NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Breath of Fresh Air The federal court ruling against the CDC’s mask mandate for travelers is also a rebuke of rule-by-bureaucrats. Joel Zinberg

Posted By on April 22nd, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/federal-court-vacates-cdc-mask-mandate-for-travelers

In the latest of a long line of judicial rebukes to the Biden administration’s expansive view of administrative-agency power, a federal district court in Florida has vacated the CDC’s mask mandate for travelers. The court concluded that the CDC had exceeded its statutory authority, violated the notice and comment procedures required for rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

The ruling comes one week after the CDC had, once again, extended the mandate, this time until May 3. The mask mandate was one of the first actions taken by the new Biden administration. One day after his inauguration, President Biden issued Executive Order No. 13998, directing executive-branch agency heads to require “masks to be worn in compliance with CDC guidelines in or on” airplanes, airports, trains, intercity buses, boats, and on other forms of public transportation.

Two weeks later, the CDC published the “Requirement for Persons To Wear Masks While on Conveyances and at Transportation Hubs.” The order stated that mask wearing is “one of the most effective strategies available for reducing COVID-19 transmission” and required masks when traveling on any type of conveyance into or within the United States and at transportation hubs.

The CDC claimed that it was relying on Section 264(a) of the Public Health Service Act, which empowers it to issue regulations “to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries,” and from state to state. Last year, the agency claimed the same section gave it authority to issue a nationwide eviction moratorium. The Supreme Court struck down the moratorium on the grounds that the CDC had exceeded its statutory authority, since the statute narrows the types of measures it can implement to limit the spread of disease to fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, and pest extermination.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

RADICAL GENDER LESSONS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN :CHRIS RUFO

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/radical-gender-lessons-for-young-children

The Evanston-Skokie School District adopts a curriculum that teaches K-3 students to “break the binary” of gender.

The Evanston–Skokie School District has adopted a radical gender curriculum that teaches pre-kindergarten through third-grade students to celebrate the transgender flag, break the “gender binary” established by white “colonizers,” and experiment with neo-pronouns such as “ze,” “zir,” and “tree.”

I have obtained the full curriculum documents, which are part of the Chicago-area district’s “LGBTQ+ Equity Week,” which administrators adopted last year. The curriculum begins in pre-kindergarten, with a series of lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity. The lesson plan opens with an introduction to the rainbow flag and teaches students that “each color in the flag has a meaning.” The teacher also presents the transgender flag and the basic concepts of gender identity, explaining that “we call people with more than one gender or no gender, non-binary or queer.” Finally, the lesson plan has the teacher leading a class project to create a rainbow flag, with instructions to “gather students on the rug,” “ask them to show you their flags,” and “proudly hang the class flag where they can all see it.”

In kindergarten, the lessons on gender and trans identity go deeper. “When we show whether we feel like a boy or a girl or some of each, we are expressing our gender identity,” the lesson begins. “There are also children who feel like a girl and a boy; or like neither a boy or a girl. We can call these children transgender.” Students are expected to be able to “explain the importance of the rainbow flag and trans flag” and are asked to consider their own gender identity. The kindergartners read two books that affirm transgender conversions, study photographs of boys in dresses, learn details about the transgender flag, and perform a rainbow dance. At the end of the lesson, the students are encouraged to adopt and share their own gender identities with the class. “Now you have a chance to make a picture to show how you identify,” the lesson reads. “Maybe you want to have blue hair! Maybe you want to be wearing a necklace. Your identity is for you to decide!”

MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN+: Grand Opening, Grand Closing By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/cnn-grand-opening-grand-closing/

Many conservatives will be dancing on the grave of CNN+, and there’s no getting around the fact that CNN just didn’t put out a sufficiently appealing slate of programming to get enough people to shell out $59.99 per year. But as Discovery’s announcement implied, there was never much reason to pay an additional fee just to get additional CNN programming, when regular CNN was available on basic cable, and it gave you more or less the same thing.

