Muda69

Federal appeals court rules in favor of Ohio professor who refused to use student's preferred pronouns https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/29/us/ohio-professor-transgender-appeals-trnd/index.html Good, a decision supporting sanity.

Time for Americans to Take Back Power from Teachers’ Unions https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/time-for-americans-to-take-back-power-from-teachers-unions/ Yep. The logical thing it to make public-sector labor unions illegal, as even the leftist-demigod FDR supported.

Teachers Compile List Of Parents Who Question Racial Curriculum, Plot War On Them: https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-teachers-target-parents-critical-race-theory-hacking “I’m listing them this way: -First name -Last name -Alias(es) -Location,” Durham wrote. “I’m losing any hope that remaining civil towards these people changes anything,” she wrote. “Avoiding these people isn’t enough to stop the spread of their evil rhetoric.” “Anyone know any hackers?” she reiterated. Members of the “Anti-Racist” group sprang into action, listing dozens of parents, often including where they lived, their employers, or their spouses’ names. Durham, who posted under the name Jen Morse, works outside of education, for the American Society of Ophthalmic Administrators. But it was a former teacher, Hilary Hultman-Lee, who executed on the idea most prolifically. “Regarding the anti-CRT movement, we’d like to compile a document of all known actors and supporters. Please comment below with legal names of these individuals, area of residence and or school board Rep known, known accounts on social media, and any other info that you feel is relevant,” wrote Hultman-Lee, who at one point taught Latin at Potomac Falls High School and who is listed as doing business with the school district as an education consultant. They erred on the side of accusing the innocent. In response to one name Hultman-Lee added, another member asked, “Why is she on this list? I haven’t seen her support anti-CRT?” Hultman-Lee responded, “I put a question mark next to her bc I’m curious about some of her comments re the Dr. Seuss nonsense and racial equity generally. Happy to remove if I’m off the mark.” “No no, I wouldn’t go so far as to take her off. However, from what I’ve seen she is very carefully neutral,” the parent replied. It was Loudoun County that first put Dr. Seuss in the news for deemphasizing him because of “strong racial undertones.” Hultman-Lee added a man whose evidence of guilt was a screenshot in which he said he had reviewed a Dr. Seuss book and “ask anyone to show me what is racist.” Barts cheered them on. “Thank you for the response to my posting this morning,” she wrote. “Thank you for stepping up. Silence is complicity.” Andrea Weiskopf, a teacher at River Bend & Seneca Ridge Middle School, named a father who has criticized critical race theory. The NAACP, which Weiskopf (who is white) works closely with, previously sent an “URGENT” email to school officials alerting them that the man is married to a teacher. We “are hopeful she does not share the same ideologies as her husband. Please confirm receipt of this message,” it said, according to an email obtained by The Daily Wire. Though elected school board members control the school system, Weiskopf, a school employee, worked with the NAACP to strategize about how to manipulate board members, explaining that one member “is usually down with whatever the plan is. He needs a lot of handholding, he’s very new and very naive.” On Twitter, Weiskopf offers the motto, “an educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor.” As part of the school system’s racial initiatives, Loudoun pays 93 teachers $3,820 extra a year to take on additional duties as “equity leads.” For Dr. VonEnde Coleman, that appeared to mean joining the mob against parents. “As an equity lead at one of the high schools, please let me know how I can help,” she wrote. Coleman is a high school department chair whose doctorate degree came from an online university. “Greetings! I am the Learning Specialist Department Chair at Indpendence [sic] High School,” her LCPS bio reads. “This is my seventh year with the county. I earned my undergraduate from Colorado Christian and her [sic] Master’s and Doctorate in Human Services from Capella.” Another teacher, Dana Maier, wrote, “I’m happy to put some time into shutting down their hateful garbage.” Yet another teacher called a parent “Beetle Douche.” One of the Facebook group’s moderators is Vanessa Maddox, a former town council member for the town of Leesburg and current member of its Diversity Commission. On February 26, she was a speaker at a Loudoun County Democratic Committee event discussing “What’s next with forward momentum in economic equality and justice for black businesses.” Another moderator is Monica Belton. A group for black women, Mocha Moms of Loudoun County, thanked Belton in May 2020 for her role in what they called the “Occupy Schools Event,” describing her as a “Loudoun County Schools Social Worker.” Belton also started a nonprofit that provides racial consulting. On April 6, she will host an event called “The Impact of Racial Trauma on Youth Online Workshop.” The description says, “Please note: This is not an opportunity to debate opposing mindsets. The operators of this forum believes, unequivocally, that BLACK LIVES MATTER and that immediate and drastic change in policy and practice is demanded.” Members at times used seemingly violence-tinged rhetoric. A third moderator is Jamie Ann Neidig-Wheaton, a one-time George Mason University adjunct professor. “The racists have a Go Fund Me,” she said, referring to Parents Against Critical Theory (PACT). “Burn it down.” According to public records, in 2012, Neidig-Wheaton was arrested on charges of trespassing and assault, which were later dropped. Cortney Austin Smith, a mother in Leesburg, Virginia, listed those who had questioned government officials. “Ian Prior spoke about First Amendment concerns… Austin Levine criticized the School Board,” she wrote. She then