MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Looking for Answers to the Autism Epidemic in All the Wrong Places Joan Swirsky

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.thepostemail.com/2023/04/20/looking-for-answers-to-the-autism-epidemic-in-all-the-wrong-places/

According to the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest statistics, in 2020 one in 36 children (approximately four percent of boys and one percent of girls) was estimated to have autism spectrum disorder, estimates that are significantly higher than those in all previous years. White children are about 19 percent more likely than black children and 65 percent more likely than Hispanic children to be diagnosed with autism.

Experts offer various reasons for the general increase in this condition:

The role that being an older parent plays not only in the incidence of autism but also Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities.
Genes.
“Something” in the environment.
The increasing number of vaccines given to infants and children, which today routinely number 16.

What is consistently omitted, however, is the role that ultrasound exams during pregnancy may and probably do play not only in this seeming black/white disparity, but in the rapidly escalating incidence of the condition. More about that below.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Autism is a neurological disorder that affects the normal development of the brain, causing self-defeating behaviors and an inability to form social relationships. It usually appears before the age of three. Most scientists believe that autism is strongly influenced by genetics but allow that environmental factors may also play a role.

To be diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, a child must have deficits in three areas:

Communication (most children can’t make eye contact; others can’t speak).
Social skills (typified by disinterest in both people and surroundings).
Typically “normal” behavior (many autistic children have tics, repetitive behavior, inappropriate affects, et al).

Those diagnosed on the autistic spectrum range from high-functioning, self-sufficient people, even geniuses, to those who need lifelong supportive help.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A is for Activist: Indoctrination in the Classroom Lana Starkey

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/04/a-is-for-activist-indoctrination-in-the-classroom/

If, through omission or commission, I have inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize … —James Finn Garner

James Finn Garner’s 1994 satirical children’s book Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times has aged very well, albeit ironically. What was once a farcical parody of the trend towards political correctness and an incisive comment on the censorship of children’s literature could now be mistaken for one of the many earnest attempts to “clean up” the canon. The depiction of the woodsmen in “Little Red Riding Hood” as “sexist’, “species-ist” bigots and Garner’s reimagination of Cinderella’s fairy godmother as a male “Fairy Godperson” is now perversely de rigueur. Indeed, it would have Helen Adam of Edith Cowan University—one of the most recent Australian academics to call for traditional children’s books to be cancelled—very pleased indeed. Adam has highlighted ten classic children’s books that fail to showcase “diverse characters” and “perpetuate gender stereotypes” and she wants them scrapped.

Apparently, “children need to experience affirmation of their identities and respect and understanding for those who may be different to themselves”. That sounds quite reasonable until we delve further into Adam’s article and discover that it is built on the philosophies of critical theory and identity politics: the idea that power shapes all social relationships. She writes that educators’ “unconscious attitudes, practices and expectations” of children in class may “negatively impact self-confidence” and “reinforce gender stereotypes”. Further, these unconscious attitudes are so deeply ingrained they impact teachers’ selection of children’s books, causing further potential harm. Her solution? Read her instructional woke pamphlet (“Gender Equity in Early Childhood Picture Books”, Australian Educational Researcher) and follow! It even has references to the United Nations so it must be right.

What the terribly serious Adam and her ilk fail to recognise is that while unconscious attitudes undoubtedly exist, and may cause harm, like anything else, her iconoclastic position is a conscious, and very loud, assault on individual identity itself. Identity politics reduces individuals to mere mouthpieces of the collective that defines them, and so dialogues between individuals are reduced to power struggles between groups they belong to. You don’t engage with your opponents because there is no “you”—only your group exercising power in the interest of the group’s identity. By this logic it follows that the woodsmen in “Little Red Riding Hood” cannot be read as individual men, and certainly not heroic ones, but must be read as “sexist” and “species-ist” products of a human-centric patriarchal society that must be overthrown. The result? Silence instead of discussion: the bones of cancel culture.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Feds Still Fighting Release of J6 Tapes Despite Mounting Legal Pressure A consortium of major media companies is suing the Justice Department and the FBI for ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the still-secret recordings of January 6. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/20/feds-still-fighting-release-of-j6-tapes-despite-mounting-legal-pressure/

Matthew Graves just received a court summons.

As the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Graves is rarely on the receiving end of a legal inquiry. In fact, Graves’ hand must be tired from signing thousands of criminal indictments, sentencing memos, and plea offers related to his ongoing investigation into the events of January 6, 2021. Just this week, the FBI arrested two more individuals on minor offenses, giving Graves’ overstaffed office more fresh meat for the Justice Department’s vengeful retaliation against Americans who protested the certification of Joe Biden’s election that day.