Discovery streaming head J. B. Perrette said that, “In a complex streaming market, consumers want simplicity and an all-in service which provides a better experience and more value than stand-alone offerings, and, for the company, a more sustainable business model to drive our future investments in great journalism and storytelling.”

No, Chris Wallace is not popular enough, but it’s not clear that any news anchor or collection of hosts would get a sufficient number of people shelling out to make a streaming news network sustainable. (Fox Nation comes closest, in part because it has made a subscription to it feel like a tribal symbol — a statement about who you are and what you value. If someone tells you they subscribe to Fox Nation, you probably know how they feel about Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and Colin Kaepernick.)

In the end, CNN+ didn’t offer anything sufficiently unique. As I noted earlier this month, this streaming service didn’t have a programming equivalent of The Mandalorian or Stranger Things or Bridgerton — something really popular that couldn’t be seen anywhere else. It is hard to imagine what CNN could offer that would be akin to that. Maybe the work of Clarissa Ward in Afghanistan and Ukraine over the past year is the most compelling, jaw-dropping, must-watch television journalism that CNN has done in a while. But I’m still not sure people would subscribe to a separate streaming service just to watch it.

News is unlikely to ever sustain a streaming service, by itself. But it is likely that some form of CNN will appear on any streaming service that emerges from the merger of HBO Max and Discovery+.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Inclusive Segregation:The diversity imperative has had a double character from the start. Peter Wood

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://americanmind.org/salvo/inclusive-segregation/

The following is an excerpt from A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education, edited by Gail Heriot & Maimon Schwarzschild.

The idea of “inclusion” was born in debates in the 1980s over how colleges and universities should deal with disparities in academic performance, mainly between black students as a category and all other students. Any explanation that pointed to average differences in ability, especially as measured by standardized tests, were deemed outrageous and insulting. Explanations that focused on the inadequacy of earlier academic preparation were more bearable but still carried the implication that black students as a whole were not capable of performing at the level of other students. The socially acceptable explanation that emerged was that the black students were victims of multiple forms of racism. American society had short-rationed their schools; college teachers treated them as racially inferior; racist assumptions were built into everyday life in America; and universities were “structurally racist.”

This last is the bridge to the conception of “inclusion.” Inclusion means recognizing that black students must be recognized as possessing their own cultural standards of expression, achievement, and excellence. Judging them by “white standards” is racist—structurally racist. A non-racist college or university would accommodate black students by judging them by black standards.

The connection to multiculturalism is evident. Inclusion, as a doctrine, incorporates the idea that black students have a separate culture, the norms of which must be respected. Eradicating all the “white assumptions” that pervade the university, however, is no small task. It requires a deep dismantling, the name for which is “Anti-Racism.” We get to “inclusion” by identifying and removing anything that might make black students feel disrespected or that might cast their academic performance in unflattering contrast to the average performance of other students.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel sustains high-favorability among Americans Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

  https://bit.ly/3OoVkB1

According to the February 2022 annual Gallup poll of country favorability, 71% of Americans accord Israel a “very favorable” and “mostly favorable” rating. It matches

Israel’s average favorability since 2013, compared to 58% in 2002, 71% in 2012, 69% in 2019 and 75% in February 2021.  Israel’s all-time high favorability was in February 1991 – 79% – in the aftermath of the January-February Iraqi Scud Missiles striking Tel Aviv.

Israel is ranked 7th among countries rated by Gallup, trailing Canada, Britain, France, Japan, Germany and India. However, none of these countries have been targeted – as has Israel – for daily criticism by the State Department (which fiercely opposed Israel’s establishment in 1948), the United Nations, the NY Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, CNN, MSNBC and many of the political and social science departments on US campuses.

While Israel is considered favorably by 71% of Americans, the Palestinian Authority has earned a meager 27% favorability rating, at the bottom of the favorability scale, along with Cuba – 40%, Pakistan – 21%, China – 20% (all time low), Libya – 19%, Iraq – 16%, Iran – 13%, Afghanistan – 12%, Russia – 12% and North Korea – 10%.