changed her Facebook profile picture to a graphic that said “I don’t argue with people who Harriet Tubman would have shot.” Maddox, the Town of Leesburg Diversity Commission member and group moderator, replied on the photo, “Yes!!!!!” Smith is a paralegal with Cooley LLP, a law firm that says it is taking part in a “Fight for Racial Justice.” Her husband, Dusty Smith, is a former government reporter for the local paper as well as for the Center for Public Integrity, where he wrote a story that began, “Civil War remains a reality in Loudoun County, Virginia.” Cortney Smith, Durham, Hultman-Lee, and Neidig-Wheaton did not return requests for comment. The mob mixed rage at parents for questioning racialized curricula and ire at those advocating for schools to be open. “Most of these names are not a surprise since they regularly post in the LCPS Open group,” one poster wrote. Levine, who Smith named, asked, “Am I on this list because I want my kids in school?” A mother named Emily J. Morford wrote down the name of Ian Prior, a former Department of Justice official in the Trump administration, alongside Aliscia Andrews, a former Republican congressional candidate, adding, “I am happy to help. The ones I mentioned are neighbors and mouthpieces for this in my community,” Morford wrote. Prior told The Daily Wire that he first met Morford at a Halloween party and that Morford, who is white, later texted his wife to claim that unspecified minorities were offended by his pro-police “thin blue line” flag. “I said ‘reasonable people can have different opinions based on their life experiences and other things, and if you want to discuss my beliefs, you know where I live.’ I didn’t expect that she would use that information to target me as part of a doxxing and hacking campaign,” he said. List-makers noted that in October, Prior wrote an op-ed in the Federalist expressing disagreement with CRT’s tenet that “racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction.” “The best way to counter that is with an op-ed arguing ‘this is why you’re wrong,’” he told The Daily Wire. The school system’s focus on race has “radicalized privileged white women in Virginia. It has turned them into a threat to the people in their own community,” he said. “If it happened to them, what is it like for small children?” Prior said he believes Durham violated a Virginia law that says “Any person who commands, entreats, or otherwise attempts to persuade another person to commit a felony other than murder, shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony” and that participants entered into a conspiracy to deprive him of his First Amendment rights. David Gordon, director of the Virginia Project, sent screenshots to Loudoun Sheriff Mike Chapman, writing “We have been presented with evidence of open organization of criminal activity intended to infringe 1st Amendment rights. We believe one intended target of this activity is our presentation on Critical Race Theory. Please note in particular the threat to hack websites, which from firsthand experience we know is not an idle one.” Kraig Troxell, a spokesman for the sheriff, told The Daily Wire, “The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office is aware of the situation and the information has been forwarded to our criminal investigations division to review the matter.” There is little evidence that Loudoun in the years preceding the schools’ racial focus was the site of widespread unrest of any kind. Black residents have a median income of $112,000, and the semi-rural county has precisely zero areas resembling inner cities. Blacks make up only 8% of the population, yet voters chose a black woman to chair the county board of supervisors. To Prior, if the goal of all these school initiatives was increased peace and understanding, it didn’t seem to be working. “They can’t see that the ‘other side’ is just people who want to cook on their grill and take their kids to soccer and enjoy the weekend and not have to worry about their neighbors trying to turn that into a political event,” he said. The pronounced role of insiders and professionals in the “anti-racist” movement has the feel of government officials seeking to have citizens be responsive to their agenda, rather than the reverse. According to the members list, the Facebook group appears to include school board members Denise Corbo, Leslee King, and Ian Sorotkin; commonwealth attorney Buta Bibaraj; county supervisor Juli Briskman; and NAACP Loudoun branch president Michelle Thomas. While these individuals were listed in the group, The Daily Wire saw no evidence that they were involved in the doxxing effort. As the group tried to get a parent’s Facebook account shut down by reporting it, Gazal Modhera, a lawyer with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), jumped into the dogpile, lamenting that despite all the attempts, Facebook “did nothing!” The EEOC is tasked with enforcing the nation’s employment non-discrimination laws. And while Barts may have been censured by her school board colleagues, in some ways, her behavior is not a departure from what the school system has strived to cultivate, but rather the fulfillment of it. The school system proposed, then withdrew, a policy that would ban teachers from disagreeing with the schools’ racial philosophies, even when not on school district property. In January 2020, the school board’s Equity Committee voted unanimously to “Offer/Provide Equity in the Center-like training to parents.” In January 2021, Eric Williams, the superintendent who set up the various equity programs — only to be besieged with unyielding complaints from both sides — quit and moved across the country to lead a much smaller district in Clear Creek, Texas. Loudoun parents, hoping to save others from the results they had seen, contacted Texans imploring them to call off the hire. The Clear Creek school board voted to ban “divisive” racial concepts, including the use of critical race theory on students — or staff. So you mean there’s a leftist version of QAnon, with about the same amount of credibility, that sucks people in?

