text,split "Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Alex Jones breaks down how the globalists’ New World Order blueprint called the Great Reset is in dire jeopardy as humanity around the globe is waking up to the medical tyranny imposed upon them for over a year as their traditionally reliable systems of control like the media and the political class struggle to maintain the prescribed pro-lockdown narrative. The Big Tech purge is here! Follow Infowars and Alex Jones on other growing platforms now to stay informed as the information blackout accelerates.",-0.3520479486486184 "Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: BBC News presenters sniggered and insulted an MP because he had a Union Jack flag and a picture of the Queen behind him during an interview. MP Robert Jenrick appeared on BBC Breakfast to discuss the vaccine rollout but at the end of the interview, presenters Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty turned their attention to the iconic British flag. “I think your flag is not up to standard size government interview…measurements, I think it’s just a little bit small. But that’s your department really!” said Stayt. Munchetty, who recently wrote an article for the BBC titled ‘It’s time to talk about race’, began laughing before commenting, “The picture of the queen though.” Give Charlie Stayt a Television Journalism Award for this beautiful moment with Robert Jenrick 🇬🇧 @TVNaga01 held it together… just. 🤣 Yes #BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/kvwZHPj8gi — Mark Conway (@MarkConway87) March 18, 2021 “Always a flag. They had the picture of the queen there in Westminster office – I’m assuming,” she added. The presenters appear to be uncomfortable with the fact that MPs are increasingly prone to appearing in front of British flags to appeal to patriotism. While some may see this as a shallow PR stunt, it’s hardly a bad thing given that the left has tarnished Britain’s reputation to such an extent in recent years that the flag was once treated as a symbol of shame. The fact that it is re-emerging in a post-Brexit world as a symbol of pride is obviously disturbing to left-wing BBC News presenters, which is why they feel the need to make fun of it. No wonder there is currently a massive push to defund the BBC, which is bankrolled via a mandatory de facto tax on British citizens, and scenes like this are only likely to further that cause. ——————————————————————————————————————— ALERT! In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here. ———————————————————————————————————————",-0.14213365858153912 "Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: CNN weirdo Brian Stelter announced with Glee Sunday that Dr Anthony Fauci is the subject of a new children’s book titled “Dr. Fauci: How A Boy From Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor,” prompting many to immediately label it a propaganda campaign. Stelter claimed that the book, written by Kate Messner and published by Simon & Schuster, “tells you something about media,” appearing to take credit for the thing. Exciting morning here – @CNN's @brianstelter just revealed the cover for DR: FAUCI: HOW A BOY FROM BROOKLYN BECAME AMERICA'S DOCTOR on @ReliableSources! (Coming 6/29 from @simonschuster & available for pre-order today – https://t.co/f8OxdyPeTf) pic.twitter.com/0rasv2s7Np — katemessner (@KateMessner) March 21, 2021 In a follow up written article, Stelter described Fauci as being “immortalized” in the book, with Messner noting “I’m really hopeful that curious kids who read this book — those we’re counting on to solve tomorrow’s scientific challenges — will see themselves in the pages of Dr. Fauci’s story and set their goals just as high.” Fauci, who has repeatedly flip flopped and lied about the use of masks and admitted that there is no science behind lockdowns, has been ever present on CNN and every other pro-lockdown news bilge station for the past year. The book was reportedly written with Fauci’s input and consultation. The book publisher’s website states “Before he was Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci was a curious boy in Brooklyn, delivering prescriptions from his father’s pharmacy on his blue Schwinn bicycle.” It continues, “His father and immigrant grandfather taught Anthony to ask questions, consider all the data, and never give up—and Anthony’s ability to stay curious and to communicate with people would serve him his entire life.” These leftists sure love their cults, don't they? Worshipping and glorifying their idols with books, tv shows, and statutes. It's disgusting, especially the low life's they choose as gods (george floyd, etc ). — The Brain (@TruthMatters95) March 21, 2021 The man has literally been wrong on everything and you people are trying to make him a saint… — k.cruz (NEANDERTHAL THINKER) (@kcruz19951142) March 21, 2021 So now we know. The Dr Seuss debacle was to make way for Dr Fauci new book . Well played liberals — Gordon L (@GordonL23725322) March 21, 2021 I'll take Dr. Seuss. — Dave Andrews (@PopsandSunshine) March 21, 2021 Until you people decide to cancel those same books in 20 years because the wind is blowing in a different direction. — Joe Verrecchia🔥🇺🇸🔥😢 (@JoeDeertay) March 22, 2021 Good thing I won’t make my children read that dumb shit — Johnny Sins ⚫️⚪️ (@vecchiasignxra) March 22, 2021 Title: Flip and Flop — Schug (@Schug5) March 22, 2021 Does the story change each time you open the book? — Home slice (@beyond_grit) March 22, 2021 WTF !! This is crazy! A book for the pharmaceutical lobbyist! — Osmar Estock (@OsmarEstock) March 22, 2021",-0.6427158233322388 "Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. The UK may be racing ahead of its European neighbours in getting its population vaccinated, but Brits might have to stay masked up for “several years” if public health experts get their way. New cases of Covid-19 in the UK have dropped tenfold since early January, and more than 27 million Britons – over half the adult population – have had their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine. Compared to rising cases on the continent and an EU average vaccination rate of around 10%, the UK appears to be winning its war against Covid-19. Brits looking for a total reprieve from the country’s punishing lockdown, however, shouldn’t hold their breath. That’s according to Mary Ramsay, the head of immunisation at Public Health England. Ramsay told the BBC on Sunday that masks and social distancing could be required for “several years,” or “at least until other parts of the world are as well vaccinated as we are, and the numbers have come down everywhere.” Jack Hadfield sees a clear pattern between the media narrative regarding the treatment of anti-lockdown protestors as opposed to the BLM protestors getting treated with a soft resolve. With vaccines being distributed unequally around the world, and people in the poorest nations facing a years-long wait to get vaccinated, Ramsay’s prediction may be a realistic one, should the British government listen to her advice. As a government body, Public Health England certainly has a say in determining the UK’s Covid-19 response. Her view is not a minority one, either. As the government looks to relax restrictions from the end of March onwards, Prof. Chris Whitty, the UK government’s chief medical adviser, told MPs earlier this month that “simple interventions,” face masks among them, would be needed beyond the summer. Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, meanwhile, suggested that masks would be required through winter, to ward off a “surge” in new cases. Ramsay claimed that “people have got used to” wearing masks and practicing social distancing, telling the BBC that “people can live with them, and the economy can still go on with those less severe restrictions in place.” However, the public might not be as compliant as she suggested. Thousands of people marched in London on Saturday in protest against the national lockdown and virus-related restrictions, with police arresting more than 30 for breaching Covid regulations.",1.8497415587911943 "Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: FBI crime statistics debunk the media’s narrative that white people represent the biggest violent crime threat to Asians, with figures showing whites significantly underrepresented in crime stats compared to their per capita population. Since the killing of six Asian women who worked in massage parlors in Atlanta, the media has amplified the false narrative that “white supremacy” is to blame. They hyped this explanation despite the fact that the attack had nothing whatsoever to do with race and despite two white women also being killed during the shooting. Despite admitting the attack had no racial motive, CNN still blamed it on “white nationalism and domestic extremism” in an article titled ‘White supremacy and hate are haunting Asian Americans’. However, official crime stats show that white people are significantly underrepresented in terms of the violent crime threat they pose to Asians. Though black people comprise 13% of the pop. They committed 27.5% of all violent crimes against Asian Americans in 2018 While whites comprise 62% of the pop. the commit 24% of crimes against Asians But please tell me how white supremacy is the issue https://t.co/3Zdn12vTfb — ELIJAH SCHAFFER (@ElijahSchaffer) March 19, 2021 As the Washington Examiner highlights, citing FBI statistics, whereas whites comprise 62% of the population, they committed 24% of crimes against Asians in 2018. In comparison, blacks, who comprise 13% of the population, committed 27.5% of all violent crimes against Asian Americans in 2018. So clearly, white people do not represent the biggest crime threat to Asian Americans. The figures once again underscore how the media has contrived another hysterical moral panic in order to bolster what can no longer be seen as anything other than institutional racism and hatred towards white people. ——————————————————————————————————————— ALERT! In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here. ———————————————————————————————————————",0.09308298643892775 "U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) released a series of leaked photos to Axios showing the deplorable, overcrowded conditions of migrant children being held in South Texas. A short time later, James O’Keefe released additional disturbing photos depicting children having to sleep on floor mats in overcrowded facilities which were rapidly opened amid a worsening humanitarian crisis. Congressman Cuellar, who lives along the Texas border with Mexico, told Axios these unaccompanied migrant children are living in eight “pods” designed to hold up to 260 people. However, Border Patrol officials are actually holding more than 400 unaccompanied male minors in the spaces, the Texas congressman said. The Biden Administration has not allowed news media or Members of Congress to photograph the conditions under which these migrant children are being held. Cuellar recently visited the facility, but did not take the photos. He said the images were captured over the past weekend. Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe released additional photographs and video leaked from inside Border Patrol facilities where up to 3,000 unaccompanied migrant minors are being held — often well beyond the 72-hour legal holding limit for minors. These photos were taken within the last few days. There are eight pods with eight cells each in the facility. At any given moment there are an average of 3,000 people in custody here. The illegal immigrants are separated by age or physical size depending on room. pic.twitter.com/kFmZgTG2Iv — James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 22, 2021 Why did Project Veritas have to do your job @PressSec? Did the public not have a right to know? #BidenBorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/mXQM6YbttJ — James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 22, 2021 During the Obama/Biden administration in June 2014, Breitbart Texas’ Brandon Darby released leaked photos showing the deplorable conditions where children were being locked in jail cells — often packed shoulder-to-shoulder. The following photos are from that 2014 Breitbart Texas article. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face book.",0.3609164909962915 "President Joe Biden and his administration continue their efforts to sell the $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending bill this week, but the crisis on the Southern border is overshadowing their message. There are more than 10,000 unaccompanied minors held by the Department of Health and Human Services and 5,000 more detained by Customs and border protection, according to the latest reports. Two-thousand migrants were apprehended in a single border sector in one day and 34,000 in March alone. Biden triggered the wave of migrants after he proudly announced the reversal of his predecessor’s successful border policies such as “Remain in Mexico” — and did not make plans to handle the surge at the border. The Biden administration continues sending mixed messaging to migrants crossing into the United States, publicly urging them not to come but also publicly telling them they will not be sent back. “We are encouraging children not to come. Now is not the time to come. Do not come,” Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “The journey is dangerous.” “The policy of this administration — as you all know, but just for others — is not to expel unaccompanied children who arrive at the border,” Jen Psaki told reporters in February. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appear unprepared to answer basic questions about the crisis, as they travel across the country. On Tuesday, Harris admitted “I haven’t been briefed on anything today” about the crisis as she traveled in Colorado to promote the administration’s coronavirus spending package. Biden also admitted Tuesday he did not have plans “at the moment” to travel to the Southern border to publicly address the crisis. On Sunday, Biden adjusted his messaging and suggested he would visit the border, but did not demonstrate any timeline or energy for doing so. “I know what’s going on in those facilities,” he said when asked if he wanted to see the conditions for himself. More details of the migrant crisis emerged over the weekend as the administration plans another week of travel across the country to sell their spending package. Reports emerged Friday of the Biden administration planning to send migrants in airplanes to states near the Canada border for processing to help alleviate the pressure on the Southern border. The campaign that ranted against the Trump administration for “babies in cages,” has now become the face of the thousands of detained minors in detention without their parents. Photos of migrant children living in squalid conditions emerged Sunday as well as reports of nearly 1,000 children being detained more than ten days by border patrol officials. The overall messaging push for Biden’s rescue package has stumbled in recent weeks as the White House struggles to stay on message. Biden’s trip to Georgia on Friday was derailed after he stumbled three times up the stairs while boarding Air Force One. Biden plans to travel to Columbus, Ohio, to promote his spending package Tuesday. Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff will travel to Iowa on Monday. Biden also faces his first public press conference Thursday.",0.33182840929036667 "U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials admit they release certain migrants without issuing a Notice to Appear before an immigration court on a specified date. The official, however, said this is not a “change in policy.” Breitbart Texas’ Randy Clark, a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent with 32 years of service, first revealed on Sunday that CBP officials notified Border Patrol agents to begin releasing migrant families without a Notice to Appear. Breitbart confirmed the directive with two officials operating under the umbrella of CBP. Clark quoted a CBP official saying, “This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us … We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released.” Breitbart reached out to CBP officials for confirmation of the new policy and additional information about its implementation. The official confirmed they are releasing some migrant families without issuing a court date but claimed, “there is no change in policy.” Retired Agent Clark responded to the statement, saying, “This is completely unprecedented. Never, in my 32 years as a Border Patrol agent have we had a policy to release migrants without issuing a court date and Notice to Appear.” “This is what enters the migrant into the alien registration system and starts the ball rolling for their removal if they do not qualify for asylum,” Clark explained. “Without a Notice to Appear, we are depending on the migrant’s word that they will self-register with the court near their destination city.” CBP, in a written response to Breitbart’s inquiry: In some cases, families are placed in removal proceedings further along in the release process rather than while they are at the border patrol station. All families, however, are screened at the border patrol station, including the collection of biographical and biometric information and criminal and national security records checks. Without a Notice to Appear, the only way the migrant can be “placed in removal proceedings” is if they go to immigration court and place themselves into the removal process, Clark explained. “There is no other charging instrument created under this new policy to enter the migrant into the court’s docket.” CBP officials told Breitbart they are simply allowing law enforcement officers operating under the Department of Homeland Security “the flexibility to handle each situation in a manner that best fits each unique encounter.” However, rather than being an officer or agent’s decision about a “unique encounter,” it appears to be a blanket instruction to allow a group of migrants to be released with no legal consequence for illegally entering the United States, Clark concluded. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face book.",0.46405388776049056 "Former President Donald Trump strongly criticized President Joe Biden in an interview Monday for reopening the border by rolling back tough immigration policies and creating a new migrant crisis. “They’ll be coming up by the millions,” Trump said about the flood of migrants crossing the border into the United States. The former president discussed the border crisis with Fox News host Lisa Boothe in a podcast interview released Monday. Trump warned Americans the crisis would get far worse during the Biden administration, even though record numbers were already crossing the border. “It’s nothing compared to what’s going to be in a couple of months,” he said. Trump noted Latin American countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala were “not sending up their finest” to the United States and even warned that even people from the Middle East were again crossing the border. “As I said before, you have some very bad hombres coming up and we’re taking them into our country and it’s insane,” Trump said. He emphasized that, once migrants were released into the country, they would disappear. “They go into our country. We never find them again; they never come back, a very tiny percentage comes back,” he said. The former president told Americans Biden made a big mistake by ending effective policies like “Remain in Mexico” which could have prevented the crisis on the border. “We had it down to an absolute science; it was a beautiful thing to see,” Trump said. He also urged Biden to finish the wall on the Southern border. “It’s just crazy that they’re not finishing the wall.”",-1.1873410757214136 "The nomination of former Obama National Security official Colin Kahl for a top position in the Biden Pentagon may have hit another snag, as Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) expressed concern that Kahl may have leaked classified information on Twitter. President Joe Biden has nominated Kahl, who served as Biden’s National Security Adviser during the Obama administration, to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, the number three job at the Pentagon. However, a number of Republican senators have expressed reservations about his judgment and highly partisan tweets, and on Friday, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who served as U.S. ambassador to Japan during the Trump administration, released a letter to the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) expressing concern that some of Kahl’s tweets after leaving the Obama National Security Council contained leaked information from colleagues who still worked there. Typically, the National Security Council is staffed not with political appointees, but with career officials designated from agencies such as the State Department, Defense Department, and others. Therefore, it is common for NSC officials to remain in their jobs even with a change in the administration. Hagerty wrote to SASC chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) and ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-OK): “I am concerned that Kahl, in his capacity as a private citizen shortly after leaving senior government service, may have been knowingly leaking, or otherwise disclosing on Twitter, sensitive information, including classified information.” Hagerty explained: The substance, meeting agendas, and schedules of the National Security Council (NSC), NSC Principals Committee, and NSC Deputies Committee are typically considered to be so sensitive that the NSC Executive Secretary classifies them, distributes them by courier or via classified network to only a limited group of interagency offices, and classifies the summaries of meeting proceedings. Some of the information that Kahl appears to have publicly disclosed is of a category to which even Senators and Senate staff with the highest security clearances are almost always denied. Hagerty described various examples of Kahl tweeting such information, including on March 1, 2017, when he tweeted, “I heard [the] Yemen portion of 1/26 Deputies mtg (held AFTER Trump approved raid) lasted < 30 min, ending w/[Deputy National Security Advisor] KT McFarland saying ‘saddle up’.” Kahl tweeted the next day, “I have confirmed with 4 separate staffers in the room.” He tweeted in late January and early February 2017 that he was “hearing” information concerning how then-President Donald Trump was receiving his classified President’s Daily Brief. “Kahl was effectively revealing to America’s adversaries details of Presidential decision-making and prioritization in national security affairs. This is knowledge of a kind that foreign intelligence services likely expend great resources to acquire, including through espionage,” Hagerty wrote. “If Kahl disclosed this national security information as it appears he did, he would have been exhibiting either politically-driven and reckless disregard for security protocols or, at a minimum, serious negligence,” he added. He urged Reed and Inhofe to ask him about these disclosures before a full vote in front of the Senate to confirm him. So far, SASC, which must approve him for a full Senate vote, has not yet confirmed him, and that vote remains delayed. In 2019, Kahl once tweeted that the Republican Party is the “party of ethnic cleansing.” Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.",0.502600778613665 "Wearing masks and social distancing could go on for “years”, says Public Health England’s chief of immunisation. Dr Mary Ramsey claimed on Sunday that social distancing and other practices like wearing a face-covering would go on for “quite a long period of time”. “People have got used to those lower-level restrictions now, and people can live with them, and the economy can still go on with those less severe restrictions in place. “So I think certainly for a few years, at least until other parts of the world are as well vaccinated as we are, and the numbers have come down everywhere, that is when we may be able to go very gradually back to a more normal situation,” Dr Ramsey said, according to the BBC. “We have to look very carefully before any of these restrictions are lifted,” she added. Last month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a “roadmap” for coming out of lockdown, starting with schools reopening on March 8th and progressing through different phases until a complete reopening in the summer. While Prime Minister Johnson said he hoped lockdown could end by June 21st, he would make no promises to commit to that date. Delingpole: BoJo’s Dodgy Science Advisors Have Staged a ‘Covert Coup’ https://t.co/YqQQTdr0lp — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 20, 2021 Professor Jeremy Brown, a member of the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation (JCVI) claimed on Sky News on Sunday that “there will be a wave of infections crossing the country” if all restrictions are completely lifted too soon. Brown also said that “some degree of social distancing or protection is going to be required” until at least July, or infections will rise. The United Kingdom has administered at least one dose of vaccine to half of its adult population and is on track to vaccinate all adults by the end of July. In December, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said that even if vaccinated, wearing masks and frequent use of hand sanitiser could become habits that people maintain “for years”, and it “may be a good thing if they do”. The following month Van-Tam’s superior, Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, said there could be another lockdown next Christmas, and that “we might have to bring a few [restrictions] in next winter, for example. That is possible because winter will benefit the virus.” European Union Threatens to Block Export of up to 19 Million Vaccines to the UK https://t.co/KphV9DlPfu — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 21, 2021",0.11365864499682526 "Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “The Next Revolution,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) discussed his recent visit to see firsthand the crisis at United States’ border with Mexico. Gimenez described the situation at the border as “modern-day slavery.” He added the border crisis is seeing the molestation of young females, indentured servitude until families can come up with the funds for being transported across the border, and the murdering of immigrants who cannot come up with the funds. “Look, what I saw at that Customs and Border Protection facility hundreds and hundreds of children, boys and girls — and I’m talking boys and girls — I’m not talking 17, 16 — I’m really talking boys and girls — I’m talking five, six, seven — they come across the border by themselves,” Gimenez recalled. “They have little pieces of paper telling them call so-and-so and an address. But here is the thing — a lot of these girls, young girls, are being molested. Maybe up to 30% are being molested. It costs their parents $4,00o to $6,000 to get them across. A Chinese immigrant trying to get across $35,000. We estimate that the cartels — the multinational cartels — are making close to half a billion dollars per month. They use these migrants to divert Customs and Border Protection agents to a certain section, and then they go ahead and rush the other sections that are unprotected, and they bring us drugs and all other kinds of mayhem that they bring in.” “[T]his is great for the multinational cartels. It’s horrible for the migrants who … some are being murdered on the other side of the border if they can’t come up with the money,” he continued. “They are being extorted. And they are also being used —- if they get across — ‘Hey, you owe us $6,000. You are now an indentured servant here in the United States until you pay us back.’ Basically, it’s modern-day slavery. That is what is going on in the border, and it’s outrageous.” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent",-1.1189643091940018 "President Joe Biden told reporters Sunday he would visit the Southern border “at some point,” appearing unwilling to commit to the idea soon. “At some point, I will, yes,” Biden replied when a reporter asked if he would visit the border. Biden spoke to reporters as he returned from his weekend trip to Camp David. When asked if he would visit some of the detention facilities for migrants personally, Biden replied, “I know what’s going on in those facilities.” One reporter asked Biden why his message urging migrants not to come from the United States was not working. Biden said he and his administration were working to handle the dramatic surge at the border. “We are in the process of doing it now including making sure we re-establish what existed before, which is they can stay in place and make their case from their home countries,” he said. The Department of Health and Human Services is housing nearly 10,500 unaccompanied minors in emergency facilities and about 5,000 in custody at a Customs and Border Protection facility, according to a Saturday CBS News report. In an interview Wednesday, Biden advised migrants not to come to the U.S. border, but his administration has struggled with mixed messaging on the issue. EXCLUSIVE: @GStephanopoulos presses Pres. Biden on the border crisis. ""Do you have to say quite clearly, 'Don't come'? Biden: ""Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don't come over…Don’t leave your town or city or community."" https://t.co/zFJaRXjCI8 pic.twitter.com/osZKR64ypq — ABC News (@ABC) March 17, 2021 “Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over,” he said. “We’re in the process of getting set up.” Biden has refused to admit the crisis on the border is an actual crisis, as more migrants flood to the border. “We’ll be able to handle it,” he replied to reporters at the White House on March 2. “God willing.”",-0.43168656072314354 "During an appearance on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared the U.S.-Mexico border “secure” and “closed.” “The border is secure,” he said. “The border is closed. We’ve been unequivocal in that and we are operationalizing our processes, executing our plans, we are a nation of laws, and we treat vulnerable children humanely. We can do it, and we are doing it.’ Following Mayorkas giving those remarks, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) disputed the claim. Cotton, also speaking to “Fox News Sunday,” told host Chris Wallace the border was “wide open,” and he blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policy in the early stages of Joe Biden’s presidency for the crisis. Partial transcript as follows: WALLACE: You just watched my interview with Secretary Mayorkas. Your reaction, sir? COTTON: Chris, it’s rich that Secretary Mayorkas won’t let press travel with him to the border, but he will come on your Sunday morning show and peddle the same kind of nonsense that has created the Biden border crisis in the first place. I mean, he’s basically saying the United States will not secure our border and that is a big welcome sign to migrants from across the world. WALLACE: So you say that you have three simple solutions. What are they? COTTON: Yeah, Chris, the Biden administration keeps saying that Trump somehow dismantled the immigration system. That’s false. It was the Biden administration that dismantled three highly effective policies. First, the public health exclusionary order. They lifted that order as it relates to minors. Well, guess what we have now with the border? Lots more minors. That’s not a surprise. Second, the “remain in Mexico” policy. The Trump administration worked with the government of Mexico to allow migrants who showed up on our border to make an asylum claim but remain in Mexico while we adjudicated rather than just releasing them into the country. And third, the so-called safe third country agreement with countries like Guatemala that says if you pass through a country that’s not your own seeking asylum, you have to make that asylum claim when the first country to pass through. That’s the international norm, that’s what we should do. Joe Biden could reimpose all three of those things this week if you wanted to. WALLACE: One of the things I was struck by at the end of the interview, Secretary Mayorkas said, quote: The border is secure, the border is closed. Is it? COTTON: No, Chris, of course not. The border is wide open. There are reports now Custom and Border Patrol may be directed to simply start processing people into the country without even giving them a notice to appear in court. And, of course, all of these bogus asylum claims are taking up so much manpower and resources of the border, that means that we also have other threats, like increases in fentanyl and other kinds of drug trafficking or persons on the terrorist watch list crossing to our border. The border right now is wide open because the Biden administration dismantled the very effective policies of the Trump administration and the agreements we had with Mexico and other Latin American countries. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor",-0.469463314182698 "A couple in Florida who spent many years serving as missionaries and ministers recently died 15 minutes apart of the coronavirus. Bill and Esther Ilnisky were married nearly 67 years when they passed away at a Palm Beach County hospice, the Associated Press (AP) reported Sunday. The couple’s only child, Sarah Milewski, whose father was 88 and her mother 92, told NBC Miami the circumstances may have been a hidden blessing although it was a devastating loss. “It is so precious, so wonderful, such a heartwarming feeling to know they went together,” Milewski commented, adding, “I miss them.” The NBC report continued: Bill Ilnisky grew up in Detroit, deciding at 16 to devote his life to God, Milewski said. He headed to Central Bible College, an Assemblies of God school in Springfield, Missouri. He preached at nearby churches and needed a piano player. Friends suggested Esther Shabaz, a fellow student from Gary, Indiana. They fell in love. … After graduation and their wedding, Bill Ilnisky opened churches in the Midwest. In the late-1950s, the Ilniskys took congregants to Jamaica for a mission, fell in love with the island, and stayed on to run a church in Montego Bay for a decade. At that time, the couple adopted Milewski, then a two-year-old, from a foster home in Miami. “In 1969, the family moved from Jamaica to Lebanon, where Bill Ilnisky ministered to college students and taught. His wife started an outreach center and had a Christian rock band,” the outlet said. When civil war erupted in 1975 and bombs exploded outside their Beirut apartment building, they eventually left in 1976 as United States Marines evacuated Americans and got on the last plane out of the area. Upon their return to America, Bill became a pastor in West Palm Beach and his wife started a program teaching kids how to pray. “Bill Ilnisky retired three years ago and while physically healthy for a late octogenarian, had some dementia. His wife still ran her prayer network and did Zoom calls,” the NBC report said. The couple took precautions when the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020 and Milewski said her mom stayed at home but Bill occasionally left the house. “He couldn’t take it,” she recalled. “He needed to be around people.” Milewski and her husband visited her parents on her mother’s birthday and a few days later, her mother became ill. It was not long before the couple was diagnosed with the virus and was hospitalized. When their illness got worse, it was decided on February 27 the couple would be placed in hospice care and Jacqueline Lopez-Devine, chief clinical officer at Trustbridge hospice, said there was no question about putting them in a room together. Milewski bid her parents goodbye through a window, and her father lay on the right side of the bed while her mom faced him. He nodded as Milewski spoke to him and her mother tried to talk but could not. “It was horrible,” Milewski recalled. Esther passed away at 10:15 a.m. on March 1, and her husband died 15 minutes later.",0.17349835999450908 "A six-year-old girl died at an apartment complex in Texas after being shot multiple times Friday over an argument about spilled water. The child’s mother identified the girl as Laurionne Walker, KTRK reported. “I’m at a loss for words right now,” Earline House, Laurionne’s grandmother, told KPRC. “My granddaughter was still a baby. She got shot twice in the chest this morning.” Police in Pasadena, which is a city southeast of Houston, said officers responded to reports of an apartment complex shooting around 11:30 a.m. Friday. A man who was related to Laurionne shot the girl multiple times, police said. Laurionne was rushed to a hospital, where she later succumbed to her injuries and was declared dead, NBC News reported. Pasadena Police charged Raymeon Means, 35, on Saturday with one count of capital murder in connection with Laurionne’s death. Means is being held in custody without bond. Laurionne’s mother said her daughter was being cared for by a relative on Friday so she could attend the vigil for Laurionne’s three cousins, all three of them children, and their mother. The three cousins and their mother died in a car crash Sunday night in Spring, Texas, after being hit by a suspected drunk driver. The crash was unrelated to the shooting.",-0.33040837176373294 "When Jane Cunningham’s home was in dire need of repairs and medical debt grew after her son was diagnosed with cancer, neighbors stepped in to help. “Her home of 25 years in Sudbury, Massachusetts was a sanctuary as she became a single mother raising three children, including a son diagnosed with cancer,” CBS News reported Saturday. However, the home was falling apart. The roof had collapsed, animals took up residence, and the family stopped living in parts of the house to protect their health. “There was mold everywhere. Other things were just crumbling. It was kind of like our life fell apart a few years ago. It just became too much,” Cunningham recalled. She knew their family was not safe there but could not afford the needed repairs. However, just when Cunningham thought she was out of options, a friend started a GoFundMe page to help remedy the situation, according to WBZ-TV. “She has been struggling with ongoing health issues in the family, and this would really take some of the stress away for all of them,” the page read. “Not only have they been dealing with water in the house, but also critters getting into the house too. Please donate what you can. Thank you so much!” it continued. When construction executive Dave Fenton heard about the effort, he picked up the phone and made some calls. “It was in my town, and without a doubt, it was something we needed to do,” Fenton said. It did not take long before multiple people got involved by donating materials and labor to do the repairs. Community members raised around $50,000 in donations to repair the house and pay off medical bills. “When you’re carrying a lot of problems alone, it can feel very alone with them and very overwhelmed. What they did, it’s like taking a boulder off my back,” Cunningham noted. Fenton said the crews plan to return in the near future to work on landscaping and the home’s exterior.",-0.13250204272087995 "Police in Pittsburgh say a 12-year-old boy was stabbed inside a McDonald’s Saturday in the city’s downtown area. “Police said they arrested 51-year-old Charles Edward Turner in connection with the stabbing. He’s facing several charges, including criminal attempted homicide,” KDKA reported. The victim was taken to a hospital in critical condition and a criminal complaint said a doctor later upgraded his condition to stable. “It also said a black and yellow box cutter was recovered from the scene and a piece of razor blade that broke off the box cutter was recovered where the stabbing happened,” the report continued. Officers said the boy was stabbed in the neck while inside the McDonald’s restaurant on Liberty Avene and Stanwix Street a few minutes after 2:00 p.m. “He was with his family, he was standing in line, they had just zipped in for one quick thing,” said Cara Cruz, the Deputy Public Information Officer for the Pittsburgh Public Safety Department. According to Cruz, Turner was in line behind the boy and his family. A criminal complaint said a witness claimed Turner tackled the child from behind and while others tried to get him off the boy, they noticed his neck was cut. “Documents also state that Turner resisted arrest by punching and kicking officers. Court documents said one officer had cuts on his face and two other victims had minor injuries,” the KDKA article read. Cruz said restaurant workers also stepped in to help during the incident. “Two McDonald’s employees did try to intervene and help the child then police and EMS arrived on the scene,” she noted, adding that police do not believe the boy and Turner knew one another, neither do they know if the incident was random. The public safety department shared a photo Saturday of the suspect and detailed the charges against him. Turner is currently being held at Allegheny County Jail: UPDATE: Police have arrested Charles Edward Turner, 51, in connection with this stabbing incident. He is charged with: – Criminal Attempt Homicide – 4 counts of Aggravated Assault – 2 counts of Simple Assault – Resisting Arrest Turner is being held at Allegheny County Jail. https://t.co/3cNAlS0ndx pic.twitter.com/SUHli1q5Ku — Pgh Public Safety (@PghPublicSafety) March 21, 2021 “We’re here all the time, people are here all the time, it’s scary, very scary and a child…that’s terrifying,” Maggie Kishbaugh, a Duquesne University student, said of the incident.",-0.38186636333761453 "Mesa, AZ Mayor John Giles (R) said Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that he had been “impressed so far” by the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis. Giles said, “You know, I’ve been the mayor for six years here in Mesa, so I am a veteran of the last border surge. And so we are very nervous about the surge that we see in refugees that are crossing the border. I’ve been impressed so far with this administration. I had an opportunity to talk with Secretary Mayorkas about a week ago. I told him the experience that we had a couple of years ago, and he was very aware of it. So we’ve had boots on the ground from the administration here in Phoenix and in Mesa.” He continued, “We’ve explained to them that there are a lot of compassionate people in our community, faith groups, and NGOs that are willing to partner with the federal government to respond to this. But the cupboards are bare because, over the last two years, they’ve been asked to shoulder this problem as the federal government really wasn’t capable of doing it without assistance.” He added, “So far, we’re getting good answers to the questions we’re asking. So far, it looks like FEMA and other resources are being brought to help communities like mine that are close to the border.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN",0.4883623825121183 "Mesa, AZ Mayor John Giles (R) said Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that he had been “impressed so far” by the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis. Giles said, “You know, I’ve been the mayor for six years here in Mesa, so I am a veteran of the last border surge. And so we are very nervous about the surge that we see in refugees that are crossing the border. I’ve been impressed so far with this administration. I had an opportunity to talk with Secretary Mayorkas about a week ago. I told him the experience that we had a couple of years ago, and he was very aware of it. So we’ve had boots on the ground from the administration here in Phoenix and in Mesa.” He continued, “We’ve explained to them that there are a lot of compassionate people in our community, faith groups, and NGOs that are willing to partner with the federal government to respond to this. But the cupboards are bare because, over the last two years, they’ve been asked to shoulder this problem as the federal government really wasn’t capable of doing it without assistance.” He added, “So far, we’re getting good answers to the questions we’re asking. So far, it looks like FEMA and other resources are being brought to help communities like mine that are close to the border.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN",0.29161145059367327 "Actress Sandra Oh made a surprise appearance at a “Stop Asian Hate” protest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where she led a chant proclaiming, “I am proud to be Asian.” “Pittsburgh, I am so happy and proud to be here with you, and thank you to all the organizers for organizing this just to give us an opportunity to be together, and to stand together, and to feel each other,” Oh can be heard saying in a video published by CBS Pittsburgh. “For many of us in our community, this is the first time we are even able to voice our fear and our anger, and I really am so grateful to everyone willing to listen,” Oh continued. “I know many of us in our community are very scared, and I understand that.” “And one way to get through our fear is to reach out to our communities,” she added. “I will challenge everyone here, if you see something will you help me? If you see one of our sisters and brothers in need, will you help us?” From there, the actress led a chant, proclaiming, “I am proud to be Asian. I belong here.” “Many of us don’t get our chance to be able to say that, so I just wanted to give us an opportunity to be able to shout that,” Oh concluded. Before Saturday’s rally, Oh posted an statement to Instagram, responding to a fatal shooting spree at two Atlanta-area massage parlors that left eight people dead and another wounded. “I send loving kindness and support to the families of the eight souls murdered in Georgia on March 16. And to all the victims of racist violence,” Oh wrote. “I am devastated and profoundly angry,” the actress added. “I know many of you are scared, but let us not be afraid.” You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.",-0.6507999093031597 "With the debut of WandaVison and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Disney is getting back in the swing of its Marvel Superhero stories, but at least for the latter show’s Falcon and Bucky, the story is bringing in moments of woke politics. According to Malcolm Spellman, head writer for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (FAWS) debuting on Disney+, the show dove into its political themes quite pointedly even from the first episode. In an interview with Variety, he breaks down how the series touches on contemporary politics, from Black Lives Matter to the coronavirus pandemic. An early scene, for instance, shows the Falcon, aka Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie) visiting a bank, and a banker asks about his income with suspicion and ultimately turns him down for a loan. “That was a really, really fun moment, where what was supposed to be a scene that mostly dealt with the issues of, you know, a black family from a certain background dealing with a bank loan, and the fact that him being a celebrity does not transcend him being black,” Spellman says. The writer told Variety that their drive to make the writer’s room “all-black” was a key to success. It was “pointed” that the episode ends with Falcon finding out that the government lied to him about becoming Captain America’s replacement because he isn’t white. I think this is going to be an extremely relevant show in a lot of ways, and that is not by accident. The magic of embracing diversity in the writers room and having an almost all-Black staff allows you to tap into pop culture. I mean, Black folk are the masters of it, and when we get a shot, to do what we do, it is universal for everyone because our struggle and our point of view is a concentrated version of the greater human struggle. So it is yeah, those moments you’re talking about are pointed, and we dig deeper and deeper and deeper as the series progresses. The betrayal of the government was a particularly important point for the writers. “That was the primary reason I showed up, which was for Sam, the idea of a black man confronting the stars and stripes is whether it’s even appropriate to carry that shield,” Spellman said. After telling Variety how “exciting” it was for the writers to show actors Don Cheadle and Anthony Mackie portraying black superheroes talking like normal people. “Just the concept of two black superheroes being on screen together said a million things,” he gushed. If you’d seen how much dialogue we wrote, because I was so excited to get them together. They were just riffing. Like, it was a moment for them. I was psyched about it. A lot of that got distilled. But I think this bigger issue that’s going on, they don’t have to say that much. Everybody knows these are two Black men, and they’re dealing with the stars and stripes. They don’t even have to say that much for you to get how much it’s weighing on them, and how much these dudes probably cooked up and talked behind the scenes in the MCU. Spellman concluded by noting that after their production was shut down due to the coronavirus, they went back into the story to “rework and retrofit” the story to include more coronavirus-inspired themes. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.",0.5755455506854018 "A senior-level law enforcement source with U.S.Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Rio Grande Valley revealed the implementation of a plan to release migrant families soon after apprehension. The plan radically changes how illegal migrants have been processed in the past and orders Border Patrol agents to quickly release migrant families without notifying the immigration courts or issuing a Notice to Appear. “This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us,” a CBP official with knowledge of the plan told Breitbart Texas anonymously because he is not authorized to speak publically on the matter. “We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released.” Breitbart Texas confirmed the report with a second official operating under the umbrella of CBP. The implementation of the plan follows a short discussion of the matter reported on by Breitbart News late Saturday night. The migrant families will be released without a Notice to Appear, a formal charging document that begins the removal process according to sources. The plan was implemented early Sunday morning and is now in effect. The source states the plan allows for “prosecutorial discretion” by the Border Patrol for all migrants who enter with children to include whole family units. A one-sheet arrest report is completed, along with criminal record checks and a photograph of the migrant. The new process relies on migrants to tell officials what city they will be traveling to. The migrant is subsequently asked to report to the nearest immigration court office when they arrive so that they can place themselves into formal removal proceedings. The source believes this to be an impossible feat for the immigration courts to achieve. He further added, “If we can’t process them with our staffing of thousands and are being overwhelmed, the minimal staffing of court clerks around the country will never catch up — even if the migrant shows up.” Without a Notice to Appear, the migrants are free to travel about the country and are not officially placed into the immigration court system. The court cannot order the removal of a migrant in absentia for failing to appear for a future court date, the source explained. the existence of a removal in absentia order from the court allows immigration officials to remove the alien without appeal if they are later encountered. Under this new process, the migrants will not have a removal in absentia order for failure to appear officials issued no order to appear under the unprecedented plan put in place by the Biden administration on Sunday morning. This is yet another pull factor that will entice more migrants to make the journey north. The source reports the new procedure is only being implemented in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the Border Patrol in South Texas. This is troubling to the source. “If they are not doing this in the Laredo or Del Rio Sectors, guess what, their traffic will come here to benefit from the immediate release, this plan will likely backfire,” the source explained. The CBP official said this plan is a result of capacity issues at Border Patrol stations but feels this will only exacerbate the issues they are dealing with. “We may be reducing the time it takes to release a family unit but if we encourage more to come once they find out it is quicker here, we’ll be in the same boat again,” the official concluded. Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.",-0.4939202926051049 "A senior-level law enforcement source with U.S.Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Rio Grande Valley revealed the implementation of a plan to release migrant families soon after apprehension. The plan radically changes how illegal migrants have been processed in the past and orders Border Patrol agents to quickly release migrant families without notifying the immigration courts or issuing a Notice to Appear. “This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us,” a CBP official with knowledge of the plan told Breitbart Texas anonymously because he is not authorized to speak publically on the matter. “We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released.” Breitbart Texas confirmed the report with a second official operating under the umbrella of CBP. The implementation of the plan follows a short discussion of the matter reported on by Breitbart News late Saturday night. The migrant families will be released without a Notice to Appear, a formal charging document that begins the removal process according to sources. The plan was implemented early Sunday morning and is now in effect. The source states the plan allows for “prosecutorial discretion” by the Border Patrol for all migrants who enter with children to include whole family units. A one-sheet arrest report is completed, along with criminal record checks and a photograph of the migrant. The new process relies on migrants to tell officials what city they will be traveling to. The migrant is subsequently asked to report to the nearest immigration court office when they arrive so that they can place themselves into formal removal proceedings. The source believes this to be an impossible feat for the immigration courts to achieve. He further added, “If we can’t process them with our staffing of thousands and are being overwhelmed, the minimal staffing of court clerks around the country will never catch up — even if the migrant shows up.” Without a Notice to Appear, the migrants are free to travel about the country and are not officially placed into the immigration court system. The court cannot order the removal of a migrant in absentia for failing to appear for a future court date, the source explained. the existence of a removal in absentia order from the court allows immigration officials to remove the alien without appeal if they are later encountered. Under this new process, the migrants will not have a removal in absentia order for failure to appear officials issued no order to appear under the unprecedented plan put in place by the Biden administration on Sunday morning. This is yet another pull factor that will entice more migrants to make the journey north. The source reports the new procedure is only being implemented in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the Border Patrol in South Texas. This is troubling to the source. “If they are not doing this in the Laredo or Del Rio Sectors, guess what, their traffic will come here to benefit from the immediate release, this plan will likely backfire,” the source explained. The CBP official said this plan is a result of capacity issues at Border Patrol stations but feels this will only exacerbate the issues they are dealing with. “We may be reducing the time it takes to release a family unit but if we encourage more to come once they find out it is quicker here, we’ll be in the same boat again,” the official concluded. Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.",0.021565691623145967 "Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he is “close” to securing the Republican votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster to advance the so-called DREAM Act, which would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Anchor Dana Bash asked, “I know you’ve been working on the issues for decades. Even the DREAM Act, which has pretty bipartisan support, could you get that done right given the fact that Republicans are saying I’m not doing anything until what is going on at the border is fixed right now?” Durbin said, “Listen, I introduced the DREAM Act 20 years ago. Most people know what it’s about. A vast majority of Americans of all political faiths support it.” He added, “I brought to the floor five times, and I’ve been stopped by the filibuster five times from passing it. I had a majority. I didn’t have 60 votes. Do I have 60 now? I think I’m close. I’m going to sit down with members of the Republican side and ask them if they would consider supporting it. I think I’ll have some support. Whether it’s enough remains to be seen.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN",-0.3715078626487034 "The official SUV, produced by General Motors (GM), of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) annual “March Madness” tournament is made in China. Last week, Buick — a division of GM — announced its 2021 Buick Envision is the official SUV of March Madness. Get fired up and get ready to #EnvisionGreatness. The All-New Buick Envision. Official SUV of March Madness. pic.twitter.com/cU9Ecwr7u3 — Buick (@Buick) March 17, 2021 The Buick Envision is built in China and imported to the U.S. market to sell. GM Authority reported in May 2020: The 2021 Buick Envision debuted just yesterday, dropping in with an all-new second generation for the nameplate. Now, GM Authority has confirmed that the next-gen model will continue to be built in China. [Emphasis added] According to our sources, the 2021 Buick Envision will be produced at the SAIC-GM Jinqiao South plant in China. From there, the new Envision will be shipped to each of the four markets where the Buick brand is available, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (comprising the North American market), as well as in China. [Emphasis added] … For reference, the first-generation Buick Envision was also produced in China, but at a different facility, namely the SAIC-GM Dongyue North plant. Like the 2021 Envision, the first-gen model was also sold in China and throughout North America. [Emphasis added] In November 2018, Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney urged GM to start manufacturing its Buick Envisions in the U.S. rather than China. “The Envision is the first car built in China for the U.S. market. Last year, Americans purchased 42,000 Envisions, which are made by a joint venture between General Motors and SAIC Motor, a state-owned Chinese automaker,” Carney wrote: China, however, is now the largest market for General Motors. Last year the company sold 4,040,789 vehicles there. And China has high tariffs on automobiles and other requirements that make exporting cars into China all-but impossible. General Motors policy of “we build where we sell” is a requirement in China. But it would be a far simpler matter to bring just the U.S. portion of Envision manufacturing back to the U.S. The basic architecture of the Envision is the same as the soon-to-be late Chevy Volt, which was built at the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant that the company announced would close by the end of next year. “It likely would not take an enormous amount of retooling to keep the plant open and making Envisions,” he concluded. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.",0.05888670472114493 "Ohio State forward E.J. Liddell shared offensive comments, including racial slurs and threats of violence, posted to his Instagram account after the Buckeye’s 75-72 loss to Oral Roberts on Friday in the first major upset of the NCAA Tournament. Charles Barkley responded immediately, calling the people responsible for the posts “losers” and “cowards,” and Ohio State sports officials announced they have called the police to report the “vile” and “dangerous” threats to their players. Messages included one that read, “I hope somebody shoot you in ya face,” and that he wants to “kill” Liddell. Another said, “You are such a f—ing disgrace. Don’t ever show your face at Ohio State … I hope you die, I really do.” Liddell posted screenshots of the messages to his Twitter page Friday. “Honestly, what did I do to deserve this? I’m human,” he said: Honestly, what did I do to deserve this? I’m human. pic.twitter.com/djXzhSH0q8 — E.J. Liddell (@EasyE2432) March 20, 2021 Barkley said during the March Madness broadcast, “You guys give me a hard time because I refuse to do any type of social media, this is the reason why.” “No. 1, he had a great game,” Barkley continued, “But for you to give this kid death threats and hurl racial slurs at him because you’re safe in your own home like a coward, behind a computer and nobody know who you are, you need to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror.” “I am never gonna dignify these losers and interact with them ever; I don’t care how much money somebody offers me, I’ll never do social media because of this,” Barkley added: Charles Barkley on EJ Liddell harassment from fans on Instagram “I’m never gonna dignify these losers and interact with them ever, I don’t care how much money some offers me, I’ll never do social media because of this” pic.twitter.com/fCpgC0O12f — gifdsports (@gifdsports) March 20, 2021 Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann defended Liddell on Saturday, posting to his Twitter account, “Recent social media comments to E.J. Liddell, while not from or representative of Ohio State fans, are vile, dangerous and reflect the worst of humanity.” “E.J. is an outstanding young man who had a tremendous sophomore season and he was instrumental in our team’s success. We will take all the necessary actions to address this immediately,” Holtmann concluded: Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith defended Liddell on Saturday, saying, “The threatening social media attack E.J. Liddell faced after the game yesterday is appalling and will not be tolerated. … If you cross the line and threaten our players, you will be hearing from the authorities. That I promise you”: I will support our student-athletes in and out of competition! I have nothing but love and respect for E.J. He epitomizes all that we hope for in our student-athletes. pic.twitter.com/BxejMWvo1x — Gene Smith (@OSU_AD) March 20, 2021 Ohio State associate athletic director for communications Dan Wallenberg told reporters he contacted police on Saturday morning about the threats.",-0.9628757144437357 "Authorities investigating Tiger Woods’ February 23 single-car crash now say that it appears the golf great didn’t hit the brakes before impact. According to investigators reviewing the crash scene and the data from the vehicle’s black box. Indeed, he didn’t seem to take his foot off the gas pedal, Woods’ car never slowed down before he lost control of the car, the New York Post reported. Woods was found unconscious immediately after the wreck, according to testimony from a bystander who was first on the scene. However, the player regained consciousness before first responders arrived at the scene. The 45-year-old player was conscious and alert when he was pulled from the wrecked auto. Woods is said to have no memory of the accident. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has taken criticism for how he has dealt with the incident. The sheriff, though, recently said that Woods got no special treatment during the investigation into the wreck. Villanueva caught criticism for quickly coming out to say that the February 23 crash was “purely an accident” before the full investigation was finished. He also immediately said that there was “no evidence” that Woods was impaired while behind the wheel and insisted he would pursue no charges. “I know there’s been a lot of concern about, was he received any treatment any different than anybody else — he did not. He received the same treatment everybody else would receive,” Villanueva said. “One, there’s no obvious evidence of impairment, and he’s compound fracture in a horrendous scene. Our concern shifts to the humanitarian, you know, life preservation, those kinds of things. And the accident becomes secondary.” The sheriff’s department also insisted that they won’t release anything else about the case, saying, “We are not releasing any further information at this time.” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.",0.3127119488177302 "Authorities investigating Tiger Woods’ February 23 single-car crash now say that it appears the golf great didn’t hit the brakes before impact. According to investigators reviewing the crash scene and the data from the vehicle’s black box. Indeed, he didn’t seem to take his foot off the gas pedal, Woods’ car never slowed down before he lost control of the car, the New York Post reported. Woods was found unconscious immediately after the wreck, according to testimony from a bystander who was first on the scene. However, the player regained consciousness before first responders arrived at the scene. The 45-year-old player was conscious and alert when he was pulled from the wrecked auto. Woods is said to have no memory of the accident. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has taken criticism for how he has dealt with the incident. The sheriff, though, recently said that Woods got no special treatment during the investigation into the wreck. Villanueva caught criticism for quickly coming out to say that the February 23 crash was “purely an accident” before the full investigation was finished. He also immediately said that there was “no evidence” that Woods was impaired while behind the wheel and insisted he would pursue no charges. “I know there’s been a lot of concern about, was he received any treatment any different than anybody else — he did not. He received the same treatment everybody else would receive,” Villanueva said. “One, there’s no obvious evidence of impairment, and he’s compound fracture in a horrendous scene. Our concern shifts to the humanitarian, you know, life preservation, those kinds of things. And the accident becomes secondary.” The sheriff’s department also insisted that they won’t release anything else about the case, saying, “We are not releasing any further information at this time.” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.",-0.15881595848737776 "Egypt is scrambling to complete a new administrative capital east of Cairo in time to receive its first civil servants by July, the government confirmed this week. “The rate of completion of the first phase has passed 60 percent across all projects,” Khaled el-Husseiny, spokesman for the new capital, said this week. The Egyptian government plans to transfer its first batch of government ministers to the city by July and officially open the new administrative capital by the end of 2021 as part of a greater plan to alleviate congestion in Egypt’s nearby national capital, Cairo. The planned launches follow several pandemic-related delays and financial setbacks for Egypt’s new administrative capital. The Egyptian government planned to rely heavily upon the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) to fund the city’s construction when it first announced the venture in 2015. The Emirati funds fell through shortly afterward, however, forcing the Egyptian military and government to take on an estimated $25 billion cost to construct the capital’s first phase. Cairo also reached out to alternative foreign donors, including China, for additional off-budget funding. “Some international financing has been secured for rail links, and a $3 billion Chinese loan has helped fund the business district, built by China State Construction Engineering Corp (CSCEC),” Reuters reported on March 17. Egyptian Housing Minister Asem al-Gazzar announced on February 24 that “60 floors have been constructed thus far in the Iconic Tower, the tallest tower in Africa at 400 meters, in the New Administrative Capital’s central business district,” according to the Egyptian Independent. “The would-be 385-meter high 80-floor Iconic Tower is expected to be the tallest skyscraper in Egypt and Africa upon completion,” Xinhua, China’s official press agency, reported last January. “We have about 800 Egyptian engineers, 4,000 Egyptian workers, 800 Chinese engineers and 1,000 Chinese workers who are currently working in the project,” Chang Weicai, general manager of CSCEC Egypt, told Xinhua. He added that CSCEC had “cooperated with about 100 Egyptian local companies so far” to build the business district. Chang hailed the CSCEC’s collaboration with Egypt on its new administrative capital as a landmark project for China’s infrastructure-building Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which Egypt joined in 2016. “Egypt now has a golden chance for economic development, and the CBD [Central Business District] joint project embodies both China’s BRI and Egypt’s Vision 2030 for future development,” Chang said at the time. Reuters described more recent development in the city’s construction on Wednesday ahead of the capital’s upcoming launch. “At the heart of the city, workers are putting finishing touches to an avenue of ministries that echo the architecture of pharaonic temples and adjoin a raised Islamic complex, two domed parliament buildings, and a sprawling presidential compound,” the news agency relayed. “There will be a monorail passing through a business district where a 385-meter central tower is close to completion. Beyond, the contours of a 10 km [6 mile] park stretching to a giant mosque are taking shape.”",1.0316766579346768 "Egypt is scrambling to complete a new administrative capital east of Cairo in time to receive its first civil servants by July, the government confirmed this week. “The rate of completion of the first phase has passed 60 percent across all projects,” Khaled el-Husseiny, spokesman for the new capital, said this week. The Egyptian government plans to transfer its first batch of government ministers to the city by July and officially open the new administrative capital by the end of 2021 as part of a greater plan to alleviate congestion in Egypt’s nearby national capital, Cairo. The planned launches follow several pandemic-related delays and financial setbacks for Egypt’s new administrative capital. The Egyptian government planned to rely heavily upon the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) to fund the city’s construction when it first announced the venture in 2015. The Emirati funds fell through shortly afterward, however, forcing the Egyptian military and government to take on an estimated $25 billion cost to construct the capital’s first phase. Cairo also reached out to alternative foreign donors, including China, for additional off-budget funding. “Some international financing has been secured for rail links, and a $3 billion Chinese loan has helped fund the business district, built by China State Construction Engineering Corp (CSCEC),” Reuters reported on March 17. Egyptian Housing Minister Asem al-Gazzar announced on February 24 that “60 floors have been constructed thus far in the Iconic Tower, the tallest tower in Africa at 400 meters, in the New Administrative Capital’s central business district,” according to the Egyptian Independent. “The would-be 385-meter high 80-floor Iconic Tower is expected to be the tallest skyscraper in Egypt and Africa upon completion,” Xinhua, China’s official press agency, reported last January. “We have about 800 Egyptian engineers, 4,000 Egyptian workers, 800 Chinese engineers and 1,000 Chinese workers who are currently working in the project,” Chang Weicai, general manager of CSCEC Egypt, told Xinhua. He added that CSCEC had “cooperated with about 100 Egyptian local companies so far” to build the business district. Chang hailed the CSCEC’s collaboration with Egypt on its new administrative capital as a landmark project for China’s infrastructure-building Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which Egypt joined in 2016. “Egypt now has a golden chance for economic development, and the CBD [Central Business District] joint project embodies both China’s BRI and Egypt’s Vision 2030 for future development,” Chang said at the time. Reuters described more recent development in the city’s construction on Wednesday ahead of the capital’s upcoming launch. “At the heart of the city, workers are putting finishing touches to an avenue of ministries that echo the architecture of pharaonic temples and adjoin a raised Islamic complex, two domed parliament buildings, and a sprawling presidential compound,” the news agency relayed. “There will be a monorail passing through a business district where a 385-meter central tower is close to completion. Beyond, the contours of a 10 km [6 mile] park stretching to a giant mosque are taking shape.”",0.17906971306963304 "Tanzanian President John Magufuli has died at the age of 61 from a heart illness, Tanzanian Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan said on Wednesday. “Dear Tanzanians, it is sad to announce that today 17 March 2021 around 6:00 p.m. we lost our brave leader, President John Magufuli, who died from heart disease at Mzena hospital in Dar es Salaam where he was getting treatment,” Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan said during a state television broadcast on March 17. Tanzania will now enter a two-week national mourning period for Magufuli, the vice president added. BREAKING: Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli is dead. Vice president Samia Suluhu says Magufuli succumbed to heart disease in Dar Es Salaam #RIPMagufuli pic.twitter.com/h9fl8ZpHYQ — The African Voice (@teddyeugene) March 17, 2021 Magufuli was admitted to the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 6, Hassan said during her speech on Wednesday. The revelation puts to rest weeks of rumors surrounding Magufuli’s nearly three-week disappearance from the public eye since he was last seen on February 27 in Dar es Salaam during a ceremony at the Tanzanian State House. The Tanzanian government’s initial refusal to comment on the president’s whereabouts fueled speculation that he had fallen ill, with some alleging that he had contracted the Chinese coronavirus. Vice President Hassan seemed to make cryptic references to Magufuli’s illness on Monday during a speech marking the launch of a government project in Tanga, a town in Tanzania’s northeast. “It’s quite normal for a person’s body to be indisposed and contract the flu or develop a fever,” Hassan said on March 15, without clarifying to whom she referred. The vice president similarly acknowledged “rumors flying around” Tanzania during her speech, without specifying which rumors she referred to or what they claimed. “As Tanzanians, we must work together, be united and build our nation. Most of the rumors you hear don’t originate in Tanzania … they come from outside the country. I ask you to ignore them. If it’s about prayers, pray, but all in all, we should remain united and take Tanzania forward. We’re safe,” Hassan said. Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa claimed Magufuli was “safe” and working on March 12 while urging Tanzanians to “ignore fake news” concerning the president’s health status. “The prime minister asked Tanzanians to be calm because President John Magufuli is safe and he is going about his work,” the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation quoted Majaliwa as saying. Tanzanian security forces arrested at least four people for allegedly spreading “false information” about Magufuli’s health on social media in recent days, demonstrating the government’s desire to clamp down on speculation surrounding the head of state. Magufuli’s death on Wednesday comes just five months after he won a second five-year term as Tanzania’s president in October in a disputed election. Magufuli was first elected president of Tanzania in 2015 after the country’s left-wing ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, chose him to succeed former Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete. The former parliamentarian was nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for his aggressive leadership style, which saw him push through policies he championed despite opposition from government factions. Magufli’s policies surrounding the Chinese coronavirus pandemic – which included blanket refusals to force Tanzanians into lockdown or to wear sanitary masks, and an endorsement of alternative remedies for coronavirus, such as prayer and steam inhalation – contributed to fervid speculation over the past few weeks that the president had contracted coronavirus during his disappearance from the public eye.",0.9795202008133409 "House Democrats introduced a bill Tuesday that would repeal the Helms Amendment, forcing American taxpayers to fund abortions overseas. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D) introduced the bill, dubbed the Abortion Is Health Care Everywhere Act (H.R. 1670), that would repeal the Helms Amendment, a longstanding provision that has prohibited taxpayer funding of abortions abroad. “Unsafe abortion is a global health crisis,” Schakowsky tweeted, citing the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute which, she stated, “estimates the US could prevent 19 million unsafe abortions a year if it repealed the Helms Amendment.” It’s time to rescind this dangerous policy — for good. That is why I am a reintroducing the Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act #RepealHelms https://t.co/JrH4ekiebx — Jan Schakowsky (@janschakowsky) March 9, 2021 Shannon Kowalski, director of advocacy and policy at the International Women’s Health Coalition, told the leftwing Common Dreams the Helms Amendment is “a racist and colonial relic,” and added, “It’s time for people worldwide to be able to access comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services without interference from the U.S. government.” Today is National Abortion Provider Day in the US but we're also celebrating providers around the world! Access to abortion care is a human right, no matter where you live. RT if you agree. #CelebrateAbortionProviders pic.twitter.com/I4gUmnCpT3 — IWHC (@IntlWomen) March 10, 2021 However, in a statement to Breitbart News, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SFLA) and SFLAction, said the Democrats’ continued portrayal of pro-abortion legislation as “life-saving health care” is flawed. “If your version of health care kills people on purpose and risks the lives of others, you’re doing it wrong,” she asserted. “Abortion harms women as it ends preborn life and represents an offensive export to other nations, something the Helms Amendment helped prevent.” “America should be investing in life-affirming opportunity and true health care, not abortion, which represents a message of defeat and the implication that we want fewer people around the world to be born,” Hawkins added. Schakowsky joined her Democrat colleagues Reps. Marilyn Strickland (WA) and Diana DeGette (CO) in an op-ed at the Hill, in declaring America must “decolonize our global health systems.” “Abortion is health care, and the Helms Amendment has got to go,” the Democrats wrote, adding the longstanding provision “is nothing more than an attempt to control Black and Brown people all over the world by making it impossible for millions to access abortion.” The bill was first introduced in the House last year, but died in the Republican-led Senate. Now, Democrats see the opportunity to pass it in the Senate and have President Joe Biden sign it into law. Despite the insistence of the abortion industry, which profits from the procedure, and its Democrat political allies that forcing American taxpayers to fund the abortions of others is popular, two very recent national polls found the opposite is true. Results of a Marist/Knights of Columbus poll released in January found most Americans support restrictions on abortion and oppose the government spending their tax dollars on the procedure both within the country and overseas. The survey found 77 percent of Americans either “oppose” or “strongly oppose” the use of taxpayer funds for abortions overseas, an uptick of two percentage points from the 75 percent who responded similarly in the last two annual polls. Of those who oppose taxpayer funding of abortions abroad, 55 percent are Democrats, 95 percent are Republicans, and 85 percent are independents. Only 19 percent of Americans say they either “support” or “strongly support” taxpayer funding of abortions outside the U.S. Additionally, even among those who identify as “pro-choice,” 64 percent say they oppose the use of their tax dollars to support abortion overseas. Within the U.S., 58 percent of those surveyed say they oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, including 31 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of Republicans, and 65 percent of independents. The Marist Poll also found more than three-fourths of Americans (76 percent) back significant restrictions on abortion, including a majority who identify as “pro-choice.” “While the number of people who identify as ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ tends to fluctuate with the public debate, when given a broader choice of policy options, there is a strong consensus among Americans on abortion,” said Dr. Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll. “Survey results reveal support for abortion restrictions and an aversion for use of taxpayer funding for abortions abroad.” Another poll from SLFA’s Institute for Pro-Life Advancement found Millennials and Generation Z individuals (ages 18-34) are more pro-life than portrayed in mainstream and pop culture media. According to the survey, 48 percent of Americans in this age group oppose taxpayer-funded abortion within the U.S., while 53 percent oppose funding abortions abroad.",1.1573962172490164 "Armed members of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) killed at least 29 people after storming a church in East Welega, located in the Oromia region of central Ethiopia, last week, the Addis Standard reported on Tuesday. The attack took place on March 5 while local members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church were celebrating the start of a two-month fasting season, residents of Jarte Wereda village told the newspaper. OLA members stormed the village’s church and instantly killed its leader before marching at least 28 other church members to a local forest where they were executed. “Of the victims, 21 were women, including those carrying babies,” a local named Hussein told the Addis Standard. The bodies of three of the women were found with their babies lying beside them, according to Hussein, who was assigned by the village to recover the victims’ bodies from nearby Gerji forest on March 6. “One among the women was released according to eyewitnesses, and she is quoted as saying she escaped rape by telling her abductors that she was HIV/AIDS positive,” the newspaper reported, citing local resident accounts. Other witnesses confirmed the March 5 attack to Ethiopia’s Wazema radio station. Oromia is home to the Oromo people, who constitute roughly 35 percent of Ethiopia’s population and form the East African nation’s largest ethnic group. The Oromia Region is an official state in Ethiopia whose state capital, Addis Ababa, also serves as the national capital. The OLA is the former armed wing of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a separatist party that has long opposed a central Ethiopian federal authority. OLA broke off from the OLF in 2018 after current Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was elected to office. The militant group has carried out kidnappings and bomb attacks across western and southern Ethiopia, according to Ethiopian federal authorities. OLA militants killed at least 50 people in an attack on the East Welega village of Gawa Qanqa on November 1, local authorities said at the time. “Witnesses said dozens of men, women and children were killed, property looted and what the militants could not carry away, they set on fire,” Amnesty International reported. Survivors of the attack told the human rights organization “they had counted 54 bodies in a school compound where the militants gathered people who did not manage to flee, mainly women, children and the elderly, and killed them.” The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said up to 60 “armed and unarmed assailants” targeted members of the Amhara ethnic group, Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group, in the attack.",-0.7787137173156002 "Twin shipwrecks off the coast of Sfax, in eastern Tunisia, claimed the lives of at least 39 African migrants Tuesday including 9 women and 4 children. A spokesman for the Tunisian National Guard, Houcem Eddine Jebabli, said the mostly sub-Saharan migrants had set sail during the night aboard two makeshift boats in an effort to cross the perilous Strait of Sicily to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Both of the vessels sank, resulting in the mass drowning. The Tunisian Coast Guard was, however, able to rescue 165 survivors from the twin shipwrecks. Mr. Jebabli attributed the disaster to the poor condition of the boats and the fact they were overloaded beyond capacity. Migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea have risen since Italy indicated it was once again opening its ports to immigration. The number of Tunisian migrants landing on Italian shores jumped fivefold in 2020, to 13,000, Reuters reported. Last November, 2,462 irregular immigrants landed in Italy in the first five days of the month despite tight anti-coronavirus regulations. As of that date, 29,952 irregular migrants had arrived in Italy by sea since the beginning of 2020. By comparison, fewer than a third as many irregular migrants (9,944) had disembarked in Italy during the same period in 2019, when Italy had stricter immigration policies. After stepping down from his post as interior minister, the leader of Italy’s Lega party, Matteo Salvini, blamed the ensuing sharp increase in migrant sea deaths on the leftist government’s open-port policy. “These deaths are the results of do-gooders, of ‘there is room for everyone,’ of open ports, of renewed enthusiasm for the smugglers,” Salvini said in late 2019. “The number of landings has tripled. Those who allowed the ports to be reopened, do they mourn these dead people?” the party leader added. Meanwhile, rescue operations continue in search of any other survivors from Tuesday’s shipwrecks, said ministry spokesman Mohamed Zekri. Follow @tdwilliamsrome",0.12501542677806446 "Nigerians can now register online to receive a Chinese coronavirus vaccine, Nigeria’s government announced Monday, though Internet access remains scarce in the country, with less than half of Nigerians able use it. Citizens of Nigeria can now access a new online government platform that “captures data and schedules persons for COVID 19 [Chinese coronavirus] vaccination,” Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) said on March 1. The platform is known as the Electronic Management of Immunization Data (EMID) Registration Portal. Nigeria received 3,924,000 doses of a coronavirus vaccine developed by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and Oxford University on March 2. The shipment arrived in Abuja on Tuesday at no cost to the Nigerian government, as it was delivered courtesy of the World Health Organization’s COVAX Facility, a global initiative set up to distribute coronavirus vaccines to poorer nations. Nigeria’s National Hospital in Abuja will host the country’s first COVAX vaccination site, where the hospital’s staff will be among the first Nigerians to receive the free vaccine. “These staff would also be electronically registered in the Covid-19 [coronavirus] vaccine database and would receive their COVID-19 vaccination card which has a QR code that can be verified worldwide,” Faisal Shuaib, the executive director of Nigeria’s NPHCDA, told Nigeria’s Business Day on Tuesday. The NPHCDA announced its new online initiative to register Nigerians for the COVAX vaccines on Monday despite a recent report indicating that less than half of Nigerians have access to the internet. At least 60 percent of Nigeria’s population of 200 million are without internet access, the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard reported last February. “[O]nly 85.49 million Nigerians have internet access, some 42 percent of the total population. Additionally, only 27 million of those internet-enabled Nigerians have social media accounts that they run actively,” according to the newspaper. The dearth of internet access in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, appears to be representative of a general lack of online access across the African continent. “Africa has about 1.2 billion people. With 870 million without internet access, the continent only has about 400 million people connected to the internet,” according to Vanguard. Pew Research Center surveyed six sub-Saharan African countries in October 2018 and found that “a median of 41 percent … use the internet occasionally or own an internet-capable smartphone.” According to the research center, “Sub-Saharan Africa has a lower level of internet use than any other geographic region, ranging from a high of 59 percent in South Africa to a low of 25 percent in Tanzania.” By comparison, “89 percent of Americans said they use the internet” when responding to a January 2018 Pew Research Center survey. Internet access has become so vital to everyday life that the United Nations passed a nonbinding resolution in 2016 condemning the disruption of internet access as a violation of human rights.",1.2187491747259493 "ROME — At least 15 African migrants lost their lives Sunday in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya when their vessel capsized while attempting to cross the perilous Strait of Sicily to Italy. The Libyan Coast Guard managed to rescue 95 survivors of the shipwreck, bringing them back to the African coast. The international organization for migration (IOM) said that others may still be missing, since the rubber dinghy reportedly was carrying some 125 migrants when it embarked from the Libyan coastal town of Zawiya on Friday. “The IOM teams are now assisting the survivors, many of whom suffer from burns and hypothermia,” the organization stated. “At least 15 migrants drowned while 95 others were returned to shore by the coast guard today,” wrote IOM spokeswoman Safa Mhsehli on Twitter. “Tragedies and avoidable loss of life continue as a policy of silence and inaction persists.” “Last night 125 people called us on a raft off the coast #Libia,” wrote the open-borders NGO Alarm Phone on its Twitter feed Sunday. “They said the dinghy was deflating and there were people overboard. They asked for urgent help.” “They were 8km from the coast but the so-called Libyan coast guard does not intervene!” the NGO complained. “We have warned all the authorities but the so-called Libyan coast guard replied that it refuses to intervene,” the group said in a separate tweet. “As usual, the European and Libyan authorities prefer to let people die at sea than to get them to Europe. We demand immediate help for the 125 people.” After a similar occurrence last month, the leader of Italy’s Lega party, Matteo Salvini, sounded the alarm over growing numbers of illegal immigrants reaching Italy’s shores. “Five million legal immigrants in Italy, they are my brothers and sisters,” Salvini wrote on Twitter. “On the other hand, landings and illegal immigration generate problems. I believe that with Draghi we will be in harmony, the borders of Italy are the borders of Europe.” Salvini has been a harsh critic of NGOs operating in the Mediterranean Sea, accusing them of inducing migrants to undertake a dangerous journey by providing them with a free “taxi service” and of being complicit in the trafficking of persons. After he stepped down from his post as interior minister, Salvini blamed the ensuing sharp increase in migrant sea deaths on the leftist government’s open-port policy. “These deaths are the results of do-gooders, of ‘there is room for everyone,’ of open ports, of renewed enthusiasm for the smugglers,” Salvini said 2019. “The number of landings has tripled. Those who allowed the ports to be reopened, do they mourn these dead people?” the League party leader added. Sunday’s shipwreck was the latest along the Central Mediterranean migration route. Last week, international agencies said that at least 41 people had drowned when their boat capsized off Libya on February 20. According to IOM statistics, more than 20,000 people have died in the Mediterranean since 2014. Follow @tdwilliamsrome",-0.4662481738196925 "ROME — Kidnappers reportedly released over 300 schoolgirls in northwest Nigeria on Sunday after abducting them at their boarding school late Thursday night. Over 100 armed gunmen stormed the Jangebe secondary school in Zamfara state around midnight Thursday, carrying them off to a forest between Dangulbi and Sabon Birnin Banaga where they held the girls hostage until Sunday. According to Italy’s RAI News, the girls are now in the palace of the Emir of Anka and await transport to Gusau, the state capital. It is unclear at this point whether a ransom was paid to secure the girls’ release, but often in these cases the government has privately paid off the kidnappers. Vatican News reported that a Nigerian government official has confirmed reports of the girls’ release on national television, but other news services — including the BBC — have denied the reports, insisting the girls are still in captivity. The BBC cited Zamfara State Commissioner of Security and Home Affairs Abubakar Dauran in their denial of reports of the girls’ liberation. At noon Sunday, Pope Francis denounced the “vile abduction” of the schoolgirls, promising prayers and closeness to the families. “I join my voice with that of the Bishops of Nigeria to condemn the vile abduction of 317 girls, taken away from their school, to Jangebe, in the northwest of the country,” the pope said following his weekly Angelus prayer in Saint Peter’s Square. “I pray for these girls, that they may return home soon,” the pontiff continued. “I am close to their families and to the girls themselves.” The pope concluded by entrusting the safekeeping of the kidnapped girls to the Virgin Mary, inviting the pilgrims present in the square to join him in praying a Hail Mary for their safe return. As Breitbart News reported Friday, abductions of adolescents in central and northwestern Nigeria by “bandits” have become frequent. A similar attack took place on February 16 in a secondary school in Kagara, Niger state, where armed men abducted at least 27 students, a teacher, and six members of his family. In December, a group of bandits kidnapped 344 students in a boarding school in the town of Kankara, in the neighboring state of Katsina. The bandits released the teenagers after a week of captivity following negotiations with authorities. On February 9, the leader of the kidnappers, Awwalun Daudawa, turned himself in to the authorities in exchange for an amnesty agreement. Follow @tdwilliamsrome",-1.3948002973480518 "Eritrean troops fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region “killed hundreds of unarmed civilians” in the city of Axum in late November 2020, according to a report Amnesty International released Friday. Describing the alleged attack on November 28-29 as a “systematic” killing, the human rights organization said Eritrean troops opened fire on the streets of Axum and conducted “house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity.” Amnesty International interviewed 41 survivors and witnesses of the attack who “consistently described extrajudicial executions, indiscriminate shelling, and widespread looting” during the two-day assault on the city. Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by allied Eritrean troops, launched an offensive to seize control of Axum on November 19 as part of an ongoing military conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Addis Ababa. Ethiopian federal forces have been engaged in a military stand-off with the TPLF, a separatist group, since November 4, when the Ethiopian government accused TPLF forces of attacking a federal military base. Eritrean troops “unleashed the worst of the violence” on Axum from November 28-29, witnesses told Amnesty International. “The onslaught came directly after a small band of pro-Tigray People’s Liberation Front militiamen attacked the [Ethiopian federal] soldiers’ base on Mai Koho mountain on the morning of 28 November. The militiamen were armed with rifles and supported by residents brandishing improvised weapons — including sticks, knives, and stones,” according to some of the witnesses. “The Eritrean soldiers were trained but the young residents didn’t even know how to shoot … a lot of the [local] fighters started running away and dropped their weapons. The Eritrean soldiers came into the city and started killing randomly,” a 22-year-old male witness told the human rights group. “Eritrean forces deliberately and wantonly shot at civilians” from about 4:00 pm onwards on November 28, other witnesses and survivors of the onslaught told Amnesty International. “[T]he victims carried no weapons and many were running away from the soldiers when they were shot,” a number of Axum residents alleged. Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab said on February 26 that it had analyzed recent satellite images of Axum that “corroborated reports of indiscriminate shelling and mass looting” on November 28-29. The images also appeared to indicate the construction of new mass burial sites near two of Axum’s main Christian churches. “The evidence is compelling and points to a chilling conclusion. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops carried out multiple war crimes in their offensive to take control of Axum,” Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa, was quoted as saying in the report. “Eritrean troops went on a rampage and systematically killed hundreds of civilians in cold blood, which appears to constitute crimes against humanity,” he said.",-1.990900750890614 "Wearing masks and social distancing could go on for “years”, says Public Health England’s chief of immunisation. Dr Mary Ramsey claimed on Sunday that social distancing and other practices like wearing a face-covering would go on for “quite a long period of time”. “People have got used to those lower-level restrictions now, and people can live with them, and the economy can still go on with those less severe restrictions in place. “So I think certainly for a few years, at least until other parts of the world are as well vaccinated as we are, and the numbers have come down everywhere, that is when we may be able to go very gradually back to a more normal situation,” Dr Ramsey said, according to the BBC. “We have to look very carefully before any of these restrictions are lifted,” she added. Last month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a “roadmap” for coming out of lockdown, starting with schools reopening on March 8th and progressing through different phases until a complete reopening in the summer. While Prime Minister Johnson said he hoped lockdown could end by June 21st, he would make no promises to commit to that date. Delingpole: BoJo’s Dodgy Science Advisors Have Staged a ‘Covert Coup’ https://t.co/YqQQTdr0lp — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 20, 2021 Professor Jeremy Brown, a member of the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation (JCVI) claimed on Sky News on Sunday that “there will be a wave of infections crossing the country” if all restrictions are completely lifted too soon. Brown also said that “some degree of social distancing or protection is going to be required” until at least July, or infections will rise. The United Kingdom has administered at least one dose of vaccine to half of its adult population and is on track to vaccinate all adults by the end of July. In December, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said that even if vaccinated, wearing masks and frequent use of hand sanitiser could become habits that people maintain “for years”, and it “may be a good thing if they do”. The following month Van-Tam’s superior, Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, said there could be another lockdown next Christmas, and that “we might have to bring a few [restrictions] in next winter, for example. That is possible because winter will benefit the virus.” European Union Threatens to Block Export of up to 19 Million Vaccines to the UK https://t.co/KphV9DlPfu — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 21, 2021",3.1768735316316694 "Chinese state media on Thursday rushed to blame “the rising anti-Asian [crime] wave in the U.S.” on the “toxic political influence” of former President Donald Trump, who had the temerity to point out that the Wuhan coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China. “U.S. media that have ramped up their propaganda machine to disparage China in recent years, and pinpoint China as the origin of the COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] pandemic that has ravaged the world should also shoulder fair share of responsibility for instigating hatred towards Asian groups,” China’s state-run Global Times hissed. The Global Times struggled a bit to find an anti-Asian crime that could be plausibly pinned on someone who seems like they might have voted for Donald Trump, eventually settling on the case of “76-year-old Chinese-American woman Xie Xiaozhen,” who was “attacked in San Francisco by a white man in his 30s” on Wednesday. “San Francisco police did not disclose a motive behind the attack and it was not clear whether the victim’s race had anything to do with the assault. They are working to determine if racial discrimination was a factor,” the Communist newspaper noted. The Global Times found an anonymous Chinese-American living in New York City who said he has “been subjected to racist invectives from people here, thanks largely to Trump’s effort to deflect responsibility and blame China for his Covid-19 handling failure.” As the Biden administration discovered to its consternation when Chinese diplomats ambushed it with Democrat Party rhetoric in Alaska on Thursday, Chinese state media are a keen student of left-wing criticism of America. The Global Times remembered that, for its own political reasons, Democrats in 2020 were happy to endorse the Chinese Communist diktat that all mentions of the true origin of the coronavirus pandemic constitute anti-Asian racism: Trump had frequently railed against the “China virus” and “kung flu.” Yet his administration also instigated conflict among the world’s two largest economies — on trade, security and technology — and has propelled a growing number of Americans to regard China as the “greatest enemy” of the US, according to a Gallup poll this week. After the attack, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pointed out that the former US administration and certain politicians’ words and deeds contributed to US domestic hostility against Asian Americans. The Trump administration’s reckless behavior only ripped a hole in long- simmering racism and white supremacy, which was silenced by society’s mainstream “political correctness,” said Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University. Turning to U.S. media, the Global Times slammed the New York Times right along with Fox News as a fountain of anti-Chinese bigotry and tore into an Asian American journalist for perpetuating anti-Asian racism by daring to notice that China loves to use allegations of anti-Asian racism in its propaganda: One example would be Melissa Chan, an American journalist who works for Deutsche Welle, who came under the spotlight after she forwarded a Foreign Policy article “Anti-Asian Attacks Are Blighting the United States” on Twitter on Tuesday. She commented that “In addition to condemning anti-Asian attacks, these experts note that racism serves as propaganda gold for China which attempts ‘to portray itself as the head of the global Chinese diaspora.'” Her tweets have generated criticism. One of the replies to her tweet tagged Deutsche Welle, urging it to think twice while hiring “propagandists” like Chan. “How much more blood do you need to see to stop extremists from spreading more hate?” Another Global Times’ screed on Thursday dragged Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) into the dock because he “floated a conspiracy theory which suggested the virus was manufactured in a Chinese bioweapons facility in February last year,” and then blasted former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for saying there was “enormous” evidence to back up that theory. The “bioweapons facility” theory is a reference to the American officials referencing the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), known to be studying coronaviruses at the time of the initial outbreak in 2019. The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) – which has been eager to stay in Beijing’s good graces throughout the pandemic crisis – grudgingly admits the Chinese have refused to provide the data that could either prove or disprove the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Global Times dismissed every single documented allegation of CCP malfeasance as a false allegation concocted by anti-Chinese racists and political opportunists: Some Western media outlets and scholars, as well as some anti-China think tanks, also played an ugly role in fanning hate against Asian Americans. They spread rumors and stigmatize China over a broad scope of issues, such as the origins of the pandemic, the CPC leadership, affairs related to the governance in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, portraying China as an “evil state” that poses an “existential threat” to the US. Adrian Zenz, a German rumormonger, talked the lie of the century that China is committing “genocide” in Xinjiang, but his lies have been welcomed by US media. His lies often hit the headlines. Josh Rogin, an American journalist and a political analyst for CNN, groundlessly blamed China’s COVID-19 “cover-up” for why people are still missing the origins of the pandemic. Those accusations are groundless. But negatively influenced by those China-haters and their vile rhetoric against China, many Americans mistakenly believe China is the “culprit of the coronavirus” and a “threat,” unleashing a tsunami of hate, Sinophobia, xenophobia and scapegoating. As a result, the discrimination and violence against Asian Americans have seen a sharp rise. The Global Times wrapped up by threatening to hold the Biden administration responsible for any further anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States unless it displays “the vision and courage to reverse the propaganda war against China.” “Asian-Americans won’t be ‘silent lambs.’ Large ‘Asian Lives Matter’ protests may not be far away if hate crimes against them continue to occur,” the CCP paper predicted.",-0.3524387174312766 "Monday, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe reacted to Department of Justice prosecutor Michael Sherwin telling CBS “60 Minutes” he believes “facts do support” charges of sedition against some of the January 6 Capitol rioters. McCabe said he is “kind of shocked” some from the group that breached the Capitol building have not been charged with sedition already, given there is “abundant evidence.” “[S]edition is a federal crime that basically says anyone who seizes by force the property of the United States government or who impedes or blocks the execution of a U.S. law can be guilty of sedition,” McCabe outlined. “Now, in this case, the U.S. law would, of course, but the Constitution itself, which specifies the process upon which we certify the election of our United States president. So, quite frankly, John, to think that we don’t have abundant evidence of sedition here is amazing to me, and I’m kind of shocked that they haven’t charged some of these folks with sedition yet.” He added, “The fact we haven’t seen those charges yet is really remarkable, and it may be an indication that there’s more kind of legal debate about that within the Justice Department that we’re not aware of.” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent",0.14697045340159715 "President Iván Duque of Colombia, a self-proclaimed conservative and stern critic of Chinese allies in Latin America like Venezuela, allowed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping to broadcast a speech directly to the Colombian people Sunday. Xi addressed Colombia on the occasion of the arrival of 774,320 doses of “Coronavac,” a Chinese coronavirus vaccine developed by the Chinese firm Sinovac. Coronavac is believed to be the least effective of the vaccines and vaccine candidates against the Chinese coronavirus currently circulating on an international scale, testing at a 50-percent efficacy rate in preventing coronavirus infections compared to the over 90-percent success of American vaccines. The Chinese Communist Party has experienced significant success in selling “Coronavac” to Latin America, expanding into the markets of Chile and Brazil, the latter after conservative President Jair Bolsonaro initially canceled an order of Coronavac doses made by a state governor. Chile, which has relied heavily on Coronavac, is currently experiencing its most severe wave of coronavirus infections since the pandemic began despite widely outpacing vaccinations elsewhere in the continent. According to China’s Global Times state propaganda outlet, Xi used his address to the Colombian people to boast that, under self-proclaimed conservative leadership, China had risen to be Colombia’s second-largest trade partner, threatening to dominate the nation’s economy. “Xi said he hopes that the governments and peoples of the two countries will make joint efforts to strengthen friendly cooperation in various fields including the anti-pandemic fight, so as to elevate China-Colombia friendly cooperation to a new level from a new historical starting point and bring more benefits to the two peoples,” the Global Times reported. The vaccines arriving from China in Colombia on Saturday are the third shipment from Beijing. The details of the agreement for the vaccine distribution, including the exact price and other commitments, remain unclear at press time. Duque also made some remarks during the broadcast carrying Xi’s speech, thanking the Chinese Communist Party and Xi for his words and hoping that bilateral ties “grow stronger and more solid day by day, that they allow the free flow of information and good experience as well as scientific information.” Colombia has one of the highest rates of coronavirus infection in the world, having documented 2.3 million cases within its borders as of Monday. Doctors have determined 62,028 people have died as a result of coronavirus infections since the pandemic began in Colombia. “Coronavac” has become one of the world’s most administered coronavirus vaccines despite its poor performance. While the Chinese government attempted to claim that it was much more effective initially than studies ended up proving, the results of Phase III clinical trials in Brazil showed only a 50.38-percent efficacy rate in preventing infections. Chinese state media outlets defended the vaccine on the grounds that it was significantly more effective in preventing severe cases of coronavirus that require hospitalization and thus has the ability to save lives. The Sinovac product has been the backbone of Chile’s vaccination program, which as of last week has resulted in at least one-third of the nation’s population receiving at least one dose of a vaccine against the Chinese coronavirus. Chile is the most vaccinated country in Latin America has one of the highest rates of vaccination against coronavirus in the world. The country received 4 million doses of Coronavac in February. Despite the mass vaccination campaign, Chile’s rates of infection have skyrocketed in the past week, leading observers to describe it as undergoing a “far more aggressive” second wave with the vaccine than its first wave of cases when the pandemic began. Doctors confirmed 7,084 cases of coronavirus Saturday, the highest number of cases recorded in a single day in the country. The center-right government of Chile confirmed last week that it has contracted with the American company Pfizer to import 150,000 doses of its coronavirus vaccine. Pfizer’s vaccine tested at a 95-percent efficiency rate in preventing coronavirus infections. Chile, a country of about 19 million, has documented 931,939 cases of Chinese coronavirus since the pandemic began and 22,279 deaths. Brazil, whose Butantan Institute hosted clinical studies for Coronavac, has documented the second-highest number of Chinese coronavirus cases in the world, not counting for mounting evidence that suggests rogue states like China, Russia, and Iran have grossly underestimated the number of cases within their borders. Nearly 12 million people have tested positive for coronavirus in Brazil and nearly 300,000 have died. Despite repeatedly insisting he would not import vaccine candidates from China, President Jair Bolsonaro announced in January that his government had contracted with Sinovac, the company that makes Coronavac, to mass import ingredients to make the vaccine at home. Bolsonaro added that his country had also contracted with the Swedish company Astra-Zeneca for ingredients to make its vaccine, now under scrutiny after mounting concerns about blood clots. “I appreciate the sensibility of the Chinese government, as well as the effort of the ministers of [the Foreign Ministry], [Foreign Minister] Ernesto Araujo, [Health Minister] Eduardo Pazuello, and [Agriculture Minister] Tereza Cristina [Corrêa da Costa Dias],” Bolsonaro said in a statement on Twitter. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.",-1.4415232063962093 "Former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, President Joe Biden’s pick to be Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), faces opposition over her anti-Israel record, including fateful lame-duck vote in 2016 to abstain from a UN Security Council Resolution declaring the Israeli presence in Jerusalem illegal, allowing it to pass. Traditionally, the U.S. had vetoed such resolutions. But on his way out the door, President Barack Obama — who had long sought to create distance between the U.S. and Israel, and to pressure Israel into concessions to the Palestinians — allowed anti-Israel forces to prevail. In her speech explaining the administration’s vote, Power claimed that the administration was following established U.S. policy against Israeli settlements in the territories won during the 1967 war. But the text of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 went beyond U.S. policy, condemning the Jewish presence in the Old City of Jerusalem. President-elect Trump opposed the Obama administration’s actions. Once in office, he went on to reaffirm the legitimacy of Israel’s presence in the Old City, and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, defying the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Power has also made a number of anti-Israel statements over the years, including a suggestion in 2002 that the U.S. support a peacekeeping force to protect the Palestinians, which she made while hinting at opposition from a “domestic constituency.” The Zionist Organization of America, the country’s oldest pro-Israel organization, issued a statement Friday opposing Power, citing her “abominable, anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Iran record,” noting that President Biden had elevated the USAID post to include a seat on the National Security Council (NSC), and that she would have influence on foreign policy there. Power has been a controversial figure for years. She was booted off Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign for referring to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Obama’s rival, as a “monster.” Renowned as a scholarly expert on genocide, Power presided over Obama’s “Atrocities Prevention Board” during the mass murder of civilians in Syria, and did nothing. In her UN post, she was caught up in the controversy over “unmasking” American citizens who were caught up in surveillance of foreigners — a practice that led to the leaking of the name of then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to the media. In the aftermath of 2016, Power emerged again as a vehement partisan, criticizing the Trump administration in vicious terms. Her shock and disappointment at Trump’s victory in 2016 was documented in the HBO documentary The Final Year. Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new novel, Joubert Park, tells the story of a Jewish family in South Africa at the dawn of the apartheid era. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, recounts the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.",0.4827066989084336 "VERSAILLES, France (AP) – Ikea’s French subsidiary and several of its executives are set to go on trial Monday over accusations that they illegally spied on employees and customers. Trade unions reported the furniture and home goods company to French authorities in 2012, accusing it of collecting personal data by fraudulent means and the illicit disclosure of personal information. The unions specifically alleged that Ikea France had paid to gain access to police files that had information about targeted individuals. Ikea France denied spying on anyone, but Sweden-based Ikea fired four executives in France after French prosecutors opened a criminal probe in 2012. One accusation alleged that Ikea France used unauthorized data to try to catch an employee who had claimed unemployment benefits but drove a Porsche. Another says the subsidiary investigated an employee’s criminal record to determine how the employee was able to own a BMW on a low income. Customers the company was in a dispute with also allegedly had their personal information inappropriately accessed. The former head of Ikea France’s risk management department, Jean-François Paris, acknowledged to French judges that 530,000 to 630,000 euros a year ($633,000 to $753,000) were earmarked for such investigations. Paris, who is among those accused, said his department was responsible for handling it. Former Ikea France CEOs Jean-Louis Baillot and Stefan Vanoverbeke, and former Chief Financial Officer Dariusz Rychert and store managers are also going on trial. IKEA Store Manager Charged For Firing Christian Employee Over LGBT Remarks https://t.co/wsMwcM8kC6 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 28, 2020 If convicted, the two ex-CEOs face sentences of up to 10 years in prison and fines of 750,000 euros. Ikea France faces a maximum penalty of 3.75 million euros. The trial is scheduled to last until April 2nd. The company also faces potential damages from civil lawsuits filed by unions and 74 employees. Ikea France is a subsidiary of Swedish furniture giant Ikea. which in 2012 said it was cooperating with French judicial authorities and had adopted procedures to prevent illegal activity. “It would appear inconceivable that a company of this size, with several stores in different countries, would not be aware of the illegality of the private data available to it,” investigating judges involved in the case said. In France, Ikea employs more than 10,000 people in 34 stores, an e-commerce site and a customer support centre. First it Was Gun Control, Now It's KNIFE Control – IKEA Stops Selling Knives After Stabbing http://t.co/4Qi3oPoGKP pic.twitter.com/XuvrWNK6Ah — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 12, 2015",-0.15785190353097447 "A pizza deliveryman in the notorious sex crime hotspot of Rotherham, Yorkshire, attacked one woman and tried to kidnap six others in a single day. 30-year-old Shamaz Ali, of Clough Road, approached a number of women on the streets of Rotherham in his vehicle and attempted to abduct them, according to reports. The women said his “behaviour seemed bizarre” and attempted to abduct them and a test conducted after Ali’s arrest showed he was significantly over the drink driving limit at the time of the offences. Defence lawyer Tim Savage claimed he was “given something to drink and was not aware what it was” prior to his attacks. Ali could not “recall [having] any sinister intent” but only feeling afraid, it was claimed in Sheffield Crown Court, with Savage emphasising that he had performed work as “a pizza deliveryman for years, apparently without any problems”. Judge Paul Thomas QC appeared to give some credence to Ali’s defence, asking for pre-sentence reports and saying of his crime spree: “It’s all very odd.” Ali, who pleaded guilty to six counts of attempted kidnap, one count of assault with intent to resist lawful apprehension, and one count of being over the drink driving limit, will now be remanded in custody prior to sentencing for his crimes in April.",-1.2706628570964815 "ROME — Pope Francis called out the Mafia Sunday for enriching themselves through corruption during the coronavirus pandemic. Today in Italy “we celebrate the Day of remembrance and commitment in memory of the innocent victims of the mafia,” the pope said following his weekly Angelus prayer. “The Mafia are present in various parts of the world and, exploiting the pandemic; they are enriching themselves through corruption.” “Saint John Paul II denounced their ‘culture of death,’ and Benedict XVI condemned them as ‘ways of death,” the pontiff added. “These structures of sin, Mafia structures, contrary to Christ’s Gospel, exchange faith with idolatry,” he said. “Today let us remember all the victims and let us renew our commitment against the Mafia.” As his predecessors did before him, Francis has condemned the mafia in the severest of terms, saying in 2014 that their members engage in the “the adoration of evil” and are therefore “excommunicated.” “Those who follow this evil path in life, such as members of the Mafia, are not in communion with God; they are excommunicated!” the pope said during a trip to Cassano allo Ionio in Italy’s southern Calabria region. “This evil must be fought; it must be cast out! One must say ‘no’ to it!” he said, calling the local crime organization, the ‘Ndrangheta, a manifestation of the “adoration of evil and contempt for the common good” and said the Church would fight to combat organized crime. “Our kids demand it, our youth, in need of hope, demand it. Faith can help empower us to respond to these needs,” he said. The following year, the pope compared abortionists to members of the Mafia, insisting they follow the code of the Mafia, who “take out” a person when he gets in their way. “No problem is solved by taking out a person. Never, ever. That is the code of the Mafia: ‘There’s a problem, let’s take this guy out.’ Never,” Francis said. “The degree of progress of a civilization is measured by its ability to protect life, especially in its most fragile stages,” he said. Follow @tdwilliamsrome",-1.2178402237798605 "Border Patrol agents in the Texas Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended more than 2,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border in a single day last week. A Border Patrol commander in the nation’s busiest human smuggling sector says his agents apprehended more than 34,000 migrants so far this month. “RGV agents remained busy on Thursday, apprehending over 2000 illegal aliens,” Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings tweeted. “Thursday’s encounters pushed RGV’s weekly total over 10K apprehensions! March monthly totals are now over 34K for #RGV Sector alone.” RGV agents remained busy on Thursday, apprehending over 2000 illegal aliens. Thursday’s encounters pushed RGV’s weekly total over 10K apprehensions! March monthly totals are now over 34K for #RGV Sector alone.