No investigative technique is too invasive for Graves’ henchmen to use in court proceedings. Big Tech, banking institutions, airlines, hotels, and other private interests work hand-in-glove with the Justice Department to hunt down Trump supporters and track their every movement before and on January 6. Much of the evidence consists of video footage captured by Capitol police’s closed-circuit television system during the breach of the building. Investigators routinely include still shots of the surveillance video in criminal complaints.

But now Graves is under pressure from all sides to make the video footage public. A consortium of major media companies is suing Graves and the FBI for ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the still-secret recordings. As I’ve reported since May 2021, the entire trove was designated “highly sensitive” government material shortly after the investigation began. Clips entered as evidence in January 6 cases are under strict protective orders.

Over the past two years, a group called the Press Coalition filed motions seeking to unseal video clips in numerous cases, however, it never requested access to the full archive of footage. That changed after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy allowed Fox News host Tucker Carlson to view the videos and air selected clips in February.

Lawyers representing the group—which includes CNN, the New York Times, and Politico among other outlets—wrote congressional leaders to demand “all closed-circuit camera footage recorded on January 6, 2021, inside the United States Capitol and on its surrounding outside grounds.” 

In what might be a first, news organizations commended McCarthy. “The Speaker also explicitly recognized the overriding public interest in disclosure: ‘I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment,’” the letter quoted McCarthy.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Pity The Reporters Assigned To The Ron DeSantis Beat By: Eddie Scarry

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/20/pity-the-reporters-assigned-to-the-ron-desantis-beat/

To get a sense of how hard reporters in Washington are struggling to kneecap Ron DeSantis ahead of his expected presidential campaign, consider that they’ve rolled in Chris Christie to attack the Florida governor.

Was no one else available? Perhaps a Republican who people outside of D.C. remember?

Politico on Thursday published a tedious interview with Christie, who, for non-historians, was once the governor of New Jersey, and gave him XXL space to share his thoughts on how inadequate DeSantis is as a challenger to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Earlier this week, the news site Semafor hosted Christie for a live-stream interview, during which he criticized DeSantis for his efforts to strip Disney of its weird status allowing it to function in Florida as a separate civic entity.

Christie has not worked as an elected official in more than five years. When he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, his support among primary voters maxed out at less than 5 percent. Even Marco Rubio, the person who, to this day, Christie brags about supposedly knocking out of the race, managed to get up to 20 percent. (The debate moment that he’s credited with securing Rubio’s doom was humiliatingly referred to as a “kamikaze” mission.) And let’s not forget Christie’s most notable contribution of late — apologizing over and over again for almost dying from Covid. He literally went on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” gave an interview to The New York Times, and wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal to lecture everyone about how “wrong” it was for him to attend a White House event without a face mask. He’s that pathetic.

There are few people less relevant in general, let alone relating to the 2024 presidential election, than Chris Christie. But the media need something to report regarding DeSantis, and they’re otherwise left describing his sustained popularity in Florida or turning out another inconsequential article quoting random Democrats and unnamed Republicans who don’t like him.

Tough choice for reporters in Washington.

BOOKS Comments turned off

How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System Ted Cruz’s new book exposes ‘Justice Corrupted’. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-left-weaponized-our-legal-system/

Setting: Loudoun County, Virginia, 2021. A girl is sexually assaulted in a school bathroom by a self-styled “trans girl” – i.e., a boy. But school administrators are so fiercely devoted to transgender ideology that they cover up the assault – and when the victim’s father, Scott Smith, speaks up at a school-board meeting, he gets tackled by cops. In the wake of this and similar incidents around the country, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) collaborates with Biden White House staffers on a letter to the Justice Department falsely claiming that parents like Smith have been guilty of “malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” and asking the DOJ to deal appropriately with these “domestic terrorists.”

Cruz, who begins his splendid third book, Justice Corrupted: How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System, with this story, points out that it’s taken months for the DOJ to answer letters from him – a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But it took only six days for the NSBA letter to result in a memo by Attorney General Merrick Garland promising to act against recalcitrant parents and ordering the FBI and DOJ to investigate them. Thanks to widespread publicity, massive displays of parental outrage, a definitive investigation by the Daily Wire, and a firm grilling of Garland by Cruz himself at a Senate committee hearing, the DOJ backed off. For the moment, anyway.

Such weaponization of executive agencies isn’t new. Cruz tells the story.  The DOJ, founded in 1870 by President Grant to address the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, succeeded eventually in bringing it down. Grant was a Republican and the Klan was overwhelmingly Democratic, but the DOJ’s mission wasn’t political; it operated independently from the White House, and continued to do so under successive administrations. That changed under FDR. Both the DOJ and Edgar Hoover’s FBI (founded in 1908) engaged in extralegal shenanigans on FDR’s orders; FDR also seems to have been the first president to weaponize the IRS (founded in 1913), which he used to target personal enemies as well as New Deal critics such as Huey Long and William Randolph Hearst. Later, JFK not only sicced the DOJ (conveniently led by his brother) on his enemies, but also told the IRS to deny nonprofit status to conservative groups.