https://reason.com/2021/03/29/basic-income-programs-in-marin-county-and-oakland-exclude-white-people-is-that-legal/ Sounds like reparations to me. And these "stimulus" payments of "free money" have just opened a pandora's box for this kind of stuff. How long until Chicago starts its own UBI program? Indianapolis?

Think Tank <> Congress. And languishing in the HOR for almost two years now: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3572 Again, good luck.

Good luck getting Congress to take that up.

Can say that the only use for the filibuster has been to "deny Black rights"? And nice to see you have that old video bookmarked. You must lull yourself to sleep at night while playing it..............

Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-attack-the-powerless?r=9pu2t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy Wow, what brave and intrepid journalistic work: speaking truth to power and standing up to major power centers by . . . working as little police officers for tech giants to prevent private citizens from being able to afford criminal lawyers. Clear the shelves for the imminent Pulitzer. Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense and to do what they can to ensure they have the best legal defense possible — especially when the full weight of the Justice Department is crashing down on your head even for non-violent offenses, which is what many of these defendants are charged with due to the politically charged nature of the investigation. The right to a vigorous defense has always been a central cause of mine as a lawyer and a journalist (it also used to be a central cause of left-wing groups like the ACLU, years ago; it was that same principle that caused then-candidate Kamala Harris to solicit donations last summer that went to protesters charged with violent rioting). A federal prosecutor was recently referred for disciplinary procedures for publicly threatening to charge some of these Capitol protesters with sedition, one of the gravest crimes in the U.S. Code. That is how grave the legal jeopardy is faced by these people trying to raise money for lawyers. What makes all of this extra grotesque is that, as The Washington Post reported, most of those charged with various crimes in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot, including many whose charges stem just from their presence inside the Capitol, not the use of any violence, are people with serious financial difficulties: not surprising for a country in the middle of a major economic and joblessness crisis, where neoliberalism and global trade deals have destroyed entire industries and communities for decades: This USA Today article is thus yet another example of journalists at major media outlets abusing their platforms to attack and expose anything other than the real power centers which compose the ruling class and govern the U.S.: the CIA, the FBI, security state agencies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley oligarchs. To the extent these journalists pay attention to those entities at all — and they barely ever do — it is to venerate them and mindlessly disseminate their messaging like stenographers, not investigate them. Investigating people who actually wield real power is hard. The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2021 Instead, the primary target of the Trump-era media has become private citizens and people who wield no power, yet who these media outlets believe must have their lives ruined because they have adopted the wrong political ideology. So many corporate journalists now use their huge megaphones to humiliate and wreck the lives of ordinary private citizens who they judge to have bad political opinions (meaning: opinions that deviate from establishment liberalism orthodoxies which these media outlets exist to enforce). We have seen this over and over. CNN confronted an old woman on the front lawn of her Florida home for the crime of having used her little Facebook page to promote a pro-Trump event they claimed was engineered by Russians. The same network threatened to expose the identity of another private citizen who created an anti-CNN meme unless he begged and promised not to do it again. HuffPost doxed the real-life name of an anonymous critic of Islam (whose spouted views I find repellent) and ruined her business. CNN @CNN A Florida woman who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls cnn.it/2EHVPpE February 21st 2018 8,231 Retweets14,695 Likes Just last week, The Daily Beast decided to expose the identity of a private citizen at Spring Break in Miami and detail his marital and legal problems because a video of him went viral due to his being dressed as the Joker and uttering “COVID truther” phrases. The same outlet congratulated itself for unearthing and exposing the real name of an African-American Facebook user whose crime was posting videos mocking Nancy Pelosi. My principal critique of the contemporary media posture — and my governing view of the real purpose of journalism — is summarized by this: Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4Chan & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit. March 16th 2021 5,288 Retweets15,925 Likes But increasingly, the largest corporate media platforms are used to punish ideological dissent and thought crimes by powerless, private citizens. They do not criticize or investigate real power centers, but