#crossingyourborders pic.twitter.com/nga2wgBI6A — Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings (@USBPChiefRGV) March 19, 2021 Hastings’ tweet comes just two days after he tweeted his agents apprehended 19 large groups of more than 100 migrants since the beginning of the year. No end in sight as large groups continue entering in the #RGV. In 48 hrs, agents arrested 369 illegal aliens mainly consisting of family members and UACs in 4 separate groups. This year, agents have encountered 19 groups of 100 or more people illegally entering the US. pic.twitter.com/GjPZ473XeK — Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings (@USBPChiefRGV) March 18, 2021 The number of migrants apprehended after illegally crossing the border from Mexico skyrocketed during President Joe Biden’s first full month in office. In the five Border Patrol sectors headquartered in Texas, agents apprehended more than 64,000 migrants in February. This represents a 27 percent increase over January, Breitbart Texas reported. Nationally, Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants who illegally crossed the southwest border into the United States in February — the highest February since 2006. After being overwhelmed, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, Biden administration officials began a policy to release migrant families apprehended after a brief interview process. The migrant families are being released without a Notice to Appear before an immigration court, Breitbart Texas’ Randy Clark reported on Sunday morning. In February, Rio Grande Valley Sector agents apprehended 10,489 Family Unit Aliens, according to the Southwest Border Land Encounters report. It is not clear from Chief Hastings’ tweet how many of March’s more than 34,000 migrant apprehensions were family units.",-1.3314994262047812 "A bar in Finland hiring hundreds of customers as employees, allowing them to eat and drink at the bar as staff, has not yet been found in violation of lockdown rules. In the southern town of Imatra, Bar Q said it would be turning into a staff-only restaurant and hiring 500 employees. The Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland has said they will be keeping an eye on the bar, but so far, it has not broken any laws. Senior Officer Markus Leivonen from the Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland said, according to broadcaster Yle, that his agency had been in contact with police but admitted, “based on media information, it seems that it is legal”. The report also revealed that police in southern Finland have received calls from members of the public regarding activity in local bars and restaurants. Over the past week, they have carried out 33 visits. Delingpole: Italian Restaurants Open in Mass Protest at Lockdown Rules https://t.co/OvWuGMkk6Z — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 17, 2021 Chief Inspector Jukka Lankinen from the Southeast Finland Police also noted that some restaurant and bar owners were spying on each other and reporting each other for lockdown violations, a phenomenon that Lankinen had noticed from as early as the spring of last year. While some businesses such as Bar Q have looked for loopholes to remain in business, many other company owners in Europe and North America have rebelled against the lockdown restrictions entirely. In Italy, as many as 50,000 restaurants opened their doors to protest the lockdowns under the #IoApro (#IOpen) hashtag on social media in January. Earlier that month in the Polish town of Zakopane, a similar rebellion saw hundreds of businesses vowing to reopen despite government lockdown restrictions. Architect Sebastian Pitoń led the movement in the town, which is heavily dependent on tourism, and argued that the lockdowns were “destroy[ing] Poland and Polishness”.",0.5803258241884065 "The European Union may block the export of up to 19 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, as the bloc continues to struggle to innoculate its population. In comments published on Saturday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen threatened to seize control of the production of the AstraZeneca jab if the British-Swedish pharma company does not prioritise European contracts ahead of others. “We have the possibility to forbid planned exports. That is the message to AstraZeneca: You fulfil your contract with Europe before you start delivering to other countries,” von der Leyen said, per DW. “I cannot justify to European citizens why we export millions of vaccine doses to countries that produce vaccines themselves — and from whom nothing comes back,” the Commission president said, adding: “And I can barely justify exports to countries that have a much higher vaccination rate and far fewer infections than the EU.” Brussels has claimed that the pharmaceutical giant has only delivered 30 per cent of the vaccines promised to the EU, while nine million doses have been shipped from European factories to the UK and a further one million doses to the United States. The bloc was three months behind Britain in signing contracts for the vaccine, according to AstraZeneca’s CEO, significantly delaying the European vaccine rollout. The United Kingdom is expected to receive some 19 million doses of the vaccine over the coming weeks; however, those vaccines are produced in Europe. A senior British government official said that the move would be illegal, telling the Mail on Sunday: “The reality is our contract with AstraZeneca is rock-solid and better than the EU’s, and we’re only getting what we helped to develop and pay for.” Earlier this month, the Italian government became the first EU member-state to ban the export of vaccines, blocking a shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca jab intended for Australia. Ms von der Leyen later warned that Italy’s action was “not a one-off“, predicting other EU countries will follow suit in seizing vaccine supplies. The pronouncement came after false accusations from eurocrats that Britain was blocking exports of the AstraZeneca jab. The EU has attempted to block vax exports to Britain, accused UK of blocking exports, acknowledged that UK hasn’t actually banned the export of vaccines, before immediately again implying the UK wasn’t exporting after all. That claim was repeated today. https://t.co/amBeLny96g — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 17, 2021 On Thursday, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said that in banning vaccine export, the EU had shown its true colours, saying: “For years I said the European Union was the new communism… Now they have proved it by seizing the means of production.” The president of the Institute for the World Economy (IFW), Gabriel Felbermayr, also criticised Europe’s protectionist tactics, telling Reuters that “export bans are a very bad idea”. “For the production of vaccines, we in the EU are heavily dependent on imports from other countries. It is impossible to imagine what would happen if the trading partners for their part restrict the export of critical preliminary products,” Felbermayr explained. “Instead of protectionism, we need cross-border cooperation in order to resolve the bottlenecks as quickly as possible,” he added. In response to the EU’s expected export bans, British ministers are said to be drawing up plans to ramp up vaccine production in the UK in order to mollify shortfalls from Europe, according to The Telegraph. “There is a lot of domestic production already. We are always looking at ways we can increase vaccine production in the UK. The Government is looking at ways vaccine supplies can be increased all the time,” a Downing Street source told the newspaper. A cabinet minister added: “The EU has monumentally ballsed this up. Madness! And then to play games and have a pop at AstraZeneca through bitterness and opportunism. And now it’s coming back to bite them because they cannot get their population to take it. We will be the only coronavirus free country in Europe in August or September.” To date, major European powers France, Germany, and Italy have only been able to vaccinate around 12 per cent of their respective populations. Countries across the EU have also begun reimposing strict coronavirus lockdown measures amid rising cases on the continent. Farage: ‘Nasty, Vindictive’ EU Threats on Vaccines Shows UK Was Right to Vote Leave https://t.co/MbxRxsJ0v8 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 27, 2021 Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka",0.0754649793881409 "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged if he wins Tuesday’s elections, he will launch direct flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia to ease the journey for Muslim Israelis making the Hajj pilgrimage to the holy site. “I’m going to bring you direct flights from Tel Aviv to Mecca,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 13 according to a translation of his remarks by the Jerusalem Post. According to the report, Netanyahu’s comments suggested a fifth normalization deal with the Gulf kingdom was in the offing. The so-called Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration, saw four Arab Muslim states — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — establish ties with Israel in recent months. Speculation has been rife that Saudi Arabia is next on the list although Riyadh has denied the rumors. Several other Muslim-majority nations, including Indonesia and Mauritania, are thought to be in talks about normalizing relations with Israel. Netanyahu also repeated a pledge made last week that Israel would sign normalization deals with four more countries in the region. “I brought… four peace agreements, and there are another four on the way,” he said. “I pledged to take care of the citizens of Israel and I do so with a deep sense of mission,” he added. While Saudi Arabia has remained reticent about establishing ties, in September it announced it would reverse its longstanding policy barring Israeli flights from using its airspace. In a Facebook post in November, Netanyahu first made the promise that he would “create direct flights from Tel Aviv to Mecca for the benefit of Muslim pilgrims who are fulfilling the Hajj.” He later deleted the Hebrew and Arabic language post. There are currently no flights into Mecca and most pilgrims arrive via Jeddah or Medina. Muslim Arab Israelis who wish to visit Mecca are issued temporary Jordanian passports and make the connecting flight via Amman in Jordan. Netanyahu’s proposal could either signal that Saudi Arabia would now allow people to enter on their Israeli passports, or cut out the connection in Amman, or both.",1.9633024359236224 "The Biden administration led over 150 other countries in a statement Friday that positively recalled the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism — a meeting in Durban, South Africa, marred by antisemitism and radical anti-Israel rhetoric. The Durban conference is widely remembered as one of the lowest points in the history of the United Nations, an event at which efforts to combat racism were hijacked by countries and activists hostile to Israel in an explicitly antisemitic way. This author personally covered the conference as a stringer for the left-wing American magazine Colorlines and witnessed the overt antisemitism of the conference, as well as daily clashes between anti-Israel groups and a handful of Jewish students. Activists once hoped the Durban conference would be an opportunity to celebrate South Africa’s emergence from apartheid, and to address the worldwide legacy of black slavery. But the conference — which included a prepatory gathering in Iran — was dominated by an anti-Israel agenda. In addition, radical activists disseminated antisemitic propaganda and even broke up a meeting that was to have discussed antisemitism as one of the forms of bigotry the NGO forum should address. The declaration of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Durban was so viciously anti-Israel — singling out Israel and comparing it to apartheid South Africa — that it was rejected outright by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. However, the main declaration adopted by the Durban conference was also problematic. It singled out Israel for criticism and described the Palestinians under the heading “victims of racism,” claiming falsely that they lived under “foreign occupation.” The Durban declaration revived the old, rejected Cold War-era libel that “Zionism is racism,” an idea pushed at the UN by the Soviet Union in U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, which was repealed by the UN after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. “The Durban Declaration encourages the hatred of Jews,” said Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and president of Human Rights Voices, in a statement Friday to the UN Human Rights Council. “Everyone who was there at its creation (as I was) knows that. Antisemites manufacture tools to spread intolerance by manipulating current events, appropriating the history of others, inverting right and wrong. Durban is such a tool.” In the U.S., both parties joined in rejecting the Durban conference, though activists on the left were disappointed by the decision by then-President George W. Bush to withdraw, claiming the U.S. was avoiding dealing with slavery. In 2009, a bipartisan resolution criticizing the Durban review conference in Geneva, Switzerland (known as Durban II) passed the Democrat-run House. The U.S. boycotted Durban II, as well as a 10th anniversary event in 2011 in New York, known as Durban III. In 2020, the Trump administration voted against the overall United Nations budget, partly because it included funds to commemorate the 2001 Durban conference. President Donald Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which had become little more than an anti-Israel forum and welcomed autocratic regimes as members. But President Joe Biden decided last month to “re-engage” and rejoin the Human Rights Council. And on Friday, March 19, the U.S. led over 150 countries in drafting and approving a statement on racial discrimination that cited the 2001 Durban declaration as a positive precedent to guide efforts to combat racism. U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Lisa Peterson said: “Recalling the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, we are committed to working within our nations and with the international community to address and combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, while upholding freedom of expression.” In a preamble, the State Department added that the U.S. was “proud to have led” in the adoption of the Friday statement. Breitbart News reached out to the State Department for comment but received an out-of-office reply from the press liaison. The U.N. is expected to commemorate the Durban conference in “Durban IV” in September at its new session in New York. However, Bayefsky warned: “Durban IV is one more attempt to turn the fight against racism into a fight against Jews. “It needs to be shunned. Not celebrated or commemorated. Not fully implemented or reaffirmed. To combat racism: stay away.” Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.",1.258814701197635 "The Biden administration is planning a “reset” with the Palestinians after the relationship crumbled under former President Donald Trump, according to an internal State Department memo. The memo, titled “The US Palestinian Reset and the Path Forward,” is still in an early “working stage” draft, according to the United Arab Emirates-based newspaper The National. The memo, which was given to Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month, would form the basis for rolling back parts of Trump’s policies, two sources familiar with the matter said. Drafted by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr, the plan includes a $15 million aid package in COVID-related humanitarian aid for the Palestinians and supports a return to the two-state solution. “As we reset US relations with the Palestinians, the Palestinian body politic is at an inflection point as it moves towards its first elections in 15 years. At the same time, we [the US] suffer from a lack of connective tissue following the 2018 closure of the PLO office in Washington and refusal of Palestinian Authority leadership to directly engage with our embassy to Israel,” the memo reads. The memo says the U.S. vision hopes “to advance freedom, security, and prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians in the immediate term which is important in its own right, but also as means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution.” The Biden Administration’s approach will return to past formulas, with the two-state solution “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees,” the memo said. The Biden reset plan also calls for the resumption of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The Trump administration cut aid to the U.N. agency over allegations of corruption and incitement.",0.9497909605255712 "A takeaway worker who stalked and sexually assaulted a woman on the street at night was allowed to walk out of court a free man after his defence argued that he was “the sole earner” in his family and jailing him “would have a significant impact”. Twenty-three-year-old Javed Miah, of Lees Street in Shaw, attacked his victim in Oldham around 9 o’clock at night on December 11th, 2018, having first followed her through the street for some time and asked her for the time, the Manchester Evening News reported this week. However, defence lawyer Saul Comish told Tameside Magistrates’ Court that the ambush had been “quite opportunistic” and that as a married man “in employment at a takeaway” with a young child and as “the sole earner for his family”, a prison term “would have a significant impact”. Khan's London: No Prison for Woman Who Shoved 'White B*tch' Into Path of Bus https://t.co/RpL6OHJOfE — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 13, 2021 Recounting the night of the attack, prosecutor Peter Conroy had told the court that the victim ”noticed there was a male walking behind her, and he bumped into her. Her right shoulder hurt and she lost her breath because of fear that she did not know what the defendant was going to do.” What Miah went on to do, after following her for another minute, was close the distance between them and grope her. Conroy said the young woman “was shocked and frightened” and “told him it was not right for him to do this. He had his arms around her chest and then the next thing she knew, she was on the floor on top of him. He lifted his right hand towards her crotch and started to move her hand up towards her chest. “She said ‘my mind froze, I was in total shock’. She managed to get out her mobile phone and use the SOS function to call 999. This let out a loud beeping sound and this forced him to instantly let go and run away down an alleyway. She had said nothing to him to warrant giving him any right of doing this.” ‘Refugee’ Spared Prison After Strangling, Sexually Assaulting Woman in Maidstone, Kent https://t.co/bp7SwnNpdH — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 22, 2018 In a victim impact statement, the assaulted woman told the court that “Since the assault, I have not been able to leave the house or work.” She said: “I do not know if he knows my route to work. I am scared to walk anywhere. I will have to rely on my friends or family to drive me to work out of fear.” But sentencing judge David Quarnby, despite conceding that “this was a cowardly and sustained attack on a young woman late at night,” decided to leave the predator at large, handing him a sentence of just six months and suspending it for two years– meaning he will only have to serve it, in part, if he commits further offences within a two-year period. Miah will also be placed on the Sex Offenders Register — although only for seven years — and required to pay a small £213 fee in costs, and perform some unpaid work. Judge Blocks Deportation of Migrant Double Rapist Because of Poor Healthcare in Somalia https://t.co/F5TzJY7l09 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 14, 2021 Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBM ontgomery",-1.3599607536237652 "The Greek area of Idomeni, which lies along the border with North Macedonia, is again becoming a hotspot for migrants looking to travel the Balkan route to Western Europe. Idomeni had seen as many as 8,000 migrants gather to cross the border into North Macedonia in 2016, following the height of the migrant crisis in 2015. Reports now claim the number of migrants is increasing rapidly once again. The North Macedonian authorities are said to have returned as many as 300 migrants to Greece on Tuesday alone after they attempted to cross into the country illegally, Greek newspaper Proto Thema reports. Violence has also been seen in the area of the old Idomeni migrant camp in recent days, as well. According to the newspaper, groups of mainly Afghan and Pakistani migrants were involved in bloody clashes on Monday. Police presence is said to be nearly non-existent, as the three police vehicles used to patrol the area have been diverted to tackling Wuhan coronavirus violations, instead. “We have a problem again, especially now that we don’t have police cars. They come to Idomeni by train and on foot and wait hidden in the fields for the opportunity to cross the fence,” a local community leader said. WATCH: ‘Worst Ever’ Riots Erupt At Greek Border Migrant Camp https://t.co/lJEVzk13av pic.twitter.com/U9vM9DZECa — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 20, 2016 “Many of the people who have been in the area for days have started to go hungry, resulting in constant thefts. They break into houses, sit in the vineyards, and throw stones at the owners while trying to break through the fence to cross into the other country,” the community leader added. In 2016, the Idomeni area saw thousands of migrants camp and make an attempt to break through the border into North Macedonia, often aided by pro-migrant activists. In March of that year, pro-migrant activists attempted to lead asylum seekers across a nearby swollen river, resulting in three migrants dying while trying to cross. Media had reported at the time that migrants were given maps before the march on the border that had falsely claimed the river was dry.",0.9719950210865952 "‘Immigrants welcome; law-abiding citizens not so much.’ Perhaps this should be the new motto of the UK Home Office which seems to be taking a very weird turn of direction under its supposedly Thatcherite Home Secretary Priti Patel. As Exhibit A, consider the Home Office’s latest Tweet: We've now resettled over , since 2015 through the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. And today, we're announcing £14m of support to refugees here in the UK with English language & employment support. pic.twitter.com/VfblBIYaUq — Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) March 18, 2021 Wait? What? This reads like something from a parallel universe, where Labour, not Boris Johnson’s ‘Conservatives’ won the general election and mass immigration was being implemented unchecked. Britain’s problem with integrating Syrian refugees — if that is indeed what they are: many will have destroyed their passports to hide their true origins — date back many years. Back in the days when such statistics were available, for instance, the Sun reported that ‘hundreds of Syrians in Britain were arrested last year for a string of offences including rape, death threats and child abuse.’ But let’s suppose that every one of those 20,000 ‘refugees’ the government boasts of is a blameless doctor/nurse/top surgeon/World-Cup-winning striker – what on earth is the UK doing depriving Syria of its most energetic talent? As Professor Paul Collier wrote in the Spectator at the height of the Syrian conflict in 2015, the rightful place of Syrians is in their homeland Syria. Providing a skilled minority of Syrians with dream lives in Europe is not the answer: it would be detrimental to recovery because once settled in Europe, with their children in schooling, such people would be unlikely to go back to a post-conflict society. In consequence, it would gut Syria of the very people it will most need. It is an intellectually lazy feel-good policy for the bien‑pensant. And this isn’t the view of some blimpish little Englander. Collier is a lefty academic, with whom I disagree on a lot of issues. But in this case, he is bang on. Mass immigration isn’t just bad for the people already living in the host country; it’s even worse for the immigrants who end up stuck in a climate they’re not used to and forced to adopt a new language and new cultural values. The war in Syria is more or less over, so much so that Denmark is now sending Syrian migrants home. It’s time for the country to rebuild itself – and the only people who can do that are Syrians. Immigration is a huge issue with Conservative voters, especially in the Red Wall constituencies of the Midlands and the North, not least because working-class voters are at the sharp end and experience the downsides of mass migration sooner and more strongly than middle-class ones. You might have imagined, as a consequence, that this ‘Conservative’ government would be keen to get a grip on the problem. Instead, as Breitbart has often reported, the government’s response has been woeful. Here is a report from earlier this month: Home Office figures revealed that some 10,373 foreign criminals have been released from prison yet have so far skirted deportation — meaning the number of foreign national offenders living in British communities has hit the highest level in recorded history. Here is another from January, headlined ‘UK Deportations Fell 79 per cent Last Year, Despite Promises’. Figures reported on by The Sun reveal that the number of deportations fell dramatically last year, however, compared to the 5,322 deported in 2019. The number of removals was also just twenty per cent of the ten-year average of 5,405 per year. Commenting on the failure of the government to keep its promises, the Migration Watch UK think tank said: “It’s all very well for the Home Secretary to talk tough, but the fact is the number of foreign national offenders being removed over the last few years has plummeted.” What IS going on? It’s not as though Priti Patel’s Home Office isn’t capable of being incredibly tough when it wants to be – such as its recent, scarily totalitarian decision effectively to abolish the right to protest. But maybe this is all part of a super-subtle strategy: make Britain such an unpleasant, overregulated police state that no immigrant would dream of wanting to come here when they can stay somewhere much more tranquil and benign and free like West Africa, the Middle East or Afghanistan… It’s a cunning plan and it might just work. Certainly, increasing numbers of us are looking abroad at what we used to think of fly-blown foreign hellholes and musing: ‘Well it could hardly be any worse than Boris Johnson’s Britain…’",-1.0890086734394109 "Greek churches in Thessaloniki have been accused of making secret lists of worshipers to help them get around Wuhan coronavirus restrictions and kiss church icons. Greek Orthodox clergy have been accused of allowing parishioners to enter churches through side doors in order to allow them to kiss icons in the Orthodox practice of veneration. Health experts have asked worshipers to kiss the air near the icons, instead. According to a report from the Greek newspaper Proto Thema, the churches have made lists of parishioners to be allowed to venerate the icons in person and participate in the ceremony for the first Friday of Lent in the Orthodox church. Ioannis Kumis, Professor of Pulmonology and Infectious Diseases at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, said he was concerned over the trend, saying: “The [church] hierarchy in 2021 says that ‘you must go’ to the churches. It’s something that worries me. There’s no reason for that to happen.” Greek Church Rebels and Rejects Government Lockdown Measures https://t.co/fZsW8VJceQ — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 5, 2021 When asked if the churches could potentially spread the Wuhan coronavirus, he added: “It may be smaller than other sources, but it is something we can easily stop, but instead we do not stop it.” The Greek Orthodox church has pushed back against Wuhan coronavirus lockdown restrictions imposed by the government since earlier this year when the Holy Synod announced it would be keeping churches open. Earlier this month, the Orthodox Church of Cyprus also rebelled against coronavirus restrictions, saying it would continue to hold divine liturgy to anyone who wished to participate. “Attendance is voluntary. No one is forced. If some people feel that they want to stay away at this time, they are free to do so”, the Cypriot church said in a statement. In other countries, resistance by religious figures has been met with government force, such as in Canada, where Alberta pastor James Coates was imprisoned for holding church services that violated health orders. Church of Cyprus Refuses to Cancel Masses over Coronavirus https://t.co/TknnU4lndd via @BreitbartNews — Thomas D. Williams, PhD (@tdwilliamsrome) March 12, 2020 Earlier this week, it had been announced that Pastor Coates would be released from jail as early as Friday, and most of the charges against him would be dropped.",1.1009187739879855 "Looking forward to your summer holiday? Well, it may not happen if Neil Ferguson (aka Professor Pantsdown) gets his way. The disgraced computer modeller from Imperial College has been warning on BBC radio about yet another deadly COVID-19 variant. According to the Daily Mail: Professor Ferguson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Perhaps of more concern for the UK though is that some countries are notably seeing a significant fraction, five to 10 per cent of cases, of the South African variant. “When infection levels go up in France, to 30,000 cases a day, that implies there’s at least 1,500 to 2,000 cases a day of the South African variant. That is the variant we really do want to keep out of the UK.” He added that “important decisions” were coming up, including whether or not No 10 can relax international travel restrictions to Europe. Neil Ferguson was on the Today programme this morning to raise the alarm about the new South African variant. He's like Freddy Krueger: every time you think you've seen the back of him, he pops back up. https://t.co/1QHwgvWsZT — Toby Young (@toadmeister) March 19, 2021 Yet again, it’s starting to look like Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s airy promises about re-opening Britain for summer are going to be undermined by scientific advisors and his SAGE committee. Which shouldn’t surprise anybody who has been paying attention: it’s the unelected, democratically unaccountable members of SAGE (and the related committee NERVTAG) who are really running the country right now. Indeed, as reporter Sonia Elijah has written in an investigative series for Conservative Woman, SAGE has effectively conducted a “covert coup”. She writes: On March 25, 2020, the Coronavirus Act received Royal Assent having been fast-tracked through Parliament in four working days. The Act contained emergency powers to enable public bodies to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, or SAGE, and its sub-committees became the de facto leader of the operation. This was the point at which the UK ceased to be governed by elected representatives. To this day, SAGE do not answer to the public – they don’t even answer to the government. They ‘advise’ the government on all things Covid, and the government is then led by the ‘data’ to implement the most draconian restrictions on freedom in our nation’s history. SAGE are accountable to no-one. In my opinion, SAGE have staged a covert coup and hardly anybody has taken notice, let alone the mainstream media. Elijah goes on to list alleged vested interests of the SAGE committee’s membership. If you take a closer look at the key ‘experts’, they have all had connections in some way with either Big Pharma, Big Tech or the Big NGOs, such as GAVI-The Vaccine Alliance, World Health Organisation, World Economic Forum, World Bank, Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Many have had their research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. In fact, the UK is the biggest beneficiary of university grants given by the Gates Foundation with $744million disbursed to 38 universities, the top beneficiaries being Imperial College London, University College London, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LHSTM), King’s College London and Oxford University. Of course, it’s not in itself surprising that government advisors in the fields of epidemiology and virology should have links to Big Pharma. What hasn’t, perhaps, received sufficient scrutiny is just how cosy these relationships seem to be. Take Professor Jonathan Van Tam — or ‘JVT’, as Boris Johnson likes to refer to him at press briefings, as if this science bureaucrat with terrifying freedom-sapping, economy-destroying powers at his disposal is actually just our lovely mate whom we can trust totally to look after our interests. Elijah then states in her report: Van-Tam chaired the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) expert advisory group on H5N1 vaccines and advised the WHO during the H5N1 influenza (bird flu) outbreak in 2009- 2010. The WHO in turn triggered countries around the world, including the UK, to buy enormous quantities of the drug oseltamivir (brand name: Tamiflu) produced by the pharmaceutical companies Roche and GSK, former employers of Van-Tam. Yet Tamiflu was a stupendous waste of money: The BBC ran an article stating that ‘hundreds of millions of pounds may have been wasted on a drug for flu that works no better than paracetamol, a landmark analysis has said’. This was based on The Cochrane Collaboration (a global non-profit organisation of 14,000 academics) review on Tamiflu. Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, University of Oxford, stated that the side effects of Tamiflu ‘included serious psychiatric adverse events, renal and metabolic adverse events’. You could be forgiven for imagining that the main criteria for being on the SAGE committee were a) possible vested interests and b) a track record of failure. On this score, mind you, Van Tam must be counted an amateur when compared with the absolute master of the art — the aforementioned Neil Ferguson who so spectacularly failed to uphold his own rules and public duty in the interest of meeting his mistress. As we have often had cause to remark — here, here, here, and here — few “experts” can be worse suited to dictating Britain’s healthcare and lockdown policy than a computer modeller (not an epidemiologist or a virologist but a physicist who doesn’t even have Biology at O-level) with a track record of getting all his predictions outrageously wrong, dating back at least to the Foot and Mouth epidemic of 2001. If people like Van Tam and Ferguson were wreaking havoc in science academe, they would be dangerous enough. But it’s worse, much worse than that: they are the de facto government of the United Kingdom. Yet, unlike real government ministers, they cannot be voted out of office by the public — nor, it seems, are they getting anything but the most cursory scrutiny by the mainstream media, which invariably greets their edicts with unquestioning acceptance and fawning gratitude. Elijah quotes a letter to the British Medical Journal by a GP Anne Mc Closkey: Governments were advised in this course of action by scientists and medics whose identity, qualifications and aptitude for this work was largely hidden from public scrutiny. Even now, the conflicts of interest of these people on whose advice our futures depend are not publicly available. Indeed. And who could not agree with Elijah’s conclusion?",-0.29713210935341294 "An academic belonging to the British government’s influential scientific panel has said that another wave of coronavirus is “likely”, while Europe’s alleged pending third wave could threaten Britons’ ability to go on holiday abroad this summer. Government scientists reportedly fear that a rising number of coronavirus cases on mainland Europe, dubbed the third wave, could head to the UK within weeks, according to The Times. Professor Andrew Hayward of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) also told Times Radio on Saturday that another wave is “still likely” despite the success of the vaccine rollout, but it would, however, be less deadly. The University College London scientist said, according to YorkshireLive: “I think another wave is possible, likely even. “I guess the difference is that another wave will cause substantially fewer deaths and hospitalisations because of high levels of vaccination across the sorts of people who would have ended up in hospital or unfortunately dying if they haven’t been vaccinated. Among Vaccine Woes, Europe Goes Into Lockdown… Again https://t.co/KU7tgRxWOw — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 20, 2021 “So the consequences of another wave are less. I think the challenge is of course we don’t know exactly how much less.” Professor Hayward also said it was “very worrying” for Europe to be moving into a “third wave” of Chinese coronavirus. He signalled that Europe’s third wave could impact on travel to the continent, continuing: “Obviously it has implications on travel, I think, and what we plan for doing with that, because these waves of infection will tend to last for several months really before they get back down to low levels. “But unless there’s much travel between the countries it shouldn’t directly impact us.” Government and scientific sources told The Times that they believe that it is doubtful there will be holidays to Europe in late spring or even summer. Papers Please: European Union Unveils Coronavirus Vaccine Passport Scheme https://t.co/PTk0Q6GNC2 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 18, 2021 Dr Michael Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “international travel this summer is, for the average holidaymaker, sadly I think, extremely unlikely.” While Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said it was “too early to tell” if vacationing abroad would be allowed for Britons. From earlier this month, Britons were told they must fill out a form declaring why their travel overseas is valid, as international travel is still prohibited for holidays or other non-essential purposes. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s current roadmap out of lockdown gives May 17th as the earliest Britons could holiday overseas.",-1.3698359227060843 "Italian media erupted with anger after it was revealed that a French museum would be scrapping Roman numerals at exhibits after claims that fewer people can understand them. The Musée Carnavalet, the oldest City of Paris museum, announced earlier this week that it would be scrapping Roman numerals from exhibits, after stating that it would be easier for visitors to understand Arabic numerals, instead. Italian media reacted angrily to the move, with Massimo Gramellini, writer and vice-director of the newspaper Corriere Della Sera, writing: “This story of Roman numerals represents a perfect synthesis of the ongoing cultural catastrophe: first, things are not taught, then, we eliminate them so that those who don’t know them won’t feel uncomfortable.” Le Figaro reports that Luciano Canfora, a professor of classics at the University of Bari, blamed “political correctness” for the move, which he called a “general scourge”. “It would be desirable to have a law imposing compulsory illiteracy and the return to only oral communication,” Professor Canfora sarcastically wrote in the Corriere della Sera. “The controversy: Louis XIV will become Louis 14,” wrote Rome’s Il Messaggero. France Closes Louvre Museum Over Coronavirus Fears https://t.co/Y7mm1Pgi17 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 2, 2020 Noémie Giard, head of visitor services at the museum, explained the move to Le Figaro, saying: “We are not against Roman numerals, but they can be an obstacle to understanding.” Ms Giard added: “We have all noted that few visitors read the texts in the galleries, especially if they are too long. They tend to jump from one to another and pick at them. How often have we seen parents reading explanations intended for children.” The use of Roman numerals has also sturred debate in the United States in the past in regard to the National Football League’s (NFL) championship game, the Super Bowl. In 2011, the Washington Post published an opinion article calling for an end to the practice of using Roman numerals, stating the system was too difficult — but did advocate for the continued use of Roman numerals for “movies and Popes”. The Musée Carnavalet is not the only Parisian museum to make headlines in recent days. Last week, France’s National Museum of the History of Immigration head Pap Ndiaye called on the country to confront its colonial past following last year’s Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests.",0.2876320161169231 "Nigel Farage has speculated that the case of a woman murdered and dismembered in Exeter is receiving little attention compared to Sarah Everard because the suspect is a migrant and the killing does not help the “anti-police” agenda. “A 32-year-old woman goes missing. After an extensive police search her body is found. It’s been dismembered into seven different pieces. Some of it is found in the back streets of the city, the rest in nearby woodland. “And yet, for this young woman, there’ve been no big demonstrations; no torchlit parades; no anti-police protests; no demands that men have to change their ways and change their behaviour — in fact, you’ve never ever heard of her name,” suggested the now-former Reform UK party leader, in a video message to followers titled, “Why won’t the mainstream media talk about this?” The victim’s name, he explained, was Lorraine Cox, contrasting the lack of media interest in her death to the intense interest in the death of Sarah Everard — who has been the subject of protests and vigils which “will lead undoubtedly to more legislation”, Farage believes. One reason for this, Farage speculated, is that the British media’s focus is “so London centric” that it tends to treat incidents in London, like Ms Everard’s death, as if they “matter more” than things that happen “out in the provinces” as with Ms Cox’s death in Exeter, Devon. “But there’s a deeper part to this story,” Farage said, pointing out that the person currently on trial for Ms Cox’s death — Farage stressed that the case should not be prejudged, as he has not been convicted of any crime at this time — is “a failed asylum seeker who’d come to this country from Iraq”. The suspect in Ms Everard’s death — who is also innocent unless and until he is proven guilty, Farage noted — on the other hand, is “a white male in his forties with a shaved head… and even better for those who wanted to make political capital out of Sarah Everard’s death, he was a serving police officer.” This, Farage suggested, made the Everard suspect “an ideal person” for activists “to be seen to be protesting against” — while the Cox suspect, given his migration background, “would have been, for many on the Marxist side of politics, too difficult, and too inconvenient” to highlight. Don’t play along with this anti-police agenda. Don't let the marxists take you for a ride. Don't defund the police. pic.twitter.com/I0Jobb53wA — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) March 18, 2021 Farage highlighted comments by one of Sarah Everard’s acquaintances that the protests around her death had been “hijacked”, saying they were “turning into anti-police demonstrations”. “[B]ehind it all are exactly the same people who are behind the protests after the death of George Floyd,” Farage accused. “Remember, they said it was about racial justice after George Floyd had died, but actually we know that the Black Lives Matter protest was a deeply Marxist organisation intent on defunding the police and bringing down Western society, bringing down capitalism, bringing down the whole world structure as we know it — and the same thing is happening here,” he claimed. Farage continued: “This has been hijacked; it’s the same people as last time… It’s now been taken over by Marxists intent on fighting this big campaign against the police.” To strengthen his argument, Farage highlighted the fact that Sir Winston Churchill’s statue — as during successive Black Lives Matter demonstrations — has been defaced with graffiti branding him “racist”, with the Battle of Britain war memorial also being vandalised. “I don’t think Cressida Dick is fit for purpose as head of the [Metropolitan Police]… but [while] I might be critical of individual actions or individual officers in the police, but I know the vast majority of men and women serving in our police forces are doing their absolute level best to maintain law and order on our streets and their morale is sinking to a low,” he added. “We must not allow the horrible murder [of Sarah Everard] on Clapham Common to be turned into an anti-police movement, and frankly an anti-men movement too,” he concluded. Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBM ontgomery",-1.1655807896385533 "GOP Sen. Mike Crapo has opened the Senate’s door to a huge agricultural amnesty that would replace many American farmworkers with an international pipeline that delivers cheap, compliant foreign workers to agriculture companies plus many new voters to Democrats. The announcement from Crapo came one day after Democrats and lobbyists won just 30 GOP votes for the House version of the amnesty — down from 34 GOP votes in 2019. “House passage of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act is an important step toward bringing certainty to our country’s agriculture industry and the hard-working producers and farmworkers,” a statement read from Crapo and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who was an original sponsor of the 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty that cost the Democrats five Senate seats in 2014. Three of the four GOP co-sponsors are no longer in the Senate. The statement continued: “We will work together to introduce companion legislation in the U.S. Senate that appropriately addresses the needs of both the industry and the farmworkers that uphold it.” The announcement indicates pro-amnesty groups are working hard behind the scenes to secretly sign up GOP senators for various amnesty, migration, and visa-worker bills. When ready, the bills — and their Senate supporters — may be combined to give the Democrats at least 10 GOP votes for a huge amnesty bill that would lock in the coastal Democrats’ political dominance — and allow them to ignore pleas from small red states — for many years. Crapo’s office did not respond to questions from Breitbart News. Last week, Breitbart News revealed that Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has drafted an amnesty plan. Other GOP Senators are talking up a deal. On November 19, for example, retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) suggested he could back a deal. On a visit to the border with President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, Portman told Fox News: We also talked to some of the people who they apprehended, and they all told me the same thing, which is they can make a lot more money here in this country than they can back home. That’s understandable, but we have a legal system to be able to do that. That increase is something we’ve got to deal with. We’ve got to change some of the rules, but also we’ve got to help the Border Patrol to do their job. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is currently opening up many side doors in the nation’s immigration laws and is encouraging a huge wave of poor migrants to enter Americans’ national labor market, housing market, and K-12 schools. 30 GOP Reps voted for the farm amnesty & cheap-labor bill, down from 34 votes in 2019, amid more biz pressure. The bill would turn much of rural US into low-wage company towns. But the main goal is to entice rural GOP Sens into a comprehensive amnesty.https://t.co/gmtX06biZv — Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) March 19, 2021 The agriculture bill was drafted in 2019 as a corporatist swap — cheap, compliant imported labor for the farm industry in exchange for imported votes for Democrats. The bill would amnesty at least 1 million hardworking but illegally present farmworkers — plus their families — most of whom are expected to vote for Democrats. If the process is poorly monitored, like the 1986 amnesty was, many migrants would be tempted to get green cards by fraud. Farm companies expect the amnestied workers to move to cities and towns. So, the bill allows farm companies to replace the the amnestied workers with an unlimited supply of imported, low-wage H-2A visa workers for a very wide variety of farm and food-industry jobs. The bill would cut wages for the H-2A workers, but it allows the farm companies to pay their H-2A foreign workers with bonuses of 40,000 family-packets of Americans’ green cards each year. “The bill implements a wage freeze for the year 2020 [for 250,000 H-2A visa workers],” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said in November 2019 after the bill was drafted. She described the corporatist swap, saying: This is a very important matter for employers, [and] wages are expected to increase by another seven to eight percent next year. Under this bill, those wage increases won’t happen. … These are significant wage reforms — a recent report by the CATO institute found that the bill, if enacted, would have saved farmers $324 million in labor expenses in 2019 alone. “I would prefer that these wage concessions were not in the bill,” Lofgren said. “It is a compromise that allows additional [migrant] people to come in to meet the growing [worker] needs of our agriculture sector.” The nation’s farm industry includes at least 1 million illegal farmworkers, many of whom survive on short-term contracts, such as stoop-labor harvesting and fruit picking. But the industry also includes at least 1 million American farmworkers — including many legal immigrants — who often operate productivity-maximizing machines at farms or food processing facilities. Those American farmworkers could be sidelined when farm companies can hire an endless supply of underpaid, rightless, disposable, temporary H-2A workers. “It is just another scheme for the United States government to provide perpetual cheap, immobile agricultural labor [so farm companies] can extract as much profit as possible, to disincentivize any form of technological developments in the agricultural sector, and to continue to reward the bad actors that hire illegal aliens,” said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. The agriculture amnesty will also hurt many young Idahoans by creating a “serfdom” economy in rural states, he said. “The reliance on cheap foreign agricultural workers is a serfdom economy, and it basically is a message saying, ‘Americans need not apply,'” he said. The bill would transfer many skilled jobs from Americans — including legal immigrants — over to cheap H-2A visa workers, he said. The loss of jobs will force young people out and drain payroll spending and tax receipts in many towns, he said: If you have no jobs in your community, all you’re going to do is get up and leave … There will be an absolute max out — this is the latest example of the seduction of perceived short-term gain and missing the big, long-term costs. This is going to create a decaying of these state and local economies. What the [amnesty supporters] are really doing is they’re destroying their constituents, they’re destroying their communities, they’re destroying their economy, and they’re destroying their political power. Many farms are already using the H-2A program to import skilled foreign workers for jobs that would be eagerly filled by well-paid American machine operators. “The South African workers we’ve brought over differ from some of the employees we’ve had in the past in that they are dependable,” South Dakota farmer Mike Brosnan told Hayandforage.com, adding: They always show up on time and hardly complain about anything. They’re here to earn money, and they know how to hustle. There’s always an exception out there, but most of them have a very good work ethic. The mega-amnesty pushed by Democrats on January 20 has distracted the media and voters from the harms that could be caused by the Democrats’ other draft amnesties, such as the farm bill or proposed amnesty for at least 2 million illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States by illegal-migrant parents, Law said. “It was so outrageous that what it has now done is made the smaller amnesties look reasonable in comparison.” “It makes no sense why any Republican would want to sign on to the Democrat amnesty proposal right now,” said Law. “It would render Republicans — and particularly those from the rural states –completely powerless because no-one [in Congress] will have any care about what they have to say ever again. If they approve the amnesties, they will be selling away their entire influence to get nothing meaningful out of it.” Aided by President Donald Trump’s lower-immigration policies, farmworker wages have been rising in recent years. The wage raises are pressuring companies to invest in high-tech farming gear that maximizes productivity, reduces waste, and minimize the environmental impact of farming: Fruit companies also stepped up investment in fruit-picking technology:",0.2264570808664079 "During a recent discussion on the invite-only app Clubhouse, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once again expressed his displeasure over Apple’s upcoming privacy update that will give users more info about the apps that track them. CNET reports that during a recent discussion on the invite-only audio app Clubhouse, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his displeasure over an upcoming Apple privacy update that will prompt users to give apps permission to track their activity across other apps and the web. On Thursday, Zuckerberg stated in a digital Clubhouse room meeting that the update could harm small businesses and developers more than Facebook. Zuckerberg stated: The reality is is that I’m confident that we’re gonna be able to manage through that situation well and we’ll be in a good position. I think it’s possible that we may even be in a stronger position if Apple’s changes encourage more businesses to conduct commerce on our platforms. Facebook isn’t the only company unhappy with this move, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek was also part of the Clubhouse room. Spotify has previously filed an antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Commission in 2019 over Apple taking a 30 percent cut from all in-app purchases. Ek stated: “My view is that this is very damaging, not only to Spotify, but the entire kind of broader ecosystem of app developers and creators and this is also why we filed the formal complaint.” Zuckerberg added that Facebook had “to go back and forth for a long time with Apple” to stop the company from taking a cut from a news product that Facebook built. “I do think that this is a big issue,” he said. Read more at CNET here. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com",-1.411332158510023 "According to a recent report, Facebook is developing a new version of Instagram aimed at children under the age of 13. BuzzFeed News reports that following a recent update to Instagram that restricts direct messaging between teenagers and adults, Facebook is considering releasing a new Instagram app aimed specifically at children under the age of 13. The new platform is reportedly mentioned in an internal company post seen by BuzzFeed News. Instagram VP of Product Vishal Shah states in the memo: We will be building a new youth pillar within the Community Product Group to focus on two things: (a) accelerating our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens and (b) building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time. Currently, children under the age of 13 are prohibited from using Instagram entirely. Instagram even features a support page for reporting profiles of children under 13 using the platform, however, Facebook is now attempting to draw more younger users to the platform. A recent update to Instagram’s safety policies stated that it will use new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to monitor younger users’ accounts, reportedly with the aim to help keep teenagers “safer” and apply “age-appropriate” features to their accounts. The app will prompt teen users to be more cautious about interacting with people via direct messages through safety notices. The prompts will notify teens when an adult who “has been exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior” is interacting with them via direct message. An example given is if an adult Instagram user is sending a large number of friend requests or messages to users under 18, Instagram will alert the recipients and give them an option to close the conversation, block, report, or restrict their interactions with the adult user. Read more about Facebook’s new child-focused Instagram app at BuzzFeed News here. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com",0.29128219881691847 "The FCC has fined two Texas telemarketers $225 million for making roughly 1 billion robocalls, bothering people across the United States. The companies — which have received the largest fine in FCC history — “illegally spoofed, to sell short-term, limited duration health insurance plans,” according to the FCC. “The robocalls falsely claimed to offer health insurance plans from well-known health insurance companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cigna,” the agency added. “John C. Spiller and Jakob A. Mears transmitted the spoofed robocalls across the country during the first four and-a-half months of 2019,” the FCC said, adding that Spiller admitted to making “millions of spoofed calls per day and knowingly called consumers on the Do Not Call list as he believed that it was more profitable to target these consumers.” Spiller and Mears had used the business names “Rising Eagle” and “JSquared Telecom.” “Rising Eagle made the calls on behalf of clients, the largest of which, Health Advisors of America, was sued by the Missouri Attorney General for telemarketing violations in February 2019,” the agency added. According to the FCC, “a large portion” of the more than 23.6 million “unwelcome” health insurance robocalls came from Rising Eagle. “Beginning in 2018, there was an increase in consumer complaints and robocall traffic related to health insurance and other health care products, with approximately 23.6 million health insurance robocalls crossing the networks of the four largest wireless carriers each day,” the FCC said. “Rising Eagle originated a large portion of this unwelcome robocall traffic.” “The Truth in Caller ID Act prohibits manipulating caller ID information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value,” the agency added. “The FCC’s investigation found that the Rising Eagle spoofed its robocalls to deceive consumers and caused at least one company whose caller IDs were spoofed to become overwhelmed with angry call-backs from aggrieved consumers.” You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.",0.18437717264868342 "During an interview aired on Thursday’s “MSNBC Live,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reacted to concerns that corporations will raise prices if taxes on corporations are increased by stating that President Joe Biden believes people “know that corporations do not need to raise the cost of goods in order to pay more taxes and pay more of their fair share.” Host Hallie Jackson asked, “Of course, he could only do so much if corporations end up raising prices on things if they end up having a tax hike as well, right?” Psaki responded, “He also believes that the American people are smart. They’re invested in this. They’re going to pay attention and that they know that corporations do not need to raise the cost of goods in order to pay more taxes and pay more of their fair share.” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett",-0.809026122955501 "Twenty-One Republican Attorneys General filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration Wednesday Over the suspension of the Keystone XL pipeline. The twenty-one Attorneys Genera,l led by Ken Paxton (TX) and Austin Knudsen (MT), filed the suit against President Biden in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in response to his executive order in January that stopped the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition to Texas and Montana, the suit is joined by 19 other attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The complaint alleged that “This Administration has sought to leverage its power regarding U.S. foreign policy to unilaterally contradict Congress’s stated domestic policy regarding one of the most significant energy projects in a generation: the Keystone XL Pipeline. This he may not do.” Knudsen said in a press release: The power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce belongs to Congress – not the President. This is another example of Joe Biden overstepping his constitutional role to the detriment of Montanans. There is not even a perceived environmental benefit to his actions – his attempt to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline is an empty virtue signal to his wealthy coastal elite donors. Knudsen added, canceling the pipeline shows the disrespect Biden has “for rural communities in Montana and other states along the pipeline’s path that would benefit from and support the project.” The complaint continues: Within hours of taking office, President Biden issued an Executive Order that purports to revoke the permit on the grounds that he has ‘an ambitious plan’ to ‘reduce harmful emissions and create good clean-energy jobs’ and that this completed pipeline would ‘not be consistent with [his] Administration’s economic and climate imperatives.’ The order itself relies on a permit provision that purports to allow such revocation by agreement from the Company holding the permit. But it cites no statutory or other authorization permitting the President to change energy policy as set by Congress in this manner. Revocation of the Keystone XL pipeline permits is a regulation of interstate and international commerce, which can only be accomplished as any other statute can: through the process of bicamerlism and presentment. The President lacks the power to enact his “ambitious plan” to reshape the ecconomy in defienace of Congress’s unwillingless to do so. Paxton said: His decision to revoke the pipeline permit is not only unlawful but will also devastate the livelihoods of thousands of workers, their families, and their communities. This administration continues to tout imaginary green-energy jobs, without any recognition that their actions in the real world will make it impossible for hard-working Americans to put food on the table. As reported previously by Breitbart News, the job loss, some estimates project, will leave up to 70,000 Americans out of work. Trump had issued the presidential permit authorizing work on the pipeline. The permit created thousands of U.S. jobs, directly and indirectly. The case is Texas v. Biden, No. 3:21-cv-65 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.",-0.5842814360601136 "Business and ethnic lobby pressure ensured that all Democrats — plus nine GOP members — voted for a huge amnesty bill that provides no offsetting benefits to working Americans. The giveaway to migrants, businesses, and Democrats passed 228 to 197, marking a comfortable win for a high-priority Democrat agenda item. The bill, H.R. 6, is titled “The Dream and Promise Act,” and it would provide a quick amnesty to several million migrants who have been brought to the United States as children by their illegal immigrant parents. It would also deliver green cards to several hundred thousand foreigners who were given “Temporary Protected Status” or “Deferred Enforced Departure” status. Progressives hope the amnesty bill will give them a political lock over Texas, Florida, and other states, so pushing the GOP and its supporters into a long-term subordinate status. The bill was supported by nine of 206 GOP members, despite a pressure campaign by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). But the relatively small number of GOP supporters will minimize pressure on the 50 GOP Senators to vote for the citizenship giveaway. The nine GOP members are: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) Rep. Chris Smith (D-N.J) Rep. Carolos Gimenez (R-FL) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) In 2019, seven GOP members vote for a similar amnesty bill, including Newshouse. He is an orchard owner in an agriculture district where the many employers rely on migrant labor. Valadao is also from an agriculture district and narrowly won his election in 2020. Bacon’s district includes a growing population of immigrants, including former illegal migrants who took jobs in the state’s low-tech meatpacking plants. In 2020, Bacon won with a four-point margin — but President Joe Biden also won a majority of votes in the district. Salazar is also pushing an amnesty and cheap labor bill in cooperation with Newhouse, Diaz-Balart, Upton, Valadao, and a few other GOP members. The Democrats’ amnesty bill echos the progressive view that America is not a homeland for American citizens, but is instead only an idea, or only a “Nation of Immigrants,” that is open to any foreigner, regardless of what ordinary Americans prefer. The view is increasingly pushed by wealthy Americans, in part, because it boosts their stock market wealth with additional cheap workers, consumers, and renters. For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to legal migration, labor migration, and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim. The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.",0.9013788586330166 "An estimated 4.4 million illegal aliens of the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States could get amnesty under a Democrat plan passed in the House on Thursday. The Democrats’ H.R. 6, known as the “American Dream and Promise Act of 2021,” will go before the House for a vote — providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, allowing them to legally enter the U.S. labor market as nearly 17 million Americans remain jobless. The analysis, conducted by the Migration Policy Institute, estimates that about 2.5 million illegal aliens considered eligible for former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and nearly 400,000 foreign nationals on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) would be put on a path to obtaining green cards and American citizenship thanks to the plan. All 218 House Democrats voted to support the amnesty with nine House Republicans joining them, including: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) Apple CEO Tim Cook, the architect of the multinational corporation’s China outsourcing scheme, urged lawmakers to pass the amnesty to benefit hundreds of illegal aliens who work for the tech conglomerate. The American Dream and Promise Act is a promise fulfilled for the over 450 Dreamers at Apple and those across this country. We urge Congress to pass legislation to provide certainty for Dreamers who rightly claim America as their home. — Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 18, 2021 Already, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants a year and awards them green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas to work in the U.S. annually while hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens arrive at the southern border. The amnesty is widely opposed by Republican voters and conservatives, as well as majorities of working class voters and swing voters. The latest Rasmussen Reports found that 56 percent of college dropouts said they opposed the amnesty along with 54 percent of voters with only a high school diploma. Among Republicans, 72 percent said they oppose the amnesty and conservatives said by a 77 percent majority that they oppose the amnesty. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has repeatedly noted that mass immigration cuts Americans’ wages. In 2013, CBO analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for the American workers. A 2020 CBO analysis stated that “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.” John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.",0.003850041008335548 "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has come out against the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), a bill that would allow Big Media companies to form cartels that would otherwise be illegal under antitrust law, in order to pressure Big Tech companies for favorable treatment. The digital rights non-profit warned that the bill would empower “media near-monopolies,” not independent journalists, a position shared by this author. Via the EFF: Leaving aside the detours, the real subject of the hearing was the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would give an exemption to publishers and broadcasters from antitrust laws, allowing them to form a unified bloc for negotiations with tech companies. The idea is that news media is struggling—present tense. The problem is that news media has struggled, past tense. Allowing this exemption will not bring back the papers that have been shut down, the journalists who have been laid off, or unwind the media mergers that have occurred in the meantime. It does not answer the question of why the hedge funds, private equity ghouls, and giant media near-monopolies should get to reap the benefits of this new exemption when they have already benefitted from Big Tech’s ad takeover, snapping up and gutting news outlets at bargain prices. It does not propose a way to stop these companies from using whatever is negotiated under this exemption as a jumping-off point for their own negotiations. Media consolidation is reaching its zenith. As is Big Tech power. Even as part of a larger package, this proposal won’t do what it is meant to. Instead, Congress should focus its attention on making the sweeping changes to antitrust law we so desperately need. Figure out how to curb these oligopolies’ power. Think beyond just breaking them up to what regulations will prevent this from happening again. The EFF’s position echoes that of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who testified at the recent hearing on the bill, warning that it would empower big media companies rather than independent reporters. Greenwald also pointed out that it is often Big Media companies themselves that have pressured Big Tech companies to censor and suppress independent journalism. “I do absolutely believe that the problem of Silicon Valley monopolistic power and its ability to interfere in our politics and impede a free press is a very serious one,” said Greenwald. “But oftentimes it’s the media itself, it’s journalists themselves who are demanding that that power be exercised in a censorious way in a way that undermines a free and diverse press.” Although the EFF is seen as a moderately liberal organization, it often sticks to its guns on freedom of expression issues, for example, its condemnation of politically motivated financial blacklisting, a problem which mainly affects the political right. The EFF has warned that banks and payment processors are becoming “de facto internet censors.”",-1.4944399630494087 "Nine members of an influential coalition of Republicans in Congress and its chairman, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, demanding an explanation for Amazon’s decision to stop selling Ryan T. Anderson’s book on transgenderism, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. The letter, which can be read in full below, calls on Amazon to provide a list of all books it has removed from its store in the last five years, together with justifications for each decision, as well as internal correspondence related to the decision to remove When Harry Became Sally. The letter also questions why books from Mao, Hitler, and bomb manuals like the Anarchist’s Cook Book are not deemed to be in violation of Amazon’s policies. “Amazom.com currently controls a majority of the print book market in the United States, and a supermajority of e-book sales. In other words, your censorship decisions affect the dissemination of facts, opinion, and culture on an incalculable scale. As such, we believe that Congressional interest in promoting open and fair market practices is justified,” says the letter. The letter was signed by ten Republican members of the Republican Study Committee: its chairman, Rep. Jim Banks, Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL), Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Rep. Jody Arrington (R-TX), and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA). “Amazon’s treatment of Ryan Anderson perfectly demonstrates the authoritarianism and insidiousness of Big Tech censorship. Ryan isn’t a Twitter troll, he’s an academic,” said Rep. Banks in a statement. “His book offers the clearest, most thoroughly researched conservative perspective on the issue of transgenderism that I’m aware of. And that political issue is extremely relevant because Congress is debating it right now. That is why Amazon is desperate to shut him up.” Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.",-0.6250725001974528 "HELSINKI (AP) – Finland´s domestic security agency said Thursday that the cybergroup APT31, which is generally linked to the Chinese government, was likely behind a cyberspying attack on the information systems of the Nordic country´s parliament. The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service, known by the abbreviation Supo, said it had “identified a cyber espionage operation targeted in 2020 against parliament with the aim of intruding into parliament´s IT systems.” The agency added that “according to Supo intelligence, APT31 was responsible for the attack”. It didn´t mention China by name or the group´s alleged links to the government in Beijing. The statement posted also on the agency’s Twitter site in English. Finland´s National Bureau of Investigation, NBI, said late December that it had started an investigation into suspected gross hacking and espionage attacks on the information systems of Eduskunta, the Finnish legislature. Among other things, some lawmakers’ email accounts were compromised. Parliament has since upgraded the systems’ security features. A group of Conservative party grandees will seek to pass legislation to make Huawei involvement in British telecoms networks illegal, over fears the Chinese may use the equipment to spy on the United Kingdom. https://t.co/tWAzhbRwVt — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 7, 2020 NBI´s Tero Muurman, who is in charge of the investigation, said Thursday his agency was probing further Supo´s allegation of APT31´s involvement. He said the breach likely aimed to “acquire information for the benefit of a foreign nation or to harm Finland.” FireEye, one of the world´s major cybersecurity firms, and other data security firms have linked APT31 to the Chinese government or operations conducted on its orders. APT is an abbreviation for “advanced persistent threat,” a general term to describe an attack in which an intruder – or intruders – establishes an illicit and usually long-term presence on a network to acquire highly sensitive data. Earlier this month, Supo said that the intelligence services of foreign powers have expanded their cyber espionage operations in Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic through either directly targeting Finnish organizations or using Finnish infrastructure. The agency has earlier named China and Russia as being the most active countries spying on Finland. A Friday report from Bloomberg News revealed China was able to spy on American computer systems for a decade by supplying compromised chips to Super Micro Computer Inc. (Supermicro), one of America’s leading motherboard providers. https://t.co/F8zDHQj0Og — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 14, 2021 Arctic issues is an area of particular interest to China in the Nordic countries. The Finnish public broadcaster YLE reported earlier March that the state-funded Polar Research Institute of China attempted in 2018 to buy or lease an airport near the small northern town of Kemijarvi in the Lapland area, Finland´s Arctic region, for research flights over the North Pole and other Arctic regions. The Finnish military, however, blocked the deal on security concerns. as the airport is close to a military area. The parliament of Norway, Finland´s Nordic neighbor, was hit by a cyberattack last year that the country´s domestic security agency said was probably done by the hacking group APT28, which has been linked to Russia´s GRU military intelligence agency.",0.5634496811062165 "Allen v. Farrow, a four-part HBO series from directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, is everything wrong with our current #MeToo-Woke Gestapo era boiled down into four tedious and breathtakingly dishonest hours. HBO ran this series over four weeks, and over those four weeks I heard a lot about how one-sided it is. But even with those warnings, nothing prepared me for just how lacking in objectivity the whole thing truly is. Allen v. Farrow is neo-McCarthyism, a witch hunt, naked propaganda, a hagiography for Mia Farrow, and a mercenary act by two dishonest filmmakers looking to add a notch to their #MeToo gun. No one is looking for the truth. No one is interested in the truth. This is a public lynching by way of innuendo, lies of omission, and emotional blackmail. Watch below: Some quick background… In 1992, before things exploded in the ugliest way imaginable, and after making 13 films together, 57-year-old Woody Allen and 47-year-old Mia Farrow had been together 12 years. The two never married or even moved in together. Their relationship ended after Mia discovered Polaroids in Allen’s apartment — naked photos of Mia’s 20-year-old adopted daughter (with former husband Andre Previn) Soon-Yi. Turns out Allen was having a sexual affair with his girlfriend’s (Mia’s) adopted daughter. Allen was not Soon-Yi’s father or her stepfather or her adopted father. He was never even a father figure to her. Allen and Soon-Yi married in 1997 and now have two daughters in college. At the time, Mia and Allen had three children together. Moses and Dylan were adopted. Satchel, who is now Pulitzer winner Ronan Farrow, is their one biological child. As you can imagine, and for perfectly justifiable reasons, Mia was devastated, humiliated, and bitterly angry. She had been betrayed in the worst way imaginable by her daughter and the father of three of her children. Allen had basically tossed a hand grenade into a large family that had trusted and embraced him. What Allen did was indefensible. Naturally, a bitter custody agreement ensued over their three kids, and on August 6, Mia and Allen were set to sign off on an agreement. But on August 4, Mia accused Allen of sexually assaulting seven-year-old Dylan in the attic of her Connecticut home. As you can imagine, and I remember this very well, all hell broke loose. Allen was in immediate jeopardy of being prosecuted in two states, Connecticut (where the alleged crime took place) and New York, where they were both residents. Allen was eventually cleared in both states. At the behest of the state prosecutor, Frank Maco, the prestigious Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital conducted a six-month investigation, interviewed Dylan numerous times, and concluded Allen was innocent. Additionally, they said it was possible Mia had coached Dylan into making a false allegation against her own father. After an exhaustive 14-month investigation of its own, New York’s Department of Social Services concluded, “No credible evidence was found that the child named in this report has been abused or maltreated. This report has, therefore, been considered unfounded.” Allen was never even charged. Two respected state agencies had declared him innocent. Watch below: During this time he did lose custody of Moses, Dylan, and Ronan and deservedly so. The judge was disgusted with Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi and believed it would be unhealthy for three small children to live in a home where their father was having an adult relationship with their sister. As sleazy as this all was, the truth is this: anyone who looks at the abuse case objectively comes away certain — as certain as one can be without having been there — that Allen is innocent. On top of two state agencies declaring him innocent, it just doesn’t make sense that 1) a man without a single scandal to his name would become a child molester at age 57, and 2) he would molest his daughter while in the middle of a custody battle in Mia’s house, which was, at the time, full of kids and at least three adults. What’s more, Mia claims that by this time she was already worried about Allen’s behavior with Dylan, and yet she was not so worried she made sure to stick around knowing Allen had a scheduled visit that day. Instead, she went out shopping with a girlfriend. Is that the behavior of a woman worried about a man’s sexual attraction to her own child? Watch below: Obviously, I can’t say for certain Allen is innocent. Only Allen and Mia know the truth. But if we’re to function properly as a civilized society, even in the court of public opinion, we must accept the idea of innocence until proven guilty, and in the case of Allen, he was declared innocent by two agencies working on the behalf of two state prosecutors. And one of those prosecutors, Frank Maco, was desperate to charge Allen. But now that the fascist #MeToo-Woketard Gestapo is so empowered, all of the above is no longer relevant. If the legal system doesn’t give you the hanging, the lynch mob runs to HBO or Netflix. Honestly, I could fill the Internet laying out all the ways in which Allen v. Farrow is manipulative, deceitful, and outright wrong. Instead, I’m going to ask a few questions of it… 1) Over four hours dozens of people are interviewed, not one taking Allen’s side. Why? 2) There are tons of home video of the Connecticut home where the alleged crime happened. Why are we never shown the attic where this supposedly took place? 3) The documentary claims Allen influenced the investigators in Connecticut and New York, including all the way up to then-New York Mayor David Dinkins. Why, then, was he unable to influence the family court judge in the custody hearing he so resoundingly lost? 4) Despite the findings of his own investigator, Connecticut State Prosecutor Frank Maco claims he had probable cause to charge Allen but didn’t go ahead and prosecute because he didn’t want to put Dylan through a trial. How does this make sense when she had already been through two grueling investigations where she told her story countless times? What’s one more time, and this time for justice? 4) Mia Farrow is portrayed as something akin to Mother Teresa. Why are we not told that three of her children are dead, two reportedly by suicide? 5) Dylan Farrow now says “I wish I had testified” against Allen back in 1992. Well, why doesn’t she testify against him now? The Connecticut statute of limitations for civil suits in sexual abuse cases does not expire until the alleged victim turns 48. There is nothing stopping the 35-year-old from having her day in court, from fulfilling her wish to testify. Why doesn’t she? 6) Much is made of Allen’s movie Manhattan (1979) where his 42-year-old character has an affair with a 17-year-old. Ignorant journalists are interviewed to inform us that Manhattan was Allen’s way of “grooming us” to accept his behavior. Okay, but why is it never mentioned that the age of consent in New York is 17? 7) Much is made of Allen’s attraction to younger women and inappropriate age differences. Why is it never mentioned that Mia was 19 when she began her relationship with a 49-year-old Frank Sinatra? 8) Why are we told that the media was only on Allen’s side in 1992? I lived through that period. I was 27 at the time. The media were desperate to crucify Allen. The idea the media were on Allen’s side is simply false. The only thing on Allen’s side were the facts and findings. 9) You honestly couldn’t find one — not one — Mia-skeptic to interview? 10) You claim Allen and Soon-Yi refused to be interviewed and were given a chance to respond. Allen claims he was only asked two months before the documentary was set to premiere. Is this true? 11) Much was made of a police drawing of the attic where the alleged molestation took place. Dylan claimed she watched her brother’s electric train go round and round as she was molested. A police drawing apparently proves there was a train track up there, but am I wrong that with the train set, there is not enough room for a grown man to molest a seven-year-old? And why was the train running at the time? Did Allen turn it on? Wouldn’t a running train signify to Allen that someone might come right back? Would he really molest a child under those conditions? 12) Why is there no medical evidence Dylan was penetrated? Mia says she took Dylan to the doctor twice right after the supposed incident. Was a physical exam not done? If not, why not, when that would be the most damning evidence against Allen? 13) Much is made of the Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital destroying their original notes. The documentary tells us this is unprecedented and proof of a conspiracy. But another documentary filmmaker, Robert Weide, says it is not at all unusual and regularly done in an effort to protect everyone’s privacy. Weide has spent years digging into this case and has written countless words defending Allen. He says no one from Allen v. Farrow contacted him for an interview. If that’s true, why would a respected filmmaker with a firm understanding of the case be ignored? To call Allen v. Farrow an act of Media McCarthyism is actually a gross understatement, especially when it ends by shaming the actors who have stood by Allen. This shaming includes commentary from Dylan about how “my self-worth” increases every time someone famous says they will never work with Allen again. My God. Honestly, how did a society raised on To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, and The Lottery devolve into Allen v. Farrow? How did an HBO that once used its power to question legal convictions allow itself to be turned into an electric kangaroo court? The ongoing persecution of this man, a man cleared entirely by two different state investigations, is one of the most despicable acts of public indecency I have ever witnessed. This #MeToo-Woke Nazi era has so broken us that Allen v. Farrow filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering not only knew they could get away with this sickening, one-sided, dishonest hatchet-job, but that their dishonesty would be applauded. Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.",-0.43639736079325353 "The auction for global telecommunications companies to bid on building Brazil’s 5G Internet will allow Huawei, a Chinese company with close ties to the communist regime, to bid despite global national security concerns, the New York Times noted Monday. Allowing Huawei to participate may come as a snub to President Joe Biden after anti-Bolsonaro remarks during the 2020 election cycle. Speaking to the nation’s Communications Minister Fábio Faria, the newspaper confirmed the minister traveled to Beijing in February and met with Huawei executives. In the process of discussing issues related to Huawei’s business, Faria confirmed to the Times he had asked the Chinese company for help procuring Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines which Huawei does not produce. Faria insisted “no quid pro quo” occurred, though the newspaper described the timeframe in which both events happened as “striking.” Faria told Brazilian media outlets last week, given national security concerns, Huawei did not meet the National Telecommunications Agency’s (Anatel) prerequisites for building the federal government a secure, private 5G network. The New York Times did not clarify if Huawei being allowed to participate in the auction meant Brasilia was overlooking this shortcoming or simply that Huawei was highly unlikely to win the bidding as it is coming into the contest with a clear disadvantage compared to companies not tied to the Chinese Communist Party. Conservative President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration came to power in part on campaign promises to curb national security risks to the country stemming from the Chinese Communist Party. Prior to Bolsonaro, subsequent socialist administrations had deeply-entrenched Chinese interests in the Brazilian economy and China remains Brazil’s largest trading partner. As president, however, Bolsonaro has embraced Chinese business profits, traveling to Beijing in 2019 and signing eight bilateral agreements with the Communist Party – while at the same time employing fiery anti-communist rhetoric towards China-allied regimes in Latin America. Bolsonaro recently claimed he would personally block the importing of Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines claiming Brazilians did not deserve to be “guinea pigs,” but ultimately relented and thanked the Communist Party for shipments of its questionably-effective vaccine candidates. Brazil has one of the largest rates of Chinese coronavirus infections in the world, documenting over 11 million cases as of Tuesday since the pandemic began. Brazil is second only to America in the number of documented coronavirus cases, not taking into consideration extensive evidence rogue regimes such as China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have significantly undercounted coronavirus cases and deaths. The New York Times, citing a Brazilian political expert, noted another potential reason the Bolsonaro administration may have opened bidding to Huawei: President Joe Biden’s bizarre attacks against the country while he was a presidential candidate, particularly a threat to destroy the Brazilian economy issued during a debate against his predecessor Donald Trump. “The election of President Biden, who has harshly criticized Brazil’s environmental record, made the Brazilian government unenthusiastic about being in lock step with Washington,” the New York Times reported citing political risk consultant Thiago de Aragão. De Aragão appeared to be referencing Biden’s comments during a debate with Trump in September in which he threatened the unilateral destruction of Brazil’s economy in response to a question on climate change policy. The debate featured no foreign policy questions and the moderator had not mentioned Brazil. “Brazil, the rainforests of Brazil are being torn down, are being ripped down. More carbon is absorbed in that rainforest than every bit of carbon that’s emitted in the United States,” Biden asserted abruptly. “Instead of doing something about that, I would be gathering up and making sure we had the countries of the world coming up with $20 billion, and say, ‘Here’s $20 billion. Stop, stop tearing down the forest. And if you don’t, then you’re going to have significant economic consequences.'” Biden appeared to be referencing a global left-wing campaign blaming Bolsonaro for allegedly out-of-control fires in the Amazon Rainforest propelled in part by a false post from French President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter using a photo from at least 2003. Bolsonaro has been president of Brazil since 2018. Bolsonaro replied to Biden in a letter referring to him as a “coward” and saying his threats were “unnecessary” and “difficult to understand.” Bolsonaro subsequently threatened to declare war on the United States, asserting that, in light of Biden’s comments, “diplomacy alone is not enough.” Upon his inauguration, Bolsonaro congratulated Biden and urged him to negotiate a free trade agreement with Brazil. Brazil is planning to build one of the world’s largest 5G networks, making its bidding process among the most lucrative. Anatel, the telecommunications agency, announced the official rules for bidding in February. The auction is scheduled to begin in July and the winner will have to guarantee a functional 5G system in Brazil’s largest cities by July 31, 2022. The winner must guarantee they can also build 4G networks in every Brazilian municipality with over 600 people, 48,000 kilometers (about 30,000 miles) of high-speed internet wiring, and a private 5G communications network for federal government use only. The latter is the prerequisite Faria recently insisted Huawei could not meet, though none of the rules for bidding explicitly exclude Huawei – the overture the New York Times linked to the vaccine deals. “Today, Huawei is not apt to participate in [the building of] the government’s private network,” Faria said on March 9, leaving the door open for Huawei to modify itself by the time bidding starts. “There are already several countries making private networks and Huawei has not entered any nation until now.”",-0.9941910446938341 "Thousands of Bolivians in at least seven cities took to the streets Monday night demanding the release of conservative former President Jeanine Áñez who spent her first night in prison that day after being arrested on charges of “terrorism.” Áñez led the country for nearly a year after the resignation of 13-year socialist leader Evo Morales who fled the country along with most of his ministers and left a power vacuum in November 2019. Bolivia’s constitution provides a line of succession in the event the president and vice president are incapacitated or resign that resulted in Áñez, at the time a high-ranking senator, being at the top of the list of people in that line of succession still in the country. Áñez vacated the presidency peacefully in October after Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, won that month’s presidential election. Áñez is now facing “terrorism” and “sedition” charges that MAS administration prosecutors say stem from her decision to assume the presidency, a constitutional duty following Morales’ resignation and flight from the country. Thousands in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Sucre, Oruro, Trinidad, and Áñez’s native city of Beni crowded central plazas waving Bolivian flags and holding up signs calling for the former president’s release. Police did not report any significant incidents of violence. Many held signs reading “there was no coup; there was fraud” – a reference to prosecutors accusing Áñez of being the leader of a coup d’etat against Morales, despite Morales’ voluntary departure from the top office. Morales left after the Organization of American States (OAS) published a report finding significant evidence of electoral fraud in the October 2019 president election which Morales won despite being constitutionally ineligible to run. “We will not give up, we will battle until we reverse this criminalization that has happened in the country,” Manuel Morales, the head an anti-socialist group called the National Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Conade), told reporters in La Paz. Conade was responsible for organizing protests against Evo Morales’ alleged election in 2019. In Santa Cruz, protesters rallied in front of a statue of Christ the Redeemer in the town center that serves as an icon of the city. “Mr. President, you are unfortunately a sick man, seek peace with God, seek democracy,” one of the protesters, Rómulo Calvo, said in remarks to the crowd, according to Bolivian newspaper Página Siete. “The nation is demanding health, vaccines, and economy recovery, it is not asking for persecution or infighting among Bolivians. Do not play with fire, you will get burned.” Luis Fernando Camacho, a conservative community leader recently elected governor of Santa Cruz, also attended the rally as one of the main political characters the MAS leadership has accused of organizing the alleged “coup” against Morales. Prosecutors have not charged Camacho, though socialists have long accused him of being the “mastermind” behind Áñez. Camacho ran for president against Arce last year. “To those in prison and those persecuted for their politics we tell you that we will not abandon you, Santa Cruz people are brave,” Camacho told the crowd Monday. Protests against the socialists in Cochabamba ironically featured chants with the 20th-century communist slogan, “the people united will never be defeated,” as well as rallies insisting Bolivians voted against Morales. Some also chanted, “this isn’t Cuba/it isn’t Venezuela either/this is Bolivia and Bolivia commands respect,” a reference to far-left dictatorships in the region that enjoyed alliances with Morales’ government. Opposition leaders have organized further protests for Tuesday and a summit for all opposition party leaders Thursday to discuss building a resistance front against the socialist government. As interim president, Áñez’s primary task was to organize free and fair elections as quickly as possible. Bolivians went to the polls in October; Áñez did not run for election. Current President Luis Arce of Morales’ MAS party won the election, prompting Morales to return from exile in socialist Argentina. Arce’s government rapidly dropped charges against Morales for organizing violent mobs in the aftermath of his resignation and allegedly fathering a child with a minor. Police arrested Áñez this weekend on charges of “terrorism” and “sedition”; prosecutors are seeking a 30-year prison sentence. The judge presiding over the case ordered her to serve at least four months of preventative detention, calling her a flight risk. Prosecutors allege Áñez was at the head of a conspiracy to stage a “coup” against Morales, citing calls from Armed Forces leader Williams Kalimán for Morales to resign. Morales chose to resign following an Organization of American States (OAS) investigation finding significant evidence that Morales had tampered in the October 2019 presidential election, which he won despite being constitutionally ineligible to run due to term limits. Áñez’s legal team has insisted she assumed the presidency only because she had a constitutional obligation to do so and no evidence exists of any conspiracy to topple Morales. The General Secretariat of the OAS issued a statement Tuesday in Áñez’s defense asserting, “the Bolivian justice system is not in proper conditions to offer minimum guarantees of a fair trial, impartiality, and due process, due to structural problems and particularly, its integration.” The statement concluded that an international commission was necessary to investigate accusations of “corruption” against Áñez. The OAS demanded Áñez’s immediate release from prison and several individuals arrested along with her for allegedly aiding her rise. Carlos Mesa, a former president and center-leftist who “lost” the 2019 presidential election against Morales, also spoke out Tuesday stating if Áñez was guilty of a conspiracy to come into power, Arce and the MAS leadership currently in power is also guilty as it benefitted from Morales’ departure. According to the prosecution’s “bizarre reasoning,” Mesa contended, “Luis Arce and [Vice President] David Choquehuanca should be prosecuted.”",0.009478939258904537 "Thousands of Bolivians in at least seven cities took to the streets Monday night demanding the release of conservative former President Jeanine Áñez who spent her first night in prison that day after being arrested on charges of “terrorism.” Áñez led the country for nearly a year after the resignation of 13-year socialist leader Evo Morales who fled the country along with most of his ministers and left a power vacuum in November 2019. Bolivia’s constitution provides a line of succession in the event the president and vice president are incapacitated or resign that resulted in Áñez, at the time a high-ranking senator, being at the top of the list of people in that line of succession still in the country. Áñez vacated the presidency peacefully in October after Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, won that month’s presidential election. Áñez is now facing “terrorism” and “sedition” charges that MAS administration prosecutors say stem from her decision to assume the presidency, a constitutional duty following Morales’ resignation and flight from the country. Thousands in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Sucre, Oruro, Trinidad, and Áñez’s native city of Beni crowded central plazas waving Bolivian flags and holding up signs calling for the former president’s release. Police did not report any significant incidents of violence. Many held signs reading “there was no coup; there was fraud” – a reference to prosecutors accusing Áñez of being the leader of a coup d’etat against Morales, despite Morales’ voluntary departure from the top office. Morales left after the Organization of American States (OAS) published a report finding significant evidence of electoral fraud in the October 2019 president election which Morales won despite being constitutionally ineligible to run. “We will not give up, we will battle until we reverse this criminalization that has happened in the country,” Manuel Morales, the head an anti-socialist group called the National Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Conade), told reporters in La Paz. Conade was responsible for organizing protests against Evo Morales’ alleged election in 2019. In Santa Cruz, protesters rallied in front of a statue of Christ the Redeemer in the town center that serves as an icon of the city. “Mr. President, you are unfortunately a sick man, seek peace with God, seek democracy,” one of the protesters, Rómulo Calvo, said in remarks to the crowd, according to Bolivian newspaper Página Siete. “The nation is demanding health, vaccines, and economy recovery, it is not asking for persecution or infighting among Bolivians. Do not play with fire, you will get burned.” Luis Fernando Camacho, a conservative community leader recently elected governor of Santa Cruz, also attended the rally as one of the main political characters the MAS leadership has accused of organizing the alleged “coup” against Morales. Prosecutors have not charged Camacho, though socialists have long accused him of being the “mastermind” behind Áñez. Camacho ran for president against Arce last year. “To those in prison and those persecuted for their politics we tell you that we will not abandon you, Santa Cruz people are brave,” Camacho told the crowd Monday. Protests against the socialists in Cochabamba ironically featured chants with the 20th-century communist slogan, “the people united will never be defeated,” as well as rallies insisting Bolivians voted against Morales. Some also chanted, “this isn’t Cuba/it isn’t Venezuela either/this is Bolivia and Bolivia commands respect,” a reference to far-left dictatorships in the region that enjoyed alliances with Morales’ government. Opposition leaders have organized further protests for Tuesday and a summit for all opposition party leaders Thursday to discuss building a resistance front against the socialist government. As interim president, Áñez’s primary task was to organize free and fair elections as quickly as possible. Bolivians went to the polls in October; Áñez did not run for election. Current President Luis Arce of Morales’ MAS party won the election, prompting Morales to return from exile in socialist Argentina. Arce’s government rapidly dropped charges against Morales for organizing violent mobs in the aftermath of his resignation and allegedly fathering a child with a minor. Police arrested Áñez this weekend on charges of “terrorism” and “sedition”; prosecutors are seeking a 30-year prison sentence. The judge presiding over the case ordered her to serve at least four months of preventative detention, calling her a flight risk. Prosecutors allege Áñez was at the head of a conspiracy to stage a “coup” against Morales, citing calls from Armed Forces leader Williams Kalimán for Morales to resign. Morales chose to resign following an Organization of American States (OAS) investigation finding significant evidence that Morales had tampered in the October 2019 presidential election, which he won despite being constitutionally ineligible to run due to term limits. Áñez’s legal team has insisted she assumed the presidency only because she had a constitutional obligation to do so and no evidence exists of any conspiracy to topple Morales. The General Secretariat of the OAS issued a statement Tuesday in Áñez’s defense asserting, “the Bolivian justice system is not in proper conditions to offer minimum guarantees of a fair trial, impartiality, and due process, due to structural problems and particularly, its integration.” The statement concluded that an international commission was necessary to investigate accusations of “corruption” against Áñez. The OAS demanded Áñez’s immediate release from prison and several individuals arrested along with her for allegedly aiding her rise. Carlos Mesa, a former president and center-leftist who “lost” the 2019 presidential election against Morales, also spoke out Tuesday stating if Áñez was guilty of a conspiracy to come into power, Arce and the MAS leadership currently in power is also guilty as it benefitted from Morales’ departure. According to the prosecution’s “bizarre reasoning,” Mesa contended, “Luis Arce and [Vice President] David Choquehuanca should be prosecuted.”",0.4147661144615316 "Cuban-American voters in Florida are strongly aligned more with the Republican Party, according to a Bendixen & Amandi International poll. The survey was taken from March 8-11, with a sample size of 400 Cuban-American registered voters in Florida who participated in the last election. The survey was given to English- and Spanish-speaking individuals with a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percent. When asked which candidate they voted for in the 2020 election, 62 percent said they voted for Donald Trump, and only 36 percent voted for Joe Biden. When the surveyor asked about the U.S. policy towards Cuba, 66 percent said the U.S. should not revert back to the “normalization of relations with Cuba” that the Obama administration had started in 2014, compared to 51 percent of Cuban-Americans who favored the policy when a similar survey was taken in March 2015. Cuban-Americans again switched their view from the March 2015 survey; 56 percent said they somewhat or strongly oppose easing travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba. The survey shows, “since 2015, we’ve seen a 21-point shift against easing travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba.” The survey also discovered 60 percent of the individuals who answered questions founds themselves to align with Republicans, 22 percent align with Democrats, and 18 percent found themselves to be independents. The survey states that Florida is home to the largest Cuban diaspora population in the nation; 66 percent of the Cuban-American population live in Florida. Politico reported: Cuban-Americans are not only the largest Latino voting bloc in Florida, they also typically have the highest turnout compared to other Latino groups in the state. As a result, the Cuban-American vote continues to be a powerful voting bloc in Florida that is heavily courted by political campaigns. Fernand Amandi, president of Bendixen & Amandi, told Politico, aligning with the Republican Party is like “Back to the Future” for Cuban-Americans. “We see the Cuban-American electorate has recalibrated and defaulted back to the hardline positions,” said Amandi.",-0.6720172365199711 "Citizens in Curitiba, southern Brazil, organized a caravan protest in front of Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Justice Edson Fachin late Wednesday in response to the STF vacating corruption sentences against socialist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this week. The STF is Brazil’s supreme court; Fachin received his appointment from Lula protege Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached out of the presidency in 2016. Lula, president of the country from 2003 to 2011, was arrested and convicted in multiple courts on charges of receiving upwards of $1 million in bribes in the form of expenses related to a luxury beachfront property in Guarujá, a beach town near Sao Paulo. The convictions resulted in a sentence of nearly a decade in prison and the triggering of the “Clean Slate” law, which bans politicians convicted of crimes related to corruption from ever running for office again. The conviction was the product of a nationwide corruption investigation known as “Operation Car Wash,” which originated in Curitiba, the capital of southern Paraná state. Fachin overturned Lula’s convictions arguing Curitiba did not have jurisdiction over the case and ordered it moved to a court in Brasilia. He notably did not remark in his ruling on the merits of the case, meaning Brasilia may still find Lula guilty and reactivate the “Clean Slate” law. Lula’s ban from politics took place shortly before the 2018 election, preventing him from an anticipated run against current President Jair Bolsonaro, an anti-communist conservative. Most Brazilian political observers expect Lula, now 75 years old, to run against Bolsonaro in 2022. Outraged citizens organized a caravan of cars — a socially distant version of a street protest — in front of Fachin’s home in Curitiba on Wednesday to protest his court ruling. Videos of the incident show traffic ground to a halt in front of Fachin’s residents and a cacophony of honking and other noise in support of the event. Some pedestrians also appear on videos wearing the colors of the Brazilian flag, yellow and green, and waving flags. National media identified the protesters as “Bolsonaro supporters” who organized through Whatsapp lists, though some noted the initial group of protesters later attracted other local residents, who did not identify themselves by any particular partisan identity. No reports of violence or criminal behavior followed the event. The protest was reportedly the first such event of its kind since the Lula ruling. Fachin issued his ruling Monday, so Brazilians have not had a chance to organize weekend events, which are typically much larger and better attended. The ruling stated that insufficient evidence existed tying Lula’s case to Paraná, making Curitiba an illegitimate venue for the trial and the judge presiding in that case, Sergio Moro, ineligible to do so. Moro, who approved most of the “Operation Car Wash” cases, became seen as a national hero in light of the mass arrests of politicians that followed, including several members of Congress of a variety of parties (Brazil is a multiparty democracy where dozens of parties, ranging from extreme left to bureaucratic center to far right, compete for legislative seats). The investigation began in Curitiba as a local money laundering case involving a car wash, hence the name, that led to the discovery of millions of dollars in kickbacks. Private contractors — most prominently the corruption giant Odebrecht — would agree to give politicians a portion of the excess money if granted lucrative state contracts for infrastructure projects. The politicians would grant significantly more taxpayers’ dollars in those contracts than the money necessary to complete the work and receive a portion of the illicit profits. Bolsonaro initially appointed Moro Minister of Justice following his election in 2018, but Moro resigned in 2020, claiming Bolsonaro had impaired his ability to fully investigate corrupt politicians. Bolsonaro refuted Moro’s claims and accused him of being “committed to his ego” and too enamored by his own celebrity to properly do his job. The STF is set to comment on Moro’s work itself Thursday. As Fachin did not remark in his ruling on the evidence that Moro allowed into a court of law in the Lula case, the Brasilia court processing the case has access to that evidence. That may change Thursday if the STF finds Moro allowed unconstitutional evidence into the court. If the STF rules the evidence presented in Lula’s case is not admissible, prosecutors would have to begin the entire case from scratch, possibly beginning with new depositions, visits to relevant locations, and other investigative processes that may take years. The STF is currently controlled by justices — or ministers, as they are referred to in Portuguese — appointed by presidents belonging to the socialist Workers’ Party (PT), namely Lula and Rousseff. Following sweeping victories for Bolsonaro allies in Congress in February, the court remains the last branch of federal government not controlled by conservatives. A significant chance exists that they would bar the evidence that made Lula’s conviction possible. The court has faced heavy criticism for years that it has become increasingly radical in its rulings, not just in defense of leftist politicians, but in attacking the free speech of political opponents. In a recent high-profile case, the STF ordered the arrest of a member of Congress, Daniel Silveira, over a YouTube video in which he insulted members of the court. The court is scheduled to deliberate his pre-trial release Thursday; he has been in jail for nearly a month. Last year, dozens of journalists, YouTube commentators, and comedians who had publicly supported Bolsonaro awoke to violent police raids of their homes after the STF ordered their arrests for propagating “fake news,” which is not a formal crime in Brazil. Some fled the country after their arrest, while others are fighting their legal cases; the STF has not articulated a constitutional basis for the arrests. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.",-0.16267309778234862 "CARACAS, Venezuela – Time and time again the “Bolivarian, Socialist, Anti-Imperialist, and Profoundly Chavista” Revolution has stylized itself as a champion of the elderly. In reality, being an elderly Venezuelan in times of socialist revolution means living a miserable retirement, on a pension so low that it’s all but a death sentence. 1,200,000 Venezuelan bolivars – that’s the amount of money a Venezuelan retiree receives from the government around the 20th of each month, an amount equal to our monthly minimum wage, which translates to roughly $0.63 using the Central Bank of Venezuela’s official exchange rate at the start of March 2021. What can you buy with 1.2 million bolivars as of March 2021? Absolutely nothing. A dozen eggs hover around 2.7 million ($1.48). Milk varies by presentation, ranging from 2.5 million ($1.35) to upwards of 12 million ($6.85). A kilogram of rice goes for about 1.9 million ($1.05), and a pack of pasta goes for 3.1 million ($1.65). The 1,200,000 monthly pension is not even enough to purchase a kilogram of white cornmeal — the main ingredient in one of Venezuela’s signature and most basic of dishes: the arepa. For reference, in 2015, the World Bank set the global poverty line at $1.90 in income per day. It is impossible for an elderly person to sustain themselves with their pension here. $0.63 per month is not enough to feed themselves, pay for services, and let alone be able to afford even the most basic medications that they may require. The socialist regime of Venezuela continues to triumphantly boast that it managed to grant pensions to 100 percent of Venezuela’s elderly population. What they don’t tell you is that the pensions themselves amount to nothing — to be cheeky, 100% of zero is zero, 100% of the elderly receive an equal share of the socialist misery. Pensioners often receive additional money stipends distributed through the socialist regime’s Fatherland system, an Orwellian surveillance mechanism built in part by the Chinese government. While way higher than the pension itself, these bonuses hardly do anything against Venezuela’s hyperinflation — they’re akin to throwing a small bucket of water at a burning forest. One of the most common stipends distributed to the elderly through the above-mentioned system is the “Economic War Bonus.” Recipients of the latest one were given 2,785,000 Venezuelan bolivars — or roughly $1.47 at the current official exchange rate. Since socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro assumed power in 2013, he has continued an “Economic War” narrative first coined by the late Hugo Chavez. According to this narrative, America – together with the Venezuelan opposition, businessmen, and other internal and external factors – is actively conspiring to bring ruin to the socialist nation through “economic warfare.” The Revolution lays the blame of the shortages, hyperinflation, and all other symptoms of the collapse of socialist Venezuela on them while exempting Maduro and the Socialist Party of any blame with regards to the current state of this country. Twisting the truth so that the Revolution are the heroes in this tragedy and everyone else is the villain is a staple tactic that they constantly employ. Even if an elderly person were to receive several monthly Fatherland bonuses on top of their regular pension, it still would fall severely short of being able to enjoy life with a modicum of normalcy. This forced life of poverty upon the elderly is not an accident. It is all by design, as the Socialist Party would prefer that the elderly, along with everyone else, depends on the regime and the Socialist Party as much as possible. Many have no choice but to further rely on the regime’s CLAP system, a heavily subsidized monthly box that contains a handful of low-quality basic products that often come rotten — which, much like the rest of the socialist regime itself, is a system deeply entrenched in corruption whose ultimately goal is to enrich Maduro and his allies. Deaths by malnutrition among the elderly have become more common with each passing day. The deaths of two elderly siblings in October of 2020 is one of the most horrifying cases in recent times. If the hunger doesn’t kill them, then lack of healthcare might do the trick, as the elderly often require regular treatment for chronic conditions. Access to adequate health care for an elderly person who survives through their pension in a country with a collapsed and obliterated healthcare system is even more uphill than for a regular person. The beyond absurd hyperinflation that we’ve lived with for the past years, coupled with the pseudo-dollarization that is holding what’s left of the country together, keeps an elderly person from being able to afford medicine. To exemplify just how bad it is, I’m going to take one of the most common conditions as an example: high blood pressure. Valsartan is one of the most common medicines used to treat this condition. These days, it can be found for anywhere between 3.8 to 52 million bolivares. It would take 3 months of pension payments to even be able to afford one of the cheapest offerings — and that’s if and only if hyperinflation doesn’t further push the price. For reasons like this, Venezuela is often referred to as the worst place to grow old, something that should not come as a surprise if you’ve kept an eye on our ongoing socialism-sponsored catastrophe. The elderly have actively participated in protests against Maduro and his regime over the inhumane conditions that they’re being subject to. Not even the Chinese coronavirus lockdowns have deterred these men and women from organizing protests that ultimately get repressed by the Bolivarian National Guard and other armed components at the service of Maduro. #23Jul Esta es la verdad de como le paga Maduro a los adultos mayores, a punta de golpes y maltratos. Ellos hoy exigían sus derechos en el mismo país que los une a esos funcionarios que también pasan trabajo parejo. ¡Mi respeto y amor infinito a los dignos abuelos de Venezuela! pic.twitter.com/qUYqnFlO6k — Henrique Capriles R. (@hcapriles) July 23, 2020 It would be remiss of me to omit the fact that pensioners have never had it easy in this country, even before the rise of Hugo Chávez and his socialist revolution. I grew up with tales of my grandmother and her woes regarding her pension in the 1990s, when banking and bureaucracy did not have the luxury of today’s technologies and the internet. While it wasn’t perfect, her pension at least allowed her, a nurse that was not rich by any measure, to live a decent retirement. Venezuela celebrates the “Day of the Elderly” every May 29. While Maduro and the Socialist Party of Venezuela will definitely use their media apparatus to post self-congratulating events and broadcasts, post images on their myriad social media accounts, and push hashtags in celebration like they usually do, the elderly will once again have little to nothing to celebrate, as they continue to further fall into ever-worsening misery. There is no respite nor peaceful retirement for them within these borders. We live a complicated reality that, while rather stagnant due to the coronavirus lockdowns, keeps you constantly moving and twisting around so you survive the socialist collapse through your own means — an unwinnable game that keeps you distracted of just how worse all of this is for the elderly that reside in these borders. Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.",0.6636700552040002 "The two largest cities in Brazil, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, are implementing curfews and business lockdowns in the face of consecutive record-high death rates in the past several days, peaking with 1,840 deaths tied to the Chinese coronavirus on Wednesday. Conservative President Jair Bolsonaro has vocally rejected the use of economic lockdowns to limit the spread of the virus, arguing that the Chinese coronavirus is “a little cold” and insisting that deliberately hurting the national economy would add to the pain of the pandemic rather than ease it. Bolsonaro tested positive for coronavirus last summer and recovered without the need for hospitalization in three weeks. As Brazil operates on a federal system, Bolsonaro’s personal objections to lockdowns do not prevent mayors or governors from limiting the economic activity under their purview. Left-leaning local and regional leaders have repeatedly challenged Bolsonaro with lockdowns, mask mandates, and other provisions, most prominently the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria. The return to strict limitations in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo appear contrary to easing limitations around the world, including the United States, in response to declining infection rates and increasing numbers of fully vaccinated people. Brazil has administered at least one dose of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine to 7.3 million people, though most of those receiving doses are in inland Amazonas state, on the other side of the coastal metropolises. Brazil is home to one of several increasingly pervasive variants of the original Chinese coronavirus, believed to have originated in Amazonas. Brazil’s O Globo reported on Thursday that Rio de Janeiro City Hall issued new ordinances that limit the hours during which bars and restaurants may operate and impose a curfew between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Residents will not be able to use the city’s iconic beach or waterfront, nor will businesses be allowed to open there. Bars and restaurants must end in-person service by 5 p.m. but may be allowed to open through 8 p.m. if not serving indoors. They will only be allowed to reach 40 percent capacity. Night clubs, parties, and other events are completely banned. The provisions will last through at least March 11. In Sao Paulo, Governor Doria announced Wednesday that all cities in the greater Sao Paulo state will be placed on “red alert” as of Saturday, which places the strictest limitations on individual and business rights. “Non-essential” businesses, as defined by the government, will be forced to shut down entirely. Curfew statewide will begin at 8 p.m. Doria did not, however, shut down schools or churches, unlike other governments around the world. The provisions will last through March 19. Doria used the announcement regarding the new provisions to attack Bolsonaro, blaming him directly for the increase in coronavirus deaths in the country. “This is your fault. It’s because of your denialism,” Doria said in a press conference, addressing Bolsonaro. “More than 1,000 people are dying every day in Brazil. It’s like five plane crashes a day. … Many of the Brazilians who have been buried died because you didn’t do what you were supposed to: lead.” Doria claimed Sao Paulo’s healthcare system was on the brink of collapse due to high numbers of hospitalizations, again blaming Bolsonaro without addressing the role his own administration played. Brazilian political observers consider Doria the top rival to challenge Bolsonaro in the 2022 election, though he has yet to officially declare himself a presidential candidate. Wednesday was the fifth consecutive day that Brazil broke its own one-day coronavirus death record, suggesting a rapidly growing rate of infection among people more likely to suffer severe cases. As a Southern Hemisphere nation, it is currently entering its autumn season, also indicating that it had experienced a summer decline in the past few months. The left-wing Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper also noted this week that public health experts have seen a close link between high rates of obesity in a country and high numbers of coronavirus deaths. About 22 percent of Brazilians fall within weights considered “obese,” while over half are technically overweight. Studies comparing country-by-country coronavirus infection and death rates are necessarily imperfect as they rely on the governments themselves to provide honest data. Studies have found that rogue states like China, Russia, and Iran appear to be severely undercounting the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in their respective countries. Impoverished countries also have less access to accurate testing, which may be accounting for their low case numbers. At press time, Brazil has documented nearly 11 million coronavirus cases and 259,271 deaths, more deaths than any nation except the United States, not taking into account the high likelihood that China and Russia, in particular, may have experienced far more deaths than those in their official statistics. Vaccination, which has led to easing restrictions in some parts of the world, has been a subject of heated political debate in Brazil. Doria has publicly supported mandating coronavirus vaccination, a position that Bolsonaro has staunchly rejected. Bolsonaro also opposed importing “Coronavac,” a Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate that rated only about 50 percent effective in preventing infection, before ultimately announcing in January that, failing to secure other vaccine products, Brasilia had agreed with Beijing to import ingredients to product “Coronavac” domestically. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.",0.09298173495057101 "Thousands of protesters took the streets of multiple cities in Argentina this weekend to protest what is increasingly being referred to as the “VIP vaccination” scandal, in which the government of socialist President Alberto Fernández reportedly vaccinated dozens of ineligible people with friends in the administration. Argentine Health Minister Gines González García resigned last week after local media revealed that as many as 70 people secretly received vaccinations against the Chinese coronavirus, some of them as young as 27 years old and without health preconditions that would necessitate urgent vaccination. Argentina recently cut a deal with the government of Russia to distribute its vaccine candidate, “Sputnik V,” approved hastily last year prior to Phase III clinical trials, and to manufacture it domestically. According to the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Argentina is also distributing the Indian coronavirus vaccine candidate Covishield, whose efficacy remains a point of dispute, and a vaccine candidate from the Chinese firm Sinopharm, which is believed to be about 72 percent effective. Argentina launched vaccinations recently only for healthcare workers. Last week, the nation opened up the vaccination process to people over the age of 70. Public health experts believe that senior citizens are at much higher risk of experiencing a severe coronavirus infection. The Argentine newspaper Clarín noted that at least six cities in addition to the capital, Buenos Aires, experienced anti-government protests on Saturday, though the Buenos Aires assembly was the largest. It was the tenth day of organized protests against Fernández since he took office in December 2019/ The marches were overwhelmingly peaceful, featuring crowds carrying signs with anti-government slogans. Among the slogans Clarín saw at the Buenos Aires rally were “the worst president in history,” “my phone is smarter than my president,” and “Alberto is an immoral.” One poster mocked the name of Fernández’s political coalition, the “Front for All”: “Front for All – Vaccines for Some.” The Argentine newspaper noted that a small minority of those protesting the president did not appear upset that the government had illicitly vaccinated well-connected people, but protested the vaccine itself. One person carried a sign reading “no to the genocidal vaccine,” and another, “down with PCR tests,” considered the most accurate way to test for Chinese coronavirus. No political party organized the protests, so the public in attendance reportedly did not reject any particular ideology. Most merely expressed disgust at the federal government. Some members of “Together for Change,” the opposition party coalition, did attend the rallies. Fernández and his administration chose to highlight, in responding to the protest, a display organized in Buenos Aires of large garbage bags, stuffed to give the appearance of body bags and labeled with the names of those who were illicitly vaccinated. While some bags featured specific names on them, others simply read phrases like “Alberto’s friends,” referring to the president. Fernández made clear that he interpreted the symbolism as a threat to the lives of those targeted; some interpreted them to be symbols for the bodies of those dead because they could not access the vaccines reportedly stolen by public officials. “The way to protest in a democracy cannot be to display in front of the Pink House [the presidential offices] body bags with the names of politicians on them,” Fernández said in a statement. “This lamentable act only shows how many in the opposition view the Republic. We cannot be silent against such an act of barbarism.” Indigna en Argentina la macabra instalación de bolsas mortuorias con nombres de dirigentes sociales en marcha opositora – El Clarin de Chile https://t.co/vRikbCVFn9 pic.twitter.com/BOtnLWnD43 — El Clarin de Chile (@ELCLARINDECHILE) March 1, 2021 The list of individuals fascinated without going through the Health Ministry’s legal system was published last week. The youngest person on the list is 27 years old, according to Clarín. Included on the list were several former government officials with friendly ties to Fernández or his administration. Fernández has distanced himself from the scandal and urged his health minister, González, to resign, particularly in light of testimony from the health workers administering the vaccines that they were pressured to do so and that “there was no way to say disobey.” A poll published Monday showed that about 20 percent of people who voted for Fernández’s “Front for All” are reconsidering their vote in light of the scandal. Another 22 percent said they had already decided to change their vote against the party coalition due to other factors. About half of respondents said they believed there were “many more” people illicitly vaccinated than the 70 the government admitted to. The vaccine scandal follows months of tensions growing in Argentina in response to the government’s pandemic policies. Unlike many other nations, Argentina has allowed the states to determine the obligatory nature of wearing a mask in public. Buenos Aires, the urban capital, has made masks mandatory, resulting in violent attacks on police officers requesting that unmasked people abide by the law. Socialist lawmakers have raised far more invasive proposals regarding the pandemic than masks. In June, one lawmaker suggested that the government should force coronavirus survivors to donate blood plasma, which doctors can use to help other patients recover. In January, a “Front for All” member stated plainly, “you have rights, but not in a pandemic,” causing an uproar. Citing the pandemic, Fernández outraged the nation last week with the imposition of an allegedly “one-time” wealth tax on citizens whose net worth is over 200 million pesos ($2.3 million). Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.",1.390800635610656 "The Brazilian municipality of Serrana launched a clinical trial on Wednesday to administer to the town’s entire adult population doses of the Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine candidate CoronaVac. “The entire adult population, estimated at 30,000 people, will be immunized in three months, in an unprecedented action,” the Butantan Institute wrote on Twitter on February 17. All study participants will receive two doses of the CoronaVac vaccine candidate. The trial excludes pregnant and breastfeeding women and people who are ill. “The city was scanned and divided into 25 sectors … Through a lottery, the vaccination order of each sector was established in the next two months. The only priority is that neighboring sectors are not immunized at the same time, precisely to assess the impact of a protected cluster on another that has not received doses,” the Brazilian online magazine Veja Saúde reported on February 17. “It’s not a simple mass vaccination. The aim of the study is to see how effective the vaccination is in a community and with that to identify the collective efficacy of the vaccination of individuals,” Ricardo Palácios, the clinical studies director at the São Paulo state government-funded Butantan Institute, said at a press conference. The Butantan Institute is funding the trial in Serrana, located 190 miles northwest of the state capital, São Paulo city. The state of São Paulo independently contracted for CoronaVac, a Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech. Butantan Institute is Sinovac’s official partner in Brazil and is coordinating the study in partnership with Serrana’s State Hospital and its municipal administration. Roughly 23,000 Serrana residents signed up to participate in the clinical trial on February 11 – the first day of registration –which amounted to 76 percent of the project’s target, according to Veja Saúde. Serrana has a total population of about 45,000. “The city is not an island. Daily, people leave there and go to work elsewhere, or receive visits from outside. This is relevant to our study because we will be able to measure the impact of these displacements and contacts on the effect of collective vaccination. Analyzing these effects is extremely important for immunization planning,” Palácios told reporters. São Paulo state has employed over 500 people to help facilitate the trial, estimated to last a year and a half. Butantan director Dimas Covas said Serrana was chosen for the study in part because it is a small town in the interior of the state, which facilitates control. It also hosts a state-run hospital and is located near the Ribeirão Preto medical research center. Serrana currently has the highest coronavirus contamination rate in São Paulo state – 5,248 per 100,000 inhabitants – making it a priority location for monitoring the effectiveness of a vaccine candidate. Serrana has recorded more than 2,300 infections and 52 deaths from the Chinese coronavirus. Brazil has reported nearly 10 million cases and over 240,000 deaths from the virus. “Some say they don’t want to be guinea pigs, but that’s absurd,” Serrana resident Rose Valdevite, 55, told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday of the Sinovac trial. “I would have never imagined we could be vaccinated so quickly, We’re lucky,” the cafe manager said. Serrana’s clinical trial is part of São Paulo state governor João Doria’s plans to distribute Sinovac’s vaccine candidate across the state. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has “publicly discredited CoronaVac, equating it with ‘death and disablement,’ and said he would not include it in the country’s national immunization program,” the South China Morning Post reported last month. “Doria … has actively pushed the Chinese-made vaccine, in what political observers say is an early move for a 2022 presidential bid,” the newspaper noted. Doria is a political opponent of Bolsonaro. Full data released on January 12 revealed that China’s Sinovac Coronavac vaccine candidate was 50.38 percent effective against the Chinese coronavirus in late-stage clinical trials, almost 30 percentage points lower than the 78 percent efficacy rate Butantan Institue gave Coronavac on January 7.",-0.18022586568146054 "Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is suggesting that legal retail gun purchases do not take long enough. Warnock was on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning, and the Guardian quoted him calling for “reasonable gun reform” in response to last week’s Atlanta-area shootings. He added, “This shooter was able to kill all of these folks the same day he purchased a firearm.” He then ridiculed the Georgia legislature for working on strengthening Georgia’s voting laws instead of working on gun control, saying, “But right now, what is our legislature doing? They’re busy under the gold dome here in Georgia, trying to prevent people from being able to vote the same day they register.” Warnock continued, “I think that suggests a distortion in values. When you can buy a gun and create this much carnage and violence on the same day, but if you want to exercise your right to vote as an American citizen, the same legislature that should be focused on this is busy erecting barriers to that constitutional right.” The Associated Press (AP) noted that Gabby Giffords’ gun control group, Giffords Law Center, also reacted to the Atlanta-area shootings by pushing for a longer process for gun purchases. Giffords Law Center executive director Robyn Thomas said, “It’s really quick. You walk in, fill out the paperwork, get your background check and walk out with a gun. If you’re in a state of crisis, personal crisis, you can do a lot of harm fairly quickly.” The AP observed that gun controllers “say mandating a window of even a couple of days between the purchase of a gun and taking possession can give more time for background checks and create a “cooling off” period for people considering harming themselves or someone else.” Chicago, like all of Illinois, has a three-day waiting period on gun purchases, yet the Chicago Tribune points out 567 people were shot January 1, 2021, through March 15, 2021, in the Windy City. AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.",-0.66331064718651 "During an appearance on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared the U.S.-Mexico border “secure” and “closed.” “The border is secure,” he said. “The border is closed. We’ve been unequivocal in that and we are operationalizing our processes, executing our plans, we are a nation of laws, and we treat vulnerable children humanely. We can do it, and we are doing it.’ Following Mayorkas giving those remarks, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) disputed the claim. Cotton, also speaking to “Fox News Sunday,” told host Chris Wallace the border was “wide open,” and he blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policy in the early stages of Joe Biden’s presidency for the crisis. Partial transcript as follows: WALLACE: You just watched my interview with Secretary Mayorkas. Your reaction, sir? COTTON: Chris, it’s rich that Secretary Mayorkas won’t let press travel with him to the border, but he will come on your Sunday morning show and peddle the same kind of nonsense that has created the Biden border crisis in the first place. I mean, he’s basically saying the United States will not secure our border and that is a big welcome sign to migrants from across the world. WALLACE: So you say that you have three simple solutions. What are they? COTTON: Yeah, Chris, the Biden administration keeps saying that Trump somehow dismantled the immigration system. That’s false. It was the Biden administration that dismantled three highly effective policies. First, the public health exclusionary order. They lifted that order as it relates to minors. Well, guess what we have now with the border? Lots more minors. That’s not a surprise. Second, the “remain in Mexico” policy. The Trump administration worked with the government of Mexico to allow migrants who showed up on our border to make an asylum claim but remain in Mexico while we adjudicated rather than just releasing them into the country. And third, the so-called safe third country agreement with countries like Guatemala that says if you pass through a country that’s not your own seeking asylum, you have to make that asylum claim when the first country to pass through. That’s the international norm, that’s what we should do. Joe Biden could reimpose all three of those things this week if you wanted to. WALLACE: One of the things I was struck by at the end of the interview, Secretary Mayorkas said, quote: The border is secure, the border is closed. Is it? COTTON: No, Chris, of course not. The border is wide open. There are reports now Custom and Border Patrol may be directed to simply start processing people into the country without even giving them a notice to appear in court. And, of course, all of these bogus asylum claims are taking up so much manpower and resources of the border, that means that we also have other threats, like increases in fentanyl and other kinds of drug trafficking or persons on the terrorist watch list crossing to our border. The border right now is wide open because the Biden administration dismantled the very effective policies of the Trump administration and the agreements we had with Mexico and other Latin American countries. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor",-0.8073857684989518 "The late and often controversial author Philip Roth is now the target of cancel culture after biographers alleged some of his writings were misogynistic. Roth, even before his death in 2018, fielded accusations of antisemitism over his portrayal of Jews, though his family was Jewish. Now, his depiction of women is under scrutiny, and not for the first time. “Two separate biographers have claimed revelations of his real life ‘sex and depravity’ could spur a reassessment of work and depictions of women,” the Times of London reported.” The Daily Mail reported on the development: Ira Nadel, author of Philip Roth: A Counterlife, wrote that he was “as sexually obsessed in real life as he was in literature,” the outlet reported. Nadel’s biography, set for release on March 29, “offers a full account of his development as a writer,” according to publisher notes on Amazon. Blake Bailey, for his authorized Philip Roth: The Biography, received independence and complete access from the author himself to spend years pouring over his personal archive and interviewing his friends and lovers. In his book, Bailey claims Roth visited London brothels and chose female students to attend a seminar based on their attractiveness and flirts with younger women the older he gets, according to the Times of London. In a visit to London, Roth allegedly went looking for Chinese prostitutes on Curzon Street in Soho. “God, I’m fond of adultery,” Roth said in the Mail report. He was married and divorced twice to Margaret Martinson and actress Claire Bloom. Bloom wrote a memoir “Leaving a Doll House, in which she noted his effort to control her every move and decision. She called him a self-centered misogynist and that he was a man with “a deep and irrepressible rage” toward women. But Roth might mount a defense from the grave. Sandra Newman, an American novelist, told the Times that another fight over his work is due and that modern audiences will be less forgiving for the misogyny in both his life and writing. “Looked at from the point of view today, the books are on the wrong side of MeToo,” Newman said. “They often have a central male who is a victim of cancel culture.” When asked by the Times if he believed Roth would ever get cancelled. “You never know these days,” Bailey said. “But I think there will always be an audience for Roth’s work in certain quarters, and a non-audience in others.” “I hope my biography helps Roth’s image; though it doesn’t spare his lapses, it does portray him as a rather touching human versus a label of whatever sort,” Bailey said. Novelist Dana Horn wrote about Roth in an article in the New York Times after his death. “Roth’s three favorite topics — Jews, women and New Jersey — all remain socially acceptable targets of irrational public mockery, and Roth was a virtuoso at mocking the combination of all three,” Horn wrote. “Roth, who achieved true greatness in depicting people like himself, never had the imagination to give these women souls.” Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com",-0.180696702052589 "Conservative commentator Dan Bongino will be taking the vacant three-hour radio time slot on Westwood One stations that previously belonged to late radio legend Rush Limbaugh. The Dan Bongino Show will premiere across the United States on May 24. “The Dan Bongino Show will tackle the hot political issues, debunking both liberal and Republican establishment rhetoric,” announced Cumulus Media’s Westwood One in a press release. “As a former Secret Service agent and NYPD officer, Bongino is uniquely positioned to provide commentary and analysis that directly questions the philosophical underpinnings of both the Left and Big Government Republicans,” the press release added. The Dan Bongino Show, a new three-hour radio program airing Monday-Friday from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET, will tackle the hot political issues, debunking both liberal and Republican establishment rhetoric. @dbongino #TheDanBonginoShow — Westwood One (@WestwoodOne) March 18, 2021 “Dan is passionate and relatable, with a natural ability to connect with his audience. Dan has been on a meteoric rise since his podcast launched in 2019, and we look forward to watching his star continue to soar,” added Westwood One president Suzanne Grimes in a statement. Bongino’s new program will be on during the prime-time radio slot between the hours of 12:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. EST, and will broadcast on Westwood One stations across the country, which include stations that had previously broadcast Limbaugh, such as KABC Los Angeles, WLS Chicago, WBAP Dallas, KSFO San Francisco, and WMAL Washington, D.C. Limbaugh passed away at the age of 70 last month, after a year-long battle with advanced lung cancer. The late conservative icon is known as “the greatest radio host of all time” — it’s even printed on his official death certificate — and Bongino pledges “to honor the trailblazing work of those who came before” him. “I’m excited to embrace the immense power of radio to connect with my listeners live for three hours every day,” said Bongino. “This is an incredible privilege, and I pledge to honor the trailblazing work of those who came before me.” Bongino’s podcast is currently the second most listened to conservative show in the country, and the move to talk radio is expected to bring over a newer audience to the platform. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.",0.42865932953564057 "MSNBC commentator Jason Johnson during a Thursday appearance on “Deadline” called the Republican Party “a cult not radically dissimilar from Al-Qaeda.” Johnson said, “This is the thing that’s more scary for me. You have got 62% of self identified Republicans in 2021 are saying ‘Hey I think the election was rigged.’ I look back at 2011 and you had 45% of Republicans in 2011 who thought Barack Obama was born in Kenya. So literally the Republican Party has gotten dumber or crazier or more conspiracy-oriented in the last decade. It would be a lot easier to convince people that Obama was born in Kenya than it should be to think that Joe Biden and somehow a collection of Democrat and Republican state senators and secretaries of state managed to rig an entire election. But that is what we are facing right now.” He added, “It is not just a crisis of confidence, it is not just a crisis of competence, it is a crisis of truth. At some point you have to recognize that when people worship white supremacy, when people worship Trump, when people worship whatever kind of QAnon conspiracy they want, it is now a cult. It is a cult not radically dissimilar from Al-Qaeda. At least as what we have seen so far as far as the belief system. And when you deal with cults, you can no-longer defeat those people with logic. You have to defeat them with laws and you allow people to live in whatever crazy fantasy world they want as long as they are not harming other people.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN",-0.026967493317951608 "Thursday, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle blamed former President Donald Trump for the Atlanta-area massage parlor shootings that left eight dead, six of which were Asian women. Barnicle acknowledged on “Morning Joe” that Trump’s “didn’t pull the trigger in Atlanta” but said his “language” and “behavior” makes him “responsible” for the attack. He explained Trump’s rhetoric has enhanced racial strife in the country. “I am not a big fan of living in the past. I believe in moving forward. Keep that line moving, go forward into the future, but we opened this segment with a clip of the former president speaking. We’ve been talking about things that have been existent in America for quite some time, but enhanced over the last four years with the presidential seal of approval given to intolerance, given to fear, given to suspicion, given to anger, given to saying very little about racial strife in this country and the causes of it, never addressing it … of lying about nearly everything you can imagine from the dangers of the virus to the dangers of racial animosity and what it’s doing to our country,” Barnicle stated. “And in the root of it is in the former president’s four years, in his language and in his behavior. And we’re still living it; we’re still playing it out. And it affects us every day.” He continued, “Now, Donald Trump didn’t pull the trigger in Atlanta, but Donald Trump certainly was responsible for the anger and the fear and the suspicion that exists in great degree in this country — much more so than ever in the past. And he’s not to blame for a history of racial strife in this country, but he certainly is to be blamed for enhancing it with his inaction and his cowardice in addressing it. We’re talking about rigged elections now. We’re still talking about January 6. All of that is the gift that keeps on giving, presented to us by a man who never, ever should have been president. And the stain of his presidency is still in existence today, and I fear how long it’s going to last. I mean, the job that Joe Biden has is enormous enough, but dealing with the underbelly of all of these causes only adds to the degree of difficulty in the presidency.” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent",-1.1608333316551005 "Bestselling author Ryan Anderson has challenged “enterprising” state attorneys general to investigate Amazon’s banning of his book questioning transgenderism. In a Wednesday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Anderson notes the curious timing of Amazon’s digital burning of his book When Harry Became Sally that took place the weekend before the House voted on the radical transgender “Equality Act,” which he publicly criticized. “Why did Amazon suddenly delist my book without warning me or my publisher?” Anderson asks. “Did an advocacy group or elected official reach out to Amazon on the evening of a big vote to ask it to remove a book it had happily sold for three years? An enterprising state attorney general may have ways to find out.” Anderson — a noted scholar and the president of the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center — says in censoring ideas with which they disagree, Amazon may be guilty of violating a number of laws. “State attorneys general have the authority to investigate Amazon’s conduct to learn whether the company is abusing its vast market power, doing so in a patently dishonest and deceptive way, or otherwise violating state consumer-protection and antitrust laws,” he writes. Amazon has such a dominant position in online retail as to nearly constitute a monopoly, Anderson suggests, before comparing banishment from the site to “being silenced.” As Breitbart News reported, Amazon added insult to injury in declaring that they will continue to ban any book that argues that boys are boys or considers gender dysphoria — the psychological distress experienced by those who do not feel comfortable with their biological sex — as a mental illness. A letter signed by Amazon Vice President Brian Huseman declared that the company offers “customers across the political spectrum a wide variety of content that includes disparate opinions” but that “we reserve the right not to sell certain content,” including heterodox opinions on LGBT beliefs. According to Mr. Anderson himself, the debate centers on if gender dysphoria should be treated as a psychological problem, to be treated with counseling, or a medical problem that should be dealt with using puberty blockers and sexual reassignment surgery. In Wednesday’s op-ed, Anderson argues that no good comes “from shutting down a debate about important matters on which reasonable people disagree.” “When Harry Became Sally addresses the scientific, medical, political and philosophical issues at the heart of our national debate on transgender issues,” Anderson insists. “We should have that debate, and Amazon shouldn’t get in the way.” Oddly, one author opposing transgenderism has yet to be banned by Amazon: Pope Francis. In his 2016 teaching letter Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), found here on Amazon, the pope denounced the transgender ideology behind contemporary ideas of gender fluidity. Sex education should teach “respect and appreciation” for sexual differences, as a way of helping the young to overcome self-absorption, the pontiff wrote. This respect includes self-acceptance and learning to embrace the body one is born with, rather than wishing to be something else. Especially when experiencing difficulties with gender identity, “the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created,” Francis wrote. Thinking that we enjoy “absolute power over our own bodies,” Francis warned, leads to the delusion that “we enjoy absolute power over creation.” “An appreciation of our body as male or female,” he added, is “necessary for our own self-awareness in an encounter with others different from ourselves.” “Trying to cancel binary sexual differences based in anatomy is a symptom of a society that “no longer knows how to deal with it,” he wrote. Francis condemned an ideology of gender that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.” Follow @tdwilliamsrome.",-0.8690948403952746 "On Monday, the far-left Washington Post admitted it spread the very worst kind of lies about former President Trump on January 9. Nevertheless, as of this writing, the fake news outlet is refusing to expose the source of these lies. This refusal is notable for several reasons… To begin with, one of the ways in which the media are supposed to ensure anonymous sources do not burn them (i.e,. lie to them to further an agenda or their own personal interests), is with the threat of exposure. This makes perfect sense, no? Without the fear of exposure, what’s to stop people from planting fake stories by posing as a high-level source, as someone in-the-know? Without there being a consequence for lying, why not plant lies? Doesn’t it make sense that a media outlet concerned with its own credibility would expose the source responsible for them publishing a lie? Before I get to why the disgraced Washington Post will not burn its source, it’s important to lay out just how serious this fake news was… On January 9, the very first day of Trump’s second impeachment trial — a consequential day that could have ensured Trump could not ever run for president again — the Post published a bombshell of lies undoubtedly timed to affect the outcome of the impeachment proceedings. The Post told the world there was a recording of then-President Trump talking with Frances Watson, the chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, and leaning on him by telling him he would be a “national hero” if he “found the fraud” to overturn Georgia’s win for Biden. So the Post told the world this was caught on tape, that there is a smoking gun of Trump basically bribing a Georgia state official. Well, there was just one problem… It never happened. It was all a lie, and over the weekend the disgraced Post was forced to issue what it obviously hoped would be a quiet correction of a story that should be retracted: Correction: Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find “dishonesty” there. He also told her that she had “the most important job in the country right now.” A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump. In other words, had the Wall Street Journal not obtained the recording of the call, we never would have known the Washington Post published a big, fat lie to meddle in and rig the impeachment hearings. This is a massive humiliation for the far-left outlet – oh, and for CNNLOL, which claimed it had independently corroborated the Post story. So… At this point, in a sane world, you would think a news outlet concerned with its credibility would gleefully expose the anonymous source responsible for spreading this bald-faced lie. But as of now, the Post and CNNLOL are refusing. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. When you look back at the breathtaking amount of lies CNNLOL and the Post have published over the past few years, not once will you find them exposing the source who supposedly lied to them. The question now is, Why? Why won’t the Post begin the hard work of restoring its reputation and ensuring this will never happen again by making an example of the source? Here’s why… Choose one, choose them all, but here’s why… 1.There Is No Source. The Post Made It Up. Sorry, but after what I have seen from the Post over the past five years — one bald-faced lie after another about the Russia Collusion Hoax and all those Race Hoaxes, it makes perfect sense that a bunch of Washington Post editors sat around and made this up in the hopes of rigging the impeachment hearings. Ten years ago, this never would have crossed my mind. Today, it sits at the top of my list. Media Encourage Sources to Lie to Them As we saw throughout the Russia Collusion Hoax and all those race hoaxes, the media are happy to be lied to if the lie furthers the left-wing narrative and agenda. Lying sources also give the media cover to publish lies. Oops, this isn’t our fault, we were just reporting what a high-places source told us. The Source Will Burn Them Right Back If the Post burns its source, this person might turn right around and say, Hey, they knew I was lying. I told them I was lying! Why Bother When There Are No Repercussion for Lying? Because the elite media have basically devolved into a bubbled cult, there are no longer any repercussions when you blow a major story or get caught publishing a bald-faced lie. The corporate media used to police itself. I mean, when Dan Rather published those fake documents about then-President George W. Bush in 2004, because the rest of the media cared about their own reputations, they raised hell about it. Those days are over. The only thing the media police anymore is ideological conformity within its own ranks. Things like this, things like lying about a presidential phone call just as the impeachment hearings were set to begin, are no longer frowned upon. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that media cultists are all thrilled the Post published this lie and are right now secretly congratulating the Post for lying to further the cause. NOTE: This was piece was updated to correct why January 9 was a consequential day. It was not the day prior to the Georgia run-off as the piece first stated, it was the first day of President Trump’s impeachment,",1.1892101304050937 "Federal officials announced it is no longer moving unaccompanied migrant children to the oilfield mancamp in Midland, Texas, after nearly 11 percent tested positive for COVID-19. The statewide average in Texas is less than 6.5 percent. U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesman Mark Weber told the Associated Press they put their plans to move more unaccompanied migrant teenagers to the Midland facility on pause. The pause followed the finding that 53 of the 485 migrant teens tested positive for COVID-19 after being secretly moved by buses to Midland under the cover of darkness. Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed a COVID outbreak in one of the HHS facilities in Texas. “The conditions unaccompanied minors face in these federally run facilities is unacceptable and inhumane. From a lack of safe drinking water in one location to a COVID-19 outbreak in another, the Biden Administration has no excuse for subjecting these children to these kinds of conditions,” Governor Abbott said in a statement provided to Breitbart Texas. “President Biden’s refusal to address the border crisis is not only enabling criminal actors like human traffickers and smugglers, but it is exposing innocent unaccompanied children to illness and potentially unsafe living conditions. The administration must act now to keep these children safe, secure our border, and end this humanitarian crisis.” Abbott also tweeted that the Lone Star State has experienced a lower-than 6.5 percent infection rate during the past week. Today, 174,430 Texans got a Covid shot. The positivity rate has remained below 6.5% for a week. Hospitalizations continue to decline. Two important metrics will be achieved tomorrow. Thanks, Texans, for all you are doing to crush Covid. — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 20, 2021 Former HHS Chief of Staff Brian Harrison told Breitbart Texas that the humanitarian crisis on the southern border is completely of President Joe Biden’s making during an interview on Friday. Harrison served HHS during the Trump administration and is currently a candidate for the Texas 6th Congressional District. “We actually had COVID protocols in place, you know, in these UAC shelters, they have undone the COVID protocols,” Harrison told Breitbart. “You know, the same people who say schools can’t be open, the economy can’t be open lockdowns forever, are undoing the COVID protocols in the shelters for the illegal alien children.” In February, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced the administration ended the COVID capacity restrictions in facilities housing migrant unaccompanied minors to ease overcrowding. “We had to expand and open additional facilities because there was not enough space in the existing facilities if we were to abide by COVID protocols,” Psaki said during a late February press briefing. Harrison says the capacity issue came about as a direct result of Biden eliminating successful programs put in place during the Trump administration. “We didn’t have a capacity problem. When Joe Biden took office, we had a lot of excess capacity,” Harrison explained. “The reason there’s a capacity problem doesn’t have anything to do with shelters, or the number of buildings. The reason there’s a capacity problem is because Joe Biden has supercharged the magnet incentivizing record numbers of illegal immigrants across our borders illegally. That’s why there’s a capacity problem.” After sneaking the migrant teens into the Midland mancamp facility, HHS officials working with FEMA opened an additional shelter at the Dallas Convention Center, Breitbart Texas reported. That facility is designed to hold up to 3,000 teens in what the agency is calling a “decompression shelter.” Breitbart asked Harrison what a “decompression shelter” was. “Who knows? Never heard that,” Harrison responded. “I was the chief of staff of the agency that oversaw these things. I’ve never heard that term in my life. I have no idea.” “I think it’s just, I think it’s just the, you know, the democrats in the media colluding to change the name.” he explained. “So the American people won’t know the full extent of the devastation and the crisis that they’re creating on the border.” U.S. Border Patrol continues to hold massive numbers of unaccompanied minors in facilities designed to hold adults who illegally cross the border — many for up to five days in violation of the 72-hour legal requirement. “As roughly 4,500 children wait in Border Patrol facilities unequipped for long-term detention, with some sleeping on floors, HHS has rushed to open holding sites across the country and tried to expedite its processes for releasing children in custody,” the AP reported. “About 9,500 minors are in HHS custody.” Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face book.",-0.41559010793707696 "Fox News reports from an unnamed senior U.S. Custom and Border Protection official that the agency is considering a plan to release migrants apprehended in South Texas who claim asylum without issuing a Notice to Appear (NTA). Breitbart Texas confirmed with a senior CBP official the plan is being discussed. A Fox News Channel article published late Saturday night revealed that discussions are underway that could result in the near-immediate release of thousands of apprehended migrants in the Rio Grande Valley Sector who would have no date to appear before an immigration judge or asylum officer. The news outlet claims a senior CBP official revealed the unprecedented plan that would allow the migrants to be released without an NTA. A Breitbart Texas source at the highest levels operating under the umbrella of CBP in Washington, D.C., confirmed the plan is a “serious measure being discussed.” Fox says the plan is being discussed because the crisis along the border has “become so dire that [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately” after their apprehension because “there is no space to hold people” long enough to do the NTA paperwork. The processing to issue an NTA can take up to two hours per individual or family group. The plan would not apply to unaccompanied migrant minors who cannot legally be released. Under the plan being discussed, migrants would be released after Border Patrol agents gather only minimal identification information, officials told Breitbart Texas. The migrant would be instructed to contact immigration officials close to their destination city after they arrive. However, without an NTA, there will be no mechanism in place to follow up on the migrant or even to know if they really traveled to their disclosed destination, Border Patrol officials said. There would be no way for an immigration court to issue an order for removal if the migrant fails to appear because they have no way of knowing the person was coming. The migrants would simply be released after promising to show up at some undetermined future time at an immigration office to apply for asylum, officials stated. It is not clear how many migrants this would apply to. Under current law, unaccompanied minors cannot simply be released. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus protection protocols under Title 42 still allow for the near-immediate expulsion of single adults and some family units. However, in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, and select other locations, Mexico is not allowing families traveling with young children to be expelled back to their country. Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings tweeted that his agents apprehended more than 2,000 migrants on Thursday, more than 10,000 in the past week, and more than 34,000 for the month of March. This is up from 27,913 apprehended during the entire month of February. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face book.",-1.5969589599851814 "Mexican law enforcement officials arrested a border city political candidate on human smuggling allegations in the border city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila. The candidate and his family claim that the arrest is part of a political prosecution. Breitbart Texas exposed the candidate as having had several brothers jailed in the U.S. on drug charges and for being the brother of a top regional commander for Los Zetas cartel. Coahuila state authorities arrested Lorenzo Menera earlier this week and turned him over to federal authorities after allegedly catching him with two Central American migrants, a statement from the Coahuila State Government revealed. Menera made various unsuccessful bids for mayor of the border city of Piedras Negras and was considered to be a favorite for the June elections. Menera’s brother, Masias Menera, who is also running for political office recorded the moment of the arrest claiming state police forces and government officials were targeting his family.  According to the statement from state authorities, police officers saw the two migrants get out of a tractor-trailer and get inside Menera’s 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Officials turned over to Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office for investigation and prosecution. After the arrest, the Menera family organized a large-scale protest outside of the FGR facilities in Piedras Negras calling for the release of Lorenzo Menera. After his release, Menera posted a video where he proclaimed his innocence and authorities took the migrants there as an apparent set-up. Breitbart Texas first reported on Menera in 2017 revealing that three of his brothers have previously been charged in a U.S. federal court of drug trafficking offenses. Menera also has another brother who is currently jailed in Mexico for being a top regional leader of Los Zetas. Lorenzo Menera’s brother Daniel “El Danny” Menera Sierra has been described by Mexican authorities as being in a top leadership position of Los Zetas in Coahuila before his arrest. Mexican authorities arrested El Danny in 2015 in the Monterrey metropolitan area. Menera’s other brothers Francisco “Chico” Menera Sierra, Rufino Menera Sierra, Felipe “El Japo” Menera Sierra, were all the subjects of criminal indictments filed in a U.S. federal court. While Chico Menera and Rufino Menera spent time in federal prison following their conviction, U.S. prosecutors closed the case against El Japo after he was killed by gunmen in Piedras Negras. Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.",0.34836545631355204 "Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) sharply criticized the Biden administration over conditions at multiple Health and Human Services detention facilities for unaccompanied migrant children recently opened across the state. Abbott specifically cited a drinking-water issue at a facility hastily opened by HHS in Midland, Texas and a COVID-19 outbreak in a facility opened last month in Carrizo Springs, Texas. Governor Abbott said, “The Biden Administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border. The conditions unaccompanied minors face in these federally run facilities is unacceptable and inhumane.” “From a lack of safe drinking water in one location to a COVID-19 outbreak in another, the Biden Administration has no excuse for subjecting these children to these kinds of conditions,” the Texas governor continued. “President Biden’s refusal to address the border crisis is not only enabling criminal actors like human traffickers and smugglers, but it is exposing innocent unaccompanied children to illness and potentially unsafe living conditions.” “The administration must act now to keep these children safe, secure our border, and end this humanitarian crisis,” Abbott concluded. This latest development regarding the surge in unaccompanied minors comes as the Biden administration finds itself woefully unprepared to handle the influx. Federal officials opened a temporary facility in Dallas, Texas at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center to accommodate the UAC’s. Sources in the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector indicate they are still apprehending between 400 and 500 unaccompanied children per day. Agents are holding, according to the source, over 2100 unaccompanied children in Border Patrol facilities and cannot keep up with the backlog in processing and transfer to HHS. HHS is responsible for providing suitable detention space for the children under current law. The governor also announced the deployment Texas Department of State Health Services resources and personnel to the Carrizo Springs Facility to investigate, identify, and combat the COVID-19 outbreak. As for the Midland, Texas facility, Abbott indicated the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality notified federal officials of the need to address the serious water issues. The Midland facility, a former oilfield mancamp, is also experiencing a COVID outbreak as nearly 11 percent of the minors tested positive, Breitbart Texas reported. U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesman Mark Weber told the Associated Press they put their plans to move more unaccompanied migrant teenagers to the Midland facility on pause after finding that 53 of the 485 migrant teens tested positive for COVID-19. Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.",-0.5367607157058452 "A group of migrants running into the streets of Laredo interrupted an interview between Breitbart Texas and U.S. Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) who was visiting the area. During an interview at night near the banks of the Rio Grande, Congressman Roy was in the process of sharing some of his observations when the interview was cut short as a group of migrants ran north from the river toward a shopping mall in downtown Laredo. “Run for the ladder, run for the ladder,” a cartel-connected human smuggler yelled from the river as the migrants ran north. The area of the smuggling attempt does not have any physical barriers such as fencing or walls, making the shallow waters of the Rio Grande the only obstacle. As U.S. Border Patrol agents rushed to intercept the group, the smuggler from the river yelled at them to run back. Some were able to return to the river and make their way back into Mexico while authorities detained two males. Federal law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that during that night just inside the city of Laredo, authorities detained more than 100 migrants in a matter of hours. Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.",-0.5269740569298911 "The migrant surge is boosting the smuggling of children for forced labor and sexual exploitation, converting the border into a “huge market” for “child sex trafficking,” Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) said this week. “Human trafficking, my friends, is slavery,” Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) pointed out as he briefed reporters Wednesday alongside Salazar and other Republicans. He went on to note “30 percent of the women and girls coming through this [migration] process are going to be raped.” “We can’t standby and let that happen. We have boys and girls as young as six or seven years old being pushed into sex trafficking,” he added. Some parents put their child on the migration pathway to the U.S. southern border process with “false hope” who never hear from their child again because that child will die, Owens also said. “President Biden should be ashamed of himself. Ashamed. This was preventable,” Owens pointed out, adding, “There are people suffering, going through misery because they were given false hope.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Reps. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) joined the Republicans who spoke to reporters on Tuesday. Salazar reiterated comments she made when she visited Texas Monday, noting that Biden’s policies fuel the ongoing crisis at the southern border. She claimed they put the lives of migrants, including unaccompanied children, at risk during the harrowing trip, and they encourage sex trafficking. Addressing the U.S. Latino community, Salazar said in Spanish: Unfortunately, once again, we have a crisis at the border. Our Hispanic community is being used on the one hand by human traffickers, drug cartels, and coyotes who create false hope for immigrants who want to reach the United States. On the other hand, we have the Washington politicians … who play with our community’s hopes to stay in power and win votes. Referring to her recent visit to Texas, the congresswoman added in Spanish: We saw the crisis with our own eyes. Coyote scoundrels who are peddling the delusion of obtaining an easy political asylum, claiming President Biden has opened the border for everyone who wants to enter. Meanwhile, our children are being trafficked. Our girls are being raped, and when I say trafficked … [I mean into] forced labor and sexual exploitation. It is a very harsh phrase, but that is what’s happening — child sex trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world. And unfortunately, it has a huge market on the border of the United States and Mexico. Her colleagues agreed the Biden border policies have made it easier and more profitable for human traffickers, many linked to drug cartels, to operate. “We are in essence funding sex trafficking,” Rep. Diaz-Balart proclaimed, adding: This is a humanitarian crisis. We are talking about thousands of girls who are being raped in the course of trying to reach the southern border. We are talking about the fact that now the United States, by this policy and rhetoric of President Biden’s administration … [is] financing the coyotes and the human trafficking cartels on the southern border of the United States. “Biden has lost control of the border,” Sen. Graham pointed out. Rep. Giménez called on Biden to secure the southern international boundary by reinstituting at least some of the border measures implemented by the Trump administration. “Not everything that was put in by the previous administration needs to be dismantled. Those policies were working, the border was under control, and we could handle the situation. We need to get back to that and do better,” he said. During the briefing Tuesday focused on the border crossing surge, Salazar promoted an amnesty plan for illegal aliens living in the United States as border crossings skyrocket at the U.S.-Mexico border. “We don’t want any more false promises, false hopes,” Salazar said. “We want for those 11 million undocumented who are here in the country to be treated with dignity.”",1.4901722607127699 "Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Dallas on Wednesday about the growing surge of migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico. The governor directly blamed President Joe Biden’s open borders policies for the humanitarian crisis. Governor Abbott spoke at a hotel located across the street from the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas where FEMA is housing some 3,000 teenage boys ages 15 to 17. Breitbart Texas reported the teens would stay at the convention center for up to 90 days. “These sites are a direct result of President Biden’s reckless open border policies that are causing a surge in crossings and cartel activity,” Abbott said. “The administration has yet to provide answers that Texans deserve.” “U.S. Health and Human Services will open the center to take some of the strain off Border Patrol, which is not supposed to hold children for more than three days but has been forced to do so for much longer,” KXAN added. “At least 3,000 children had been in custody longer than that 72-hour limit.” The Biden administration claims that it is sending adults and families back because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) coronavirus order but is allowing children — or mostly older teens — admission into the country. The Austin NBC affiliate’s report continued: According to Abbott, Biden’s administration needs to provide information on where these migrants have come from and a timeline of how long they’ll be in Texas/the U.S. The governor said that so far this year, 11,000 minors have been apprehended crossing the border into Texas, which he claims is a 60% increase between January (which was under the Trump administration) and February. “On Monday alone, the Border Patrol took in about 280 child migrants in the Rio Grande Valley sector. America needs to know how these children — some are young children — are coming across the border and who is it that is helping these children across the border,” the Texas governor explained. Abbott added that he asked the Biden administration to allow Texas officials to interview minors being held at the facility. The governor also said he is expanding the Operation Lonestar program to combat human trafficking. Abbott expressed concern that individuals entering the country could be ill, including those who may be infected with the coronavirus. “Are they being tested for COVID?” Abbott asked. “And if so, how is the administration handling those who test positive?” “Texas is willing to step up and help out,” the governor concluded. “But this is the Biden administration’s responsibility … the Biden administration has made it clear that if you are an unaccompanied child, you will be allowed to come into the United States.” Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com",0.3979171486478717 "CBS News reports U.S. Border Patrol officials are holding more than 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children in custody along the Rio Grande. Many are being held for at least five days — well beyond the 72-hour legal limit. CBS News Correspondent Mirey Villarreal reported from the Texas-Mexico border that officials are holding more than 13,000 unaccompanied alien children in Border Patrol facilities designed for adults. Many of the children are being held for at least five days. Courts previously imposed a limit of 72 hours on how long unaccompanied children could be held without being released to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services. BREAKING: CBS News has learned that there are now over 13,000 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody.@CBSMireya is on the border tonight for the @CBSEveningNews. — Norah O’Donnell (@NorahODonnell) March 16, 2021 Breitbart’s Randy Clark first reported on the Biden Administration illegally holding these minors in jail cells built to hold adults beyond the 72-hour limit. “Despite the opening of a new facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, Border Patrol facilities continue to experience overcrowding not seen since the 2019 migrant crisis,” Clark wrote. While the Biden Administration calls the migrant surge a “challenging situation,” and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the situation is “under control,” local law enforcement officials in the Rio Grande Valley are calling it a “full-blown crisis,” Villarreal reported. More migrants are attempting to cross into the U.S. now than in the past 20 years, @DHSgov Sec. Mayorkas said while insisting that the situation is under control. A surge of unaccompanied migrant children is presenting the biggest challenge.@cbsmireya reports from the border pic.twitter.com/3xA8y28YDq — CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) March 16, 2021 In her report, Villarreal talked to a 10-year-old Honduran boy who made the journey to the Texas border without any family and was walking alone when she found him. The situation is something President Joe Biden has seen before. In June 2014, during the Obama/Biden administration, Breitbart Texas Managing Editor Brandon Darby published leaked photos of migrant children being packed into filthy jail cells. The revelation of the children being held in deplorable conditions shocked the world and shifted the discussion of illegal immigration in the United States. During the Trump administration in April 2018, Breitbart Texas again reported the increasing numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the border. With only 4,171 unaccompanied minors crossing the entire southwest border with Mexico that month, DHS Press Secretary Tyler Q. Houlton said, “The crisis at our Southwest border is real. The number of illegal border crossings during the month of March shows an urgent need to address the ongoing situation at the border.” In February 2021, Border Patrol agents apprehended 18,945 unaccompanied minors (7,056 in Texas sectors alone) and the Biden Administration scrambles to catch up with the situation they say is “under control.” DHS Secretary Mayorkas appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday morning, Breitbart News reported. The secretary refused, once again, to call the situation a “crisis.” Rather he said the department faces a “difficult situation.”",-0.9809142968617608 "HBO’s Silicon Valley star and Verizon Wireless pitchman Thomas Middleditch has been accused of sexual misconduct, according to the far-left Los Angeles Times. The overall story about a private Goth club, where 50-year-old “industrial-music producers mingle with early-20s OnlyFans fetish models at warehouse techno parties and private clubs for bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, or BDSM,” is itself pretty interesting. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first the meat of the story… [Hannah] Harding said Middleditch made lewd sexual overtures toward her and her girlfriend. She turned him down, but he kept pursuing her, groping her in front of her friends and several employees, including the club’s operations manager, Kate Morgan. … Harding has Instagram direct messages from Middleditch, seen by The Times, saying, “Hannah I had no idea my actions were that weird for you … I know you probably want to just put me on blast as a monster … I don’t expect you to want to be my friend or anything … I am so ashamed I made you uncomfortable.” Harding said she complained to the club owners, but nothing was done. She then claims to have seen Middleditch “grope” another woman. MIddleditch did not comment on the allegations. So, this place was called the Cloak & Dagger, a private Hollywood club for Goth types, a place where “a cast of experimental artists performed eerie, sexually charged ceremonies each week in the back rooms of the Pig ’N Whistle bar[.]” It was a private club, invitation only, a “LGBTQ-friendly, members-only club where underground DJs, actors, rockers and adventurous partygoers could revel in safety and secrecy.” Watch below: Whether or not the allegations against Thomas Middleditch are accurate or not, we don’t know, but it’s not surprising to discover he was a member of such a place. This was the guy who revealed in 2019 that he and his wife of four years were active swingers, but only after he told his poor wife he needed to swing after they were married. “Only after I got married was I like, ‘Mollie, I’m sorry, but we have to get nontraditional here.’ To her credit, instead of saying ‘Fuck you, I’m out,’ she was like, ‘Let’s figure this out,’” he told Playboy. He then said swinging had “saved” his marriage. The following year she sued him for divorce. Yeah, Thomas Middleditch sounds like a real sweetheart. But Silicon Valley fans might want to purchase hard copies of the show before it’s disappeared by the Woke Gestapo. Anyway, back in 2015, two guys named Adam Bravin and Michael Patterson opened up the Cloak & Dagger Club, the idea being to return to the glory days of the 80’s when Goth was all the rage. Two things wiped the club out this year: the China Flu and a #MeToo, which is kinda funny if you think about it. How rebellious were these Goth-ers if they agreed to abide by lockdowns over a virus that the CDC says has a better than 99.5 percent survival rate? When AIDS had a zero percent survival rate, the gay clubs didn’t shut down, but these badass Goth-ers… LOL. The final blow was a #MeToo-driven Zoom meeting on June 23: “Adam flirted with almost every female employee, either asked them out directly or sent flirty messages at 2 a.m.,” Lesser said. “We organized a [separate] Zoom meeting for former employees where someone said, ‘Raise your hand if you’ve been hit on by Adam and Michael.’” The vast majority raised their hands, Lesser said; other employees recalled the meeting similarly. … Amid more criticism, Bravin, Patterson and Tiffany Naiman, a UCLA professor and music-industry consultant who worked part-time with the club, hosted a Zoom call for longtime members on June 23, 2020. According to several who participated, the call fell apart when Waxman told Bravin, as dozens of assembled members listened on, that “you need to stop hitting on every woman who comes in. We don’t like it, we’re half your age, it’s inappropriate.” “I was totally surprised and offended,” said Craig Klein, a theater and nightlife executive who was on the call. “I reached out to everybody I worked with in nightlife immediately to tell them to avoid Cloak. I was livid.” So you join what is basically a sex club and get offended when the owner gets “flirty?” This, though, is my favorite part of the piece: The simmering issues around harassment soon collided with the club’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests. Vanessa Benton, a 27-year-old Black member, was angry that an ostensibly progressive nightclub was doing so little to help with the cause. “We were out in the streets protesting and then got an email saying, ‘Come party,’” she said. “I came at them respectfully, saying, ‘I’m a Black member, and it’s disturbing that you haven’t said anything yet.’” HAHAHAHAHA!!! Not only did some humorless prude get angry because a freakin’ sex club filled with Goth-ers, people who pride themselves on lifting a middle finger to all things establishment, refused to jump on the establishment cause du jour, the L.A. Times made room for this self-satire in its report. The whole world’s gone crazy and I can’t tell you how much fun it is to sit back and witness it. Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.",0.0184658998669581 "On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that the “epidemic of violence against Asians is horrible and we have to do something about it,” and the Atlanta shootings are likely not a part of that. Maher said that crimes against Asian people have increased over the past year. He added, “However this story is also instructive and I think it says a lot about our tribalism and our inability to see evidence as opposed to what would fit the narrative that we already believe.” Maher further stated, “It seems like people insist, no, this is what I thought it was, and I’m just going to insist.” Maher also said, “I really feel like if it was Armenians who were manning the massage parlors, he would have killed Armenians. We don’t know.” He concluded, “Is it that hard to keep two thoughts in our minds at the same time? That this epidemic of violence against Asians is horrible and we have to do something about it, and this probably isn’t part of it.” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett",-0.7752525705149138 "There will be no Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2021. Organizers announced Friday the anticipated return of the mass event this year “has been cancelled,” after it was initially postponed to October due to coronavirus concerns. According to a report published by Variety, once the move is officially confirmed it would be the fourth time the dates have been shuffled since the coronavirus pandemic began just over 12 months ago. Coachella 2020 was initially set to be held on two separate weekends in mid-April, before it was pushed back to October, then for a third time to April 2021, as Breitbart News reported. Coachella Festival Postponed Due to Coronavirus https://t.co/ZEwSPdQcTo — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 11, 2020 It was then rescheduled for October 2021, but the dates were not officially confirmed by promoters and there have been no dates posted on the official website for several months. Sources speaking to Variety said the reason for the latest postponement is “ongoing uncertainty” over the coronavirus pandemic. Representatives for Goldenvoice, the event’s promoter, and AEG Presents, its parent company, did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment. It is expected the Stagecoach Country Music Festival, which takes place the weekend after Coachella, will now also be canned for this year. Travis Scott, Calvin Harris and Frank Ocean were set to headline Coachella. The Stagecoach lineup included Lil Nas X, Carrie Underwood and Billy Ray Cyrus. Both festivals are held in Indio.",-1.0529607746925322 "A security officer working on the protection detail for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was found dead in his apartment Tuesday. His death was ruled a suicide, as a note was found saying that he could no longer endure insults and threats from his superiors. “It must be what you do best to insult your personnel, threaten them, fire them, humiliate them and make them out to be liars. Every man has his pride, and I couldn’t stomach those words,” said the suicide note left by police officer Mehmet Ali Bulut, as reported by Turkey’s Cumhuriyet News. “Yes, C.B. and A.Ö., building facilities and doors belong to you. I wish you would try to understand them by being nice to the staff and asking about them, instead of what I wrote above. I don’t want any officers to come to my funeral except for my commissioner, Mustafa Yavuzkanat,” the note continued. According to Cumhuriyet, Bulut was 28 years old. His body was found by three colleagues who went looking for him after he failed to report to work or answer his phone. The exact cause of death was not specified in the report. Opposition politician Murat Bakan, a member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), submitted an official inquiry to the Interior Ministry noting at least two other police officers are known to have committed suicide recently and asking if there are more deaths that have not been made public. Bakan also wanted to know who “C.B.” and “A.O.” are, and what relationship they had with Bulut. “These children, at the prime of their lives, want to become police officers, and then they commit suicide. What pushes them to give up on their own lives?” Bakan asked. He told Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu previous police suicides also cited humiliation and mistreatment and asked if their complaints have been properly investigated.",1.2306240380293545 "South Africa’s Chief Justice, Mogoeng Mogoeng, is refusing to apologize for comments last year supporting Israel — even after a judicial body ordered him to do so, and even wrote out the words of the apology that he was ordered to offer. As Breitbart News noted in June 2020, Mogoeng revealed during a live webinar hosted by the Jerusalem Post that he was pro-Israel, unlike much of South Africa’s political and media elite. He revealed that the prayed for the “peace of Jerusalem.” Mogoeng added: “I cannot, as a Christian, do anything other than love and pray for Israel because I know hatred for Israel by me and my nation can only attract unprecedented curses upon our nation.” His comments caused an uproar in South Africa, whose ruling party, the African National Congress, has adopted an anti-Israel stance and has supported calls to boycott the Jewish state. There were calls for Mogoeng to resign, and pro-Palestinian activists complained to the Judicial Conduct Committee of the country’s Judicial Service Commission, a body that oversees the behavior of the country’s judges. Earlier this month, the committee ordered Mogoeng to apologize for having involved himself in a political controversy. The Post reported: The judge also ordered Mogoeng to apologize for a subsequent statement saying he would under no circumstances apologize, and even drafted the exact wording Mogoeng should use in his apology. On Sunday, the deadline for Mogoeng to apologize, he formally appealed the decision of the Judicial Conduct Committee. The South African branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, an pro-Israel evangelical organization, has been heavily involved in campaigning for Mogoeng and has decried what it says are efforts to deny him right to freedom of expression. A petition supporting Mogoeng by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has gathered over 125,000 signatures thus far. In a statement on Sunday quoted by South African news website IOL.co.za, Mogoeng said that he was standing up for his freedom of expression, and that he would rather give up his position than disobey the word of God: “Judges, as citizens, have constitutional rights of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and freedom of opinion. It is not correct to say that when you assume office, you’ll automatically let go of your constitutional rights,” he said He said there was nothing in his remarks, which called for the peaceful mediation of the situation in the Middle East, during the Jerusalem Post webinar last year, that contradicted any official SA government policy. “I respect the law and that is why I’m appealing,” said Mogoeng. Mogoeng said if it came to the point where he was forced to reject God, he would rather be without money or position and please God rather than man. “If I get to the point where there is a judgment that says ‘Mogoeng you must say you hate Israel and the Jews’ I would rather cease to be chief justice, than to do it. If I get to the point where they say ‘Mogoeng you must say you hate the Palestinians, and Palestine’ I would rather cease to be chief justice than to do it, because my God has instructed me to love and not to hate,” he said. “The Lord gave me rock-solid grounds to appeal,” he added. Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.",-1.722763416249488 "Israel is set to make peace with four more Arab countries in the region, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday. “I brought… four peace agreements, and there are another four on the way,” he said in an interview with the Hebrew-language Ynet news site. “I talked about one of them yesterday.” According to the Israeli premier, he conversed with “one of the leaders in the region” on Monday night for 45 minutes about the possibility of a normalization deal. “I pledged to take care of the citizens of Israel and I do so with a deep sense of mission,” he added. The so-called Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration, saw four Arab Muslim states — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — establish ties with Israel. Several Muslim-majority nations, including Indonesia, Mauritania, and even Saudi Arabia, are thought to be next on the list.",-0.9436319748426089 "Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system has undergone a “technological leap” and can now intercept multiple threats simultaneously, including rocket barrages and drones a barrage of rockets and drones, the Defense Ministry announced Tuesday following a series of complex testing. The news comes in the wake of a warning by the Israel Defense Forces of a possible war with the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah that would see Israel hit with some 2,000 rockets per day. The tests demonstrated a “significant upgrade” of Iron Dome’s technological capabilities, a Defense Ministry statement said. The Iron Dome was tested in “difficult and complex scenarios, intercepting and destroying existing and new threats… simultaneously shooting down several unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as missile and rockets salvoes,” according to the ministry statement. “Ten years after the first operational use of the Iron Dome, today we are completing a qualitative technological leap in the system’s abilities. In three series of experiments in just a few months, we have upgraded the capacities of the Iron Dome to the next generation of threats,” said Defense Ministry official Moshe Pattal. This test took place together with defense contractor, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and the Israeli Air Force’s Air Defense Command. The upgraded missile defense system will be issued to the IAF and the Navy for operational use. Defense Minister Benny Gantz hailed the announcement. “The Israeli technological superiority provided by the Iron Dome and the multilayer defense system is a cornerstone of our defense system and Israel’s security. It is critical for the security of our country in the face of changing and diverse threats from our enemies,” said Gantz. He went on to thank the defense ministry’s Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) as well as Rafael. “Thanks to them, the citizens of Israel can sleep peacefully at night.” General Manager of Rafael’s Air and Missile Defense Division, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Pini Yungman said: “Rafael and the IMDO have been tirelessly upgrading Iron Dome’s capabilities over the last decade, constantly improving its technological and operational abilities. Our forward-looking approach allows us to address projected threats that are emerging around us. The capabilities that were demonstrated in this last test will ensure further protection to the State of Israel.”",-0.8016978015258254 "Lawmakers in Iraq passed a bill Sunday exempting manufacturers of Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidates from liability for possible damages from them. The bill specifically stipulates that “international companies that manufacture, equip, and distribute” a Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate contracted by the Iraqi government for use in the country, “in addition to the Iraqi Ministry of Health and its employees, are exempt from civil and penal liability from damages resulting from the use of the vaccine.” “All the companies producing the vaccine demanded legal protection,” Hassan Khalati, an Iraqi parliament minister who worked on the exemption bill, told Iraqi state media outlet al-Sabah on March 14, as quoted by Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency. “Some [companies] were satisfied with a pledge from the [Iraqi] Ministry of Health, and others were satisfied with a decision from the Council of Ministers, aside for the company (Pfizer) that demanded that there be a law voted on by the House of Representatives,” Khalati revealed, adding that Iraq’s health ministry proposed the bill at the request of Pfizer, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical corporation. In addition to Pfizer, Iraq’s federal government has contracted with the Chinese state-run pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, the German-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, and Russia’s state-run Gamaleya Research Institute to use and distribute their coronavirus vaccine candidates to Iraqis. Iraq began distributing Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine candidate, known as “Sinopharm,” on March 2, according to state media. Iraq’s new bill exempting vaccine manufacturers from damages caused by their shots “obligates the Iraqi government to compensate those adversely affected by the use of the vaccine, with the exception of intentional actions that lead to death or serious injury by using the vaccine contrary to medical instructions,” Rudaw noted Sunday. Iraq’s Council of Ministers passed legislation in early March to provide “ten million Iraqi dinars (approximately $7,000) to families of those who died of COVID-19 [coronavirus] while working as Ministry of Health employees,” according to the news agency. Iraq recorded 3,866 new infections from the Chinese coronavirus on March 14, marking a significant spike in its number of daily new cases. The country has so far reported more than 763,085 cases and 13,788 death from the virus, according to the Iraqi health ministry. Germany, France, Italy, and Spain joined a growing number of countries worldwide on Monday that have temporarily suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine candidate following at least 37 reports of people suffering serious blood clots after receiving the shot. “French President Emmanuel Macron said his country will likewise suspend shots until at least Tuesday afternoon. Italy’s drug regulator also announced a temporary ban, as did Spain, Portugal, and Slovenia,” the Associated Press reported March 15. Denmark was the first country to pause its use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate on March 12; Ireland, Thailand, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Bulgaria soon followed.",-0.22905757620528666 "Iran claims the right to retaliate over an alleged Israeli attack on one of its ships, the regime’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday. “The finger of blame points” at Israel, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh was quoted by the Tasnim news agency as saying. “The (Israeli) regime’s ferocious and aggressive nature also corroborates this,” he added, noting Israel “always causes turmoil in the region.” “[Israel] finds its survival in war, crisis and chaos. Iran would consider all options when it finds out who has been involved in this operation, and will resort to them to protect its legitimate rights,” the spokesman said. He went on to say Iran would not hesitate to safeguard its national interests. “The Israeli officials are aware how Iran defends itself,” he added. Last month, Israel blamed Iran for an explosion on an Israeli cargo vessel in the Persian Gulf, blowing four holes on both sides of its hull. The Wall Street Journal last week reported Israel has targeted at least a dozen ships bound for Syria, most of them carrying Iranian oil, with mines and other weapons. The attacks began in late 2019, according to U.S. and regional officials. Iran has carried on with its oil trade with Syria, shipping millions of barrels in violation of both U.S. sanctions against Iran and international sanctions against Syria. Israel sought to stop the trade in oil out of concerns that the profits were financing extremism, the report said. Iran funds several terror proxies in the region, including the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group. Israel’s Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Uri Gordin warned on Monday a future war with Hezbollah would see the terror group firing some 2,000 rockets and missiles per day, stretching the Israeli military’s defense capabilities. “They know they cannot defeat us on the battlefield, so they will attempt to move the battlefield to a second front: our homes and in our cities,” the IDF general said. Hezbollah has approximately 150,000 rockets, according to Israeli estimates.",0.11712160421594277 "TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has charged a French tourist with spying and “spreading propaganda against the system,” his lawyer said Monday, the latest in a series of cases against foreigners at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West. Benjamin Berier was arrested some 10 months ago after taking pictures in a desert area where photography is prohibited and asking questions “in the media” about Iran’s obligatory Islamic headscarf for women, his lawyer Saeed Dehghan wrote on Twitter. Authorities were holding Berier at a prison in the northeast city of Mashhad, Dehghan said. Prosecutors recently presented the propaganda charges in a court hearing, he added, without specifying when. Under Iranian law, a spying conviction can lead to up to 10 years in prison. Berier has become the latest Westerner held on widely criticized espionage charges. On Sunday, prominent British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe reappeared in a Tehran court to face similar accusations of spreading propaganda after completing her full five-year prison sentence. She remains in limbo in Iran awaiting the verdict, unable to fly home to London. The cases come as Iran escalates pressure on the United States and European powers, including France and Britain, to grant the badly needed sanctions relief the country received under its tattered nuclear accord with world powers. While former President Donald Trump abandoned the landmark nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions on the country, President Joe Biden has offered to join in talks toward restoring the deal. But Washington and Tehran have reached an impasse, with each insisting the other move first to revive the deal. Rights groups accuse hard-liners in Iran’s security agencies of using foreign detainees as bargaining chips for money or influence in negotiations with the West. Tehran denies it, but there have been such prisoner exchanges in the past. Last March for instance, Iran and France swapped French researcher Roland Marchal for Iranian engineer Jalal Ruhollahnejad.",-0.13935667461982942 "A 7.0 preliminary magnitude earthquake struck Japan off the coast of Ishinomaki, 65 miles from the 9.0 earthquake that struck Fukushima ten years ago. A tsunami warning was declared earlier on Saturday but has now been downgraded to a “tsunami forecast” due to slight changes in sea level, CNN reported. The Japan Times reported that firefighters in Ishinomaki stated there is no damage from the earthquake, and Japan’s nuclear reactors in the northern and eastern parts of the country are safe. Japan experienced a deadly earthquake ten years ago that caused the worst nuclear disaster in the country’s history. More than 20,000 people were killed or went missing, and a 30-foot wave tsunami damaged several nuclear reactors in the Fukushima area. More than 100,000 people had to evacuate the area at the time, and authorities have spent the last ten years cleaning up the damage from the disaster, which experts say could take decades. This is not the only earthquake that hit Japan this month. Last month, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s northeastern coast in the same area, which caused the devastating earthquake in 2011.",-0.3372118755154754 "On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reacted to the exchange between American and Chinese officials earlier in the week and said that Chinese officials “mentioned Black Lives Matter as part of the reason they think American democracy is in decline, those are running buddies of Marxist-Leninists all around the world. And so, when they see a Democrat Party that is so deeply tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, I think they sense that America may well be in decline.” Pompeo said, “I would have called it out for exactly what it is, this idea somehow that America isn’t a beacon of democracy around the world, that’s just nonsense and it is crazy for them to make that attack. … They mentioned Black Lives Matter as part of the reason they think American democracy is in decline, those are running buddies of Marxist-Leninists all around the world. And so, when they see a Democrat Party that is so deeply tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, I think they sense that America may well be in decline. I would have made clear that America stands for protecting its own. I would have reiterated our views about America first. We would have talked about the greatness and the exceptionalism of our nation, and we would have called them out for what they did to the world with this virus that has destroyed millions of lives. We’ve lost millions of lives and billion dollars worth of wealth. It is unacceptable that the administration didn’t push back in that way.” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett",-1.484331637327382 "On Friday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show,” House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) said she supports boycotting the 2022 Olympics in China. Cheney said, “I remember when we boycotted the Olympics, I guess it was the 1980 Olympics. And it’s terrible for our athletes, and I understand that. But what we’re facing right now, the alternative to boycotting the Olympics is participating in — would be participating in a show that essentially would be whitewashing what the Chinese Communist Party is doing around the world, and doing with respect to the Uyghurs, and I think that that would be wrong. So I do support [Rep. Michael Waltz’s (R-FL)] resolution. I think that’s important.” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett",1.4604889220734685 "The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Thursday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit China on Monday for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who just met with U.S. diplomats in Alaska. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted diplomatic observers who expected Lavrov and Wang to work on a joint Chinese-Russian response to U.S. foreign policy under the Biden administration: “The international situation has undergone great changes,” said Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “With shifts in the policies of US and Western countries towards China and Russia, the strategic partnership between China and Russia needs to be reflected and upgraded.” Yang said the two countries would discuss how to strengthen coordination on regional and major international issues. Yang anticipated the Wang-Lavrov meeting would synchronize Beijing and Moscow’s position at the United Nations on matters like the Iran nuclear deal, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, the junta in Myanmar, the coronavirus, and climate change. Increasing military cooperation between Russia and China will probably be on the agenda as well, even though the Chinese Foreign Ministry publicly claims it has no interest in a military alliance with Russia against the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public stance on military cooperation is that he supposedly feels it is unnecessary at present but could become important in the future. Skeptics of these public statements believe China and Russia are already working together more than they admit, especially in areas where they feel mutual antagonism toward U.S. objectives, such as their support for brutal dictator Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. One interesting point of turbulence in the relationship between Beijing and Moscow is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which Russia tepidly supports diplomatically as an international infrastructure plan but privately fears as China’s imperial gambit for control of the Third World. Sometimes the Russians appear to regard BRI as an opportunity for financial and diplomatic gain, and sometimes they fear it as a Chinese bid for hegemony that could permanently relegate Russia to junior-partner status at best. The recently announced agreement between Beijing and Moscow for joint development of a lunar research station was taken by some observers as the Russians making their peace with that junior-partnership position with Belt and Road. The Russians may have concluded BRI is their best hope for countering American and European economic influence, and a means for Russia to tap into both the Chinese and European economies. The coronavirus pandemic slowed Belt and Road down considerably, so this might be the best time for Russia to climb fully on board. Geopolitical analysts told the South China Morning Post on Friday that mutual hostility toward the United States has hardened enough to become a solid foundation for a closer Chinese-Russian partnership. Retired China Foreign Affairs professor Yang Chuang thought Lavrov’s visit next week would be a good opportunity for China and Russia to “reinforce their strategic coordination on international issues, discuss Biden’s foreign policies and, more importantly, develop a back to back and shoulder to shoulder relationship, which is much stronger than just an alliance.” Russia could also be making a play for more U.S. concessions by pretending its displeasure with Washington is driving it into the arms of imperial Beijing. U.S.-Russian tensions are supposedly ratcheting up, with President Joe Biden agreeing in an interview that Putin is a “killer” and Putin responding with schoolyard-bully taunts at the frail American president. Behind the theatrics, the Biden administration made concessions to Moscow that were so generous the Russians were taken aback, reversing former President Donald Trump’s pattern of uncomfortably chummy rhetoric toward Putin but tough stances on key issues. If the Biden team has dreams of resuming the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton “reset with Russia,” as some observers believe they might, Putin would be shrewd to cozy up to China and raise the price for improving relations with the United States.",-0.7387108509040915 "The number of marriages in South Korea plummeted to an all-time low in 2020 owing to changing attitudes toward marriage among younger generations and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported Thursday. Newly released figures from Statistics Korea show 214,000 couples married in South Korea last year, the lowest such figure since the statistical agency began compiling marriage data in 1970. The number of marriages in South Korea dropped for the ninth-straight year in 2020, marking a 10.7 percent decrease from 2019. “The annualized decrease rate is also the steepest since the 18.9 percent tumble recorded in 1971. It also marks the first double-digit decline in 23 years,” Yonhap noted. Just 51.2 percent of South Koreans aged 13 and older said they felt obligated to marry one day in a survey conducted by the South Korean government in 2020, representing a decrease by 14 percentage points from a similar survey in 2010. The average age of a South Korean groom in 2020 increased to 33.2 years, up 1.4 years from a decade earlier. Statistics Korea recorded a similar increase in the median age of first-time brides, who were on average 30.8 years-old when they walked down the aisle in 2020, up 1.9 years from 2011. The number of South Koreans who married foreign spouses in 2020 dropped 35.1 percent from the previous year to 15,000. Such unions accounted for 7.2 percent of all marriages in the East Asian country in 2020. While the demographics of South Korea’s foreign spouses in 2020 have yet to be released, Vietnamese women made up the majority of foreign brides in South Korea in 2019 at 37.9 percent. They were followed by Chinese women at 20.6 percent and Thai women at 11.6 percent. Men from the U.S. accounted for 24.6 percent of foreign grooms in South Korea in 2019, followed by Chinese men at 23.6 percent, and Vietnamese men at 10.7 percent. “The number of divorces in South Korea dropped to 107,000 in 2020, “down 3.9 percent from the previous year and marking the first annual drop in three years, with couples married 20 years or longer accounting for the largest portion of the total at 37.2 percent,” Yonhap reported on March 18. South Korea’s population fell for the first time in its history in 2020 along with its birth rate, signaling the country – Asia’s fourth-largest economy – may face serious economic and cultural changes in the coming years. The population of South Korea was 51,829,023 as of December 31, 2020, marking a decrease of 20,838 from the end of 2019, census data released by South Korea’s Ministry of Interior and Safety on January 3 revealed. South Korea also reported 275,815 births in 2020, down 10.65 percent from 2019. “Amid the rapidly declining birth rate, the government needs to undertake fundamental changes to its relevant policies,” South Korea’s interior ministry said on January 3.",-0.8284401191414066 "A top North Korean diplomat confirmed in a public statement Wednesday that the administration of President Joe Biden has repeatedly attempted to contact Pyongyang and North Korean officials have deliberately ignored it. Choe Son Hui, first vice minister of Foreign Affairs, asserted North Korea’s communist regime does not “think there is need to respond to the U.S.” at the moment and vowed dictator Kim Jong-un would never meet with an American president again, as he did with President Donald Trump on two occasions. Choe’s letter described Biden’s policy towards North Korea as “lunatic” and insisted North Korean officials would not speak to American counterparts unless Washington lifted sanctions on the regime. Under Trump, the United States led a charge at the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on North Korea for its last illegal nuclear weapons test, which took place in 2017. The Trump administration convinced the Council, including North Korea’s closest ally China, to impose the strictest sanctions on Pyongyang in history, severely limiting its economic growth. While multiple reports indicated China was illicitly allowing trade across the North Korean border, Kim Jong-un acknowledged in remarks this year that North Korea’s economy was in shambles and scolded officials for failing to find ways to circumvent sanctions enough to expand the nation’s financial reach. A United Nations report obtained by Reuters in February revealed evidence suggesting North Korea generated as much as $300 million in 2020 through global cyberattacks targeting “financial institutions and virtual currency exchange houses,” but it appears not to have been enough to offset years of strict global sanctions. “The U.S. has tried to contact us since mid-February through several routes including New York,” Choe said in the statement published Wednesday through North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). “It recently requested to contact us by sending e-mails and telephone messages via various routes. Even in the evening before the joint military drill it sent a message imploring us to respond to its request through a third country.” Reuters first reported, citing an anonymous source in the Biden administration, that the White House had indeed attempted on multiple occasions to reach out to Pyongyang, beginning in mid-February. North Korean state media, the only media legally available in the country, had not yet at the time mentioned America had a new president, save in a passing remark in an article on the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot. “To date, we have not received any response from Pyongyang,” the unnamed official told Reuters this weekend. Like Choe, the official mentioned attempts through the United Nations in New York to contact the communist regime. Choe described responding to America as a “waste of time” unless Washington took proactive measures to remove sanctions on the regime. The sanctions are in place in response to North Korea building an illegal nuclear weapons program, which it has done nothing to dismantle save for a mostly performative explosion at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site in 2018. “We have already declared our stand that no DPRK [North Korea]-U.S. contact and dialogue of any kind can be possible unless the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy towards the DPRK,” Choe insisted. “Therefore, we will disregard such an attempt of the U.S. in the future, too.” “If the U.S. wants so much to sit even once with us face to face, it has to drop its bad habit and adopt a proper stand from the beginning,” the statement continued. “It had better drop the cheap trick by which it tries to use the DPRK-U.S. contact as a means for gaining time and building up the public opinion.” Choe ominously vowed to “keep tabs” on the Biden administration’s “ill deeds” and asserted Kim would not meet with any future U.S. presidents without fundamental changes in the status quo. Choe’s is the second government statement out of Pyongyang since the initial Reuters article revealing the Biden administration’s failed overtures to North Korea. The first was a statement attributed to Kim Yo-jong, dictator Kim’s sister, whom the regime appears to have tasked with the most threatening and belligerent remarks out of the country. “We take this opportunity to warn the new U.S. administration trying hard to give off powder smell in our land,” Kim Yo-jong wrote in a statement published in North Korean state media Monday. “If it wants to sleep in peace for coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.” Kim notably did not name Biden in the statement. Elsewhere in the remarks, Kim urged South Korea to end its “ridiculous, impudent, and stupid” military exercises. South Korea and North Korea are technically at war, though active hostilities ended in 1953. The United States and China participated in the Korean War on the sides of the South and the North, respectively, so are still also technically embroiled in the conflict to this day. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.",0.8672434822487675 "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) filed a resolution to force Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) off of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday due to Swalwell’s alleged ties to a Chinese spy. The resolution comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reappointed Swalwell to the committee last week. Present in the resolution is a reference to FBI Director Christopher Wray’s July statement saying, “Beijing is engaged in a highly sophisticated malign foreign influence campaign,” which is to “undermine confidence in our democratic processes and values.” McCarthy’s resolution noted Swalwell “has not denied public reporting that a suspected Chinese intelligence operative helped raise money for Representative Swalwell’s political campaigns and facilitated the potential assignment of interns into Representative Swalwell’s offices.” #FoxNews has obtained this Resolution seeking Congressman Eric Swalwell’s removal from the House Intelligence Committee. TBD on timing in terms of when Leader McCarthy will seek to force a vote on the House Floor. pic.twitter.com/FpX7vd9Nz5 — Mike Emanuel 🇺🇸 (@MikeEmanuelFox) March 18, 2021 In December, an Axios revealed a years-long political intelligence operation run by the Chinese main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015. It showed a suspected Chinese spy developed extensive ties with Swalwell. The Chinese national named “Fang Fang” or “Christine Fang” targeted “up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage.” Swalwell responded to a Fox News reporter’s tweet, accusing this of being the “New McCarthyism” from the GOP leader. “Meet the New McCarthyism. Multiple sentences in resolution state ‘Swalwell has not denied…,'” the California Democrat tweeted. “Yet fails to include multiple FBI statements of ‘no wrongdoing’ and did nothing but ‘cooperate.’ All of this to deflect from GOP Leader’s support for QAnon.” Meet the New McCarthyism. Multiple sentences in resolution state “Swalwell has not denied…” Yet fails to include multiple FBI statements of “no wrongdoing” and did nothing but “cooperate.” All of this to deflect from @GOPLeader’s support for QAnon. https://t.co/2bsU72ev8H — Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) March 18, 2021 Last week, McCarthy tweeted, “Pelosi just reappointed Eric Swalwell to the Intelligence Committee. Based on the briefing she and I received together, Swalwell should not be on the panel in charge of Guarding our nation’s secrets. Next week, I will offer a resolution to remove him from the Intel Committee.”",-1.863979745791229 "School counselors in many urban, high needs districts have been consumed with efforts to help students engage with their schoolwork since the pandemic hit In poor districts, pandemic overwhelms school counselorsBy MICHAEL MELIAAssociated PressThe Associated PressBRIDGEPORT, Conn. BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — To help her students keep up with school this year, counselor Nadia Pearce has tried it all. She reminds them of goals they had before the pandemic, for college or a career. She calls parents and goes over how their children are supposed to log in for distance learning. She begs. She pleads. She practices tough love. “I really have to say, ‘You’re in this nest right now. This is high school and we are pampering you. But when you leave here, you’re going to be an adult and you have to make your own decisions and there won’t be a Ms. Pearce to come advocate for you,’” she said. “’So you have to get it together, now.’” School counselors everywhere have played important roles in guiding students through the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, but the burden has been especially heavy in urban, high-needs districts like Bridgeport, Connecticut, where they have been consumed with issues related to attendance and engagement. In a nation where poor districts typically have fewer counselors per student, those demands highlight one way the pandemic is likely to worsen inequities in the American education system as those with the most on their plates have the least amount of time to help students plan for the future. Well before school buildings shut down last spring, addressing chronic absenteeism was a time-consuming chore for Pearce and her colleagues. Since the shift to distance and then hybrid learning, her students at Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict Magnet school have taken on more responsibilities at home, working jobs or caring for siblings. Counselors regularly run reports to identify students who are missing consecutive days of school or not logging in for class. From there, they analyze whether it’s a case of illness, or perhaps flagging motivation, and discuss strategies that could work for each student. “Attendance, attendance, attendance,” Pearce said. “The data for attendance is like that emoji where there’s an explosion.” There is one guidance counselor for every 350 students in high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city where three quarters of the students in the low-income district are Black or Hispanic. That compares with much smaller ratios in neighboring, largely white Fairfield County communities including 1 for every 220 in Greenwich, 206 in Darien and 162 in Weston, according to federal data. Nevertheless, counselors in Bridgeport generally need to spend more time engaging families and connecting them with resources outside of school, said Michael Testani, Bridgeport’s superintendent and a former school counselor. “There’s a lot of areas that a school counselor in Bridgeport needs to cover outside of just the academic guidance and support that you may see in the suburbs, where kids are getting all of their needs met at home and in the community,” Testani said. Nationally, high school counselors who serve predominantly students of color attend to 34 more students than others, according to a 2019 report by the American School Counselor Association, the Education Trust and Reach Higher. It also found that schools serving the most students from low-income families tend to have fewer counselors. Still, Pearce has made time for students who lean on her for college planning. Pola Indyk, a senior whose mother is from Poland and was unfamiliar with the college application process, said Pearce guided her through every step, even working after the school day on a last-minute request for a recommendation. “It was very nerve-wracking. I’m a pretty anxious person as it is. I just felt really overwhelmed,” Pola said. “She checks up on me. She knows that I have a lot of plans and aspirations.” In a crisis year, counselors and other school staff members in many areas have been occupied with making sure students have meals and support for emotional struggles, never mind declines in student performance and college application rates. A shift to emphasize student attendance and well-being — and not necessarily academic counseling — has taken place even in suburban districts, said Amanda Fitzgerald, an assistant deputy executive director at the school counselor association. “I think the college and career readiness piece is, in some communities, still a number one priority. And I think in most communities, the social and emotional well-being of students is the number one priority,” Fitzgerald said. In Cheshire, Connecticut, a New Haven suburb where the vast majority of students go on to college, counselors have been called upon to provide extra support addressing student’s social and emotional needs, which had been rising rapidly in many places even before the pandemic, district counseling director Michelle Catucci said. The pandemic, she said, has brought further stress, including the uncertainty around planning for college and whether students will be comfortable going away for higher education. “It’s just increasing — the demands on our students as far as what success means and being successful and managing the social pieces, especially with social media,” said Catucci, who is also executive director of the Connecticut School Counselor Association. “But since the pandemic, we’re obviously still dealing with some of those issues, but also with supporting students through this unprecedented time and the emotions that come with it.” In Bridgeport, Pearce said she has adopted the role of an “auntie,” checking in on students and their parents alike. “I told a mother, ‘Look, I know that you work. My sister’s a single mom, too. So I get it. You’re doing a lot of different things,'” she said. “’But you know, we’ve got to help our little friend cross the finish line. Can you just check her assignments? Just to make sure she’s doing what she needs to do?’” She also has success stories. Masengo Nkuili, a junior, said distance learning has been disrupted by distractions at home and there have been days she didn’t feel like getting out of bed. She said Pearce has helped to keep her motivated and guided her toward scholarship opportunities to help fulfill her dream of attending a historically Black college. “If I am just not feeling something or I don’t feel like going, it’s, ‘Masengo you have to go to class,’” she said. “She always gives me advice like that. Her energy is always amazing.”",-0.7233210404358706 "Officials say a man charged with beating to death a New Jersey resident he said sexually abused him as a child now claims he has killed a total of 16 people, including his ex-wife and three others in New Mexico Prosecutor: Man accused of 1 murder says he really killed 16By ALLEN G. BREEDAssociated PressThe Associated PressWOODBURY, N.J. WOODBURY, N.J. (AP) — A man charged with beating to death a New Jersey resident he says sexually abused him as a child now claims he has killed a total of 16 people, including his ex-wife and three others found dead near a New Mexico airport, officials said. Authorities have not corroborated his claim. Sean Lannon, 47, said he killed the four whose remains were found in a vehicle and “11 other individuals” in New Mexico, Alec Gutierrez, an assistant prosecutor in Gloucester County, New Jersey, said at a detention hearing Friday, NJ.com reported. Gutierrez said Lannon had confessed to luring several victims to a home in New Mexico and dismembering some of them. Authorities said in court documents that Lannon made the admission in a phone call to a relative, who told investigators he expressed remorse. Lannon has been charged only with the death in New Jersey, and his lawyer says his client was provoked. He has been named a person of interest in the four New Mexico slayings. Police Lt. David Chavez in Lannon’s hometown of Grants, New Mexico, said authorities have no indication that his claims about 11 other killings are true and that they aren’t aware of any missing-person or homicide reports that would fit his narrative. “Is it possible? Sure, anything’s possible. Is it plausible?” Chavez said. “Unfortunately we are still investigating that and conducting search warrants for evidentiary value.” It was a twist in a case that spans the country but has many unanswered questions, including how Lannon was connected to the New Mexico slayings. Officials from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, several police agencies in New Mexico, and police and prosecutors in New Jersey either didn’t respond to requests for comment Saturday or didn’t immediately have more information. The case began on March 5, when the bodies of Lannon’s ex-wife and three other people were found in a vehicle in a parking garage at Albuquerque International Sunport, New Mexico’s largest airport. It’s not clear how they were killed. Police say three of them were reported missing in January from Grants, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Albuquerque. The victims were identified as Jennifer Lannon, 39; Matthew Miller, 21; Jesten Mata, 40; and Randal Apostalon, 60. Chris Whitman, Jennifer Lannon’s brother, said that Sean Lannon told the family in January that Jennifer had “run off” with some friends, possibly to Arizona. Whitman said that didn’t sound right. “She was a great mom and, just, it would be uncharacteristic of her to not be with her children,” Whitman told The Associated Press Saturday in a telephone interview from his home in Washington Township, New Jersey. When the family were unable to reach her, he said they filed a missing person’s report. Jennifer Lannon, Miller and Mata were friends, and Apostalon lived out of his car and was known to give rides for money, Grants police said. The bodies were found in Apostalon’s car. “I can understand he (Sean Lannon) stated that, you know, he shot his wife and her boyfriend,” Chavez said. “But Matthew was not her boyfriend, so I don’t know how he became involved.” Whitman told the AP that Sean Lannon had flown to New Jersey March 4 with the couple’s three young children — girls 6 and 7, and a boy aged 4. Lannon took them to his parents’ house and said he was going back to New Mexico to continue looking for Jennifer. Whitman told the AP that although the couple had divorced after nearly a decade of marriage, they were still living together. They were even talking of moving the family back to the East Coast, he said. “They were still parenting together, and there was no indication that there was trouble —at all,” said Whitman. “From my knowledge and our family’s knowledge, they were working on their relationship and heading in the right direction.” On March 8, three days after the remains were found in New Mexico, the body of Michael Dabkowski was discovered in his New Jersey home, just south of Philadelphia, after a welfare check. Sean Lannon is accused of breaking in and beating the 66-year-old to death with a hammer, according to an affidavit. Lannon told investigators that Dabkowski had sexually abused him as a child and that he had gone to the home to retrieve sexually explicit photos. Dabkowski mentored Lannon and his twin brother through a Big Brothers program in the 1980s, NJ.com reported. Whitman said the family did not know of the alleged abuse. In fact, he said he met Dabkowski at the birthday part of one of the Lannon children a couple of years ago, and all seemed fine. “I knew he was a close, just a close friend to Sean, and that he was a father figure,” Whitman said. “But outside of that, we knew nothing else.” A search for Lannon ended with his arrest in St. Louis on March 10. He was driving a car stolen from Dabkowski. In court in New Jersey on Friday, public defender Frank Unger challenged probable cause for the murder charge, arguing that Dabkowski had allowed Lannon into his home and that what followed amounted, at worst, to manslaughter provoked by passion, NJ.com reported. He said Lannon didn’t want anyone “to have control over me any longer” in trying to take back the photos. Dabkowski had “documented those sexual assaults, those rapes, by taking pictures of himself with Mr. Lannon in sexually compromised positions,” Unger said. The public defender said Lannon retrieved two hammers from Dabkowski’s garage and gave them to the victim, saying, “You’re going to need these. I don’t want to hurt you.” “I would suggest that this fact alone illustrates this was not purposeful murder. He did not even bring a weapon to the home,” Unger said, arguing that Dabkowski attacked his client and then was killed. Unger wanted the judge to release Lannon before trial, saying he had no prior convictions and is an Army veteran with an honorable discharge. Lannon was born in Massachusetts and spent most of his early years in suburban Philadelphia’s Gloucester County before he was deployed to Germany, Unger said. He has family in southern New Jersey, including his mother and sister. But Gutierrez said Lannon “admitted his efforts to conceal evidence” in killings in New Mexico. The prosecutor added that Lannon had previously spent a week in jail in New Mexico for failing to appear in court. It wasn’t clear what he had been cited with. The judge ordered that Lannon remain behind bars. Unger, an attorney for Sean Lannon’s family and Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence Region didn’t immediately respond Saturday to messages seeking comment. Whitman said Lannon’s story of abuse was “heartbreaking.” And while his family is angry and hurt, there is a part of him that feels sorry for his former brother-in-law. “We still want justice,” Whitman said. “We’re clinging to our faith right now in the Lord. And, you know, one day — it might not be any time soon — we want to get to a place of forgiveness for him.” ___ This story has been updated to delete incorrect attribution in the first paragraph about the suspect’s confession to 11 killings. It also corrects that the suspect was arrested March 10, not March 17; that the airport bodies were found March 5, not last week; and that the New Jersey victim’s body was found March 8, not March 10.",1.1137714116034245 "Top U.S. and Chinese officials have wrapped up two days of contentious talks in Alaska after having traded sharp and unusually public barbs over vastly different views of each other and the world in their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office US, China wrap up testy 1st face-to-face talks under BidenBy MATTHEW LEE and MARK THIESSENAssociated PressThe Associated PressANCHORAGE, Alaska ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Top U.S. and Chinese officials wrapped up two days of contentious talks in Alaska on Friday after trading sharp and unusually public barbs over vastly different views of each other and the world in their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office. The two sides finished the meetings after an opening session in which they attacked each other in an unusually public way. The U.S. accused the Chinese delegation of “grandstanding” and Beijing fired back, saying there was a “strong smell of gunpowder and drama” that was entirely the fault of the Americans. The meetings in Anchorage were a new test in increasingly troubled relations between the two countries, which are at odds over a range of issues from trade to human rights in Tibet, Hong Kong and China’s western Xinjiang region, as well as over Taiwan, China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and the coronavirus pandemic. “We got a defensive response,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the meetings concluded. “We wanted to share with them the significant concerns that we have about a number of the actions that China has taken, and behaviors exhibiting concerns, shared by our allies and partners,” he said. “And we did that. We also wanted to lay out very clearly, our own policies, priorities, and worldview. And we did that too.” In separate comments, Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi said dialogue was the only way to resolve differences, But he also made clear that Beijing had no intention of backing down on any issue. “China is going to safeguard our national sovereignty, security and our interests to develop China,” he said. “It is an irreversible trend,” he said. “We hope the United States is not going to underestimate China’s determination to defend its territory, safeguard its people and defend its righteous interests,” he said. As they opened the talks on Thursday, Blinken said the Biden administration is united with its allies in pushing back against Chinese authoritarianism. In response, Yang accused Washington of hypocrisy on human rights and other issues, many of which Blinken mentioned in his comments. “Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability,” Blinken said of China’s actions. “That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.” National security adviser Jake Sullivan amplified the criticism, saying China has undertaken an “assault on basic values.” “We do not seek conflict but we welcome stiff competition,” he said. Yang responded angrily by demanding the U.S. stop pushing its own version of democracy at a time when the United States itself has been roiled by domestic discontent. He also accused the U.S. of failing to deal with its own human rights problems and took issue with what he said was “condescension” from Blinken, Sullivan and other U.S. officials. “We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world,” Yang said. “Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” “China will not accept unwarranted accusations from the U.S. side,” he said, adding that recent developments had plunged relations “into a period of unprecedented difficulty” that “has damaged the interests of our two peoples.” “There is no way to strangle China,” he said. Blinken appeared to be annoyed by the tenor and length of the comments, which went on for more than 15 minutes. He said his impressions from speaking with world leaders and on his just-concluded trip to Japan and South Korea were entirely different from the Chinese position. “I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re reengaged,” Blinken retorted. “I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.” Underscoring the animosity, the State Department blasted the Chinese delegation for violating an agreed upon two-minute time limit for opening statements and suggested it “seem(ed) to have arrived intent on grandstanding, focused on public theatrics and dramatics over substance.” “America’s approach will be undergirded by confidence in our dealing with Beijing — which we are doing from a position of strength — even as we have the humility to know that we are a country eternally striving to become a more perfect union,” it said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, speaking later in Beijing, said Blinken and Sullivan had provoked Chinese officials into making a “solemn response” after U.S. officials made “groundless attacks” against China. “It was the U.S. side that … provoked the dispute in the first place, so the two sides had a strong smell of gunpowder and drama from the beginning in the opening remarks. It was not the original intention of the Chinese side,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing. U.S.-China ties have been torn for years, and the Biden administration has yet to signal whether it’s ready or willing to back away from the hard-line stances taken under Donald Trump. Just a day before the meeting, Blinken had announced new sanctions over Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong. In response, China stepped up its rhetoric opposing U.S. interference in domestic affairs and complained directly about it. “Is this a decision made by the United States to try to gain some advantage in dealing with China?” State Councilor Wang Yi asked. “Certainly this is miscalculated and only reflects the vulnerability and weakness inside the United States and it will not shake China’s position or resolve on those issues.” Trump had taken pride in forging what he saw as a strong relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But the relationship disintegrated after the coronavirus pandemic spread from the Wuhan province across the globe and unleashed a public health and economic disaster. ___ Lee reported from Washington.",0.9857609259788243 "U.S. relations with its two biggest geo-political rivals are facing severe tests as President Joe Biden tries to assert America’s place in the world and distinguish himself from his predecessor US ties with Russia, China sink as Biden toes tough linesBy MATTHEW LEEAP Diplomatic WriterThe Associated PressWASHINGTON WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. relations with its two biggest geo-political rivals are facing severe tests as President Joe Biden tries to assert America’s place in the world and distinguish himself from his predecessor. Airing myriad complaints, the Biden administration took an extraordinarily tough line with China and Russia this past week. Public spats between the countries erupted as Biden characterized Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “killer” and his top national security aides excoriated China for a litany of issues. Moscow and Beijing both fired back, setting the stage for months, if not more, of escalating tensions that are unlikely to be resolved without intense discussions at the leadership level and major concessions from all sides. Biden himself kicked off the latest round of recrimination in a television interview in which he sought to draw clear differences between his Russia policies and those of former President Donald Trump. who was accused of being soft on Putin. Just 24 hours later, Biden’s top diplomat and national security adviser blasted Chinese officials in face-to-face talks. Although Biden’s strong comments about Putin reflected a shift from Trump’s often conciliatory approach to the Kremlin, the harsh criticism directed at China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan in many ways mirrored the previous administration’s hard line toward Beijing. The contrasting styles suggested that Biden is intent on reversing years of perceived U.S. weakness toward Russia while rejecting Trump’s 2020 campaign allegations that he’s not tough enough on China. In taking a strong line on Russia, Biden has said the days of the U.S. “rolling over” to Putin are done. And, in the interview with ABC broadcast on Wednesday, Biden replied “I do” when asked if he thought Putin was a “killer.” Russia responded by recalling its ambassador in Washington for consultations. Putin then shot back by pointing to the U.S. history of slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans and the atomic bombing of Japan in World War II in an “it-takes-one-to-know-one” response. As that was unfolding, on Thursday in Alaska, China’s top two diplomats reacted in similar fashion to criticism from Blinken and Sullivan about Beijing’s human rights record in the western Xinjiang region and Tibet and its aggressive actions in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea. Communist Party foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the U.S. of hypocrisy for condemning China while at the same time grappling with its own internal issues, including violence against Asian Americans and other people of color and political unrest following the 2020 presidential election. Blinken and Sullivan took umbrage at those comments and replied that the U.S. was not perfect but sought to openly and honestly address such matters. Sullivan said Americans’ willingness to confront their shortcomings was the “secret sauce” of U.S. success. And, they sought to reframe U.S.