Then came Nixon, at whose behest the FBI harassed the likes of John Lennon and Muhammed Ali; in 1975, a committee led by Senator Frank Church uncovered sundry abuses not just by the FBI but also by the CIA and NSA. But during the Nixon years there were also cases of impressive integrity. The IRS, while willing enough to look into Nixon’s enemies, balked at acting against them; indeed, IRS commissioner Donald Alexander eventually halted such investigations altogether, and when Nixon tried to fire Alexander, Treasury Secretary George Schulz threatened to quit. Similarly, when a low-level Nixon aide, with the president’s approval, proposed a joint DOJ, FBI, and CIA operation against presidential enemies, both Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell said no; later, both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus famously quit rather than obey Nixon’s order to dismiss Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. In short, as Cruz puts it, to a remarkable extent “the system worked during the Nixon administration.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Canadian Experts Blame Climate Change on Capitalism and Whiteness By Lincoln Brown

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/04/20/canadian-experts-blame-climate-change-on-capitalism-and-whiteness-n1688806

That Canada has become a veritable petri dish for Leftist change is undeniable. I fully expect that at some point, the issue will become a Trivial Pursuit question, should the game even survive into the 21st century and anyone feels like playing a board game in the near future. Canada has furthered its descent into a socialist dystopia by announcing who are the most vicious culprits when it comes to climate change. I’ll give you three guesses as to who the villains are in this melodrama.

Ding, ding ding! Times up! If you guessed “white supremacy” and “capitalism,” you win. Please contact the editors at PJ Media for your prize. Earlier in the week the Public Health Agency of Canada released a report about climate change and the dangers it poses to Canucks. The agency talked with the usual experts in order to obtain the desired results. Those results, as noted by The Post Millennial, were as follows:

The report alleged that white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, and racism were all “systemic drivers of negative health outcomes and climate change,” and therefore the only way forward is via a plan focused on “decolonizing, justice, and equity.”

Of course, it is. Did you expect another conclusion? The report includes comments from Isaac White, Jennifer Otoadese, and Dr. Heather Castleden, who calls herself a “white settlement scholar.” (They’re just pretty much picking these certifications out of a hat, now, aren’t they?) The group states, “…we acknowledge that we are uninvited land occupiers who by virtue of our identities contribute to the multiple manifestations of settler colonialism in our society.” The report also names capitalism, the patriarchy, and all of the usual suspects for climate change while claiming in eloquent, academic language that “big, bold, transformative action is needed now.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Celebrate Earth Day With Bright Lights And The Joy Of Internal Combustion

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/21/celebrate-earth-day-with-bright-lights-and-the-joy-of-internal-combustion/

Saturday will mark the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day, one full spin of the globe in which we are expected to celebrate the modern environmental movement. Yet that great cause, if we may paraphrase Eric Hoffer, became a business, then degenerated into a racket that not only became a haven for grifters but also a platform for scolds and eco-religion zealots. We strongly suggest that rather than spend a day exalting the inanimate Gaia, the West should mark it with recognition of how far human progress has brought us.

Closely related to Earth Day is Earth Hour, usually the last Saturday in March each year when the lights of “landmarks and homes across the world” are to be turned off from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm local time.

The usual scolds expect us “to spend 60 minutes doing something – anything – positive for our planet.” In other words, plunge the world back into pre-modern times. This might be productive if the point were to show how far man has come – and how far he will go backward if the green zealots get their way. Instead, it’s an opportunity to virtue signal and hector.

Economist Mark J. Perry has long suggested that we use Earth Day – which has become an airing of progressive grievances, which can be addressed only through leftist public policy – to “appreciate our fossil fuel energy treasures that come from the Earth’s natural environment.”

After all, Earth is where we’ve found the raw materials we needed to protect ourselves from the hostile environment around us and to pull ourselves out of poverty. It’s as if they had been stored there for us to use. Without energy provided by fossil fuels, man would not have advanced far beyond where he was just before the Industrial Revolution.

Let’s remember this by leaving the lights on and taking advantage of the blessings of the internal-combustion engine, an invention that has liberated man like no other.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Hard-Up Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer By James Varney

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/04/20/where_did_all_the_biden_illegal_immigrants_go_hard-

In New York City, if the newcomers aren’t put up at the luxury cruise terminal that served the QE2, they could get $700-a-night midtown hotel accommodations with iconic Manhattan views. In Chicago, they found themselves whisked to suburban lodgings. In Denver, officials refer to them discreetly as “guests” and you needn’t bother inquiring about their inns or addresses. 

The people enjoying these free digs aren’t privacy-conscious jet-setters, but the secrecy surrounding them might be comparable: They’re some of the millions of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed most border controls.  