serve them. And what makes it worse — so, so much worse — is that, as they assault, dox and harass private citizens, these journalistic bullies depict themselves as the real marginalized people, as those who are so fragile, voiceless, powerless, and vulnerable that criticizing them is tantamount to bullying, harassment, and violence. This new journalistic tactic of weaponizing and misappropriating the language of marginalization, abuse, harassment and oppression and applying it to themselves — all to render any criticism of their work a form of assault and abuse — is one I have written about several times before. The last time was when a major front-page reporter at the most influential paper in the country, The New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz, got caught lying twice in six weeks, and those (such as myself) who criticized her for it — who criticized her journalism for the Paper of Record — were branded toxic, misogynistic bullies who were inciting dangerous hate mobs against her. And thus was criticism of this powerful journalist somehow manipulatively converted into an act of morally reprehensible harassment. What these journalists are doing is as transparent as it is tawdry. They insist that you not treat them as what they are: people who wield extreme power and influence to shape political discourse, widely disseminate disinformation, wreck people’s reputations, expose the identity of private citizens, and propagandize the public. No, increasingly they are demanding that you treat them as exactly the opposite: the most marginalized, vulnerable, endangered and fragile members of society whose standing is so tenuous that publicly criticizing them should be barred as an act of violence, and those expressing critiques of their work must be consequently shunned as harassers and abusers. This is the demented framework that allowed CNN’s coddled, blow-dried, manicured and pedicured millionaire TV personality Jim Acosta, with a straight face, to write an entire book casting himself on the cover as someone in danger. What enabled Jim Acosta of all people to cast himself as a victim, to the point where so many liberals bought this book that it ended up on The New York Times bestseller list? He was criticized by the President and his supporters for his journalism. That’s it. And just like that, the real victims in America are not the jobless or the homeless or residents of addiction-ravaged communities or victims of violent crime but, instead, the rich, famous TV personalities for CNN. This is the fictitious melodrama — with themselves cast as the stars — that they are demanding you ingest to treat them with deference and respect. As I’ve noted before, I’ve been harshly criticized for my journalism for years. I was publicly attacked in deeply personal ways by the President of Brazil many times, and endlessly slandered by his movement. That’s not fun, but it is also not persecution. What is real persecution is being prosecuted or imprisoned or threatened with prison for your reporting. Real persecution is what is being done to Julian Assange. Criticism, even harsh criticism, comes with the territory: the cost of the immense privilege of having a public platform to shape debate. If you do not want to be criticized or called names, don’t become a journalist or seek out public platforms. Sunday’s USA Today article which tried to destroy the ability of these criminal defendants to raise donations for their legal fees contained the names of three journalists in its byline. The lead reporter — the one who the paper’s editors put first, Brenna Smith — took to Twitter to boast of this monumental journalistic exposé. After I saw several commenters criticizing the story, I added my own critiques of this story: Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald Congratulations on using your new journalistic platform to try to pressure tech companies to terminate the ability of impoverished criminal defendants to raise money for their legal defense from online donations. You're well on your way upward in this industry for sure: Brenna T. Smith @brenna__smith My *first* story with USA Today: Defendants in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot continue to crowdfund their legal fees online using popular payment processors despite a growing crackdown from tech companies. https://t.co/KpegKiOmzL March 28th 2021 1,677 Retweets7,891 Likes Note that the critique I voiced is about the reporting she had just published in one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the country. I also engaged the journalist whose name was listed last — a person named Will Carless — in a lengthy discussion expressing similar criticisms. My criticism of Carless, a white straight male listed last on the byline, attracted no criticism for some reason. But my criticism of Smith, the lead reporter, caused such an explosion of indignation and rage from the corporate media class that it caused my name to trend on Twitter (yet again) as a dastardly online villain: that’s how grave my moral transgression was. What was my moral offense here? According to these media mavens and the self-serving, manipulative framework they are trying to implant, I did not voice criticisms of a piece of journalism in one of the most influential newspapers in the country. Instead — in their hands — they converted it, just as they did with criticisms of Lorenz, into a narrative in which I bullied a poor, fragile, young lady who is too weak and too vulnerable to handle public critique. They emphasized that she is just an intern: in their eyes the equivalent of a high school junior — even though she has a long history of writing deranged articles for the U.S.