Israel has retained a high-level of favorability among the three major US political groups: 63% of (mostly moderate) Democrats, 71% of Independents and 81% of Republicans. At the same time the Palestinian Authority received a 38% favorability rating among Democrats, 29% – Independents and 14% – Republicans.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The unholy alliance of Israel haters Both Islamic fanatics and the Western woke left treat the Jewish State as uniquely wicked. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/12/the-unholy-alliance-of-israel-haters/

Certain rituals follow every terror attack in the West. People take to social media to express feelings of grief. They post an image of the flag of the nation whose citizens have been slaughtered. ‘I Stand With…’ France, Belgium, Spain, they say, or whatever unfortunate nation has attracted the bloody attention of ideological mass murderers. They might even take part in a sing-song. They might gather somewhere, flowers in hand, to sing ‘Imagine’ or hum along to a national anthem. But there’s one exception to this custom. One nation for which this never happens. For whom virtue is never signalled, flags never waved, songs never sung, no matter how much terror comes its way. You know which nation it is. Israel.

Israel has been subjected to a wave of terror over the past three weeks and social-media mourners are nowhere to be seen. You’ll be searching a long time – forever – to find a blacked-out square on Instagram or an Israeli flag in the Twitter bio of a member of the great and good. Many people I’ve mentioned the terror wave to hadn’t even heard of it. From the mass stabbing carried out by an ISIS-supporting fanatic in the city of Beersheba on 22 March, which left two women and two men dead, to the mass shooting at a crowded bar in Tel Aviv last Thursday, in which three people were murdered, horrific attacks on Israeli citizens have passed many by. Five terror attacks, 14 deaths, and it barely makes a ripple in the Western consciousness.

The individual stories behind the wave of terror are truly grim. In the attack of 29 March – in which a Palestinian terrorist opened fire in the city of Bnei Brak, killing five – two Ukrainian nationals were among the victims. Aged just 23 and 32, they were sitting outside a shop, taking a rest, when they were shot to death. So it isn’t only in Ukraine that Ukrainians face murder in the streets right now – they’re at risk in Israel, too. One of the other victims in Bnei Brak was an Israeli-Arab police officer, a 32-year-old Christian who was engaged to be married. Two of the victims at the Tel Aviv bar were lifelong friends, both 27, meeting for a post-work drink. These are the human realities behind a wave of indiscriminate slaughter that many in the West can’t even be bothered to notice.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard brings a sledgehammer to Mitt Romney and Keith Olbermann By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/tulsi_gabbard_brings_a_sledgehammer_to_mitt_romney_and_keith_olbermann.html

Tulsi Gabbard is a former Democrat party member of the House of Representatives, a former presidential candidate, and a current lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve.  She’s too left on some things for me, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders, lots of common sense, and a dislike for being used as cannon fodder for America’s newly hawkish leftists and RINOs.  Because she’s suggested that America should not rush into a shooting war with a nuclear Russia on behalf of Ukraine, especially given revelations about biological labs in Ukraine, Mitt Romney and Keith Olbermann have called her a traitor.  What’s great is that Tulsi is pushing back by demanding an apology or, if she does not receive one within a week, promising to sue.

Tulsi’s attorney is the brilliant, and very successful, Harmeet Dhillon.  On Wednesday, Dhillon sent a “cease and desist” letter to both Romney and Olbermann.  In the letter to Romney (here), Dhillon details Tulsi’s long record of active service in the United States military.  She then spells out Romney’s defamatory statement:

On March 13, 2022, you tweeted the following: “Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.” [Footnote omitted.] Your tweet had no surrounding context and was not part of a broader conversation. Your accusation that Representative Gabbard, a combat veteran and current military officer, has engaged in “treasonous” activity is completely false, a fact of which you were well aware when you made your claim. And as explained below, your accusation that Representative Gabbard lied also has no basis in fact.