No one knows exactly how many people have poured across the southwestern U.S. border since President Biden took office, or where they’ve gone since. The official number of encounters by Customs and Border Patrol stands at 5.2 million people, logged over the last two full federal fiscal years and fiscal 2023 through March. But that number is imprecise because it includes repeat encounters with the same people and omits the many who slipped into the country unnoticed by border agents.  

Under President Biden, the U.S. smashed past the 200,000 monthly encounters mark for the first time in July 2021 and it has repeatedly topped that record in the months since. By comparison, in fiscal 2020, which ended a month before Biden’s defeat of President Trump, the U.S. averaged 38,174 monthly encounters at the border, according to CBP figures.  

Because of an official lack of transparency, all those people and the circumstances by which they have arrived and remained have made it hard to take stock of the historic influx. Through midnight flights and buses from the border to far-flung locales, the administration has made it difficult to identify where the migrants are now living and receiving services. Also unclear are the costs associated with the arrivals.  

But flares have been sent up – especially over immigrant sanctuary cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, which have long promised to house migrants. While those cities are providing housing and other services for a small fraction of the recent migrants, the costs are significant for these budget-strapped metropolises.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Recession already here for many Americans, as buying power, credit, social net shrinks by Aris Folley

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://thehill.com/homenews/3951579-recession-already-here-for-many-americans-as-buying-power-credit-social-net-shrinks/

The stock market may be closely watching the chance of an official economic recession, but many Americans across the country are already feeling the squeeze as they contend with higher prices and borrowing costs than they saw a year ago.

While Evelyn Canela, 31, a senior program director at a nonprofit based in Harlem, said she thinks she has a “well-paying job,” which paid in the $100,000-range when she first started, she also said she’s been feeling the pressure to save, particularly as various industries have seen more layoffs in recent months. 

In a poll released by Morning Consult last month, almost half of respondents believed the nation was already in a recession.

The poll also found that about 41 percent of Americans surveyed had begun taking precautions and steps to beef up savings, but a closer look at the data revealed disparities by income. 

Adults in households with annual earnings above $100,000 were more likely than others to say they were beginning to prepare for an economic downturn or recession, with 52 percent saying they’d taken to stockpiling goods or food, cut back on spending or other steps.

By contrast, the poll found that those in households that earned under $50,000 annually were more likely to say they had not yet begun to make preparations “but wish they could.”

The poll comes as recent months have seen more Americans are feeling poorer and pessimistic about the nation’s economic forecast at a time that rising price stickers are putting a squeeze on pockets across the spectrum.

At the same time, data shows credit card debt is also on the rise; a March study from Wallethub found “credit card debt increased by $85.8 billion during Q4 2022 – the highest quarterly increase ever recorded.”

Job losses are cutting into spending power, even for six-figure earners

MEDIA Comments turned off

Justice Clarence Thomas and the Plague of Bad Reporting The Washington Post and ProPublica commit comically incompetent journalism. But by stirring up animus, they increase the risk of a tragic ending.

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-thomas-and-the-plague-of-bad-reporting-propublica-washington-post-disclosure-court-safety-def0a6a7?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

By James Taranto

ProPublica’s big scoop turned out to be a quarter-teaspoon. In an error-filled report last week, the opinionated news site got one point right: Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t disclose the 2014 sale of his one-third interest in three Savannah, Ga., properties to a company controlled by his friend Harlan Crow. He was legally required to do so. On these pages, in an article published online Sunday, I observed that he may have to amend his financial-disclosure form for that year.

On Monday, “a source close to Thomas” told CNN that the justice would do so. “The source said . . . it was an oversight not to report the real estate transaction. Thomas believed he didn’t have to disclose because he lost money on the deal, according to the source.” It is the justice’s share of the sale price ($1,000 or more), not a profit, that triggers the statutory obligation to report.

How big a deal is it to amend a form after missing a disclosure? Consider these examples, which reader Darin Bartram dug up:

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2012 disclosure amended her 2011 report, which “inadvertently omitted” the sale of shares in an exchange-traded fund that she had bought earlier the same year. “The Value Code should of [sic] been L and the Gain Code should of [sic] been A,” the amendment says.

• Ginsburg amended her 2017 disclosure to reflect that she had “inadvertently omitted” a gift of an opera costume worth $4,500.

• Justice Stephen Breyer reported in an amended 2018 disclosure that he had “inadvertently omitted” two stock sales by his wife, one in 2006 and one in 2018.

• In February 2022, three days after President Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson amended her 2020 disclosure to note that in various years between 2011 and 2021 she had “inadvertently omitted” travel reimbursements for two speaking trips, a university teaching salary, four nonprofit board memberships, her husband’s consulting income and a 529 college savings plan. No senator mentioned these omissions at her confirmation hearings.