-Government-funded Bellingcat and was, at least in the view of her editors, competent and professional enough to be the lead reporter on what they treated as a major news story designed to harm the lives of numerous private citizens. If she is “merely an intern,” then why is she listed as the lead reporter on a major news story? And if her editors determine that she is capable of fulfilling that role, then you can’t simultaneously demand she be treated like a young debutante off-limits from critique. Do you see what they are doing here? They are working to create a moral framework where it is always impermissible to criticize their journalism, no matter how shoddy, deceitful and amoral it is. They constantly concoct reasons why the journalist in question is too marginalized and too vulnerable to legitimately criticize. They are all apparently competent and sophisticated enough to be trusted to byline news reporting in major corporate outlets — and we must treat them as tough, talented professionals when it comes time to deference due — but we are then simultaneously instructed that they are not mature or strong enough to endure criticisms of that work. If she had not been an intern, they still would have decreed criticisms of her off limits on the ground that any criticism will stoke misogynistic abuse: after all, Lorenz is a borderline-middle-aged reporter, not an intern, but that is how criticisms of her are delegitimized. What is even more remarkable is how these liberal media figures invoke the most long-standing sexist, racist and homophobic tropes to erect this shield of immunity around themselves that they demand you honor. Look at how they transformed this journalist from what I see her as and what she is — an adult professional reporter who has sufficiently risen in the profession to byline a major story in a national newspaper — into an offensive sexist caricature straight out of the 1950s. In their manipulative hands, she — like Taylor Lorenz of The New York Times — becomes not a professional adult journalist but just a fragile little china doll who cannot withstand any critiques. A senior USA Today editor actually emailed me to chide me for my inappropriate behavior — i.e., critiquing the journalism of the reporter they placed first on the byline. And here is how USA Today’s former “diversity and inclusion editor” Hemal Jhaveri — who just got fired for posting a series of racist decrees about how white people are the root of all evil — decided to interpret this event: Hemal Jhaveri @hemjhaveri Two USA TODAY reporters getting targeted in the span of days isn't by chance. What is happening to Brenna Smith is not a coincidence. Top editors showed they would cave at the slightest provocation. Now, female journalists through the org will be more susceptible to harassment. March 29th 2021 6 Retweets40 Likes Journalists with these outlets wield immense power and influence. These are not the voiceless, marginalized, powerless people in society. They’re the ones who attack, expose and ruin marginalized people if they dare express political views of which these journalists disapprove. It is not just morally repugnant but quite dangerous for them to try to place themselves off limits from criticism this way. The whole point of journalism — the reason why a free press is vital — is because it is the only way to hold accountable powerful institutions and powerful actors. Corporate media outlets and those they employ as reporters are among the most powerful and influential actors in society and, as such, are completely fair game for criticisms, protests, and denunciations. What they are trying to do by exploiting the language of oppression and marginalization to cast themselves as vulnerable victims who cannot be criticized is despicable. It deserves nothing but contempt. That is precisely why I intend to heap scorn on it every time they try it, precisely because these in-group, swarming corporate journalists are the real bullies, trying to stigmatize and destroy the reputations of ordinary citizens who commit the crime of criticizing their journalism or expressing political opinions they want banished. They know that the public — for very good reasons — has lost faith and trust in their work at unprecedented levels. They know that their industry is failing. When journalism turns its guns not on the powerful but on the powerless — descending as low as trying to prevent them from raising needed money for a legal defense — the contempt is well deserved. The demographic characteristics of the journalists doing this disgraceful, cowardly journalism is irrelevant. The only reason they even mention it is because they think they can weaponize it against their critics. This lowly tactic will succeed only if people are cowed and intimidated by it. It will fail, as it should, if people ignore it and treat them like any other power centers by freely expressing the criticisms you think their journalism merits regardless of what names they call you as a result. Another fantastic piece by Mr. Greenwald. And goes to show again the complete fall of mainstream media "journalism".