Dhillon’s demand letter explains to Romney that defamation occurs when a person knowingly publishes a false, and derogatory, statement about another.  When the defamatory statement falsely accuses someone of criminal activity, it’s called “defamation per se,” which means that the plaintiff does not have to prove injury; it’s assumed.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Real Reset is Coming… But Not the One the Elites Expect By Ron Wright

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/the_real_reset_is_coming_but_not_the_one_the_elites_expect.html

“We are at a tipping point with the coming midterms. The lies of the elite are catching up with the common sense of the American people.”

“The ‘Real Reset’ is Coming,” As Victor Davis Hanson writes on the upcoming midterm elections.

In truth, we are about to see a radical reset – of the current reset.  It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear. . .

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility — as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.

The public has been marinated in false narratives and disinformation spread by our elite ruling class and echoed by the dominant media. For example, climate change (more), green energy and its consequences, and Putin inflation.  Then there’s the COVID-19 origin and authoritarian mandates fostered by the spurious meme follow the science, the Russian collusion narrative, there was no election fraud in the 2020 Election, voter suppression, wokeism, and equity-speak.  Don’t forget gender fluidity/grooming, the mask mandates by woke schoolboards supported by teachers’ unions,  cops shooting Black men, and Critical Race Theory, including the divisive memes of White Supremacy/domestic terrorism/systemic racism and many other crises de jour.

These false narratives can be very pervasive when embedded in many people’s minds.  For example, I was recently in SoCal.  A Gen Z young man was discussing American government and politics with two older British men in the hotel lounge.  As I left, I mentioned Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell and the election fraud in the 2020 Election.  The discussion was civil, but the young man was wed to the progressive narrative that this was disinformation and wasn’t open to debate.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden’s dismal poll numbers imperil Dem Senate control The president’s popularity is dangerously low in the four states where Democratic incumbents are most endangered.By Natalie Allison

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/21/senate-democrats-midterm-election-biden-00026781

Democrats’ path to saving their narrow Senate majority comes down to defending four states this fall. And in all of them, President Joe Biden is underwater in the polls.

Biden’s drag on swing-state incumbents is emerging as a pivotal factor in the midterm Senate elections, where the loss of just one Democratic-held seat in November could put Republicans in control.

Acutely aware of the need to get distance from the president, the four most endangered Democratic incumbents — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan — are increasingly taking steps to highlight their independence from the president and underscore their differences.

Their public pushback against Biden’s plan to lift the Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 is the most visible expression of the effort to get distance from the president. But the four Democrats are also finding other ways of signaling to voters. They’ve visited the border wall and blocked his nominees. A month before a Trump-appointed judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate on mass transit, three of the four voted in favor of a Republican bill to do just that

On social media, where they shy away from praise of the president and instead focus on their efforts to prod the White House to action, it’s hard to tell they’ve voted in line with Biden no less than 96 percent of the time.

“In these four states, these are senators just doing the work, keeping their head down, getting things done for their states while the Republicans are obviously tearing each other apart in these primaries,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic ad maker who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

‘Common Sense’ Indeed by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18465/common-sense-indeed

Founding father Thomas Paine knew a crisis when he saw one.

When America’s Revolutionary War was sputtering he wrote a powerful essay that spoke directly to the men being asked to shoulder their muskets against the British Empire and the most powerful army in the world, giving them the spirit to sustain the fight.

In his Common Sense pamphlet, “American Crisis No.1, 1776,” he shared, “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

With these inspiring words Thomas Paine dismissed the Loyalists, Tories, and traitors who were against the patriots and would throw aside the demand for independence and freedom. He would scathingly ask, “And what is a Tory? GOOD GOD! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs [Patriots] against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward, for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.”

What would Paine make of today’s American “Tories” – those against American patriotism, no longer patriots loyal to America; these might be the Americans whose enormous wealth has so altered their perception of self that they may not even view themselves as citizens of our threatened democracy? Rather, their self-concept may be that of a sovereign entity answerable only to themselves and their stockholders.