest of the entire world combined, the West continues on the path of deindustrialization in the name of the climate.

Thankfully, President Donald Trump, once again, has withdrawn the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. As the past has shown, however, such a withdrawal holds no future guarantees. Trump also withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement during his first term, but President Joe Biden then brought the US back the first chance he got. For this reason, it is crucial that the current US administration do all it can to publish the truth about the climate scam and work towards ending it across the board.

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this January, Klaus Schwab’s wife, Hilde Schwab, opened the annual meeting with the assertion that Antarctica is melting.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Only Game in Town Peter Smith

Posted By on March 11th, 2025

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/america/the-only-game-in-town/

It would be nice if plucky Ukraine could win the war, but that’s impossible. Trump, like him or not, grasps what his critics refuse to see

Last Tuesday evening I had the delightful experience of watching Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary in 2017, putting Andrew Bolt right about Trump and Ukraine, followed by the lovely Miranda Devine (the Aussie at the New York Post) doing a similar job on Sharri Markson. I just wonder whether Bolt and Markson do any homework. Did they view the whole press conference at the Oval Office? It seems not. Otherwise, they would not have arrived at the characterisation of the meeting which fed their prejudices.

Did they know of the difficulties Trump’s emissary Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio had in separately in dealing with Zelensky in the lead up to him coming to Washington? Both were both given the brush off by Zelensky when trying to get the minerals deal done.

Did they know that Zelensky met with leading Democrats immediately before meeting Trump? What an extraordinary underhand meeting to have had. It seriously calls into question his judgement and frame of mind.

It was wonderful near the end of President Trump’s State of the Union Address when he figuratively waved the letter from Zelensky in which he offered to sign the minerals deal and participate in peace talks. What a quick turnabout almost immediately after the armament supplies were suspended.

Here is a brief selection of quotes which I read from various commentariat glitterati following the spat at the White House.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Kim Jong Un Tests Trump With Ballistic Missile Launch Matt Margolis

Posted By on March 11th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/10/kim-jong-un-tests-trump-with-ballistic-missile-launch-n4937772

U.S. and South Korea began their first major joint military exercise of President Donald Trump’s second term on Monday, and soon after North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles into the sea.

According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the missiles were fired from the North’s southwestern Hwanghae Province and were classified as close-range. In response, South Korea’s military has heightened its surveillance and is working closely with U.S. forces to monitor the situation.

“We are aware of the DPRK’s multiple ballistic missile launches and are consulting closely with the Republic of Korea and Japan, as well as other regional allies and partners. The United States condemns these actions and calls on the DPRK to refrain from further unlawful and destabilizing acts,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. “While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, or territory, or to our allies, we continue to monitor the situation. The U.S. commitments to the defense of the ROK and Japan remain ironclad.”

Fox News Digital has more:

The launches come after South Korean and U.S. forces began their annual Freedom Shield exercise Monday.

“Freedom Shield is an 11-day exercise conducted by the Republic of Korea and the United States consisting of training to reflect the Korea Theater of Operations – a combined, joint, multi-domain, and interagency operating environment,” according to the U.S. Army.

“Field training events throughout FS25 include urban combat operations, field hospital operations, mass casualty treatment and evacuation, field artillery exercises, air assault training, wet gap crossing, air defense artillery asset deployment and validation, and a joint assault exercise with the U.S. Marine Corps,” the Army added.

However, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry is calling the exercises an “aggressive and confrontational war rehearsal.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

CBS Reporter: “We Did Not See A Single Migrant” During Trip To Border Posted By Tim Hains VIDEO

Posted By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/03/10/cbs_reporter_we_did_not_see_a_single_migrant_during_trip_to_border.html

CBS’s Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported that during a trip to the US-Mexico border this week, he “did not see a single migrant or asylum-seeker” over the course of four hours.

“Typically, when you go to the border, you will see groups of people who are trying to cross into the US, but we did not see a single migrant,” he reported.