I urge your compatriots in South Carolina to investigate the use of a true system of promotion & relegation for your football playing schools. It makes all this mostly enrollment based & "success factor" nonsense go away. High school football teams will be classified based on the historical successes and failures of their overall program, not their arbitrary enrollment figure.

The Southern Baptist Convention Confronts Critical Race Theory https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/the-southern-baptist-convention-confronts-critical-race-theory/

Meh, both North, South, and maybe this 3rd high school could play their games at ISU's Memorial Stadium. It's nowhere near the ISU campus, being on Terre Haute's east side. And it would be cheaper.

A modest proposal for the NFL’s 17th game: https://deadspin.com/a-modest-proposal-for-the-nfl-s-17th-game-1846572811 Another "show me the money!" move by the NFL. They need this 17th game to recoup the cash the teams and the league burned through during the covid season.

Ughh. I would throw in Khalil Mack as trade bait before Roquan Smith.

https://reason.com/2021/03/26/abolishing-the-filibuster-is-about-power-not-anti-racism/ Agreed. The filibuster needs to stay. But if the Democrats succeed is having it banned then they will rue the day the did it.

More than half of Indiana school districts oppose choice expansion. Will it matter? https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2021/03/29/more-than-half-indiana-districts-united-against-choice-expansion/6971630002/ (Note: Story is behind a paywall) Sorry Ms. Larty, making your students politically "aware" is not your job. Teaching them is. And let's be clear, the ISTA/NEA is opposed to any state expansion of vouchers because it threatens the jobs of its government school employee members. There is no other logical reason, full stop.

It's pretty clear; if it can be done in Oakland, California then it can be done across the country, with the federal government providing a GBI to poor non-white residents. Part of the far left's agenda.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/hate-crimes-false-narrative-progressive-racism/ These progressives are so race-blind that they think — or at least behave like they think — that this is all white people: When I was a junior in high school, a group of us went over spring break on a college tour of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, led by our school’s guidance counselor. The short bus stopped somewhere in Appalachia for gas. I saw a white Appalachian family there gassing up their beat-up pick-up truck. The bed of the truck was full of scrawny, dirty, scabby children. I lived in a poor state, and in fact grew up in a rural part of it, where there is poverty, especially black poverty. But I had never seen anyone, black or white, as poor as that family. Nearly forty years later, I can still see in my mind’s eye the way a little boy with stringy blond hair looked at me through the bus window. It was like an outtake from those Walker Evans photographs of poor tenant farmers in the Depression. It felt like I was in another country. But yeah, according to the Narrative, those white people are oppressors. Don’t feed the oppressor. In Quillette, Heather Mac Donald has a good piece about how the Left cannot help but impose the Narrative on the recent mass shootings. Excerpts: Well, yes, but Harris doesn’t mention the fact that the anti-Asian hate crimes in this recent wave have been carried out by black assailants. Mac Donald lists a number of them, giving details of the crimes. She goes on: More: Read it all. These lies, and this false narrative, is unquestionably going to spark a fierce white racial backlash. These progressive liars are summoning demons from the deep. I cannot imagine why these liars can’t see that. It’s probably because the only white people they know are those who either capitulate to it, or are so afraid to voice objections that the liars have reason to believe that these people accept the Narrative. As Mac Donald says, though, this progressive racism is not innocuous. It is malicious, and is turning Americans of all races against each other, teaching us to live in fear and loathing. Live not by lies! Yes, I fear for the future of America while the progressives are in power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/us/politics/women-military-draft-supreme-court.html Methinks this should be a slam dunk if it ever comes before the SCOTUS.

The 9th Circuit Says the Right To Bear Arms Does Not Extend Beyond Your Doorstep https://reason.com/2021/03/24/the-9th-circuit-says-the-right-to-bear-arms-does-not-extend-beyond-your-doorstep/ Yep, SCOTUS here we come.

When Cancel Culture Comes for the Person With the Pitchfork https://reason.com/2021/03/24/cancel-culture-teen-vogue-new-york-times-podcast/ Yep, this was a slippery slope that was easily predicted.

I had to throw an entire box of animal crackers away. . . . . . . . . . . . . The seal was broken.

Senate Democrats’ Short-Lived Opposition to All White Biden Nominees https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/senate-democrats-short-lived-opposition-to-all-white-biden-nominees/ Later on Tuesday, Duckworth and her colleague Mazie Hirono of Hawaii told reporters that they intended to vote against any Biden “nominees who aren’t minorities.” Instead of judging those nominees by their merits, those senators pledged to judge them by the color of their skin. If only we had a word to describe that phenomenon. By Tuesday night, Duckworth had backed away from the threat, but not before making comments that suggested certain high-profile figures didn’t meet her threshold for being sufficiently representative of their ancestries: Oh, was it now? Kamala Harris doesn’t count because only her mother immigrated from India? How does the vice president feel about a U.S. senator declaring she’s not Asian enough to qualify as an Asian American? Are the self-described anti-racists going to bring back the “one drop rule” in racial purity to ensure sufficient representation? Or is Duckworth hinting that in her mind, Indian Americans don’t really count as Asian Americans? The senator is free to define the term as she sees fit, but let’s set the wayback machine to 2016 and take a look at how the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans addressed the potential nomination of Appeals Court judge Sri Srinivasan to the U.S. Supreme Court: But let’s go back to this notion that Biden has somehow done Asian Americans wrong because he didn’t name a cabinet secretary of Asian heritage. By no measure can you plausibly argue that the Biden cabinet isn’t diverse. The fact that Biden nominated so many Asian Americans to other positions dispels the notion that he’s got some axe to grind with this particular group. In fact, Katherine Tai, as head of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, is a cabinet-level official; she just doesn’t have the title ‘secretary.’ Duckworth and Hirono had to really narrowly define their categories to find a situation that could even remotely be painted as exclusionary. How many Asian Americans out there feel as if their sense of value, recognition, and respect depends upon seeing someone who looks like themselves as Secretary of Agriculture or running the Department of Housing and Urban Development? Did Elaine Chao’s presence as secretary of transportation during the Trump years mean that his cabinet was better for Asian Americans than Biden’s is? Was George W. Bush’s better because Chao was his secretary of labor and Norman Mineta was his secretary of transportation? In fact, Duckworth and Hirono have just made life more difficult for Asian Americans who want to serve in the Biden administration. If, God forbid, some cabinet secretary got hit by a bus tomorrow, and Biden promptly nominated an Asian-American replacement, how would that new nominee be perceived and greeted? Would people believe the new nominee was genuinely Biden’s best choice for the job? Or would they believe the new nominee was the best Asian-American option, and a choice designed to placate Duckworth and Hirono? Politico’s evening newsletter argued the lesson was that “The Democratic Party holds up diversity as a key value and embraces intersectionality — but realizing that vision is much more complicated as more Americans (rightly) demand a seat at the table.” But does this fight really represent “demanding a seat at the table”? Or is it demanding a particular seat at the table? Or is the lesson that the likes of Duckworth and Hirono will always be looking for some reason to get mad and will be extremely quick accuse others — even their allies and leaders of their party — of deliberate discrimination, even when it’s absurd?

FTO: This is the way, if you insist on government funded education.

Teachers Unions Hate School-Opening Science Now That They Can't Influence It https://reason.com/2021/03/23/teachers-unions-hate-school-opening-science-now-that-they-cant-influence-it/ If public school districts in the United States lack the human resources and planning ability to do what their private school counterparts have long managed, then maybe it's time to recognize that those monopoly systems no longer deserve automatic taxpayer funding. You could fill a football stadium with the most effective libertarian education reformers on the planet, and their exertions combined would pale in comparison to how much, in one short year, teachers unions have turned normal people away from public schools. Like vulture capitalists squeezing the last drops of value out of newspaper companies, teachers unions are shaking down the public for one last big payday. Only in this case, millions of kids are suffering as a result. When Randi Weingarten uses "science" in a sentence, the appropriate response is a laugh track—and getting taxpayer money far, far away from people like her. Agreed. When will the general public come to realize that the primary concern of public sector teachers unions is NOT the welfare of the children their members purport to teach, it is to protect at virtually all costs their members jobs, salaries and benefits. That is the primary purpose of any labor union.

Can a youth sports coach in 2021 be an atheist?