-China relations in the context of the Biden administration’s resolve to correct those issues, strengthen the U.S. economy and improve ties with democratic allies in Asia such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. Blinken, having just finished a trip to Japan and South Korea with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, made clear to the Chinese that the U.S. is aligned with its allies. “I have to tell you, what I’m hearing is very different from what you described,” he told Wang and Yang. “I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re re-engaged with our allies and partners. I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government has taken.” Blinken appears to have impressed his boss. “I’m very proud of the secretary of state,” Biden said after the testy talks in Anchorage. A similar effort with allies is underway in Europe with respect to Russia. Blinken will leave Monday for Brussels for talks with NATO and European Union officials designed to repair strains caused by Trump’s largely transactional diplomacy. Trump’s bluster, threats of trade wars and intense demands that Europe pay more for its defense angered many, particularly in the continent’s two major powers: France and Germany. That trip is aimed at underscoring the Biden administration’s “determination to strengthen the transatlantic alliance and reinvigorate our ties with allies through NATO” with an eye toward challenges posed by both Russia and China, the State Department said. Russia’s relations with the United States and the European Union already had plunged to post-Cold War lows after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, meddling in elections, hacking attacks and, most recently, the jailing of Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny after his poisoning, which he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the accusations. Then, the U.S. national intelligence director’s office released a report finding that Putin authorized influence operations to help Trump’s reelection bid. The Biden administration warned that Russia would face sanctions soon over its attempt to influence the election and the widespread SolarWinds hacks. “(Putin) will pay a price,” Biden said in the ABC interview when asked about the declassified report.",0.3778884241104176 "L.L. Bean sees sales boom amid pandemic’s push to outdoors L.L. Bean sees sales boom amid pandemic’s push to outdoorsBy DAVID SHARPAssociated PressThe Associated PressFREEPORT, Maine FREEPORT, Maine (AP) — With Americans hunkering down and hankering to get outdoors during the pandemic, L.L. Bean recorded its best annual sales growth in nearly a decade, the company said Friday. The Freeport-based retailer started its fiscal year with store closings and worries about survival but the company weathered the turbulent times with revenue growth of 5%, the best showing since 2011. L.L. Bean was positioned to meet consumer demand for both comfy items for people working from home and outdoor gear as more people ventured outdoors to ensure social distancing and other pandemic-related protocols. “What my great-grandfather knew more than a hundred years ago was that spending time outside is really important, and that took on more importance this year,” said Shawn Gorman, chairman and great-grandson of the company’s founder, Leon Leonwood Bean. The company’s 4,600 full- and part-time workers reaped some of the benefit from the net revenue of $1.59 billion. The family-owned company’s board on Friday awarded a cash bonus of 10% of workers’ salary and an additional 401(k) contribution equal to 8% of salary, said CEO Steve Smith. All told, the company gave back $72 million to workers, he said. Smith praised the workers who endured the crazy year. “They were resilient, resourceful, innovative. We took care of them from a safety perspective, and they took care of our customers,” he said. L.L. Bean benefited from two of the hottest retail segments during the pandemic — comfort items like slippers, pajamas and loungewear, along with outdoor gear like hiking boots, fishing gear and canoes, both of which were “right in line with the consumer psyche,” Smith said. All told, the company picked up 1 million new customers during the pandemic, he said. “L.L. Bean probably had the best of both worlds because it targets both of those segments,” said Neil Saunders, analyst at New York-based GlobalData Retail. Other beneficiaries included retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Lululemon, he said. For L.L. Bean, it was quite a transformation for a company that previously pared its product line, reduced its workforce and tightened its generous return policy against a backdrop of flat sales for five consecutive years. During the pandemic, L.L. Bean closed all of its stores for 100 days but online and catalog sales remained strong. The company saw a glimmer of hope in May and June when bikes, canoes, kayaks, outdoor furniture and hammocks were flying out of the warehouse. The company also saw solid growth from its market in Canada and wholesale arrangements with Zappos, Nordstrom, Staples and SCHEELS, Smith said. To help during the pandemic, the company also manufactured 350,000 face masks, assembled 500,000 face shields, provided personal protective equipment to election workers, and packed more than a million pounds of food for a food bank, the company said. Looking ahead, the company is continuing to see strong sales this spring. And company officials say they think the change in buying habits may be permanent. The Outdoor Industry Association estimates that nearly 8 million more people tried camping, 8.1 million more people hiked and more than 3 million more people tried freshwater fishing in 2020 than in the previous year. “People’s habits have been reshaped,” Gorman said. “It’s that realization that time outside has that restorative power that’s so necessary in this time of high anxiety and high stress.”",-1.1783651758727873 "March 22 (UPI) — Riley Keough says she’s completed her training to become a death doula. The 31-year-old actress finished her death doula training Sunday, eight months after her brother Benjamin Keough’s suicide. Keough shared a quote from the poet Rumi and an update on her progress Sunday on Instagram. “Today I finished my Death Doula training, on The Art of Death Midwifery training course by @sacred_crossings so I guess I’m an almost certified death doula now hehe,” she captioned the post. “And I just felt like writing such a deep thank you to this community who are teaching and training people in conscious dying and death work.” Death doulas provide comfort and support to people and their families as they navigate the end-of-life process. Keough said many people are taught that death is “a morbid subject” or are too “afraid” to discuss it, leaving them “very ill prepared” when death happens. “I think it’s so important to be educated on conscious dying and death the way we educate ourselves on birth and conscious birthing,” she said. “We prepare ourselves so rigorously for the entrance and have no preparation for our exit. So I’m so grateful for this community and to be able to contribute what I can.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Riley Keough (@rileykeough) Keough is the daughter of singer Lisa Marie Presley and the granddaughter of late rock and roll icon Elvis Presley. Her brother Benjamin Keough died at age 27 in July. Keough called Benjamin Keough her “best friend” in a message on Instagram after his death. “There are no words for you. Angel is the closest I could think of. Pure light. Baby brother. Best friend. Wild man. Intellectual. Witness to my life. Twin soul. Protector. Too sensitive for this harsh world,” the actress wrote. “I hope you feel my love,” she said. “I can’t believe you’ve left me. Not you sweet Ben Ben. Anyone but you. I guess this is true heartbreak. I hope we meet again.” Keough is known for the films Mad Max: Fury Road, It Comes at Night and The Lodge. She also played Christine Reade on the Starz series The Girlfriend Experience.",-0.5499747113367662 "A Russian man has pleaded guilty to offering a Tesla employee $1 million to cripple the electric car company’s plant in Nevada with ransomware in an extortion scheme Russian man pleads guilty in Nevada to plot to extort TeslaBy KEN RITTER, FRANK BAJAK and SCOTT SONNERAssociated PressThe Associated PressRENO, Nev. RENO, Nev. (AP) — A Russian man has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to offering a Tesla employee $1 million to cripple the electric car company’s massive electric battery plant in Nevada with ransomware and steal company secrets for extortion, prosecutors and court records said. In a case that cybersecurity experts called exceptional for the risks he took, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Reno. His court-appointed federal public defender, Chris Frey, declined Friday to comment. Prosecutors alleged that Kriuchkov acted on behalf of co-conspirators abroad and attempted to use face-to-face bribery to recruit an insider to physically plant ransomware, which scrambles data on targeted networks and can only be unlocked with a software key provided by the attackers. Typically, ransomware gangs operating from safe havens hack into victim networks over the internet and download data before activating the ransomware. “The fact that such a risk was taken could, perhaps, suggest that this was an intelligence operation aimed at obtaining information rather than an extortion operation aimed at obtaining money,” said Brett Callow, a cybersecurity analyst at anti-virus software company Emsisoft. “It’s also possible that the criminals thought the gamble was worth it and decided to roll the dice,” Callow said. Charles Carmakal, chief technical officer at cybersecurity firm FireEye, agreed. “You could have potentially done it from thousands of miles away without risking any asset,” he said. The FBI said the unnamed prospective recruit informed Tesla and cooperated with the FBI, and the plot was stopped before any damage happened. Kriuchkov, 27, told a judge in September that he knew the Russian government was aware of his case. But prosecutors and the FBI have not alleged ties to the Kremlin. Kriuchkov is in federal custody at the Washoe County jail in Reno. His guilty plea to conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer could have gotten him up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But he’s expected to face no more than 10 months under terms of his written plea agreement. He already has been in custody for seven months, since his arrest in August in Los Angeles. Federal authorities said he had been heading to an airport to fly out of the country. “The swift response of the company and the FBI prevented a major exfiltration of the victim company’s data and stopped the extortion scheme at its inception,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicholas McQuaid said in a statement. “This case highlights the importance of companies coming forward to law enforcement, and the positive results when they do so.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged his company was the target of what he termed a serious effort to collect company secrets. Tesla has a massive factory near Reno that makes batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage units. Company representatives did not immediately respond Friday to messages. Court documents say Kriuchkov was in the United States for more than five weeks last July and August on a Russian passport and a tourist visa when he tried to recruit an employee of what was identified as “Company A” to install software enabling a computer hack. The employee, who was no identified, was to receive payments in the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin. No other suspected co-conspirators were charged in the case. Some were identified in a criminal complaint by nicknames including Kisa and Pasha, and a person is identified as Sasha Skarobogatov. Some meetings were monitored and recorded by the FBI, according to court documents. It was not clear from court records if money changed hands. In court documents, Kriuchkov was quoted saying the inside job would be camouflaged with a distributed denial of service attack on plant computers from outside. Such attacks overwhelm servers with junk traffic. If Tesla didn’t pay, the purloined data would be dumped on the open internet. The documents also said Kriuchkov claimed to the prospective recruit that he had executed similar “special projects” on other companies on multiple occasions, with one victim supposedly surrendering a $4 million ransom payment. ____ Ritter reported from Las Vegas. Bajak reported from Boston. Sonner reported from Reno.",-0.3304972051284693 "The Turkish currency has plummeted against the U.S. dollar after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the central bank governor over the weekend for hiking interest rates Turkish lira plummets after Erdogan fires central bank chiefBy SUZAN FRASER AND DAVID McHUGHAssociated PressThe Associated PressANKARA, Turkey ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — The Turkish currency plummeted against the U.S. dollar on Monday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired his third central bank head in less than two years, raising concerns about a possible return to the unconventional monetary policy favored by the Turkish president as the country struggles with persistent inflation and currency instability. Over the weekend, Erdogan dismissed Naci Agbal, who had shored up the lira currency and investor confidence with a strong dose of higher interest rates since being appointed in November. Agbal was replaced by Sahap Kavcioglu, a banking professor who has argued for lower rates. Kavcioglu’s stance is in line with Erdogan’s stated preferences, but in contradiction to the usual economic thinking. Typically, higher interest rates shore up a currency and help combat inflation. Erdogan has argued the contrary, that the fight against Turkey’s painfully high inflation requires lower rates, not higher ones. The market selloff in the lira and Turkish stocks reflect investor fears that interest rates are headed lower, said Maya Senussi, senior economist at Oxford Economics. She wrote in a research note that the Turkish central bank leadership “has been removed once too often, leaving the bank with no credibility” and that a surprise rate hike Thursday, “which we took as a good omen, appears to have overstepped President Erdogan’s tolerance limits.” Higher rates, while they support the currency and battle inflation, can constrain economic growth by raising the cost of borrowing for companies. Despite currency difficulties since mid-2018, Turkey was one of the few countries to post economic growth during 2020, when most struggled due to the pandemic. That was thanks to government stimulus, tax breaks and cheap credit from state-owned banks. Growth in recent years, however, has been fueled by foreign credit and government stimulus, leaving the economy vulnerable, according to the International Monetary Fund. The lira was trading Monday at around 7.9 against the dollar — nearly 10% down from Friday’s close. It had been weaker earlier Monday at 8.4 per dollar but recovered some of it losses after Finance Minister Lutfi Elvan assured markets that Turkey was committed to free market rules and to a liberal currency exchange regime. The currency has fallen from levels around 4 to the dollar since April 2018. Agbal, a respected former finance minister, was brought in to lead the central bank after the Turkish lira hit record lows and inflation soared. In his months in office, Agbal had hiked the benchmark rate a total of 8.75 percentage points, working to rebuild the credibility of the central bank after it was damaged by years of unorthodox policies. Agbal’s most recent hike of 2 percentage points on Thursday took the rate to 19%, which was higher than analysts expected. The bank said tight monetary policy would be maintained until inflation, which has hit 15.61%, was brought under control. Kavcioglu is a banking professor and a columnist at a pro-government newspaper, where he has argued for low interest rates. He previously was a lawmaker in Erdogan’s ruling party. Kavcioglu is the fourth governor to lead the bank in two years. Ratings agency Moody’s said that the decision “increases the risk of renewed pressure on the exchange rate. The surprise move is also further evidence of the complete lack of policy predictability in Turkey and confirms our view of serious institutional weakening in the country over the past several years.”",2.713924258746556 "March 22 (UPI) — A teacher’s union in Southern California has agreed to a plan to reopen classrooms next month for preschool and elementary students. The union, United Teachers Los Angeles, approved the plan on Sunday. Eighty-nine percent of about 20,400 members favored the proposal. Under the plan, the classrooms would open in the middle of April. The agreement includes safety criteria that’s required for any schools to reopen. First, areas must be out of its county’s purple tier. Second, there must be vaccine access and, third, certain safety protocols must be met. The union specifically demanded that educators be given access to vaccination and time to acquire full efficacy before they return to the classroom. “Every step of the way, UTLA educators have kept our students and communities safer, from the call to close down schools early in the pandemic to holding the line against an unsafe return,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a statement. “We believe this agreement puts [the school district] on the path to a physical reopening of schools that puts safety first.” Los Angeles’ school district is tentatively planning for grades 7-12 to return later next month. It agreed to the union’s reopening proposal earlier this month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it’s safe for masked students to return to schools while remaining at least 3 feet apart. The UTLA rejected the CDC’s new guidance, saying it’s “flawed” because it doesn’t account for asymptomatic students and residents not tested for COVID-19.",-0.8073220404861893 "A tool designed to help businesses protect themselves from further compromises after a global hack of Microsoft email server software has been downloaded more than 25,000 times since it was released last week Tool created to aid cleanup from Microsoft hack in broad useBy ERIC TUCKERAssociated PressThe Associated PressWASHINGTON WASHINGTON (AP) — A tool designed to help businesses protect themselves from further compromises after a global hack of Microsoft email server software has been downloaded more than 25,000 times since it was released last week, the White House’s National Security Council said Monday. As a result, the number of vulnerable systems has fallen by 45%, according to an NSC spokesperson. The one-click Microsoft tool was created to protect against cyberattacks and to scan systems for compromises and fix them. It was developed after a massive hack affecting an estimated tens of thousands of users of servers running Microsoft’s Exchange email program. The breach was discovered in early January and was attributed to Chinese cyber spies targeting U.S. policy think tanks. Then in late February, five days before Microsoft Corp. issued a patch on March 2, there was an explosion of infiltrations by other intruders, piggybacking on the initial breach. The White House earlier this month described the hack as an “active threat” that was being addressed by senior national security officials. The administration’s response is being led by deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger, who convened government officials and private sector experts to brainstorm solutions, particularly given that smaller businesses often lack resources to counter cyber attacks and to clean up after hacks. The administration pressed Microsoft to come up with a more simplified and streamlined fix and to track the number of compromised systems. Since the release of the tool, the number of vulnerable systems in the United States has fallen to fewer than 10,000 from at least 120,000 at the peak. Many of the remaining vulnerable systems are tied to small businesses but not limited to any one sector. While Microsoft has taken considerable heat for being the provider of software that elite hackers have exploited, Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technical officer of prominent cybersecurity firm FireEye, said that Microsoft deserves credit for working hard to help people who run its software defend themselves. He cited, especially, the downloadable turnkey script that people can use to apply patches and see if their systems have been compromised. “The level of effort that they put into this to help companies defend themselves is terrific,” he said. “It’s a tough situation that organizations are in with the vulnerability in general.” ___ Associated Press writer Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report. ___ Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP.",0.11066272599152378 "March 22 (UPI) — David Hasselhoff will be portraying himself in a new German television series titled Ze Network. Hasselhoff will earn the lead role in a German stage show in the series, before getting tangled up in an international conspiracy involving Cold War assassins. Production will begin in July. German actor Henry Hübchen will also star as himself. CBS Studios and Berlin-based production company Syrreal Entertainment are teaming up on Ze Network, which will will premiere on German subscription video on demand service TV Now from RTL Group. CBS has a first-look production deal with Syrreal, with Ze Network being the first project under the partnership. Syrreal CEO Christian Alvart created the series and is serving as director and producer. Hasselhoff is also executive producing with Sigi Kamml and Timm Oberwelland producing. Hasselhoff’s 1980s series Knight Rider was successful for RTL in Germany. “Knight Rider was incredibly successful for both me and RTL. Returning now 30 years later to do a cutting-edge series and working with RTL again is a dream come true. The series is funny, deadly, creative and informative…simply exciting. Fact of fiction, you decide,” Hasselhoff said in a statement. The actor auctioned the Knight Rider car, a customized Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, in January. Hasselhoff took ownership of the car after the series ended.",0.26337438233249644 "This week’s new entertainment releases includes new music from Carrie Underwood and Evanescence, as well as a documentary in which Tina Turner surveys her tumultuous and extraordinary life New this Week: ‘Tina,’ ‘Runaway Bunny’ & ‘City on a Hill’By The Associated PressThe Associated Press Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week. MOVIES — Most of last week’s Oscar nominees are already streaming or available on-demand. Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” though, is among the most recent arrivals; it becomes available on premium on-demand Friday. (It’s also playing in theaters.) Based on Zeller’s own much-traveled play, “The Father” largely takes the perspective of its main character, 80-year-old Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), who’s in the grip of dementia. Zeller’s directorial debut was nominated for best picture, best actor (Hopkins) and best supporting actress (Olivia Colman, who plays Anthony’s daughter), as well as nods for production design, editing and adapted screenplay. My review called it a clever, not profound film but praised the lead performance: “To see Hopkins play all these ever-fluctuating turns of mood is riveting. He has grasped, at least for a proud man like Anthony, how one’s ego keeps fighting a battle it doesn’t know is already lost.” — In Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s revealing documentary “Tina,” Tina Turner surveys her tumultuous and extraordinary life. The film, which debuts Saturday on HBO and HBO Max, includes intimate interviews with the 81-year-old “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” along with previously unseen footage, audio tapes and personal photos. Turner’s life has been much chronicled — including the 1986 autobiography “I, Tina” and its 1993 big-screen adaptation “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” But time has only made Turner’s swings between success, trauma and survival all the more powerful. — Another Oscar nominee achieved a rare distinction. The piercing Romanian documentary “Collective” was nominated for both best documentary and best international film — something only one previous film ( “Honeyland,” in 2020) — has ever managed to do. Alexander Nanau’s film, which arrives Thursday on Hulu, was one of the very best of 2020. It trails the unlikely investigative journalists that doggedly reported on the fallout of a horrifying and deadly fire in a Bucharest nightclub. “As a journalism drama,” I earlier reviewed, “it’s as absorbing as ‘Spotlight’ and more sober than ‘All the President’s Men.’” The film is also available on-demand and for digital rental. — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle MUSIC — Carrie Underwood’s upcoming album features gospel hymns important to the “American Idol” winner. The 13-song “My Savior” includes “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” with CeCe Winans and “Nothing But The Blood of Jesus” with Bear Rinehart. “The songs on this album are literally songs that I’ve heard from birth,” Underwood shared in a trailer for the album. Also on the album are harmonica legend Buddy Greene, guitarist Mac McAnally, piano virtuoso Gordon Mote and frequent Underwood collaborator Brett James. — Evanescence is gearing up to release the band’s first full-length of original music in a decade, “The Bitter Truth.” It contains the band’s signature stew of metal-inspired sounds and strong rock elements, especially in the fiery, independence-minded new single “Better Without You.” On “Far From Heaven,” singer Amy Lee sings about questioning her faith after suffering so much personal loss. The band worked on the album during the pandemic, with the U.S.-based members traveling via tour bus to Nashville to record alongside Lee. “The Bitter Truth” is slated for a March 26 release. — AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy TELEVISION — “The Runaway Bunny” gets star treatment in an animated special based based on Margaret Wise Brown‘s classic book about a bunny eager to leave home. Besides Tracee Ellis Ross’ performance of an original lullaby by Brown, the HBO Max show out Thursday incorporates songs by Mariah Carey (a remake of “Always Be My Baby”), Roseanne Cash (“You Are My Sunshine”) and Ziggy Marley (“What a Wonderful World”), among others artists. From producer-director Amy Schatz (the “Classical Baby” series), the special uses hand-drawn animation to evoke Clement Hurd’s illustrations for the 1942 book. — Emilio Estevez returns as youth hockey coach Gordon Bombay in “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers,” a Disney+ series follow-up to the 1990s movie franchise. Gordon has a new challenge: help 12-year-old Evan (Brady Morrow) and his mom, played by Lauren Graham (“Gilmore Girls,” “Parenthood”), create a new team after Evan gets dropped by the Ducks, who have morphed into a team of winners who lack boundaries. Estevez, who had largely traded acting for directing, promises the series debuting Friday captures the films’ “magic” but offers more than nostalgia. — A drug violence-riddled federal housing project in Boston is at the center of season two of Showtime’s “City on a Hill,” debuting 10 p.m. EDT Sunday. Kevin Bacon’s FBI agent Jackie Rohr is trying to salvage his career by trading on the city’s flawed criminal justice system, with Aldis Hodge’s assistant D.A. Decourcy Ward his formidable opponent. Their hostility is destined to ensnare the office of federal and county prosecutors in what’s described as “all-out war.” Tom Fontana (“Homicide: Life on the Street”) is the executive producer in charge of the drama, back with eight episodes. — AP Television Writer Lynn Elber ___ Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment.",-0.8557924600481079 "Spain’s top health officials are proposing to broaden the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for people up to 65 years old, expanding from a current cap on adults under 55, two sources familiar with the discussions have told The Associated Press The Latest: Spain expected to expand AstraZeneca vaccine useBy The Associated PressThe Associated Press MADRID — Spain’s top health officials are proposing to broaden the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for people up to 65 years old, expanding from a current cap on adults under 55, two sources familiar with the discussions have told The Associated Press. Officials, who were not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly, said central and regional health officials are expected to approve later on Monday the recommendation on the new 18-65 age range by the country’s Public Health Commission. The decision came after Europe’s drug regulator declared the jab co-developed by the University of Oxford safe and with no obvious links to some recent cases of blood clots across the continent. The Health Ministry, which hosts the commission, declined to comment and said that an official announcement won’t be made until Monday evening. Some Spanish regions and doctors had been lobbying the central government to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to both young and old, but that decision had been put on hold when Spain followed other major European countries last week in temporarily halting the use of the shot. Spain is set to resume administering AstraZeneca doses on Wednesday. The government has pledged to vaccinate 70% of its adult population —or 33 million of a total population of 47 million— by the end of the summer. So far, only 1.8 million, most of them residents and workers in nursing homes, medical personnel and other essential workers, have been fully vaccinated. Nearly 5 million, including many over 80, are awaiting their second shot. Reported by Aritz Parra in Madrid ___ THE VIRUS OUTBREAK: — AstraZeneca: US data shows vaccine effective for all ages — Analysis finds faster is not necessarily better in US COVID-19 vaccine rollout — Germany looks set to extend lockdown measures again — Taiwan gives health workers island’s first AstraZeneca doses — Teachers lament ‘chaotic’ virus rules in German schools ___ Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak ___ HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Health authorities in northwest Bosnia say they have placed a migrant center in the area in isolation after a coronavirus outbreak there. The regional top health official Nermina Cemalovic said that there are 45 migrants in the Borici camp, near the town of Bihac, who have tested positive for the virus and about a dozen staff. Cemalovic says five more migrants have tested positive in another camp in the town of Velika Kladusa. Cemalovic says health authorities in the area have urged imposing tough anti-virus restrictions because of a worsening situation. Entire Bosnia has seen a surge in virus cases in the past two weeks and a spike in deaths. Authorities have reported 818 confirmed new cases in the past 24 hours and 73 fatalities from COVID-19. There are thousands of migrants staying in Bosnia while trying to reach Western Europe. Most have concentrated in the northwest part of the country which is bordering European Union member Croatia. ___ ISLAMABAD — Pakistani authorities banned sports, festivals, cultural events and indoor dining at restaurants as part of new measures aimed at containing the ongoing third wave of coronavirus which has started flooding hospitals. The announcement was made after a high-level meeting in the capital Islamabad. The new measures will remain enforce until April 11. The latest development comes two days after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan tested positive two days after he received his first vaccine dose. There has been a spike in COVID-19 in the capital and elsewhere in Pakistan in recent week. Pakistan has reported 3,669 cases and 20 additional deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the total deaths to 13,863 and total infected cases to 630,471. ___ WARSAW, Poland — A line of people waiting to get a COVID-19 test has formed at the Polish-German border after Germany began demanding negative test results for those entering from Poland. Germany declared Poland a “high-incidence” area as of Sunday — meaning that people now need to have a negative coronavirus test taken within the last 48 hours to enter Germany. The move comes as Poland has recorded a dramatic spike in new coronavirus infections in recently weeks. Germany’s decision has greatly complicated the lives of many people living in border towns, who are accustomed to crossing the border frequently for work. ___ BEIRUT — Lebanon has eased its nearly two-month lockdown with restaurants opening to the public for the first time in two months amid strict measures to prevent the spread of the virus. Restaurants will be allowed to have a 50% capacity indoor with a 2-meter distance between each table while outdoors they will be allowed to have a 75% capacity. Many hope that opening restaurants will help Lebanon as it passes through its worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history. The food and beverage sector employs tens of thousands of people. Restaurant employees will have to conduct regular PCR tests to make sure they are not infected while working. Restaurants will have to close by 7 p.m. as a nationwide curfew between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. remains in place. The lockdown went into affect in early January following a sharp increase of coronavirus cases after the country opened up for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. On Sunday, Lebanon registered 2,253 new cases raising the total in the country to 436,575. The small nation also reported 51 new deaths raising the total of fatalities to 5,715. ___ TIRANA, Albania — Albania accepted 10,000 Sputnik V Russian vaccines donated from the United Arab Emirates in a change of policy on coronavirus vaccinations. Health Minister Ogerta Manastirliu said that the Immunization Commission had certified the use of the Russian vaccine “which offer security and efficiency.” In January, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama demanded an apology from the Russian embassy after it published a message on social media that Moscow stood ready to immediately supply Albania with the Sputnik V vaccine, although that shot is not certified in the European Union. Earlier this month, Albania said it has been negotiating to receive vaccines not only certified by the EU, meaning Russian and Chinese ones too. Albania has inoculated medical personnel and has started with people over 80 years old and school teachers. Since the start in January, Albania has distributed more than 46,000 Pfizer and AstraZeneca shots. Albania has had 2,137 virus-related deaths and 121,200 cases as of Sunday, according to the health authorities. The government aims to start a mass vaccination campaign to ready the country to welcome tourists in the summertime. In the years before the virus outbreak, tourism has gained a high place in the country’s economy. ___ PRAGUE — Bells tolled across the Czech Republic at noon Monday to honor those who have died of COVID-19 in one of the hardest-hit European Union countries. A 95-year-old man, who is the first known Czech victim, died on March 22, 2020 at Prague’s Bulovka hospital. The death toll has reached almost 25,000 since the start of the pandemic in the nation of 10.7 million. Coronavirus infections have been on the decline since the government imposed a tight lockdown earlier this month, but new cases and death rates still remain high. Petr Pospichal, a former anti-Communist dissident who helped organize the remembrance, told Czech public radio that it was the right thing to do for people to observe a minute of silence wherever they were. Pospichal says it’s also necessary to realize that the pandemic isn’t over yet and people are still dying. The country has almost 1.5 million confirmed cases, and 24,810 deaths. ___ WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s prime minster said that the government is seeing a significant increase in people wanting Astrazeneca’s coronavirus vaccine. “I received a report that there are far more people willing to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said during a visit to a new temporary COVID-19 hospital in Radom. “This is very good news.” Poland has been ramping up pandemic restrictions in recent weeks amid a dramatic spike in the number of new coronavirus infections. Last week, many Poles canceled or didn’t show up for appointments to receive the AstraZeneca shot amid reports of rare blood clots. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency said the vaccine doesn’t increase the overall incidence of blood clots, though it couldn’t rule out a link to a small number of rare clots. ___ NEW DELHI, India — Russia’s sovereign wealth fund announced a manufacturing deal with the Indian pharmaceutical maker Virchow Biotech Private Limited for making 200 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine each year. This is the fourth manufacturing deal announced by Russia, and 700 million doses of the Russian vaccine will now be made in India. Last week, two manufacturing deals for the vaccine in India were announced: Gland Pharma Pvt Ltd., a subsidiary of Chinese pharmaceutical company Fosun Pharma, said Tuesday it would 252 million doses vaccine and Stelis Biopharma partnered to produce and supply 200 million doses of the vaccine. Earlier, a deal to make 100 million doses of the vaccine annually was announced by Indian pharmaceutical firm Hetero Biopharma. India has been pledged 125 million doses of the vaccine by Russia. ___ LONDON — AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States, the company announced Monday. AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe. Although AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries, it has not yet been given the green light in the U.S. — and has struggled to gain public trust amid a troubled rollout. The study comprised more than 30,000 volunteers, of whom two-thirds were given the vaccine while the rest got dummy shots. ___ BERLIN — Cross-border commuters have lined up at a newly opened testing station on the Polish-German border after Germany reacted to rising coronavirus infections in Poland by imposing new restrictions. Germany declared Poland a “high-incidence area” starting Sunday, meaning that most people now need a negative test taken with the last 48 hours to enter and need to go into quarantine. Regular work commuters have to get tested twice a week. Germany didn’t set up full border checks of the kind that have been place on its border with the two countries’ worse-hit neighbor, the Czech Republic, for weeks. But the dpa news agency reported that there was a long line early Monday morning for a new testing station set up in Frankfurt an der Oder — one of three in Germany’s Brandenburg state. About 150 people waited in frosty temperatures to get tested. ___ VILNIUS, Lithuania — The president, prime minister and speaker of the parliament of the Baltic country all rolled up their sleeves Monday in a public move to boost general public’s trust in the AstraZeneca jab. Last week, the Lithuanian health ministry halted the vaccine but authorized again nationwide two days later. “I encourage our people not to linger any longer and get the jab with the vaccine of their preference” President Gitranas Nauseda told reporters Monday morning. He and Ingrida Simonyte and Viktorija Cmilyte Nielsen — respectively the prime minister and the speaker of the 141-member Seimas assembly — received the vaccine. Lithuania has reported more than 209,000 cases and 3,476 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of pandemic in 2020. A massive vaccination campaign is planned to start later this spring. ___ ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s health minister is requisitioning the services of private sector doctors from certain specialties in the wider Athens region to help fight a renewed surge in coronavirus infections that is straining hospitals to their limits. Vassilis Kikilias said that despite repeated appeals to private sector doctors to volunteer to help in the public sector, very few came forward. Therefore, he said, he was ordering those from the specialties of pathology, pneumonology and general medicine to help. The requisition order is for one month for 206 doctors, health authorities said. ___ TAIPEI, Taiwan — Health care workers received the first shots in Taiwan’s COVID-19 vaccination drive Monday, beginning a campaign that won’t use supplies from China amid uneven distribution of the vaccines globally. Taiwan has on hand 117,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which it is distributing to healthcare workers across 57 hospitals. Taiwanese premier Su Tseng-chang launched the drive by receiving the first shot at National Taiwan University Hospital in the capital Taipei. “After 30 minutes of rest, there’s no signs of any discomfort,” he said. The rest period is for monitoring recipients for any adverse reactions.",0.36897204075580536 "The NFL is scrapping the virtual format it used for the 2020 NFL Draft, and planning to for a “large, live, in-person” draft in 2021, according to sources. As Sports Business Journal reports, the NFL is moving forward with a plan to have their draft prospects on a stage and fans in attendance when the draft kicks off from Cleveland on April 29. However, the league is looking at an outdoor venue for the event and will enforce strict mask compliance. “We have been characterizing it as a ‘large, live, in-person event,” said Greater Cleveland Sports Commission CEO David Gilbert. As Gilbert explains, the crowd is expected to be “the largest event in this city in many years, certainly since the [2016] Republican Convention.” The NFL says it will use the draft to promote vaccines,” Pro Football Talk reports. “About a quarter of Ohio adults have already received at least one shot, and on March 29 all Ohio adults will become eligible, meaning that by the time the draft rolls around, a large percentage of those in attendance should be vaccinated.” The NFL Draft Experience, a fan-friendly event held at each draft will be held at “FirstEnergy Stadium and the broad plaza between the stadium, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock ‘n’ Roll HOF, all located just north of downtown Cleveland.”",1.7013319410065164 "The future of slap fighting in the United States — UFC President Dana White is an advocate of the sport — just might be in the palm of the Da Crazy Hawaiian’s hand. Slap fighting, yes the art of striking another fighter with an open hand for sport, is the latest head-turning spectacular. “Some people just need to be slapped,” Da Crazy Hawaiian said. Trying to poke fun at the slap-until-you’re-knocked out-sport would be, yes, a slap in the face to the Da Crazy Hawaiian. He might take offense, but Layne Kailiilauokekoa Viernes — his actual name — can handle the pain. He has dished out the fiercest open-hand smacks in the United States in his bid to be the most punishing slapper in slap fighting. The soundtrack from his highlight reel of slaps sounds like the constant cracking of a bullwhip and he’s used his heavy hand of justice to defeat every cherry-cheeked challenger in his path. “I’m putting my head on the line,” Viernes said. “I want to be a pioneer in the sport.” Viernes has joined the SlapStrike roster and will appear as a guest Saturday on the promotion’s “The War from Warsaw” pay-per-view event in Poland. The $14.99 event streams across all FITE platforms and pro wrestlers Matt Striker and Vampiro are on the broadcast team. The rules for fights on Saturday’s card are simple: — The match will consist of three alternate slaps or strikes. — There is a 60-second time limit between strikes. — The offensive player’s feet must be no further apart than shoulder distance. — A legal strike is one that is delivered only to the cheek of the opponent with an open palm. Please, make sure the ice buckets are full. The 6-foot-3, 370-pound Viernes, who turns 31 next month, was raised on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and since settled in Springfield, Missouri. He played football, wrestled, even boxed growing up on the island. But the goal of slapping another man silly wasn’t set until around 2018 when he saw videos of Vasily “Dumpling” Kamotsky, the big Russian universally recognized as the greatest slap fighting champion. “I saw, whoa, man, this is what I want to do,” Viernes said. “Once I figured out it was a thing, I just really wanted to do it. It was just in me. Everyone around me thought it was a joke. Thought I was just talking just to talk.” The reality was, he was slapping just to get slapped. Viernes works in construction and it was during a break he saw an ad for a slap fighting competition in Branson, the entertainment tourist spot and home of the comic Yakov Smirnoff. Viernes called his fiancee and told her “this is my chance.” The slap fights were only 40 miles down the road! What a country. “I called the promoter and said, ‘Hey, you got room for me? I’m willing to do it yesterday,’” Viernes said. What happened next went down in slap fight lore — and with some 1.4 million YouTube views. Da Crazy Hawaiian and Hillbilly Hippie got to lay the slap down round after round that led to a few punch-drunk stumbles but no decision. Neither fighter turned the other cheek. Finally, the moment of truth: the rattled Hippie stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Viernes measured his right hand against the Hippie’s face and brought it back while the crowd chanted “One! Two! Three!” and with that, came the slap shot that rocked 350 pounds of beef into his spotter and they crashed to the floor. The dazed Hippie needed three people to help him to his feet while the Branson crowd went wild. On that night, a slapperstar was born. “It took me a week to stop looking like the ‘Goonies’ monster,” Viernes said. His secret to success? “I like to channel my chi, channel my energy,” he said. “It’s all fun and games until you figure out, man, this guy is hitting me with something else other than just his hand. It’s an inner-energy you bring out. I basically bring my power from the ground.” The Dumpling fights Maciej Kwiatkowski in the first round of the tournament and Viernes will appear on the broadcast to challenge the champion. “I’m hoping it’s Dumpling,” Viernes said. “I just need to let them know, you guys might have started it, but America is here to reign over it for years to come.”",0.7615352039626151 "The future of slap fighting in the United States — UFC President Dana White is an advocate of the sport — just might be in the palm of the Da Crazy Hawaiian’s hand. Slap fighting, yes the art of striking another fighter with an open hand for sport, is the latest head-turning spectacular. “Some people just need to be slapped,” Da Crazy Hawaiian said. Trying to poke fun at the slap-until-you’re-knocked out-sport would be, yes, a slap in the face to the Da Crazy Hawaiian. He might take offense, but Layne Kailiilauokekoa Viernes — his actual name — can handle the pain. He has dished out the fiercest open-hand smacks in the United States in his bid to be the most punishing slapper in slap fighting. The soundtrack from his highlight reel of slaps sounds like the constant cracking of a bullwhip and he’s used his heavy hand of justice to defeat every cherry-cheeked challenger in his path. “I’m putting my head on the line,” Viernes said. “I want to be a pioneer in the sport.” Viernes has joined the SlapStrike roster and will appear as a guest Saturday on the promotion’s “The War from Warsaw” pay-per-view event in Poland. The $14.99 event streams across all FITE platforms and pro wrestlers Matt Striker and Vampiro are on the broadcast team. The rules for fights on Saturday’s card are simple: — The match will consist of three alternate slaps or strikes. — There is a 60-second time limit between strikes. — The offensive player’s feet must be no further apart than shoulder distance. — A legal strike is one that is delivered only to the cheek of the opponent with an open palm. Please, make sure the ice buckets are full. The 6-foot-3, 370-pound Viernes, who turns 31 next month, was raised on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and since settled in Springfield, Missouri. He played football, wrestled, even boxed growing up on the island. But the goal of slapping another man silly wasn’t set until around 2018 when he saw videos of Vasily “Dumpling” Kamotsky, the big Russian universally recognized as the greatest slap fighting champion. “I saw, whoa, man, this is what I want to do,” Viernes said. “Once I figured out it was a thing, I just really wanted to do it. It was just in me. Everyone around me thought it was a joke. Thought I was just talking just to talk.” The reality was, he was slapping just to get slapped. Viernes works in construction and it was during a break he saw an ad for a slap fighting competition in Branson, the entertainment tourist spot and home of the comic Yakov Smirnoff. Viernes called his fiancee and told her “this is my chance.” The slap fights were only 40 miles down the road! What a country. “I called the promoter and said, ‘Hey, you got room for me? I’m willing to do it yesterday,’” Viernes said. What happened next went down in slap fight lore — and with some 1.4 million YouTube views. Da Crazy Hawaiian and Hillbilly Hippie got to lay the slap down round after round that led to a few punch-drunk stumbles but no decision. Neither fighter turned the other cheek. Finally, the moment of truth: the rattled Hippie stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Viernes measured his right hand against the Hippie’s face and brought it back while the crowd chanted “One! Two! Three!” and with that, came the slap shot that rocked 350 pounds of beef into his spotter and they crashed to the floor. The dazed Hippie needed three people to help him to his feet while the Branson crowd went wild. On that night, a slapperstar was born. “It took me a week to stop looking like the ‘Goonies’ monster,” Viernes said. His secret to success? “I like to channel my chi, channel my energy,” he said. “It’s all fun and games until you figure out, man, this guy is hitting me with something else other than just his hand. It’s an inner-energy you bring out. I basically bring my power from the ground.” The Dumpling fights Maciej Kwiatkowski in the first round of the tournament and Viernes will appear on the broadcast to challenge the champion. “I’m hoping it’s Dumpling,” Viernes said. “I just need to let them know, you guys might have started it, but America is here to reign over it for years to come.”",1.193531139775881 "LeBron James fell to the floor in pain Saturday night after suffering a high ankle sprain that will take him out of action indefinitely. The Laker’s star and foremost political authority on all things, crashed to the floor while grabbing his lower leg after Atlanta’s Solomon Hill rolled over his ankle. Here is the injury to LeBron’s ankle. 😬 pic.twitter.com/AHxYEnmdzt — Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) March 20, 2021 “He got up and briefly stayed in the game hitting a 3-pointer, but after the ensuing defensive possession, James called a timeout and knocked over a chair before limping to the locker room,” the New York Post reports. “He was ruled out for the remainder of the game.” Doctors determined the injury to be a high ankle sprain and have ruled James out indefinitely. James took to Twitter and said that the injury had left him hurting “inside and out.” “Nothing angers and saddens me more than not being available to and for my teammates!” James tweeted after the game on Saturday. “I’m hurt inside and out right now. The road back from recovery begins now. Back soon like I never left.” Nothing angers and saddens me more than not being available to and for my teammates! I’m hurt inside and out right now. 🏾‍♂️. The road back from recovery begins now. Back soon like I never left. #ThekidfromAKRON🏾 — LeBron James (@KingJames) March 21, 2021 James’ teammates were quick to voice their shock over the injury as well. “I haven’t necessarily seen him scream and squall like that, probably ever, not even with that groin,” Laker Kyle Kuzma said, recalling when James missed 17 games with a groin injury two years ago. “It had to hurt a little bit, for sure.” Lakers coach Frank Vogel was more guarded and did not reveal details about how James dealt with the injury in the locker room. “The mood of the team is we’re disappointed we lost, and we’ve got to come back and get one tomorrow,” Vogel said. “I won’t disclose what LeBron was like (in the locker room). It’s in-house.” James has been notoriously resistant to major injury throughout his 18-year career. His ankle sprain marks only the second time in recent memory that he will miss a significant number of games. The injury also spells trouble for the NBA given that James is the reason why most people watch their games. The Lakers lost to the Hawks 99-94.",1.0905161492286644 "TOKYO (AP) — At last it’s official after countless unsourced news reports and rumors: spectators from abroad will be barred from the postponed Tokyo Olympics when they open in four months. The decision was announced Saturday after an online meeting of the International Olympic Committee, the Japanese government, the Tokyo government, the International Paralympic Committee, and local organizers. Officials said the risk was too great to admit ticket holders from overseas during a pandemic. The Japanese public has also opposed fans from abroad. Several surveys have shown that up to 80% oppose holding the Olympics, and a similar percentage opposed fans from overseas attending. Japan has attributed about 8,800 deaths to COVID-19 and has controlled the virus better than most countries. “In order to give clarity to ticket holders living overseas and to enable them to adjust their travel plans at this stage, the parties on the Japanese side have come to the conclusion that they will not be able to enter into Japan at the time of the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” the Tokyo organizing committee said in a statement. Organizers said 600,000 tickets were sold to fans from outside Japan. They have promised refunds, but this will be determined by so-called Authorized Ticket Resellers that handle sales outside Japan. These dealers charge fees of up to 20% above the ticket price. It is not clear if the fees will be refunded. Toshiro Muto, the CEO of the organizing committee, said organizers were not responsible for money lost on flights or hotel reservations. He said these did not involve any “contract arrangement with Tokyo.” Organizing committee President Seiko Hashimoto, who appeared in seven Olympics as an athlete — she won bronze in speedskating in 1992 — said there was pressure to wait longer to make a decision. But she said fans could now plan. She also lamented the move. “So the fact that spectators are not able to attend the games from abroad — that is very disappointing and it’s regrettable,” she said. “It was an unavoidable decision.” IOC President Thomas Bach called it a “difficult decision.” “We have to take decisions that may need sacrifice from everybody,” he said. Muto seemed to rule out fans entering who may have received tickets from deep-pocketed sponsors. “If they are part of the operation of the games, if they are somewhat involved in the operation then there is still a possibility they may be able to enter into Japan,” Muto said. “But solely as spectators for watching games — no, they will not be allowed to make an entry.” The financial burden of lost ticket sales falls on Japan. The local organizing committee budget called for $800 million income from ticket sales, the third largest income source in the privately financed budget. Any shortfall in the budget will have to be made up by Japanese government entities. “The ticketing revenue will be in the decline,” Muto said. “That is very clear at this point.” Muto also hinted at more cuts for people on the periphery of the Olympics. He also said volunteers from overseas would “be dealt with in the same manner” but said details would be forthcoming later. “But as far as other people related to the games or whether we should maintain the same number — perhaps we will have to reduce the number. That is the consensus. That is the premise,” he said. Overall, Japan is officially spending $15.4 billion to organize the Olympics. Several government audits say the actual cost may be twice that much. All but $6.7 billion is public money, and a University of Oxford study says these are the most expensive Olympics on record. About 4.45 million tickets were sold to Japan residents. Organizers are expected next month to announce the capacity at venues, which now will be populated by only local residents. The ban on fans from abroad comes just days before the Olympic torch relay starts Thursday from Fukushima prefecture in northeastern Japan. It will last for 121 days, crisscross Japan with 10,000 runners, and is to end on July 23 at the opening ceremony at the National Stadium in Tokyo. The relay will be a test for the Olympics and Paralympics, which will involve 15,400 athletes entering Japan. They will be tested before leaving home, tested upon arrival in Japan, and tested frequently while they reside in a secure “bubble” in the Athletes Village alongside Tokyo Bay, or at venues or training facilities. Athletes will not be required to be vaccinated to enter Japan, but many will be. In the midst of Saturday’s meeting, Bach and others were given a reminder about earthquake-prone northeastern Japan — and Japan in general. A strong earthquake shook Tokyo and triggered a tsunami warning as Bach and others made introductory remarks before the virtual meeting. The strength was put a 7.0 by the U.S. Geological Survey and the location was in northeastern Japan, an area hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami in 2011. About 18,000 were killed in that tragedy 10 years ago. “I think the screen is shaking. Have you noticed the screen is shaking,” Tamayo Marukawa, Japan’s Olympic minister, said as she made her presentation from Tokyo talking remotely to Bach visible on a screen in Switzerland. “We’re actually in the midst of an earthquake right now.” Officials there said there were no immediate reports of damage.",0.8340138210904643 "South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) returned a bill designed to prevent biological men from competing in biological women’s sports back to her state legislature on Friday for changes. Noem cited in a public letter changes she is requesting to the bill, specifying they are revisions of “style and form.” The changes include removing collegiate athletics from the bill, thereby limiting its application to K–12 athletics, and modifying language about civil liability and performance-enhancing drugs. The bill, House Bill 1217 titled “promote continued fairness in women’s sports,” had passed the South Dakota Senate on March 8. Upon its passage, Noem — whose name has been floated as a possible 2024 presidential contender after her hands-off approach to coronavirus in her state gained her prominence among the Republican Party — announced on social media she was “excited” to sign the bill: In South Dakota, we're celebrating #InternationalWomensDay by defending women's sports! I'm excited to sign this bill very soon. https://t.co/OU15HOwp2r — Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) March 8, 2021 Critics of Noem have perceived her rejection of the bill in its current state as backtracking in an attempt to appease outside entities. Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project Foundation, implied Noem faced pressure from the state Chamber of Commerce, writing on social media, “If you can’t stand up to the chamber of commerce, how the hell will you stand up to China”: Moments like this are important. They tell you about the character of the person and whether or not they are presidential. If you can’t stand up to the chamber of commerce, how the hell will you stand up to China? https://t.co/uJ2XbVoyJ7 — Terry Schilling 🇺🇸 (@Schilling1776) March 19, 2021 South Dakota Chamber of Commerce President David Owen confirmed to The Federalist that business groups were indeed pressuring the governor about the bill and threatening boycotts should it become law. “Employers view the workforce as a place of inclusion,” Owen told the outlet. “They’ve made it clear to us they won’t support groups that help pass laws that blindly discriminate in certain areas.” In her letter on Friday, Noem said that after studying the bill and consulting with legal experts over several days, she had “become concerned that this bill’s vague and overly broad language could have significant unintended consequences.” Noem argued the bill would cause collegiate athletics in her state to suffer because the “national governing bodies” — most notably the National Collegiate Athletic Association — would require compliance with their organizations’ policies that conflict with those of House Bill 1217. “South Dakota has shown that our student athletes can compete with anyone in the country,” Noem wrote, “but competing on the national stage means compliance with the national governing bodies that oversee collegiate athletics.” “While I certainly do not always agree with the actions these sanctioning bodies take, I understand that collegiate athletics requires such a system – a fifty-state patchwork is not workable,” she added. Noem also said the current bill is worded in such a way that students could be sued for using performance-enhancing drugs, including anabolic steroids, for reasons that extend beyond the bill’s intended scope, and the annual confirmation and ongoing monitoring for accuracy of students’ age, sex, and use of performance-enhancing drugs places an “unworkable administrative burden on schools.” She concluded, “Overall, these style and form clarifications protect women sports while also showing empathy for youths struggling with what they understand to be their gender identity.” Noem said she supports the bill and intends to sign it once the changes she has requested are made. Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com.",0.16753004091392656 "Minnesota-based doctors working in the lucrative youth transgender medical field are condemning a state bill seeking to ban biological males from competing in women’s sports and using female locker rooms. In an op-ed at the Star Tribune this week, the medical professionals – pediatricians and those treating gender dysphoric youth in “gender clinics” – called the legislation a “hateful distraction, an imagined problem created only to politicize the lives of transgender youths.” The authors defended males in girls’ and women’s sports with a statement denying the existence of evidence that boys and men “have any type of biological advantage over” girls and women. The authors do not cite specific studies to support their claims. In 2019, a study at BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics found male athletes claiming to be female hold an “intolerable” advantage over biological female athletes. Three professors — two in bioethics and one in physiology — noted in the BMJ that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) initially allowed transgender women to compete against biological females if their testosterone is below 10 nmol/L. The researchers found, however, even that level is “significantly higher” than that of biological females. The authors cited research demonstrating that “healthy young men did not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced” for 20 weeks to meet the IOC’s guidelines. The researchers also stated that “indirect effects of testosterone will not be altered by hormone therapy.” “For example, hormone therapy will not alter bone structure, lung volume or heart size of the transwoman athlete, especially if she transitions postpuberty, so natural advantages including joint articulation, stroke volume and maximal oxygen uptake will be maintained,” they explained in the BMJ article. “We conclude that the advantage to transwomen afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness,” the researchers asserted. Another study, conducted by the Karolinska Institute and Linkoping University in Sweden, showed biological males identifying as women still held “considerable advantages over biological females in strength and muscle mass, even after a full year of hormone therapy,” as Breitbart News reported. The researchers concluded, “after 12 months of hormonal therapy, a transwoman will still likely have performance benefits over a cis-woman.” Despite such evidence, the pro-transgender doctors wrote in the Star Tribune that increasing state legislation seeking to keep girls’ and women’s sports for biological females will only harm “an already marginalized population” with a “high risk of poor mental health outcomes when they are not supported in their gender identity, with suicide attempts as high as 14-49%.” The doctors did not cite studies to support this claim. In August, however, the American Journal of Psychiatry released a correction to a 2019 Swedish study that concluded that individuals claiming to be transgender experience mental health benefits following gender-affirming surgeries. The American Journal of Psychiatry noted the authors of the original study retracted their conclusion after numerous requests for a reanalysis of the data led to the corrected findings. Following reanalysis, the Swedish study’s conclusion was that neither “gender-affirming hormone treatment” nor “gender-affirming surgery” decreased the need for mental health services of those claiming to be transgender. Still, the Minnesota doctors wrote: Despite the growing number of bills targeting transgender youths in sports, there is no evidence that transgender girls playing on girls’ teams is harmful or detrimental. In fact, the creators of these bills themselves are unable to find examples supporting their case in the state of Minnesota. This fabricated problem is based on the bigotry and fears of anti-trans activists. Is there danger in erasing biological sex? To ensure the health and safety of children, it is critical to acknowledge the innate difference between males and females. Read why here: https://t.co/NYGSR3AyfR#BestForChildren #SexDifferences #EqualityAct pic.twitter.com/pBxeYiO2aV — The American College of Pediatricians (@ACPeds) March 10, 2021 “This proves my point that science denial reigns in academic medicine,” said Michelle Cretella, M.D., to Breitbart News. The executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, Cretella asserted pediatricians who have been “brave enough to proclaim authentic science and adhere to the ethics of first do no harm will champion these pro-children pieces of legislation by making the following points”: There is no such thing as a transgender human being. There are only males and females who feel estranged from their bodies and choose to self-identify as “transgender” – a social construct divorced from physical reality – often due to a history of trauma. Sex is a dimorphic, innate trait defined in relation to an organism’s biological role in reproduction. An organism that donates genetic material toward the conception of a new organism is male; an organism structured to receive genetic material during fertilization is female. In humans, primary sex determination occurs at fertilization and is directed by a complement of sex-determining genes on the X and Y chromosomes. This genetic signature is present in every nucleated body cell and is not altered by drugs or surgical interventions. No one has an opposite-sexed brain trapped in their body. Sex differences arise from at least four different genetic mechanisms, in addition to the actions of sex hormones and environmental influences. Consideration of these innate differences is critical to the practice of good medicine and to the development of sound public policy for children and adults alike. Long-term research on elite athletes has consistently shown that when matched for training, males are bigger, faster and stronger than females. Though predominantly related to hormones, these differences also result from sex-differential gene expression. Males, who self-identify as female, including those on estrogen, remain genetically male and have no objective reason — let alone a right — to be in female spaces or competing against females. Just as a female doping testosterone would be prohibited from competing against other females, so too should all males be barred from competing against females. The feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has also voiced strong opposition to allowing men and boys in women’s and girls’ sports, and spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms: Who would take their kids to pediatricians who think that accurately describing a child’s sex is “disparaging,” and don’t understand why boys shouldn’t be allowed to undress in front of girls? https://t.co/Fe5Z6QPByl — WoLF (@WomensLibFront) March 18, 2021 “Doctors shouldn’t be in the business of prescribing a loss of civil rights and privacy for girls as a mental health treatment for their male patients,” WoLF executive director Natasha Chart said in comments to Breitbart News. She elaborated regarding the op-ed written by the gender clinic doctors: Who gave them the authority to shift responsibility to the rest of us for patient care needs that they seem to be having trouble meeting in their own practices? If they have a young male patient with complex needs, those needs should be met by their guardians and physicians, not foisted off onto their female peers. Chart observed that pediatricians “need to know the sex of a child in order to know if their patient is thriving and meeting developmental milestones, or in order to prescribe them appropriate and effective treatments.” “If these doctors think that it’s disparaging to identify the sex of a child, what are they putting down on their patient charts at the office to ensure there aren’t clinical mistakes?” she asked. The Minnesota-based authors of the op-ed titled “Anti-Trans Legislation Is Inhumane” are: Katy Miller, assistant professor in the Division of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Health, University of Minnesota; Rhamy Magid, medical director, Pediatric Gender and Sexual Health Clinic, Hennepin Healthcare; Christopher Dunne, clinical lead of Gender Health, Children’s Minnesota; Angela Kade Goepferd, chief of staff and medical director of Gender Health, Children’s Minnesota; Kelsey Leonardsmith, director of the Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Hormone Care Program, Family Tree Clinic.",-1.5382412042487401 "A UFC fighter had her upcoming bout canceled after she stumbled and collapsed twice during weigh-ins, and was taken away on a stretcher. Julija Stoliarenko, 27, was scheduled to face Julia Avila on Saturday night. However, that fight will no take place after the concerning video emerged from Stoliarenko’s weigh-ins. Warning: This is a tough thing to watch. WATCH: Scary scene at #UFCVegas22 official weigh-ins as Julija Stoliarenko collapsed multiple times while trying to make weight. Her fight with Julia Avila has been canceled. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/myaDSvkNHP — MMA Junkie (@MMAjunkie) March 19, 2021 According to MMA Junkie: Less than 15 minutes into the official weigh-in window at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Stoliarenko got up on stage to take her turn. She first sat down on the ledge of the set to take her shoes, socks and pants off, then walked over toward the scale. As Stoliarenko stepped on, she stumbled backward and fell on her butt, held up only by the signage behind her. UFC staff and medical personnel immediately rushed to tend to her. It seemed like Stoliarenko regathered her wits after a few seconds. She got back up and stepped on the scale a second time, officially hitting her mark at 135.5 pounds. However, Stoliarenko collapsed again before being surrounded by medical staff and placed on a stretcher. The UFC later announced that the fight with Avial was canceled.",1.2639574117264123 "The Los Angeles Lakers and the Atlanta Hawks honored the victims of the Atlanta spa shootings on Thursday night with a moment of silence to “Stop Asian Hate.” As Breitbart reported on Tuesday, Robert Aaron Long of Georgia, went on a shooting spree at two Atlanta-area massage parlors that left eight people dead and another wounded. Long was apprehended by Georgia State Patrol troopers after a brief pursuit. Six persons of Asian descent were killed in the shootings, two white, and the person injured was Hispanic. Yet, despite the fact that not all of the victims were Asian and the fact that Long stated that he targeted the spas because he saw them as facilitators for his sexual addiction, not because he was targeting Asians. The Lakers and Hawks decided to hold a moment of silence dedicated to stopping “Asian Hate.” The Lakers held a moment of silence in honor of the eight victims of the Atlanta-area shootings. They also shared a statement in support of the AAPI communities. pic.twitter.com/xn6rYavPIg — SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 19, 2021 The Lakers are apparently having none of Long’s explanation for the attacks. Nor are they acknowledging that people of other races were killed or harmed in the shooting. Before the moment of silence, the Lakers PA announcer specifically called the shooting an act of anti-Asian racism.” The Lakers announcer said: The Lakers family was saddened to hear the events late Tuesday night in Atlanta Georgia where 8 people lost their lives in an act of anti-Asian racism. As an organization, the Lakers stand in solidarity with the Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders community and are committed to taking action towards being a part of the change we want to see take place. At this time, please join the Lakers organization in a moment of silence for the 8 victims of this senseless tragedy. The Hawks announcer read a statement slightly less declarative than the Lakers statement. “Independent of the motivations, racist and gender-based crime have absolutely no place in our society and we’re committed to being an ally to communities in need,” the PA announcer said. “Please join me in a moment of silence in memory of those whose lives were lost on Tuesday.”As of the time of this writing, Long has not backed off his claim that the shootings were not racially motivated.",-0.8456056507167389 "On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said that golf great Tiger Woods got no special treatment during his single-car wreck investigation. Villanueva caught criticism for quickly coming out to say that the February 23 crash was “purely an accident” before the full investigation was finished. He also immediately said that there was “no evidence” that Woods was impaired while behind the wheel and insisted he would pursue no charges, the L.A. Times reported. Further, the sheriff’s department did not seek a warrant after the crash to determine if Woods had drugs or alcohol in his system. The sheriff’s quick proclamations and the lack of a blood alcohol test led some to wonder if the five-time Masters winner received special treatment by the officials investigating the accident. The department did issue a subpoena to obtain the vehicle’s black box data to determine if the car was being driven erratically ahead of the crash. Regardless, Villanueva says that there was no undue favorable treatment. “I know there’s been a lot of concern about, was he received any treatment any different than anybody else — he did not. He received the same treatment everybody else would receive,” Villanueva said Wednesday. “One, there’s no obvious evidence of impairment, and he’s compound fracture in a horrendous scene. Our concern shifts to the humanitarian, you know, life preservation, those kinds of things. And the accident becomes secondary.” Still, the sheriff did admit that his department needs more officers trained in drug recognition. “That’s something that obviously, lessons learned from every incident, how can we apply what we learned to future events and make ourselves more, a better organization, more effective,” Villanueva said. Woods was released from the hospital on March 16 after undergoing surgery on both his legs to repair the severe injuries suffered in the February 23 crash. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.",0.19666824027605842 """Republicans suddenly want to make it more difficult to vote."" So says CNN's Jake Tapper and the rest of the mainstream media. But as sane politicians address voting issues that were seen in the last election, Senate Democrats are pushing hard to enact the so-called ""For the People Act"" or H.R. 1, a sweeping, 791-page election bill touted as ""the only hope to save American democracy."" On ""LevinTV"" Thursday, host Mark Levin exposed Tapper and the rest of the mainstream media for what they are: just the man behind the curtain voicing the Democrat's anti-constitutional propaganda. Levin played a clip from a recent episode of ""The Lead with Jake Tapper"" in which Tapper stated: Texas is the latest state where Republicans suddenly want to make it more difficult to vote. They just rolled out two dozen bills that could restrict absentee ballots. They could limit voting hours, purge voter rolls faster and more. All this to crack down on the widespread voter fraud that does not exist, a crackdown largely motivated by Donald Trump's big election lie. Critics of these types of bills popping up nationwide call it modern day Jim Crow. ""He's a liar. He's a propagandist — utterly contemptible and utterly corrupt,"" Levin said of Tapper. ""'Purge voter rolls'? Isn't that sinister. As a matter of federal law, states are required to make sure their voter rolls are accurate. It's not a matter of purging voter rolls. It's a matter of checking those rolls up against present day residency and whether people are actually alive ... this is a good thing. You want accurate rolls, don't you? ""And how does he know 'the widespread voter fraud that does not exist'?"" Levin asked. ""Why does the IRA have auditors? Why do we have an FBI that investigates fraud? Why do we have state and local law enforcement units that investigate all kinds of fraud. [...] So, the only place there's no fraud is in voting? Isn't that amazing? ""This guy, with a straight face, is lying to everyone,"" Levin added. ""The only place where there's not fraud, apparently, is where the Democrats control the cities, and the Democrats control the states. But in this nation, we have a history of voting fraud, particularly in Democrat-controlled cities. Does Chicago ring a bell? New York City ring a bell? Philadelphia ring a bell? Detroit ring a bell? They should all ring a bell! So, [Tapper] is a liar."" Levin went on to argue that the Democrats' ultimate aim is to ""institutionalize fraud, eliminate security measures, and advance one-party dominance."" Congress is tasked with making sure the integrity of the elections are upheld and ensuring a one-citizen, one-vote system, but they are now looking to dismantle the democratic system, spreading the narrative that if Democrats do not control the cities and states, there will be nothing but election fraud and voter suppression. The Democrats are defining the laws at all levels of the government to take absolute electoral control and using the corrupt left-wing media to advance the narrative with half-truths. This is neither Americanism nor constitutionalism, he added. Watch the video below for more: . Want more from Mark Levin? To enjoy more of ""the Great One"" — Mark Levin as you've never seen him before — subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.",0.6413531601515088 "Scientists are beginning to map out how they will send and store ""6.7 million of Earth's species [including human]"" to a sperm bank on the moon. The New York Post reported, ""In what they're calling a 'modern global insurance policy,' mechanical engineers have proposed that humans establish a repository of reproductive cells — sperm and ova — from 6.7 million of Earth's species, including human."" Pat Gray, Jeffy Fisher, and Keith Malinak covered the story and raised some poignant questions. Who will guard the sperm bank on the moon? How much time and resources will be required to build the sperm bank? The guys also discussed the massive load of batteries recently launched into outer space adding to the growing space litter problem. Watch the clip for more from Thursday's episode of ""Pat Gray Unleashed."" Can't watch? Download the podcast. Use promo code PAT to save $10 on one year of BlazeTV. Want more from Pat Gray? To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.",-0.04048258554163775 "A shooting in Atlanta has #StopAsianHate trending. On today's episode of ""Louder with Crowder,"" we tell you what the mainstream media won't. We also take a look at rock band Rage Against the Machine's latest commie trash. Also, it's St. Patrick's Day, so we're having some fun at the expense of the Irish. With Dave Landau as our special guest host! Want more from Steven Crowder? To enjoy more of Steven's uncensored late-night comedy that's actually funny, join Mug Club — the only place for all of Crowder uncensored and on demand.",-0.007336884144857825 "Steven Crowder wrapped up the week with a rant on how the modern far-left and white-supremacists have more in common than you think. In this ""Louder with Crowder"" clip, Crowder broke down his views on the socialist commonalities between the two groups calling them ""distinctly anti-people."" Watch the clip for more from Steven. Can't watch? Download the podcast. Use promo code LWC to save $10 on one year of BlazeTV. Want more from Steven Crowder? To enjoy more of Steven's uncensored late-night comedy that's actually funny, join Mug Club — the only place for all of Crowder uncensored and on demand.",0.6827784740934794 "President Joe Biden won't speak about the crisis brewing on our southern border with Mexico, but the numbers don't lie. On the ""Glenn Beck Radio Program,"" Glenn broke down several statistics that prove the number of migrants — including unaccompanied minors — attempting to cross the border is skyrocketing. There is a crisis occurring, he said, so now the question becomes: will President Biden ever address it? Watch the video below: Want more from Glenn Beck? To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.",-0.2620231535101375 """Louder with Crowder"" host Steven Crowder was suspended again on Twitter and has not been given a reason for the suspension. On Thursday, Steven and his lawyer, Bill Richmond, discussed Steven's most recent suspension from Twitter's platform. According to Bill, over the last three weeks, Steven received three separate email notifications informing him about the suspensions but was never enlightened as to which post violated Twitter's policy. Bill said that Twitter has found a way to actively and instantly determine whether or not a post is violating laws in 25 countries, but yet, they cannot figure out a way to let an American citizen working for an American company know which post triggered the violation? ""These Big Tech companies have created and developed for themselves that they are unable to actually exercise it in good faith,"" Bill said. In addition to being given no explanation for the ban, Twitter appeared to be consistently resetting the ban-clock. Watch the clip for more from Steven. Can't watch? Download the podcast. Use promo code LWC to save $10 on one year of BlazeTV. Want more from Steven Crowder? To enjoy more of Steven's uncensored late-night comedy that's actually funny, join Mug Club — the only place for all of Crowder uncensored and on demand.",-0.3443913868306813 "New photos inside one of the Biden administration's surge facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border show the awful conditions under which migrant children are being kept amid the ongoing illegal immigration crisis. The photos, shared with Axios by Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas), were taken inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary surge facility in Donna, Texas, and show hundreds of children packed into tiny, makeshift rooms as they await transfer to longer-term facilities operated by the Department of Health and Humans Services. Conditions inside such facilities have previously been described as ""grim,"" cage-like, and ""akin to jails."" Due to the rapid influx of migrants and the unpreparedness of the administration, many of the migrant children are being kept in surge facilities for longer than is legally permitted. The photos provide a rare look inside the facilities, as the Biden administration has to this point blocked access to media organizations and placed an unofficial ""gag order"" on Border Patrol agents, restricting their ability to share information with journalists. Axios reported that each of the eight ""pods"" inside the so-called ""soft-sided facility"" has a maximum occupancy of 260 people. But Cuellar told the outlet that as of Sunday, one of the pods contained more than 400 unaccompanied male minors. The Democratic lawmaker described the setting as ""terrible conditions for the children."" He added that Border Patrol agents are ""doing the best they can under the circumstances"" but are ""not equipped to care for kids"" and ""need help from the administration."" ""We have to stop kids and families from making the dangerous trek across Mexico to come to the United States,"" he continued. ""We have to work with Mexico and Central American countries to have them apply for asylum in their countries."" Cuellar noted that he did not tour the facility or take the photos himself, but confirmed that the photos were taken over the weekend. The lawmaker has been outspoken about the ongoing crisis since the start of Biden's presidency. He warned earlier this month that the new administration's open-borders policies would ultimately lead to dangerous consequences for both migrants and American communities along the southern border. ""You just can't say, 'Yeah, yeah, let everybody in' — because then we're affected down there at the border,"" he told Axios in an interview, adding, ""The bad guys know how to market this.""",0.16488064572657785 "Health experts predict that summer 2021 will be far more enjoyable than summer 2020. What are the details? In a Monday article at the Huff Post, writer and editor Jillian Wilson said that hope is coming back full force this year. ""The past year-plus has been heavy and exhausting, with barely enough time to breathe before the next piece of not-so-great COVID-19 news drops,"" Wilson wrote. ""It seems, though, that we are rounding a corner as cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to drop and vaccines become more available."" Citing Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Wilson noted that the U.S. appears to be on a ""good path"" amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Speaking for the U.S., I'm really hopeful that this summer will be remarkably different from last summer,"" Nuzzo said. “We're on a good path right now and I just hope that we can stay on the path that we're on."" David Aronoff, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, added that as more U.S. citizens receive a COVID-19 vaccine, there will likely be fewer restrictions imposed on the general public. ""These vaccines are absolutely our way out of this pandemic,"" Aronoff said. Timothy Brewer, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that he predicts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will continue to relax standards in restrictions. ""One of the things that we are feeling better about is the data around SARS-CoV-2 transmission and recognizing that outdoor activities have not turned out, as best as we can tell, to be a significant factor in pushing the pandemic forward,"" he said, advocating for outdoor gatherings. He continued, ""I'm not sure whether we'll get back to large outdoor mass gatherings like athletic events where stadium are full, but I do think that there will be more smaller, outdoor gatherings."" ""I think there will be less concern about what people do outdoors,"" Brewer added, and said that beaches and pools will provide relative safety for people to congregate. Aronoff agreed and said that, while the news is promising, ""maintaining a safe distance remains important until more people are immunized and the pandemic is clearly on the way out."" In all, Wilson wrote, ""The outlook for the summer is generally sunny: We can look forward to eased restrictions, more available vaccines, and social gathering with those who are vaccinated."" Aronoff added that while experts continue to track new COVID-19 variants, he is ""encouraged"" by data that suggests that scientists ""haven't seen a real rise in case numbers particularly in the states where they have reported the variants."" Nuzzo warned, however, that if people ease their guard against coronavirus too soon, the situation does ""have the possibility of going off the rails."" ""We're in the last mile, folks,"" she warned. ""Let's not quit the race before we win."" Wilson concluded, ""Long story short: Those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will experience a version of life that is fairly 'normal' — visits with parents and grandparents, local beach house rentals with vaccinated loved ones, drinks with friends, hugs from family — without the overwhelming fear of becoming seriously ill or dying from the coronavirus.""",0.3153569624431392 "Former President Donald Trump unloaded on his successor Sunday, directly responding to President Joe Biden's administration continually blaming Trump for the growing border crisis. What is the background? Biden officials have made a habit of blaming incompetence of the Trump administration for the intensifying migrant crisis. ""As we were coming into the administration, we knew we were inheriting an absolute mess from the previous administration — that there were aspects of our legal immigration system that had been gutted and a department that lacked the personnel to administer our laws,"" Julie Chavez Rodriguez, director of the White House's office of intergovernmental affairs, recently told CNN. Another Biden official told CNN, ""When we came into office, like, it was a disaster. I mean, really. The staffing wasn't in place, the structures weren't in place."" Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also blamed Trump over the weekend. Speaking on ""Fox News Sunday,"" he said: What we are seeing is the result of President Trump's dismantlement of the safe and orderly immigration processes that were built over many, many years by presidents of both parties. That's what we are seeing, and that's why it's taking time for us to execute our plans to administer the humanitarian claims of vulnerable children. That's what this is about. What did Trump say? In a statement released late Sunday, Trump rebuked claims that his administration is to blame for the crisis. ""We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot,"" Trump began. ""Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster,"" he continued. ""They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast."" Trump also accused Biden officials, specifically Mayorkas, of engaging in a ""huge cover-up"" of the crisis. Trump referred to the unofficial ""gag order"" placed on Border Patrol agents preventing them from disclosing the truth about the crisis. Mayorkas has denied such an order exists. ""The Mayorkas Gag Order on our Nation's heroic border agents and ICE officers should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation. But it's clear they are engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are,"" Trump said. ""The only way to end the Biden Border Crisis is for them to admit their total failure and adopt the profoundly effective, proven Trump policies."" Trump went on to say, ""This Administration's reckless policies are enabling and encouraging crimes against humanity. Our Country is being destroyed!"" What has Biden done? Despite the Biden administration's blame-shifting, Biden not only advertised wholesale changes on immigration policy during his campaign, but has made good on those promises. In fact, Biden has reversed two of Trump's most deterrent immigration policies: The ""Remain in Mexico"" policy, which forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while U.S. immigration courts processed their asylum claims. Under former President Barack Obama, migrants were released after being given a ""notice to appear"" in court, resulting in many migrants slipping into the shadows. The ""Safe Third County"" policy, which forced migrants to apply for refuge in Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras before applying for asylum in the U.S. The conceivable result of Biden's actions is that government officials now believe the highest number of migrants will travel to the U.S. in over 20 years. One migrant who recently spoke with ABC anchor Martha Raddatz, in fact, said Biden's presidency was the motivating factor for now traveling to the U.S., something he admitted that he would not have done if Trump were still president.",0.6305156411152083 "Bill Maher came out swinging against cancel culture in the latest episode of ""Real Time."" Maher cited the most recent victims of cancel culture: former Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Alexi McCammond and Mumford & Sons banjo player Winston Marshall. ""I swear to God, I don't want to talk about cancel culture and this nonsense every week, but I just think people understand how this is a tsunami and how fast the goalposts change almost on a weekly basis,"" Maher started the discussion. Maher recently issued a warning about cancel culture, declaring it to be ""real, insane, and coming to a neighborhood to you"" in a February episode of his HBO talk show. Maher pointed out that you can get canceled not only for your current supposed infractions but ""anything you've ever done."" The HBO host was referring to McCammond, who was forced to resign from Teen Vogue for offensive tweets she wrote a decade ago when she was 17-years-old. Maher exploded, ""Can I just say something? People talk s*** in private! We can't legislate that away! For f*** sake, can we have a little common sense? People talk s*** about each other in private."" One of Maher's guests, former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, attempted to blame Republicans for cancel culture by bringing up the ""war on Christmas."" Maher responded, ""Yeah, they're snowflakes, too, but they don't control the media the way these brats do. That's the problem. I don't think that it was Republicans who got Alexi [fired]."" Maher then moved on to the canceling of a musician for reading a book. ""I was reading about this guy Winston Marshall, the banjo player in Mumford & Sons,"" Maher said. ""This guy tweeted out that he liked a book. It's a book called 'Unmasked.' I never heard of it, you never heard of it, It's apparently not favorable to Antifa, so it's criticizing Antifa. Okay, people write books."" ""He tweeted out, 'Finally had the time to read your important book, you're a brave man, to the author,"" Maher said of the book's author, Andy Ngo. ""Now he has to step away, everyone is always 'stepping away,' from the band."" Maher then read the apology from Marshall, and said, ""This is his apology, so Soviet. 'Over the past few days, I have come to better understand the pain I caused by the book I endorsed.' What?!?! Did you hit someone over the head with it? 'I have offended not only a lot of people I don't know but also those closest to me, including my bandmates. And for that, I am truly sorry.'"" ""It's so Stalinesque,"" Maher explained. ""You know what, how about, 'I can read what I want. I'm a musician. Don't worry, it won't happen again!'"" Maher compared the current cancel culture climate to the blacklist era of the 1950s. ""Not just what you say, it's now what you listen to, they can catch you for that,"" he said. ""What you order, who you say you like, anything sort of association, if you retweet something."" ""I never thought I would live in an era, I remember watching movies about the 50s and the blacklist era when people would whisper that you were you're a communist and all it took was someone informing on you and us saying they saw you at a rally or a peace march and you are branded, and your career was over or you were on the blacklist,"" he said. ""People go to parties now and they don't want to talk. They're like, 'Can I talk? I don't know your girlfriend. She might be woke.' Really. I'm not making this up,"" Maher stated. ""This informant thing, it's not just what you do, it's what you don't report. That's another way the goalpost moved."" (Content Warning: Explicit language):",0.4465535808216429 "Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a chief scientific adviser on former President Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed panel, said that 90% of President Joe Biden's vaccine rollout plan is the same as the previous administration's approach to vaccinating U.S. citizens against coronavirus. During an appearance on CBS's ""Face the Nation,"" host Margaret Brenna brought up allegations made by Biden, who said the Trump administration didn't secure enough vaccine doses when he took office. ""Just over four weeks ago, America had no real plan to vaccinate most of the country. My predecessor — as my mother would say, 'God love him' — failed to order enough vaccines, failed to mobilize the effort to administer the shots, failed to set up vaccine centers,"" Biden said on Feb. 21. ""That changed the moment we took office."" Slaoui responded to Biden's assertions, ""I think that's a very negative description of the reality. I do think that we had plans, and in fact, 90% of what's happening now is the plan that we had."" ""Of course the first thing was to accelerate the development of the vaccine,"" Slaoui said. ""We contracted specifically 100 million doses of vaccine, but also built into the contract options to acquire more vaccines once we knew they are effective. And the plan was to order more vaccines when- when we knew they are more effective. So I think what's happening is right. But I think what's happening is, frankly, what was the plan. Substantially what was the plan."" Slaoui admitted that the Trump administration didn't plan to use sports arena as vaccination sites, and hadn't discussed using the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of their vaccine strategy. He did say that Operation Warp Speed laid out the groundwork to use health care centers and pharmacies, which he said is where ""the bulk of vaccine distribution is happening."" Slaoui noted that the Trump administration had an original plan of having ""most of adult Americans over the age of 18 that want to be vaccinated will have been vaccinated"" by June. In December, Slaoui told the Washington Post, ""Hopefully by the middle of the year, I hope most Americans will have been immunized, which means the level of hesitancy that exists currently will have been decreased because people will have learned more information ... about the vaccine."" He added that the Trump administration ""should have this pandemic under control in the second half of 2021."" Slaoui, who was previously the head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine division, revealed that the Trump administration was in talks with Merck to use the American multinational pharmaceutical company's facilities for ""pandemic purposes."" Brennan asked Slaoui if there were any flaws in Operation Warp Speed. ""I think there were two areas for me that are key lessons to learn in terms of how things should have been done differently,"" he replied. ""One is on the communication, and I think we have failed to communicate the fact that vaccine doses availability is going to be, you know, slow over time because- because we went so fast. There is no stock of vaccine. It was impossible to have enough vaccine doses quickly enough compared to the expectations. So we were unable, as we communicated in the month of November and December and January, to- to manage the expectation."" ""And I think the second thing is indeed, in the actual immunization, the approach taken was a philosophical approach that was frankly part of what the previous administration philosophy is, which is the federal government is going to provide vaccine,"" he continued. ""The states should be accountable for actually immunizing. And that's- that's the principle on which we have worked. Clearly, there was a need for the states to actually learn, which they did in reality. And that's how improvements are happening now and also for the central government to participate in that learning process and accelerate it."" Slaoui said the politicization of the coronavirus pandemic and the COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been a ""big mistake"" by some. ""I do believe that it's a mistake to politicize a health issue. It's a big mistake,"" Slaoui said. ""Many people probably have died or suffered because the whole situation became so political that, you know, emotions overtook rationality."" ""I'm very concerned, very concerned that for political motivation, people decide to actually place themselves and the people around them in harms' way by refusing to be vaccinated,"" he added. ""I think- I think we need to do every effort we can to explain to people that vaccines have nothing to do with politics. These vaccines are safe. They are highly effective. They're going to help them protect themselves and protect the people around them from the spread of this virus and critically from the potential appearance of new variants.""",0.4330148120684517 "A prominent photojournalist rebuked the Biden administration last week for allegedly blocking media from observing operations of immigration officials handling the migrant crisis at the southern United States border. What are the details? John Moore, an award-winning photojournalist for Getty Images, blasted Biden administration officials for obstructing media access. In fact, the lack of transparency is so bad that Moore said he was forced to do his job — document the border crisis through the medium of photography — by working from the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Moore said that officials in the previous three presidential administrations did not block journalists from documenting immigration operations. ""I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations. I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now — zero access is granted to media,"" Moore said. ""These long lens images taken from the Mexican side."" Moore later added, ""The photographs in this tweet string were taken with a telephoto lens from across the border in Mexico. Until now, US photojournalists haven't needed to stand in another country to photograph what's happening - in the United States."" In fact, Moore said that federal authorities are even removing journalists from areas where migrants are entering. ""The vast majority of river crossings by asylum seekers happen on federal land in south Texas' Rio Grande Valley. The federal govt. controls access to those areas. The Border Patrol has been removing journalists who enter, including recently myself, CBS, others,"" Moore explained. Moore went on to say: There's no modern precedent for a full physical ban on media access to CBP border operations. To those who might say, cut them some slack - they are dealing with a situation, I'd say that showing the US response to the current immigrant surge is exactly the media's role. Photographing Border Patrol agents and immigrant encounters can and has been done respectfully without interfering with operations. Regardless, @cbp public affairs exists to work with media. And Pandemic restrictions are not a valid excuse to block physical media access, especially to operations that are outside. There are easy alternative options to media ride-alongs. Showing the difficult and important work of @cbp agents in the field, while also photographing immigrants in a dignified way are not mutually exclusive endeavors. Transparency is key, even in a politicized environment Anything else? As TheBlaze reported, the Biden administration has enacted an unofficial ""gag order"" restricting officials and immigration agents from sharing details about the ongoing border crisis. The Biden administration has also closed media access to detention facilities housing migrant children, a move that some Democratic lawmakers support.",0.06608932012571624 "The Department of Education took new steps last week to provide certain federal student loan borrowers complete debt relief. The announcement came as Democrats explore how to cancel student debt. More than 40 million Americans have federal student loan debt totaling more than $1.7 trillion. Debt payments are currently suspended due to financial hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic. What is the DoE's plan? Perhaps preparing to take even larger steps in the near future, the Education Department said student loan borrowers can apply for full debt cancellation if their college engaged in fraud or other financial misconduct. The government estimates that $1 billion in student loans will receive ""cancellation"" as a result, which will benefit 72,000 borrowers. ""Borrowers deserve a simplified and fair path to relief when they have been harmed by their institution's misconduct,"" Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. ""A close review of these claims and the associated evidence showed these borrowers have been harmed and we will grant them a fresh start from their debt."" More from the Department of Education: Current provisions in federal law called ""borrower defense to repayment"" or ""borrower defense"" allow federal borrowers to seek cancellation of their William D. Ford Direct Loan (Direct Loan) Program loans if their institution engaged in certain misconduct. Beginning today, the Department will ensure that borrowers with approved borrower defense claims to date will have a streamlined path to receiving full loan discharges. This includes borrowers with previously approved claims that received less than a full loan discharge. The new guidance defines ""full relief"" as cancellation of 100% of the borrower's debt, ""reimbursement of any amounts paid on the loans, where appropriate under the regulations,"" ""requests to credit bureaus to remove any related negative credit reporting,"" and ""reinstatement of federal student aid eligibility."" What is the background? According to the Washington Post, the new policy reverses one implemented under former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and revives another implemented during the Obama administration. Students are entitled to a discharge of their debt when their college uses illegal and deceptive tactics to persuade them to borrow, but the Trump administration tried to limit that relief. DeVos created a methodology for processing claims that compared median earnings of graduates who have made debt relief claims with those of graduates from comparable programs. The bigger the difference, the more relief an applicant will receive. Critics of the policy said graduate earnings were a faulty measure as many applicants never completed their degree and the formula created impossible standards for many to get full relief. The policy was a stark contrast from the Obama administration's practice of granting full cancellation when it determined a college committed fraud. About 200,000 student loan borrowers have filed for relief under the ""borrower defense to repayment"" statue, the Post reported. The Department of Education is working to find a solution for those borrowers whose debt will not be cancelled under the new guidelines.",0.8864375917754751 "With migrant facilities being overwhelming by the massive surge of migrants, the Biden administration's solution to the border crisis is to house migrants in hotels, but it will come at a hefty cost to the American taxpayer. The Biden administration has awarded an $86 million contract to pay for hotel rooms to accommodate 1,200 migrant family members who cross the U.S.-Mexico border, Department of Homeland Security officials informed Axios. The hotel rooms in border states such as Texas and Arizona will originally lodge migrants for six months, but ""could be extended and expanded."" The hotel arrangements will be organized through a San Antonio-based non-profit organization called Endeavors, which ""connects vulnerable populations across the United States to a wide range of helpful services."" The Endeavors website states that they offer: ""Direct care, migrant wellness support, case management, home study and post-release services, staffing, and holistic programming for unaccompanied migrant children and families."" Migrant families attempting to cross the U.S. southern border spiked massively in 2021, rising from over 7,000 in January to more than 19,000 in February, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted this week that the U.S. government is ""on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,"" a statement that was echoed by a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Also on Saturday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is opening another facility to house unaccompanied child migrants. The new facility in Pecos, Texas, will provide housing for at least 500 unaccompanied minors to begin with, but will expand to 2,000 children, according to Fox News. ""While ORR has worked to build up its licensed bed capacity to almost 13,500 beds, additional capacity is urgently needed to manage both enhanced COVID-19 mitigation strategies and the increasing numbers of UC referrals from DHS,"" a spokesperson for the Office of Refugee Resettlement said. ""I got notified about an hour ago from HHS, that they're opening up a new unaccompanied minor facility in PECOS, which is in my district, out in West Texas. This facility is going to house between 500 to 2000, unaccompanied minors, it appears as if they're targeting unused man camps. These are oil facilities where workers, temporary oil workers, house when they're operating in the oil gas industry,"" Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas) told Fox News on Saturday. ""There is no end in sight, I'm told there's two other facilities, and they're also looking at attending this crisis is getting out of control."" The Biden administration will reportedly send as many as 3,000 unaccompanied migrant teens aged 15-17 to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, for up to three months. Earlier this month, a report found that one migrant facility was at 729% capacity, and there were allegedly children taking turns sleeping on floors and only allowed weekly showers. On Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lashed out at the Biden administration's handling of the immigration crisis at the border. He slammed President Joe Biden for allowing a minor migrant facility to open despite having ""unsafe water"" and another facility with a COVID-19 outbreak. ""The Biden Administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border,"" Abbott said in a statement. ""The conditions unaccompanied minors face in these federally run facilities is unacceptable and inhumane."" ""The Biden Administration has no excuse for subjecting these children to these kinds of conditions,"" Abbott decalred. ""President Biden's refusal to address the border crisis is not only enabling criminal actors like human traffickers and smugglers, but it is exposing innocent unaccompanied children to illness and potentially unsafe living conditions. The administration must act now to keep these children safe, secure our border, and end this humanitarian crisis."" ""The Biden Admin. has turned a humanitarian crisis into a complete disaster,"" Abbott wrote on Twitter. ""They were unprepared for open border policies."" There were a record-high number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border in February.",1.8124127720868355 "John Cooper, frontman of Christian rock band Skillet, went beyond merely disagreeing with the highly sexualized performance of ""WAP"" from Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion at the 2021 Grammy Awards and made a crucial observation about where our culture is quickly heading. What are the details? ""We're living in a world right now where there are certain Dr. Seuss books that you cannot sell on eBay,"" Cooper noted in a ""Cooper Stuff"" video posted Wednesday on his YouTube page. ""They are just too much for anybody to even be allowed to buy; they're being yanked down from all the bookstores and stuff like that. It's just too much; it's too evil. … But you can, and must, applaud the sexual degradation of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion simulating sex together on the Grammys. ... You must celebrate it. In fact, if you don't celebrate it, then you're actually a bad person, and you kind of, like, don't love people, right? You're actually not nice."" He then read part of Isaiah 5:20 in the Old Testament of the Bible: ""Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."" Cooper pointed out that a growing number of people over the last several years have been engaging in that practice. ""Why would anybody ever call evil good and good evil?"" he asked. ""It's simple: Because they just redefine the terms. The question is, who is going to define what is good, and who is gonna define what is evil? Every dictator in history says that what they were doing was good. That's what they believe. If you go back and you read some of [Adolf] Hitler's speeches, he's, like, 'I'm gonna set people free — free from the bondage of the Ten Commandments.' In his mind, he's a liberator. It's always like that, you guys. All you do is you just redefine evil, and you redefine good. That's what's happening right now on the Grammys."" Cooper noted that some may take issue with that perspective since Madonna made similar waves with her sexualized performances in the 1980s — but he noted that back then observers weren't praising Madonna as good or virtuous. ""Now we're redefining what 'virtuous' is,"" he observed, adding that the effect is seen as more and more people are getting ""cancelled"" socially because of views that were once considered traditional but now are condemned as not ""woke."" Check out Cooper's full Ten-Minute Talk:",-0.2172833113045144 "A transgender person is now one step closer to being crowned Miss USA. Kataluna Enriquez, a biological male, won the Miss Silver State USA pageant this week, an event considered the biggest preliminary competition for the Miss Nevada USA pageant, KVVU-TV reported. The outlet called it a ""monumental win"" for Enriquez, who will now move on to the statewide competition in the pageant circuit that leads to Miss USA and, eventually, the Miss Universe competition. The pageants, collectively run by the Miss Universe Organization, were once owned by former President Donald Trump and are widely recognized for awarding among the most coveted crowns in the pageant world. In an interview with the local news outlet after the victory, Enriquez called the experience ""a celebration of womanhood and diversity and this celebration of being your true self."" First transgender titleholder crowned Miss Silver State USA youtu.be But Enriquez noted that she has not always been so well liked in the pageant world. She recalled at a previous pageant, which she chose not to name in the report, when event organizers found out she was a transgender, they required her to provide medical documents to prove she was female. The organizers also allegedly refused to assign her a roommate. ""I was asked to provide documents that were invasive in my opinion physically asking me to get a letter from my doctor,"" Enriquez said. ""It brought me back to a time where I felt like I was not welcome."" But according to KVVU-TV, Enriquez said instead of shying away from her transgender identity based on past experiences she has decided to make ""awareness of the transgender community"" her pageant platform. That message evidently resonated in the Miss Silver State USA pageant and may prove to benefit Enriquez in upcoming competitions, especially as transgenderism gains popularity in progressive circles and pressure mounts to avoid even the slightest appearance of discrimination. Over the last few years, pageant organizations have started to receive entries from more and more biological males and have been hit with backlash upon denying the participants from competing. In 2018, Angela Ponce, winner of that year's Miss Universe Spain pageant, was at one point the favorite to be crowned Miss Universe. The Miss Nevada USA pageant is scheduled for June, according to the report.",-0.5402713120719546 "Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher Stories nobody else has time to cover. ""Jeffy"" brings you the daily fat pile, water cooler chitchat, road raging and living the American Dream.",-1.5160377519108457 "Americans nationwide continue to be impacted by coronavirus-related restrictions implemented by their state leaders. Although most lockdowns have lifted, leaders continue to restrict gatherings to few people, require social distancing of at least six feet between people, and mandate the wearing of face coverings. The restrictions have forced millions of Americans to miss out on important family-related events, like weddings and funerals. But, for some reason, the same restrictions that apply to the general public were not followed during the funeral for American hero John Lewis, which took place at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. A powerful picture revealed the double standard on social distancing that apparently applies to politicians and other American leaders. In a viral Twitter post, user ""brink,"" wrote, ""I get it. My dad wasn't important. So it's ok to limit his funeral to 10 people tomorrow."" Accompanied was a picture from Lewis' memorial showing attendees not social distancing. ""This is not an attack or statement on Lewis or Masks. Rather, a statement on the double standards of those we have voted into office vs. the people who voted for them,"" the user added in a follow up tweet. Indeed, one of the most tragic aspects of the coronavirus pandemic is that many people have died alone in hospitals and other care facilities, and that families have been unable to attend funerals, instead being forced to settle for watching a memorial service via livestream.",-0.18678382770309923 "Over the weekend, a video of a police officer went viral. In that video, an unidentified police officer explains that he was called to provide security for protesters. The irony, the officer explained, is that the protesters requested police presence for a...wait for it...""defund the police"" rally. ""So I come in this morning and we're informed there's gonna be a protest to 'defund the police.' Well, that's fine, I like protests,"" the officer explained. ""Except they requested a police presence, you know, for their safety, at the 'defund the police' event,"" he continued. ""I s**t you not."" It was not clear where the officer worked, as he had removed his badge from his uniform, presumably so that his location could not be identified.",0.8185126211502549 "Possibly hundreds of people attended a house party in Chicago on Saturday night, and the videos have gone viral for their lack of social distancing. A huge party was held at a home believed to be on the west side of Chicago, where one witness said there was 1,000 people in attendance. A couple of the partygoers were wearing face masks, but nobody was following social distancing guidelines of being separated by at least six feet because the rooms of the house were jam-packed. The video of the party uploaded to Facebook already has over 1.3 million views in 16 hours. One partygoer said there were about 1,000 people at the house party. ""[There] were about 1,000 people in the yard and in the house,"" she said. ""It was really crowded and hot."" The woman added that the people who attended the house party were not concerned about contracting the coronavirus. ""I'm not worried about [the coronavirus] but if I didn't have it before, I probably got it now. Oh well,"" she said. On Sunday afternoon, the Chicago Police Department released a statement on the house party. We are aware of a video circulating on social media depicting a large house party inside of an alleged Chicago residence. While we cannot authenticate the nature or location of the gathering, we want to remind everyone of the social distancing requirements in place. CPD will disperse crowds in violation of social distancing requirements, and if necessary, issue citations or as a last resort, enforce via arrest. Illinois has the fourth-most confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. with nearly 44,000, as well as 1,933 deaths from COVID-19. Last week, cops busted a bonfire party that was held on the banks of a creek in New Jersey. A group of 11 friends used boats and wave runners to assemble at a location in Cinnaminson that they believed to be hidden. Police found the secret party and arrested everyone. They were charged with violating the emergency orders, which is a disorderly persons offense carrying a potential sentence of up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. Tens of thousands of people flocked to beaches in California after temperatures warmed up over the past week. Thousands of people went to Huntington Beach, and an estimated 40,000 Californians swarmed Newport Beach. Californians also visited San Diego County beaches this weekend, but they were closed to the public. At least three people were arrested for violating Gov. Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home orders by organizing a lockdown protest at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas.",0.006945708360134844 "HBO ""Real Time"" host Bill Maher gloated on his show Friday over David Koch's death, saying he was ""glad"" the billionaire businessman had died. ""F**k him,"" Maher said. ""I'm glad he's dead and I hope the end was painful."" Although Maher was not the only liberal to rejoice over Koch's death, his response was the most harsh; Maher essentially danced on Koch's grave to the applause of his audience. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld had a powerful response for Maher, calling the vile jokes ""evidence of a needy phony and a gleeful mob uniting."" He added pointedly, ""Koch was a generous libertarian, whose millions went to fight disease. he did more for the world in a day, than Maher will do in his lifetime.""",0.3767879770664061 "The student loan debt crisis in America reached new heights this year when the total amount of liabilities eclipsed more than $1.5 trillion. Unfortunately, the growing problem has emboldened progressive lawmakers — like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who believe the debt should be wiped clean. On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez called for legislation ""erasing"" the total sum of student loan debt in America. In the process, she revealed the crux of her belief: Young Americans should not be held responsible for student debt because school is too expensive and following your dreams is worth it. Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and the myriad of other progressive lawmakers advocating student debt be erased need classes in both basic economics and personal responsibility. Federal student loans, which comprise the majority of student loan debt, are federally guaranteed and insured by taxpayers. ""Erasing"" them will create unimaginable burden for an economy already seized by debt because, whether Ocasio-Cortez wants to admit it or not, the debt will still need to be paid somehow, someway. Meanwhile, ""erasing"" student loans robs young people of a valuable life lesson: You are responsible for repaying that which you take but cannot afford. In no other sphere — outside of bankruptcy — are people excused from their economic liabilities. Part of accepting loans is agreeing to repay the borrowed amount with interest. This basic economic principle is not erased simply because the federal government orchestrated a student debt catastrophe. In the end, attending college is a choice, and accepting loans to pay for college is a choice. With individual choice comes personal responsibility that government cannot wholly absolve.",-1.0435411623192339 "This is getting ugly. First, there was the coup attempt against National Rifle Association chief executive and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre led by former NRA President Ollie North at the convention in April. That led to North getting the boot, followed by a lawsuit by the NRA against its former head. And now Chris Cox, the NRA's No. 2, has been suspended amid accusations that he was part of the failed coup. This is from the New York Times Thursday: The palace intrigue at the National Rifle Association deepened on Thursday as the gun group suspended its second-in-command and top lobbyist, accusing him of complicity in the recent failed coup against its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre. The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Wednesday night in New York State Supreme Court against Oliver North, the N.R.A.'s former president, who led the attempt to oust Mr. LaPierre shortly before the group's annual convention in April. The complaint provides fresh detail about the effort against Mr. LaPierre, but it is the involvement of the organization's No. 2 official, Christopher, W. Cox, that will reverberate. In the suit, the N.R.A. said that text messages and emails demonstrated that “another errant N.R.A. fiduciary, Chris Cox — once thought by some to be a likely successor for Mr. LaPierre — participated"" in what was described as a conspiracy. According to the Times, though the full context of the texts is unclear, it appears Cox and a NRA board member discussed ousting LaPierre. Cox said in a statement, reported by the Times: The allegations against me are offensive and patently false. For over 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization. My efforts have always been focused on serving the members of the National Rifle Association, and I will continue to focus all of my energy on carrying out our core mission of defending the Second Amendment. Cox has always been one of the best guys at the NRA, so let's hope that the NRA gets to the bottom of this quickly and that all is not as it seems. The Second Amendment is too important to give left-wing outlets like the Times, as well as other anti-gun nuts, the opportunity to trash a group that has done so much to protect our rights. This post has been updated.",-1.9481340899931865 "The reason the left has been so successful in transforming the country even when Republicans are in charge is because Republicans have ceded the education system to the most extreme social engineers in the country. The latest fad is the teaching of ""critical race theory,"" which essentially abuses young children with white guilt rather than de-emphasizing race altogether. Trump uprooted it from the federal curriculum last year, but now the Biden administration has brought it back in full force. Now that New Hampshire Republicans won the trifecta of government in the Granite State last November, they can easily get rid of this divisive education curriculum, right? Not if Gov. Chris Sununu (R) has a say in the matter. The New Hampshire House is planning to vote on HB 544, a bill that would prohibit New Hampshire public schools or government agencies from teaching divisive curricula, such as critical race theory. The bill enumerates the following list of offensive principles that have been percolating throughout the education system, the media, and the government: (a) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; (b) The state of New Hampshire or the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist; (c) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; (d) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex; (e) Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex; (f) An individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; (g) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; (h) Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or (i) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. The Iowa House of Representatives recently passed a similar bill barring all schools and government officials from teaching diversity training. Iowa House File 802 specifically bars any curriculum teaching ""that the United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist, that an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past and that an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."" Although our country is deeply divided, can't we all agree that such racist views should have no place in publicly funded and state-sanctioned schools? Evidently not. The left feasts off playing one group against another, which is why its curriculum places identity above all else. Yet, in a shocking announcement, Gov. Sununu indicated that he would veto this bill. ""Look, that bill, as I've read it to date, really limits free speech,"" said the governor on March 9 to a NHPR show host. ""We may not like what is said in a public setting or a school or whatever it is, but that's the beauty of local control ... you don't control that by having a big government law that says you can't say certain things. If that's not changed, I'd very likely veto it"" (audio at 47-minute mark). So, like every RINO, Sununu discovers his conservatism and affinity for the Constitution in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a man who has locked down his state and is criminalizing the breathing of human beings without masks. He has shredded life, liberty, and property of private citizens and has even criticized the legislature for encouraging ""law breaking"" by zeroing out his COVID business fines, referring to his edicts as the law and the lawmakers as some pariahs who have no say in legislation. Yet this same man somehow thinks that education institutions run by the state can only silence pro-American voices, but not anti-American curriculum, and that it is somehow protected by the First Amendment? Also, you gotta love his affinity for localism. Suddenly, he thinks that little towns should be able to control the state's education process when he knows darn well that New Hampshire is not a home rule state. In other words, localities have less autonomy than in almost any state on nearly every policy issue because the state's constitution grants no power to towns and cities. Remember, Sununu is being touted as the great hope of the GOP to win back the Senate for Republicans because he is weighing a challenge to Sen. Maggie Hassan for the Senate seat in 2022. But this is why we have so many liberal Republicans in the Senate. We rely on candidates who are out of touch with the most basic values of their own party in their respective states. The antithesis of someone like Sununu is Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of Florida. Even without the legislature passing any bill, he announced yesterday that he is banning critical race theory from the schools. ""There's no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,"" said the Florida governor at a press conference on Wednesday. ""Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money."" Indeed, as we are locked in mortal combat for the culture of our civilization, the difference between a DeSantis Republican and a Sununu Republican is greater than the difference between a standard Republican and a Democrat.",0.20638544266226141 """Be all that you can be!"" Where men can be women and women can be men; where soldiers must wear masks all day on American bases but can't carry firearms; where the entire purpose of the military is to fight other countries' battles but not the one at our border; where getting women to act like men is the only religion allowed in the military, except when they invariably can't meet the standards and the military lowers them to make them ""fair"" for all. That is sadly the state of play in what was once the pride of the nation, after decades of the left rotting out our armed forces with left-wing politicians serving as generals. For many years, conservatives have known that military leadership has become politicized. The focus shifted from combat readiness to social experimentation, and the left finally conquered the one institution that was considered a bastion of traditional American values. But Tucker Carlson has now exposed that it's worse than even we realized. Last Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson commented on Biden's celebration of the military becoming more feminine: ""While China's military becomes more masculine, as it's assembled the world's largest navy,"" America focuses on making our military ""become more feminine — whatever feminine means any more, since men and women no longer exist."" Tucker was commentating on Biden's celebration of the military making apparel for women, including ""designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating — updating requirements for their hairstyles."" Carlson prefaced his critique of the president with his now famous line, ""So we've got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits."" ""Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It's a mockery of the U.S. military,"" Carlson added on his show Tuesday. Carlson drove home the point by noting how ""the Pentagon is going along with it"" and that this entire feminine focus ""is a mockery of the U.S. military and its core mission, which is winning wars."" For most Americans with common sense, Tucker was expressing their anger and sorrow at what has happened to our military over the years. What none of us expected was the response of the military leaders from all service branches sending out memes about Amazonian women and outright celebrating the concept of pregnant women in combat. Reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh's parody ""we're fierce, we're feminists, and we're in your face,"" many active-duty feminist generals sent out social media memes basically suggesting that women are the strongest and most effective part of combat readiness, taking the absurdity of gender-bending to the next level and exemplifying Tucker's point better than he could have on his show. Putting aside the absurd values and strategy behind this gender-bending agenda, it's quite shocking how active-duty generals are able to spar with a civilian media figure to this extent. It's one thing for the secretary of defense to engage in political battles, but we have never seen active-duty military allowed to become so political. It's as if they are trying to compensate for 20 years of egregious rules of engagement and lack of mission clarity by training their fire on a civilian with no holds barred. Now we know why we've been in Afghanistan for 20 years. As for the substance of the gender-bending argument, how many of you actually believe that a military leadership so dedicated to promoting women in combat really remains neutral when it comes to passing women through the combat training tests? Well, just one month ago, before Tucker prompted the generals to tout women as stronger than men, the Army Times reported that the military is considering halting its gender-neutral Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) test, as female soldiers were failing at a rate of 65%, in order to make it fair to both genders. So, much like having both sexes compete together in sports, women are exactly like men, until they are not. Which is perhaps why Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is now promoting ""mindfulness and yoga"" as part of combat readiness – of course, while wearing masks. A Pentagon study has found up to 65% of women were failing the ACFT, compared to just 10% for men, according to the Telegraph. Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry of TRADOC told the Army Times last month that the Army ""is looking at means to apply those scores based on gender to account for biological differences."" Oh, so you mean there are actually biological differences that make life-and-death differences in combat readiness? Who knew? The reality is that the Marines already studied this issue very carefully in 2015, but their findings were ignored. When Obama began integrating women into infantry and other combat units, the Marine Corps, under General Joseph Dunford, was the only service branch to question this absurdity. The service conducted a study of 400 Marines (300 male and 100 female) over many months at a cost of $36 million, in which all-male teams and integrated teams were studied performing numerous tasks similar to those they would carry out in real-life combat. In infantry testing, in nearly every category, mixed teams came up short compared to the all-male teams. Here are some key points, according to a summary of the report: Overall, the all-male teams outperformed teams with integrated female members 69% of the time, in 94 out of 134 tasks. All-male teams were faster than integrated teams in every tactical movement, and this was especially evident when heavy crew-served weapons were being moved. This held true across all Military Operational Specialties (MOSs). The all-male teams were more accurate shots than the integrated teams across all weapons systems. This included male Marines trained as infantrymen and those in a different MOS who were part of the testing. The all-male teams performed much better on routine combat tasks. When climbing an eight-foot wall, male Marines would toss their packs to the top, whereas female Marines ""required regular assistance getting their packs to the top."" When carrying out mock evacuations of casualties, all-male teams were much faster except in cases where the evacuee was carried in a fireman's carry, and then it was usually a male Marine doing the carrying. The top 25% of females overlapped with the bottom 25% of male Marines in the study for anaerobic power, and the top 10% of females corresponded with the bottom 50% of males for anaerobic capacity. Most importantly, the female participants sustained significantly higher injury rates and levels of fatigue than their male counterparts. In the Infantry Training Battalion, females were injured at six times the rate of male Marines. It's important to keep in mind that these were some of the strongest and most talented female Marines, drawn from graduates of the Infantry Training Battalion. Yet at the end of the day, combat is a job only for the strongest and most resilient of men, not just average men, which is why it makes no sense to promote an agenda of women in infantry units. Overall, the results showed that while some exceptional and unusual women might be capable of serving in the infantry in a vacuum, even they would lag far behind their male counterparts and end up slowing down their units or placing themselves or others in unnecessary danger. The study and the recent admission from the Pentagon about women failing the ACFT – despite five years of moving heaven and earth to get as many women through it as possible – prove the simple yet blunt conclusion of a 1992 report from the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces correct: Unnecessary distraction or any dilution of the combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong. So much for ""following the science."" Women in combat was the original ""wear your mask to stop the spread."" In both cases, politics trumps science. It's just a matter of time before they begin celebrating pregnant female Navy SEALs. Now the same Marine Corps is attacking Tucker on Twitter for essentially opining on what its own study showed. The military is also abusing the soldiers with endless mask-wearing while performing exhausting physical exercises, while the science has shown that it has failed to stop the spread among these predominantly young recruits who are not even in danger from the virus. The same generals promoting gender-bending are the same ones proposing masks, endless nation-building follies, and more Saudi military recruits – while opposing using troops at our own border and arming soldiers on their own bases. Donald Trump was right when he said in 2016 that our generals have been ""reduced to rubble."" Meanwhile, all civilians should be asking themselves the following question: Does China actually fear a military wearing masks and run by feminist generals?",-1.014395422706615 "Why should the estimated one-third of Americans who have already contracted the virus still be treated like ticking time bombs? How much longer will the government get away with denying the science behind immunity from infection? The isolation of all human beings as a strategy to deal with this virus began with the novel assumption of mass asymptomatic spread, a hypothesis now disproven by studies on transmission. Now, the mandatory masking and isolation are continuing without question based on a shocking lie that the one-third of the country who have already gotten the virus – despite the masks and lockdowns, by the way – are not immune to the virus. As more and more studies have come out showing that prior infection confers long-lasting immunity – not just the 90 days we are told by the government – the purveyors of panic and tyranny have sought to use the focus on several supposedly new variants to deny the presumed immunity from prior infection. However, a new comprehensive study from Harvard Medical School and Boston University researchers should put this latest myth to rest. The researchers took blood samples from people who had the virus from March 3 to April 1, 2020, long before the new variants were discovered, which allowed them to presume they all had the original Wuhan strain. They found the S-specific memory B cells ""conferring robustness against emerging SARS-CoV2 variants"" – the U.K. (B117) & South African (B1351) variants. ""Loss of protection against overt or severe disease is not an inevitable consequence of a waning serum antibody titer,"" wrote the authors. ""This atlas of B cell memory therefore maps systematically a crucial component of the long-term immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection."" In other words, the inherent immune system full of B cells (in addition to T cells) provides robust immunity not just long after the antibody titers wane from the original infection, but also against emerging strains of the virus. There has been much discussion over whether the vaccine confers immunity against the new variants, but the more important fact is that previous infection confers such immunity, as is the case with nearly every virus. Indeed, cases have plummeted in South Africa and England precisely since the new variants have been discovered, which would be difficult without natural immunity from the prior waves working against the new variants. In Denmark, the U.K. variant composes roughly three-quarters of all cases, yet the country is averaging one death per day over the past 7 days. The same holds true for a number of states in America. A retrospective observational study of 14,840 COVID-19 survivors in Austria found just a 0.27% reinfection rate during the second wave. ""Protection against SARS-CoV-2 after natural infection is comparable to the highest available estimates on vaccine efficacies,"" concludes the study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. It's also important to remember that, as with other viruses, immunity doesn't necessarily mean you can't test positive again, but that you won't experience serious symptoms even if you do. The goal is not to prevent colds and flus, but to pre-empt serious illness and death. ""With follow‐up on mortality available until December 23, only one 72‐year‐old woman died two days after her tentative re‐infection diagnosis,"" observed the authors of the Austrian study. ""She was not hospitalized and according to her medical records her cause of death ('acute vascular occlusion of an extremity with rhabdomyolysis') was not causally attributed to COVID‐19."" As the Los Angeles Times reported already in February, with an estimated 35% of Americans already infected (up to 50% in Los Angeles!), ""the biggest factor"" driving the plummeting of cases ""paradoxically, is something the nation spent the last year trying to prevent."" That is herd immunity. As illogical as it was to lock down all Americans last year, regardless of whether they were sick, it's downright insane to continue masking people who already had the virus AND have no current symptoms. We've already learned from reams of medical research that asymptomatic individuals rarely drive outbreaks. Coupled with already having been infected, the likelihood of a recovered COVID patient both getting the virus and transmitting it is so low that it makes further masking of these people unconscionable. With this thought fresh in your mind, now consider the insane abuse our government continues to foist upon kids by masking them seven hours a day in school. You can have a child who already had the virus and currently has no symptoms, yet he is still forced to wear a mask. What's worse, with mass testing of children, yet extremely low rates of infection in recent weeks, the chance of false positives is extremely high. Last week, Professor Jon Deeks, a biostatistician from the University of Birmingham, told the U.K. Telegraph, ""It seems likely that over 70% of positive test results are false positives, potentially many more."" So, children continue to be masked or even removed from school with no symptoms, based on faulty testing, predicated on a false assumption of mass asymptomatic spread – when so many of them already have immunity. In other words, this cycle can go on forever. Just how big a lie is mass asymptomatic spread? Last month, the Federalist's Georgi Boorman trenchantly observed how the CDC mistakenly admitted that its entire premise of masking and isolating asymptomatic people is based on a lie. While finally acknowledging in its Jan. 29 report the fact of insignificant levels of spread in schools, the CDC let the following genie out of the bottle: ""Children might be more likely to be asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 than are adults. … This apparent lack of transmission [in schools] is consistent with recent research (5), which found an asymptomatic attack rate of only 0.7% within households and a lower rate of transmission from children than from adults. However, this study was unable to rule out asymptomatic transmission within the school setting because surveillance testing was not conducted"" (emphasis added). So, when it comes to explaining why children rarely spread the virus, the CDC settled on the principle that children usually get infected asymptomatically, which means very little transmission! That would apply to adults who don't have symptoms, too, but the CDC will never concede that point. In fact, the low rate of transmission in that study includes both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases. Nevertheless, despite the CDC admitting that kids, especially young kids, are not vectors of spread, it updated its guidance to continue recommending that children as young as two, aka babies, wear masks at child care facilities except for when they are eating and sleeping! Which raises the question: With so many people already having had the virus and feeling healthy, what is the legal justification for using the police power of quarantine against those people? There is none, and there never has been a legitimate constitutional authority, yet they've done it anyway. In other words, if we don't end this tyranny now, it will never end, because quarantine and masking are no longer a means but an end.",-0.7577206492253101 """Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled … sex offenders … yearning to …"" Wait … what? Customs and Border Protection announced yesterday that more than 100,000 illegal aliens were apprehended at the border. That is more than any time in recent history except for the peak months of the 2019 border crisis. And it's getting worse every day. But what few people have noticed is that it's not just impoverished illegal aliens coming in. The cartels and smugglers use that flow of family units and children to tie down border agents with processing and medical care while they bring in some of the worst human beings alive, including previously deported sex offenders. Buried in the newly released border apprehension numbers is the deduced fact that year-to-date, CBP is apprehending, on average, more than three times the number of sex offenders they did in fiscal year 2020. Image source: CBP.gov As you can see, after just five months of this fiscal year, CBP has caught more sex offenders than it did during the entire FY 2020, for an annualized pace of more than three times that of last year and greater than any other year since the agency started tracking apprehensions by criminal category. Remember, under the Trump administration, many criminal aliens and sex offenders were deported. Now is the perfect time for them to re-enter the country. The cartels have been known to strategically bring over the criminal aliens who don't want to meet a border agent while the smugglers are tying down the agents with the family units. The cartels typically charge more to bring over the high-value individuals. Thus, if 210 were caught despite this successful business model, how many of them do you think we did not catch while the Border Patrol plays babysitter? Based on data obtained by TheBlaze from a border agent, just for the month of February, CBP recorded 26,825 ""gotaways."" They calculate these numbers based on a mix of counting footprints in the ground and adding them to the hits they get on all the cameras and sensors. Then they compare those suspected infiltrations against the apprehension numbers. The difference between the two is the rough estimation of how many people got away that day in the given area of operation. However, given how taxed the Border Patrol is at this point, it's truly hard to imagine they are fully aware of all the gotaways. One veteran border patrol agent who spoke to TheBlaze anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the media believes those numbers are much higher. ""None of my partners are properly counting and recording the gotaway numbers,"" said the agent, who patrols the front lines in Texas. ""With the stress of the border flow and all the COVID regulations on our operations, that is the last thing on the mind of an agent. The number of gotaways in Texas is likely exponentially higher."" What this all means is that the invitation for the world's impoverished people to crash our border is allowing the cartels to strategically bring over many more criminal aliens than we can imagine. As I reported earlier, the Cochise County Sheriff's Department estimates that only 35% of those detected on their cameras are apprehended and that most of them are drug runners and criminal aliens. As I've reported from covering immigration over the years, sex offenders, particularly child sex offenders, have been rampant among the illegal alien population from certain countries. A quick look at the past few years of ICE enforcement data reveals that ICE typically arrests illegal aliens who have a cumulative tally of 12,000-15,000 sex offense charges and convictions every year. That's an awful lot of sex offenders who have been deported in recent years and are likely trying to get back into the country while Biden is offering them the perfect cover of the family units. According to data from Girls Not Brides, a global nonprofit against child marriage, the child marriage rates for girls in Latin American countries from which we are seeing an increase in illegal immigration are particularly high, especially in rural areas. The organization estimate that 34% of all married Honduran women were with their male spouses as minors. One report from only 30 percent of North Carolina counties found that in just an 18-month period in 2018 and 2019, more than 331 illegal aliens have been charged with 1,172 child rapes and child sexual assaults. Just one year's arrests by ICE's small forces netted illegal aliens who were charged with a total of 6,888 ""sex offenses,"" 5,350 ""sexual assaults,"" and 1,739 ""commercialized sexual assaults."" Consequently, every time you see large numbers of illegal alien families tying down our border agents, just realize that thousands of previously deported criminal aliens, including sex offenders, are sneaking in surreptitiously and being brought in strategically. Even for the few criminal aliens who are caught, you can't assume that they will be re-incarcerated. Not only have ICE removals in the interior plummeted 60% under the Biden administration, but officials are releasing even some of the criminals who are freshly caught re-entering the country illegally. U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, who is hearing Texas' challenge to Biden's order suspending deportations, said that recent human smugglers caught in Texas were released. Human smuggling is a felony which would have gotten then immediately removed in the past. The flood of criminal aliens together with the torrent of migrants is the biggest reason why the border wall needs to be completed . One Texas lawmaker is pushing a bill that would enable the Lone Star State to go it alone and complete the wall. However, given that what comes to Texas doesn't stay in Texas, all the states have an obligation to help Texas fund the wall. After all, do we really need the world's sex offenders to come here, besides our own?",-1.394082392805314 "If I were a Democrat, I'd centralize power in Washington by nationalizing our elections. It wouldn't be enough to hold all three branches temporarily. I'd need to make it permanent. So I'd change the rules. If I were a Democrat, I'd flood the voter pool. I'd require all states to allow same-day voter registration. I'd mandate states automatically register felons, illegal aliens, and 16-year-olds to vote, and I'd require prisons, welfare offices, and ICE to provide their voter registration information. I'd also use taxpayer dollars to establish aggressive voter recruitment programs at leftist training camps — otherwise known as colleges and universities. If I were a Democrat, I'd begin a chronicle of lies that all voter verification laws are racist and with that distraction, I'd enable illegal voting. Banning all voter ID laws would be another important step. If any local official dared question the eligibility of one of my illegal voters, I would throw them in jail. I would threaten force until no one dared resist. I'd block efforts to verify signatures and citizenship in the name of counting every vote — not just every legal one. I'd make it more difficult for poll watchers to ensure accountability: citizen oversight is a pest. I'd make the fraud-ridden mail-in voting of the 2020 pandemic election permanent. To ensure my win on Election Day (or Election Month under our new scheme), I would allow aggressive ballot harvesting to begin 45 days before the election, and I'd count votes received 10 days late in case we need to drum up some missing ballots. If I were a Democrat, I'd siphon the power of states to the federal government. I'd ignore the Constitution and prevent states from determining their own voting practices. If conservative states did not readily relinquish their authority, I would reduce their representation in Congress and give their electoral votes to my friends in California or New York. For good measure, I'd strip all state legislatures of their ability to decide how Congressional districts are drawn, and I'd also prohibit states from enforcing their election law. Next, I'd give D.C. statehood. Now I have the Senate. If I were a Democrat, I'd marginalize the courts and limit access to challenges. I'd insist that all election lawsuits be processed only by my friends on the District Court in Washington, D.C. If I were a Democrat, I'd talk about taking money out of politics, but would tax businesses to provide kickbacks and multiply my own campaign war chest by 600%. If I were a Democrat, I'd be a career politician, so I'd enrich the Swamp while further bankrupting America. To sweep away any ethics challenges, I'd change the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a partisan board with a new czar governed by the ruling party — mine. Now I know these changes are ambitious, and there could be backlash. So I'd silence dissent and cancel free speech. After I controlled the government, I'd want to control the people, so I'd cancel unauthorized thoughts. I'd empower bureaucrats to prosecute individual Americans for posting anything ""fact-checkers"" deem ""misinformation."" I'd dox and censor anyone who donated to my opponents by having the government publish their personal information. Then I'd weaponize the IRS to strip conservative churches and nonprofits of their tax-exempt status. If I were a Democrat, I'd use the weight of the federal government to crush anyone who opposed me. In other words, if I were a Democrat, I'd pass the ""For the Swamp Act,"" H.R. 1. But I'm a conservative, and I will never stop fighting for the rights of states, limited government, and election integrity.",2.1424336938237167 "It's not just in San Francisco and New York City that violent career criminals are being released en masse, only to commit more crimes. Republicans in Oklahoma and other states have bought into this ""criminal justice reform"" lie – that somehow our system is too tough on criminals, rather than too lenient by a mile. The deception of ""low-level criminals"" propelling last year's mass prison release in Oklahoma has now been laid bare by the case of Lawrence Paul Anderson. Anderson is accused of killing his neighbor, Andrea Lynn Blankenship, 41, on February 12 in Chickasha, cutting out her heart, and cooking it with potatoes at his uncle's house. He then allegedly killed his uncle, injured his aunt, and killed the couple's 4-year-old granddaughter. As soon as I saw the story, I figured that a person like that either had to be a career criminal released early from prison, a known criminally insane person who should have been known to law enforcement, or both. Well, remember that mass commutation by Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) a little more than a year ago? On Nov. 4, Gov. Stitt commuted the sentences of 527 criminals, in the largest single prison release in U.S. history. To a cheering crowd, he bragged about ""second chances"" being offered to ""low-level"" offenders. This was part of a broad effort that has infected even the most conservative states – convincing the public that we have an over-incarceration problem, rather than an under-incarceration problem. I warned at the time that crime had begun to skyrocket in Oklahoma as a result of several of these measures being implemented in a similar fashion to what was observed in San Francisco. The people of Oklahoma deserve blame because they ultimately voted for State Question 780 in 2016, which downgraded drug and theft crimes across the board. Proponents spent over $4 million dollars with almost no opposition. But lawmakers followed up in 2018 by making those changes retroactive. They also teed up the ballot intuitive and misled the public about the nature of these crimes. As I observed in my Nov. 22, 2019, column, ""We are not locking up people for minor crimes, and even those locked up for so-called minor crimes are usually not incarcerated for that long — and it's usually because they had a longer rap sheet of violent crime and violated their parole with theft, drugs, or driving offenses."" When criminals are locked up for a while, with few exceptions, there is a reason. As Jason Hicks, the president of the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council, warned, many criminals are barely serving time as it is. ""A five-year sentence or even up to a 10-year sentence, those folks are serving a very, very small amount of time in DOC on a nonviolent crime,"" Hicks said at a 2019 hearing in the House Judiciary Committee. ""In fact, you're going to serve roughly 90 days on a 10-year or less nonviolent crime and, if you haven't done anything else, you're getting an ankle bracelet and getting sent back home."" Well, that brings us back to Anderson, who was released on Jan. 18 as part of this same parole program. As the AP reported: ""Anderson had been sentenced in 2017 to 20 years in prison for probation violations on a drug case, the newspaper reported. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the sentence last year to nine years in prison, and Anderson was released after serving a little more than three years."" The public has been convinced that the sort of people who get those sentences are low-level. Drugs and probation violations don't sound like a big deal. And they might not be for some people, most of whom will never serve time in jail anyway. According to court records, he was charged in 2006 for attacking his girlfriend with a gun. In 2016, he was charged with felony possession of a firearm, and in 2017 with felony possession of a firearm during commission of a felony, bringing contraband into penal institution, molesting a motor vehicle, and possession of meth. When he was resentenced in 2017 for pointing a gun at a woman, he also told the judge he was taking medication for bipolar disorder. He fits the profile of someone who might be a career violent criminal or mentally ill. This was overlooked when he was released. He had a slew of other drug charges too. Those people tend not to be nonviolent. Crime in Oklahoma and across the nation is skyrocketing precisely because we reversed the very policies that reduced crime. Since the bottom of the two-decade decline in homicide in 2014, the homicide rate was 34% higher in 2019, according to the FBI Uniform Crime statistics (table 6), and even higher in 2020. 2017, the year after the criminal justice ""reforms"" were passed, was the highest of all. The homicide rate in Oklahoma City rose 48% from 2014 to 2019. The reality is that most people with multiple gun and drug charges are the most violent criminals in the country and will go on to commit other violent crimes if left undeterred. Kevin Stitt continued to push even more jailbreak because of coronavirus as well. The governor, the legislature, and the people got this issue wrong five years ago. But now that we see the results of the jailbreak policies, it's time to revisit the definition of ""low-level offenses."" With Oklahoma experiencing an increase in theft and homelessness just like San Francisco, why will policymakers not re-examine their erroneous premises on criminal justice? Kevin Stitt and other pro-criminal RINOs incessantly speak of ""second chances."" But very few criminals get locked up without having had endless chances, like Anderson. Moreover, ""parole violations"" are often for gun crimes, as was the case with Anderson. Yet in their rush to brag about releasing as many criminals as possible, they failed to analyze the profile and criminal history that led to the final incarcerations on their respective records. Grady County District Attorney Jason Hicks is right that the legislature needs to shift its focus to protecting citizens, not criminals. ""This has to be addressed by the Legislature, sooner rather than later, because more people are going to get killed,"" the prosecutor said. ""We're seeing this all over the state. Repeat offenders go to prison. They're not there very long. And they come home and they're committing crimes just like this.""' As Hicks noted, at the time, the parole board was considering hundreds of cases in order to release as many people as possible. It's one thing to carefully comb through files to see if some people don't need to be incarcerated. However, any honest reform would have to simultaneously focus on all those violent criminals who should be locked up who aren't in prison, which are much more numerous. But this was never about proper reforms; this was always about de-incarceration at all costs. Maybe someday, Republicans and the phony ""conservative"" special interest groups will go back to focusing on victims of crime instead of criminals. Until then, red-state governors will continue to pursue the same dangerous and radical policies as the Soros prosecutor in San Francisco.",0.6241474306494362 "Shutting down schools is not the only way our politicians are destroying the lives of children. They also continue to ban or limit youth sports in many states or make kids play with masks, which is a greater health threat to children than the coronavirus. The entire sports and leisure life of children has been destroyed for a generation, all for a virus that does not pose a statistically significant threat to them, more than the daily risk of living. Now a new study from Wisconsin lays waste to the entire premise of shutting down youth sports in the first place. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health published a preprint study of coronavirus transmission among 30,704 high school athletes who played sports in Wisconsin during the fall. Wisconsin children were luckier than others because the state Supreme Court reversed the categorical ban on youth sports last May, so most were able to play sports. However, the majority of students were, shockingly, forced to play wearing masks. So, did it make a difference? Overall, the study found that the infection rate among players was exactly in line with the infection rate in the given county at the time. Despite 30,074 student-athletes that had participated in 16,898 practices and 4,378 games during the peak of Wisconsin's fall spread, the rate of incidence among those students was actually lower (32.6 cases per 100,000 person-days) than the rate of incidence among the general population of 14-17-year-olds (38.1 cases per 100,000 person-days) during the time. Here's the money quote: Of the cases with a reported known source, 115 (55%) were attributed to 163 household contact followed by community contact outside sport or school (85, 41%), school 164 contact (5, 2.4%), sport contact (1, 0.5%) and other (3, 1.4%). You read that right. Just 1 individual of 30,000 players contracted the virus through what was suspected to be transmission from the sporting event. And I'd bet my bottom dollar that this was not the worst thing that child had contracted in his lifetime. In fact, with flu season on hiatus, children are getting sick less often and less severely than they do during a typical winter. The researchers further found no statistically significant difference in reported COVID-19 incidence between contact versus non-contact sports or individual versus team sports. They did find a slightly higher rate for indoor vs. outdoor sports, which is to be expected, although the overall rates for that age group were low across the board. What about masks? ""After adjusting for local county COVID-19 incidence and school instructional delivery, face mask use was not associated with a decreased COVID-19 incidence in football, girls' volleyball, boys' soccer or cross country."" If anything, there was a greater incidence of cases among those who wore masks relative to those who didn't for the football groups, which had the most cases out of the four sport groups studied. Either way, because 84% were wearing masks, it was hard to get a significant sample size of non-mask-wearers, which will always be used as an excuse to avoid drawing conclusions from this study. However, with no affirmative evidence that masks ever work, why are we making kids play in such a dangerous environment for a virus that is simply not a problem for them? In an informal survey of 2,270 Minnesota high school athletes, 74% of students reported experiencing at least one ""clinically significant symptom"" from wearing a mask while playing, including loss of consciousness, dizziness, and vomiting. Almost 80% of respondents said it was hard to breathe, 52% said they experienced ""increased or excessive fatigue,"" and 48 players reported going to urgent care, with 18 of them being taken to the ER. The broad results of the Wisconsin study harmonize with a recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which found ""that the transmission risk during a rugby match is likely to be very low."" Well, if you're not spreading it during rugby, then you're likely not spreading it during any sport. Even if masks were to work in general, there is no reason children, who are not at risk in any meaningful way, should have to wear masks outdoors. The harm far outweighs even the contrived benefits of mask-wearing. Incidentally, it was the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health that published a mental health survey among high school athletes last July that found that approximately 68 percent of the 3,243 student-athletes surveyed reported feelings of anxiety and depression at levels that would typically require medical intervention. In October, that same department published a survey comparing those in Wisconsin who participated in sports to those who did not and found that 80% of those who participated felt zero anxiety in their lives compared to just 26.4% who did not play a sport in the fall. Just 6.6% of those who played felt moderate or severe anxiety compared to 44.1% who did not! Also, nearly twice as many students who played sports reported experiencing no or minimal depression as among those who did not participate in youth sports. Remember that according to the CDC's current unscientific guidance, youth sports and extracurricular activities would be banned in all the red areas. Source: https://cai.burbio.com/burbios-cdc-k-12-red-zone-t... What our government is doing to us is a crime against humanity. A 2019 study published in Nature Neuroscience observed that social interaction was so important even for lab rats that when offered the option between a drug infusion (they were previously injected with methamphetamine) and interaction with other rats, the rats chose their peers 90% of the time. The question going forward is not only whether we will follow the science, but whether we will treat our children with as much humanity as rats.",1.892992631198292 "JERUSALEM, Israel – An Israeli-American pharmaceutical company claims it is working on a coronavirus vaccine that can be taken at home in the form of an oral pill. Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Israeli company, announced over the weekend it is partnering with Premas Biotech to develop the world’s first oral coronavirus vaccine through their new company “Oravax Medical.” The vaccine is “based on Oramed's proprietary POD™ oral delivery technology” and Premas Biotech’s “novel vaccine technology,” the company said in a statement. The Oravax vaccine is designed to target three structural proteins on the virus, instead of the single spike protein targeted by Pfizer and Moderna. This could make the vaccine more effective in protecting against virus strains, the company claims. ***Stay up to date with CBN News QuickStart. Go here to sign up for QuickStart and other CBN News emails and download the FREE CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.*** Unlike the current COVID-19 vaccines, Oravax’s oral vaccine would not need to be stored at below-freezing temperatures, making its distribution and accessibility easier. A pilot study of the vaccine found that the oral COVID-19 vaccine promoted the production of antibodies in rats. ""An oral COVID-19 vaccine would eliminate several barriers to rapid, widescale distribution, potentially enabling people to take the vaccine themselves at home,” said Nadav Kidron, CEO of Oramed. ***As certain voices are censored and free speech platforms shut down, be sure to sign up for CBN News emails and the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.*** “While ease of administration is critical today to accelerate inoculation rates, an oral vaccine could become even more valuable in the case that a COVID-19 vaccine may be recommended annually like the standard flu shot.” Oravax is preparing to begin a clinical study during the second quarter of 2021.",1.12361613130174 "***Start Your Day with CBN News QuickStart. Go here to sign up for CBN News emails and download the FREE CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.*** President Biden's COVID-19 Response Team is holding a LIVE briefing on the pandemic on Monday. The response coordinators and public health officials will provide updates and developments on the federal government's efforts to combat the pandemic. BELOW: Watch the briefing LIVE at 11 AM READ: What You Need to Know About the Leading Coronavirus Vaccines ***As certain voices are censored and free speech platforms shut down, be sure to sign up for CBN News emails and the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.***",1.1885393082221376 "The United Nations body responsible for overseeing Palestinian Refugee Education said recently it had removed violent and anti-Israel content from special materials it published to help Palestinian children study at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. This announcement came after it was challenged by a report from IMPACT-se. But a new investigation questioned that so-called resolution and found the changes didn’t go far enough. Throughout 2020, Palestinian children like many others around the world couldn’t go to school due to COVID-19. During that time the United Nations Relief Works Agency or UNRWA, produced and provided the students with material that went way beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. “We found that it contains various violations of UN values, of UNESCO standards and of UNWRA’s own principles. These were educational materials, which were distributed to over 320,000 Palestinian children across the West Bank and Gaza,” said Marcus Sheff, CEO of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se). ***Start Your Day with CBN News QuickStart!!! Go here to sign up for QuickStart and other CBN News emails and download the FREE CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.*** Sheff's group examined the material sent to those children and what they found was not good. “The idea that UNWRA, as a UN organization, is distributing material which, calls on students to defend the motherland with blood. Or that glorifies terrorists and directs students to terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who is in their materials a role model for young girls, somebody who had murdered 38 people, including 13 children on a civilian bus,” Sheff told CBN News. IMPACT-se produced a report on January 13 that lays out examples found throughout the curriculum. In mathematics, for instance students are asked to write “The number of martyrs in the first Intifadah” in numerals from written words; a language studies question asks students to find the preposition in a sentence like, “Jihad is one of the doors to paradise;” and in Social Studies, they’re taught “Zionist policy” is responsible for “exhausting Palestinian natural resources.” “It was written by UNWRA’s teachers. Now, UNWRA’s teachers are supposed to be trained in UN values of peace and tolerance,” Sheff said. Following the January IMPACT-se report, UNWRA admitted to the problem and assured governments it had been addressed. A follow-up study by the IMPACT team, however, shows that was not the case. “Within these materials, we also found hateful material; material which young people anywhere should not be studying and certainly not being taught by a UN organization,” Sheff said. “So, you know, I think what we see here is that, you know, UNWRA is absolutely part of the problem in relation to the incitement to young people in the region,” he added. ***Be sure to sign up for CBN News emails and the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.*** In one social studies exercise, sixth graders are shown a map of the British Mandate called “Palestine” – that does not include any Israel reference and told: “Palestine is the geographical area which extends from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the River Jordan in the east and from Lebanon and Syria in the north to the Gulf of Aqaba and Egypt in the south…Its location gave it strategic importance, making it coveted by invaders and colonial powers,” it says. And there’s another problem. “That is if you’ve distributed printed materials to 320,000 children, then you’ve found that you had been distributing hateful material, how exactly did UNWRA get those materials back? We have no answer to that,” Sheff said. Former President Trump cut funding to UNRWA because of this kind of incitement in Palestinian schools. President Biden has pledged to resume humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Sheff maintains the world should expect transparency from any United Nations body and until UNRWA can prove otherwise, it should be understood the organization teaches hate.",-0.22726023985718596 "WASHINGTON – The number of migrants crossing the southwestern border is on pace for the highest level in 20 years. Republicans call it the ""Biden border crisis"". Up until now, the White House has been calling it a ""challenge"" and avoiding the word ""crisis"". With migrants pouring across the southern border and the number of migrant children coming into the country on pace to set a record, lawmakers are rushing to address at least part of the immigration problem with legislation. In a near party-line vote, the House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday that would give legal status to around two million ""Dreamers"" brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The bill also extends to hundreds of thousands of people let into the country for humanitarian reasons. In another measure, the House also voted to give similar protections to one million farmworkers in the U.S. illegally. While there is some bipartisan support for both bills, they face an uphill battle in the Senate. For more than a decade, both sides of Capitol Hill have supported protection for the Dreamers. It's the disagreement over other immigration issues, however, that may once again block their pathway to citizenship. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who for years has joined Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) in sponsoring the Dream Act, now seems hesitant to move it across the finish line. ""Biden has lost control of the U.S.-Mexican border. Until he regains control and implements policies that work, it's going to be very hard to do the Dreamers or anybody else,"" said Graham at a press conference this week. ""Legalizing anybody under these circumstances will lead to even more immigration."" This week Graham joined Republican Congresswoman Maria Salazar in introducing the Dignity Act, which combines border security and legal protections for undocumented immigrants. Thank you all of my colleagues who joined me today in demanding #DIGNITY! We must secure our border and provide practical, common-sense solutions for our immigrant community. pic.twitter.com/8k9xVrAwRp — Rep. María Elvira Salazar (@RepMariaSalazar) March 17, 2021 ""I am offering dignity,"" Salazar told ABC News. ""What I'm offering is the art of the possible. What I'm offering is to bring those people out of the shadows, the ones with TPS, everyone who's been here for more than 5 years and does not have a criminal record. You bring them out of the shadows and you give them dignity so they can continue to working and raising their American children and paying American taxes. If they want to become Americans, after 10 years they can do so."" Thursday, House Democrats argued especially in the pandemic, Dreamers and farmers need protection now. ""Dreamers are doctors, nurses, lab technicians, contract tracers, and job creators,"" said Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA). ""Farmworkers are getting infected and dying from COVID-19 at a much higher rate than the general public. They are literally dying to feed you."" Both bills passed the House Thursday with bipartisan support, but as the situation escalates at the border, it's unclear if they'll get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate and be signed into law. This photo was taken 6 days ago on private land at the border. This is what a crisis looks like. pic.twitter.com/rO7bHiresL — Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) March 19, 2021 The White House has labeled the border surge as a ""challenge"" and is steadfastly refusing to call it a crisis, but in what seems to be a slip-up, Press Secretary Jen Psaki used that exact word Thursday. ""There have been expectations set outside of, unrelated to, any vaccine doses or requests for them, that they would be partners in dealing with the crisis on the border and there have been requests, unrelated, that they, for doses of these vaccines,"" said Psaki. For years Congress has been unable to come up with a solution for illegal immigration and with Democrats and Republicans standing by their positions, it doesn't appear they'll be able to this time around either. ***As certain voices are censored and free speech platforms shut down, be sure to sign up for CBN News emails and the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.***",-0.49059310945495443 "Senate Democrats say all options are on the table to pass President Biden's agenda, including removing the 200-year-old practice of legislative filibusters in the U.S. Senate. Even with Democrats controlling the House, Senate, and White House, as long as 60 votes are needed to end a filibuster in the Senate, there's only so much they'll be able to pass without bipartisan support from Republicans. As more Democrats express support for invoking the ""nuclear option,"" or removing the filibuster, Republicans are predicting dire consequences if Democrats permanently change the rules of the Senate to allow legislation to pass with a simple majority. It's Down to Just 2 Senate Democrats ""I am very concerned because basically the future of our country depends on two Democrats right now not overturning the filibuster,"" Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told CBN News. Those two senators are Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). ""If they both decide to overturn the filibuster, Katy bar the door, I mean, when they talk about transforming the country they'll be able to,"" Paul continued. Sen. Paul says he didn't support former President Donald Trump's calls to remove the filibuster when the GOP held the Senate majority and he certainly doesn't support it now. ""If we lose the filibuster, we're in for a world of hurt,"" he warned. Manchin Toys With Changing the Filibuster On Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) confirmed on Meet the Press he's not ready to fully remove it, but he's interested in changing it. ""Can you imagine not having to sit down, there's no reason to sit down with your colleagues on both sides and have their input?"" asked Manchin. ""The Senate is the most unique body of government, governing body in the world – it's deliberate."" Manchin did signal he's open to bringing back the talking filibuster, but not removing it completely. ""If you want to make it a little more painful, make them stand there and talk, I'm willing to look at any way we can, but I'm not willing to take away the involvement of the minority,"" continued Manchin. Durbin's Double Standard Exposed The number two Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin (D-IL), argues Republicans abuse the filibuster and he wants to end it. ""When Senator McConnell and others come to the floor and plead for us to hang on to the traditions of the Senate, I would tell you that their interpretation of the traditions is strangling this body,"" Durbin argued on the floor. But during Donald Trump's presidency, Durbin argued this to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos when he asked his thoughts on Republicans invoking the nuclear option. ""Well I can tell you that'd be the end of the Senate as it was originally devised and created going back to our founding fathers,"" answered Durbin. ***As certain voices are censored and free speech platforms shut down, be sure to sign up for CBN News emails and the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.*** President Biden suggested this week the Senate should go back to the talking filibuster. ""I don't think you have to eliminate the filibuster,"" Biden told ABC News. ""You have to do with it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate - and that is that a filibuster - you had to stand up and command the floor. Once you stopped talking, you lost that, and someone could move in and say, 'I move the question of.' So you gotta work for the filibuster."" McConnell's Dire Warning Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warns killing the filibuster would break the Senate. ""Even though the American people sent a 50/50 Senate and a narrowly divided House, I don't think they were sending a mandate to completely transform the country in every way liberals want to do that,"" McConnell told Fox News' Harris Faulkner. McConnell vows if it goes away, Republicans will use every rule and option at their disposal to stall legislation. ""They're prepared to steamroll the Senate into a majoritarian body just like the House because it inconveniently gets in the way of all they want to do to run up the debt, to raise taxes, and you've seen the disaster at the border,"" McConnell continued. Under current rules, Senate Democrats don't have the votes to pass the House-approved Equality Act or the For the People voting reform bill. If the filibuster goes away, those bills and more could become law.",2.140530540714763 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",-1.3070852215210549 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",0.5377051114871654 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",-0.3129833361460322 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",1.7616579650915987 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",-0.35913447589867037 "It’s important to know the truth about Islam and be able to speak confidently regarding the issues of our day. Find out what Arabic scholars reveal in their research through the authentic texts of Islam. You can download a booklet here, or to have one mailed to you, please call 1-800-759-0700. Islam: Religion of Peace or War? is available to all registered CBN Online Community members. Log-in or Sign Up to Download this Free Resource CBN Online Community membership is free, and you will enjoy the benefits of: Important information Excellent resources Special offers that will improve your life and the lives of those you love Sign Up Now to Join the Community and get this Free Resource!",0.06196957898028219 "For more than five decades, Marie Ortiz has been a guardian for the underserved in her native city of New Orleans as a respected civil rights and community activist, saying, “I’ve given my all! Being honest. I really did serve New Orleans well.” The 81-year-old still confronts injustice with conviction. Marie believes, “That’s what’s going to change everything--Love and forgiveness is a moral excellence! And if we get that in us to love and stop hating, we’re going to be a better people and God will bless us marvelously!” Those same distinct principles that would serve Marie for a lifetime shaped her during childhood. She recalls, “Love and forgiveness! I watched my family do that when I was a little girl. It was instilled in me in that loving home that I was raised in. They fed the hungry. They housed people! I was brought up with that. It’s still with me and I’ll never give it up!” Marie walked, prayed and marched with many renowned leaders of the Civil Rights movement. A few joining her family as her greatest influences, saying, “First of all, my mother and Coretta King! They believed things the way I did about the character, the personality and the love for mankind.” The local civil rights icon and pastor remains hopeful and available to further social justice. Marie says, “I’m so encouraged! Even though you see protesters and all that going on--black and whites just coming together in love. People loving one another more than I ever seen when I was a child. “Walk in faith because without faith it is impossible to please God!” Marie’s faith and activism brought her unique opportunities. In 1988, Marie met Pat Robertson, an aspiring presidential candidate, when their political contacts intersected in New Orleans. She remembers, “John Rondino was over Pat’s election and he called me up, knowing I was very popular in the city and asked me if I be the woman coordinator? I was elated because Pat was a Christian and he was speaking God stuff. They asked me to greet Pat and escort him into the luncheon they were having. And all of the other candidates were there. Pat Robertson, a presidential candidate. I said, ‘Pat Robinson is with God.’ I said, ‘He’s already a winner, he’s with Jesus. He’s just getting the message out.' I got my button!” It got Marie even more! Introduced to CBN, she identified with their mission and message! Marie says, “Oh, I love The 700 Club! They take care of the poor. They do mission work. CBN is one of my homes! That’s my home--that’s a part of me!"" She partners with CBN, extending her life’s work in reaching the needs of others, saying, “Why not support something like that? Doing wonderful work! And they love Jesus! Helping people building houses and all that! Makes me feel good because when I see it on the TV, I say, ‘I’ve got my little dollar in there! It just blesses me!’”",-0.8869402109630038 "Ismail and Irma could hardly wait for the arrival of their baby daughter. They had lost three children in the past from miscarriages and premature births. But on the day she delivered baby Khofifah, she wasn’t ready for the words she heard from the midwife. “She said ‘Please stay calm,’” Irma told CBN. “‘Your child can be fixed. She just needs an operation.’” Baby Khofifah was born with a cleft lip. No one in their community in Indonesia had ever seen anything like it before. “I couldn’t stop shaking when I saw my baby’s lip for the first time,” said Ismail. “I was shocked. I felt so sorry for her.” Their fears grew worse when Khofifah stopped gaining weight. “Because of Khofifah’s cleft lip, she kept choking on the milk,” said Irma. “She could drink only a little. I love her so much! She’s the baby we had been waiting for! We would do anything to get her an operation.” But Ismail earns only five-dollars a day making sandals. That’s just enough to buy food and pay a few monthly bills. “My wife and I often talk about our baby’s future,” said Ismail. “What would it be like? I couldn’t stand the thought that, when she grew up, people would make fun of her.” Then one day, the couple got a call from the midwife. “She said that we could get Khofifah an operation,” said Ismail. I told her that I didn’t have any money to pay for it. But he said, ‘No, it’s free! CBN would take care of everything.’ I was so happy!” CBN arranged for Khofifah to receive free cleft lip surgery at a city hospital three hours from their home. The operation was a success and a month later, we went to visit the family. “Every day when I come home from work,” said Ismail happily, “it refreshes me to see Khofifah’s smile!” “My daughter looks beautiful!” said Irma. “It’s like a dream come true. We can never repay you for helping her. Thank you very much, CBN!” CBN partners are making a difference in the lives of hurting people throughout the world. If you are not a partner, please join today. Your gifts make it possible to provide a tangible future to those in desperate need, bring medical services to the sick, help feed and clothe children here at home and overseas, and broadcast a message of hope around the world. Become a CBN partner today!",-0.13576168293083382 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",1.2757779314826398 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",-1.0305139813227886 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",0.7307711935447756 "The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages. If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.",-1.7733133119131723 """Fasting and prayer? Didn't those go out of style decades ago?"" The woman who said this to me was a godly woman, a woman who had been in the church all her life, and a woman intent on obeying the Lord. She knew her Bible. She was very serious in her questions. Yet for some reason, she had concluded -- at least subconsciously -- that fasting and prayer were no longer intended for believers in today's world. The truth is, fasting and prayer are for today! In fact, now more than ever! The combination of fasting and praying is not a fad or a novelty approach to spiritual discipline. Fasting and praying are not part of a human-engineered method or plan. They are not the means to manipulate a situation or to create a circumstance. Fasting and praying are Bible-based disciplines that are appropriate for all believers of all ages throughout all centuries in all parts of the world. Through the years, I have learned that many people in the church have never been taught about fasting and prayer, and many have therefore never fasted and prayed. As a result, they don't know why fasting and praying are important, what the Bible teaches about fasting, or how to fast. To many, fasting sounds like drudgery -- or a form of religious works. To others, fasting sounds extremely difficult. People tend to stand in awe at reports of those who have fasted for several weeks. When I hear about such fasts, I no doubt think what they think: If I fasted that long, I'd die! I couldn't possibly do that! Let me assure you at the outset of this book that I am not advocating prolonged periods of fasting for every believer. A fast can be as short as one meal. Neither do I advocate fasting and praying for the mere sake of saying with self-righteousness, ""I have fasted and prayed about this."" I do not advocate fasting so that the hungry in a foreign nation might have the food you would have eaten that day -- which is highly unlikely. I do not advocate fasting apart from prayer. KEY REASONS TO FAST AND PRAY I do, however, encourage every believer to fast and pray for two very important reasons: 1. The Scriptures Teach Us to Fast and Pray The Bible has a great deal to say about both fasting and praying, including commands to fast and pray. The Bible also gives us examples of people who fasted and prayed, using different types of fasts for different reasons, all of which are very positive results. Jesus fasted and prayed. Jesus' disciples fasted and prayed after the Resurrection. Many of the Old Testament heroes and heroines of the faith fasted and prayed. The followers of John the Baptist fasted and prayed.Many people in the early church fasted and prayed. What the Scriptures have taught us directly and by the examples of the saints is surely something we are to do. 2. Fasting and Prayer Put You into the Best Possible Position for a Breakthrough That breakthrough might be in the realm of the spirit. It may be in the realm of your emotions or personal habits. It may be in the realm of a very practical area of life, such as a relationship or finances. What I have seen repeatedly through the years-not only in the Scriptures but in countless personal stories that others have told me -- is that periods of fasting and prayer produce great spiritual results, many of which fall into the realm of a breakthrough. What wasn't a reality . . . suddenly was. What hadn't worked . . . suddenly did. The unwanted situation or object that was there . . . suddenly wasn't there. The relationship that was unloving . . . suddenly was loving. The job that hadn't materialized . . . suddenly did. The very simple and direct conclusions I draw are these: First, if the Bible teaches us to do something, I want to do it. I want to obey the Lord in every way that He commands me to obey Him. And second, if fasting and praying are means to a breakthrough that God has for me, I want to undertake those disciplines so I might experience that breakthrough! Every person I know needs a breakthrough in some area of his or her life. I am no exception. I need breakthroughs all the time -- it may be a breakthrough in understanding a situation, a breakthrough answer to a problem, a breakthrough idea, a breakthrough insight, a breakthrough in financial or material provision, a breakthrough in health. If you have any need in your life, you need a breakthrough from God to meet that need! Fasting and prayer break the yoke of bondage and bring about a release of God's presence, power, and provision. I certainly have seen this borne out in the course of my ministry. When I was forty-two years old, I went to an Assemblies of God camp in Alexandria,Minnesota, to speak for a women's retreat. The first two days of the retreat went very well, and then I had one day in between the first retreat and the second -- so many women had registered, the camp could not host all of the women at the same time. I took that day in this lovely place in Minnesota to enjoy the lakes and trees -- it was a gorgeous environment -- and to fast and pray about God's will for my life. I felt as if I was doing a lot of good things, but I also thought I might miss God's best for me. I longed to hear from God and to receive a revelation from Him about my life. In that day of fasting and prayer, God spoke to me words from Isaiah 11:9: ""I have called you to cover the earth with the Word."" Through the years, the Lord has confirmed that word to me a number of times, but this was my initial call to take the message of God's Word to the whole earth, and it came as the result of one day of prayer and fasting. The breakthrough that you may need in your life is a sense of God's direction -- not only for today and tomorrow, but for the broad scope of your life. If you long to know God's purpose for you on this earth, I strongly encourage you to seek God in prayer and fasting. THE PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL FASTING There are two main overriding principles related to prayer and fasting in the Bible. First, biblical fasting is going without food. The noun translated ""fast"" or ""a fasting"" is tsom in the Hebrew and nesteia in the Greek language. It means the voluntary abstinence from food. The literal Hebrew translation would be ""not to eat."" The literal Greek means ""no food."" I know people who say they go without television or movies, and they call these ""fasting"" times. I'm not opposed to that definition of fasting-fasting does imply that we are giving up one thing in order to replace it with something else, and in the Bible sense, specifically to replace it with prayer. But in the main, I believe fasting has to do with our abstaining from food. Second, biblical fasting is linked with serious seasons of prayer. The more seriously we approach prayer and fasting, the more serious the results we will experience. I sometimes hear people say, ""I'm giving up chocolate"" and they regard this as a type of fasting. I think this is a rather frivolous approach. The first and foremost purpose of a biblical or spiritual fast is to get a breakthrough on a particular matter that one lifts up to the Lord in prayer. A spiritual fast involves our hearts and the way in which we relate to and trust God. It relates to discerning and receiving strength to follow through on what God might reveal to us about circumstances in our lives or a direction we are to take. I am not against people fasting in order to lose weight. Many people fast to lose weight or maintain their weight.What I am opposed to is making the losing of weight your primary goal in a season of spiritual fasting and prayer. To have weight loss as a goal makes your fasting a diet plan, not a time of genuine fasting and prayer. If losing weight is your purpose in fasting, you will be missing out on the full reason for fasting, and you likely will be concerned only with what you don't eat rather than with what you are led to pray. Now there's certainly an issue of food that is associated with many seasons of prayer and fasting, and let me quickly add this: control of eating is a valid reason to fast. The purpose is not the number of pounds you might lose during a fast, but rather, trusting God to help you regain mastery over food during a fast. Jesus said, ""The spirit is . . . willing, but the flesh is weak"" (Matt. 26:41). Fasting is a means of bringing the flesh into submission to the Lord so He can strengthen us in our mastery over our own selves. Fasting in the flesh makes us stronger to stand against the temptations of the flesh. Those temptations very often deal with food. Abstaining from food is often God's way of showing that His desire for us is that we regain mastery over all things associated with our flesh in order to subdue our flesh and elevate our emphasis on spiritual matters. God's promise is to help us as we overcome the flesh and put all carnal temptations into subjection. ABSTAINING FROM FOOD TO REGAIN MASTERY OF THE FLESH We are wise to recognize that food was the enticement the devil used to cause Eve and Adam to sin in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 2 the Lord God told Adam and Eve that they could eat freely of every tree in the garden of Eden, ""but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"" (Gen. 2:17). God did not tell Adam and Eve to refrain from touching a particular animal or smelling a particular flower or swimming in a certain stream. He told them to refrain from taking a particular fruit into their bodies-one type of fruit out of all the many types He had made available to them. God had given Adam and Eve authority over all things that He had created-every bird, fish, beast of the field, and over ""every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat"" (Gen. 1:29). God did not prohibit Adam and Eve from interacting with any part of God's creation when He commanded them to be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it-except for this one tree and its fruit. They were not to eat of a particular tree,what God described to them as the ""tree of the knowledge of good and evil."" Why did God set apart this one tree and its fruit? God was giving Adam and Eve free will and the ability to make choices and decisions. Free will isn't really free if a person has no choice. Adam and Eve had a choice to make about this one tree. God told them to abstain from eating from its fruit because He did not want His beloved creation to have a knowledge of evil. He had already given them a full knowledge of everything He called ""good.""He wanted to spare them the heartache of knowing evil. That's true for us today as Christians. God calls us to pursue only what is good. Paul wrote to the Philippians: ""Whatsoever things are true . . . honest . . . just . . . pure . . . lovely . . . of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things"" (Phil. 4:8). God desires only good for His children. He tells us in His Word, ""Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good"" (Rom. 12:21). Even as God calls us away from evil and toward good,He gives us a choice. So many of the problems we have in our world today are the result of men and women making the wrong choices. They have knowingly and unknowingly chosen what is evil.And the end result is the same for us as it was for Adam and Eve: death and all forms of sin that lead to death (see Rom. 6:23). Let me point out to you two results from the disastrous choice that Adam and Eve made about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 1. Diverted Attention First, Eve listened to what the devil had to say to her about the fruit itself. The devil diverted her attention from whatever it was that Eve was doing. He called her attention to the tree and its fruit. The Bible tells us the devil came to her in the guise of a beautiful and subtle serpent and said to her, ""Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"" (Gen. 3:1). There's no indication that Eve had given much thought to the tree before the devil asked her this question. There's no record that she longed for it or had any curiosity about it. She certainly didn't crave it, because she had never tasted it! In many ways, the devil uses this same tactic today. He calls our attention to how beautiful and refreshing certain foods and beverages appear. It's difficult to go through a day without seeing enticing food and beverage commercials on billboards, on television, and in magazines. Foods are presented in the most tempting ways in stores, restaurants, and on menus. The devil says the same thing to us he said to Eve:""Has God really said you can't have a bite of this?"" A woman once said to me, ""If there's a piece of pie in my house, it calls out to me. It says to me, even in the middle of night, 'Eat me. Come eat me.' I can't resist."" Now I'm certainly not linking the devil to a piece of pie, but I am saying this: the devil will always call your attention repeatedly to the thing that is harmful for you, but he will do it in a way that makes you feel deprived if you don't indulge in eating, drinking, or partaking of what is harmful. The implication of the devil is always: ""This is so good. Has God really said you can't have any of this good thing?"" Never forget that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the knowledge of good and evil. There was an element of good in that fruit, not just evil. The devil told Eve specifically that the fruit of the tree was ""good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes"" (Gen. 3:6). All Eve had to do was look to see that the fruit was pleasant. She made a bad assumption, however, that what was visually pleasant would also be ""good for food."" In that, the devil was very wrong! What about us? There's an element of good in foods and substances that are ultimately bad for us, even if it's just the good appearance, smell, or taste. Have you ever noticed how beautiful all the colored and distinctly shaped bottles look in a bar? Those bottles always seem lighted in just the right way to make them look very special, very festive, very appealing. Many foods are pleasant to the eyes. Many drinks are presented in ways that make them appear pleasing. We buy into the lie that what is pleasing is also nutritious and beneficial. Fasting calls us to turn away from food. Fasting calls us to redivert our attention back to the things of God and His commandments. Fasting calls us to face and overcome the devil's call: ""Has God really said you can't have this?"" Fasting calls us to abstain from all things harmful for us, and in most cases, from all food for a period of time. The devil's insistent question is likely to become very loud in our minds as we begin a fast: ""Has God really said you can't eat? Not anything? Not the things you love the most? Has God really called you to fast- to abstain totally from this thing that you have labeled as 'good'?"" Our answer must be a firm ""Yes! God has called me to fast. He has called me to give my full attention to Him and to His commandments. He has called me to obey Him fully in all things. And God has called me to say no to you, devil!"" 2. Temptations Toward False Benefits Eve listened to what the devil had to say to her about the benefits of eating what God had prohibited. The devil always points out the would-be and usually short-term benefits of sin. Many substances that are ultimately harmful for us taste good or feel good or bring pleasure. In some cases, the partaking of the substance makes us feel like adults, feel accepted by others, or feel more powerful and in greater control. Some people say about certain foods and substances that they ""give me quick energy,"" ""make me more alert,"" or ""help me relax."" The devil told Eve that the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make her wise-she would be as a ""god,"" knowing good and evil. In the short term, the devil was right. Eve suddenly had a knowledge of evil. She really knew in her own experience as a human being that evil existed. This was the first time in her life she had ever known the contrast-up to that point, all things had been good. What the devil failed to mention to Eve was the ultimate consequence that God had associated with eating of this fruit: ""You shall surely die."" The devil failed to mention any downside to her disobedience. In fact, he dismissed God's consequences with a sarcastic question. The devil comes at us the same way. The devil never tells us that drinking alcohol can make a person an alcoholic. He never tells a person that smoking cigarettes can cause him or her to have lung cancer. He never tells a person that eating too much of the wrong foods can lead to chronic illness and premature death. The devil points out only short-term benefits, never long-term disasters. When we fast, we are suddenly aware once again of what is good and evil. We have a heightened awareness not only of God's goodness and of God's commandments, but of the evil that abounds in the world around us. A man once said to me about fasting, ""It seems that when I fast the world seems much more black and white, at least for a period of time. I see right and wrong much more clearly. I see good and bad, blessings and cursings, benefits and negative consequences, what is godly and what is ungodly. I am much more discerning about what lines up with God's commandments and what falls into the category of 'man's commands.'"" I asked him what happened after he stopped fasting. He laughed and said, ""I am still very clear on these things, but there's also a time after I end fasting that the whole world seems more vivid and more colorful than ever before. I can distinguish tastes again. The sky seems bluer than before. The air seems crisper in the mountains. All of my senses seem to be heightened toward what is God's creation, which is always good, and what is man's invention, which very often has an element of evil to it."" Those who fast often experience greater discernment of good and evil. In fact, it seems to be a major by-product of fasting. God seems to give us an opportunity as we fast to take a look again at our lives and the world around us and to discern what is good and what is evil. Excerpted from The Power of Prayer and Fasting by Marilyn Hickey. Copyright © by Marilyn Hickey. Used by permission of Warner Faith, a division of Time Warner Book Group. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.",0.7680152172960677 "Seattle Seahawks quarterback Alex McGough has reportedly been accused of attacking a man at a bar. According to TMZ, the NFL backup quarterback was accused of punching a man on Saint Patrick’s Day at Green Parrot Pub in Tampa, FL. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football) Seattle Seahawks Backup QB Alex McGough Accused Of Bar Attack, Cops Investigating https://t.co/DqVl3ekMPo — TMZ (@TMZ) March 20, 2021 According to alleged victim Anthony Albino, McGough thought he had hit on his girlfriend and that’s when things went off of the rails and things turned violent. In a video shared by TMZ, Albino looks bloody and clearly hurt. TMZ reported that the police are currently investigating the situation. As I always say, McGough has every right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. That’s the system we have here in America, and we should all be grateful for it. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alex McGough (@alexmcgough12) At the same time, if he’s found guilty of punching a man at a bar, then he’s an idiot beyond words. As a wise man once told me, before you jump of a ledge to do something stupid, think about what you have to lose. McGough is an NFL quarterback. He might not be a guy who sees the field, but he’s still cashing NFL paychecks. You know what you do when you have NFL money on the line and things start going sideways? You leave. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alex McGough (@alexmcgough12) We’ll see what the police determine, but this situation looks like McGough might have some questions to answer.",0.7479049509210167 "The U.S. Defense Department (DOD) has spent a good part of March attacking Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson for criticizing them for focusing too heavily on diversity. Comparing U.S. military ads to China’s proves his point. The Pentagon went after Carlson after he mocked President Joe Biden for touting “maternity flight suits” and other efforts to make the military appear more inclusive as the chief priority of the DOD. Carlson’s criticism appears substantiated if you look at the way the U.S. military advertises itself and compare it to the Chinese military’s ads. China’s ads are chiefly about communicating power and seem completely unconcerned with the race or gender of the people in them. U.S. military ads sound like corporate ads, emphasizing pay benefits, “grievances” and more. One of China’s latest ads looks like something out of Call of Duty, slapping footage of gunfights, missiles and tanks together with a rap soundtrack. The ad shows soldiers blasting terrorists holding hostages, going so far as to show one terrorist get shot in the head. China’s message is clear: Being a soldier is cool, and our only goal is victory. Compare that to this one from the U.S. Army, titled “U.S. Army Supports Diversity Awareness,” in which actual war seems to take a back seat. Here the Army says its goal is to “create an environment in which people feel comfortable expressing their grievances,” because the “Army is a reflection of American society.” Other ads show soldiers high-fiving little girls wearing hijabs as music swells in the background. Big text then flashes on the screen: “We make battle plans and create breakthroughs.” The military’s concern about diversity goes well beyond its advertisements as well. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has prioritized educating servicemembers about racism in an attempt to root out “extremists” from the ranks. (RELATED: The Military’s Top Directive For March 17: With Every Decision You Make, Consider Its Effect On LGBTQ People) Pentagon press secretary and former CNN commentator John Kirby has echoed Austin and Biden on prioritizing diversity. “I want to be very clear right up front, that the diversity of our military is one of our greatest strengths,” Kirby said during a March 11 press briefing. “I’ve seen it for myself in long months at sea and in the combat waged by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve seen it up on Capitol Hill just this past month. And I see it every day here right at the Pentagon.” China’s other recruitment ads depict enlisting as a sacrifice made proudly and simply for love of the People’s Republic of China. Comparable U.S. military recruitment ads give the impression that it’s a college with guns. China’s ads are about sacrifice. U.S. ads are often about what the military can do for you. The one below offers a $40,000 signing bonus for “highly qualified candidates.” (RELATED: Defense Secretary: Pentagon Will Review Diversity In Military) Carlson’s fundamental argument — that the U.S. military has allowed scrupulous public relations efforts to overtake its basic mission of winning wars — seems borne up through recent public communications. When the Washington Redskins got into hot water in 2019 for claims their name was racially insensitive, for instance, the DOD promptly published an explainer on why its helicopters all have Native American names. Then, when Carlson suggested the U.S. military should be more focused on fighting, DOD brass dogpiled him.",-0.30109767568254453 "Pat Forde is the proud owner of one of the stupidest tweets ever sent. Illinois, West Virginia and Texas Tech all failed to advance out of the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament, and the Sports Illustrated writer thought it was a good time to take a shot about them not wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Loyola Men’s Basketball (@ramblersmbb) Forde tweeted Sunday night, “Not saying this is a causal relationship, but: the three coaches who seemed the least interested in wearing their masks this season were Brad Underwood, Bob Huggins and Chris Beard. Gone, gone, gone.” Not saying this is a causal relationship, but: the three coaches who seemed the least interested in wearing their masks this season were Brad Underwood, Bob Huggins and Chris Beard. Gone, gone, gone. — Pat Forde (@ByPatForde) March 22, 2021 How the hell is it possible to be this insufferable? It’s almost beyond parody. Does Forde, who spent the football season painting doom and gloom, honestly believe there’s any connection here? Last time I checked, wearing a mask has zero impact on whether or not your players are draining shots and playing great defense. This tweet is so far from reality that it’s almost hard to believe that it’s even real. The rest of us are out here enjoying the games with a few light beers and Pat Forde is trying to dunk on eliminated coaches for apparently not wearing their masks to his satisfaction. This is a circus and Forde is the main clown. Put the phone down, Pat. The entire internet will thank you.",1.7984180395937672 "An insane video showing a volcano exploding in Iceland is making the rounds on Twitter. In a video tweeted early Monday morning by @baronvonclutch (filmed by Bjorn Steinbekk), Mount Fagradalsfjall in Iceland could be seen erupting, and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. The process started late Friday and carried into the weekend, according to the BCC. (SLIDESHOW: These Women On Instagram Hate Wearing Clothes) Watch the insane video below. It’s going to likely be the wildest thing you see all day. (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything) That’s without a doubt one of the coolest videos that I’ve ever seen in my life. Look at all that lava! It’s also not just the lava. (SLIDESHOW: 71 Times Samantha Hoopes Stripped Down) It’s the sheer amount of it and the force it’s coming out with. It resembled something right out of “Dante’s Peak.” (SLIDESHOW: This Blonde Bombshell Might Be The Hottest Model On The Internet) Also, the BBC reported that people were making the journey in Iceland to watch the volcano explode. I’ve done a lot of things in life. (SLIDESHOW: 60 Times Abigail Ratchford Wore Almost Nothing) One thing you’ll never have to worry about me doing is making the hike to get anywhere near an exploding volcano. That will never happen. I’ll stick to enjoying the videos from a very safe distance!",1.6550373682929531 "Amazon delivery vans are being equipped with new AI-powered surveillance cameras to track drivers’ every move, and some are unwilling to go along with the company’s latest initiative. The new four-lens cameras will analyze the driver’s face and body to detect behavior like yawning, checking a cellphone or not wearing a seatbelt, according to Reuters. The new cameras, and the policies that come with them, have drawn the scrutiny of five Democratic senators due to privacy and pressure concerns. Drivers are required to sign a consent agreement by March 23, allowing Amazon to film them at work once cameras are installed in all the company’s vans. The agreement gives Amazon the right to share the footage with “third-party service providers” and “Amazon group affiliates,” according to Reuters. The cameras are only the latest surveillance tool used by Amazon to keep a close eye on its labor. The company’s “Mentor” app monitors driving, phone use and location of delivery workers. Amazon Flex requires drivers to post a selfie before starting their shift, in addition to clocking into work. The new cameras are a bridge too far for some employees. One driver in the Denver area chose to quit rather than sign Amazon’s consent agreement, according to Reuters. (RELATED: Popular Security Camera Company Gave ’20-Year-Old Interns’ A ‘Super Admin’ Privilege To Look In On Americans) The driver, a man named “Vic” who decided instead to get a job with a different delivery company, described being fed up with the surveillance to Reuters: “I wanted to show up and do my job — not to be watched all the time — and that was not an option.” The Mentor app would often dock his performance for “checking his phone” if he drove over a speed bump causing his phone to rattle, he said. The surveillance cameras, which he occasionally had to drive with as they were installed in more and more vans, started recording him every time he yawned or touched his phone and shared the footage with his dispatcher. “We are all out there to do a job. And if they don’t trust us to do the job — if they feel like they need to be watching us 24-7, why did they hire us? Why are we on the payroll?” Vic told Reuters. This is putting Amazon delivery drivers who are concerned about their privacy in an agonizing position. On one Reddit thread, drivers debate whether they could access unemployment benefits if they were fired for refusing to accept the new layer of surveillance. pic.twitter.com/p8RVs2fZyP — Avi Asher-Schapiro (@AASchapiro) March 19, 2021 Vic chose to hand in his two weeks’ notice rather than agree to the camera policy, and other drivers are reportedly unhappy with the situation. Some have complained that Amazon may sell the information gathered to other companies or the government, while others say the standards being enforced are too strict. Amazon told Reuters that the measures were a safety protocol. “[The company] recently started rolling out industry leading camera-based safety technology across our delivery fleet. This technology will provide drivers real-time alerts to help them stay safe when they are on the road,” the spokeswoman told the outlet. The senators who wrote to Amazon expressed concern that drivers couldn’t opt out of the new program even if they have stellar safety records. Vic told Reuters he agreed. “It was both a privacy violation, and a breach of trust, and I was not going to stand for it.”",-0.285606314314996 "Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim dropped a hell of a quote Sunday night after beating West Virginia. The Orange upset the Mountaineers in the Round of 32 75-72 in the NCAA Tournament, despite the fact a lot of people viewed West Virginia as a great team to make the Elite 8. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Syracuse Men’s Basketball (@cuse_mbb) According to Adam Rittenberg, Boeheim was asked about the criticism he’s faced over recent years, and he said, “I don’t hear it because it’s from people that are inconsequential. … They don’t matter. Not one sentence on the internet matters. Not one.” #Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, asked about criticism in recent year’s despite postseason success: “I don’t hear it because it’s from people that are inconsequential. … They don’t matter. Not one sentence on the internet matters. Not one.” — Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) March 22, 2021 Shots fired by Boeheim? It damn sure feels that way! I don’t even know Boeheim and I’m sitting here feeling attacked. Not one word? Not a single word on the internet matters? Really? I don’t want to call up the fact checkers, but that just doesn’t seem true. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Syracuse Men’s Basketball (@cuse_mbb) The fact he said that quote makes me think he loves reading his criticism. Clearly, it bothers him. If it didn’t, then he wouldn’t come off as so bitter. He could have just said that criticism doesn’t matter, which is 100% true. Instead, he said not a single word matters and it’s all written by “people that are inconsequential.” Do we think he holds a grudge or what? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Syracuse Men’s Basketball (@cuse_mbb) Grab a beer and relax, Boeheim. You’re headed to the Sweet 16. Life is good. There’s no need to be over the top like this.",0.49233806697557525 "Colorado has announced plans to lift its statewide mask mandate once the current mandate expires April 4 and ease its coronavirus protocols. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ administration released its plan Friday to begin dialing back COVID-19 restrictions that have been in place for the past year. Polis’ proposal would grant local governments and “private entities” in the counties with the lowest COVID-19 infection rates the authority to determine whether or not masks must be worn. It would also end many restrictions on outdoor events and update the requirements for a county to be considered the lowest level of risk. A county in Colorado must have no more than 15 cases per 100,000 people in order to be considered “Level Green.” The new guidelines would update that by allowing a rate of 35 cases per 100,000, making it easier for those counties to pull their mask requirements. The proposed changes would not affect schools. Students aged 11-18 will be required to wear masks indoors for the remainder of the year, regardless of their county’s color tier. Polis’ proposal appears to go against President Joe Biden’s message of extreme caution pertaining to COVID-19. Biden recently called removing safety measures like mask orders a “big mistake” and “Neanderthal thinking,” following Republicans Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves’ decisions to lift statewide mandates. Despite being vaccinated, Biden is regularly seen wearing a mask both indoors and outdoors. (RELATED: ‘Neanderthal Thinking’: Biden, White House Bash State Governors For Ending Mask Mandates) Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky said in early March that “now is not the time” to ease restrictions, but the Polis administration stated that circumstances are changing due to increased vaccine distribution. Colorado’s goal is “to slow the disease while attempting to limit the ramifications of closing down parts of the state and the impacts that come with that,” state public health director Jill Ryan said in a statement released Friday. Over 115 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S. since December, and over 41 million Americans are fully vaccinated, according to Politifact.",-0.08941754364788006 "A senior Teen Vogue staffer who wrote a letter sharing her unease about former editor-in-chief Alexi McCammond’s tweets allegedly used the N-word in tweets from over a decade ago, Fox News reported. Christine Davitt, Teen Vogue’s senior social media manager, tweeted “Ni**a I miss yo a**” and “Ni**a you owe me a nap” to her friend in 2009, according to Fox News. In 2010, she tweeted, “I love the contradictory nature of the phrase ‘white ni**a’. #bushwicklife.” The tweets in question are no longer available. McCammond, 17, was a rising reporter at Axios prior to accepting the job as editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue, according to Fox News. She was to begin her position on March 24 until staffers at Teen Vogue, including Davitt, revolted over her “past racist and homophobic tweets.” (RELATED: Teen Vogue’s Newly-Hired Top Editor Begs Her Staff For Forgiveness In Groveling Email) On March 8, Davitt posted the letter on Instagram about the decision to fire McCammond, according to Fox News. “So proud of my @teenvogue colleagues,” the caption said. “The work continues…” The Instagram post is no longer available. Hours after McCammond announced she and Conde Nast “decided to part ways,” Davitt tweeted, “[Exhales the deepest sign I’ve ever sighed],” according to Fox News. In 2011, McCammond tweeted, “Outdone by Asian. #Whatsnew.” Another tweet said, “Now googling how to not wake up with swollen, asian eyes.” She also referred to a “stupid Asian T.A.” in another tweet. Davitt has said in multiple tweets she is of Irish and Filipino descent, according to Fox News. However, the tweets are limited to public viewing.",0.1866893085840352 "Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of Texas are reportedly releasing illegal immigrants seeking asylum into the U.S. without giving them court dates, Fox News reported Sunday. Illegal immigrants claiming asylum are not given a Notice to Appear before being released from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody, multiple unnamed Border Patrol agents confirmed with Fox News. Since the migrants aren’t given a court date to attend an asylum hearing, the responsibility is on them to schedule one through Immigrations and Customs Enforcement or other legal assistance. Border Patrol agents were reportedly told to use prosecutorial discretion when determining to skip the paperwork needed to schedule a court date, according to Fox News. Biometrical data is gathered from the migrants before they’re released into the U.S. The migrants are screened at a temporary outdoor processing site and does not include unaccompanied minors, Border Patrol agents reportedly told Fox News. The situation at the border has “become so dire that BP [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately after apprehension because there is no space to hold people even to do necessary NTA paperwork,” a senior CBP official told Fox News. It can take multiple hours to issue a Notice to Appear for one migrant or a family, Fox News reported. (RELATED: Around 200 Illegal Immigrants Including Dozens Of Unaccompanied Children Apprehended At Border) Health and Human Services will reopen a facility for unaccompanied migrant minors in Pecos, Texas, Fox News reported. At least 500 minors will go to the facility, which is capable of housing up to 2,000. “While ORR has worked to build up its licensed bed capacity to almost 13,500 beds, additional capacity is urgently needed to manage both enhanced COVID-19 mitigation strategies and the increasing numbers of UC referrals from DHS,” an Office of Refugee Resettlement spokesperson said, Fox News reported. CBP agents encountered over 100,000 migrants including more than 9,000 unaccompanied minors in February, according to the agency. CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.",-0.28494756507513236 "The University of Florida has reportedly suspended three conservative student organizations for allegedly violating’s the school’s COVID-19 policies. University of Florida Dean of Students Heather White told the school’s Turning Point USA, Young Americans for Freedom, and Network of Enlightened Women chapters that they “were observed not complying with” the school’s regulations and were thus indefinitely suspended “pending resolution of the allegations,” according to Campus Reform. In a letter obtained by Campus Reform, White alleged that the Turning Point chapter had violated university policy by hosting an unsanctioned and unregistered event on “Norman Field,” an outdoor public field located on the university’s campus. White also stated that some chapter members were observed not wearing “appropriate face coverings” or maintaining “appropriate physical distance.” The suspension means that, according to the letter, the groups will lose “all privileges and access to all campus resources and services, for a period of time, including, but not limited to, the use of University space, participation in University programs, activities, events and services, and registration of gatherings and events.” (RELATED: Campus Republican Club Suspended Over 9/11 Memorial Poster) The secretary of the University of Florida Turning Point chapter, Abigail Streetman, told Campus Reform that “The event in question took place outside in a big open field with people wearing masks. Given such circumstances, the university’s decision to suspend all of the clubs seems extreme.” Streetman added that “the state of Florida does not have a mask mandate in place,” and that “there is also broad legislative protection for the first amendment and peaceably gathering, especially on public property.” The chapter president, Carter Mermer, appealed the dean’s decision to the vice president of student affairs, Kim Pace, stating that the club “explicitly said masks were required” and quoted Florida law as saying, “A person who wishes to engage in an expressive activity in outdoor areas of campus may do so freely, spontaneously, and contemporaneously.” Mermer also mentioned that not “one person from [their] event or previous events” was infected with COVID-19. Pace decided to “uphold the decision” of the dean of students, as the Turning Point chapter’s behavior threatened “the health and safety of members of the university community.” When asked by The Daily Caller if their club’s actions had endangered the campus community, Mermer and Club Treasurer Raquel Morales stated, “absolutely not.” Both commented on the fact that “most people [at the event] were wearing masks and took them off” only to eat. Mermer, who made clear that he doesn’t wish to discount those who have died from COVID-19, stated that scientific findings support the idea that the risk of infection is “minimized substantially” when events are held outdoors and reiterated the fact that they have not had a single club member get infected from a chapter event. Morales and Mermer expressed their frustration that they “haven’t been provided any evidence” by the university to corroborate the claims made against their club, and that their chapter’s suspension is seemingly based purely upon unsubstantiated allegations. Morales told the Caller that numerous other organizations including sororities regularly use the field in a similar fashion as Turning Point yet don’t face any repercussions. Mermer similarly noted that he doesn’t “know of” any other clubs that have been suspended. Morales stated that “it feels like we’re being targeted” and mentioned that “this isn’t something that just happened once,” alleging that the university often holds conservative student organizations to stricter standards than other student groups. When asked about the atmosphere on campus, Morales stated that there “definitely is an anti-conservative sentiment.” She mentioned that due to this bias, many club “members don’t want to associate with us” and are fearful of being seen participating in chapter activities. Morales also also noted this is not just an issue at the University of Florida, but “is happening across the country.” (RELATED: Student Government Activists Demand College Republicans Be Deplatformed Over ‘Stop The Steal’ Rally Attendance) Mermer told The Daily Caller that due to the university’s suspension of every major conservative organization on campus “thousands of students” are left without a place where they “can feel heard.” Morales said that she thinks that the university is violating students’ free speech rights and argued that the event, which was held at a public field, is protected under the First Amendment. She also noted that she doesn’t only want to protect the right of conservatives to peaceably assemble, but believes in “fighting for liberals” to be able to exercise their first amendment rights as well. Both Morales and Mermer emphasized that they were going to continue to attempt to work with university administrators and to “hold meetings off campus” and promote the goals of “conservatism” as best they can. Mermer expressed gratitude to those who have voiced support for his chapter, including their club sponsor Frank Orlando and U.S. Representatives Madison Cawthorn and Katherine Cammack.",1.5509375670202994 "Alyssa McGrath, a current aide in the office of Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is now the eighth woman to accuse him of sexual misconduct. McGrath told The New York Times Cuomo repeatedly asked questions about her relationship status, made sexually suggestive comments, and looked down her shirt. She is the first current aide to the governor to publicly detail allegations of misconduct. Breaking News: Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now accused of harassment by a current aide, who said he ogled her body, remarked on her looks and made suggestive comments. https://t.co/hqDJZIoX9L — The New York Times (@nytimes) March 19, 2021 In addition to describing her own experiences with the governor, McGrath corroborated the accusation of another aide who said Cuomo groped her breast without consent in his Executive Mansion. That aide’s identity has not been made public, but McGrath said the two discussed the incident after it took place. (RELATED: Accuser Lindsey Boylan Says Cuomo Joked He Would ‘Mount’ Her If He Were A Dog) McGrath said she considered the governor’s conduct to be sexual harassment, but he did not make physical sexual contact with her at any point. She described being requested to work weekends at the Executive Mansion along with the unidentified coworker and said Cuomo tried to foster a competitive relationship between the two. Cuomo took a picture with the unidentified aide on New Year’s Eve and sent it to McGrath, which she suspects was an attempt to make her jealous, according to the NYT. Another time, the governor allegedly referred to both women as “mingle mamas” for an entire day after asking them if they would be “mingling” with men on an upcoming vacation to Florida. (RELATED: Women’s Groups Fly Plane Banner Over New York State House: ‘Cuomo’s Got To Go!’) McGrath said Cuomo once commented on how beautiful she was in Italian after she told him she could not speak the language. She also described a meeting with the governor in his office, alone, in which he was “blatantly looking down my shirt.” After she noticed, Cuomo asked her about her necklace, according to the NYT. Other women have accused Cuomo of kissing them without consent, making inappropriate sexual comments and pitting female subordinates in competition with each other. Cuomo has denied all wrongdoing and has asked the public to await the results of two investigations, one by New York Attorney General Letitia James and the other by the State Assembly. Meanwhile, numerous elected officials from New York have called on Cuomo to resign. An impeachment investigation is underway, and President Joe Biden said this week Cuomo should resign if the allegations are proven true.",-0.3725339938600404 "Wisconsin parties harder than any state in America! According to a study from BestLifeOnline.com, the home of the Badgers is the hardest-partying state in the country, and 23.6% of people living there have reported drinking a bit too much. (SLIDESHOW: These Women On Instagram Hate Wearing Clothes) Below is a live look at people around Wisconsin as soon as they hear this news. (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything) North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota rounded out the top five. (SLIDESHOW: 71 Times Samantha Hoopes Stripped Down) I’m happy to announce that I’ve lived in the top state and the third ranked state when it comes to partying, and I 100% agree with the rankings. (SLIDESHOW: This Blonde Bombshell Might Be The Hottest Model On The Internet) People in Wisconsin get after it in a way that would make Johnny Manziel circa-2016 jealous. We’re raised in brutally cold winters, and we ease the pain with a shield of light beer. (SLIDESHOW: 60 Times Abigail Ratchford Wore Almost Nothing) It’s not so much a choice as it is a lifestyle. Throw in the fact that we are a huge sports state with a powerhouse program located in Madison, and it’s not hard to see why people rage. If the Badgers were playing in college, the beers were going down smooth. A lot of people want to be about that “win or lose, we booze” lifestyle, but we backed it up. March Madness is in two weeks, and it’s time to remember when Wisconsin beat Kentucky in the Final Four. When the clock hit zero, I stood on the bar, shotgunned every beer I was thrown and partied nonstop until morning. This is the last surviving video: https://t.co/MTBFakRp7X pic.twitter.com/8UyKQchCpi — David Hookstead (@dhookstead) March 5, 2021 As for Montana, I have great respect for the party atmosphere in Bozeman. It’s full of young people with cash to burn, memories to create and alcohol. Also, it’s ripe with weed if that’s your thing, but we’ll save that conversation for another time. Trust me, you won’t go thirsty if you find yourself in Montana looking for a beer. Let us know in the comments what you think of the rankings! H/T: BroBible",-1.3887961719714752 "Chris Markowski, a partner and advisor at Markowski Investments, spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Samantha Renck about the February jobs report, his thoughts on the $1.9 trillion stimulus package and more. The U.S. economy added about 379,000 jobs in February with the unemployment rate dropping from 6.3 percent to 6.2 percent. “I think we expected to see an uptick in jobs in the hospitality sector, which we’ve seen,” said Markowski, the host of the “Watchdog on Wall Street” podcast. “Over 90 percent of the new jobs created actually were waiters and bartenders in places starting to open up a little bit here and there,” he said. “I just think that people got to look things a little bit differently rather than just a jobs report,” Markowski said. “We’ve got real fundamental issues with the economy at this point in time.” Markowski also discussed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, specifically his thoughts on the targeted stimulus checks for individuals and couples making a certain amount of money. (RELATED: Rep. Ron Johnson Objects To Skipping Reading Of 600-Page COVID-19 Relief Bill In Senate) “I’m not a fan of sending these checks out in the first place at all,” he said. “What’s in this stimulus package, most people fail to understand, is it basically blows up the 1996 Welfare Reform.” “It’s almost like universal basic income for kids and they’re going to be sending checks out on a regular basis if you have kids.” WATCH: Check out more from the Daily Caller News Foundation: ‘They’re Exactly So-Called Cages’: Immigration Expert Explains What’s Happening At The Border Will Cuomo Be Impeached? Reporter Who Broke Nursing Home Story Lays Out What’s Next For NY’s Gov The DCNF Was Months Ahead Of Media On Kamala Harris’ Involvement Bailing Out Accused Criminals Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.",0.3415104597558921 "Charlotte Hornets star rookie guard LaMelo Ball is reportedly done for the season. According to Adrian Wojnarowski (who has blocked me on Twitter for some unknown reason), the talented young guard for the Hornets has a fractured right wrist in the area of his thumb, and that means his season is over. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football) Ball is getting a second opinion to confirm the initial diagnosis. Charlotte guard LaMelo Ball — rookie of the year frontrunner — is expected to miss the rest of the season with a fracture to his right wrist, source tells ESPN. He’s seeking a second opinion to confirm the diagnosis. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) March 22, 2021 Fracture is in the area of Ball’s thumb, source tells ESPN. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) March 22, 2021 This is super unfortunate for LaMelo Ball. He’s been having a hell of a rookie campaign and probably would have won Rookie of the Year if he had remained healthy. Now, his season has reportedly come to an end before the start of April. LaMelo Ball this season (rookie rank): 652 points (2nd) 240 rebounds (1st) 251 assists (1st) 65 steals (1st) pic.twitter.com/x73VDkqwPz — ESPN (@espn) March 22, 2021 Hopefully, LaMelo is able to bounce back as quickly as possible because he’s an incredibly fun and talented player to watch. As a rookie, he’s already become one of the best guards in the entire NBA. Here is the play where LaMelo Ball fractured his right wrist ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/MO1NdpAIUu — FOX Sports: Hornets (@HornetsOnFSSE) March 22, 2021 We’re all pulling for him. He’s become one of the biggest faces of the NBA, and you never want to see a guy like that go down.",0.12058797250517306 "NASCAR Xfinity drivers Daniel Hemric and Noah Gragson exchanged blows Saturday after a race in Atlanta. After a bump in the pit, all hell broke loose between the two drivers, and this is one of the best racing altercations that we’ve ever seen. (SLIDESHOW: These Women On Instagram Hate Wearing Clothes) Hemric walked up to Gragson while he was doing an interview, and it was go time! Both men ended up getting physical and it was insane! Watch the unreal chaos unfold below. (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything) PUNCHES THROWN! Daniel Hemric and Noah Gragson brawl on pit road after the Xfinity race in Atlanta. pic.twitter.com/KF8COEkMHp — FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 20, 2021 Like I said, that’s without a doubt one of the best racing fights I’ve ever seen. Racing isn’t exactly a sport where brawling is common but these two men took it to another level. (SLIDESHOW: 71 Times Samantha Hoopes Stripped Down) Also, I love how this Noah Gragson guy just gave a casual interview after the fact like nothing had happened. (SLIDESHOW: This Blonde Bombshell Might Be The Hottest Model On The Internet) Here’s what Noah Gragson had to say after the fight: pic.twitter.com/4B2rS3WDlQ — FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 20, 2021 What an epic day for racing in America. If this is what happens on a regular basis, I might have to start checking out the sport.",1.0709102068695406 "Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul shared a study Sunday that he said backs up his assertion that previously infected or vaccinated people are immune to coronavirus variants. “Sorry Dr. Fauci and other fearmongers, new study shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants,” Paul tweeted along with a link to the study. “Good news for everyone but bureaucrats and petty tyrants!” (RELATED: ‘You Parade Around In Two Masks For Show’: Sen. Rand Paul Questions Dr. Fauci On Wearing Masks After Vaccination) Sorry Dr Fauci and other fearmongers, new study shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants. Good news for everyone but bureaucrats and petty tyrants! Neutralizing Antibodies Against SARS-CoV-2 Variants https://t.co/k4SKSfxLJh — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 21, 2021 An article explaining the study, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) network, stated that the people tested were either previously infected or vaccinated and were then exposed to four variants of the novel coronavirus. “This study found neutralizing activity of infection- and vaccine-elicited antibodies against 4 SARS-CoV-2 variants, including B.1, B.1.1.7, and N501Y. Because neutralization studies measure the ability of antibodies to block virus infection, these results suggest that infection- and vaccine-induced immunity may be retained against the B.1.1.7 variant,” the study concluded. Sen. Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci engaged in a heated exchange during a Thursday Senate hearing, in which Paul accused Fauci — who has been fully vaccinated — of wearing two masks for theater. Fauci argued that those who had been previously vaccinated or infected should continue to wear masks out of concern over the rise of variants, but Paul later argued that it was a “noble lie” designed to prevent those who had not yet been vaccinated from refusing to wear masks. “He is lying to you because he doesn’t think we are smart enough to make decisions,” he told Fox News host and Daily Caller cofounder Tucker Carlson during a Friday interview.",-2.13703548880491 "HBO Max recently dropped a special sneak peak for “Godzilla vs. Kong.” The plot of the film, according to HBO Max’s YouTube description, is, “Chaos fills the world as Godzilla rains down terror, and no one understands why. The fate of humanity may be in the hands of the strongest ally we have, Kong.” (REVIEW: ‘Westworld’ Season 3 Ends With The Possible Deaths Of Multiple Characters) Judging from the sneak peak, this film is going to be full of destruction and chaos. Give it a watch below. “Godzilla vs. Kong” will be the latest major film to hit HBO Max directly when it drops March 31. Warner Bros. made the decision during the coronavirus pandemic to drop its 2021 slate to the streaming service, and that means fans can watch “Godzilla vs. Kong” from the comfort of their couch. As for the movie specifically, it looks like it’s going to be nothing other than nonstop carnage. If you’re not here for it, then I don’t know what to tell you. Why are you watching a movie about Godzilla and Kong if you’re not watching it to see stuff get destroyed by the legendary characters? You can catch “Godzilla vs. Kong” on HBO Max starting March 31. Something tells me that people will be flocking to see this one!",-0.3381799112346704 "The NFL draft will have fans and players in attendance. The league announced early Friday morning that players, fans and media members will be in Cleveland when the three-day event gets underway April 29. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football) Fans in attendance will have to wear masks and observe social distancing rules. NFL announces plans for 2021 NFL Draft in Clevelandhttps://t.co/h4bPpsSzOh pic.twitter.com/rlN4V3Y8Bi — Around The NFL (@AroundTheNFL) March 22, 2021 This is the right decision by the NFL. The league just finished an incredibly successful season, fans were in attendance at the Super Bowl and there’s no reason they can’t be at the draft. Obviously, the joint isn’t going to be packed with people, but there’s no reason why some players and fans can’t be in attendance. Believe it or not, we are returning to normal. View this post on Instagram A post shared by NFL Draft (@nfldraft) Also, Cleveland is a great city and a ton of fun. I went there for the RNC in 2016, and had an absolute blast. The city has tons of great food, fun spots and it’s full of passionate football fans. They’re going to eat up the draft. View this post on Instagram A post shared by NFL Draft (@nfldraft) Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it goes off without a hitch!",-0.8432476791963884 "A father who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he would not have done so if former President Donald Trump were still in office. During a segment of “This Week” that aired Sunday morning, Raddatz interviewed a man from Brazil who had crossed the border with his wife and children — and he told her that he made the choice not to come until President Joe Biden took office. (RELATED: Meghan McCain Unloads On Sara Haines: ‘Give The Guy A Break While Kids Are Being Held In Jail-Like Facilities?’) WATCH: “This father who asked we not show his face, traveled to Mexico from Brazil with his wife and three young kids before crossing the border,” Raddatz said by way of introduction. “Would you have tried to do this when Donald Trump was president?” “Definitely not. Definitely. We had the chance, you know, but the same violence that’s going on today was there last year,” the man replied, making it clear that it was the political situation in the United States rather than the situation in his home country that had made all the difference. “We used to watch the news, I definitely wouldn’t do this.” “Did you come here because Joe Biden was elected president?” Raddatz asked. “Basically. Basically,” the man said, adding, “The main thing was the violence in my country, and the second thing I think was Joe Biden. You know, it’s like it lightened up my hope, you know what I mean?” The Biden administration has encouraged those who want to come to the United Stated to wait until there are mechanisms in place to speed the immigration process, but those warnings appear to have little impact on those intent on crossing the border. A number of critics have argued that Biden’s sudden reversal of Trump’s border policies like “Remain in Mexico” have contributed to the unprecedented surge in ways that the administration should have expected.",0.8836712354461118 "Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appeared Friday on the Fox News’ “America Reports,” where he characterized the conditions in the state’s migrant facilities as a “humanitarian disaster.” “We’ve known this is a crisis. What I learned in just the past hour shows that we are now dealing with a humanitarian disaster,” Abbott said, according to Fox News. WATCH: Watch the latest video at foxnews.com Abbott voiced concerns regarding what can possibly qualify as “unacceptable and inhumane” conditions in two of the three federally run facilities in Texas. The one in Midland has “no proven clean running water at the location” and uses well water which may potentially be contaminated with arsenic, according to Abbott. The Biden Admin. has turned a humanitarian crisis into a complete disaster. One location where migrants are housed has no clean running water & has a massive Covid outbreak. Another location also has a massive Covid outbreak. They were unprepared for open border policies. pic.twitter.com/qRAHdwbRdt — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 19, 2021 More than 10% of migrants at both Midland and Carrizo Springs facilities have tested positive for COVID-19. “This is… endangering lives as we speak,” the governor stated. (RELATED: Jonathan Swan Suggests Border Crisis Was ‘Foreseeable’ When Biden Reversed Trump Policies, Says The Administration Is ‘Scrambling’) The office of the Texas Governor published a press release Friday harshly condemning President Joe Biden’s administration for its handling of the crisis. “The Biden administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border,” the statement reads. “President Biden’s refusal to address the border crisis is not only enabling criminal actors like human traffickers and smugglers, but it is exposing innocent unaccompanied children to illness and potentially unsafe living conditions. The administration must act now to keep these children safe, secure our border, and end this humanitarian crisis.”",0.5760436786351966 "Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday denied there’s a media “gag order” in place at the U.S. southern border. During the broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mayorkas discussed media access to the administration’s operations at the border with host Chuck Todd, and said it was “unequivocally false” to say there is a “gag order” in place. (RELATED: MSNBC Host Blasts Biden’s Media Blackout At Border: ‘If It Had Been The Trump Administration We Would Be Rightly Outraged’) WATCH: Todd began by noting that Mayorkas visited the border on Saturday with a bipartisan group of senators. He explained that Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who was part of the group, claimed after the visit that the facilities holding migrant children were overcrowded. Todd then asked Mayorkas why Murphy can see the facilities, but not the American public or news media. Mayorkas didn’t directly respond to Todd’s question, and instead discussed what actions the administration is taking at the border, such as not expelling unaccompanied children, dedicating FEMA resources to assist with capacity issues at border patrol stations, and moving children to facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He added they’re also “working on providing access” so the American public can “see what is going on,” but didn’t provide details as to how. “What does that mean? I mean, right now we have no access to, or photos of, the conditions in the facilities, there have been no ride alongs with agents, all inquiries are routed through Washington, there have been strict controls on sharing data, local border patrol folks feel like they can’t even talk to our folks down there. Is there a gag order?” Todd asked. “There is not. That is unequivocally false, Chuck. Let’s be clear here. We are in the midst of a pandemic. We are, because of the extraordinary leadership of the president, climbing out of it more rapidly than ever before. But we are still in the midst of the pandemic,” Mayorkas responded. “There is central CDC controls in place, and border patrol agents are focused on operations, on securing the border, on addressing the needs of vulnerable children. We are not focused on ride alongs right now,” he concluded. President Joe Biden’s administration has come under fire from various media organizations for the lack of access being allowed to journalists at the border. This comes as the crisis at the border has become increasingly worse over recent months, with the CDC reportedly allowing migrant facilities to operate at 100% capacity, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.",0.32786384790507744 "A New Mexico man arrested earlier this month in connection with five murders confessed that he’s actually killed 16 people, according to a prosecutor’s statement Friday. Sean Lannon, 47, was arrested Mar. 10 in St. Louis, Missouri on charges of burglary and possession of a weapon after allegedly forcing entry into the New Jersey home of Michael Dabkowski, 66, who was found dead two days prior, according to the Associated Press. Sean Lannon, 47, was charged with burglary and possession of a weapon after allegedly forcing entry into a home Monday in Elk Township, New Jersey. He is a person of interest in the deaths of his ex-wife and 3 men: https://t.co/fF2qflNG1Q — U.S. Marshals (@USMarshalsHQ) March 10, 2021 Lannon told the investigators that Dabkowski had sexually abused him as a child, and that he had paid Dabkowski a visit to retrieve sexually explicit photos the victim allegedly was in possession of, NJ.com reported. Lannon is accused of breaking in and beating Dabkowski to death with a hammer, according to an affidavit. A law enforcement official confirmed Sunday that Lannon is the primary suspect in the case of four murders — his ex-wife and three other people, whose bodies were found Mar. 5 in a vehicle in a garage at Albuquerque’s airport, according to the Associated Press. Lannon confessed to killing “11 other individuals” in a phone call with a relative. AP reported. Alec Gutierrez, an assistant prosecutor in Gloucester County, New Jersey, stated that Lannon had admitted to luring people to his New Mexico home and dismembering some of them. Local law enforcement officials are in close contact with the FBI as attempts at checking the veracity of the confession are being made. New Mexico Police Lt. David Chavez previously questioned the plausibility of Lannon’s claims. “Is it possible? Sure, anything’s possible. Is it plausible?” Chavez said, according to AP. “Unfortunately we are still investigating that and conducting search warrants for evidentiary value.”",0.5998546872034463 "You can get the pleasure of a bidet without installing a separate device next to your toilet thanks to this Slim Zero bidet seat. It simply takes the place of your current toilet seat and gives you the same benefits as a separate unit. Not only do you get an affordable price, but this seat is easy for anyone to install. A dual nozzle system creates optimum cleansing for both men and women. You control the pressure, and the water that is released is room temperature, so there are no cold surprises coming at you. This seat also includes a nightlight the illuminates the toilet bowl blue and allows you to see what you’re doing in the middle of the night. And with no buttons or knobs to fight with, you get a hygienic blast without any hassle. Simply push or pull a side lever to activate the system. Past users have found the seat to be an excellent choice, giving it 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Many people think of a bidet as something for the elite, but there are numerous reasons a bidet is good for you. One of the major reasons is a reduction in the amount of toilet paper you use, which helps your wallet and the environment. Bidets also eliminate a lot of itchiness and soreness from wiping too much. Before investing in a full bidet, you can experience all the same benefits with this bidet seat. Normally priced at $129, you can get it for a limited time for just $99.99, a 22 percent savings. Prices subject to change. The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.",-0.8041471903456959 "President Joe Biden’s administration will spend $86 million to house migrants crossing the southern border in hotels, according to a new report. Around 1,200 migrant family members will be housed in the hotels as part of a contract awarded by administration, Axios reported Saturday. Illegal border crossings have surged since Biden took office, and detention facilities holding unaccompanied minors have reached capacity at the southern border. (RELATED: ANALYSIS: Biden Scrapped These Major Trump Border Policies Before The Crisis Started) The contract through Endeavors, a Texas-based nonprofit, is for six months but could be extended and expanded. The hotels will be near border areas, including in Arizona and Texas. https://t.co/RQSkLuXEXK — Axios (@axios) March 20, 2021 The hotels will reportedly be in Arizona and Texas, and the contract will start at six months with the option to extend it, DHS officials told Axios. Hotels have been used in the past to house excess migrants at the border when illegal crossers cannot be processed quickly enough, including during the Trump administration in 2020, according to Axios. The number of migrant family members crossing the border nearly tripled between January and February, according to Customs and Border Patrol. Border patrol agents encountered more than 100,000 illegal crossers in February, about 9,000 of which were unaccompanied minors. That’s almost triple what the number was in February 2020. Republicans and media members have pressured the Biden administration on how it will respond to the growing surge of migrants at the southern border. Biden administration officials have refused to call the situation a “crisis” until White House press secretary Jen Psaki used the term this week, although she then backtracked. (RELATED: ‘Sanctuary State’ Governor Faces Backlash From Pro-Illegal Immigration Groups Over COVID-19 Relief Benefits) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Biden administration has the situation “under control.” Biden’s team has reportedly pressured Mexico to step up its own border enforcement to slow the flow of migrants coming from Central America.",0.8711521772142738 "During the 2020 campaign Joe Biden mocked then-President Donald Trump for a stumble at West Point and told reporters to watch how he steps compared to the president. “Look at how he steps and look at how I step,” Biden said in a flashback clip posted by The Daily Caller on Friday. “Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps,” he added. “Come on.” (RELATED: Biden Calls Kamala Harris ‘President Harris’) The video included a clip of Trump’s appearance at West Point military academy graduation in June 2020 where he walked very slowly down a ramp and appeared to step cautiously one foot at a time. (RELATED: Are Biden’s Speeches Getting Shorter To Avoid Gaffes?) WATCH: FLASHBACK: Biden mocked President Trump stumbling on the ramp at West Point: “Look at how he steps and look at how I step. Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps. Come on.”pic.twitter.com/2S1lQSKsT9 — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 19, 2021 A longer view of the moment was posted on Twitter. (RELATED: Biden Stumbles Then Falls Going Up The Stairs While Boarding Air Force One) Why is Trump having trouble walking down a ramp and drinking a glass of water with one hand? Does he have Parkinson’s? What was the reason for the mysterious Walter Reed trip last year? We deserve answers.pic.twitter.com/8wemcucnGN — Lindy Li (@lindyli) June 13, 2020 When the video of Trump originally surfaced, the former president claimed that the ramp was “steep” and “very slippery.” “The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long [and] steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery,” then-POTUS tweeted. “The last thing I was going to do is ‘fall’ for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, at the time, suggested Trump was in worse physical shape than then-Democratic nominee Biden. “Clip for clip, stumble for stumble, Donald Trump seems to be right in line with Joe Biden, or in many cases, even worse,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe.” WATCH: The Daily Caller post included video of Biden on Friday at Joint Base Andrews going up the stairs to Air Force One and stumbling several times before he falls down on the steps and eventually recovers to board the plane.",-0.15506431790284722 "Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a medical analyst for CNN, suggested Sunday that Republican lawmakers who are silent about receiving a coronavirus vaccine for political reasons should be disqualified from running for office. Reiner’s comments came during a “Reliable Sources” segment about how the media, particularly Fox News, is covering vaccines. After CNN anchor Brian Stelter criticized the outlet for what he considered “not showing that leadership that the other networks are showing,” Reiner added that the pattern “mirrors what Congress is doing.” WATCH: “Fully, 25% of the House membership, largely GOP members, have not disclosed whether they’ve received the vaccine,” he said. The CNN medical analyst said it’s “conceivable” that some of the lawmakers simply don’t want to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, “which raises different questions about competence.” “But it’s more likely that they have received the vaccine, but are reading the politics in their districts and not wanting to counter vaccine hesitancy by telling people in their districts they’ve been vaccinated,” Reiner continued, “which means they’re putting politics above the public health of their constituents, which should essentially disqualify them for running for office.” (RELATED: ‘If I Wasn’t President, You Wouldn’t Be Getting That Beautiful Shot’: Trump Credits Himself For Vaccine) An Associated Press poll released last month showed that around a third of Americans are hesitant about receiving the vaccine due to safety concerns. Another more recent poll found that 47% of people who supported former President Donald Trump intend to skip the vaccine. Since then, the former president has openly recommended the vaccine to those who are skeptical about receiving it.",-1.4786899794949637 "Publisher Simon & Schuster is set to release a children’s book about Dr. Anthony Fauci later this summer. Written by children’s book author Kate Messner and illustrated by Alexandra Bye, the book, titled “Dr. Fauci: How A Boy From Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor,” is scheduled for release June 29 and is currently available for pre-order. CNN host Brian Stelter shared the cover on Sunday morning’s “Reliable Sources,” a clip that Messner shared on Twitter. Exciting morning here – @CNN‘s @brianstelter just revealed the cover for DR: FAUCI: HOW A BOY FROM BROOKLYN BECAME AMERICA’S DOCTOR on @ReliableSources! (Coming 6/29 from @simonschuster & available for pre-order today – https://t.co/f8OxdyPeTf) pic.twitter.com/0rasv2s7Np — katemessner (@KateMessner) March 21, 2021 The publisher’s website describes the book as the “definitive picture book biography” of the White House coronavirus task force member and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has become the sometimes controversial medical face of the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19. “Before he was Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci was a curious boy in Brooklyn, delivering prescriptions from his father’s pharmacy on his blue Schwinn bicycle,” the book’s “about” section reads. “His father and immigrant grandfather taught Anthony to ask questions, consider all the data, and never give up—and Anthony’s ability to stay curious and to communicate with people would serve him his entire life.” The publisher writes that the book will draw from interviews with Fauci himself and trace his life from his “Brooklyn beginnings” all the way to the current COVID-19 crisis. (RELATED: ‘You Parade Around In Two Masks For Show’: Sen. Rand Paul Questions Dr. Fauci On Wearing Masks After Vaccination) “Extensive backmatter rounds out Dr. Fauci’s story with a timeline, recommended reading, a full spread of facts about vaccines and how they work, and Dr. Fauci’s own tips for future scientists,” the description reads.",-0.1776352203466684 "Public schools across the country have been training teachers and students to view the world through the prism of race, and the push may be driven in part by white progressives seeking to assuage their own feelings of guilt via other peoples’ children.",-0.013241019854449938 "Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said Sunday that his changing position on the Senate filibuster is necessary to make sure that Congress could “produce something.” Durbin explained his position to CNN’s Dana Bash during an interview on “State of the Union,” arguing that a change to filibuster rules would force senators to commit rather than “phone it in” to stop bills they don’t like. (RELATED: ‘I Would Talk ‘Til I Fell Over’ — Lindsey Graham Responds To Biden’s Idea Of Bringing Back Talking Filibuster) WATCH: Bash began by noting the change in the way Durbin appeared to view the filibuster, saying of his recent floor speech, “At one point you call it a weapon of mass destruction.” She then played a clip of Durbin defending the filibuster from a few years earlier, in which he claimed that the end of the filibuster “would be the end of the Senate as it was devised and created going back to our founding fathers. We have to acknowledge a respect for the minority.” “So the obvious question is whether the shoe is on the other foot now in majority, that’s why you want to get your agenda passed, that’s why you have a change of heart?” Bash pressed Durbin. “Dana, what I said on the Senate floor is not a threat. It’s a challenge to senators in both political parties,” Durbin said, suggesting that whether or not the Senate could “produce something” was the metric by which the filibuster should be judged. “Prove to me under the current rules, with the filibuster, requiring 60 votes we can produce something.” Durbin used the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and calls for immigration reform as an example, adding, “Can we do it? Well, if 10 come forward and join all the Democrats, yes. It’s a challenge to my colleagues, make it work. Right now, we know the 60-vote requirement can stop the Senate from meaningful activity.” Bash went on to ask whether Durbin would support a rule change to the “talking filibuster” — which would require senators to actually hold the floor and would delay any other Senate actions until it was broken. “Just to be clear to our viewers, that would change the process, but it wouldn’t change the outcome, right?” Bash asked. “You’re still gonna need 60 votes. So will that need to happen? Will you need to change the 60-vote threshold and will you have the votes to do that?” “I certainly support the talking filibuster as proof positive if someone cares enough to stop the Senate in its tracks, to say to the Senate that you cannot even consider what’s before you. Is it too much to ask them to stand at their desk to show them that personal commitment,” Durbin replied. “Right now they phone it in, they call the cloak room, the room right off the floor of the Senate chamber and say, yes, I think I will do a filibuster. Stop the bill on the floor. That’s all it takes. Some start on Friday and go home for the weekend and come back on Monday to see how they’re doing.”",-1.2545965402307673 "Richard Grenell, the former former acting director of National Intelligence during the Trump administration, was mistakenly listed by Google as the president of the United States on Saturday. A Google search for “President of the United States” showed both current President Joe Biden and Richard Grenell. Grenell responded to the Google gaffe on Twitter, saying, “I will run up the stairs without tripping and then announce a plethora of Executive Orders.” I will run up the stairs without tripping and then announce a plethora of Executive Orders. Stay tuned. https://t.co/CGkexORsiB — Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 20, 2021 Grenell also joked he would order “multiple desalinization plants to be built in California,” and “new Nuclear power plants to be built in California.” He added that Eric Swalwell would lose “his security clearance.” I hereby order multiple desalinization plants to be built in California. And I also hereby order new Nuclear power plants to be built in California. Oh, and Eric Swalwell hereby loses his security clearance. https://t.co/pznALaY8Mo — Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 20, 2021 Republican lawmakers have sought to remove Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee over reports he was involved with a Chinese spy. (RELATED: Report: Alleged Chinese Spy Raised Money For Eric Swalwell, Planted Intern In His Office) Grenell has called for Swalwell to be removed from the committee, citing Chinese influence on members of Congress. He told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in December, “Look, my point … is that what’s the tip of the iceberg is members of Congress, governors, local officials being leveraged by the Chinese — this has been going on for years, and Eric Swalwell has been part of the distraction campaign.”",-0.3072989294803305 "President Joe Biden stumbled multiple times then fell going up the stairs while boarding Air Force One on Friday for a trip to Atlanta, Georgia. Biden left the White House by Marine One and arrived at Joint Base Andrews where he walked to AF1 and was headed up the stairs when he got half way up and appeared to have trouble getting his footing on the steps. (RELATED: Biden Calls Kamala Harris ‘President Harris’) Biden then recovered only to stumble once again and then fell down completely onto the stairs. He then got his feet under him and recovered, dusted something off his pants and managed to finally get onboard the plane. Several clips of the fall have surfaced on Twitter showing a far away angle. (RELATED: Scarborough Questions Trump’s Health: ‘Stumble For Stumble … Even Worse’ Than Biden) President Biden stumbles while walking up the stairs to Air Force One pic.twitter.com/t959EPMHpu — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 19, 2021 Another showed a close-up view of the stumbles and fall from a different angle. “NEW: White House Deputy Press Sec. @KJP46 tells reporters on board AF1 that @POTUS is doing fine following the stumble — doesn’t answer a question from @robcrilly about medical explanation,” Daily Caller White House Reporter Christian Datoc tweeted. NEW: White House Deputy Press Sec. @KJP46 tells reporters on board AF1 that @POTUS is doing fine following the stumble — doesn’t answer a question from @robcrilly about medical explanation https://t.co/Zx7rOetY4L — Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) March 19, 2021 During his trip, the president is expected to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to receive an update about the fight against the pandemic, a release from the White House shared The president will later meet with “Georgia Asian American leaders to discuss the ongoing attacks and threats against the community,” following the shooting at three massage parlors that left 8 people dead, it added.",-0.29201556588756133 "Former President George W. Bush predicted a dim future for former President Donald Trump’s political career in a taped interview broadcast Thursday, saying that “these populist movements begin to fritter over time.” Bush delivered remarks in a taped interview shown at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the 2020 election and the future of American democracy, USA Today reported. Although out of office and banned from Twitter, Trump appears to have maintained influence over the GOP during the early days of the Biden administration. Trump won the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll by a wide margin, earning 55% of the votes while the second-place finisher, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, came in at 21%. A Politico/Morning Consult from February showed Trump as the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP nomination in 2024, and a Quinnipiac poll from mid-February showed that 75% of Republicans want Trump to play a prominent role in the party moving forward. Trump has been noncommittal about running for president for a third time in 2024, but has repeatedly floated the possibility and has left the door open for launching a bid. President Trump says he’ll make a decision about running again in 2024 after the midterms: “Based on every poll, they want me to run again but we’re gonna take a look and we’ll see. First step’s first, we have to take back the House.” pic.twitter.com/ulX40enJzh — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 16, 2021 Speaking about the Capitol riots, Bush said that he felt “sick to [his] stomach” as he watched the attack unfold. Bush described the rioters as “hostile forces” who, by storming the Capitol, made a direct attack against American democracy. Bush emphasized the importance of the freedom to peacefully protest, but added that the events of Jan. 6 were “not peaceful.” Bush, along with former presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama, decried the riot shortly after it took place. “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic,” Bush said at the time, according to CNN. He went on to lambast Republican officials whom he viewed as complicit in the riots, saying that he felt “appalled” by their “reckless behavior.” Over 300 people have been charged in connection with the capitol attack, according to the Department of Justice. Prosecutors have described the investigation into the riots as “the most complex investigation ever” and “one of the largest [investigations] in American history” while adding that they expect to file more charges as the investigation continues. (RELATED: DOJ Expects At Least 100 More Charges Over Capitol Riots) Bush added that he does not believe that the 2020 election was stolen and that he views Joe Biden as a legitimate president.",-0.37974110898435337 "Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds reaffirmed his support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ critical race theory ban from the state’s new civics curriculum. “There’s no room in our classrooms for critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money,” DeSantis said during a press conference this week. (RELATED: Gov. DeSantis: ‘There Is No Room In Our Classrooms For Things Like Critical Race Theory) “Governor DeSantis is absolutely correct,” Donalds said Friday on “Fox News Primetime.” Watch the latest video at foxnews.com “Yes, we have dark spots in our history. I’m the first to acknowledge that, but we also have to understand that our country is the great story of redemption in world history,” Donalds said. “We are a far better country than we were 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And, we need to embrace our history, but also understand and embrace the country we are today and the country we continue to become every single year going forward. So I applaud the governor and his decision. We need to see more of that in the other 49 states.” “[Critical Race Theory] underpins identity politics, an ongoing effort to reimagine the United States as a nation riven by groups, each with specific claims on victimization,” the Heritage Foundation said in December. DeSantis said Florida will instead focus on an “actual, solid, true curriculum and we will be a leader in the development and implementation of a world-class civics education,” Fox News reported. DeSantis pledged to spend $106 million to support civics education in Florida after receiving additional funding from President Biden’s coronavirus stimulus package that was signed into law last week, according to Fox News.",0.7564378044676132 "As Americans reflect on the past year and how much power the federal government has taken for itself in the name of COVID-19, one of the most far-reaching power grabs came directly from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the form of a nationwide eviction moratorium order. Under the order, private property owners are required to allow non-paying renters to live rent-free until the federal government says otherwise, costing landlords billions of dollars in unpaid rent — all while landowners remain responsible for property taxes, mortgages, and the costs of their property. And if a property owner tries to get their property back by filing an eviction case, the federal government says it can fine them up to $100,000 and even put them in jail. (RELATED: Ohio Attorney General Sues To Block ‘Unconstitutional’ Part Of COVID-19 Relief Bill) But last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas entered a final judgment declaring the federal government’s eviction moratorium unconstitutional and set the CDC order aside. The case filed by Texas Public Policy Foundation and Southeastern Legal Foundation on behalf of private property owners argued that the eviction order was unconstitutional because the federal government cannot interfere with private property owners’ rights or access to the courts, and the court agreed. Though only a handful of landlords filed suit, the intent of the court was clear in its decision to set aside the entire CDC order, rendering it today of no legal force or effect. While the Biden Administration now seeks to limit the scope of the final judgment, representations by the Department of Justice attorney at the final hearing were clear that the federal government pledged to abide by the court’s decision. The CDC invoked the federal government’s power over interstate commerce and pointed to COVID-19 as its reason for needing the eviction moratorium. But just like the many other regulations we have seen since March 2020, it turns out the pandemic had nothing to do with it. After SLF and TPPF filed suit, the federal government admitted as much and claimed to have the authority to suspend residential evictions for any reason, including its own views on “fairness.” If the federal government was correct and the Constitution gave it the power to base decisions on the vagaries of a subjective “fairness” standard, we would have no Constitution at all. Instead, we’d have a government that could (and would!) cancel anyone and their rights for any reason — a government that can suspend the rights to worship, assembly, and free speech in the name of “fairness.” As we reflect on the last year, we challenge all Americans to recall how “14 days to flatten the curve” turned into potential jail time for private property owners who don’t provide free housing, despite their own ongoing cost burdens that were never addressed in the $4-plus trillion doled out during the pandemic. If the government can cancel property rights, what else can it cancel? Fortunately, we do have the Constitution’s requirement of much more than fairness to justify government action. And fortunately, we have private property owners who refused to be cancelled and instead stood up for the rights of all Americans. (RELATED: Biden HHS To Invest $10 Billion In COVID-19 Testing For Schools To Reopen) The court’s decision sets a critical precedent — the eviction moratorium imposed by the federal government is unconstitutional. That means that not even Congress can come in behind this decision and legislate. It is just flat-out unconstitutional. It also makes clear that even during a pandemic, the Constitution persists. For it is in times of crisis when our constitutional protections are most needed — and tragically, most vulnerable. Robert Henneke is the general counsel of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Kimberly Hermann is the general counsel of the Southeastern Legal Foundation. Mr. Henneke and Ms. Hermann are co-lead counsel for the Plaintiffs in the Terkel v. CDC lawsuit. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller News Foundation. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.",0.6891651419854237 "Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican California Rep. Michelle Steel sent a letter Friday to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) calling for the Olympics to be moved out of Beijing, China. The Daily Caller first obtained the letter in which the two members of Congress express their concerns over the IOC’s support for hosting the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing. The two mention ongoing human rights violations in China and mention the forced labor and torture of the Uighur Muslims. “On behalf of democracy and freedom around the world, we hope you can join us in condemning the ongoing human rights violations and gross abuses currently happening throughout China. For this reason, we emphatically support that the 2022 Olympics Games immediately be moved out of Beijing,'” the letter reads. “The Olympic charter states the goal of Olympism is to promote ‘a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” It also states the importance of “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.’ Yet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to be engaged in unfathomable and horrific human rights abuses. We cannot turn a blind eye to the forced labor and torture of the Uyghurs, the persistent repression of dissenting minorities, and the systemic violations of civil liberties in Hong Kong,” the two continued. READ THE LETTER HERE: Daily Caller Obtained Steel… by Henry Rodgers Cruz argued Monday that the U.S. shouldn’t boycott the upcoming 2022 Olympic games in Beijing in an op-ed. Cruz said American athletes should “kick their commie asses” while the Biden administration pursues a strong anti-China policy agenda. Cruz slammed the IOC for allowing China to hold the event and said he hopes that the games are moved even though he opposes a boycott. “I am flabbergasted that the IOC would ever give this human rights-abusing, free speech-repressing, trade-and-currency manipulating set of totalitarians who make up the Chinese Communist Party the honor of hosting the Olympic Games,” he wrote. (RELATED: China Offers To Vaccinate All Olympic Athletes Ahead Of Beijing, Tokyo Games) “Allowing China to host the Beijing games would put these athletes and the global community in the impossible position of having to forgo the Olympic games in all its importance and pageantry, and celebrating their countries and our freedoms, but at the risk that the CCP will disingenuously claim their participation as a victory. We must hold the CCP accountable and protect the freedoms of religion and speech for all humans,” they added. (RELATED: ‘Kick Their Commie Asses’: Ted Cruz Says US Shouldn’t Boycott Beijing Olympics) Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs have been put in camps. The U.S. declared that China was committing genocide against the Uighurs in January.",-0.9506579044163058 "Xiao Zhen Xie, a 76-year-old Asian woman, decided to fight back Wednesday after an attacker punched her while she was standing on the sidewalk in San Francisco. The unprovoked attacker punched Xie while she was waiting at a traffic light, reports KPIX 5. Just came upon an attack on an elderly Asian woman on Market Street San Francisco. Effort I got more details pic.twitter.com/5o8r0eeHE2 — Dennis O’Donnell (@DennisKPIX) March 17, 2021 “You bum, why did you hit me?” Xie reportedly shouted in Chinese. “She found the stick around the area and fought back,” Xie’s daughter Dong-Mei Li said, according to KPIX-5. Both Xie and her attacker were taken to the hospital as a result of the incident. Xie, who has lived in San Francisco for 26 years, said she was very shaken up by the unprovoked attack. (RELATED: Psaki: ‘No Question’ Trump Saying ‘Wuhan Virus’ Contributed To Rise In Attacks Against Asian Americans) Xie cannot see out of her left eye and has not been able to eat since the attack according to Li, reports KPIX 5. “As you can see she is extremely terrified. She’s terrified to even step out,” Xie’s grandson John Chen said, according to KPIX 5. “We have to do our job and we have to investigate these cases with all resources brought to bear and we need to make arrests, and we’ve done that,” San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said, reports KPIX 5. Reports of violent hate crimes committed against Asian Americans are rapidly increasing across the country. In 2020, the number of reported incidents of Asian American hate crimes in 16 American cities rose almost 150% from 2019.",-2.5664014418375616 "Oral Roberts sent Ohio State packing Friday afternoon in unreal fashion. The 15 seed Golden Eagles punched their ticket to the second round after defeating the two seed Buckeyes, who were one of the best teams in the B1G, in overtime 75-72. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football) Max Abmas is cold. ???? 29 Pts ???? 5 Rebs ???? 3 Ast ???? Played all 45 minutes ???? Led 15-seed Oral Roberts to an upset over 2-seed Ohio State Making a name for himself in March. pic.twitter.com/HR49u7RCdW — SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 19, 2021 What an absolutely unreal sequence of events this afternoon for the Golden Eagles and the Buckeyes. What an awesome game. One one hand, I’m upset because I put OSU in my Final Four. I foolishly believed the B1G was untouchable. I foolishly thought the Buckeyes would pull through. I have to put my hand up and own that mistake. I should have known better. Rapid reaction to the NCAA Tournament bracket: I’m feeling CONFIDENT the Final Four will be Iowa, Alabama, Ohio State and Illinois. #MarchMadness — David Hookstead (@dhookstead) March 14, 2021 On the other hand, I love a great upset, and this is only the ninth time in NCAA Tournament history where a 15 seed has one. Let me repeat that. It’s only the ninth time ever! What an accomplishment for Oral Roberts! Teams seeded No. 15 are now 9-132 in NCAA tournament history, which puts the chances of the upset at about 6-percent. Oral Roberts joins a rare group. — Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) March 19, 2021 Major props to Oral Roberts for pulling off the insane upset on day one. This is why we play the games!",1.0706355047693372 "President Joe Biden commented Friday on the state of the coronavirus pandemic and the threat of future viruses while visiting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. A video posted to Twitter by Breaking911 shows Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were at the CDC facility in Atlanta, Georgia and discussing the health officials’ efforts to fight the pandemic. Biden described his “gigantic debt of gratitude” towards the health experts and medical professionals at the CDC for their efforts that enable people to stop worrying about the virus, which he said will “come again and again and again and again.” “We owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude,” the president said to the audience at the CDC. “And we will for a long, long, long time because I hope this is the beginning of the end of not paying attention to what’s going to come again and again and again and again.” Biden went on to explain that the types of measures taken to combat other threats to national security — such as building walls to fight illegal immigration and organized military strength to combat the threat of terrorism — are entirely different from the kinds of measures that officials must take in order to combat viruses and public health crises. “We can build all the walls we want, we can have the most powerful armies in the world, but we cannot stop, we cannot stop these viruses other than be aware of where they are and move quickly on them when we find them,” Biden said. Biden also noted how under his administration, “science is back,” not just as an “appendage” to other initiatives, but as something in and of itself that his administration is prioritizing. “For the longest time, not just as it relates to the CDC, but science — science was viewed as an appendage to anything else that we were talking about, but it’s back.” (RELATED: Alaska Meeting Reveals Just How High Tensions Are Between US And China)",-0.03826764437440885 "Fox News host Tucker Carlson shared a recording Friday of a song he said was written and performed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Comparing Blinken to the 90s boy band Hanson, Carlson suggested that politics might not have been Blinken’s first choice of career. (RELATED: ‘Single Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Witnessed’: Brit Hume Asks Tucker Not To Make Him Relive Kavanaugh Hearing) WATCH: Carlson began with a clip of comments from Blinken’s first official meeting with the Chinese, during which top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi blew off criticisms of human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslims and accused the United States of slaughtering black Americans. “Ouch! That’s not the traditional language of diplomacy, elaborately polite and obliquely indirect,” Carlson said. “That is talk radio. The Chinese government has utter contempt for the Biden administration and doesn’t feel like hiding it anymore. Tony Blinken, who is supposed to be our Secretary of State, clearly had no idea what to say in response to it. Blinken is not a natural statesman but what Tony Blinken really wanted to be was a pop star.” Carlson then aired a segment of a song, ostensibly performed by Blinken, titled “Lip Service.” “Our Secretary of State. It all brings you back to 1997 when the Hanson brothers were the reigning boy band. ‘MMMBop,'” Carlson continued. “That could have been Tony Blinken, but it wasn’t. Instead Tony Blinken memorized political slogans and over time, the Democratic Party gave him the State Department as a reward.”",-0.8813246459744029 "Pets are vital members of our family. They provide us with companionship, love, and affection. Plus, they’re super cute! However, with all of the great things pets do for us, we need to make sure we return the favor. That’s why we’ve done the research and found six dog essentials that we’re sure will be your next purchase. Not only will your pup be excited to get his new toys, food, and accessories, but you’ll feel better knowing they’re happy! Be sure to check out the items below: Essential #1: Food Natural food is the best kind of food for your pet, hands down. This dry dog food package from Diamond Naturals is made with potatoes and wild-caught salmon, a superfood with high nutritional value. With no artificial colors, preservatives or flavors added, this dog food will be enthusiastically enjoyed by your pet. And, you’ll feel better knowing they are eating healthy and fresh ingredients! Get it here for only $36.99! This 14-pound bag of premium dog food has been formulated by none other than celebrity chef Rachael Ray! Since it contains no poultry by-product, wheat, or wheat-gluten, your pet will feel energized and healthier! Plus, you’ll feel more comfortable feeding them ingredients they’ll love AND that are good for their health! Get it here for only $16.26! Essential #2 Toys This Amazon Choice Product comes with three animal toys: one fox, one raccoon, and one squirrel. There’s no squeak box or stuffing embedded within the toy, so you won’t have to worry about your pup tearing it out of the toy. Get it here for $10.99! This interactive dog puzzle will challenge your pet’s mental and physical capabilities. How this puzzle works is quite simple. underneath each blue tile is a treat compartment. You can fill each one with food bits or treats and cover them back up. Now, it’s your pup’s turn to move the tiles to find the treats! Get it here for just $27.37! Essential #3: Treats This #1 best seller is made right here in the USA. Zuke’s uses high-quality, fresh ingredients and each treat is only three calories. Feed your pet the fresh food they deserve with these healthy dog treats. They come in many flavors; rabbit, duck, pork, beef, chicken, peanut butter, oats, pumpkin, and more! Get it here for only $14.99! Get an 36-count package for just $15.13 when you click here! Essential #4: Accessories Say you’re out and about with your dog. What if he gets into a muddy puddle or gets dirt and dust on his paws? You’re probably not going to want to let him back in your car or house with his dirty paws. That’s where this gadget comes in handy. All you have to do is put your dog’s paw in this gadget and add a little water. Just like that, your dog’s paws will be sparkling clean in no time. Did I mention this product is a #1 best seller? Get it here for only $14.99! If you’re planning a trip with your pup but haven’t figured out where you’re going to put all of their food and accessories, we’ve got the solution for you right here! Store everything from toys and food to waste bags and extra treats with this convenient travel pack. Plus, it’s airline compliant for hassle-free travel. Get it here for just $37.99! The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.",-1.3243133682040216 "Since St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about how you’ll celebrate the occasion. Maybe you and your friends are deciding on which bar crawl to go to. Perhaps you’ve decided to stay at home with friends and family. However you choose to celebrate, we’ve rounded up a few items we think you’ll love this St. Patrick’s Day. Be sure to check them out below: This growler is designed to keep your beer tasting fresh for weeks, even after all of the St. Patrick’s festivities have ended! How does it do this? That’s easy. All you have to do is slip a CO2 canister in the included sleeve, twist the sleeve onto the cap, screw on the uKeg neckpiece, and voila! It’s now pressurized. If you love your beer always tasting fresh (who doesn’t), this is an absolute must-have bar accessory. Get it here for just $161.24! A beer doesn’t quite taste the same if it’s not chilled to perfection in a mug. This beer glass is quite unique in its design. Notice how the cup looks like an upside-down beer bottle! This cup clearly combines creativity with functionality to create an awesome beer mug. And hey, it’s also refrigerator and freezer safe. Get it here for only $14.24! These metal bullet-shaped whiskey stones are made to enhance your drinking experience. The company that makes this unique product, TakeFlight, is veteran-owned! Made from 100% food-grade stainless steel, you’ll never consume a diluted drink again! Get them here for just $27.97. This gunmetal black plated premium bartender kit will look insanely sleek on any countertop or bar. Whether you enjoy a citrusy mojito or a tart whiskey sour, you’ll be able to make any drink you can dream of with this bartender kit. Get it here for only $69.95! This Amazon Choice bar cart has three storage shelves to fit all of your wines, spirits, and accessories. The highly-desirable rustic bar cart comes with adjustable feet, rotatable wheels, and even a wine glass rack. This St. Patrick’s Day, your guests will be envious of your modern yet rustic bar cart. Get it here for just $75.99! These hand-made shot glasses have been molded to mimick 50 caliber casings. What’s so special about these shot glasses? Well, a portion of their profits goes directly to the Wounded Warrior Project, a foundation that supports injured soldiers and their families. Get it here for only $9.99! If you thought Keurig was just for coffee, you’re wrong! It works just like a regular Keurig: choose your favorite k-cup and brew away! However, for this drink maker, you’ll be able to choose from more than 30 different pods, including Moscow Mule, Mojito, Gin & Tonic, Mai Tai, Cosmo, and more! Keuring just got a lot more exciting! Get it here for only $299.99! No man cave is complete without a mini-fridge to keep all of your drinks chilled! This is the #1 best seller in beverage refrigerators, so it’s safe to say you’ll love this product. It can store up to 120 cans at once. Your life will be made easy with the temperature control system embedded within the device. Set to your favorite temperature and you’re done! Get it for here the reduced price of $294.99. The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.",0.4810959450789568 "Self-defense and self-reliance are something we all should take seriously. Over the past year, I think we can all agree we learned just how important it is to be prepared for any situation that may arise. Having an effective way to protect yourself and your family from dangerous figures and violent threats is essential in 2021. That’s why we’ve rounded up eight must-have self-defense gadgets that will keep you safe in times of insecurity. Be sure to check them out below: This #1 best seller comes with a keychain ring, so you can take it with you wherever you go. This self-defense tool is made from 100% aviation aluminum, making it an absolute necessity for every adult who seeks to protect themselves. Get it here for just $9.99! When this pepper spray device is used, the app it is linked to will automatically send SOS alerts to your programmed emergency contacts, letting them know you’re in trouble. This tool has a 10-foot spray range and is extremely easy to use. The Plegium app is completely free and there is no monthly subscription fee. Get it here for just $34.95! This gadget offers two self-defense tools for the price of one; a stun gun and pepper spray! The stun gun with its flashing light will help disoreint the attacker. Its discreet design will fit into your purse, backpack, or pretty much wherever you want to store it! Get it here for only $22.92! This quick strike safety tool is concealable and easy to use. This gadget is ideal for students, hikers, bikers, or anyone else that often finds themselves on solo adventures. Get it here for just $26.98! This keychain contains the maximum police strength pepper spray. In fact, Sabre Red is the #1 most trusted pepper spray brand used by police all around the country! This product will provide you with up to 25 sprays. That’s 5x the amount that of a normal pepper spray bottle. This product is suitable for any adult who wants to feel safe and secure. Get it here for just $24.77! This bracelet is just like every other paracord bracelet…not! This paracord bracelet, unlike many others, has a discreet knife hidden within its contents. Not only can this bracelet act as a survival tool, but it can also be used as a self-defense gadget. If someone or something is approaching you in a threatening way, this tool is sure to scare them off. Get it here for just $9.98! This personal alarm is amll enough to fit in any purse, backpack, or pocket. When activated, it emits 140 db of noise that can be heard from up to 600 feet away. This is a great tool if someone is following you, as you can just presh the button and everyone within the 600-foot radius will hear you. The potential attacker will be scared away and all eyes will be on you. Get it here for only $18.99! This non-lethal pepper gun requires no license to own and is extremely effective in keeping intruders away. It accurately shoots powerful pepper balls that produce a long-lasting cloud of irritants from up to 40 feet away! If you detect someone unwanted approaching you, this device is sure to steer them away as quick as can be. Get it here for only $189.99! The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.",0.20398138673770053 "With spring right around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to get back into gardening! We know gardening can be a tedious task at times. But when it’s time to reap the fruits of our labor (literally), a sense of pride and accomplishment fills our hearts. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, we’ve compiled a list of several, stress-free basics you need when planning your ideal garden. Be sure to check them out below: Depending on where you’re located, the weather may still be too chilly to start growing your seeds. That’s where this Amazon Choice product comes in handy. This 24-plot tray increases the amount of humidity your seedlings need to grow healthy by trapping it in the included dome. Humidity levels can be adjusted according to the type of plant you’re growing. The bottom tray is heated to a proper 77 degrees, providing optimal conditions for your sprouts. Get it here for only $36.08! These biodegradable seed trays promote proper draining and ventilation so your seeds will grow into healthy, strong plants. This starter kit is suitable for beginners and professionals alike. If you’re interested in this item, you’re going to need to purchase it quickly, as there are only a few left in stock! Get it here for only $18.99! This complete gardening set comes with all of the tools you need for creating your perfect garden. This set includes handy tools like a trowel, transplanter, thand fork, spray bottle, and more! Get it here for just $28.88! It’s no secret that starting a plant from seeds is a tricky task. Sometimes, it takes a little extra care and attention for them to sprout into full-grown plants! That’s why this product is extremely helpful. These seed starters can be placed on any tray and will thrive. Circular seed starters allow the roots to grow dense and strong as opposed to the typical square shape that makes the roots become tangled. If you prefer to buy these seed starters with their corresponding tray, please select that option at checkout! Get it here for just $17.99! This heirloom vegetable seed set is perfect for those who are looking to grow a little bit of everything. With these organic, non-GMO seeds, you’ll be able to grow 13 different types of vegetables from the comfort of your own home. Get it here for only $16.99! Fresh herbs bring immense flavor to any dish that requires them, but it’s not always easy to keep them growing and fresh year-round. That’ why the Vegebox Hydroponic Growing system is amazing! There’s enough room to grow 12 plants per box. The built-in red, blue, green and IR light turn otherwise lengthy photosynthesis into a speedy process, providing you with fresh herbs in a fraction of the grow time. Get this product here for the reduced price of $92! In my opinion, herbs are the most reliable plant to grow because they are hearty and durable. This seed pack includes Italian basil, Italian parsley, cilantro, mint, chives, thyme, and many more wonderful herbs. Herbs taste great on salads, meats, vegetables, you name it. Plus, many herbs have medicinal benefits! Get it here for just $18.91! This kneeling pad can be a lifesaver. Kneeling on the ground for an extended period of time can be quite painful. It’s made from extra-thick foam that will keep your knees feeling great! Get it here for only $15.97! The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.",-1.0096455603050278 "National Review’s Radio Free California Podcast is a show about the perilous state of the Golden State -- and what that means for you, wherever you live.",-0.533961854319722 "National Review’s Radio Free California Podcast is a show about the perilous state of the Golden State -- and what that means for you, wherever you live.",-0.6173795784012496 "Some are guilty of elitism, but most bring high-quality, reliable schooling to many, outdoing public-school counterparts in helping the underprivileged. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he latest cover of The Atlantic features a golden desk and the bold title “Private Schools Are Indefensible.” In the article, Caitlin Flanagan details her experience working at a premier private school in Los Angeles and the opulence within the building’s walls — billion-dollar endowments, theater prosceniums, and an archeologist in residence. Such extravagance, she argues, would not exist “in a just society.” I’ve taught in both public and private schools, and I do not recognize the caricature of private education that Flanagan furnishes. The private-school classroom where I currently spend my time has a few broken desks, a whiteboard donated …",-0.7681814681358007 "An AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is prepared at the local vaccination center in Hagen, Germany, March 19, 2021. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters) AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine was 79 percent effective in preventing symptomatic disease and 100 percent effective against severe disease and hospitalization in a new U.S.-based clinical trial, the company announced on Monday. Experts did not find any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including any increased risk of rare blood clots that have raised concern in Europe. Advertisement A number of European countries, including Norway, France and Denmark, have temporarily suspended distribution of the vaccine in recent weeks following reports of blood clotting in patients who had received the shots. However, in addition to the new Phase 3 trial’s findings, an emergency investigation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) last Thursday found that the vaccine is “safe and effective” in preventing coronavirus and “not associated with an increase in the overall risk of thromboembolic events, or blood clots.” An independent committee “found no increased risk of thrombosis or events characterized by thrombosis among the 21,583 participants receiving at least one dose of the vaccine,” according to AstraZeneca. The new data came from a trial conducted in the U.S., Chile and Peru that included more than 32,000 adult volunteers. AstraZeneca says it will submit the findings to a scientific journal for peer review. Ruud Dobber, president of AstraZeneca’s biopharmaceuticals business unit, said Monday on CNBC that the company plans to apply for emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration next month. If the company receives the authorization, its COVID vaccine would become the fourth available in the U.S. Send a tip to the news team at NR.",-0.18665513590836802 "A U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary overflow facility in Donna, Texas (Courtesy of the Office of Congressman Henry Cuellar (TX-28)) New photos of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary overflow facility in Donna, Texas reveal severe overcrowding in the makeshift shelter as the Biden administration struggles to handle a growing crisis at the border. Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) shared a series of photos of the soft-sided facility with Axios, telling the outlet that while each of the eight “pods” there has a 260-person occupancy, one pod held more than 400 unaccompanied male minors as of Sunday. Cuellar, who recently visited a shelter for children but did not tour that specific facility nor capture the photos himself, called them “terrible conditions for the children.” He called for the children to be moved more quickly into the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Border Patrol agents are “doing the best they can under the circumstances” but are “not equipped to care for kids” and “need help from the administration,” he said. The photos offer a rare look at the deteriorating situation at the border, as the Biden administration has restricted media coverage at migrant housing facilities. CBP had 10,000 migrants in custody as of Saturday. Unaccompanied minors accounted for nearly half of those in custody. Thousands of migrants have been waiting for more than three days in border patrol facilities, according to the report. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week called the situation at the border “difficult” and said the administration is “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.” Cuellar said the U.S. has to “stop kids and families from making the dangerous trek across Mexico to come to the United States.” “We have to work with Mexico and Central American countries to have them apply for asylum in their countries,” he said. Mayorkas on Sunday underscored the Biden administration’s messaging to migrants that the southern border is closed, though he noted that it would not expel “vulnerable children.” “Our message has been straightforward and simple and it’s true: The border is closed,” he said. “We are expelling families, we are expelling single adults and we’ve made a decision that we will not expel young vulnerable children.” Mayorkas said that though the administration has warned migrants against seeking entry to the U.S. that border officials “will not expel into the Mexican desert, for example, three orphan children.” He also told CNN on Sunday that “a Border Patrol station is no place for a child” and the administration is “working around the clock to move these children out of the Border Patrol facilities into the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services that shelters them.” Send a tip to the news team at NR.",-0.3543969317687596 "Coronavirus vaccine vials displaying the Johnson & Johnson logo, February 9, 2021 (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) Politico reports that three weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, “2.3 million of the 4.3 million doses of the vaccine delivered have actually been administered.” That’s an abysmally disappointing 53.4 percent. And, much like in the early weeks of the Moderna and Pfizer shots, no one is entirely sure what the holdup is. Over the course of the last two weeks, senior Biden administration officials have met privately to try and determine what happened. Two senior administration officials believe states are conserving their J&J supplies until there’s enough to reach underserved communities and specific groups, like teachers or the disabled. But multiple state officials say they’re using whatever they get as soon as they get it. The notion of “conserving their J&J supplies until there’s enough to reach underserved communities and specific groups, like teachers or the disabled” makes no sense. You don’t reach underserved communities, or anyone, if you’re not using the doses. If you want to vaccinate more teachers or the disabled, open up the vaccination appointments to teachers or the disabled. Open up more sites. Operate them longer hours. Figure out where your target population is most densely clustered and bring the vaccine to that spot. There is absolutely no public-health advantage to waiting around and stockpiling vaccine doses to be used sometime down the road. Why is this so difficult to grasp? Overall, as of this morning, the United States has administered 79 percent of the vaccines distributed to states. That’s not bad, but not great, either. It’s been as low as 74 percent and as high as 83.9 percent, and that’s just in a week’s span in late February. States are thankfully getting shots into arms faster — we’re close to averaging 2.5 million doses administered per day — but the vaccine manufacturers are going gangbusters in production and delivery: “The U.S. monthly output for the three authorized vaccines is expected to reach 132 million doses for March, nearly triple the 48 million in February.” Advertisement Many conservatives will notice that the private sector, in charge of inventing and manufacturing the vaccines and delivering them to states, is doing a terrific job. The public sector, in charge of actually getting the vaccine doses into arms . . . is very hit-and-miss.",0.050181779147493555 "There was this telling exchange on Sunday on Meet the Press between Chuck Todd and Raphael Warnock: CHUCK TODD: I appreciate it. I want to start with something that the FBI director said this week. Director Wray said it does not appear the shooting was racially motivated. So, this is now the FBI director. We’ve heard local law enforcement. What are your — are you hearing the same thing from law enforcement that you’ve been speaking with? SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: Well, first of all, let me say that our hearts go out to these families as they are dealing with unspeakable loss. I think it’s important that we center the humanity of the victims. I’m hearing a lot about the shooter, but these precious lives that have been lost, they are attached to families. They’re, you know, they’re connected to people who love them. And so, we need to keep that in mind. I know that — look, law enforcement will go through the work that they need to do, but we all know hate when we see it.",0.4685768608503579 "(Carlos Jasso/Reuters) A federal judge has blocked a pro-life law in South Carolina that prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which usually takes place around six weeks into pregnancy. Late last week, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis granted a preliminary injunction blocking the bill, siding with plaintiffs who challenged the law. Immediately after the law took effect, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a local South Carolina abortion clinic sued the state, arguing that the law violates women’s constitutional right to abortion. Advertisement Shortly after Republican governor Henry McMaster signed the bill into law last month, the same judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent it from taking effect while she reviewed the arguments from challengers. Now she has formally issued a preliminary injunction against it, a decision that the state is likely to appeal. “This state is overwhelmingly in favor of that bill, and we will do whatever it takes — however long it takes — to see that the right to life is protected in South Carolina,” McMaster tweeted on Friday in response to the decision. In her order blocking the bill, Lewis argued that the plaintiffs would likely succeed in claiming that the heartbeat bill is unconstitutional, and she asserted that “plaintiffs’ patients are likely to suffer irreparable injury absent a preliminary injunction.” When South Carolina passed the bill in mid February, it became one of about a dozen states to prohibit abortion after the fetal heartbeat begins. In 2019, several pro-life states including Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee all enacted forms of a heartbeat bill. Thus far, none of those bills have been allowed to stand, as challenges from abortion-rights groups have found support in federal courts from judges who argue that they conflict with existing abortion jurisprudence. Supporters of these laws believe that they might someday serve as a vehicle for challenging Roe v. Wade and subsequent abortion decisions at the Supreme Court. In the meantime, pro-lifers hope that debates over heartbeat bills will bring public attention to the fact that an unborn child’s heartbeat begins, and can be detected, so early in pregnancy. In fact, some of the most interesting conflicts in the abortion debate over the last few years have emerged in response to heartbeat bills, as opponents of the legislation attempt to downplay the reality of fetal heartbeats. In 2019, when a number of states enacted heartbeat bills, several major media outlets ran articles insisting that the bills “get the science of heartbeats wrong.” One abortionist insisted, in opposition to heartbeat bills, that is more technically correct to refer to the heartbeat in question as “fetal pole cardiac activity.” Advertisement Other outlets preferred the dehumanizing phrase “embryonic pulsing,” dismissing the fetal heartbeat entirely on the advice of medical experts who pointed out that the fetus at that stage of gestation doesn’t have “any kind of cardiovascular system.” While heartbeat bills will likely continue to meet with opposition in federal court, watching opponents try to explain away the reality of the unborn child as a distinct, living human being is a pro-life victory in itself.",-0.16590172650991958 "Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks at the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas, Texas, May 4, 2018. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) When I wrote about Texas’s coronavirus case numbers since the end of the statewide mask mandate last week, I noted that the daily number of new deaths bounces around a lot. A reader pointed out that the seven-day average for that figure smooths out a lot of those unusually high or low days. Using the seven-day average shows similar results as the post last week. Since ending the statewide mask mandate, Texas rate of new cases per day has dropped, as has the number of active cases, while the rate of deaths per day increased slightly. Advertisement The day before the mask mandate ended, March 9, Texas had 5,119 new cases of COVID-19, and the seven-day average for new cases was 3,971. On that day, the state had 126,404 active cases of COVID-19. As of March 9, the seven-day average for new deaths was 104. As of yesterday, the seven-day average for new cases in the state of Texas is 3,010. As of yesterday, Texas had 109,197 active cases of COVID-19, and the seven-day average for new deaths in the state of Texas is 114. (While many Democrats love to contend that the Lone Star State and its governor, Greg Abbott, have been particularly reckless in their quarantine restrictions and pandemic response, Texas ranks right around the middle: 24th in the country in cases per million residents and deaths per million residents.) Advertisement Meanwhile, the state of Colorado is relaxing its mask mandate starting April 4, lifting mask requirements “in Level Green counties for everyone except for students 11 to 18 years old through the end of the school year. Private businesses and local governments still could issue their own mask mandates. For Levels Blue, Yellow, Orange and Red, the mask mandate would remain in place for that same group of students and for any indoor public places with 10 or more people present.” We’ll see if President Biden denounces Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, for so-called “Neanderthal thinking.”",0.39693612224904196 "BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at a conference in New York in 2017 (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) The week of March 15: ESG’s new clothes, tax troubles ahead, inflation ahead (or not) and much, much more. On the whole, I would prefer to live in a society run by cynics rather than saints—cynics tend to be less intrusive. However, when cynics pretend to be saints, they are playing a dangerous game, as many of those on Wall Street now peddling “socially responsible” investment (SRI) may soon discover. To be clear, I have no doubt that some of those pushing for more SRI (or the closely related concept of stakeholder capitalism) are true believers. Others, perhaps the smartest, are jockeying for positions of power — and the perks that come with it — under a corporatist regime (stakeholder capitalism is essentially an expression of corporatism). Still others are simply following the ancient Wall Street practice of repackaging nonsense and selling it at a profit. The idea that companies which are run not for their shareholders, but for a somewhat arbitrarily selected group of “stakeholders” and/or goals that someone, somewhere, has determined to be good for society will be more profitable (or less risky) than companies run with a keen eye on shareholder return is, on the face of it, absurd. Even if it were not absurd, the extra fillip that would come from doing well by doing good would be quickly reflected in the share prices of those supposedly virtuous companies, sharply reducing the potential upside for those who got into the game too late (which will likely be most investors). Nevertheless, turning to Jason Zweig’s The Devil’s Financial Dictionary (a recent, and entertaining purchase, from which I plan on quoting fairly frequently in the next few months), I see that the first line of Zweig’s definition of a stock market is this: A chaotic hive of millions of people who overpay for hope and underpay for value. Harsh, but often true. And so we come to the bubble in stocks that are considered to score highly against certain environmental (“E”), social (“S”) and, rather more rationally, governance (“G”) benchmarks. To be clear, this bubble, like all the most dangerous bubbles, has some logic behind it. There is no doubt that the actions of activists, governments and regulators can create an environment in which such stocks will do better than they would in a market without such distorting factors. And momentum, of course, helps. Jumping on a bandwagon can make sense, so long as you know when to jump off, but picking that moment is rather easier said than done. As the saying goes, no one rings a bell. Valuations can only go so far, and even the supply of “greater fools” is not infinite. Zweig: It might seem surprising that there could ever be a shortage of fools in this world, but if you count on always finding one just when you most need to, you will wake up one day to find that everyone else has suddenly smartened up and the greater fool is you. And so to the selling of ESG, and this piece by Michael Wursthorn in the Wall Street Journal: Sustainability has been good for Wall Street’s bottom line. Exchange-traded funds that explicitly focus on socially responsible investments have 43% higher fees than widely popular standard ETFs. The environmental, social, and governance funds’ average fee was 0.2% at the end of last year, while standard ETFs that invest in U.S. large-cap stocks had a 0.14% fee on average, according to data from FactSet. “ESG creates a fantastic revenue possibility for large firms,” said Dr. Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. Asset managers are among the biggest cheerleaders for sustainable investing. Their efforts are all aimed at capturing some of the tidal wave of money that has flowed into funds that promote things like clean energy or diversity. As a broader fee war has narrowed profit margins for money managers over the last decade, firms are looking to wring more revenue from the surge. Even a seemingly small increase in fees can have a big impact at scale. A firm managing $1 billion in a typical ESG fund, for example, would garner $2 million in annual fees versus managing the standard ETF’s $1.4 million. “It’s fresh, feels good and new,” said Andrew Jamieson, global head of ETF product at Citigroup Inc., of ESG. “But it’s not any different than anything else. These things aren’t any more expensive to run.” Advertisement Nearly $8 billion has flowed into a host of U.S. ESG-themed funds in just January and February, according to FactSet, putting the first two months of flows roughly on par with all of 2019 . . . Money managers launched a record 71 sustainable mutual funds and ETFs last year, according to Morningstar. Asset management giant BlackRock Inc. pulled $68 billion into its sustainable products last year, representing more than 60% annual growth, with more than two-thirds of that money going into its iShares ETF business. In many respects, Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, has made himself the face of ESG, issuing increasingly imperious directives setting out what he expects from the companies in which BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, invests or might invest. Now’s not the time to go through his latest “letter to CEOs,” although I appreciated the customary, if perhaps debatably scientific, shout-out to the “mounting physical toll of climate change in fires, droughts, flooding and hurricanes” and Fink’s (professed, if implicit) faith in Xi, the Chinese dictator, someone who no one should trust. In 2020, the EU, China, Japan, and South Korea all made historic commitments to achieve net zero emissions. It is, of course, only a coincidence that BlackRock sees China as both a business and investment opportunity. Then there was this (my emphasis added): There is no company whose business model won’t be profoundly affected by the transition to a net zero economy – one that emits no more carbon dioxide than it removes from the atmosphere by 2050, the scientifically-established threshold necessary to keep global warming well below 2ºC. As the transition accelerates, companies with a well-articulated long-term strategy, and a clear plan to address the transition to net zero, will distinguish themselves with their stakeholders – with customers, policymakers, employees and shareholders – by inspiring confidence that they can navigate this global transformation. For the CEO of the largest asset manager in the world to include “policymakers” (in other words, the state) as one of the “stakeholders” in private companies is an indicator of how far and how fast the corporatist advance is proceeding, an advance that bodes ill for shareholders and, for that matter, democracy. But back to the Wall Street Journal: For sustainability-focused investors, long-term returns aren’t certain. Last year, three out of four sustainable funds beat the averages for their broader categories, Morningstar said in a research report in January. Much of that outsize performance owes to sustainable funds being populated with technology stocks, a general stock-market favorite in 2020 that outperformed nearly all other sectors. History suggests that performance may be more of an outlier than the start of a permanent trend. Technology stocks happen to have, on some measures, a light environmental footprint, but that’s not why they outperformed. Pacific Research Institute’s Mr. Winegarden crunched some numbers in 2019, finding that $10,000 in an ESG fund would be about 44% smaller compared with an investment in an S&P 500-tracking fund over a 10-year period. Oh. And a purely opportunistic embrace of ESG may well backfire. Not only does it help shift the parameters of debate in a direction that is unlikely to favor either shareholders or prosperity or free markets, but it also may well leave those who have embraced it open to some . . . embarrassment. Take this article, published in USA Today: The financial services industry is duping the American public with its pro-environment, sustainable investing practices. This multitrillion dollar arena of socially conscious investing is being presented as something it’s not. In essence, Wall Street is greenwashing the economic system . . . In many instances across the industry, existing mutual funds are cynically rebranded as “green” — with no discernible change to the fund itself or its underlying strategies — simply for the sake of appearances and marketing purposes. In other cases, ESG products contain irresponsible companies such as petroleum majors and other large polluters like “fast fashion” manufacturing to boost the fund’s performance. There are even portfolio managers who actively mine ESG data to bet against environmentally responsible companies in the name of profit, a short-selling strategy. In that last case, I can understand why, and not just because many of these companies are currently traded at bubble prices. A company that is making a great show of the emphasis that it puts on ESG is unlikely to be focusing as much as it should on delivering a return to shareholders. This is even more the case where management is financially rewarded for the progress it makes in delivering ESG-style objectives, something that is becoming increasingly popular in C-suites, both as a public gesture of piety and as a means of diluting the tougher discipline imposed by financial targets. Back to USA Today (my emphasis added): As disheartening as this reality is, claiming to be environmentally responsible is profitable. Last year alone, ESG mutual funds and exchange-traded funds nearly doubled. The investment community understandably reacted to this with cheers. But those cheers were only for fund managers and their bottom lines. No matter what they tout as green investing, portfolio managers are legally bound (as well as financially incentivized) to do nothing that compromises profits. To advance real change in the environment simply doesn’t yield the same return . . . Oh. In early March, my sentiments were echoed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which announced it was creating a Climate and ESG Task Force to “proactively identify ESG-related misconduct” such as inaccurate or incomplete disclosures by funds and companies — an unprecedented move that suggests there might be abuses that have gone unaddressed. That is a part of what has attracted the SEC’s attention, yes, and it may well cause some difficulties for companies that have either been mis-selling themselves or their investment products. But the SEC’s initiative is a part of a more far-reaching process. First the agency would like to bring some order into how E, S, and G are defined and measured. That makes some sense. Investors who wish to base their decisions, whether it’s to buy or to sell (including selling short), on these issues ought to know how much they can rely on claims of ESG compliance and on what those claims actually mean. Those who have been so loudly touting their ESG credentials will find any arguments made by the SEC to that effect extremely difficult to resist. Sadly, the SEC appears to have wider ambitions that that. Please note this comment: Proactively addressing emerging disclosure gaps that threaten investors and the market has always been core to the SEC’s mission. What that will come to mean is that every company, whatever its previous stance on, say, climate change, will be required to disclose what it is doing in this area, a disclosure that will be used by activists as a cudgel to bring miscreants into line. But the ratchet will not stop there. What will begin as mandate to disclose will end up as an obligation on all companies to achieve certain standards — and those standards will inevitably become tougher as the years go by. To repeat myself, that is not good for shareholders, free markets, or prosperity. That would not, I suspect, worry the author of the USA Today article overmuch: Imagine the planet is a cancer patient, and climate change is the cancer. Wall Street is prescribing wheatgrass: A well-marketed, profitable idea that has no chance of curing or even slowing down the cancer. In this scenario, wheatgrass is the deadly distraction, misleading the public and delaying lifesaving measures like chemotherapy. But like giving false hope to unproven cures in the midst of a pandemic, the consequences of such irresponsibility are all too obvious. And motivation for why the industry continues to greenwash is all too obvious. I believe we are doing irreversible harm by stalling and greenwashing. And all in the name of profits . . . We’re running out of time and need to accept the truth: To fix our system and curb a growing disaster, we need government to fix the rules. Once again, those who have been pushing ESG so hard (particularly where climate change is concerned) may find themselves on tricky ground if or when they dare to argue back. So, who wrote the USA Today piece? Well, his name is Tariq Fancy, and, in the article, he explains his background: As the former chief investment officer of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world with $8.7 trillion in assets, I led the charge to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) into our global investments. In fact, our messaging helped mainstream the concept that pursuing social good was also good for the bottom line. Sadly, that’s all it is, a hopeful idea. In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community. BlackRock? Oh. The Capital Record We recently launched a new series of podcasts, the Capital Record. Follow the link to see how to subscribe (it’s free!). The Capital Record, which will appear weekly, is designed to make use of another medium to deliver Capital Matters’ defense of free markets. Financier and NRI trustee David L. Bahnsen hosts discussions on economics and finance in this National Review Capital Matters podcast, sponsored by National Review Institute. Episodes feature interviews with the nation’s top business leaders, entrepreneurs, investment professionals, and financial commentators. In the ninth episode, David Bahnsen interviews Father Robert Sirico, founder of the Acton Institute. The conversation goes deep and wide around economic history and is entitled Ayn Rand Meets Religion. And the Capital Matters week that was . . . Perhaps appropriately, given the assumption of regulatory creep contained in the first section of this Capital Letter, we began the week with the Manhattan Institute’s Randall Lutter noting the use that President Biden will make of regulation to push through his agenda. Lutter wonders who will regulate the regulators: The Biden administration, supported by thin Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, may soon begin issuing regulations to achieve its policy goals. A presidential memo from last month outlines the administration’s plan for modernizing the federal regulatory-development process within the executive branch. It calls for rulemaking-process improvements to promote goals such as public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, and equity. But a close reading of Biden’s memo raises questions about whether the process improvements that it envisions will suffice to provide necessary transparency and accountability in rulemaking. In fact, Congress should consider taking additional steps in order to ensure transparency and accountability and to help make regulations authorized by existing statutes more efficient and cost-effective . . . In 2000, Congress authorized but did not fund an office of regulatory analysis that would have been housed in the General Accountability Office. Congress should now authorize and fund such a body, either as a part of the GAO or as a stand-alone organization. An independent office of regulatory analysis would surely not prevent all federal regulatory excesses, either those that go beyond existing statutory authority or those that are legally sound but burden families and small businesses and curtail innovation without commensurate benefits. But it would help protect the impartiality of estimates of the economic effects of federal regulation and thereby enhance serious deliberations about specific federal regulations and the regulatory process generally. And in a troubled world in which legislative action by our elected officials may be limited and new regulations abundant, this modest step is well worth taking. It is indeed, but I am not holding my breath. PERC’s Brian Yablonski argued that private landowners ought to have a role to play in Biden’s plan to conserve 30 percent of all U.S. lands and waters by 2030: There will be a push to use old, divisive tools on public lands to score easy gains, such as designating new monuments or banning fossil-fuel development. But conserving land does not necessarily require a heavy hand from the federal government. The administration should use this moment to explore newer, more-creative market-based solutions. Indeed, whatever its instincts to the contrary, this would be its best chance of success . . . Private landowners play a vital but often overlooked role in sustaining much of what many Americans want to conserve — abundant wildlife, clean water, and vast open spaces. Altogether, private lands are home to 75 percent of the nation’s wetlands and more than 80 percent of its grasslands. Two-thirds of all threatened and endangered species depend upon private lands for the majority of their habitat. But getting landowner buy-in for a federal initiative won’t be easy in our current “red-county–blue-county” political climate. A recent survey from Duke University found that only 25 percent of rural Americans believe that the federal government, rather than states, should “take the lead” on environmental issues. To address these concerns, the Biden administration should come out strongly against the use of regulations or restrictive designations on private lands to reach its target of 30 by 30. Even the progressive Center for American Progress — in an article published in 2019 that argued for protecting 30 percent by 2030 — said that such policies “need not and must not infringe upon private property rights.” Instead, innovation and incentives should take the lead. Private-land innovators are already harnessing markets for large-landscape conservation . . . It is fair to say that Daniel J. Pilla did not like the look of Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan, which has implications that go far beyond a wealth tax, bad enough as that would be: The merits of the tax itself have been discussed at length. What has not been discussed is the new IRS-enforcement scheme that the bill would create, which would include a staggering increase in the size of the IRS, a substantial expansion of the IRS’s already-oppressive information-reporting requirements, and many more audits and collection actions. Let’s examine these elements more carefully. The bill proposes to increase the IRS’s funding by $100 billion over the next ten years. To put this in perspective, the IRS’s FY 2021 budget is $11.92 billion, up by $409 million from FY 2020. Warren’s bill would nearly double the agency’s funding for FY 2022, and leave it nearly ten times bigger by 2031. What’s more, the bill stipulates that 70 percent of the new money must be used for tax-law enforcement, compared to just 10 percent allocated for “taxpayer services” such as pre-filing assistance and education, filing and account services, and taxpayer-advocacy services. Again, for perspective, the IRS’s FY 2021 budget allocates $2.556 billion for taxpayer services and $5.213 billion, or just about twice as much, for enforcement activities such as audits, collections, litigation, and criminal investigations. Warren’s bill would give the IRS seven times more money for enforcement than for taxpayer services . . . It gets worse. But then you knew that. Charlie Cooke meanwhile didn’t think that Joe Biden had been entirely straightforward about his tax plans. Then: Joe Biden will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. Period. Now: Psaki says potential tax increase on those making $400,000 or more means that income threshold applies to “families.” One cannot square “anyone” and “families,” writes Charlie. Indeed. “Watch this space,” he adds. I think I know what will fill it. Phil Klein, meanwhile, the new editor of National Review Online (welcome!), disapproved of the fact that Chuck Schumer “is pushing Biden to remove the $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes from federal taxes (known as the SALT tax cap)”: The Tax Policy Center has found that were the cap lifted, a majority of the benefits would go to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, and 96 percent of would go to the top 20 percent of taxpayers. Virtually no middle-class taxpayers would benefit from the repeal, which would reduce revenues by about $327 billion over the next five years. One effect of the tax cap was that it allowed liberal states such as Schumer’s to hike taxes while minimizing the fallout from doing so. It’s no surprise that since the cap was put in place, people have been fleeing New York and California in droves for lower-tax jurisdictions — a trend that was accelerated by those states’ abysmal handling of COVID-19. I shall say nothing. (Don’t @ me.) Tax week continued with Kevin Hassett and Matthew Jensen adding up all the stimulus packages and then running some numbers. Brace yourselves: It is possible that lower spending will eventually offset the debt from all this stimulus, but what if, as the Biden team signaled this week, the stimulus bill is paid for with tax hikes? Just to make it personal, wouldn’t you like to know what your tax bill will be for all the stimulus packages, so you can, with your usual rational panache, save in order to finance your new liability just as Friedman suggested all rational people would do? To find out, we relied on a methodology that was developed by one of us (Jensen) and his coauthor Aspen Gorry in a 2011 article. The idea is that the current distribution of taxes paid is the result of a political process that has evolved in almost Darwinian fashion over time and thus is likely to persist. Tax hikes come and go, but the basic distribution of taxes paid varies much less than you might think, with the wealthiest paying the vast majority of taxes under both Republican and Democratic administrations. It is highly unlikely that a bill as high as $5.3 trillion will be distributed differently from today’s taxes. The richest of the rich simply don’t have that much money. Once we accept that assumption that the future tax hike will be distributed according to today’s distribution of taxes, we can estimate the tax bill for each income level. How are taxes distributed? According to calculations based on the Tax-Brain software available at PSLmodels.org we found that in 2020, individuals with incomes below $75,000 paid about 12 percent of total taxes, while those with incomes between $75,000 and $200,000 paid about 34 percent of taxes, and those with incomes above that paid the rest. Assuming that pattern holds . . . [we can see] how a future tax bill associated with COVID-19 relief would be distributed. Even with the high progressivity of the current tax code, the bills are extraordinary. For those with incomes between $30,000 and $40,000, the tax hike needed today to pay for the combined stimulus packages would be about $5,000. Those with incomes between $40,000 and $50,000 would pay about $9,000, while those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 would have to fork over $16,000. That rises to $27,000 for incomes between $75,000 and $100,000, and $51,000 for incomes between $100,000 and $200,000. For higher earners, the bills climb so fast that they jump off the chart. The average for Americans with incomes between $500,000 and $1 million is $304,000. A typical American family, with $88,000 of income, faces a bill near $27,000. And speaking of stimulus, Veronique de Rugy didn’t see too much of it coming out of the latest $1.9 trillion: Even if you are sympathetic to the idea that government spending can stimulate the economy, there is no way to justify the size of the American Rescue Plan, a plan that has little to do with rescuing us but is a first step toward a progressive paradise á la Bernie Sanders, at least with the tradition tools used by Keynesian or even neoliberal thinkers. That level of spending has nothing to do with the traditional justification of filling the economy’s output gap, the difference between actual economic activity and potential output in a normal economy, unless we are willing to recognize that the economic return on this government spending (the spending multiplier) is ridiculously small — much smaller than 1. Let’s do the math: The Congressional Budget Office projects that the output gap will be $700 billion through 2023, the period when most of the $1.9 trillion in spending will take place. It means that $1.9 trillion is two or three times more than needed to fill the gap. Unless one is willing to say that the multiplier is roughly 0.37. For each dollar the government spends (and takes from the real economy), it gets $0.37 in growth. Not too glorious . . . But $1.9 trillion isn’t the end of the binge. Robert VerBruggen warned that another $2–4 trillion might be on the way, this time largely on infrastructure. There might be some projects that justify additional federal spending — which, at about $100 billion per year, already covers about a quarter of American infrastructure costs — but most infrastructure improvements can and should just be left to state and local governments. These entities can decide for themselves whether to pony up, and with an overly generous handout from the COVID bill, they’re in good financial shape. Meanwhile, there is no guarantee that infrastructure will “pay for itself” any better than tax cuts do. One can find studies claiming that every dollar of infrastructure investment creates several dollars in economic growth, but as Duranton et al. explain, the overall literature is “mixed,” with results that are sensitive to the statistical techniques used. But free-market conservatives might not have a veto here. In that case, what should they do with what leverage they have? As much as they possibly can, they should seek to include reforms that bring prices down. Infrastructure is way too expensive in this country, and if conservatives can’t prevent trillions in new spending, they should at least try to make the spending more efficient . . . Philip Cross doubted whether higher minimum wages would reduce poverty: Most studies conclude that minimum-wage hikes result in job losses, especially among the younger generation, while doing little to reduce poverty. The failure of minimum-wage laws to achieve their intended goal of helping low-income families is not surprising. Minimum-wage laws are designed to use employers to achieve a social goal at minimal cost to the government, but they incentivize firms to lower total labor costs in ways that frustrate that goal. This is because minimum-wage laws have contradictory effects: They help a small number of full-time workers at the expense of others, especially those who lose job opportunities . . . Almost all the evidence for the impact of higher minimum wages on jobs is based on the relatively small increases that historically have been the norm. The Democratic proposal is more in line with the sizable increase made by Canadian provincial governments in Ontario (32 percent) and Alberta (36 percent) when, a few years ago, they boosted their minimum wage to $14 and $15 an hour, respectively. Economists expect these very large hikes eventually will result in disproportionately more job losses because outsized increases give employers more incentive to cut costs while unable to make the subtle adjustments to lower nonwage benefits or higher labor productivity that help firms control overall costs. One mitigating factor for the proposed U.S. federal minimum-wage increase is that it starts from a much lower initial wage rate than in either Ontario or Alberta. This also, however, magnifies the shock of moving to a $15 an hour wage. So far, the sharp hikes in the minimum wages for Alberta and Ontario in 2018 have had a negative impact on youth employment. The youth-employment rate fell by a full point in Ontario between late 2017 and early 2020 (before the pandemic began), while in Alberta it dropped by half a point over the same period. By comparison, the youth-employment rate in all of Canada rose by nearly 2 percentage points over the same period. Not having a job lowers the earnings profile of young people for years . . . The CEI’s Iain Murray argued that decentralizing social media was the way to approach the current conundrum over Big Tech and its control over speech: Before the “great de-platforming” following the events at the Capitol on January 6, defenders of a laissez-faire approach to social media were able to tell those unhappy with Big Tech’s content moderation decisions to simply switch platforms. But when Amazon Web Services removed Parler from its cloud hosting, making the app impossible to access, the case against a government crackdown became less convincing. But if given some time to innovate in an environment free from stifling regulation, the market may yet produce a solution in the form of decentralized social media. It seems everyone is concerned about “Big Tech” these days. The Left is worried about its role in spreading misinformation — both actual and perceived. The Right is worried about what they see as anti-conservative bias on the part of tech companies. Even libertarians, who regard these two concerns as misplaced, worry about cronyism and a disturbing tendency to cozy up to authoritarian regimes. And the Big Tech firms themselves say they need to be regulated — on their own terms. But compelling companies to quiet the “hate speech” du jour will displease conservatives and libertarians. Forcing companies to carry all speech will anger the Left and libertarians. And doing nothing will annoy the Left and Right alike. The good news is that we already have a possible path out of this impasse: disintermediation. In practical terms, that means replacing the current generation of social-media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Parler, with decentralized social media — a different infrastructure where there is no central server. Instead of a company owning and controlling the site, the users themselves would control content moderation and other management of the network . . . Glenn Hubbard, a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, asked how to “build back better”: Policy-makers are often impatient with the extended time it takes for bridges to make a difference. If a community is hurting because of imports or technology, why not just put in temporary tariffs or other protections (e.g., a wall)? Very simply, because to do so would be to postpone the inevitable work that all communities must do in order to participate in a dynamic economy. More important, walls are almost always inequitable. Tariffs on steel might temporarily help a few steelmaking towns, but they ultimately operate at the cost of many more manufacturing towns with falling revenue because of higher prices for a key input. Protections usually favor well-connected groups at the expense of underprivileged communities trying to make it the usual way. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, understood this dynamic as well as anyone did. In his day, mercantilist thinkers thought that the wealth of nations consisted of stocks of gold or silver. They wanted to increase those stocks, the better to fund wars and explorations. They convinced kings to intervene in markets to limit competition at home and abroad for favored activities. Trade surpluses were good, trade deficits bad, and state-sanctioned monopolies generated more revenue for the crown. For Smith, the wealth of a nation lay in its potential for consumption by the great mass of ordinary people. He wanted to make the economic pie as large as possible. The consumer, not the crown or court, was Smith’s economic king. To expand this wealth, Smith promoted free markets and competition guided by the invisible hand. These forces reconciled self-interest with the expanding pie for everyone. He wanted everyone, even those without connections, to be able to compete, so he encouraged education and other kinds of preparation. Mass flourishing was his goal. Today’s economy is more complex and disruptive than that of Smith’s day, but we still need broad participation. That’s the only way to keep raising living standards for more people, and bring economic justice to formerly marginalized groups. Participation is also good for its own sake. Think of mass flourishing as being “in the groove” of the dynamic economy, akin to psychologists’ concept of flow. Like flow, flourishing requires individuals who can raise their game to keep up with wherever the economy goes. People feel a sense of belonging in the economy when they work in open markets. They don’t get that sense when we try to protect them with walls. Well-connected workers will get those protected jobs, while other people will remain stuck. It’s far better to let consumers’ tastes and incomes shape the opportunities for firms and the employment patterns that follow. And once you start a bit of tinkering in the economy, everyone wants favors, and pretty soon you’ve smothered the economy’s dynamism inside a series of well-intentioned walls . . . Jimmy Quinn described how the Beijing regime had used capital as one of the ways in which it reined in Hong Kong: Even in the earliest years of the period following the city’s 1997 handover from the U.K. to China, the Chinese regime’s willingness to use flex its financial muscle as a way of asserting control over the life of the city was already apparent. As a result of the 2003 Closer Economic Partnership Agreement, trade between Hong Kong and the mainland tripled over the ensuing decade. The growing influx of mainland cash degraded Hong Kong’s financial regulations, allowing Chinese firms to take charge of its capital markets. In 2004, mainland corporations accounted for 31 percent of Hong Kong’s stock market by market capitalization; by 2019, that figure had risen to about 71 percent. Naturally, Beijing turned its increasing control of Hong Kong capital flows into a political weapon with which it would eventually beat down the city’s pro-democracy opposition. The report notes that as the regime gained greater clout within Hong Kong-based multinational corporations, it installed party loyalists in key positions within them. And not coincidentally, during the protests against an extradition law proposed by the city’s chief executive in 2019, a number of businesses restricted the political speech of, and in some cases fired, employees for supporting the democracy movement, while banks, such as HSBC, closed accounts used to support the protesters . . . Steve Hanke and Robert Simon argued that: Bitcoin clearly falls short of meeting the four standard criteria to be designated as a currency. Accordingly, it should not be viewed as a currency but as a speculative asset with a fundamental value of zero. That being said, Bitcoin does have an objective market price. That price is determined by speculators operating in a whirlpool in which they are purchasing an asset with very little or no utility in the hope of selling it later at a higher price: greater fools and all that . . . Thanks to ease of entry and competition, inferior cryptocurrency products will struggle, in the end, to survive. Just look at Bitcoin. Although its market capitalization has skyrocketed, Bitcoin’s share of the total crypto market has fallen from 94 percent in April 2013 to 61 percent today. Eventually, Bitcoin’s current limited use value will likely be eclipsed by the offerings of superior challengers. So, just what might an effective competitor look like? It would be in the form of a private cryptocurrency board. A traditional currency board issues a currency that is freely convertible at an absolutely fixed exchange rate with a foreign anchor currency or gold. Therefore, under a currency-board arrangement, there are no capital controls. The currency issued by a currency board is backed 100 percent with anchor-currency reserves. So, with a currency board, its currency is simply a clone of its anchor currency. Currency boards have existed in about 70 countries, and none have failed — including the North Russian currency board installed on November 11, 1918, during the Russian Civil War. What all currency boards — past and present — have in common is that they are public institutions, but there is no requirement that currency boards be publicly owned. A private cryptocurrency board would be the ideal institutional arrangement for the crypto world. For example, its home offices and reserves could be located in Switzerland, a safe-haven financial center, and it could be governed under Swiss law. It could be operated with a small staff, as is the case with all traditional currency boards. As for its anchor, it could be a currency issued by a central bank, or gold, which is not issued by a sovereign. Furthermore, given its digital nature, the balance-sheet information of a private cryptocurrency board, including its reserves, could be publicly available and audited by independent auditors on a regular basis. With such a system, the crypto world would finally have a product that is more than just a speculative house of cards. Our chart guy, Joseph Sullivan, suggested that our understanding of the growth in international trade owed more than is understood to the growth in international borders: As empires crumble, new sovereign states with new national borders of their own are born, and trade across national borders increases accordingly. In 1920, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires had recently collapsed in the wake of World War I. While the empires of Western European powers such as the United Kingdom and France would not start their collapse until the 1950s, the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s triggered the most recent of the upward waves in national land border visible on the chart. All in all, miles of land border slightly more than tripled from 41,920 in 1920 to 132,940 in 2019, as international trade’s share of GDP slightly less than tripled from 21.7 percent in 1920 to 60.3 percent in 2019. The broad similarity in the size of their increase — both roughly tripled — suggests their rise together is no coincidence. But stability, once variation in the quantity of national land border is factored in, may be the most remarkable attribute of international trade’s role in the world economy. In the 100 years that span 1920 to 2019, international trade’s share of world GDP never dipped below 0.21 percent or above 0.51 percent. These upper and lower bounds have also been retraced with a regularity that suggests they may be more than coincidence. The border-adjusted low of 0.21 percent of world GDP per 1,000 miles of national land border was reached in the Great Depression of 1932 as well as at the height of the Cold War in 1967. The overall series high of 0.51 percent came in 1920, when far less national border existed than today. Since 2000, the quantity of border has stayed roughly stable, and international trade’s share of world GDP per thousand miles of national border has not budged above the 0.46 percent it registered in four separate years, including in 2019. Some today worry about this lack of new growth in international trade’s share of world GDP. If history is any guide, their best bets for unlocking that growth would be for secessionist movements in places like Catalonia or Scotland to succeed. But many proponents of deepening international trade are also opponents of new national borders. They may have, then, an internal contradiction to resolve: If you’re applauding the growth of international trade over the last 100 years, you have the birth of new national borders to thank. Jerry Bowyer pointed out that the Fed’s “no change” stance was really a change: The Fed is moving the goal posts, giving itself more permission to keep the game going. Gold, crypto, forex, and inflation-protected treasury bonds all were up in response, though there were reversals subsequently, especially on Thursday when markets reacted to other news, including an unexpectedly weak jobless-claims report and rising concerns about global supply chains. Markets sifted through the new data and sold off treasuries (raising yields) and stocks, particularly tech stocks that tend to be more interest-rate sensitive because of long time horizons. Perhaps investors are looking at both the Fed and the economy and realizing that there are limits to how much real economic good money creation can accomplish. I think that, in making their initial reflationary bet, the markets had things right and may even be underestimating the radical nature of the Fed’s policy agenda. The Fed made it clear last year that it intended to keep “inflation moderately above 2% for some time.” It also reiterated this week that it “will aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time so that inflation averages 2 percent over time.” In other words, the goal isn’t just to get PCE inflation above 2 percent, but also to raise the average above that level. That average includes the past two years of PCE inflation averaging only 1.3 percent, and only 1.5 percent since the end of the Great Recession. The math is pretty clear. If the Fed aims for four years of average PCE inflation of 2 percent, and the past two years averaged only 1.3 percent, then the next two years will have to average 2.7 percent. And to add fuel to the fire (or is it firewater to the punchbowl?), that target is a PCE target. But CPI inflation runs about one-third higher. So, if the Fed is giving itself permission for a PCE party of more than 2.7 percent, it is giving itself permission for a CPI party of more than 3 percent “for some time.” And all of that just includes the inflation it wants, not inflationary policies foisted upon it by the implications of yet more Biden spending, or, for that matter, possible minimum-wage-hike effects on unemployment that will force the Fed to adjust its policies to accommodate the NAIRU jacket in which it has now wrapped itself . . . Jon Hartley and Andy Puzder were more sanguine about the inflationary prospects: Inflation has begun increasing but, to this point, only nominally so. It is important to keep in mind that the Fed recently shifted its monetary framework to “flexible average inflation targeting” over the long run. Since we’ve seen drops in inflation over the past year, we think that the Fed’s current accommodative policies are the right framework to make sure inflation runs at an average of 2 percent over the long run. Recently, we have seen little increase in core inflation rates, which exclude gas and food prices. U.S. core CPI year-over-year inflation has been running at 1.3 percent through February compared with the 1.7 percent headline number, which includes oil prices. Rapidly rising oil prices (Brent crude-oil prices rose from about $50 per barrel at the beginning of the year to $70 per barrel as of this writing) are largely responsible for the nominal increase in headline inflation. Core year-over-year PCE inflation (the Fed’s preferred measure) has been running at 1.5 percent through January, still well below the Fed’s 2 percent long-run target. Expectations for future inflation also remain low. Real yields on ten-year Treasury Inflation-Protection Securities (Treasury bonds indexed to inflation to protect investors from the negative effects of rising prices) have risen by 0.4 percent since the beginning of the year, reflecting improved U.S. investment prospects while also suggesting that headline ten-year inflation expectations have increased by only 0.3 percent. The M2 money stock (a measure for the amount of currency in circulation) has increased by a meaningful 20 percent since the passage of the CARES Act, understandably raising inflation concerns. But, it has leveled off since, suggesting a one-time increase. A one-time increase shows up more meaningfully in five-year inflation expectations (which are up 0.6 percent since January 1) compared with ten-year inflation expectations (which have risen only 0.3 percent). This is not to downplay the potential for inflationary pressures down the road. With the passage of the Democrats’ recent $1.9 trillion so-called COVID-relief American Rescue Plan Act, there is certainly a risk that the economy could overheat. The fact is that the economy would have substantially improved this year — and may well have done so without dramatic inflationary pressure — if the Biden administration had done nothing. Unfortunately, it likely did too much in its effort to “go big.” . . . Finally, we produced the Capital Note, our “daily” (well, Tuesday–Friday, anyway, though this week Friday Note mysteriously went missing). Topics covered included: China’s tech crackdown, Dalio’s dollar doom, Ashworth’s response, a look at China’s advantages in entrepreneurship, the FOMC meeting, tech stocks tumble, Treasurys climb, the risks of forward guidance, priorities, priorities, and Danone’s management change, priorities, priorities, genocide and climate change, earmarks, bubble watch, and price to story ratios.",-1.6381875849583714 "Stacey Abrams’s indefensible attack on Georgia voting reforms. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE S tacey Abrams and like-minded progressives are dumbing down Jim Crow. In a combination of rank demagoguery and misinformation, they accuse Georgia Republicans of instituting changes in election rules worthy of a hideous period of racial repression. On CNN earlier this month, Abrams said of these changes, “I do absolutely agree that it’s racist. It is a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” “The only connection that we can find,” she continued, “is that more people of color voted, and it changed the outcome of elections in a direction that Republicans do not like. And so, instead of celebrating better access …",0.8815095351840438 "An election worker checks a voter’s drivers license as North Carolina’s “Voter ID” law goes into effect for the state’s presidential primary election at a polling place in Charlotte, N.C., March 15, 2016. (Chris Keane/Reuters) Steven Taylor at Outside the Beltway takes issue with my contention that it is inconsistent for the District of Columbia to demand identification for purposes of keeping non-residents from obtaining vaccines, and for this to be reported as an unremarkable step, when D.C. Democrats and the media are the sort of people who react with paroxysms of rage and horror if anyone seeks to use identification or voter-registration lists to keep non-residents from voting. First, Taylor complains that “it is untrue that Democrats are ‘trying to abolish state voter-identification.’ Instead, HR1 would provide an alternative for those who lack ID at the polling place.” Of course, H.R. 1 would indeed abolish a great many states’ identification laws for in-person voting, and eliminate identification requirements, notarization, and witnesses for absentee ballots. His evidence is that H.R. 1 would allow voters to submit a self-sworn statement. I suppose you could call that “identification” in the same way that writing or saying your name is “identification.” Advertisement Then he says that “no critic of voter ID rules is advocating for a free-for-all wherein anyone could show up to any polling place and vote willy-nilly. See, again, voter registration and checking the rolls at the polling place.” This ignores the extensive provisions of H.R. 1 that would eviscerate voter registration lists, such as automatic and same-day registration, restrictions on keeping voter rolls current, and even allowing a voter to change their name and address on the list at the polling place. Advertisement Taylor says that “the reason that people, such as myself, criticize voter ID rules is not that we are opposed to the notion, on its face, of showing an ID to vote” but that “the chances that lack of specific kinds of ID could hamper a citizen from being able to exercise a fundamental right of citizenship is higher (quite a bit higher, in fact) than the chances of in-person voter fraud taking place (let alone in a way that would affect the outcome).” Of course, the rhetoric surrounding voter-ID requirements is that they ipso facto constitute “voter suppression,” a charge that — if true — would be equally true even if voter fraud was massively epidemic. It is true that few elections will be altered by voter fraud, but it is also true that few if any voters will actually be unable to obtain any valid form of identification, or will be prevented from voting. Both issues are at the margins — and the margins can matter when there are, every year, a few races for a significant office decided by fewer than 100 votes (including this year’s House race for Iowa’s second district, decided by six votes). Finally, Taylor says that “if we just made IDs easy to obtain, free, and universal, we could stop having this discussion . . . I would challenge any advocate of voter ID laws to join me in that solution.” In fact, many states with voter-ID laws make it easy to obtain an ID — Alabama even has a mobile unit to provide free IDs. Very few conservatives or Republicans would be unwilling to sign on to a deal that requires voter ID in exchange for making a state voter ID easier or free to obtain.",-0.0958224196333577 "U.S. soldiers attend welcoming ceremony for NATO troops near Orzysz, Poland, in 2017. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters) The accusation that the military is full of racists and extremists is false, and damaging. During the 1960s and ’70s, those of us who fought in Vietnam became accustomed to having many of our fellow countrymen slander us as, at best, victims of a government that sent its poor to fight a criminal war and, at worst, war criminals ourselves, complicit in the routine commitment of atrocities. But the pendulum began to swing back the other way in the 1980s, and continued in the same direction through the Gulf War and 9/11 until, by the time of George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers had been elevated to the status of “secular saints.” Advertisement My fellow Vietnam veterans and I would no doubt have preferred such reverence to the chilly reception we received after the war, but secular sainthood has created its own set of problems — isolation from American society at large, unequal burden sharing, and a belief in the moral superiority of those who serve over those who haven’t — that threaten to undermine the bond between service members and veterans on the one hand and American society at large on the other. After all, healthy civil-military relations depend on mutual trust between soldiers and the society they serve. Now, the pendulum seems to be swinging back to the bad old days of slandering the military, as part of broader claims that Donald Trump normalized “white supremacy” and other forms of right-wing extremism. The fact that there were veterans among the rioters who unlawfully entered the Capitol on January 6, the persistent claim that Trump appealed to extremist groups, and Trump’s popularity with the military form the basis for proliferating allegations that the military has become a friend to racism and extremism. Indeed, some have even raised the specter of active duty and National Guard troops constituting an “insider threat.” For example, Representative Steve Cohen (D., Tenn.) told CNN that: The [National] Guard is 90-some-odd percent, I believe, male. Only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden. You gotta figure that in the Guard, which is predominantly more conservative, and I see that on my social media . . . they’re probably not more than 25 percent of the people that are there protecting us who voted for Biden. . . . The other 75 percent are in the class that would be the large class of folks who might want to do something. And there were military people and police who took oaths to defend the Constitution and to protect and defend who didn’t do it who were in the insurrection. So, it does concern me. Cohen added that people on social media had referenced and reminded him of the assassination of then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Responding to a question about white supremacy during his CNN Town Hall on February 16, President Biden said: I would make sure that my Justice Department and the Civil Rights Division is focused heavily on those very folks, and I would make sure that we, in fact, focus on how to deal with the rise of white supremacy. And you see what’s happening, the studies that are beginning to be done, maybe at your university as well, about the impact of former military, former police officers, on — on the growth of white supremacy in some of these groups. To address concerns about extremism in the ranks of the military, Biden’s secretary of defense, retired Army general Lloyd Austin, has called for a “stand down” across the force to address the issue. “I really and truly believe that 99.9 percent of our servicemen and -women believe in [their] oath. They believe, embrace the values that we are focused on, and they’re doing the right things,” Secretary Austin said on February 19. “I expect for the numbers [of extremists in the ranks] to be small, but quite frankly, they’ll probably be a little bit larger than most of us would guess. . . . But I would just say that, you know, small numbers, in this case, can have an outsized impact.” But Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, argued that the problem has been overstated. “They have self-admitted that the problem doesn’t exist, to their knowledge, and that’s because it doesn’t,” Patel said on Fox News: White supremacy is not rampant throughout the Department of Defense. That is outrageous and offensive to our men and women in uniform. . . . The Biden Pentagon is trading in politics instead of logic and fact. . . . Their own spokesperson and their own secretary of defense, they have said they do not know the problem and whether it exists. They don’t have a name for it. They don’t have a solution for it. But they’re going to label it anyway. There is indeed a “real problem”; it’s just not the one people are talking about. It is instead that political and military leaders have failed to define their terms. Racism vs. Racial Prejudice Let me be clear: There have been serious racial incidents involving military service members in the past, and military leaders were quick to deal with the perpetrators appropriately. But the idea that racism is somehow pervasive in the military is nonsense. The problem with this latest campaign is that most of the recent claims about racism in the military conflate true racism and white supremacy on the one hand and racial prejudice on the other. The former has traditionally referred to membership in, or sympathy with, the KKK, neo-Nazis, skinheads, or other groups that preach violence. The U.S. military has long been vigilant about the possibility of extremist groups taking advantage of military training to advance their own goals. Background checks have always been a part of the recruitment and enlistment processes. And the services have been quick to separate individuals whose background checks raise red flags. The latter is a manifestation of what both Plato and Aristotle called “love of one’s own,” a feature of human nature. The Greeks preferred their ways to those of the Persians. The Athenians preferred their own laws to those of the Spartans. All humans prefer their own families and communities to others’. Racial prejudice arises from generalizations about other racial groups, and is not unique to any one group. It has been my own experience that military service undermines such prejudice. Because service members learn to work toward a common goal with others from different backgrounds, the service often teaches them to rise above their preexisting prejudices. Advertisement It is also the case that although the services reflect the racial attitudes of Americans at large, they have done well in overcoming racial problems. As the late military sociologist Charles Moskos observed a quarter-century ago, the United States Army is the only American institution in which black men routinely give orders to white men. The military is, by necessity, a meritocracy, which gives it a leg up on other institutions in grappling with the problem of prejudice. Extremism Although extremism and racism overlap in many cases, they are different phenomena. In the current debate, “extremism” apparently does not include the groups that instigated mayhem across America in the summer of 2020, rioting, looting, and committing arson. The media has persisted in representing those groups as “peaceful protesters,” and since peaceful protesters can’t be extremists, the term is reserved for right-wing militia groups and the like. But even when one confines the discussion to one side of the political aisle, where does one draw the line? Is supporting the Second Amendment or advocating smaller and less intrusive government “extremist”? Is a service member or veteran who supported President Trump an extremist? Is it extremist to be skeptical of the single-minded quest for “diversity”? Ironically, the military’s attempts to address an alleged lack of diversity in the ranks, like all identity politics, risks dividing people rather than unifying them by suggesting that justice is a function of attributes such as skin color rather than individual character. In the military, where institutional effectiveness depends on cohesion born of trust between and among service members, this is a serious problem. Undermining Trust Thus, the claim that extremism and white supremacy are widespread in the military undermines trust on two levels: First, between the American people and the military as an institution; and second, between the military rank-and-file on the one hand and their leaders on the other. Advertisement Americans hold the military in high regard, perhaps too high. But if civilians have tended to place members of the military on a pedestal, implying that extremism and white supremacy are rampant in the military can only engender civilian disrespect for the armed forces and lead to unjust condemnation. This, needless to say, does not bode well for healthy civil-military relations. Advertisement Regarding trust within the force, what is the rank-and-file soldier to think when both politicians and especially senior officers seem to suggest that supporting President Trump or traditionally conservative ideas such as gun rights and smaller, less intrusive government might make him or her a threat to the country? What will be the consequences for morale and discipline if the ranks believe that senior leaders have sold them out by their apparent willingness to go along with such accusations? Advertisement I am personally aware of increasing disillusionment on the part of service members who feel betrayed by their senior leadership. Individuals join the military for a variety of reasons, but a dominant one is a sense of patriotism, which is undermined if service members believe that senior officers are willing to sacrifice them to trendy political ideas. It is disheartening to note that no senior officer to my knowledge has stepped forward to denounce this latest slander against the American soldier. While real instances of extremism and white supremacy must be identified and perpetrators separated from the service, as has been the practice in the past, suggesting that white supremacy and extremism are rampant in the military is a disservice to the force. Both political leaders and senior officers owe it to the country in general and the military in particular to define extremism, identify actual cases, and provide data supporting their claim that a real problem does in fact exist. To do otherwise is to contribute to a calumny against those they claim to lead.",0.05460154210288925 "Just not this one. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE C onservatives have hated the Department of Education since it was founded, and before it was founded, we preemptively hated the notion of it. It is not difficult to see why. The Department of Education was a Jimmy Carter project, and Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 promising to abolish it. Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and principal architect of those “Reagan deficits,” had other ideas, and, though Reagan kept up the pressure (in his 1982 State of the Union speech, he promised to “dismantle” the department), he was unsuccessful. When Reagan ran for reelection in 1984 (winning 49 states in …",-0.20636969145464343 "On the First Things website, Joshua Craddock has responded to the three “doubts and questions” that I raised about John Finnis’s essay bearing the (rather confusing) title “Abortion Is Unconstitutional.” I’m grateful to Craddock for his civil and intelligent response. I’m happy to continue the conversation. 1. For the sake of clarity, I will repeat the core of my first objection (emphasis added): According to Finnis, by the end of 1868, 30 of the 37 states then in the Union had enacted anti-abortion statutes that superseded the common-law prohibition on abortion after quickening, and 27 of these 30 states criminalized abortion “before (as well as after) quickening.” That would mean that the Fourteenth Amendment, on Finnis’s reading, obligated at least ten states to enact statutes that generally prohibited abortion from conception. If this “plain meaning” would have been “too obvious to need discussion” among the ratifying legislators, wouldn’t we expect some evidence somewhere that some legislators in those ten states recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment would obligate them to enact such statutes? Or that, immediately after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, legislators in most or all of those states would have enacted such statutes and cited the Fourteenth Amendment in support of doing so? a. Craddock first responds by asserting that “the post-ratification pattern [of state abortion enactments] matches what Whelan says we would expect to see if the Fourteenth Amendment recognized preborn personhood.” He cites seven states that enacted statutes in the fifteen years after ratification. Craddock’s response misses (and misstates) my point. It’s no surprise that the trend of state abortion enactments that preceded the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment continued at a leisurely pace in the fifteen years after it. The fact that the trend was the same in the decades before and after ratification suggests that the Fourteenth Amendment had no effect on the post-ratification enactments. I argued that if Finnis were right, we should have expected immediate enactments in most or all of those ten states, that we should have expected legislators to cite their Fourteenth Amendment obligation, and that we should have expected some ratifying legislators from those states to raise the issue. The post-ratification enactments that Craddock cites thus have no bearing on my objections. Advertisement b. Craddock next contends that I’m demanding too much, that I am “impos[ing] an unreasonably high burden of proof that originalists do not apply to any other question.” I’ll note, first, that I am responding to Finnis’s particular claim that the absence of evidence is because the “plain meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment would have been “too obvious to need discussion.” At the very least, if it were “too obvious to need discussion,” we should have seen immediate post-ratification enactments in most or all of the ten states. On Craddock’s complaint that I “apply a different and much higher standard of proof in the abortion context than in the context of school segregation and interracial marriage,” I’ll limit myself to two points. First, the two contexts are not at all parallel. No one disputes that the primary purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to put an end to various forms of state-sponsored racial discrimination. By contrast, I don’t think that even Finnis or Craddock contend that the drafters or ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended it to have any effect on abortion. They argue instead that it had a decisive incidental effect. Second, original expected applications inform (but do not exhaust) original public meaning. The weight they have necessarily depends on context. As law professor Michael McConnell has argued, while constitutional amendments “generally reflect, rather than contradict, popular opinion” and contemporaneous practice, the post-Civil War Amendments were an extraordinary instance in which a “political minority, armed with the prestige of victory in the Civil War and with military control over the political apparatus of the rebel states, imposed constitutional change on the Nation as the price of reunion, with little regard for popular opinion.” Craddock says that he also “cannot help but remark upon the oddity of an originalist who disregards substantial evidence about the original public meaning of an enacted text for lack of a clear statement in legislative history.” But the failure of the ten states to immediately enact statutory bans on abortion is not “lack of a clear statement in legislative history.” Nor, indeed, can Craddock point to any statement, clear or otherwise, that suggests a linkage between the Fourteenth Amendment and the later enactments. And I’m not disregarding Finnis’s or Craddock’s evidence; I’m just questioning whether it’s as compelling as they think it is. 2. Here is the gist of my second objection: If [the Due Process Clause of ] the Fourteenth Amendment requires the states to protect pre-natal human beings from abortion, then wouldn’t [the Due Process Clause of] the Fifth Amendment have imposed a similar requirement on the federal government from 1791 forward? Yet even over the several decades before 1868 in which many states enacted statutes that barred abortion from conception, Congress never did so with respect to the District of Columbia. Congress didn’t do so in 1866, the year in which it proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the states, and it didn’t do so in the proximate aftermath of ratification. It wasn’t until 1901 (if my quick research is correct) that Congress enacted an abortion statute for D.C. Craddock purports to address my entire objection, when he in fact takes issue only with the last sentence. I will happily accept his account that the Legislative Assembly for the District of Columbia enacted an anti-abortion statute in 1872. That still wouldn’t explain why Congress didn’t enact an anti-abortion statute in 1866 or in the preceding decades. But I acknowledge that the Due Process Clause may just be a sideshow. Although Finnis seems to treat the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause indistinguishably, I understand Craddock to regard the Due Process Clause as playing little if any role in the abortion context. (I’m relying here on an event in which Craddock and I took part, not on anything in his current response.) The simple reason, of course, is that abortion is, in all or almost all instances in this country, not an act by which the government deprives the unborn human being of life. Advertisement Advertisement 3. Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, I questioned “how the Supreme Court has the institutional capacity to establish the ‘regulative regime’ that Finnis envisions.” Craddock (“Only Finnis can elaborate on his argument ….”) and I are both far from clear what Finnis has in mind. (So, by the way, are some of Finnis’s avid Twitter supporters, who offer very different accounts even as they damn anyone who isn’t compelled by the clarity of a position they can’t agree on.) But I don’t understand his response to me. I stated that “under Finnis’s theory, it would seem that the Court would be in some way requiring the states (or Congress) to affirmatively enact criminal laws prohibiting abortion.” Craddock says my reading is “improbable,” but he then speculates that this is what Finnis’s theory would entail: Where the protections of state homicide laws are wrongfully withheld from preborn persons, the Court would issue rulings requiring states to extend equal protection to preborn persons with respect to those homicide laws before they could be enforced. This sure strikes me as “in some way requiring the states (or Congress) to affirmatively enact criminal laws prohibiting abortion.” Oh, sure, a state would have the option of not enforcing its homicide laws at all. But what state would view that as an acceptable option? So it would then have to extend its homicide laws to cover abortion—if, that is, it chose to comply with the Court’s mandate. And what would the Court do if a state simply refused to comply with its mandate? Overturn the convictions of anyone convicted under the state’s homicide laws? Craddock’s claim that the Court’s role would be similar to its supervision of school desegregation misses the point that it’s one thing to order state officials to desegregate schools, but that it’s quite another to order them to enact particular criminal laws or to undertake criminal prosecutions. Advertisement The unprecedented and unworkable role that Finnis’s theory would seem to entail for the Supreme Court provides another reason to question its soundness. Advertisement 4. Let me add a fourth objection, one that I raised in the event that I did with Craddock: In the original Constitution, the notorious Three-Fifths Clause called for representatives to “be apportioned among the several States … according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” (Emphasis added.) This provision certainly seems to contemplate a counting of persons who have been born—and thus to use the term “Persons” in a way that excludes prenatal human beings. All of the thirty or so other uses of “Person” or “Persons” (or “person” or “persons”) in the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Twelfth Amendment sensibly accommodate the same meaning. As Finnis acknowledges, section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which supersedes the Three-Fifths Clause, calls for representatives to be apportioned among the states “according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” Advertisement It’s possible, as Finnis argues, that “persons” in section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment bears a different meaning with respect to natural persons than it bears in section 1. It’s also possible that “persons” in section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment and “Persons” in the Three-Fifths Clause include unborn human beings and that, for practical reasons of convenience, no census has undertaken to try to count them. Further, it’s possible that every other reference to “person” or “persons” in the Constitution also includes unborn human beings—and that it’s the surrounding language that imposes any formal or practical restriction to born human beings. But I think that it’s at least as possible that, notwithstanding Blackstone, the drafters and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment understood that the term “person,” as it had been used in the Constitution for the preceding eight decades, included only those natural persons who had been born. * * * Like Finnis and Craddock, I very much hope that the day comes very soon when the lives of unborn human beings have ample protection in law. In my judgment, the only prospect of any imminent broad protection involves the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and restoring abortion to the democratic processes in the states.",0.4381464904780744 "U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) 1957—President Eisenhower’s nomination of William J. Brennan, Jr. to serve on the Supreme Court is confirmed by the Senate. Brennan, a former New Jersey supreme court justice, is already serving on the Court by virtue of Eisenhower’s October 1956 recess appointment of him. Eisenhower’s selection of Brennan—which Eisenhower later identifies as one of his two biggest mistakes as president (see This Day item for March 1, 1954)—is said to have resulted from a recommendation by his campaign advisers that an appointment of a Catholic Democrat from the Northeast would attract critical voters. So much for basing Supreme Court selections on short-term political calculations. In retrospect, that recommendation appears to have been as unnecessary as it was foolish: Eisenhower wins re-election over Adlai Stevenson by a huge margin, 57%-42% in the popular vote and 457 to 73 in the electoral college. Advertisement In his 34 years on the Court, Brennan deploys his impressive backroom political skills in the service of liberal judicial activism. It is doubtful that anyone has done more to misshape the Supreme Court’s understanding of the Constitution.",1.3905038487611487 "Justice William Brennan in 1972 (Library of Congress) 1963— As Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel write in Justice Brennan, this day stands out among all others as the day when Justice Brennan’s “new majority”—resulting from Arthur Goldberg’s replacement of Felix Frankfurter—“flexed its muscles”: “The liberal bloc overturned four of the Court’s long-standing precedents” on a single day. In Fay v. Noia and Townsend v. Sain, in (as Justice Harlan puts it in his dissent in Fay) a “square rejection of long-accepted principles governing the nature and scope of the Great Writ,” the Court dramatically expands the federal habeas corpus rights of state prisoners. In Gideon v. Wainwright, the Court, overruling its 1942 decision in Betts v. Brady, holds that the Constitution requires that states provide counsel for indigent defendants in all criminal trials. And in Gray v. Sanders, the Court rushes deeper into the thicket of state redistricting, as it adopts a theory of political equality that it had previously rejected.",-0.9347411187600728 "Begin with Blackstone’s Commentaries,” wrote presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860, when asked how to get a thorough knowledge of law; read them “carefully through, say twice.” (That’s four thousand pages, just to “begin” with.) Lawyers involved in drafting and debating the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 were all acquainted with the Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765 in time to be appealed to among the Framers at Philadelphia in 1787, and still foundational, in the original or in American editions, in early- and mid-nineteenth-century legal education. The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to sustain the Civil Rights Act of 1866, whose sponsor, James F. Wilson, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said while introducing it: What are these rights? Certainly they must be as comprehensive as those which belong to Englishmen. . . . Blackstone classifies them under three ­articles, as follows: 1. The right of personal security . . . 2. The right of personal liberty . . . 3. The right of personal property . . . The great fundamental rights are the inalienable possession of both Englishmen and Americans . . . Wilson was quoting from the Commentaries’ first chapter, “Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals,” and Wilson, too, calls these rights absolute, meaning not exceptionless but rather natural or human. Blackstone delineates these rights: The rights of the people of England . . . may be reduced to three principal or primary articles; the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property: because . . . the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense. The passage continues without a break: I. The right of personal security consists in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation. 1. Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor. An infant . . . in the mother’s womb, is supposed in law to be born for many purposes. It is capable of having a legacy, or a surrender of a copyhold estate, made to it. It may have a guardian assigned to it;and it is enabled to have an estate limited to its use, and to take afterwards by such limitation, as if it were then actually born. Plainly, there is an individual, a human being, as soon as there is a living individual in the mother’s womb. For some purposes (guardianship, for example) the law treats such an individual, even at that beginning stage, as equal to a born child. For other purposes, notably direct protection of the right to personal security by the criminal law, the life of the unborn begins “in contemplation of law” only when the “infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb.” But an English statute of 1803, only a generation after Blackstone, made it a felony to attempt abortion even before the child was provably “quick.” Thus, by the dawn of the nineteenth century, English criminal law “established” the “great fundamental right” uniquely important for an unborn child, beginning when the child did: at conception. Notice Blackstone’s and Wilson’s logic: Persons, “individuals,” people, have absolute or natural rights. In England and America alike, the law gives these effect—“establishes” them—as legal “rights of the person.” Where the law’s establishment of personal rights is for any reason defective, individuals have a claim in justice to that law’s replacement or supplementation. Slaves and non-citizen freedmen like Dred Scott, for example, had in reality absolute rights to security, liberty, and property, and were owed state law that neither wholly nor partly denied these rights. Hence the need for a Civil Rights Act, and a Fourteenth Amendment to grant power to enact it (and to make the absolute or natural right a positive-law constitutional right). The Commentaries’ first book is “Of the Rights of Persons,” and its first chapter, “Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals,” begins by explaining what persons are: Persons . . . are divided by the law into either natural persons, or artificial. Natural persons are such as the God of nature formed us; artificial are such as created and devised by human laws . . . which are called corporations or bodies politic. The rights of persons considered in their natural capacities are also of two sorts, absolute and relative. . . . By the absolute rights of individuals, we mean those which are so in their primary and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it. The extent to which these entitlements will in fact be “established”—acknowledged and given effect—in law has fluctuated, as Blackstone observes before he settles down to detailing how far the law of England in his day established them. Book I’s exposition of “The Rights of Persons” has eighteen chapters, the last being “Of Corporations.” Shortly after the Fourteenth Amendment had been sent to the states for approval, its main draftsman, John A. Bingham, said more than once that his work for it represented my conviction of the fundamental, eternal rights of humanity, rights that had been denied to the negroes. It surged from my understanding of the Divine Plan for people. These are the precious rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I had thought of substituting property for pursuit of happiness. By property I meant that [belonging to] human beings. By persons I did not mean corporations. But, as Bingham would not have denied, the constitutional question is not what the drafters of the Amendment “meant”: what they had in mind to achieve, their intended purposes or aims, nor even what they happened to think about aloud. The question is what their wording meant to those state legislators who ratified it, as they considered it in the context of the document and law they were amending and of the understanding of language and law prevalent among them. Of the Fourteenth Amendment’s five sections it is section 1 that has mattered most. Section 1 consists of four ­propositions: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The third sentence is usually called the Due Process Clause. In it, Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) found a prohibition invalidating any state law substantially restricting a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to bear or abort her unborn child. Roe v. Wade also said that if the ­unborn were persons, their “right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment,” and the case against Texas’s law forbidding abortion except to save the mother’s life would collapse. Perhaps the Court thought that guarantee was implied by the Due Process Clause, or perhaps it was thinking of section 1’s fourth sentence, the Equal Protection Clause. Either would suffice. Each protects “any person.” Given what Blackstone’s Commentaries show about the prevalent legal understanding in 1866 of the word “persons,” it was not too surprising that the Supreme Court, when in 1886 the issue was first raised, ruled it too obvious even to need argument or explanation that “any person” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection” clause includes corporations. (Santa Clara County v. Southern ­Pacific Railroad established this, and it has been the rule ever since.) Indeed, Bingham’s “I did not mean corporations” may well have been a tacit admission that, though protecting corporations was no part of his purpose, the public language he chose did mean that corporations have whatever Fourteenth Amendment rights they logically can have—and a tacit admission that, had he wanted them not to be included, he could and should have written “natural persons.” Logically, corporations could not come within the Amendment’s first sentence, for they are never “born” or “naturalized.” But they can come within its third and fourth, for lawyers brought up on ­Blackstone and the whole tradition he articulated included corporations under “persons” when that term is unqualified, as in “any person.” The evidence is that neither corporations nor the unborn were discussed in the Committee that drafted, or the Congress that debated, the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. But, as we saw Blackstone saying, the unborn were the very first persons—individuals, human beings (“men”)—whose “absolute” right to bodily security was “­established” in the English law that Wilson wanted American law to match in respect for rights. In the criminal law of 1765 that “absolute” security right became an “established” right as soon as the child’s mother was “quick with child” (perhaps only at “quickening,” when the child’s movements became perceptible to the mother, around fifteen weeks into the pregnancy—or perhaps much earlier, when the child was in Aristotelian biology “formed” and “quick,” that is, alive). In the law of guardianship, and of succession to property, too, there are established “rights of the person” that the unborn child enjoys, Blackstone is saying, from the ­beginning of its life in the womb (the beginning of the pregnancy). Is the unborn child a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment? The Court in Roe v. Wade (1973) began its response with the acknowledgement already noted: If the answer is “Yes,” the case against the Texas abortion statute “of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.” The Court’s answer was “No.” For this answer it offered, in effect, three reasons. None of them is defensible. Yet the Court’s answer has never been challenged or questioned in the Court by any Justice. In examining the Roe Court’s reasons and seeing how unsound they are, we will become clearer about the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s first section—about how any legally informed reader at the time would have understood the phrases “deprive any person” and “deny to any person.” The Court’s first reason simply lists the eighteen provisions of the Constitution in which the word “person” appears—including the uses, just mentioned, of “any person” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses—plus the following comment: In nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application. What exception or exceptions to “only post-natally” did “nearly” and “with any assurance” signal? No hint is given. The obvious exceptions are the key provisions, those directly under consideration: Unless guaranteed by law, due process and equal protection might obviously be denied to “pre-natal” persons. And every state by common law and/or statute already prohibited everyone from denying persons some if not all of their prenatal rights. As for the other sixteen or seventeen provisions, none is applicable “with any assurance” to corporations. Yet the Court since 1886 has effortlessly, firmly, and reasonably included corporations within the guarantee of due process and equal protection for “any person.” Like the unborn, corporations do not fit the first of the three uses of “person” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s first section, the use in its first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” So, corporations are not among the persons—persons already born—guaranteed citizenship by that first sentence of the section. The unborn, too, though they are (as Blackstone put it) persons, do not come within that guarantee until they are born. But as persons within the third and fourth sentences’ unrestricted uses of “person,” both corporations and unborn persons get the benefit of these sentences’ guarantees of due process and equal protection, even if neither corporations nor the ­unborn fit any of the Constitution’s many other uses of “person.” Indeed, unborn persons come within the guarantee even more certainly than corporations do. Natural persons—­human beings—are the primary, focal referent of the word “person”; artificial persons—corporations—are persons in an extended, non-focal sense. Consider another clause that does not “with any assurance” apply to prenatal human beings but assuredly does not apply to corporations. Corporations—and probably the unborn—are not among that “whole number of persons in each State,” which under the Fourteenth Amendment’s section 2 settles a state’s share of Congressional representatives. In any such clause about “counting,” various conventional elements are taken for granted, and loose ends are left for further, more or less free, conventional or legislative specification: precisely when or for how long a person must have resided “in” the state, for example. Conventionally, censuses—particularly those keyed to voting and political representation—include neither artificial persons (corporations) nor the unborn. Still, if Congress today lacks power to include unborn children in a census, it can only be because the original public meaning of “persons” in section 2 was conventionally, implicitly, restricted, given that in 1866 (as in all previous times) enumerating them would be rather pointless. And it would be quite unfeasible, except by using a criterion (“quickening” in the sense of movement perceptible to the mother) challenging to modesty and rapidly falling out of legal use, or else by a grossly intrusive personal examination employed for public purposes only when determining whether a capitally condemned woman was pregnant (or “quick with child”) and so (though long before “quickening”) entitled to reprieve out of respect for the rights of her unborn child. For census and apportionment purposes, no rights of the unborn were or are affronted by treating them as not included in the original public meaning of “counting the whole number of persons.” To return to the key third and fourth sentences of section 1: Had they been intended not to include aliens, they could have said “such persons” (as the persons born in the U.S. and thus, by the first sentence, citizens). Had they been intended not to include corporations, they could have said “natural persons.” Had they been intended not to include the unborn, they could have said “any person wherever born.” They said none of these things and so communicated a public meaning among the legally informed that—whatever particular legislators privately did or did not want or bring under ­consideration—did clearly enough include all three, the unborn even more certainly than corporations and aliens. So, this first reason is no reason. The Roe Court accompanied the first reason with a second, different in kind: a historical argument: All this [about the uses of “person” in the Constitution], together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn. (Later, the Court fuzzily restates its conclusion by denying that the unborn are “persons in the whole sense”—a phrase with no known legal meaning or usage, and out of kilter with relevant legal truths, such as that toddlers, though indubitably persons in fact and law, lack various important legal capacities such as to make contracts or commit crimes.) By “our observation, supra” the Court meant its review of the common law and pre-1866 statutes about abortion. About the English common law inherited by the colonies and states, that review was astonishingly inaccurate. It proceeded as if Blackstone had not headed his list of absolute (natural) “rights of the person” to security with the unborn child’s right not to be aborted (with a soon-to-be eliminated “stirring” or “quickening” precondition for applying homicide protection). The Roe review relied wholly upon an abortion-law reform advocate’s article, too recent to have been critiqued post-publication by peers, and soon—but too late—to be refuted. The Court thereby committed itself not only to Cyril Means’s radically distorted history of the common law, but also to his fundamental conceptual blunder. Here is the Court’s version of it: [1] . . . It now appear[s] doubtful that abortion was ever firmly established as a common law crime even with respect to the destruction of a quick fetus. . . . [2] . . . At common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect. [3] Phrasing it another way, a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today. The “doubt” alleged in [1] and taken for granted in [2] is entirely unwarranted by history. Besides Blackstone and the authorities he cited, actual trials and convictions in England (for instance, in Derby in 1732) and America (for instance, in Maryland in 1651 under non-Catholic governance) establish that, as even Means had earlier accepted, performing an abortion even at the woman’s request was, at common law—throughout the nation’s history—a serious indictable offense, certainly when it could be shown that the child had been “quick,” and quite possibly (as in both the Derby and the Maryland cases) even when that was not shown. And even in the states where pre-quickening abortion was not a ­triable common law offense, abortion induced ­however early in pregnancy was clearly unlawful. (Many sorts of unlawful behavior are not themselves triable offenses.) Proposition [2] conceals the gravity of the crime of abortion, late or early, in all the state laws that began replacing the common law from 1821 onward. Proposition [3]’s talk of a “right to terminate” is a blunder in relation to the common-law period, and simply absurd in relation to every statute replacing the common law in any “portion of the 19th century.” At the time of America’s colonization, forgery was not an offense at common law, nor was perjury, attempted burglary, or even attempted murder. But anyone who claimed to “enjoy a . . . right” (or what Means, less recklessly than the Court, called a “common law liberty”) to do any of these things, or to carry out abortions on consenting women, would quickly be disabused by the Crown’s other courts, coroners, and local justices. Chief Justice Shaw of Massachusetts stated the position plainly in 1845: Yes, abortion is not indictable at common law until quickening. But because, “to many purposes, in reference to civil rights, an infant in ventre sa mere is regarded as a person in being. 1 Bl. Com. 129,” any attempt to induce an abortion on a consenting woman even prior to quickening is an act done “without lawful purpose,” and so, if it happens to result in her death, it is murder—even though it was intended to help her and she fully consented to the risk. Thirty days after this judgment, Massachusetts enacted its first abortion statute to replace the common law; make abortion and attempted abortion punishable with one to seven years imprisonment without regard to quickening; and reduce the offense of thereby causing the woman’s death from murder to a crime punishable with five to twenty years. As that state’s Supreme Judicial Court said in 1858, “The statute . . . was intended to supply the defects of the common law, and to apply to all cases of pregnancy. . . . It is not necessary to allege that the child was alive or that the woman was quick with child.” Three months after Iowa ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, its Supreme Court—citing (like Shaw in 1845) the page where Blackstone presents the right of the unborn to security as the first example of the common law’s respect for the absolute rights of the person—spoke of the common law as “a general guardian holding its aegis to protect the life of all,” for its all embracing and salutary solicitude for the sacredness of human life and the personal safety of every human being . . . not only extends to persons actually born, but, for some purposes, to infants in ventre sa mere. The Chief Justice then quoted Lord Hale, the mid-seventeenth-century English Chief Justice, affirming the unlawfulness of seeking to destroy any child with whom a woman is pregnant (without restriction of gestational age and regardless of her consent). No American court at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment would have accepted the Roe Court’s second reason or contemplated its picture of the common law without a sense of incredulity. That second (historical) reason offered by the Court has another element: a picture of the statutes that replaced the common law, first in England and then in many American states and territories before the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment and during the two years of its ratification. The Court depicts these as few, and as concerned with preserving the life and health of pregnant women and the status of medical professionals, rather than with the unborn. This depiction is, and has been thoroughly proven to be, quite wrong. The common law, so the Court claims, remained in effect in “all but a few states until mid-19th century,” and “it was not until after the War Between the States that legislation began generally to replace the common law.” Another two incorrect claims: By the end of 1849, eighteen of the thirty states had antiabortion statutes; by the end of 1864, twenty-seven of the thirty-six; and by the end of 1868, thirty of the thirty-seven states—including twenty-five of the thirty ratifying states, along with six territories. James Witherspoon’s masterly 1985 summary in the St. Mary’s Law Journal of these statutes, and of their successors close in time and content, takes nearly fifty printed pages. Though making no unequivocal finding, the Roe Court gives the last word to Means and other advocates who claimed that protecting prenatal life was not even a purpose of these statutes, that “most state laws were designed solely to protect the woman,” and that any statutory attention to quickening (even only in relation to penalties), or any failure to incriminate the pregnant woman for her complicity in abortion, “impliedly repudiates the theory that life begins at conception.” Witherspoon’s exposition and analysis shows the error of these claims. By the end of 1868, twenty-seven of the thirty states with antiabortion statutes criminalized attempts to terminate pregnancy before (as well as after) quickening. In most statutes, quickening had no bearing at all on penalties, and where quickening remained relevant at all the point was—not unlike at common law—to help establish that the abortion had caused a death. In a majority of statutes, proof that the abortion had caused the death of the unborn—something irrelevant to the health of the mother—­increased the penalty. Various other features of these statutes against voluntary abortion underline the concern of legislatures with the life and security of the unborn. Most of them, unlike Massachusetts, provided the same range of punishments for killing the unborn child as for causing the mother’s death. Most of them designated the killing of the unborn child as “­manslaughter.” Most of them, unlike the Massachusetts consolidators of 1860, categorized abortion with homicide, related offenses, and offenses against born children. Most of them, unlike Massachusetts and following instead the example of Connecticut in 1830 and New York in 1845, required proof of intent to “destroy the child.” Most of them, unlike Massachusetts, incriminated the mother’s own participation in her unlawful abortion. In these and other ways they showed their concern with protecting the right to life of the unborn, even if they may also often have aimed to discourage women from courses of action then so perilous to their own life and health. About a month after Ohio had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, its legislature acted again to tighten up Ohio’s 1834 antiabortion statute by abolishing the distinction it made, though only in relation to the severity of punishment, between pre- and post-quickening. That distinction, said its Senate select committee, was “ridiculous,” because physicians “have now arrived at the unanimous opinion that the foetus in utero is alive from the very moment of conception.” The committee wrote that “no opinion could be more erroneous” than “that the life of the foetus commences only with quickening, and . . . that to destroy the embryo before that period is not child-murder.” The committee report approvingly quoted ­Thomas Percival’s influential Medical Ethics (published in Manchester, England, in 1803, six months before the English antiabortion statute of that year): “To extinguish the first spark of life is a crime of the same nature . . . as to destroy an infant, a child, or a man.” In the committee’s words, it should be proclaimed to the world and to consciences “that the willful killing of a human being, at any stage of its existence, is murder.” State legislators such as these from Ohio, if asked whether, in the third and fourth sentences of the Amendment’s first section, the phrase “any person” properly includes the unborn, would have answered: Yes, that goes without saying. Do you think a state should be allowed to deprive unborn children of some disfavored race, or of foreign nationals, of those “absolute” rights and legal protections that the unborn have because of what they are by nature? Why, the first chapter of our first law book tells how the unborn have all those rights of the person—of every human being—that befit their condition and circumstances. We are legislating now, before the Amendment comes into force, to ensure that our law here in this state is adequate to those circumstances and that condition, as science and our physicians now understand them. So, yes! In seeing that only some such answer, or its core, would have been acceptable to those involved anywhere in ratifying the Amendment, one sees that to reverse Roe on personhood would be to restore a one-hundred-fifty-year-old plain meaning too ­obvious to need discussion among those who, as legally learned (or informed) elected legislators, were concerned or content to include it as an implied part of their constitutionalizing project of tersely putting certain matters beyond the powers of the legislators of any state. The Roe Court’s third reason for answering “No” is equally slender but perhaps the most interesting of the three. For it gives, I think, a clue to a mystery: Why have the Justices who in or since Roe have rejected its other main holding, about the existence or weight of the woman’s Fourteenth-Amendment due-process liberty or privacy right, been unwilling to challenge or question, even in passing, its logically prior but erroneous holding that her child is not a Fourteenth-Amendment person until birth? Why do they put up with the dogma that the Fourteenth Amendment’s makers and ratifiers willed that their guarantee to “any person” should remain a nullity until another second had passed and another inch been traversed by one and the same child? The Court presents this third reason, primarily, in a long footnote asserting that those who say the unborn are persons face a dilemma. The footnote shies away from ever articulating a dilemma (a pair of inconsistent positions), and retreats to a set of rhetorical questions. To get a dilemma we must convert what the questions insinuate into assertions. Thus: A person or legislature that holds unborn children to be persons must, to be self-consistent, (i) prohibit all termination of pregnancy even to save the life of the mother, (ii) treat the mother as criminally complicit in any termination she requests or permits, and (iii) treat all abortion as murder punishable with “the maximum penalty for murder prescribed by . . . the Texas Penal Code.” But no state abortion statute does any of these. So (this argument concludes), all are inconsistent with any claim that the unborn are persons, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court also floats a secondary version of this third reason: All state laws, by explicitly or implicitly permitting abortion to save the mother’s life and treating abortion as less culpable than first-degree murder, acknowledge that the unborn are not persons (and that what begins at conception is not a life, but only a “potential life”). But in both its versions this reason, like the other two, wholly fails. Those nineteenth-century exponents of medical ethics, and the medical associations and legislators who held most firmly that “the willful killing of a human being, at any stage of its existence,” is a crime, were perfectly consistent in holding that it can be right to save one person’s life by actions that immediately cause the death of another, that among wrongful killings there are grades of culpability, and that there can be good and sufficient reasons for granting immunity from prosecution to a participant in wrongful killing. The Court’s “dilemmas” are each absurd, once one starts thinking seriously about homicide law as it actually is, or indeed, about the rest of what law and reasonable standards ­stipulate—or treat as justifiable or at least excusable—about how far one person must, or need not, put up with being harmfully impinged upon, even quite innocently, by another. One can speculate, however, that the Court’s conservatives have been reluctant to revisit Roe’s peremptory and unjustified dismissal of the unborn from the status of being persons with a Fourteenth-­Amendment right not to be deprived of life without due process and equal protection of law. Acknowledging that status and those rights would entail the Court’s retaining (for as long as the Fourteenth Amendment endures) the responsibility of supervising state laws—or indeed any Congressional law enacted under the Fourteenth Amendment’s fifth section’s grant to Congress of power to “enforce” the Amendment “by appropriate legislation.” But as that word “appropriate” signals, the Fourteenth Amendment was not enacted to make easy the role of the Court and its justices. Still, however massively controversial in the public square, the task of supervision would not outrun the competence of a Court mindful of its duty of fidelity to the Constitution as meant. For with that fidelity come the historic standards that settle at least the contours of the application of “due process” and “equal protection” to the unborn. As we have seen above and will see below, precisely those standards were under discussion and legislative deliberation across the whole country, albeit not simultaneously, in the years from about 1820 to about 1880. With virtual unanimity the country settled on a regulative regime in which preserving the life of the mother was firmly accepted as due and compelling. Almost everywhere that was entirely explicit; few were the places that, like England and Massachusetts, buried it in an “unlawfully” whose reference to that exception was left unarticulated but well-understood. Moreover, even if there were no such clear historic standard contemporaneous with the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption (a standard virtually universal down to 1960), the task of legislatures and of the Court, once the constitutional truth is acknowledged that the unborn are persons according to the Fourteenth Amendment, would not be to replicate the reasoning and judgments of a moralist (or other conscientious person) defining the contours of fully reasonable respect for the basic human good of life. The jurisdiction of human law is not to secure purity of morals or good character. It is to do and preserve justice among persons in their dealings and interactions with each other—a justice that is a matter of external acts that are reasonably fair, rather than of fully upright (let alone heroic or saintly) motivations and reasonings. Judgments about what it is reasonably fair to permit do not have the permanence and precision that one can hope for in relation to the relatively few moral norms that exclude intentional destruction of basic human goods. This relative imprecision is all the more to be expected when the question is what conduct, and what end-results—in a uniquely intimate competition of interests—should be prohibited, or can fairly be permitted, by state law. But whether in determining what is to be legally permissible or in settling upon penalties for the prohibited, doing what is reasonably fair depends on candidly acknowledging the true facts of the matter about whose interests are at stake. That is what legislatures all over America judged they were bound to do as the facts of human life—facts gradually freed by empirical findings from the obscurity of Aristotelian guesses about the first six weeks of gestation—impelled the nation’s doctors to crusade for a more adequate justice for the unborn. It was a crusade whose arguments about the facts and their moral implications were regarded as irrefutable, and almost everywhere prevailed with substantial unanimity. In the journal Academic Questions for winter 1994, I displayed and documented the gross deceptiveness of the Amicus Brief of 281 Historians filed in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) and again in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey—­deceptions about that crusade’s core claims and motivation. In Issues in Law & Medicine in 2006, John Keown detailed more of the Briefs’ impostures (and Roe’s historical distortions and mistakes); ­Joseph Dellapenna’s Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History (2006) documents the whole Means-Roe-­Historians’ Brief fiasco over some thousand pages. At the center of these discussions was the scholarly though manipulative book Abortion in America (1978), by the historian James C. Mohr. Incredibly, Mohr was a signatory of the first iteration of that Brief—incredibly, because on pages scrupulously avoided by the Brief, his book had summed up the real position of the doctors (and of the legislators, nearly unanimously in agreement with them), in a chapter titled “The Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion, 1857–1880”: Logically, then, if a child could legally exist in utero at some stage of gestation, say at eight months, when the law recognized it as a victim, it just as logically existed at all other stages of gestation. Most physicians considered abortion a crime because of the inherent difficulties of determining any point at which a steadily developing embryo became somehow more alive than it had been the moment before. Yet equally the physicians held that if the presence or development of the unborn child threatened the life of the mother, state law must not prohibit the taking of medically indicated steps likely or certain to terminate the child’s life. Medical ethicists among them could see nuances in the question where the balance of fairness lay in particular cases of mother and child, but there was agreement about the coherence of the reformed laws’ project of giving equal protection to both the persons involved, ignoring neither their basic equality as human beings nor the obvious inequalities and unique interdependencies between them. Thus, the public meaning of “any person” in the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment included the unborn, who in 1868 were protected, imperfectly though really, by the common law in some states, but in a growing majority much more sufficiently (though still ­variably) by recent reforming statutes. That historical fact about public meaning provides a sufficient basis for a judicial rectification of Roe’s great error about the constitutional status of the unborn. The truth that human beings are persons is not of primary concern to the Supreme Court. Only if there were genuine uncertainty—and there isn’t—about the historical facts (original public meaning) would constitutional adjudication need to take into consideration this other sort of fact, to resolve the uncertainty. But it could also be of relevance to Justices seeking assurance that the historic positions were not inherently or substantially religious and have not been overtaken by new knowledge or superior explanations of reality. For legislators, by contrast—such as those who settled the laws presupposed by the Fourteenth Amendment, or closely consorted with it in time, or who ratified the Amendment—the secular truth about human beings was, as it needed to be, the primary and central concern. The unborn in their circumstances, whether immediately (or soon) after conception or during birth or at any time in between, each share in the quality of being human. So, despite any emergent inequalities with one another, they are each by their nature—prior to all convention and law—fit to be treated, unlike all other animals and creatures, as an equal of all who share that human nature. These facts—of direct concern to citizens and legislators or constitution-makers—are partly biological and physiological, and partly not. For consideration of them extends natural-scientific concerns (concerns with understanding and explaining specific fields of data) into concerns with the datum that there are beings like us—beings who have the capacity not only to be aware of data but to understand and explain it to one another. At the outset of a human life, those capacities are more or less undeveloped, and at intervals regular and irregular they are dormant or damaged or blocked or decayed. But human beings always have radical ­capacities that animals of other kinds never have. It is a sober truth—more and more intelligible as our knowledge of genetic complexity and the nanophysics of DNA expands—that the one-cell human embryo has, right then and there, radical capacities, to think, talk, and laugh, which a frog embryo simply lacks. And these radical capacities are the rational foundation of human equality. Their possession by every member of our species, from conception until death, justifies communities in undertaking the burdens of envisaging and securing equal protection of law, and in setting out on the course of acknowledging rights of persons. It took Blackstone a weighty volume to outline the law that, in one political and legal culture, imperfectly but aspirationally “established” those rights—acknowledged them in principle, and tried to give them a fair specificity, treating like cases alike and different cases differently on a foundation of human equality. My Intention and Identity (2011) analyzes the inevitably unsuccessful attempts of philosophical colleagues in Oxford and Cambridge to make sense while they deny that you or I were once an embryo, indeed a zygote. I analyze similarly doomed efforts by some German legal scholars to be scientifically and morally credible while they reject their own country’s admirable, informed insistence on the legally and constitutionally equal dignity, as persons, of even the most embryonic human. And I analyze failed efforts of a priest-philosopher to find a point after conception (the union of male and female gametes into one cell) when many human organisms become one human individual. All such attempts break down because the fact of the matter is as stated frankly by Robert G. Edwards, the first person to bring a human person from conception in a Petri dish to birth from her mother’s womb. Work on in vitro fertilization, into which ethical considerations “hardly entered,” enabled him, he wrote, to “examine a microscopic human being—one in its very earliest stages of development.” At its one-, two- and four-cell stages, “the embryo is passing through a critical period in its life of great exploration: it becomes magnificently organized, switching on its own biochemistry,” increasing “in size, and preparing itself quickly for implantation in the womb.” Acknowledging that a human being is sexed radically—that is, from its very beginning—Edwards said about his first “test-tube baby,” Louise Brown, “She was beautiful then [as one or two cells], and she is beautiful now.” That appreciation of beauty went beyond the facts of the matter, but knowingly presupposed a totally informed grasp of the facts of the matter: about the dynamic, self-directing unity and integrity of Louise’s being, at every stage from her beginning, and about her personal membership of humankind from that earliest time of her life. The words of the profoundly secular Dr. Edwards, like the more highly articulated syntheses of developmental-biological information with philosophical precision such as one finds in Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen’s Embryo (2008), all reinforce the already inevitable conclusion: Justice Stevens was simply mistaken in claiming—as he repeatedly did, most elaborately in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services—that the question of when human life (or personhood) begins is theological and/or religious, a question that there can be no secular purpose in resolving. Difficult or easy, that question, like its answer, is in truth strictly factual. Not in the same sense as history is factual, but in the equally secular sense in which natural science and philosophical assessments of natural-scientific findings are factual. It is like the judgment that we are animals that can make free choices, in which nothing determines which of two or more options will be chosen other than the choosing itself; or the judgment that reasons for judgment are not reducible to very complex physical interactions and causalities; or the judgment that an original singularity (“Big Bang”), billions of years ago, better explains the data than alternative histories of the universe. One is making a strictly secular judgment when one concludes that not only the one-cell, but equally the two-cell and four-cell human embryo—and equally the embryo at all later stages (including in a special, complex way, the relatively rare cases of monozygotic twinning, and excluding the also relatively rare cases of hydatidiform moles and other products of human conception that lack the epigenetic primordia for development of human capacities)—exists, functions, and develops as a unified, self-directed whole of a particular (human!) kind and never as a mere collection of contiguous but unintegrated individual cells. Equally secular and equally available is the rational conclusion that each adult, child, infant, and unborn child had his or her personal beginning precisely as a one- and then two- and then four-celled embryo with just those radical capacities which, by their species-specific diversities, both distinguish him or her from every other human person and unite all these human persons, all of us, in basic equality of humanity. Our understanding (and accurate critical assessment) of the amazing way in which species-specific information (“form”) dominates the astounding storm of partially random nano-level molecular and sub-molecular events is knowledge that is, if anything, more a cause (or potential cause) of moving toward “theological” or “religious” hypotheses and judgments than it is a result or manifestation of theology or religion. Justice Stevens had things backward, and his Webster claim is no rational or constitutional barrier to revisiting and rejecting the Roe denial of personhood before birth. In relation to the unborn at later stages in their gestation, Gerard Bradley recalled in these pages earlier this year that American law remains in a crisis of constitutional, legal incoherence affronting both common sense and decency, and decently equal protection of the law. Many people are in prison, and one has been recently executed, for the specific crime—a homicide offense, in both the pre-Roe and the updated post-Roe law of most U.S. states—of doing to an unborn child a lethal harm of perhaps the very kind its mother could lawfully (thanks to Roe) have chosen to do or have done to it, that very day, for the slightest of reasons or none. A break in the nearly half-century silence on the Court about all these matters would enhance respect for law, for historical meaning and constitutional commitment, and for the order of things that underpins our common humanity. On the question whether, under the Fourteenth Amendment as it stands, the unborn from their conception onward are persons entitled to the protection of its due process and equal protection clauses, there is only one right answer. That the Court’s adoption and declaration of that answer would meet unimaginable resistance does not render it nonjusticiable. And though the pertinent bio-­philosophical assessments in no way depend upon religion and are even better supported by scientific knowledge than they were in the era of Lincoln and Reconstruction, the pertinent historical-juridical assessments are indeed fully justiciable in kind. Giving judgment in line with them would ratify the legislative judgment made by the great majority of the legislatures that adopted the Fourteenth Amendment: that prohibiting the killing of the unborn is a matter of simple justice to the most vulnerable among us. John Finnis is the Biolchini Family Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame.",-0.7059871182911961 "( Zolnierek/Getty Images) 1992—By order of a trial court, the sponsors of the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston are required to allow the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston to participate in their parade. In 1994, in an error of judicial passivism, the Massachusetts supreme court rules that the parade is not an exercise of First Amendment rights and that compelling the parade organizers to comply with state law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation did not raise any significant First Amendment issue. In 1995, in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay Group of Boston, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reverses: “The selection of contingents to make a parade is entitled to [First Amendment] protection.” Advertisement 2009—President Obama makes his first federal appellate nomination as he selects district judge David F. Hamilton for a Seventh Circuit seat. Among the distinctions in the judicial record of the former ACLU activist are an extraordinary seven-year-long series of rulings (ultimately reversed by the Seventh Circuit) obstructing Indiana’s implementation of its law providing for informed consent on abortion; a reckless invocation of substantive due process to suppress evidence of violation of drug laws (also reversed by the Seventh Circuit); a ruling barring Indiana’s House of Representatives from permitting invocations that refer to “Christ” but permitting invocations by Muslim imams that refer to “Allah” (reversed, for lack of standing, by the Seventh Circuit); and a reputation among criminal defense lawyers as the most lenient judge in the district. All of which, of course, leads the New York Times to proclaim Hamilton a “moderate”! 2020—In a divided panel ruling (in Pakdel v. City of San Francisco), the majority opinion of Ninth Circuit judge Michelle T. Friedland holds that a takings challenge is “unripe” because plaintiffs failed to avail themselves of a previously existing opportunity to apply for an exemption. But as Judge Carlos T. Bea argues in dissent, the government’s action is final and therefore ripe for review, and the majority is instead importing into the takings context a requirement that plaintiffs exhaust state remedies—a requirement that the Supreme Court had rejected just the previous year. Advertisement Some months later, nine judges will dissent from the Ninth Circuit’s denial of en banc review.",0.27943750144767143 "Last Friday in Planned Parenthood v. Box, a divided panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s preliminary injunction against a provision of Indiana law that requires that a minor’s parents be notified that she is seeking judicial authorization for an abortion, unless the judge authorizing the abortion finds that parental notice is not in the minor’s best interests. Judge David F. Hamilton wrote the majority opinion, which Judge Ilana D. Rovner joined. Judge Michael S. Kanne dissented. Advertisement The Supreme Court remanded the case to the Seventh Circuit after issuing its opinion last June in June Medical Services v. Russo. In June Medical, Chief Justice Roberts issued an opinion concurring in the judgment that explained his critical fifth vote against a Louisiana law regulating abortion providers. A major question for the Seventh Circuit panel on remand was how to apply the “narrowest ground” rule in Marks v. United States (1977) for discerning the precedential force of Supreme Court decisions issues without a majority opinion. I will not try to summarize the extensive arguments between Judge Hamilton and Judge Kanne on how Marks applies but will instead try to distill the essence of the disagreement. Hamilton argues that the Marks rule requires a court to find the “narrow, common ground” between the June Medical plurality and the Chief Justice’s concurrence. He identifies that ground as the proposition that the Court’s 2016 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt “has stare decisis effect on essentially identical facts.” Because Whole Woman’s Health hasn’t been overruled, Hamilton stands by the panel’s earlier decision applying a balancing test of benefits and burdens to bar enforcement of Indiana’s parental-notification requirement. Kanne agrees with Hamilton on what the Marks rule requires. But he determines that the “common denominator” between the June Medical plurality and the Chief’s concurrence is the “finding of a ‘substantial obstacle.’” He points out that the Chief “explicitly rejected” the “added weighing of benefits” that the original panel decision engaged in. He highlights in particular these two sentences by the Chief: Under principles of stare decisis, I agree with the plurality that the determination in Whole Woman’s Health that Texas’s law imposed a substantial obstacle requires the same determination about Louisiana’s law. Under those same principles, I would adhere to the holding of Casey, requiring a substantial obstacle before striking down an abortion regulation. [Emphasis added.] Kanne also notes that the Sixth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit have reached the same conclusion he did. As I read June Medical, Kanne clearly has the better of the argument. The plurality and the Chief disagreed on what Whole Woman’s Health meant and on how to read it consistent with Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which it said it was abiding by and which (as the Chief notes) all parties in June Medical “agree[d] … provides the appropriate framework to analyze Louisiana’s law.” Of a passage in Whole Woman’s Health that seems to contemplate an inquiry into benefits and burdens, the Chief writes: Read in isolation from Casey, such an inquiry could invite a grand “balancing test in which unweighted factors mysteriously are weighed.” Under such tests, “equality of treatment is . . . impossible to achieve; predictability is destroyed; judicial arbitrariness is facilitated; judicial courage is impaired.” In this context, courts applying a balancing test would be asked in essence to weigh the State’s interests in “protecting the potentiality of human life” and the health of the woman, on the one hand, against the woman’s liberty interest in defining her “own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” on the other. There is no plausible sense in which anyone, let alone this Court, could objectively assign weight to such imponderable values and no meaningful way to compare them if there were. Attempting to do so would be like “judging whether a particular line is longer than a particular rock is heavy.” Pretending that we could pull that off would require us to act as legislators, not judges, and would result in nothing other than an “unanalyzed exercise of judicial will” in the guise of a “neutral utilitarian calculus.” And: To be sure, the Court [in Whole Woman’s Health] at times discussed the benefits of the regulations, including when it distinguished spousal notification from parental consent. But in the context of Casey’s governing standard, these benefits were not placed on a scale opposite the law’s burdens. Rather, Casey discussed benefits in considering the threshold requirement that the State have a “legitimate purpose” and that the law be “reasonably related to that goal.” So long as that showing is made, the only question for a court is whether a law has the “effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.” Yet more: Whole Woman’s Health held that Texas’s admitting privileges requirement placed “a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion,” independent of its discussion of benefits. Because Louisiana’s admitting privileges requirement would restrict women’s access to abortion to the same degree as Texas’s law, it also cannot stand under our precedent. (Various citations omitted.)",0.21284254645863543 "The creation of new judgeships has not kept pace with the growth in case filings over three decades, producing “profound” negative effects for many courts across the country, U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller told Congress today. Miller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the Judiciary’s request for additional judgeships. He appeared on behalf of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policy-making body of the federal Judiciary. Miller chairs a subcommittee on judicial statistics for the conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources. The Judicial Conference has recommended that Congress establish five new judgeships in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and 65 new judgeships in 24 district courts across the country. The conference also recommended that eight existing temporary district court judgeships be converted to permanent status. Since 1990, when the last comprehensive judgeship bill was passed by Congress, case filings in the courts of appeals had grown by 15 percent by the end of 2018, while district court case filings had risen by 39 percent in the same period. “The effects of caseload increases without increasing the number of judges are profound,” Miller said in his written testimony. “Increasing caseloads lead to significant delays in the consideration of cases, especially civil cases which may take years to get to trial. … Delays increase expenses for civil litigants and may increase the length of time criminal defendants are held pending trial. Substantial delays lead to lack of respect for the Judiciary and the judicial process.” Miller noted that before a judgeship recommendation is transmitted to Congress, it undergoes careful consideration and review at six levels within the Judiciary. Judgeship needs are determined through an examination of the unique circumstances of a district, such as the number of senior judges and magistrate judges to assist with workload. The conference also uses a mathematical formula to determine the “weighted filings per judgeship,” which is a way of accounting for the varying complexity of the different types of civil and criminal filings and the differences in time commitments required of judges. For example, the goal is to maintain a standard in the range of 430 weighted filings per judgeship in a district court. For the district courts where additional judgeships are being requested, weighted filings average 635 per judgeship. “The conference does not recommend, or wish, indefinite growth in the number of judges,” Miller testified. “It recognizes that growth in the Judiciary must be carefully limited to the number of new judgeships that are necessary to exercise federal court jurisdiction. The conference attempts to balance the need to control growth and the need to seek resources that are appropriate to the Judiciary’s caseload.”",0.957564042056919 "The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., August 29, 2020 (Andrew Kelly/Reuters) Last month, a House Subcommittee heard testimony from law professor Steven Vladeck criticizing the Supreme Court’s use of its so-called “shadow docket” to grant requests for emergency relief. Vladeck argued that the Court risks its legitimacy when it grants such requests (at least outside of the death-penalty context), because its orders happen faster, less predictably, and with less explanation than decisions on its usual merits docket. Advertisement Professor Vladeck’s criticisms suggest that the Court should allow important constitutional rights to be infringed — often for years — in order to decide cases at a more leisurely pace. That approach would be a mistake, both for the parties (who sometimes need emergency relief) and for the Court (which is sometimes duty-bound to provide it). First, “shadow docket” is a fun term — it makes lawyer work sound like it belongs in a spy novel! — but it is actually somewhat misleading. “Shadow docket” was coined by Will Baude several years ago, and perhaps inadvertently makes it sound like something clandestine or nefarious is going on when the Supreme Court decides emergency motions. In truth, all courts sometimes need to deal with emergency cases on an urgent schedule and the Supreme Court is no exception. A better term might be to call it the “emergency” or “accelerated” docket. Lower federal courts essentially do the same thing all the time, deciding emergency motions very quickly and normal trials and motions more slowly. Courts having some emergency matters to decide is actually quite normal. Second, whatever the label, by far the largest substantive component of this docket at the Supreme Court is emergency death-penalty appeals. So much so that the clerk who handles the docket — whose real title is the “emergency applications clerk” — is colloquially known as “the death clerk.” (Years ago, when Justice Sotomayor granted an emergency application to protect my clients the Little Sisters of the Poor from millions of dollars in illegal fines, the news came to me via a late-night New Year’s Eve call from the “death clerk.”) Advertisement Vladeck doesn’t seem to take issue with the use of emergency orders in death-penalty cases. Presumably this is because he recognizes that the Supreme Court often must decide those applications on an accelerated schedule because they really are emergencies, and failure to consider the application would risk depriving the relevant party of his rights, with no chance to remedy the matter later. In fact, Vladeck even offered the subcommittee suggestions to make such cases more frequent (namely, making it mandatory for the Court to hear them) and allow prisoners to start their challenges earlier. By contrast, Professor Vladeck does not seem to think there is quite the same need for the Court to decide other cases involving ongoing deprivations of constitutional rights. Thus he criticizes the Court’s rulings, singling out the Court’s orders in recent religious-liberty cases. For example, in discussing the Court’s orders against California’s draconian indoor worship ban in South Bay II and Gish, Professor Vladeck laments that the decisions were made “entirely on the merits.” When criticizing the Court’s decisions in favor of synagogues and churches targeted by Governor Cuomo (with restrictions Governor Cuomo would later ask a federal court to enjoin!), \ Vladeck accuses the Court of “prematurely” and “unnecessarily” deciding constitutional questions. Of course, to the people who regained their constitutional freedom to worship in synagogue or church, the relief hardly came too soon. In fact, until last November, most courts were allowing governments to restrict the constitutional right to worship without requiring any sort of evidence from the government to support the restriction. State and local governments were obviously probing to see how much the courts would let them get away with. California had gone so far as to make it illegal for even a single person to engage in worship inside a large cathedral. And Governor Cuomo’s COVID orders were later shown to have been the product of his political calculations, rather than “following the science” — so much so that Cuomo would later ask a federal court to enjoin the rules rather than attempt to present evidence in their defense. Perhaps deferring to representations of good faith offered by officials like Governor Cuomo is a poor way to decide First Amendment questions. Advertisement Advertisement Nevertheless, Vladeck argues that there is an important benefit to waiting years for a decision: the slower timeline allows for more people (especially law professors, Court-watchers, and amicus parties) to preview, participate in, and react to the Court’s decisions. There is some truth to this point: Longer, slower timelines make it easier to organize panels, plan law-review articles, write previews, and file amicus briefs. As both a law professor and a practitioner, I sympathize with Vladeck — it is much easier to predict and participate in cases that take a year or two than cases than cases that take a week. Advertisement That said, it is not at all clear why it would be a good thing for the Supreme Court (or any other court) to withhold protection for constitutional rights that are actively being violated in order to achieve this more leisurely schedule. The court system has to deal with all of the conflicts that rightfully come before them — not just the ones that can be set at the most comfortable pace. Nor is it right to say it is “all-but-impossible” for amicus parties to file briefs in emergency cases. My firm has done it six times in recent years, chiefly in death-penalty appeals and COVID cases. And just looking at the past year, amicus briefs in emergency cases have been filed on both sides of various emergency applications by, among others, law-professor groups, law-school clinics, liberal and conservative interest groups, and big firms such as Morrison Foerster, Sidley Austin, and Jones Day. In fact, there is usually about a week to put together an amicus brief related to an emergency application. Litigators can and do move quickly when they need to, and they do so daily in courts up and down the judicial system. Advertisement It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Vladeck is discounting the possibility that the religion cases might really be emergencies. Thus while he sees last-minute capital punishment appeals as really belonging on the docket — and while he offered the subcommittee no criticism of the times the Court has used the emergency docket to protect abortion rights — he suggests that it is okay to leave extreme First Amendment–restrictive measures on the books for a year or more without SCOTUS intervention. As the Chief Justice put it, that reflects “insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake.” Vladeck or other law professors may not put the ability to attend worship very high in their own values rankings, but like it or not, the Constitution that the justices are sworn to uphold does. And of course millions of Americans do as well.",-2.232035736572812 "Since President Biden took office nearly two months ago, only ten federal appellate judges have taken senior status (or, in the case of Merrick Garland, retired) or announced their intention to do so. Given the large number of federal appellate judges appointed by Democratic presidents who are “senior eligible”—that is, who could fully retire or take senior status and continue to receive their annual salary—that’s a slower pace of new vacancies than I anticipated. Advertisement When it comes to Supreme Court retirements, I have often observed that it’s rare for a justice to expedite retirement in order to accommodate broader political considerations (e.g., who is president, composition of Senate). I think that I failed to give enough weight to the factors that operate to similar, if lesser, effect for appellate judges deciding whether to take senior status. In particular, an appellate judge who desires to retain a full caseload will see considerable downside, with little or no compensating upside, to going senior. For starters, the judge would lose considerable clout. A senior-eligible judge is usually the presiding judge on a panel and thus has the valuable role of assigning opinions to the panel members—and keeping the best assignments for himself. If the judge goes senior, someone else will be assigning opinions to him. While the rules governing en banc proceedings vary somewhat from circuit to circuit, a judge who goes senior will also play a much smaller role, if any, in en banc proceedings. A judge also risks losing prestige by going senior. Whether or not that matters to the judge’s ego, it might affect how attractive the judge is to future applicants for clerkships. Advertisement A judge considering whether to take senior status might also look around at the other senior-eligible judges on his circuit and say to himself, “Why should I go senior before they do? I’m performing at a higher level than they are.” And then there’s the elementary disinclination that most humans have to face the reality of aging. On the opposite side of the ledger, a federal appellate judge who was appointed by a Democratic president—and who is therefore presumably supportive of the sort of judges that President Biden will be picking—would welcome the incremental effect on his court’s overall ideological makeup (active judges plus senior judges) that would result from his being replaced. But that incremental effect is likely to be very small.",0.8072390697345388 "The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) If the SEC has decided that it can regulate anything under the sun, what is to stop every other federal department or commission from realizing an equivalent opportunity to expand its authority? Federal agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have long varied in their focus and priorities, depending on their current leadership and the ideological composition of their members. In the Biden era, however, we may be seeing the dawn of a new age in the federal regulatory apparatus: one in which regulatory agencies, originally created and given their responsibilities by Congress, will begin implementing policies that are directly opposed to their statutory missions. Advertisement The SEC, as its website will inform you, has a multipart mission. It exists “to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation.” That mission has guided the commission since the 1930s, when it was founded in the aftermath of the market meltdown that had ushered in the Great Depression. While not without controversy, the creation of a new finance regulator was meant to do something specific: protect investors and allow markets to work. In the new age of environment, social, and governance (ESG) theory, those goals might come to rank second — if they are considered at all. During a speech at the Center for American Progress last week, SEC acting chair Allison Herren Lee said that “human capital, human rights, and climate change” are “fundamental to our markets,” and that the demand for information about those topics “is not being met by the current voluntary framework.” She assured her audience that “our efforts at the SEC should and will stay firmly rooted in our mission,” but that statement was not at all consistent with the rest of her remarks. Advertisement Lee clearly has plans that exceed the agency’s traditional parameters, announcing that “the perceived barrier between social value and market value is breaking down.” The COVID-19 pandemic, racial-justice protests, and climate change all became linked in the last year, as “the issues dominating our national conversation were the same as those dominating decision-making in the boardroom.” And lest anyone think this is a technocratic verdict that will affect only nerdy readers of corporate 10-K statements, MarketWatch also summarized the acting chair’s remarks on further mission creep, warning that her proposed disclosure rules would require further disclosure of political spending as well. Commissioner Lee clearly believes that an SEC-mandated “comprehensive ESG disclosure framework” is consistent with the agency’s long-term mission. But even if we agreed with her, the people most highly motivated to advance ESG-style priorities will not be bound by any such constraints. Climate change, for example, is by far the single highest-profile issue in the ESG basket, and the climate activists’ long-term playbook — which will be strengthened and advanced by additional disclosure mandates and political-spending restrictions — is a direct threat to the SEC’s true mission. Many “climate-finance” policies — such as requiring companies to limit their carbon footprint — aim to punish any company that has the temerity to continue using and investing in the traditional energy sources of coal, oil, and natural gas. The energy sources, that is, that power over 80 percent of the world. That goal is no secret to anyone who has followed the world of climate-change politics. Much like the pacifist investors in the 1970s and 1980s who had hoped they could drive defense contractors out of business by starving them of capital through divestment campaigns, climate-disclosure advocates aim to push politically disfavored companies and industries into the economic dustbin, next to buggy-whip makers and VCR repairmen. The thousands of jobs already lost by the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline are just the canary in the soon-to-be-closed coal mine. Advertisement The people who laid down in traffic as part of the recent “Extinction Rebellion” protests in London and Washington, D.C., weren’t doing it so that ExxonMobil would issue a better corporate-disclosure statement. No, they did it in hopes of driving the big energy companies permanently out of business. And they’re not alone. The Green New Deal, championed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), would “transform our energy system to 100 percent renewable energy.” That doesn’t mean a few thousand fewer energy jobs, as the Keystone cancellation did. It means zero coal, oil, or natural-gas jobs, forever. Perhaps future jobs losses from the Green New Deal and the collapse of the domestic energy sector aren’t the SEC’s problem. Or are they? We don’t all work in oil and gas, but we might all stand to lose a big chunk of our retirement savings when trillions of dollars of equity in energy firms and their customers and suppliers are vaporized. Advertisement Such a course of events might go a long way toward tackling climate change, but it clearly does not “protect” investors — and it is certainly not facilitating capital formation. It creates a political-protection racket in which, as Heidi Klum would put it, “one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out,” depending on public companies’ level of fealty to our newly super-empowered financial regulators. If the head of the SEC decides your company isn’t doing enough to end the climate crisis — or COVID-19 or racial injustice — you may be out, for good. My Competitive Enterprise Institute colleague Marlo Lewis has written for years about environmental activists’ campaigns targeting energy companies. They claim to be guarding shareholder value from investment risks while creating and amplifying legal and political risks to those same shareholders. ESG campaigns such as fossil-fuel divestment are unlikely to ever be successful on their own, but it is alarming to see professional activists’ goals being adopted by federal regulators. Federal bureaucrats with market-moving powers may soon be able to unilaterally redefine their jurisdiction without review by Congress. According to its acting chair, the SEC should be free to regulate on any topic that is part of the “national conversation.” From public health to civil rights to the environment, it is difficult to imagine an issue of any substance that would not qualify as an agency priority under such a justification. And if the commission has decided that it can regulate anything under the sun (or buried beneath the Earth’s surface), what is to stop every other department, commission, and federal board from realizing an equivalent opportunity to expand its authority? So far, no one has offered an answer.",-1.0267959702444842 "President Trump speaks at a “Make America Great Again” rally in Green Bay, Wisc., April 27, 2019. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) Normal presidents begin their terms by attempting to appear as if they represent the whole country. Trump has never made any effort in this regard. ‘Without the ILLEGAL Witch Hunt, my poll numbers, especially because of our historically ‘great’ economy, would be at 65%,” President Trump tweeted last week. In all likelihood, the president believes what he wrote. It’s a strongly held sentiment among many of Trump’s ardent supporters that if he hadn’t been stabbed in the back by the Deep State, the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller, and a complicit media, people would have realized by now that Trump is, as the actor Jon Voight recently put it, “the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.” Or at least they would give him a fairer shake than he’s gotten. Advertisement Is it true that the president’s poll numbers have suffered largely because of what he calls a “witch hunt”? The shortest and most accurate answer for this and all counterfactuals is, “We can never know.” Still, there’s ample reason to conclude the answer is, “Probably not.” There are two mutually reinforcing reasons for this conclusion, one structural, the other specific to Trump. The structural explanation is that the electorate has been growing more polarized for decades, and the presidency had become a symbol in the culture war long before Trump. There have been only a handful of times in recent decades when any president has enjoyed a supermajority of public approval. During wartime, for example, the rally-around-the-president effect often swamps partisanship. George H.W. Bush hit 89 percent after the first Iraq war, and after 9/11, his son reached 90 percent. Other events can also goose approval ratings. Bill Clinton’s highest approval numbers were reported on the day he was impeached (a fact House speaker Nancy Pelosi probably is thinking about as the House considers impeaching Trump). It’s widely believed the bump in Clinton’s polling was less a referendum on the president than on the effort to remove him. Barack Obama’s best performance (67 percent) came four days after his inauguration, when many Americans were hopeful that his presidency could deliver on his campaign promise to put the culture wars behind us. In all of these cases, however, the entropic effect of polarization reasserted itself as Americans divided back into Red and Blue teams. Obviously, events mattered. If, say, the second Iraq War had gone swimmingly, things might have been different, but there’s little reason to believe the larger trend wouldn’t have manifested itself again in time. Advertisement And then there’s the specific case. Trump won in 2016 by picking the lock of the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. According to Gallup, he took office with an approval rating of 45 percent. His highest approval rating in Gallup’s polling was achieved last month: 46 percent. The notion that the public would have come around to Trump but for the Mueller probe presupposes that the investigation is what made him unpopular, when all of the evidence suggests that the investigation was merely something that people who already disliked the president put their hopes in. When Mueller’s finding that there was “no collusion” was released, Trump’s approval rating went down, not up. Also, the fact that Trump enjoys majority approval for his handling of the economy even as his overall disapproval ratings stay high demonstrates that voters don’t look only to economic indicators when judging presidents. There is, however, one way in which the Mueller probe may have hurt him: his reaction to it. When impeachment loomed for Clinton, however much he was privately obsessed with it, his public position was to ignore it and at least seem like he was focused on the people’s business. Trump went a different way. Advertisement Normal presidents begin their terms by reaching across the aisle and attempting to at least appear as if they represent the whole country. They try to build on the coalition that elected them. Trump has never made any sustained effort in this regard. From his inaugural address onward, Trump has catered to his biggest fans and most ardent supporters. This is a defining feature of Trump’s character. The only people who matter are the ones who love him. And since his election, he’s routinely mocked the idea that he should be “presidential,” because his fans would find it “boring.” It’s easy to imagine a world where the Mueller probe never happened. It’s harder to imagine one where Trump isn’t Trump, which is why 65 percent approval was never in the cards. Advertisement © 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC",0.13950224665101946 "Joe Biden speaks at the kickoff rally of his 2020 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Pa., May 18, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) The 2020 Democratic front-runner doesn’t carry the same baggage. Is Joe Biden Hillary Clinton — or George W. Bush? The first, most obvious and literal answer is, he’s neither. He’s Joe Biden, one of the most known and familiar personalities in American politics. Matt Continetti, editor of the Washington Free Beacon, recently asked: “Is Biden the new Hillary?” “Trump plans to wage the same sort of campaign against Biden that he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016,” Continetti wrote for National Review. “Back then, Trump defined Hillary as the candidate of entrenched interests who used a long career in politics for familial gain. He highlighted Clinton’s support for the 1994 crime bill and for NAFTA and TPP, driving wedges between the former secretary of state and important Democratic constituencies. And he went after Hillary’s foreign-policy credentials, painting her as an interventionist who had weakened America’s standing in the world.” Advertisement Continetti is surely correct that this is Team Trump’s game plan. Both D.C. scuttlebutt and public reporting suggest that they see Biden as the biggest threat to Trump’s reelection prospects. That’s certainly borne out in the polls, which show Biden leading Trump by 8 points (according to the RealClearPolitics average). Biden’s lead in some crucial states is even more worrisome for Trump. A recent Quinnipiac poll had him ahead by double digits — 53 percent to 42 percent — in Pennsylvania. Biden has a 10.5 percentage-point lead in Michigan, 8 points in Wisconsin (though polling there is sparse), and 4 points in Ohio, and is tied in Florida, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Trump won the Electoral College by taking a handful of states out of the traditional Democratic column with razor-thin margins. It’s insanely early, but the scary part for Trump is that Biden is not only wildly beating the other Democrats in the field, he’s also outperforming Clinton at a comparable time in 2015. And this points to a possible flaw in the effort to turn Biden into another Hillary. Clinton ran as an experienced Washington hand, Continetti notes. But “after 16 months of Trump attacks, 77,000 voters in three states denied her the presidency,” he adds. “The same could happen again to a nominee easily caricatured as the epitome of Beltway cluelessness. What looks like Joe Biden’s greatest strength — electability born of experience — may also be a debilitating weakness.” Advertisement Maybe. But while Trump’s attacks on Clinton were surely effective at times, Trump was aided enormously by the fact that Americans, particularly Republican and Republican-friendly ones, were skeptical or outright hostile to her already, thanks to decades of experience with, and criticism of, her. Trump didn’t define Clinton as much as she did. Moreover, implicit to her campaign was the promise of both a third Obama term and a restoration of the Clinton dynasty. Trump did not need to work all that hard to convince voters exhausted or frustrated by the Obama years or disdainful of Clinton Inc. to vote against her. Biden occupies a different space, psychologically and politically. There’s a lot of conventional wisdom in Washington that the early front-runner always loses. And that’s true except when it isn’t. In 2003, former Vermont governor Howard Dean dominated the polls. Then he lost Iowa, screamed, and eventually skulked away. Advertisement But in 1999, George W. Bush dominated the polls and, except for a brief scare from Senator John McCain in the New Hampshire primary, essentially cruised to victory. A key part of Bush’s early success, not just in polls but in fundraising, stemmed from the fact that he was promising a Bush restoration. Indeed, some of his early approval ratings were a direct result of nostalgia for his father, with whom he shared a name. Also, he was offering a referendum on the incumbent president and the scandals and partisanship that defined the end of his administration. He vowed to restore “honor and dignity to the Oval Office” and to be a “uniter not a divider.” The very different context notwithstanding, this is pretty much Biden’s campaign message. The ideological, activist, and Twitter-obsessed base of the Democratic party may not like Biden’s pitch. But it sure looks like rank-and-file Democrats do, particularly African-American women who may see in Biden something of an Obama restoration. Advertisement Of course, Biden can blow it, as he did the two previous times he ran for president. But counting on the past repeating itself is a good strategy only when you pick the right example from the past. © 2019 Tribune Content Agency LLC",1.8976892988632184 "Photo : Sebastian Unrau With the news that Hawaiian hiker Amanda Eller was found alive after being lost for 17 days, it’s worth considering what to do if you find yourself alone and lost in the wilderness. Eller did a lot of things right, according to early news reports. CNN says that “She picked berries and guava to eat when she could find them. She drank water only when it was clear enough and looked like it wouldn’t make her sicker. She took care of a bum knee and nursed sunburn so bad it got infected.” Advertisement If you’re injured or hopelessly lost, wilderness survival is largely a matter of waiting for rescue without making your situation any worse. If you’re in good shape, you may be able to find your own way out. The tricky part is knowing the difference. Stop and think As soon as you realize you’re lost, remember the classic survival mnemonic STOP: Stop . Sit down. Don’t panic. Stay where you are. . Sit down. Don’t panic. Stay where you are. Think . What do you know about your situation and location? The US Forest Service advises . What do you know about your situation and location? The Observe . Gather information that can help you figure out where you are. Do you have a map and compass? Are there signs labeling trail intersections? . Gather information that can help you figure out where you are. Do you have a map and compass? Are there signs labeling trail intersections? Plan. Consider possible courses of action, and choose one. Maybe you should continue down the path, or turn back the way you came. If you are injured or night is falling, it may be best to stay where you are. Plan ahead By the time you’re lost, it is obviously too late to plan ahead, but probably most of you are reading this out of curiosity rather than mid-wilderness googling. (If the latter—call 911 while your phone still has a signal and some battery life.) Some of the things you should consider: Tell somebody where you’re going. For a big trip, send detailed information to several people. For a quick stroll in the woods, at least text one friend or family member to let them know where you’re headed. Bring essential survival gear Have a way to communicate in an emergency. Your phone (plus a backup battery) is a start. Consider emergency beacons or satellite messenger Advertisement Know how rescues work If you’ll need to be rescued, it helps to know how the rescue process works. Outside has a good rundown here. Authorities usually start with a 911 call from someone who suspects you’re missing, and then they gather information to figure out whether you’re actually lost in the woods or just left town without telling anybody. Advertisement Then, they start looking. Even if your phone is turned off, cell towers can ping you to try to get a location. Searchers will have a description of what you were wearing, and where you might be. They will start searching the area based on an analysis of the terrain and what people in your role (skier, hunter, etc) tend to do. The good news is that 97% of people who go missing in the wilderness are found in the first 24 hours. The bad news is that if you can’t be found in that time, there’s usually a reason, like being stuck in an area where you’re hard to spot. Even tricky rescues sometimes succeed, though, so do your best to plan ahead and, if you do find yourself lost, think clearly and don’t panic.",-0.3822014291095261 "What do chocolate and concrete have in common? More than you might think. Chocolate is made by mixing liquid and finely ground cacao beans in a device that bears more than a passing resemblance to a cement mixer. In both cases, stirring tiny granules in a fluid results in a substance with very specific properties — for chocolate, it’s a meltingly smooth mouthfeel, and for concrete, it’s a cohesive, consistent texture. However, while physicists have studied the physics of mixing concrete, fewer have taken a close look at the forces at work in chocolate conching, as the process is called. Now a team of physicists, funded in part by Mars, the confectionary company, published a paper last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing just what happens as the ingredients of chocolate are given a stir on their way to becoming a delicious treat. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] When conching was invented in 1879 by Rodolphe Lindt, it could take more than a day of steady mixing for gritty chocolate to grow smooth. Today, it is a shorter process. For this study, the researchers spun cacao powder and a bit of oil in a conching machine for 40 minutes. They took photographs as the stuff went around, then added a different oil that reduces friction during the final phase, which lasted an additional 20 minutes.",0.9164650888349686 "SpaceX's artificial constellation of broadband-providing satellites could increasingly spoil views of the night sky and hinder astronomy, experts say. Elon Musk's Starlink project recently placed 60 satellites in low-Earth orbit as they look to beam high-speed internet down to the the planet's surface. It soon became clear that the bright train of orbiting satellites were quite visible to the naked eye, as astronomers and space enthusiasts tracked the launch. The sight has provoked an outcry among the astronomy community, with the development seen as a new headache for researchers who already have to find workarounds to deal with objects cluttering their images of deep space. SpaceX's plans for the Starlink program are fuelling concerns, with the firm setting its sights on increasing their artificial constellation to 12,000 satellites by 2025. Scroll down for video Researchers fear that SpaceX's artificial constellation of broadband-providing satellites (pictured) could increasingly spoil views of the night sky and hinder astronomy University of Alabama astronomer Bill Keel told the AFP that the sighting of the satellite train had experts trying to extrapolate what effect artificial constellations of such steady brightness might have as they grow in size and number. Fears developed, he said, that 'in 20 years or less, for a good part the night anywhere in the world, the human eye would see more satellites than stars.' The brightness of the satellites has since dimmed as they ascended to their final orbiting altitude of around 340 miles (550 kilometres) above the Earth's surface and stabilised their orientations. However, this has not entirely allayed the scientific community's concerns, with fears as to how views of the night sky will be impacted with SpaceX's plans to increase the number of orbiting satellites from 60 to 12,000 over the next five years. There are currently 2,100 active satellites orbiting our planet, according to the Satellite Industry Association — and SpaceX is not the only company looking to enter the burgeoning space internet market. Yet even if SpaceX alone adds another 12,000 satellites, there 'will be hundreds above the horizon at any given time,' Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Jonathan McDowell told the AFP. This issue will be exacerbated at specific times of the year and during certain points in the nighttime, he noted. 'It'll certainly be dramatic in the night sky if you're far away from the city and you have a nice, dark area.' 'It'll definitely cause problems for some kinds of professional astronomical observation.' Elon Musk's Starlink project recently placed 60 satellites in low-Earth orbit as they look to beam high-speed internet down to the Earth's surface, but plans envisage increasing the artificial constellation to 12,000 satellites by 2025 SpaceX CEO Elon Musk offered contradictory messages on Twitter in response to the concern. Despite reporting he had already taken steps to investigate ways to reduce the reflectivity of the Starlink satellites, Mr Musk also said that 'Starlink won’t be seen by anyone unless looking very carefully'. The satellite constellation 'will have ~0% impact on advancements in astronomy' and we 'need to move telescopes to orbit anyway,' he added. While SpaceX cares 'a great deal about science', the work to give 'billions of economically disadvantaged people' high-speed internet access through the Starlink network 'is the greater good,' he wrote. Responding to Mr Musk's comments, Professor Keel said that he was happy that the SpaceX CEO had offered to look into ways to reduce the reflectivity of future satellites, but questioned why the issue had not been addressed before. If optical astronomers are concerned, then their radio astronomy colleagues are 'in near despair,' Professor Keel added. Radio astronomers rely on the electromagnetic waves emitted by celestial objects to examine cosmic phenomena — such as the black hole that was imaged last month. So-called 'side emissions' generated by satellite operators can interfere with the observation bands that radio astronomers are looking out for if not adequately mitigated. 'There's every reason to join our radio astronomy colleagues in calling for a ""before"" response,' said Professor Keel. 'It's not just safeguarding our professional interests but, as far as possible, protecting the night sky for humanity.' Amateur astronomer Marco Langbroek caught footage of dozens of miniature satellites from SpaceX's Starlink project traversing their new orbit around Earth. In the video, shot from the Netherlands, the satellites — which appear as a string of consecutive lights — can be seen flying through the night sky a little more than a day after they were launched. A blog post from Langbroek detailed the amateur astronomer's excitement as the satellites entered his camera's field of view. 'It started with two faint, flashing objects moving into the field of view,' he wrote. 'Then, a few tens of seconds later, my jaw dropped as the ""train"" entered the field of view. I could not help shouting ""OAAAAAH!!!!"" (followed by a few expletives...).' The scientific community is concerned about how views of the night sky will be impacted with SpaceX's plans to increase the number of orbiting satellites from 60 to 12,000 over the next five years (Pictured: a Falcon 9 rocket carries Starlink satellites into orbit on May 23, 2019) To time the satellites voyage and get the video, Langbroek said he calculated the instruments' orbit himself. 'There were no orbital elements for the objects available yet on Space-Track, but based on the orbital information (53 degree inclination, initially 440 km orbital altitude) I had calculated a search orbit and stood ready with my camera,' he wrote in a post. 'My search orbit turned out to be not too bad: very close in sky track, and with the objects passing some 3 minutes early on the predictions. And what a SPECTACULAR view it was!' While Langbroek set up his camera in anticipation of viewing the satellites, other stargazers weren't anticipating the spectacle, causing an outpouring of UFO claims. Following the fly-by dutch UFO website www.ufomeldpunt.nl was flooded with reports. 'There's a long line of lights. Faster than a plane. Huh?' said one poster. 'Bizarre train of stars or lights moving across the skies at constant speed,' posted another. In a report by dutch outlet, NOS, one witness said he was concerned the lights were an attack. 'I didn't know what to think,' said an eye-witness who saw the lights go over The Hague reports NOS. 'Is Russia attacking America? Are they UFOs? I really didn't know.'",-1.2670578912369743 "Protesters outside the Alabama State Capitol hold signs against the state’s new abortion law, May 19, 2019. (Michael Spooneybarger/Reuters) If we go by the attitudes of the American people, both the New York and Alabama laws are extreme. ‘Democrats are aggressively pushing late-term abortion, allowing children to be ripped from their mother’s womb right up until the moment of birth,” President Trump said at a Florida rally earlier this month. “The baby is born and you wrap the baby beautifully and you talk to the mother about the possible execution of the baby.” Advertisement For cable news talking heads and leading Democrats, this is a demagogic lie. The fact-checkers mostly say it’s a distortion and exaggeration — and it is. It’s a distortion of something Virginia governor Ralph Northam said days before revelations that he dressed in blackface (or in a Klan outfit) during medical school eclipsed the Virginia abortion controversy. Trump has been referencing Northam’s remarks since January, when Kathy Tran, a Democratic Virginia delegate, introduced legislation to liberalize abortion in her state. During a colloquy with a Republican lawmaker, Tran said her bill would legalize abortions through the 40th week of pregnancy, including during labor. (She later said she misspoke when it was pointed out that this would violate infanticide laws.) The next day, Northam — a pediatric neurologist by training — appeared on a local radio station to support Tran and her bill. He explained how, in cases where a fetus was not viable, “the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.” Advertisement Now, Northam never said anything about “executing” babies. But Tran’s legislation would have allowed late-term abortions of viable, non-deformed babies solely if the mother’s mental or emotional health was threatened. Tran’s bill didn’t pass, but it was part of a trend in liberal states to loosen abortion laws even further. Earlier in January, Democratic New York governor Andrew Cuomo had signed similar legislation. All of this is worth keeping in mind amid the furor over Alabama’s near-total abortion ban. If we go by the attitudes of the American people, both the New York and the Alabama laws are extreme. Polling on abortion is notoriously fraught. Wording matters enormously because many Americans are conflicted on the issue. But generally, most Americans support early-stage abortions, and opposition grows along with the fetus. According to Gallup, 60 percent of Americans support abortion rights in the first trimester, but only 13 percent do in the third trimester. That the media yawned over New York’s law but remain in a frenzy over Alabama’s says a lot about where the press comes down on the issue. But it also speaks to the legal and political landscape. Even Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a strong defender of abortion rights, has called the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision a “heavy-handed judicial intervention” and said she would have preferred that abortion rights were secured more gradually, with greater buy-in at the state level. Advertisement Under Roe v. Wade (and later Planned Parenthood v. Casey), the court not only imposed one of the most permissive abortion regimes in the world, it foreclosed state-level compromise, galvanizing the pro-life movement and causing both pro-choicers and pro-lifers to take more absolutist positions. Alabama’s law is clearly unconstitutional under current precedent. But that’s the point. Alabama’s GOP legislators deliberately passed an unconstitutional law in the hope that the court’s new conservative majority would overthrow Roe and Casey. New York’s Democratic lawmakers weren’t trying to test Roe or Casey, but to create a post-Roe abortion “sanctuary” in case the court does reverse Roe. In other words, Roe is not a “moderate” ruling. Purely in terms of public attitudes, it permits pro-choice extremism (abortions in the 40th week!) but not pro-life extremism (total bans). Hence, Roe made it necessary for the pro-life movement to embrace an incremental strategy, working to change attitudes, chip away at Roe at the margins, and reduce the abortion rate (with considerable success). But now that some think the brass ring is in sight, the movement has split between incrementalists and those — like the sponsors of the Alabama bill — who think it’s worth going for broke. (I think the go-for-broke crowd is miscalculating.) Advertisement The underlying political reality is that most Americans want a compromise, but the parties are more responsive to the activists and donors. As a result, Democrats have abandoned their “safe, legal, and rare” rhetoric, while Republicans are downplaying a “culture of life.” Instead, each seeks to cast the other party as extreme. Republicans highlight rare late-term abortions, and Democrats focus on the also-rare cases of 12-year-olds impregnated by their rapist fathers. Roe created this polarized — and polarizing — dynamic in which the debate is dominated by the extremes. Overturning Roe and allowing states to pass laws that reflect majority opinion might not defuse the political passion, but at some point we are likely to find out. (C) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC",0.8870848883761224 "Job seekers at the TechFair in Los Angeles, Calif., March 8, 2018. (Monica Almeida/Reuters) Generational pride is the cheapest form of identity politics. I’ve changed my mind (a little) about how we discuss generations. First, let me illustrate my longstanding gripe. “I am probably the biggest fan of the Millennials you’ll ever meet,” retired navy admiral William H. McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said in a recent CBS interview. “[Critics] talk about Millennials being soft and pampered and entitled? Well, I’m quick to say that you’ve never seen them in a firefight in Afghanistan. . . .This is a fabulous generation, and anybody that worries about the future of the United States, I don’t think you need to worry.” Advertisement I can’t stand that kind of talk. Imagine that I said, “I am probably the biggest critic of Millennials you’ll ever meet. Fans talk about Millennials being brave and courageous. Well, I’m quick to say that you’ve never seen them mooching beer money in a 7-Eleven parking lot.” This might instantly strike you as unfair — and it is! That’s the point. There are some 83 million Millennials, defined as Americans born between 1981 and 1996. It’s difficult to generalize about a group of people this large. Within the ranks of Millennials there are pro-life Mormons and pro-choice atheists. There are immigrants and descendants of the Mayflower settlers. Some obsess over the best way to make avocado toast, and some obsess over the best way to clean an M1 rifle. I would leap at the opportunity to buy beer for the Millennials who raided bin Laden’s compound. But some random guy who was playing video games when bin Laden was taken out? He can buy his own beer. In other words, characteristics can be generalized, but character is formed by individual deeds. There is no transitive property to glory or blame. A hero in one generation isn’t less heroic because of the misdeeds of someone else his age. Generational pride is the cheapest form of identity politics. On the other hand, it’s true that you can make some useful generalizations about various generations. There are roughly as many Millennials in America as there are Germans in Germany. And while painting “the Germans” with too broad a brush can have its pitfalls, there are still some things you can say about Germans that you can’t say about Swedes or Costa Ricans. So it is with any generation. Advertisement Joseph Sternberg, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, has a new book, The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials’ Economic Future. He casts a thoughtful, nuanced, and important light on the plight of Millennials. Crucially, Sternberg does it from a center-right, pro-market perspective rather than from the more familiar, center-left view that often gets mired in larger identity-politics formulations. Millennials entered the workforce in large numbers around the time of the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the deep recession that followed it. That, along with policies in areas such as housing and education pushed by allegedly self-interested Baby Boomers, had dire consequences for a large swath of young people. Entering the labor market during a severe downturn puts a drag on lifetime earnings. Saddling yourself with college loan debt can too. Sternberg’s argument that Millennials — whether they fought in Afghanistan or not — have legitimate complaints about how the system is failing them strikes me as a valuable and worthwhile form of generational stereotyping. It’s rooted in empirical facts and figures. Advertisement But Sternberg’s attempt to blame the Boomers for the Millennials’ travails strikes me as the wrong kind of generational stereotyping. And I say that as a Gen Xer for whom bashing Baby Boomers is a birthright. I have no doubt that some of the policy missteps Sternberg lays at the feet of the Boomers can be attributed to certain generational attitudes. (They were the damn hippies, after all.) But many of those attitudes were inherited from the “Greatest Generation” or earlier. More to the point, the policies the Boomers implemented were hotly debated among Boomers themselves, and virtually none of them expressly argued from a desire to self-deal for their own generation at the expense of others. Just as there are Millennial socialists and Millennial anarcho-capitalists, there are Boomers in those categories as well. If we’re going to assign blame — and why not? — it’s more helpful to put it on those who were wrong rather than indicting an entire generation of some 75 million people. If it’s wrong to demonize Millennials, it’s probably wrong to demonize the Boomers, too. Advertisement © 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC",2.783603238980601 "“Was it right?” Jon Snow asks Tyrion after assassinating Daenerys in the series finale of Game of Thrones. “What I did? What we did—it doesn’t feel right.” “Ask me again in 10 years,” Tyrion responds. IMDb users didn’t wait nearly that long to pass judgment on how Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss handled the denouement of their immensely successful HBO series. Immediately after the finale aired, visitors to the vast movie and TV database—or as Tyrion might call it, the keeper of all our stories—began rating the episode on a scale from 1 to 10. Their verdict on what D&D did: It wasn’t right. Each of the final season’s six episodes has received more than 100,000 IMDb ratings. The average scores—especially for the second half of the season—are notably low not just by Game of Thrones’ previously lofty standards but compared to all oft-rated series on IMDb. Thrones’ user ratings were consistently strong throughout its first seven seasons, spiking in Season 4 and at the end of Season 6, but Season 8’s user ratings nose-dived more dramatically than the Clegane brothers amid the destruction of King’s Landing. Until recently, a fifth-season dalliance with Dorne had been the series’ nadir, but the six lowest-rated episodes in the series’ run are now all from the final season. As of the Wednesday after the finale’s first airing, the average IMDb user score for “The Iron Throne” sits at 4.4. The average combined rating for the last six episodes is 6.7. Considering that the combined average for the series’ previous seven seasons was 9.1, that’s quite a comedown. In fact, the drastic differences between the average ratings for Thrones’ final season and episode and the show’s combined average rating for its previous seasons are almost unprecedented among popular shows. For comparative purposes, we gathered episode-by-episode ratings for more than 1,600 shows with at least 5,000 user ratings on IMDb, which resulted in a sample of approximately 130,000 episodes over more than 7,400 seasons. The final season of Thrones places in the bottom 10 percent of all seasons in that group, and the series finale ranks within the worst 1.5 percent of all episodes. (It might seem strange that scores toward the middle of the 1–10 scale would rank so low, but IMDb user ratings tend to skew toward the high side, probably because users are more likely to rate shows they enjoy.) The full dataset (filtered to remove game shows and series that are still airing) doesn’t offer any evidence of a pronounced tendency for shows to end in unsatisfying fashion. As the table below indicates, the average ratings for final seasons and earlier seasons are only about a tenth of a point apart (if that), and as we’ve noted before, series finales tend to be deemed better-than-average episodes. That’s true among shows that ran for at least two seasons and shows that ran for at least five seasons, and it’s also true for shows whose genre labels include “drama” and ran for at least five seasons. Average IMDb User Ratings for Popular Non-Game Shows Sample Final Season Other Seasons Final Episode Sample Final Season Other Seasons Final Episode ≥2 Seasons 7.79 7.82 8.11 ≥5 Seasons 7.64 7.75 8.02 ≥5-Season Dramas 7.85 7.93 8.23 In other words, TV series don’t typically have much more trouble pulling off the proverbial landing than they do maintaining quality prior to that point. Thrones, which had the highest average “other seasons” rating of any series in the sample with as many total episodes, is one of the most extreme exceptions. The following table lists the narrative, live-action series that ran for more than five seasons and experienced the biggest drop-offs from their previous seasons to their final seasons, as indicated by their final-season average divided by their other-seasons average. Game of Thrones, for instance, has a final-season average rating only 73.2 percent as high as the average rating of its earlier seasons. Lowest-Rated Final Seasons (Relative to Combined Previous Seasons) Series Number of Seasons Final Season Ranking Other Seasons Ranking Final Season % Series Number of Seasons Final Season Ranking Other Seasons Ranking Final Season % House of Cards 6 4.18 8.62 48.4 Game of Thrones 8 6.67 9.11 73.2 Two and a Half Men 12 5.55 7.56 73.5 Murphy Brown 11 5.01 6.72 74.5 Scrubs 9 6.37 8.35 76.3 Bewitched 8 5.82 7.54 77.3 Degrassi: The Next Generation 14 5.08 6.5 78.2 Are You Afraid of the Dark? 7 6.98 8.7 80.2 Laverne & Shirley 8 6.35 7.67 82.8 Hawaii Five-O 12 6.08 7.28 83.6 Some of these outlier last seasons suffered from circumstances that went beyond a simple decline in quality. House of Cards, the only qualifying show with a steeper decline than Thrones, booted lead actor Kevin Spacey from the final season in the wake of sexual assault allegations by dozens of accusers and elevated Robin Wright to the starring role. The low ratings for House of Cards Season 6 could be a product of trolls trying to sabotage the series to protest Spacey’s removal; IMDb has been plagued by similar problems in the past. It’s possible, though, that the ratings are partly a response to the awkward narrative necessity of killing the main character off-screen. The ratings for the roundly lambasted series finale do show a lower average score by male users, but even female users gave it a 3.9. (The Thrones finale ratings show no gender split, although the site’s most prolific voters gave the episode a relatively positive score of 6.7.) Scrubs essentially rebooted in its final season, replacing almost its entire cast, while Bewitched recycled scripts from earlier episodes. Thrones itself had to resolve a sprawling story that started as an adaptation but ran out of road map when the series surpassed its source material. The accelerated pace at which the showrunners tried to tie up—or, just as often, didn’t try to tie up—the show’s complex plot lines culminated in the IMDb audience treating the finale like Drogon did the Iron Throne. Only a few other finales—including legendarily divisive endings like those of Dexter and How I Met Your Mother—occupy the same range relative to their series’ previous scores. (Both the best qualifying final season and the best qualifying finale belong to Breaking Bad, at 9.3 and 9.9, respectively; other user-acclaimed finales include Parenthood at 9.8; Six Feet Under, 9.8; Person of Interest, 9.8; and, at 9.7, The Americans, Angel, Friends, Parks and Recreation, Friday Night Lights, and The Office. In happier news for HBO, Veep’s series finale score stands at 9.6.) Lowest-Rated Final Episodes (Relative to Combined Non-Final Seasons) Series Number of Seasons Final Episode Rating Other Seasons Rating Final Episode % Series Number of Seasons Final Episode Rating Other Seasons Rating Final Episode % Are You Afraid of the Dark? 7 1.8 8.7 20.7 House of Cards 6 2.7 8.62 31.3 Game of Thrones 8 4.4 9.11 48.3 Dexter 8 4.7 8.75 53.7 Two and a Half Men 12 4.1 7.56 54.3 The Andy Griffith Show 8 4.8 7.91 60.7 True Blood 7 5.2 8.21 63.3 Murphy Brown 11 4.5 6.72 66.9 How I Met Your Mother 9 5.6 8.26 67.8 Pretty Little Liars 7 5.6 8.23 68.1 That Thrones’ user ratings fell through the Moon Door in its final season is partly a testament to its quality, consistency, and audience engagement leading up to that point; 4s, 5s, and 6s wouldn’t be as jarring if not for the 9s that came before. And even as the endgame left many fans unfulfilled, Thrones remained a massive success in the kind of ratings that matter more to HBO. Of course, IMDb user ratings are only a proxy for quality; they tell us how good a show is perceived to be by users of the site, not necessarily how good it is in any objective sense. What’s more, in many cases IMDb users may not be representative of the series’ overall audience. Thrones Season 8 has been savaged on social media, endlessly dissected by writers who watched it in a more analytical way than most casual viewers, found wanting by betrayed book readers who couldn’t help comparing it to George R.R. Martin’s intricate work, and even slighted by several members of the cast. A petition to remake Season 8 with “competent writers” has received upward of 1.5 million signatures (although they may not all be unique), and at least one writer has taken on the task of scripting an alternate telling. It’s reasonable to assume that IMDb raters are much more aware of—and potentially influenced by—that backlash than the less Extremely Online spectators who make up the majority of the giant audience enthralled by Thrones. In the same way that the electorate on Twitter doesn’t always mirror the electorate in real life, then, the IMDb audience probably distorts the more sweeping sentiment to a certain extent—although the critics aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes were almost equally harsh in their pans of the second half of the season. Even if there isn’t a concerted campaign to tank the Thrones ratings by a subset of inordinately aggrieved fans, the ultralow rating for the finale in particular likely reflects the IMDb audience’s dissatisfaction with the season as a whole (unless a lot of viewers were really bitter about that water bottle). Until we have representative public polling on every episode of past and present TV shows, as we do with political candidates, more reliable data sources are scarce. Judging by the data we do have, though, there may be one thing in the world more powerful than a good story—a deeply invested audience’s anger about a good story squandered. Then again, the wounds inflicted on the fan base’s psyche over the last several weeks haven’t had time to heal. Future viewers may reappraise the season, although it would take an inordinate number of positive votes to counteract the negative ones already cast. Was the way Thrones ended right? For now and for the foreseeable future, the internet’s answer is a vehement no. We can ask IMDb again in 10 years. Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.",0.12826103786075493 "[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] So many rats regularly lurk on a sidewalk in Brooklyn that it is the humans who avoid the rats, not the other way around. Not even cars are safe: Rats have chewed clean through engine wires. A Manhattan avenue lined with trendy restaurants has become a destination for foodies — and rats who help themselves to their leftovers. Tenants at a public housing complex in the South Bronx worry about tripping over rats that routinely run over their feet. New York has always been forced to coexist with the four-legged vermin, but the infestation has expanded exponentially in recent years, spreading to just about every corner of the city. “I’m a former Marine so I’m not going to be squeamish, but this is bad,” said Pablo Herrera, a 58-year-old mechanic who has counted up to 30 rats while walking on his block in Prospect Heights, just around the corner from the stately Brooklyn Museum.",0.25497346390421893 "A bungling felon from Washington state made a series of blunders when he shot himself in the testicles and tried to hide the weapon — all while storing drugs in his anus, a report said Wednesday. Cameron Jeffrey Wilson, 27, was carrying a pistol in his front pocket while in his Cashmere, Wash., apartment on April 5 when the firearm accidentally discharged and pierced his groin and thigh, according to the Wenatchee World News. Wilson, who is a 13-time convicted felon, told his girlfriend to dispose of the weapon before heading to the hospital, the paper said. When the ex-con finally went to the hospital, a balloon of marijuana slipped out of his anus while a doctor was operating on the gunshot wound, court records show. Cops also arrived at the hospital when alerted of the gunshot wound and searched Wilson’s car where they discovered a bag of meth in the blood-stained jeans he was wearing when he shot himself. The officers issued an arrest warrant for Wilson and he turned himself in to police on April 18. As he was being processed at the Chelan County Regional Justice Center, Wilson was strip-searched and another balloon of marijuana slipped from his anus, the paper said. While in jail, Wilson made a number of calls to his girlfriend and asked her not to cooperate with investigators working on his case. Authorities were listening in on the calls. The convicted felon was charged with possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of meth, possession of a controlled substance in a correctional facility, and four counts of tampering with a witness. Wilson was being held on $110,000 bail and is due in court on June 18.",-1.979772187731188 "Leaves and galls from white oak trees were used to produce plant-based antiseptics during the U.S. Civil War. Image : Stephen Nowland, Emory University With conventional medicines in short supply during the Civil War, the Confederacy turned to plant-based alternatives in desperation. New research suggests some of these remedies were actually quite good at fighting off infections—a finding that could lead to effective new drugs. Advertisement Three plant-based topical remedies listed in a Confederate Civil War field guide have antiseptic qualities, according to new research published this week in Scientific Reports. The antibacterial compounds were derived from white oak, tulip poplar, and devil’s walking stick. The active ingredients of the remedies are still not known, but the finding suggests these plant-based medicines may have actually saved some lives during the war, and perhaps even preventing the amputation of infected limbs. “As we look toward a future where many of our current antibiotics may no longer work... I think it’s important to have alternative strategies in development to fill that gap.” The new research also highlights the value of investigating old-timey therapies, which could be reconstituted into modern medicines. “As we look toward a future where many of our current antibiotics may no longer work with the efficacy to which we have become accustomed, I think it’s important to have alternative strategies in development to fill that gap,” Cassandra Quave, senior author of the new paper and an ethnobotanist at Emory University, told Gizmodo in an email. “The significance of the study is that it offers another proof-of-concept case that some of our solutions for the post-antibiotic era may be found in the medical traditions of the pre-antibiotic era.” Quave said it’s important to look back on historical data relating to the use of medicinal plants, particularly as we search for solutions to emerging medical challenges. Advertisement “Luckily, today we have advanced scientific methodologies and instrumentation that enables a deeper look at these historic remedies,” said Quave. During the Civil War (1861-1865), Union forces suffocated the South with a blockade, dramatically limiting the amount of goods available to the Confederacy—including its access to conventional medicines. With soaring infection rates among wounded soldiers, Confederate Surgeon General Samuel Moore commissioned Francis Porcher, a botanist and surgeon from South Carolina, to compile a book of medicinal plants found in the Southern states. Porcher was asked to include folk remedies used by white Southerners, as well as those used by enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples. Advertisement An 1863 copy of “Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests,” by Francis Porcher. Image : Stephen Nowland, Emory University The book, titled “Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests,” was published in 1863. The compendium was amazingly thorough, and included, for example, nearly 40 plant species used to treat gangrene and other infections. Equipped with this book, Moore sketched out a condensed version called “Standard supply table of the indigenous remedies for field service and the sick in general hospitals,” which neatly described the way in which the field guide was used by the South during the latter stages of the Civil War. Advertisement This guide likely came in handy. As the war raged on, and as conventional medicines became scarce, disease began to exert a terrible toll on soldiers. The majority of casualties and deaths in the Civil War, as the American Battle Trust points out, were the result of non-combat-related diseases. Germ theory was still in its nascent stage of development, yet doctors understood the importance of using antiseptics to stave of infections even if it wasn’t immediately obvious as to why. To assess the antimicrobial potential of these Civil War-era remedies, Quave and her colleagues selected three specific plant-based medicines to test in the lab, specifically those derived from the white oak and tulip poplar (both trees) and devil’s walking stick (a thorny, woody shrub). All three were used during the war as a topical, or external, rinse for wounds. Using Porter’s book as their guide, the researchers selected specific extracts from the bark, leaves, galls, and other parts of the plants. These compounds were then tested against three species of drug-resistant bacteria associated with wounds, namely Acinetobacter baumannii, Staphylococcus aureus, and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Advertisement “We found that they worked against a number of bacteria that are commonly implicated in [wartime] wounds—including drug-resistant strains,” said Quave. “While some exhibited classic antibiotic activity—such as slowing down the growth or killing the bacteria—others acted by blocking the bacteria’s ability to stick to surfaces (important to wounds) or by blocking bacterial communication responsible for the production of toxins that destroy tissues.” When asked if doctors would ever want to treat an infection solely with one of these remedies, Quave said it would depend on the context. Advertisement “I don’t believe these would be effective as an oral medication to treat a systemic infection, but they could be potentially useful in wound care—perhaps formulated as a wound rinse, hydrogel, or medicated bandage,” she said. “This new scientific research confirms that folk medicine used in the Civil War actually did fight bacteria and prevent infection,” Joan E. Cashin, a historian at the Ohio State University and author of War Stuff: The Struggle For Human And Environmental Resources In The American Civil War, wrote in an email to Gizmodo. “These staggering results prove yet again that truth—and history—is stranger than fiction,” said Cashin, who wasn’t involved in the new study. Advertisement Looking ahead, Quave would like to determine which compounds are responsible for the specific antibacterial activities observed in the study, and to test formulations of the most promising extracts in wounds infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria. Ultimately, Quave would like to see these discoveries translated to actual medicines. “Perhaps the best implementation will be as a topical antimicrobial medical device—like a hydrogel, wound rinse, or medicated bandage,” she said.",-0.8207645751590557 "Scientists have long presumed that the creatures in the deep ocean experienced a dark, colorless world. But some of the fish who live there may be able to see colors thanks to a newly discovered visual system that’s never been seen in vertebrates before. The find, reported in the journal Science, challenges long-held assumptions about how these animals perceive colors. “We didn’t expect this at all,” said study co-leader Fabio Cortesi, a marine biologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. “We were like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’” Christopher Kenaley, a biologist at Boston College who wasn’t involved in the study, said the report should prompt scientists to reconsider the conventional wisdom that deep-sea fish have very limited vision. Advertisement “There’s some important questions in the deep sea about how animals communicate down there,” he said. “This gives us insight about how they might be able to detect one another.” Vertebrate vision is made possible by photoreceptor cells in the back of the eye. These cells — called rods and cones — include pigment proteins that detect different types of light and relay that information to the brain. The yellow light-filtering lens of a deep-sea oceanic basslet. Yellow filtering pigments and lenses are found in a number of deep-sea fish eyes and are thought to enhance contrast against the residual daylight. (Dr. Wen-Sung Chung, University of Queensland) A typical vertebrate eye has multiple types of cones that work in bright conditions — each capable of sensing a certain range of colors — and one type of rod that senses light when the environment is dim. The rods can’t distinguish between colors because they all have the same pigment protein, which is why humans and most other animals are said to be colorblind at night. Advertisement Cortesi and his colleagues wondered if they could find some exceptions among fish who lived in perpetually dark environments. Their question was prompted by a 2015 study of mostly shallow-water fish that turned up several species with more genes for cone pigment proteins than scientists had expected. “We just thought if other fish are more variable in their visual system than previously thought, we should look at the deep-sea fishes,” said Walter Salzburger, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland who oversaw both the 2015 study and the new one. After all, if any fish stood to benefit by having more ways to see in dark conditions, it would be fish that live in water so deep that light barely reaches them. Very little is known about fish that reside more than 1,000 meters below sea level. Some developed large pupils and very long rods help them catch whatever light is around. (At those depths, most of the light is produced by fish themselves through bioluminescence.) For the new study, the researchers started by counting the number of genes for both rod and cone pigment proteins in the genomes of 101 species of fish living in a diverse array of habitats. Although they found a dozen species with up to seven cone pigment genes, what really struck them was the discovery of 13 species that had more than one rod pigment gene. Advertisement Four of those species stood out with five or more of the genes: the tube-eye (Stylephorus chordatus), the glacier lanternfish (Benthosema glaciale), the longwing spinyfin (Diretmoides pauciradiatus) and the silver spinyfin (Diretmus argenteus). An assortment of deep-sea fishes with enhanced vision: silver spinyfin (top), lanternfish (middle) and tube-eye (bottom). (Pavel Riha, University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice) All four of these fish live 1,000 meters to 2,000 meters below sea level. Their most recent common ancestor dates to more than 100 million years ago, so the researchers think the additional genes evolved independently in each lineage. “Is it to see prey species? Or to find mates in a completely dark, or almost dark, environment? Or to avoid predators?” Salzburger said. “These are the three main evolutionary advantages we can think of.” Advertisement But were these fish actually using their extra pigment proteins? To answer that question, the team examined specimens representing 36 different fish species. Some tissue samples were already preserved in laboratories, and others were acquired on fishing expeditions. Cortesi and other researchers dragged a net through the ocean from Perth to Sri Lanka. They trawled at night so the fish wouldn’t encounter sunlight that might damage their eyes. It could take six hours to fill just one little bucket of the thumb-size fish, Cortesi said. Most of the 36 species had only one active gene for producing rod pigment proteins. The species with at least five rod pigment genes had at least three that were active. The star was the silver spinyfin. It had 38 genes for rod pigment proteins, and 14 of those proteins were actually at work inside the eye. (For the sake of comparison, most humans use only three types of cone pigment proteins to see the world in color.) Advertisement It’s not clear how the silver spinyfin uses all of these rod pigments, but the scientists suspect they may increase their sensitivity to light, Salzburger said. To get an idea of what colors the silver spinyfin might see, the researchers enlisted bacteria to reproduce some of its rod pigment proteins in a petri dish. Then they shined a light on each of them to see what portion of the spectrum the pigment proteins were able to absorb. They found that they could detect light across the entire spectrum of bioluminescence — from different shades of blue and green to yellow. Finally, they used those results to predict the colors other deep-water fish with multiple rod pigment proteins could see. The shapes of those proteins were the key, since different shapes are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Their work suggested that the lantern fish, tube-eye and longwing spinyfin probably could detect blue light, as well as shades of green and yellow-green. But they would not have as wide a range as the silver spinyfish. Advertisement Without behavioral experiments, the scientists can’t know for sure whether these fish really do use their rods to see color. The experiments would be difficult to pull off because the fish aren’t just hard to get, they don’t live long once they are brought to the surface, Salzburger said. (The water pressure at sea level is much lower than what they’re used to in the deep ocean.) Nevertheless, scientists who were not involved in the study agreed that identifying fish with multiple rod pigment proteins was a novelty in itself. Biologist David Hunt, a professor emeritus at the University of Western Australia who has specialized in the evolution of vertebrate vision, called its findings “quite astounding.” “That is something that is unknown and really totally unexpected,” he said. “I’m still trying to get my head around really what it means.”",-0.7468091976949695 "Scientists have created a living organism whose DNA is entirely hu man-made — perhaps a new form of life, experts said, and a milestone in the field of synthetic biology. Researchers at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain reported on Wednesday that they had rewritten the DNA of the bacteria Escherichia coli, fashioning a synthetic genome four times larger and far more complex than any previously created. The bacteria are alive, though unusually shaped and reproducing slowly. But their cells operate according to a new set of biological rules, producing familiar proteins with a reconstructed genetic code. The achievement one day may lead to organisms that produce novel medicines or other valuable molecules, as living factories. These synthetic bacteria also may offer clues as to how the genetic code arose in the early history of life.",1.3109633614308558 "Attorney General William Barr speaks during a farewell ceremony for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., May 9, 2019. (Leah Millis/Reuters) Instead of praising Barr for releasing to the public what amounts to an off-the-shelf roadmap for impeachment, Democrats are cavalierly talking about throwing Barr in jail. Ever since Donald Trump came down that Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy for president, we’ve heard a great deal about the abuse of norms — constitutional norms, democratic norms, norms of decency, all kinds of norms. For Trump supporters, the president’s frequent violations of norms, while occasionally regrettable, were for the most part welcome because they proved he was willing to fight to win. This was necessary, the theory went, because the Left didn’t care about norms anymore; they only cared about winning. Advertisement But this view — that the other side plays dirty so we must too — is hardly new to American politics. The sentiment is practically baked into politics. But the degree and intensity of the baking has increased and has come to define whichever side has been out of power over the past few decades. President Clinton’s impeachment on charges of lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice came after years of frustration with what was perceived as “Slick Willie’s” flouting of political norms. The 2000 presidential election recount in Florida and the Supreme Court’s role in settling the Bush-Gore recount dispute was all the evidence progressive online activists (called the “netroots” in pre-Twitter nomenclature) needed to argue that Democrats needed “fighting Dems” to play as dirty as they imagined Karl Rove, Bush’s supposed Rasputin, was playing. Partisans invariably think the other side is cheating perhaps just a little bit more than they really are, so when they decide to fight fire with fire, they emulate the worst-imagined tactics of the enemy, creating a race-to-the-bottom dynamic. Advertisement And that brings us to the Democrats’ rush to create a “constitutional crisis” where there isn’t one. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over a fully unredacted version of the Mueller report in compliance with a subpoena. It’s a wild overreaction given that Barr’s decision to release the Mueller report almost in its entirety was purely discretionary. By law, and by custom, Barr was under no obligation to release anything, since the norm is for the Department of Justice to stay silent if it fails to find prosecutable crimes. His only objectionable transgression against traditional norms was offering a Trump-friendly memo accurately, if tendentiously, summarizing the report’s conclusions. That was enough for Democrats to lock in to a “cover-up” narrative. Never mind that Barr soon waived all executive privilege claims and released the whole report, redacting only a sliver of material that relied on confidential grand jury testimony and a few sentences that might reveal sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The latter is stuff the Russians would presumably love to see, the former is stuff Barr is barred by law from releasing. If you read the report — and by the fact that you can read it — it’s clear there was no cover-up. As a compromise, Barr invited congressional leaders to look at an even more unredacted version. Representative Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, refused to even look at the report, saying a 99.9 percent redaction-free report wasn’t good enough. The notion that a few sentences of blacked-out information are the real “smoking gun” is absurd. Advertisement Instead of praising Barr for releasing to the public what amounts to an off-the-shelf roadmap for impeachment, Barr is not only being charged with contempt, but Democrats are cavalierly talking about throwing Barr in jail. The Democrats are on much better legal footing in their pursuit of the president’s tax returns, but even here the effort amounts to responding to one violation of norms with another. Trump should have abided by custom and released his returns, as past presidents have done and as he said he would. But the law says Congress can demand to see them. The law is a bad one prone to abuse, but the Trump administration will still have to comply. But in listening to Democrats explain why they want the returns, you can see how corrupting the desire to get Trump has become. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. (D., N.J.) offered his reason for wanting the tax returns: to rub the truth in the faces of “the people who follow Mr. Trump, his base.” Pascrell wants them to say, “We’ve been had.” “I can’t wait for that to happen,” he added. Advertisement Pascrell will be sorely disappointed by the capacity of Trump’s base to absorb negative revelations about the president. But that’s beside the point. The White House is wrong when it claims Congress must have a “legislative purpose” to see the returns. But democratic norms suggest that Congress shouldn’t require confidential tax returns to be spilled out just for the purpose of saying “nyah, nyah” to voters or to prove that Democrats are just as willing to fight dirty. © 2019 Tribune Content Agency LLC",-0.24088914224717944 "× Acton Institute Information 131 Million. This is not a population statistic, nor is it the answer to some clever math problem. It’s the number of people you reached through Acton over the past year. Your support made possible a wide range of conferences, publications, media products, television interviews, and social media outreach that impacted leaders around the globe. For this, we are truly grateful. As you know, Acton has been promoting liberty and virtue for 25 years now. Alumni of our programs and users of our products include heads of state, members of the U.S. House, Fortune 500 business executives, influential clergy, and professors and students from preeminent universities and seminaries. Many of these individuals have gone on to promote Acton insights in their own realms of influence and authority. But you did. Over the years, you’ve supported us generously with your prayers, encouragement, and resources. That generosity has made us one of the most unique and respected organizations in the free-market movement. As you read this Founders’ Report – and all of them, for that matter – we hope you will see yourself not as a passive supporter, but as an active collaborator. Over the last 25 years, your support has brought us to this place. And of that, you ought to be proud. With gratitude, Kris Mauren",-1.1966740755111835 "Unlike wood, insulation, and other building materials, concrete doesn't burn. Modern civilization has practically built its infrastructure on it, from stairs to floors to office towers. While not bursting into flames is a good thing, concrete does have vulnerability—exposed to high temperatures, it can explode like a bag of microwaved popcorn. And scientists are getting better at understanding why. A recent paper published in the journal Cement and Concrete Research offered some insight into this unusual phenomenon. Researchers at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology; the University of Grenoble, and Institut Laue-Langevin conducted an experiment using blocks of concrete, which typically consists of cement, sand, water, and other additives to increase strength or reduce permeability. Heated to 1112°F, portions of the block exploded. Using neutron tomography, researchers were able to visualize the accumulation of water as the block heats up. The principle behind it is largely the same as popping popcorn kernels. In both instances, heated water vaporizes and becomes trapped. With nowhere to go, the built-up energy is released, with the concrete becoming pressurized and breaking apart. Part of the reason the vapor becomes trapped is because water moves away from the heat source—say, a fire in an interior room—and toward the cooler portion of the concrete. In doing so, the water acts as a moisture barrier, preventing vapor from coming through pores. High-performance concrete, which is often used in commercial applications, has few pores, which makes the pressure from the vapor more concentrated. The water in the mix can turn to vapor when temperatures reach 392°F. Why is understanding this process important? By exploring how and why concrete can burst, additives can be developed to reduce or eliminate the effect. The result will be safer, more fire-resistant buildings. [h/t Live Science]",-0.45974946514194487 "“The Balls are Going to be Lopsided”: Hear rendition of Navy pilots' plan to draw sky penis In 2017, a Navy flight crew roared into legend when they drew a giant phallus in the sky with the contrails of their jet, assuming it would quickly blow away. It did not. Now, Navy Times has obtained the transcript of the conversation that led to the 'sky dong.' It prompted viral guffaws from some and online outrage from others. There are shot glasses commemorating the event and it birthed memes ahead of the annual Army-Navy game. But the inside story of how an EA-18G Growler jet crew drew a penis across the clear blue skies of Washington state in 2017 has never been told. Until now. It was the work of two junior officers with the “Zappers” of Electronic Attack Squadron 130, who had sky time to kill and noticed that the white contrails their jet produced were particularly robust that afternoon. But they never counted on those contrails lingering long enough for folks on the ground to see their phallic rendering, according to a copy of the military’s sky penis investigation obtained exclusively by Navy Times. Penis skydrawing was our doing, Navy says Outraged residents spotted the phallic-shaped skydrawings near Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. × Fear of missing out? Sign up for the Navy Times Daily News Roundup to receive the top Navy stories every afternoon. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to the Navy Times Daily News Roundup. KREM 2, a local TV station, broke the news after a woman snapped pics of the sky drawings on Nov. 16, 2017, near a training area for the squadron, which is based in western Washington at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. “A mother who lives in Okanogan who took pictures of the drawings reached out to KREM 2 to complain about the images, saying she was upset she might have to explain to her young children what the drawings were,” the station reported. The story of the sky penis took wing from there, spreading umbrage and juvenile glee to all corners of the internet. It also prompted nervous commanders to file urgent communiques to Navy leadership back in Washington, D.C., letting them know that this was about to turn into a thing. Within hours of the phallic rendering, the squadron sent an alert to higher ups in an “official information dispatch” that reached the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. “Aircrew maneuvered an EA-18G aircraft in a pattern that resulted in contrails depicting an obscene symbol when viewed from the ground,” it warned. “Media attention is expected.” Flying as “Zapper 21,” the lieutenants responsible for the drawing took off from Whidbey with another jet at about noon that day, according to the investigation. The squadron’s commanding officer would later praise the pilot as a shy introvert and “a ‘whiz kid’ who managed our training and readiness with higher efficiency and effectiveness than anyone else I have seen in a squadron,” according to the investigation. His cockpit partner that day, an electronic warfare officer, or EWO, was “my best junior officer,” the CO noted. What discipline the Zapper 21 duo faced remains unknown. Citing privacy regulations, officials declined to provide such records, and all names are redacted in the report copy provided to Navy Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. An Air Force sky penis to rival the Navy’s own? A pic of a sky phallus apparently drawn over Ramstein Air Base fails to match the clean elegance of the Navy's sky penis drawing last year. The day’s flight was to be a standard 90 minutes of training over the skies of north-central Washington. Their partner jet soon flew to another section of their training area, and the lieutenants got an idea. The EWO broached it first, according to the investigation. “My initial reaction was no, bad,” the pilot wrote in a statement after the incident. “But for some reason still unknown to me, I eventually decided to do it.” Their sky penis plan of attack was captured on their cockpit video recording system, a transcript of which is included in the investigation. “Draw a giant penis,” the EWO said. “That would be awesome.” “What did you do on your flight?” the pilot joked. “Oh, we turned dinosaurs into sky penises.” “You should totally try to draw a penis,” the EWO advised. “I could definitely draw one, that would be easy,” the pilot boasted. “I could basically draw a figure eight and turn around and come back. I’m gonna go down, grab some speed and hopefully get out of the contrail layer so they’re not connected to each other.” They theorized on the second-order effects of their nascent sky drawing. “Dude, that would be so funny,” the pilot said. “Airliner’s coming back on their way into Seattle, just this big (expletive)ing, giant penis. We could almost draw a vein in the middle of it too.” Soon, the EWO reported they were definitely “marking.” They had found the sweet altitude, and the contrail sky penis was being born in their wake. “Balls are going to be a little lopsided,” the pilot advised. “Balls are complete,” he reported moments later. “I just gotta navigate a little bit over here for the shaft.” “Which way is the shaft going?” the EWO asked. “The shaft will go to the left,” the pilot answered. “It’s gonna be a wide shaft,” the EWO noted. “I don’t wanna make it just like 3 balls,” the pilot said. “Let’s do it,” the EWO said. “Oh, the head of that penis is going to be thick.” “Some like Chinese weather satellite right now that’s like, ‘what the (expletive)?’” the pilot surmised. The jet streaked across the sky, and the duo’s magnum opus continued to take shape, showcasing the pilot’s prowess in the process. “To get out of this, I’m gonna go like down and to the right,” the pilot said. “And we’ll come back up over the top and try to take a look at it.” “I have a feeling the balls will have dissipated by then,” his partner answered. “It’s possible,” the pilot said. They flew away to a distance where they could take in their work. They cracked up in the cockpit as their sky penis came into full view, snapping pics they would later delete once they realized their command would likely go apoplectic. “Oh yes, that was (expletive)ing amazing,” the pilot said. “This is so obvious.” “That’s a (expletive),” the EWO said. “Dude, I’m amazed that this stayed.” “Mishap pilot alpha said, ‘Dude, I’m gonna draw a (expletive),’” the EWO said. “EWO alpha said, ‘Yup, that’s a great idea.’” They waited to see if their partner jet would notice their work. “Your artwork is amazing,” the lieutenant commander EWO in the other jet radioed to them. “Glad you guys noticed,” the pilot replied. Air Force: Sky penis drawings over Germany were not intentional Air Force officials in Europe said the contrails that some on the ground mistook for genitalia renderings were not intentional. Their triumph was fleeting. “Soon after, I realized the extent of our actions,” the pilot wrote. “That the contrails were remaining longer than predicted.” Evasive maneuvers became necessary. “I remarked that we needed to take steps to try to obfuscate it,” he wrote. “I flew one pass over it essentially trying to scribble it out with my contrails. That pass was ineffective.” With fuel running low, the jet returned to Whidbey Island. Back on the ground, the deputy commodore of Electronic Attack Wing Pacific soon contacted the squadron, looking for the executive officer, or XO. The XO confirmed that there had been squadron jets in the area of the sky penis that afternoon, according to the investigation. “(The deputy commodore) emailed pictures of the phallic-shaped object that were taken from the ground” to the XO. When the XO asked the lieutenants if anything unusual had happened during their flight that day, the two immediately fessed up and apologized, according to the report. “(One lieutenant) stated that he deleted the sky drawing photographs from his phone out of shame and as an attempt at damage control to prevent further accidental spread of the photographs,” the investigator wrote. “They both apologized and were at once remorseful,” the XO wrote in a summary. Soon, the squadron’s commanding officer arrived. The XO showed his boss the sky penis pics and explained what happened. “He was immediately furious,” the XO wrote. “He asked both (lieutenants) if they had any idea what the ramifications of their actions were going to be.” Neither lieutenants had any previous disciplinary problems, and the high jinks were conducted after the training was completed, according to the report. While Navy officials said at the time of the incident that the two would go before a disciplinary board, the investigating officer recommended they receive “non-punitive letters of instruction.” “While the sky writing conducted by (the lieutenants) was crude, immature, and unprofessional, it was not premeditated or planned and not in keeping with their character demonstrated prior to the incident,” the investigator wrote. “Even so, it has caused the United States Navy severe embarrassment in the public arena and jeopardizes the strategic narrative that underpins the justification of the flight hour program.” Growler training flights and their noise are a recurring complaint among some residents in areas of Washington state. “Additionally, the absence of relevant, effective, professional training highlighted by the sophomoric sky drawing indicates a potential waste and misuse of government resources,” the investigator wrote. The XO defended the wayward lieutenants, calling them both “fine officers and capable aviators.” “They 100 percent need to be held accountable, but if they are allowed to continue in naval aviation this is not a mistake they will repeat,” he wrote. “Minus the current circumstances, they have never given me a reason to doubt their trustworthiness or their resolve to be officers in the Navy.” The investigator interviewed squadron members of all ranks to see if the sky penis reflected larger problems at the command. Personnel across the board reported no concerns, according to the report. A 2017 command climate survey had placed the squadron above or within Navy averages for nearly all measurable areas, the investigator wrote. “The investigation revealed no indications of poor command climate and no evidence or allegations (of) overt sexism or misogyny,” the report states. When it came to the sky penis, one squadron officer statement in the investigation appears to sum up the sentiment of the command regarding the historic act: “This was a really bad decision by some really good guys in a really good squadron.”",-1.2433117437006436 "One week from today, Mad Max returns to our screens in Mad Max: Fury Road. But that post-apocalyptic road-rage survivor wouldn’t be around today if he hadn’t starred in two incredible movies, decades ago. Here are all the weirdest facts you never knew about the making of Mad Max and The Road Warrior. Plus an exclusive video! Advertisement Mad Max (1979): Director George Miller grew up in a small town in Queensland, Australia where he saw a lot of car accidents. The subculture around cars and violence became an early subject of preoccupation for him, especially after he lost three friends to accidents in his teenage years. Later, as a doctor working in a casualty department, he would see numerous road accident victims, practically on a daily basis. These concerns and images accumulated to provide the raw material for the film. As Miller put it in a 1979 interview with Cinema Papers, “The USA has its gun culture, we have our car culture.” Another major inspiration was Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, which sparked the Toecutter gang’s distinctive dialect. Miller wanted to avoid contemporary-sounding dialogue and, with the help of a movie-obsessed Irish journalist named James McCausland whom he met at a dinner party, he wrote a script littered with outre linguistic flourishes. Miller’s medical background also came in useful while funding the film. The pre-production funding was secured partly via earnings from three months of intensive work as a traveling emergency physician (with producer Byron Kennedy as his driver). In the process, they also collected many anecdotal experiences from road accident victims and incorporated them into the film. Source: Cinema Papers, Issue 21 (May-June 1979) Advertisement The then-unknown Mel Gibson was cast when he dropped his drama school friend/housemate Steve Bisley (who landed the role of Goose) off at the auditions. His face was swollen and littered with bruises, thanks to a drunken brawl he’d gotten into the week before. The battered look intrigued the casting agents (“We’re looking for freaks”) who took Polaroids and asked him to return once he’d healed up. When he returned weeks later, the producers didn’t recognize him until he pointed out his Polaroid on the casting board. He got the part after winning the people in the casting office over with a joke, and confirming that he could indeed drive. Advertisement Funnily enough, there’s a rumor that this particular story is just a tall tale cooked up by Gibson and that his matinee idol looks were the deciding factor in winning him the part. There’s a version of the casting story that simply has Miller going to a play in which Bisley and Gibson were starring, and being won over by Gibson’s physicality and the pair’s onstage chemistry. Given his career-long preoccupation with Catholicism, it’s also no surprise that Gibson returned to the role twice. Terry Hayes, co-writer of The Road Warrior, says that when he first spoke to Gibson about his returning to star in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, he described the character as “Jesus in black leather.” Advertisement Source: Hero Complex Advertisement George Miller was worried that he wouldn’t have the money to hire Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Hugh Keays-Byrne to play the villain, Toecutter. After much back and forth, Keays-Byrne agreed to join the cast but only if he could bring along the group of actors that would go on to play the Toecutter’s gang. Miller didn’t have the money to fly them all in from Sydney so he paid for their motorcycles (all Kawasakis) to be shipped to Sydney by train. Keays-Byrne and his cohort then rode the bikes all the way from Sydney to Melbourne, where the film was being shot. Oddly enough, that journey became an inadvertent bit of method preparation as the days on the road helped them bond and get into the biker gang mindset. Miller also had an arrangement with the local police, giving every actor a letter on studio letterhead, certifying that they were with the production. This group also lived apart from the actors playing policeman (who were derisively dubbed “the Bronze”) — and in inferior accommodations to boot. This was by design on Miller’s part, helping create tension both on-camera and off. According to Keays-Byrne, there was a lot of “illegal activity” being perpetrated and the studio letters were basically “get-out-of-jail-free cards.” Advertisement Source: Empire Magazine, October 2002 Thanks to the meager $350,000 budget, many aspects of the production were cobbled together on the fly. Real bikers—including members of a biker club called the Vigilantes as well the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels—were used in several action scenes. Some of these bikers—as well as a few drivers—were paid in ‘slabs’ (slang for 24-packs) of beer. Advertisement Art director Jon Dowding stole the signage and props that can be seen outside the store where Jessie gets ice cream, making off with them in the morning and returning them at night after the shot was complete. Given how expensive actual leather costumes were, only Gibson and Bisley got to wear the real thing. Everyone else was sporting vinyl outfits. Advertisement Most of the film was shot using an old beat-up lens that Sam Peckinpah once used for The Getaway. Miller himself went above and beyond what’s generally expected of a director. He personally swept glass off the roads after shots were completed. He edited the film by hand in his kitchen. He even sacrificed his old Mazda Bongo, the blue van seen totaled in the opening chase. Advertisement Despite the shoestring budget, however, Miller and company were all about verisimilitude. Many of the action scenes were shot at real speeds. The one shot of Goose’s speedometer reading 180 km/h is a real one, filmed by brave DP David Eggby as he clung to the back of a bike with a 35mm camera. Given all the risks taken by the crew, it’s ironic that the most significant injuries suffered during the production were not incurred during filming. Lead stuntman Grant Page (paid all of $1000 a week for his work on the film) and Rosie Bailey, the actress originally cast as Max’s wife, were speeding to the set on a motorcycle, trying to make an early shooting call. They were cut off by a sixteen-wheeler and crashed the bike. Both suffered broken legs, causing Bailey to be replaced by Joanne Samuel and Page to be sidelined for a little while. Advertisement Broken leg notwithstanding, Page still performed some of the most impressive stunts in the film, including one in which he jumps the Interceptor through a caravan during the opening chase. Another stuntman—Gerry Gauslaa—broke a world record when he rode his four-cylinder bike over 28 meters and jumped off it mid-flight. Then there was the filming of the Nightrider’s death, four seconds of screentime that took three days to film. The process involved the use of a military booster rocket to propel the souped up Holden Monaro to speeds of 75 mph over 36 meters before terminating in the required fiery crash. By the time filming was done, fourteen vehicles had been destroyed and every crash was shot in one take. These stunts were so impressive that they prompted a bit of professional jealousy in international quarters—there was a rumor later spread by American stuntmen that a rider was killed in the shot during the bridge sequence where a biker gets hit on the head by a flying cycle. Grant Page would like you to know this isn’t true. Advertisement Sources: Mad Max DVD commentary, Empire Magazine article Advertisement The Vehicles: Max’s yellow Interceptor was a 1974 Ford Falcon XB sedan with a 351 cubic inch Cleveland V8 engine. Roop and Charlie’s “Big Bopper” was also a ‘74 Falcon but had a 308 cubic inch V8 instead of a 351. Both were decommissioned Victorian police cars. Max’s famous black Pursuit Special was a 1973 Ford XB Falcon GT351, modified by crew mechanic Murray Smith, Ford Australia’s Peter Arcadipane, and others. Modifications include the non-functional supercharger (added for its cosmetic appeal) and the Concorde front, a relatively rare accessory that later went public thanks to its increasing popularity. After the shoot wrapped, the car was taken around the country as part of the film’s promotional campaign and, then put up for sale. There were no interested buyers, and it went back under the care of Murray Smith. Advertisement Most of the bikes used in the film were Kawasaki Kz1000s donated by a local dealership called La Parisienne. Source: Mad Max Movies Advertisement The Road Warrior (1981): A core inspiration for the sequel stemmed directly from the reception to the first movie. Miller found that Mad Max seemed to translate seamlessly across cultures, super-imposing itself on the mythology of every country it was popular in. As he often observes, the Japanese would equate it to samurai films, Europeans would compare to spaghetti westerns and so on. Miller realized that in making the first film, he had—unknowingly—reinterpreted some universal definitions of heroism. Advertisement For the second film, he decided to explore that concept further and, this time, by design. This endeavor led him to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, a book about the classic hero figure that has transcended historical and cultural differences. Miller believed that the heart of the first film’s success was summed up neatly by Campbell’s book. “So we decided to expand on it,” said Campbell in a Films in Review interview. “We decided to see if we could create a real hero.” Source: Films In Review, “George Miller” by Pat Broeske Advertisement Part of Miller’s pre-production strategy was to concoct background stories for all the characters. Lord Humungus’ backstory was that he was a horribly injured senior military officer and master strategist. Wells recalls that “Wez was an ex-Vietnam veteran who had fought his way through many battles...I considered him an innocent swept up in all this, defending what he believed in.” Bruce Spence said that he and Miller pictured the Gyro Captain as “venal, a good talker with absolutely no self respect...We seem to agree that he was possibly a used car salesman or a PR consultant. If George Bush Jr. was around then, I probably would have modeled him on that bastard!” Advertisement Sources: Hot Dog Magazine: “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Pavel Barter Fantastic Films #30, “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” by Blake Mitchell and Jim Ferguson Advertisement The film was shot in the winter of 1981 in a remote mining town called Broken Hill, 800 miles west of Sydney. The town’s reserves of ore had dried up, causing much of the population to relocate. This made it a source not just of cheap housing but of a certain air of post-apocalyptic desolation that couldn’t be replicated on a studio lot. The result was a ghost town turned surreal by the twelve week occupation of a gang of wild-looking, adrenaline-junkie film people. Advertisement Mel Gibson would tool around the town in his Mini, wearing (for some reason) bedroom slippers, an affectation that the town’s inhabitants found odd but soon got used to. They also got used to half-naked men wandering around in S&M gear. Virginia Hey, the actress who played the Warrior Woman, remembered arriving in the town in the middle of a storm, only to be greeted by the sight of Vernon Wells striding through a dust cloud with a mohawk and protruding buttcheeks. Extras were recruited from the town populace but, apparently, not everyone heard about the filming. A mailman once blew through the stop signs while a chase was being filmed, only to encounter the gangs of marauding punks and flee in terror. Source: Hot Dog Magazine: “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Pavel Barter Advertisement The Buttocks: Costume designer Norma Moriceau was inspired by the offerings on display at an S&M boutique store that adjoined her Sydney home. Much of the wardrobe was cobbled together over the course of numerous trips to junk shops, second-hand stores and various special-interest leather outlets. Moriceau originally wanted Wells’ butt to be bare but a flap was deemed necessary, due to his need to jump on and off motorcycles constantly. Gibson called Wells “Barometer Bum” on set. Why? Wells recalls, “When my butt cheeks went purple on set, they’d send everyone into the bus so we could warm up.” Advertisement His wasn’t the only blue rear end on view. The Broken Hill locals had promised warm weather through to the middle of the year but this was not to be. Co-scripter Brian Hannant recalls, “We had maybe six or eight clear warm days. It rained; the wind was abysmal. The costumes were all designed for warm weather, just G-strings some of them. I never saw so many blue bums in my life. Genuinely blue. The local army disposal shop didn’t have a greatcoat left. All you’d see on the set were these rows of greatcoats.” Sources : Hot Dog Magazine: “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Pavel Barter Starburst Magazine, Vol 4, No. 9, “Mad Max 2” by John Baxter Advertisement The Dog: Max’s dog, (actually named “Dog”) was a Queensland Heeler rescued from an RSPCA pound the day before he was set to be euthanized. Dog stood out of the crowd by picking up a stone in his mouth and dropping it at Miller’s feet. Unfortunately, given the subject matter of the film, it turned out that Dog was terrified of cars. This issue was bypassed by plugging Dog’s ears with cotton during the louder scenes. He also spent his time on set showering affection on Bruce Spence (“Gyro Captain”) whose character he was actually supposed to attack. Spence recalls, “The only way I could get him to go for my throat was to play with him for hours on end, getting him to bite my scarf. That was what he was doing when we shot it.” Dog was handled by stuntwoman Dale Aspin, who also later adopted him. Advertisement Source : Hot Dog Magazine: “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Pavel Barter Fantastic Films #30, “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” by Blake Mitchell and Jim Ferguson Advertisement The Accidents: The second film had its own share of crazy stunts and spectacular accidents. One of these accidents is actually in the film—a scene featuring a bike-riding raider slamming into a car, flying off his motorcycle, smashing his legs into the car and then hurtling before the camera. The stuntman—Guy Norris—was not supposed to bounce his legs off the car. Unfortunately, upon impact, the car rose into the air and met Norris’ legs full-on. The poor man had just recovered from a previous leg injury and this particular incident bent the steel pin in his leg 20 degrees in the wrong direction. A slow playback of the scene actually shows his leg at an unnatural angle. Advertisement The next day, stuntman “Mad” Max Aspin shot a scene in which he rammed a vehicle at 50 mph through a wall of pre-wrecked cars and tumbled end over end through a ditch. He performed the stunt unharmed the first time but, unsatisfied with the result, tried it again. This time, he broke a vertebra and a heel as the car rolled over. Advertisement Accidents also happened off set. Stuntwoman Dale Aspin (Max’s wife) took a few days off to work on another production. She fell from a wire suspended between two buildings and ended up breaking the same vertebra as her husband. The most unusual accident, however, wasn’t even related to filmmaking. Stuntman Kim Noyce was bored on his day off and decided to ride his motorcycle to the set to see what was going on. Max Aspin recalls, “Out in the bush...he passed a camel train...He pulled up to say hello to the camel driver and forgot that the camels might not like the high-revving, noisy motorbike engine. One of them kicked out with both legs and knocked him ten feet through the air, breaking one of his ankles. The guy’s so embarrassed he’s telling people he did it rolling a car at 90 mph.” Advertisement Fortunately, the most dangerous stunt in the entire film—the rolling of the tanker in the climactic scene—went off without a hitch. Dennis Williams, driver of the truck, was not allowed to eat for 12 hours before the scene was shot, a precaution designed to reduce potential complications if he had to be rushed to emergency surgery. A helicopter and ambulance were kept standing by and many members of the production refused to come watch. It was something Williams had never done before and it had to be executed in one take. Thankfully for all involved, he managed it. Sources: Starburst Magazine, Vol 4, No. 9, “Mad Max 2” by John Baxter Truckin’ Life Magazine, “Lights, Camera, Action...Roll ‘Em” by Mark Gibson Advertisement The Car: The same black 1973 Ford Falcon coupe that was used in the first film was also brought in for the second. Kennedy and Miller reacquired the car for the new production and had it further modified, adding big gas tanks in the back while also giving it a generally battered look. Thanks to the larger budget for The Road Warrior, the production could afford a duplicate car. It was used for most of the driving sequences while the original features in most of the interior and close-up shots. It was the duplicate that was destroyed when the script called for the obliteration of Max’s car. The original remained intact and changed hands several times over the years. It spent some time in the Cars of the Stars Motor Museum and, according to madmaxmovies.com, is now part of the Dezer Collection in Florida. Fans have, since, built hundreds of replicas. Advertisement Source: Mad Max Movies Additional Sources: The Mad Max Movies by Adrian Martin G/O Media may get a commission The Mad Max Movies Amazon Advertisement Blu-Ray Commentaries: Mad Max and The Road Warrior",2.174030381253189 "Image: NASA/Tim Kopra Astronaut Tim Kopra is currently orbiting Earth as part of the Expedition 36 and 37 missions, and snapped this fantastic image of Ukraine’s Dnieper River as he passed overhead last night. Advertisement We live on a beautiful planet. [Twitter]",-0.9078151372630945 "To the Editor: It was widely reported when Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, suspended Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who told an audience at Kean College of New Jersey that Jews are bloodsuckers, gays are sissies, and the Pope is a cracker. Mr. Farrakhan rebuked the manner in which Mr. Muhammad delivered his message, but Mr. Farrakhan reaffirmed the ""truths"" of that message! Reporters speculate if this is a repudiation of bigotry or not. But they are silent about the history of the Nation of Islam on these subjects. In the early 1960's, at a large gathering of the Nation of Islam, the featured speaker was Elijah Muhammad, its leader. But the speaker just before him, addressing Elijah Muhammad's followers, was George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party. In the early 1960's Malcolm X, as a Nation of Islam spokesman, mocked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. At the height of civil rights protest Malcolm traveled to the South, not to partake in civil rights protest, but to negotiate with leaders of the Ku Klux Klan on how to thwart the struggle for civil rights. This scene is omitted from Spike Lee's film and from the recent PBS documentary on Malcolm X.",0.639370493656516 "Photo : James Leynse ( Getty Images ) As incredible an invention as the Roomba may be, it doesn’t have nearly enough personality. This is the year 2019: our automated vacuum robots need to have a memorable brand to go with their ability to perform chores like something out of post-war science fiction. Advertisement Enter “The Roomba That Screams When It Bumps Into Stuff,” an invention that handily solves this problem by allowing us to pretend every cleaning machine in service today is in nearly constant agony. The poor Roomba in question was created by Michael Reeves, a YouTuber whose channel is filled with incredible engineering feats like a machine that forces its wearer to dab by electrocuting their muscles. The premise of his latest invention is simple: I t’s a Roomba that curses in torment when it bumps into things. “All that you really need to know is that when a collision gets detected by the sensors,” Reeves explains at the beginning, “Sound gets played from [a] Raspberry Pi to [a] Bluetooth speaker.” After showing off some computer voices, Reeves says that “the point of the screaming is so that it doesn’t feel like a robot” but instead “a living creature ... that’s in pain.” He calls up some other YouTubers and uses their foul mouths to craft more organic samples. The end result is a machine that yells in agony, roaring “Why was I created this way?” or “God-fucking-damn it!” when it bumps into chairs or counters. To cap off his demonstration, Reeves brings the Roomba to a nearby Target so average shoppers can witness the beautiful machine, too. While there are good reviews, he concludes that “it appears as though our invention is simply too far ahead of its time.” Now that there’s a swearing, miserable Roomba, the sky’s the limit with what we kind of features we can expect to see brought to the machines that fill our homes. Perhaps a car that explains the effects of climate change every time it senses a newly-filled gas tank or a smart thermostat that calls you a wimp for being too cold or hot. Advertisement Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com",0.42454482522073583 "Photo : CDC Three days after a 9-year-old Connecticut boy started to hear a strange buzzing sound in his ear, his parents took him to a doctor at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Advertisement The boy reported that he had no pain in his ear, no hearing loss, and no ringing or signs of tinnitus. He said he’d been playing outdoors recently on school days. Then the doctor, Erik Waldman, looked into the boy’s ear and saw a true vision of horror—a brown arachnid burrowing into the epidermal layer of the eardrum and feasting on the child’s blood. The hospital captured an image of the tick lodged into the right tympanic membrane, which was published along with a case study on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicin e. Photo : New England Journal of Medicine The tick couldn’t be removed at the doctor’s office, so the boy was moved to an operating room. Co-author of the report, otolaryngologist David Kasle told CNN that “in any kid, removal of a foreign body from an ear is difficult—but especially in this case,” because the tick’s bloodsucking mouth probe was “dug in,” and pulling out the tick would likely tear the membrane. Advertisement “The eardrum essentially acts as a part of a pretty complex lever mechanism to allow sound to travel from the outer ear into the inner ear and through the middle ear, where there are ossicles—small bones,” Kasle told CNN. “You need that drum intact to get good sound.” Kasle was able to remove the tick’s feeding structure with a fine hook tool. The boy’s eardrum remained intact. Tests a month later revealed the child did not get rashes or fever from the tick. Advertisement However, the above image of the tick will be embedded in your mind for at least a month.",-1.7455925044908742 "The names Tommy Baloney, Knucklehead Smiff, Farfel the Dog and Lamb Chop may not ring a bell for many people, but for ventriloquists they read like a who’s-who list of some of the craft’s most notable characters. And there’s only one place to see them all together in one spot: the Vent Haven Museum. Since its founding in the early 1970s, the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, located just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, has been the only museum in the world dedicated entirely to ventriloquism, a stagecraft that involves a person “throwing” his or her voice to make it appear as if a doll or dummy is the one speaking. Today the museum serves as the final resting place for nearly 1,000 dummies, with some dating as far back as the Civil War. Ventriloquism has a long and storied history, with some of the first references to the craft found in Egyptian and Hebrew archaeology. Over time ventriloquism was practiced worldwide by a number of cultures, but it wasn't referred to as such until the 16th century when Louis Brabant, valet to King Francis I, began performing for the French king and his court. Not only was ventriloquism seen as a form of entertainment, but at one time it was also considered a religious practice that some believed was a way for God to speak through a human. (Conversely, some people, such as Joseph Glanvill, author of the 16th century book Saducismus Triumphus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions, claimed that ventriloquism was a form of demon possession and was an example of the devil using a human as a ""mouthpiece."") Some of the most notable pieces in the collection are the dummies that once belonged to well-known ventriloquists like Jeff Dunham, Shari Lewis and Terry Fator. Vent Haven is also home to a replica of Charlie McCarthy, who once belonged to ventriloquist and actor Edgar Bergen. (The original is now part of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History collection and made its debut in 1936 on Rudy Valée’s radio show.) “What is amazing about the museum is that about 95 percent of what is here is one of a kind,” she says. “Ventriloquists would use a dummy for their whole career [and then donate it to us]. If you were to pick any dummy at random, it’s unique, which I think is pretty amazing about this collection.” During a visit to the museum, Sweasy takes visitors on a guided hour-long tour of its massive collection, which is spread across four buildings. (In recent years, the museum has again outgrown its home, and it's currently doing a capital funds campaign to move into a larger facility.) No two tours are the same, and Sweasy prides herself on tailoring each to visitors who come from as far away as Japan, South Africa, Germany and Argentina to see the collection. It's also a popular stop during the annual Vent Haven International Ventriloquist Convention each July, a four-day event with lectures and performances held in nearby Erlanger, Kentucky. And while there are several dummies that were donated with the sole purpose to give visitors the chance to tinker with and see how they operate, the rest of the dummies are completely off limits—even to Sweasy. “The way the founder wrote the charter is that he did not want a ventriloquist to work here,"" she says. ""He would promise donors that once their dummies got here they would be taken care of and kept clean and in good condition, but he didn’t want anyone to animate them out of respect, because the owner [who was its voice] is no longer here."" If you think of it in terms of musical instruments, it makes a lot of sense. It could be considered pretty offensive if someone picked up Chuck Berry's guitar Lucille and played it. Vent Haven subscribes to a similar philosophy. ""You never handle someone else’s dummy, in particular you don’t animate it,"" says Sweasy, ""because the ventriloquists have spent a lot of time developing those characters and giving them a voice.” The Vent Haven Museum is open for tours by appointment ($10 donations are encouraged) from May through September.",0.5852435794913549 "Engineers working on the Advance LIGO upgrade at the Hanford site. Photo : LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Jeff Kissel A pair of objects, each more massive than the Sun but only as wide as a city , have once again produced ripples in spacetime that were picked up by sensitive gravitational wave detectors on Earth. But this time, scientists think they may have measured something even weirder the usual. Advertisement After booting up a month ago for their third observing run, the Virgo and two LIGO gravitational wave observatories have already measured five potential gravitational wave signals. These include three potential collisions between black holes, a pair of colliding neutron stars, and maybe even a neutron star colliding with a black hole. The LIGO and Virgo science collaborations are releasing their detections publicly in near-real time so that astronomers around the world can immediately follow up with their own observations. “We expect there will be much more insight into the laws of nature and the universe in this observing run to come and beyond,” Jess McIver, senior postdoctoral scholar in experimental physics at the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech in Pasadena, said in a press conference. After the Nobel Prize-winning 2015 observation of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, the LIGO and Virgo experiments now routinely measure these gravitational disturbances the way that other telescopes might measure gamma ray bursts. The ripples pass through the LIGO and Virgo observatories, which split laser beams, send them down mile-plus-long pipes, and rejoin the beams on a detector. A gravitational wave would cause one of the lasers’ paths to change, producing subatomic-sized interference patterns after the beams are united. Black hole collisions have become nearly routine, but neutron star collisions have produced a host of interesting science results, since they also come with a corresponding electromagnetic signal. The resulting explosion, called a “kilonova,” provides the energy required to produce many of the elements heavier than iron, even in our own solar system. These collisions also provide a way to measure how quickly the universe is expanding by comparing the wavelength of the resulting flash to the distance that the gravitational waves had to travel to arrive at the Earth. LIGO and Virgo Scientists measured evidence of a second neutron star collision on April 25. But the detectors had never spotted a black hole colliding with a neutron star—until the next day, April 26. This detection could be helpful in multiple ways. It’s a first, so that’s interesting on its own. But it can also help scientists explain where in the universe such pairs form, as well as the orientation of the black hole as it spins compared to its binary partner. It would provide an even better way to measure the universe’s expansion, Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor at the LIGO Lab of MIT, said during the press conference. There’s currently a discrepancy between the various ways that scientists measure how fast the universe is expanding, so any additional independent measurements help. LIGO and Virgo announce detections mainly through GCN Circulars, which provide various pieces of evidence to astronomers around the world, including the approximate location of the source that produced the waves, the chance that the detectors spotted a false alarm, and what might have produced the signal. Advertisement “The follow-up community is really excited that things are happening again,” Edo Berger, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, told Gizmodo. He explained that one of his students was giving a Ph.D defense when the April 26 signal came in, setting off alerts on both of their phones. But following up on all these signals has been and will continue to be challenging, Berger said. At present, he felt that there’s some potentially useful gravitational wave data missing from the GCN circulars, especially given how valuable telescope time can be. “The more information we have, the more clarity we’re going to have” about which events to follow up on. He explained that the April 26 event came with a relatively high chance that it was a false alarm. Advertisement Still, it’s a thrilling time for astrophysics—neutron star collisions might come in each month, and black hole collisions even more frequently, from much farther out in the universe. More data will tell us more about these powerful events than ever before. For now, the gravitational wave detectors are more sensitive than ever, and will receive further upgrades at the end of this observing run in spring 2020. A Japanese detector, KAGRA, will join the group then, too. While there are some growing pains and the usual issues that come with any large effort, world-wide collaboration between different kinds of observatories is teaching scientists more about the universe than ever before.",-0.6825349817460714 "The Indian Army has discovered large footprints close to the Makalu Base Camp in North-Eastern Himalayas that could have possibly been made by a Yeti. The army’s Mountaineering Expedition team located the gigantic footprints on April 9, 2019, that measured 32 inches by 15 inches. They were found close to the Makalu Barun National Park which is located in Nepal and is coincidentally the same location where the creature has allegedly been seen in the past. The Yeti, which is also known as the Abominable Snowman and the Asian Bigfoot, is believed to live in the Himalayas and there have been several reported sightings of the creature over the years, although there has yet to be any definitive proof of its existence. Yetis are said to be over 6 feet tall and can weigh anywhere from 91 to 181 kilograms (200 to 400 pounds). The Additional Directorate General of Public Information (ADG-PI) tweeted the photos of the footprints which can be seen here. Unfortunately for the army, they have not received the support they were expecting when they posted the pictures of the footprints online and instead received much ridicule. Since the footprints were one in front of the other (instead of side-by-side), some users said that it was a “yeti catwalk” and that whatever made the footprints must have been “hopping”. Some joked about it being a “mythological one-legged creature”. Needless to say, the Indian Army has become a popular topic over the last several days, but not in a good way, as one online user asked the army to “delete this tweet to avoid international embarrassment of India.” Another person wrote, “This is deeply, deeply embarrassing: whoever in the Indian Army’s PR has circulated this is disgracing the institution, and India, in the world’s eyes.” Click here to read more of the tweets. If the past is any indication, the footprints were most likely made from a bear. In 2017, researchers collected 24 “Yeti” samples which included hair, skin, bones, and feces, but after studies were conducted on the samples, it was concluded that they came from a Himalayan brown bear and a black bear. A few years before that, in 2014, researchers tested 30 hair samples that were believed to have came from a Yeti but instead came from several other animals, including bears and dogs. While the footprints were probably created by a bear, the mystery of the Yeti continues to fascinate and excite those who believe the creature does exist.",0.43113452448598494 "A view of the facade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, April 16, 2019 (Christophe Petit Tesson/Pool via Reuters) Telling people they’re bigots for taking pride in the civilization that brought them forth better than any other is like taking a sledgehammer to your own soapbox. EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays. Dear Reader (Redacted: Harm to Ongoing Matter), One of the things I tell new parents is something that was told to me when my daughter still had that new-baby smell: “Prepare for long days but short years.” No statement more succinctly captures the exhaustion, excitement, and melancholy nostalgia that come with parenthood. I have no doubt whole books have not covered it more eloquently. Advertisement This week I had a similar sensation thinking about the two big news stories of the week: The fire at Notre Dame and the release of the Mueller report. Time may be linear, but our comprehension of it isn’t. All around us events are taking place that we do not perceive as events because they are moving at a pace that we really can’t comprehend. Imagine if you could make a film of the planet earth from its birth to its demise. If you played the movie fast enough, the formation of mountains would look like terrifying clashes between continents. The breakup of Pangaea might look like a jigsaw puzzle thrown into a hot tub. Playing the film a million times slower would still probably make the rise and fall of ancient redwoods seem like nothing more than the instantaneous and momentary emergence of some colors on a canvass. Think of it this way: If you reduced the entire history of the planet to a 24-hour cycle, humans don’t even show up — some 2 million years ago — less than one minute before midnight. Against such a backdrop, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris emerges and disappears too fast for the naked eye. As for the controversies about Donald Trump, never mind the Mueller report, they take up a fraction of time words cannot capture. Advertisement But if you slow things down enough for the mind to take it in, Notre Dame is like a mountain. Not quite eternal in a literal sense, but eternal enough by human standards. As I mentioned the other day, I once wrote and produced a documentary called Notre Dame: Witness to History (I don’t really recommend it; I wasn’t a great TV producer and I certainly didn’t have a great budget). The title was clichéd but accurate. Notre Dame was the central location for so much of French and really Western history, its scars and embellishments are almost like rings in an ancient tree recording whole eras of Western history. Signs of the Huguenots’ assault on the Church — and the Church’s assault on the Huguenots — can be found in its nooks and crannies like the tiny indicia of a plague of locusts in a bisection of an ancient oak. The last time the Spire burned, it was at the hands of the Jacobins who briefly turned Notre Dame into a “Temple of Reason.” Putting History on a Stop Watch I bring all this up for a few reasons, not least because the “process” for this “news”letter amounts to taking my brain pan and upending it like a kid emptying his toy chest in search of the Lego pieces required to build a time machine. The controversies of the day are important, but they are like the crises of parenthood: Hugely important in the moment, but likely to turn into the faintest squiggles in the tree rings of time. That’s not foreordained, of course. There are daily crises with your kids that can turn into existential ones — as anyone who’s taken their child to an emergency room can attest — which is one of the reasons the days of parenthood can feel so much longer than the years. Advertisement Advertisement I’m not sure what the right terms are, but there’s an analogy here. Some controversies are important (and some are just incredibly stupid) but they are important in the moment alone. Others transcend the fierce urgency of now and apply across generations. For some, climate change is precisely such a challenge. For others, it is the civilizational friction between the Muslim world and the rest, or the rivalries between America and China. The Cold War was certainly larger than any confirmation battle or scandal. The most worthwhile daily arguments are the ones that work within a timeline measured by more than 15-minute increments in a Nielsen report on last night’s cable ratings. For instance, Jussie Smollett’s transgressions are great for feeding the ratings beast, but they are only significant to the extent they illuminate the larger dysfunction of a culture that encourages racial hoaxes because we have turned victims into heroes. And even then, that context is usually used as a pretext just to keep jaw-jawing and preening for the perpetual outrage machine. Advertisement I’m the first to admit that it is hard to know where to draw the lines between seriousness and exploitation, or mere infotainment, particularly since this “news”letter darts back and forth across the borders like the Viet Cong running the Ho Chi Minh trail. But one of the things I despise about the current moment is how the Big Things are so often turned into just another Twitter controversy and the Small Things are elevated into existential crises of the first order. President Trump, lacking anything like a historical memory, is fond of claiming that this or that outrage or accomplishment is the worst or best thing “ever.” “Our African American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before,” Trump declared in 2016. “Ever, ever, ever.” That might have been news to the Africans-Americans lynched in the 1920s or the Africans auctioned off in Charleston in the 1820s. I still laugh whenever I think about Sebastian Gorka ranting about the alleged FISA warrant abuses of the Obama administration. “It has to be put in the context of the history of our great nation,” he said in expert-mode. “This is 100 times bigger.” More recently he explained that the Democrats were a continuation of Stalinism because they’re coming for our hamburgers. Advertisement Western Civilization 0, Twitter 1 The other day Ben Shapiro offered what should have been an utterly banal statement about the fire at Notre Dame: Advertisement Absolutely heartbreaking. A magnificent monument to Western civilization collapsing. https://t.co/UajArjkt2g — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 15, 2019 Now, I have no problem with quibbles (and neither does Ben) from Catholics who point out that Notre Dame was a monument to the glory of God and what Catholics believe to be the One True Church as delineated in the Nicene Creed. But, I doubt any of those Catholics took offense at what Ben said. And if they did, they should probably lighten up. I’d also point out that Cathedrals were the space programs of their day (“The Knights Templar were the first Space Force”: Discuss). Cities and nations constantly competed to see who could build the tallest Cathedral — which is why most are built on the tallest ground available. The idea was both theological and political. Theologically, the idea was to get as close to God as possible. Politically, it was a desire for, well, national greatness. Advertisement Anyway, what I have a huge problem with is the bonfire of asininity that ignited from people who think “Western civilization” is a term reserved solely for the alt-right and other bigots (David French addressed the point well here). In a piece about Ben’s excellent book on Western civilization — I’ll reserve my quibbles for later — The Economist labeled him an “alt-right sage” and a “pop idol of the alt right.” To The Economist’s credit, they retracted and apologized. But the immediate assumption that praise for, or pride in, Western civilization is a species of bigotry and racism is a perfect example of the sort of civilizational suicide I describe in my own book on the subject. So adamantine is this absurdity that some Shapiro haters actually assume he’s not actually saying he thinks the West is superior, only “tacitly” suggesting it. I wasn't tacitly saying Western civilization is superior to other civilizations. I openly say it, because I believe Western civilization is superior to other civilizations. In fact, I wrote an entire book on the topic, in which I explain why. https://t.co/5xxT67KKj6 https://t.co/u02Ju84WmH — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 16, 2019 Ben might as well be standing in the center of Times Square waving a giant foam finger that reads “Western Civ #1” on it. But the idea is so offensive to some people they think he wouldn’t dare say it outright. What’s So Great about Western Civilization? I’ve covered much of this at length — book length but also in this G-File — elsewhere. So I’ll go in a slightly different direction. Forget calling it Western civilization for a moment. Instead think of a kind of party platform with a bunch of planks: Support for human rights Belief in the rule of law Dedication to democracy Free speech Freedom of conscience Admiration for science and the scientific method Curiosity about other cultures Property rights Tolerance or celebration of technological and/or cultural innovation I’ll be generous and stipulate that 90 percent of the people who are offended by pride in Western civilization actually believe — or think they believe — in most or all of these things. They just have a problem connecting the dots, so I’ll try. Where do they think most of these ideas come from? Where were they most successfully put into action? What civilization today or in some bygone era manifests these values more? Chinese civilization? Islamic civilization? Aztec? African? Indian? Persian? Turkish? Advertisement I’m not trying to belittle any of those cultures, nor deny their contributions to human history. I’m not even trying to argue – here, at least — that Western civilization is objectively superior in some scientific or God’s-eye-view sense. As with the debates over nationalism, there’s no arguing — and no reason to argue — with a French patriot about whether or not America is “better” than France. I would think less of a Spaniard who didn’t love Spain more than he or she loves France. It’s like arguing whose family is better, we love what is ours. As Bill Buckley liked to say, De gustibus non est disputandum. But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best. This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box. The irony is that the willingness to entertain the possibility that some other culture has something important to offer or say to us is actually one of the hallmarks of Western civilization (and the condescension with which many Americans treat other cultures is also a more regrettable side of Western culture). We “borrow” stuff from other cultures constantly, starting with Christianity itself. This is particularly true of America, which is why our menus read like the requested meal plans from a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. This profound lack of self-awareness manifests itself most acutely among progressives who wear their Europe-envy on their sleeves. Oh, they’re so much more civilized over there. Well, what civilization do you think “over there” is part of? Western civilization is a work in progress because that’s what civilization means. If you want a Cliff’s Notes version of what my book was about it’s simply this: Every generation, humans start from scratch. As Hannah Arendt said, every generation Western civilization is invaded by barbarians — we call them “children.” As babies we come into the world with the same programming as Viking, Hun or caveman babies. These barbarians need to be civilized and that’s a job primarily done by families, which is why the days are long and the years are short. We teach barbarians how to be citizens in the broadest sense of the word, through formal education, religious teaching, social norms and the modeling of proper behavior. In other words, we assimilate people into a culture. As Alan Wolfe writes in his discussion of Immanuel Kant: As cultivating a field yields a better product, the arts and sciences cultivate us by improving the quality of who we are. No wonder, then, that when we look for a term that expresses the way we improve upon nature, we use “culture,” which has the same root as “cultivate.” And civilization—expressed in German not only as Zivilisation but also as Kultur — far from corrupting our soul, makes it possible for us to bring good out of evil. The way you sustain and improve upon a culture is by fostering a sense of gratitude for what is best about it. You celebrate the good in your story while putting the bad in the correct context. Conservatism is gratitude, and as I noted on Fox the other night, one of the most compelling things in reaction the fire of Notre Dame was seeing how many people recognized their own ingratitude for this jewel of their own civilization. The Church was in peril because the French took it for granted. But, like that feeling one gets deep in the soul when a loved one in peril, millions were overcome with a sense of what they might lose. And now France is devoting itself to restoring what was almost lost. Has Western civilization made mistakes? Sure (cue the Monty Python skit about Rome). Terrible things have been done in its name, a statement one can make about every civilization that has ever existed. But to say that the mistakes define us more than the accomplishments is suicidally stupid. And if you subscribe to those planks I mentioned above, I’d like to suggest that telling people they’re bigots for taking pride in the civilization that brought them forth better than any other is like taking a sledgehammer to the soapbox you’re standing on. And to do it in the name of virtue tweeting is one of the purer forms of asininity. Various & Sundry Canine Update: Pippa’s limp keeps coming back when she overdoes it, which is a challenge since Pippa only has a handful of settings. Overdrive, waiting for opportunities for overdrive and recharging after overdrive. Zoë in her middle age has a richer emotional range. We’ll be taking her to the vet if it persists. Some readers have suggested it might be from an infection like Lyme disease. We’ve seen that sort of thing before. Zoë once had a terrible infection from a tick bite, that cleared up very quickly with the right medication, but it was scary how fast and severe it came on. But they remain decidedly happy beasts. Though it seems like they have a problem with Bernie Sanders. Some of my Twitter followers have protested about Gracie, AKA the good cat, getting equal time in my feed. They think it’s “off-brand.” I get it, but she’s such an exceptionally good cat (admittedly graded on a feline curve) and besides my daughter lobbies on her behalf so much, that I think you’ll just have to put up with it. Besides, I find her contempt for the dogs hilarious. I’ll be on Meet the Press this Sunday. Oh, and if you’re curious about what’s going with my next thing, I’m afraid I can’t share much right now. But you should check in to my personal website from time to time for updates. The first such update is here. And have a Happy Pesach and/or Easter! ICYMI… Last week’s G-File On Notre Dame On Trump’s lib-owning Skinflint Beto Bernie and abortion This week’s Remnant Mueller report muddle My Monday hit on NPR And now, the weird stuff. Debby’s Thursday links Beautiful photo of horses galloping through a lake Florida man steals a police car immediately after getting out of jail Asteroid bombing Drinking beer helps you lose weight… why hasn’t that worked for me? Real life battle-royale Marvel Studios’ secrets revealed Haunted Appalachian mountain with disembodied voices Doc Oc on the roof Ouch The most relatable Florida man yet Bedazzled skeletons Giant sea cucumber species named Cthulhu Brad Pitt, Baby Shampoo, and a Unitard: The Story Behind That Meet Joe Black Car Scene Scientists partially revive disembodied pig brains 65 year old Florida woman fends off half naked burglar with baseball bat Selfie deaths are getting out of hand Australian real estate company’s raunchy property advertisement Oil rig workers save a dog 135 miles out to sea What would actually happen if Thanos snapped?",-0.9576089879203445 "Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones (HBO) Spoilers below! I generally agree with much of what David has written about the first two installments of the final season of Game of Thrones. But I want to throw in a criticism I’ve been mulling. For a long time there were rumors that the final episodes of Game of Thrones would be extra long, perhaps even “movie-length.” After watching last night’s episode, I think that would have been better. The pacing of both episodes has been off. In the first, the reunions were almost all way too short. The conversation between Arya and the Hound should have been allowed to breathe, instead it butted-up against the reunion with Gendry which also seemed stunted. All of the interactions we’ve been waiting for were clipped. Sanda and Dany should have done a couple rounds. The romantic stuff between Jon Snow and Dany was visually cool (Dragons!), but felt like box-checking. Gotta show they’re still a couple! There are exceptions. For example, the interaction in episode one between Dany and Sam, as David has written, was really well done. And I did think the teaser shot of Jamie seeing Bran at the end of episode one was great and their conversation last night was just right. But in last night’s episode we had a bit of the reverse problem. I take David’s point about crafting the “deep breath before the plunge” but at times it felt like padding. And some of it came at the expense of some scenes that should have been drawn out. I, for one, would have loved to hear a lot more of Tyrion’s conversation with Bran. I’m of mixed minds about how they handled the most important conversation so far, between Jon and Dany about his real identity. This, after all, is the heart of the coming intrigue. Cutting it short for understandable reasons, while teasing her fearful contemplation of losing her claim to the throne might have been the right call. But there was another problem with last night’s installment. Because viewers have been trained to look for cues and clues who is next to die, much of the episode seemed like an effort for people to get their “Who’s about to buy the farm?” bingo cards filled out. It’s like that scene in Hardhome when the wilding mom tells her daughters she’ll be joining them soon on another boat — you knew she was about to become an ice zombie. The stuff with Grey Worm last night seemed like a textbook example of the how the gods — old, new, many-faced, and fire — laugh when man plans. The Knighting of Brienne, combined with her battle assignment, was indeed poignant. But it also felt like she was getting her metaphorical gold watch before her retirement as a character. I’m particularly worried that all of the talk about the crypt being the safest place is a huge setup for some close-quarter tragic carnage. I think if they had combined these two episodes into a single 90-minute-plus movie, they would have worked out a lot of these issues better, leaving episode two for the Mother of all Battles and the Final Four for the more interesting stuff. Of course, I could be wrong. We won’t know until we see the whole thing play out. But that’s how I felt as they unfolded.",-0.3584317126600431 "Good news, everyone: The homeless man whose pet rat was stolen has been reunited with his beloved fur baby! Chris and Lucy are inseparable. The pair are often spotted around Sydney, Australia — while Chris chats with passerby, Lucy snacks on vegetables and naps. But on Apr. 6, Chris left Lucy on a milk crate while he used a nearby restroom. When he returned, Lucy was gone. A heartbreaking photo of a devastated Chris sitting on the street without Lucy was posted across social media. ""My pet rat Lucy was stolen on Saturday,"" his sign read. ""Lucy is black and white with a bite of brown."" In a screenshot of an anonymous Facebook post posted to the subreddit r/trashy, a passerby said they were ""genuinely distressed"" to see Chris without Lucy. SEE ALSO: Survey says dog owners are happier than cat owners ""Taking a homeless person's loved pet,"" the poster said. ""Seriously, what a really low act. Please repost this story in the hope that the power of social media may find someone who knows where Lucy is."" The screenshot went viral, and made it to the front page of Reddit last week. Other Redditors, some who knew Chris personally, commented their disgust. Luckily, the local police reunited Chris and Lucy. According to a Facebook post by the police force, a passing woman thought Lucy had been abandoned and took her home. Lucy was ""safely retrieved"" on Thursday and returned to her rightful owner. In a heartwarming video, officers brought Lucy to Chris in a cardboard box. After carefully examining the rat, Chris confirmed that it was his beloved pet. ""Yep, she remembers me,"" he said in the video, bringing Lucy to his face for a kiss. ""Sorry to put you through all the trouble."" Lucy showered Chris in tiny rat kisses and perched on his shoulder for photos. ""She's really lovable,"" he said. Good job, internet.",-0.8839265482168959 "April 25 (UPI) -- A Nebraska-based business is offering to bolster social media pages with expertly faked photos of the user on vacations they never took. The company, Fake a Vacation, offers packages starting at $19.99 for a service to superimpose the photos of a social media user in front of famous landmarks at popular vacation spots including Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Hawaii and Walt Disney World. Advertisement The packages also include some facts about each destination to help the customer concoct the story of their fake vacation. The company cited a study that suggests more than half of Millennials have lied about taking vacations for reasons ranging from last-minute cancellations, the high price of travel and the desire for social media recognition.",0.6248201266607929 "The Mystery Of Julian Assange's Cat Enlarge this image toggle caption Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno seemed annoyed when he announced an end to the seven-year residency of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London: ""We've ended the asylum of this spoiled brat,"" he said. But what about the asylum of Assange's cat? The WikiLeaks founder, who was arrested Thursday, has been charged with conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network. Presumably, Assange's alleged illegal interactions with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning are the main interest of law enforcement. Then there is the matter of paw enforcement. (Sorry.) While holed up, Assange famously acquired a cat. The cat, named Michi, is more well known by its social media moniker, Embassy Cat. More than 30,000 Twitter followers, and 6,000 on Instagram, followed the self-described master of ""counter-purrveillance."" Embassy Cat tweeted regularly beginning with its arrival in May 2016. Cute photos were the norm, with just a bit of political grandstanding thrown in — always with lots of puns. (Embassy Cat was proud to be a ""#whiskerblower."") But by the fall of 2016, its tweets had become much less frequent. In 2017 the cat tweeted only three times. In 2018, twice. It has been silent for more than a year. (The Instagram account has been crickets for more than two years.) The New Yorker reported in 2017 that Assange's interest in the cat was less as an animal lover and more as a master of his own brand. ""Julian stared at the cat for about half an hour, trying to figure out how it could be useful, and then came up with this: Yeah, let's say it's from my children,"" the magazine quoted one of Assange's friends as saying. ""For a time, he said it didn't have a name because there was a competition in Ecuador, with schoolchildren, on what to name him. Everything is P.R.—everything."" The cat arguably played a small role in Ecuador's decision to end its asylum agreement. Moreno explained that Assange treated his hosts disrespectfully; late last year the embassy implemented a series of rules for Assange, including a requirement to be responsible for the ""well-being, food, hygiene and proper care of your pet."" If Assange didn't, the embassy threatened to put the cat in a shelter. In other words, it is likely that Assange didn't effectively clean up after his cat's own wiki-leaks. After Assange was picked up Thursday, some people wondered what would become of Embassy Cat. ""My sympathy to the cat,"" author Charlie Stross tweeted. Journalist James Ball said that although he offered to adopt the cat, it was ""reportedly given to a shelter by the Ecuadorian embassy ages ago."" But according to Hanna Jonasson, whom The Washington Post describes as a member of the Assange legal team, Assange was incensed by the threat to put Embassy Cat in the pound. ""He asked his lawyers to take his cat to safety,"" Jonasson said. ""The cat is with Assange's family. They will be reunited in freedom."" Wherever the cat is, it's no longer at the embassy. The Italian paper la Republicca wrote in November that the ""friendly atmosphere"" at the embassy was gone. ""Not even the cat is there anymore. With its funny striped tie and ambushes on the ornaments of the Christmas tree at the embassy's entrance, the cat had helped defuse tension inside the building for years. But Assange has preferred to spare the cat an isolation which has become unbearable and allow it a healthier life."" The Ecuadorian Embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment. But a spokesperson told Sputnik that the cat hasn't been with the embassy since the fall. ""It was taken by Mr. Assange's associates,"" the spokesperson said. ""We are not a pet store, so we do not keep pets here.""",-0.008291769430842604 "The lesson is clear: leave the chimney work to the professionals. Like Santa. And that note of caution is particularly true for those climbing in with bad intentions -- such as a would-be burglar who got caught at an Oklahoma business Monday after becoming trapped in a chimney for hours, officials said. The Tulsa Fire Department told FOX23 the man had cut the electricity lines of an air conditioner and attempted to shimmy down the chimney of the business when he became stuck. Eva Sigala, who works at the Durango Auto Center, said her boss raised the alarm when he heard noises emanating from the chimney early in the morning. NEW YORK CITY BABY SITTER STABBED MOM OF TWO BECAUSE SHE ‘DON’T WORK FOR FREE,’ REPORTS SAY ""Well he came in this morning and he heard a whining and crying noise and at first he thought it was a pigeon, because we get pigeons stuck in there all the time and he listened closer and heard 'help', that's when he left, closed the door and called the cops,"" she told FOX23. 2 NYPD OFFICERS SUSPENDED DUE TO ALLEGED SLOW RESPONSE DURING HORRIFIC AX ATTACK, REPORT SAYS Firefighters said surveillance video showed the man trying to Kris Kringle his way down the chimney around 12:30 a.m. Monday. The man, who was not immediately identified, ended up stuck there until rescuers pulled him out around 9:45 a.m. Fire officials had at one point considered dismantling the entire chimney but eventually extracted the man via a pulley system. CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP The man did not sustain any injuries during the incident.",0.22285346692198924 "(Nastco/Getty Images) The cause of National Review — and it is that, a cause — is a thing of true consequence and impact and meaning. But from the financial perspective, it is also a thing of great deficit. Many readers understand this is the fate of opinion magazines and websites. Many don’t. As things that produce and market controversy, opinion magazines are anathema to your typical advertiser. Minus the reliance on Sugar Daddies or billionaire owners, an institution such as ours must depend on the kindness, generosity, and selflessness of a broad base, of many people of good will. Advertisement And so our current webathon — contrived, as these things are, to help alleviate the staggering annual deficit that is part and parcel of this journalistic mission and business of defending our principles, this being done through your participation — seeks to raise ample funds to offset these deficits. Ample — what is that? We initially set a goal for this webathon of $250,000. It is not reflective of our reality — and the reality is seven figures, the kind that come with two commas, and all that before the decimal point. That is the annual fiscal difficulty with which we battle, and, with your help, surmount. Think about that problem, and then layer onto it the legal costs of this crazed suit from Michael Mann. It too has cost seven figures to our insurer, and many additional hundreds of thousands of dollars above and beyond that to NR. And there are still bills incoming. And, though we received wonderful news about this case on Friday, we are confident that there will be more bills to pay. There is, after all, a limit to insurance. We have revised our goal to $350,000 — which sounds a speck more achievable than the daunting reality of $1,000,000, no? Our needs are more in line with the latter, but let us focus on the former — since this effort began on March 8, we have been the beneficiary of 2,325 donations, totaling $267,422. Which means in this campaign’s upcoming final week, we hope to raise an additional $87,000 or thereabouts. And if that happens, it will indeed be a great achievement — but it will also be nowhere near to NR’s real needs. But let us admit: The kindness sent us these past two weeks means that this has already been a great achievement. The amount, yes, and also the love and inspiration that attend the gifts. Here are a few examples: Tom makes kindly with $50 and utters: “NR was a favorite of mine in college, when Buckley was the face of U.S. conservatism. In those days, the 1960s, one could discuss differences, not just yell them. I could even study under a conservative professor (Morgenthau) and a liberal (Herman Finer) without being cast into the sea. I rarely agree with anyone on The Right these days but the freedom to say whatever you believe isn’t negotiable. Who knows, enough speech might produce something of lasting value.” Love this Tom, and thanks. Jennifer finds 100 bucks for us, and tells a tale: “NR has been my intellectual lifeline ever since I found Up from Liberalism in my school library in the tenth grade. Sooooo many years ago. Keep up the fight and maybe (if not just now) somewhere down the road the same kind of resource may be available to high-school sophomores of another generation.” Amen, Amen. Thanks, Jennifer. Ron sends along $100 and explains why: “Combat vet who fought a war 50 years ago to stop these kinds of people. Yet they are now in our Congress. The war isn’t over.” It’s an honor to fight it alongside you, Ron. Betty offers a Twenty and explains her addiction: “I simply cannot manage without NR. My small contribution is but a cheer for the brilliance and hope I count on every day from your many sources. I also appreciate those who are the actual BIG contributors . . . thank you, thank you for your generosity, we must thwart vile censorship, we must live and speak free. WIN BIGLY! Betty you are one gracious lady. Trent tenders $50, and anxiety: “I feel like I’m living in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the Puritan witch trials; the Nazi book burnings, the Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution.’ What’s going on in our country is sheer insanity. There has to be a voice of reason.” You sound pretty reasonable yourself. It matches your selflessness. Joshua offer a repeat $50, and encouragement: “Recently I contributed $50 towards your campaign to defend this outstanding publication. It is my hope that you will use this $50 to pursue Michael Mann, and his enablers, to recover all fees, costs, and expenses incurred in your defense of his baseless lawsuit. For nearly 30 years NR has enlightened and entertained me, and been a beacon of sanity in a world that seems to get less sane every day. God bless.” He has, with you! Laurie donates a sweet $100 and gives a marketing perspective: “A lot of people CAN SELL the CANCEL culture but we don’t have to buy. Thank you NR for fighting the good fight! I’m very grateful and behind you all the way. I learn so much every day reading all the brilliant articles from your talented writers. Know that you are educating the world one day at a time!” None of that happens minus comrades like you, Laurie. Charles spots us $100 and his sentiment reflects those of many others: “This Mann lawsuit is (near) the height of ridiculous. I am sorry for the trouble and encourage National Review to keep speaking loudly against incompetence and fraud and in favor of improving the lives of all peoples.” Damn straight, amigo. Thanks. to keep speaking loudly against incompetence and fraud and in favor of improving the lives of all peoples.” Damn straight, amigo. Thanks. John spots us a C-Note and a rumination: “I thought I ought to close out the week and herald the arrival of the spring by reaffirming my support for the valuable work that National Review does. Thank you for keeping your pages open to all strains of right-leaning thought, at a time when so many other outlets have instituted a ‘you’re either with our guy or against us’ editorial attitude. If the GOP and other conservative institutions are going to survive in the present climate, it will be the big tent approach embodied by NR which will lead the way.” You are a blessing on us, John. Please help us reach our goal, especially if you are a regular reader who has always walked up to the brink of donating but never hit the button. Betty is right: You’re only able to read NR today because many others donated before, selflessly, because they knew it was important for NR to survive and thrive, the economics be darned. If it’s your turn to step up, well, please step. Whatever you can afford, whether $20 or $50 or $100 or even $1,000, donate here. Many have sent donations by check, and if that suits you, then please make yours payable to “National Review” and mail it to: National Review, ATTN: Webathon, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, N.Y., 10036. Thanks so very much.",-0.2126440733637129 "(Pixabay) Are we at some halfway point for this country? At some tipping point? Ides has a calendar significance — but as far as Caesar was concerned, the Ides weren’t the middle: They were the bloody end. Well, we’ll be damned if we are at the end of what Lincoln called the last best hope of earth, and its expiration will come over our dead body. But it won’t come to that, because we fight — with you at our side we hope — and that gives us hope, and a sense of not only forestalling the Left’s insane push for domination throughout all of our institutions, but of prevailing. Our webathon — running through March 29 and seeking to raise $250,000, and plenty more if folks want to pitch in more (because NR’s needs are so much more than that figure) — has had a strong initial response, adding to this sense of a pushback that will prevail. The data: Over $170,000 has been raised so far, and nearly 1,500 good souls have seen to that with their selfless contributions. Some of those gifts have thoughts and sentiments stapled to them, and we share a handful: Father Mark, who knows a thing or two about collection plates, puts $100 in ours and explains: “Why am I contributing? One reason: The Buckley lives loudly within you. Keep it up!” Father says! So we keep up — thanks so much, padre. William also tends $100 and his sentiments are those of many others: “Keep up the good fight. More people than you imagine are depend on hearing your voice — the voice of sanity in an increasingly insane world.” Thanks very much. Susan too sends $100 and gives the climate guy what-fer: “Michael Mann and his fellow travelers have tried to make it illegal to say or publish anything questioning his views on climate science. The arrogance is breathtaking.” And that’s just for starters. You rock, Susan. Chris finds $50 and confesses: “I am unemployed or I would donate more.” Dude, you have no idea what this means to us (and probably to everyone reading this), and how it inspires us. Raymond gives $100 and a brief but beautiful history lesson: “NR subscriber since 1963; reading it never gets old.” Nor will you, we pray. Thanks a ton, Raymond. Arnold spots us a C Note and a prayer: “May God grant those aligned with the left, the wisdom to moderate their views before we lose our form of government and our freedom. Let’s not let our generation be the one that allowed the experiment to fail. God Bless America!” Okay, Arnold: We will supplement the fight with a little beseeching. Thanks kindly. Irit doles out a goodly $500 contribution and slaps our backs: “Thanks for all the great work you guys do. I enjoy reading articles on NR as they are smart and well thought out. I also appreciate the different perspectives that your writers have and present in an intelligent and meaningful way.” Not as much as we appreciate good friends like you with us in the foxhole. Thanks, Irit. Jim contributes $200 and vexes: “I cannot believe the Mann – hockey stick lawsuit wasn’t booted out of court on the first day! Keep up the good fight, we are behind you.” We know it and deeply appreciate it, Jim. Rob also gives $200 and admits that Godot was worth the wait: “I have never supported the NR, however I have long respected WF Buckley and think now is the time to give my support to the NR!” Welcome, Rob — we are thrilled to be your comrade. Richard gives us our first-ever $103.52 donation. And like few others before it, there is a special motivation: “In memory of my Father. William F Buckley helped my Father change his political leanings from Democrat to Conservative. If my Father was still with us he would be distraught with the state of both American Politics and Culture. National Review is arguably the Last Bulwark (The Bulwark, ironically, is not) standing up to the ongoing oppressive efforts of the leaders of the toxic American Culture. WFB put it best when he said a conservative is someone who “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” That is what National Review is, and that is precisely what we need right now.” Amen brother! Thanks so very much Richard. is arguably the Last Bulwark (The Bulwark, ironically, is not) standing up to the ongoing oppressive efforts of the leaders of the toxic American Culture. WFB put it best when he said a conservative is someone who “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” That is what is, and that is precisely what we need right now.” Amen brother! Thanks so very much Richard. John hands in $500, and sees it as turnabout: “Were there only a way I might inform the White House, the Senate majority leader, and the House speaker how I’ve chosen to divvy up their $1400 ‘gift’ to me.” God bless John, we like how you think. The Culture Cancelers and Woke Hucksters, the Critical Race Theory Baloney-Slicers and the 1619 Fraudsters — we are taking them all on. We’ve said it before and do so again, now: Yes, this is our fight, but it is also yours. One way to truly be involved in it is by helping keep NR armed while it blazes away on the front lines. Can you support NR with $10 or $25? $50 or 100 or $500 or even Richard’s wild $103.52? Anything and all is accepted, everything is appreciated deeply. Contribute securely here, and to donate by check, please make it payable to “National Review” and mail it to: National Review, ATTN: Webathon, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, N.Y., 10036. Many, many thanks.",1.6743190975034197 "(utah778/Getty Images) On his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith of the University of San Diego Law School wrote a post that was sharply critical of Chinese government policies. Shortly thereafter, the academic mob accused him of ethnic bias against Chinese people. You would think that law students should be able to distinguish between the two, but either their previous education has left them incapable of making such distinctions or they are so intent on finding a pretext to attack a non-woke professor that they will say any foolish thing. Advertisement So, the dean of the law school, Robert Shapiro, has to decide what to do — tell the students that their claims about Smith are ridiculous or appease them with a promise to investigate him for thought crimes. If you guessed the latter, you understand the nature of higher education in America today. Writing on Legal Insurrection, Bill Jacobson has the story (and links to many similar ones). He notes, “It is [reminiscent] of the worst days of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, in which students were the most aggressive in demanding ideological obedience from professors, with public shaming one of the tools used to humiliate the target and scare others into silence.” He’s right. The great “progressive” project of turning our education system into one for indoctrinating young people so they’ll unthinkingly do what the revolution requires is far along.",0.052311190740859846 "It’s a vital check on majoritarian excess The Democrats’ campaign to destroy the legislative filibuster is predicated on three questionable claims. The first is that allowing a 60-vote threshold in the Senate to cut off debate is antiquated, fundamentally undemocratic, and an impediment to progress that facilitates “minority rule” — by which Democrats mean “federalism.” Now that the Democrats have won a narrow, probably fleeting, majority, they want the unfettered ability to compel an entire nation to live under intrusive partisan generational “reform” bills. This brand of majoritarianism is objectively un-American, undermining the proper constitutional limits of the federal government to lord over states and localities. The filibuster …",-0.4585567253804864 "National Review’s Radio Free California Podcast is a show about the perilous state of the Golden State -- and what that means for you, wherever you live.",0.010214000320658759 "National Review’s Radio Free California Podcast is a show about the perilous state of the Golden State -- and what that means for you, wherever you live.",-0.758163633402981 "1. UK House of Commons: Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang and UK value chains 2. Lebanon: “The People Are Hungry, and the Worst is Yet to Come” We only realize the extent of the catastrophe that has hit the Lebanese, if we compare the current collapsed currency rate of some 11,000 LBP to the US dollar and the rate in September 2019 when it amounted to some 1500 LBP to the dollar. This means that the average monthly income, which stood at some 700,000 LBP or $470 at the time, today equals some $64. All this has made the Lebanese rush to buy subsidized products and sometimes store them. Recently, a video went viral on social media showing shocking scenes of people fighting over a box of powder milk that was still on the list of subsidized items by the government. 3. Ryan T. Anderson: Amazon Won’t Let You Read My Book Three years ago the Post ran a hit piece titled “ Ryan Anderson’s book calling transgender people mentally ill is creating an uproar.” The second sentence read: “In the 264-page book, ‘When Harry Became Sally,’ Anderson makes an inflammatory claim — that transgender people are mentally ill.” My book made no such claim. I contacted the Post asking them to quote a single sentence from the book supporting their contention that I had called transgender people mentally ill. They couldn’t, because it doesn’t exist. Within a day, the newspaper had entirely rewritten the story, removing the falsehoods and changing the headline. Three years later, the world’s largest e-commerce platform — owned by the richest man on the planet — has canceled my book. In a letter last week to four U.S. Senators, Amazon justified its decision to delist “When Harry Became Sally” by claiming it frames “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.” This recycled charge is as false now as when Mr. Bezos’ newspaper first made it. 4. Catholic News Agency: Poll: most Illinois voters want parental notification for abortion, but lawmakers seek repeal 5. Brookings Institute: 6 policies to boost employment for Black men Reducing crime rates and incarceration of Black men is a vital step towards boosting employment rates. There are a number of ways to achieve this. First, states and localities should expand the use of community policing and other approaches that successfully reduce crime without subjecting Black men to excessive use of force. Second, mental health professionals should be consistently deployed along with police, to defuse situations where mental illness leads to violence and deaths. Third, greater investment in programs that reduce crime and violence among young Black men – including summer employment and others, like Becoming a Man, that teach young participants how to avoid violence in confrontational situations. Fourth, expanded drug courts and treatments for those suffering from substance addiction. Fifth, seek out and eliminate the sources of racial bias in law enforcement at all levels. 6. Kevin D. Williamson: Hillbilly Agonistes Vance’s views are, in many cases, not mine. But he is not auditioning for the vacancy at Lou Dobbs’s old desk. We can have a useful argument with intelligent, informed, honest people with whom we disagree. I wish there were more opportunities for such disagreement, both within the Right’s factions and between the Right and the Left. Our politics have been tribalized and sacralized (which ultimately are the same thing) at just the wrong time in our cultural history: the moment when new manners and mores associated with social media and the mutation of celebrity culture into an airborne virus have led to a general lowering of intellectual standards and the nearly complete annihilation of the spirit of compromise and cooperation. Reversing that dismal tide will require a campaign for hearts and minds, and a very different kind of politics from the one we have endured so far in this wretched century. 7. Robby George and Rick Santorum warned us: The New Yorker: How Polyamorists And Polygamists Are Challenging Family norms In the popular imagination, polygamists are presumed to be right-wing misogynists and polyamorists to be decadent left-wingers, but the two groups share goals and, often, ways of life. In the years I’ve spent talking to members of both communities, I have found that it is usually the polygamists who are more cognizant of common cause. How feminists don’t care in a big way about this is beyond me. 8. Samuel Benson: The danger of trading religion for politics The problem, some would say, is not just the rise of politics and fall of faith. Politics are not inherently bad, nor are all Americans theists. But as politics replace faith, fueled by hate, the irony (and danger) of it isn’t lost on religious politicians themselves. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Latter-day Saint, decried this pandemic-era mentality and the shift from pews to PACs: “We may not have any real friends, and we may not know our neighbors, but at least we can hate the same people together on Facebook. And that’s bringing people together in this new type of religion.” 9. Gracy Olmstead: The Risk of Gentleness As I sat — nine months pregnant — during Advent, surrounded by reminders of Jesus’ imminent birth, I found myself dwelling often on the sacred surprises we neither expect nor fully deserve. In 2020, like many others, I realized how often love calls us to take frightful, beautiful risks. 10. More than 85 percent think it is over 50 percent. Over 45 percent think it is over 80 percent! Nothing like a scientific poll, of course, but if we believe at least half of our problems are strongly related to mental and/or spiritual illness what should we be doing differently? https://t.co/bMgfhkUjDX — Charlie Camosy (@CCamosy) March 17, 2021 11. National Catholic Register: Examen for Masculine Virtue Advertisement 12. Dan Darling: Why It’s Okay to Enjoy Some Good News",-0.27724449478858393 "Columbia University is offering six separate graduations for students who identify as follows: Black, Asian, “Latinx,” FLI (“first generation/low income), Lavender (LGBT), and Native American. (The university claims these ceremonies exist “in addition to, not instead of, University-wide commencement . . .”) But Columbia is not alone. At least 70 other colleges across the country offer separate graduations based on race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. The schools defend the practice by asserting that the events aren’t segregated in the traditional sense, i.e., the separation isn’t mandatory or enforced by school authorities. In truth, there’s no need. The segregation is self-policing. “Diversity and inclusion” prevails except when superseded by the woke imperatives of “identity.” Advertisement Separate graduations, dormitories, and trainings have mushroomed throughout academia in the last few years. For example, last fall the University of Kentucky announced separate trainings for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (“BIPOC” — pro tip: Whenever you see an acronym for a racial grouping, there’s a good probability you’re about to encounter lunacy and/or mischief). The BIPOC training was called “Healing Space for Staff of Color.” The space for white staff was called “White Accountability Space.” No judgments there. “Critical Race” and segregated trainings are going on throughout the country: K–12, colleges, businesses, and government. When Governor George Wallace of Alabama uttered the infamous phrase, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” more than 50 years ago, it was condemned as a dangerous expression of backward bigotry. Who knew he was prescient?",-1.6101055002865912 "William Clark is a mixed-race student in a charter school in Las Vegas. That school, like so many others across America, has succumbed to leftist pressures and pushes “progressive” propaganda down students’ throats. In a class entitled Sociology for Change, he was told that he had to denounce his supposed privilege and admit that he was “an oppressor.” Advertisement He didn’t go along with that and was given a failing grade. His mother, Gabrielle, is not standing idly by. With the help of the recently formed organization Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), she is suing the school. Read more about her case here. If you’re sick of the spread of divisive ideology that turns people against each other while promoting the growth of statism, I suggest supporting FAIR.",0.6458851544964305 "Back when he was at his provocative, impolitic best, or worst, Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, in a turn of phrase that was a folksy ancestor to ''telling it like it is,'' would often say that he was ''putting the hay down where the goats can get it.'' Utah's Senators, Orrin G. Hatch and Robert F. Bennett, both Republicans, do not come out of the George Wallace school of politics, not by a long shot. But lately they have been putting down a lot of hay -- the kind that has led to charges that they don't get it. Mr. Hatch, a late starter in the 1999 Presidential race, told the annual state convention of Utah Republicans a few weeks ago that among the many things the party had to be proud of was that ''we don't have the gays and lesbians with us.'' Accused of intolerance by leaders of gay and lesbian groups, the Senator maintained that while he believed that ''homosexuality is contrary to the Bible,'' he nevertheless was ''tolerant of all people.'' All he was trying to convey in his convention remarks, he told The Salt Lake Tribune, was that ''gays and lesbians, by and large, are very intelligent, highly educated, high-earning people who support mainly Democrats.''",1.7166470062706498 "The companies that employ its members currently put in about $1 billion a year. Its trustees, made up of union officials and company representatives in equal numbers, have contemplated raising employer contributions, but the unionized trucking sector has financial problems, and for many companies a higher contribution would be a hardship. The biggest and wealthiest participating company, United Parcel Service, has been trying to leave the pension fund altogether. The unionized trucking industry was more stable before deregulation in 1979, and so was the Central States pension fund. In the 1970's, the fund's assets grew by as much as 10 percent a year, according to some media reports from that period. Luck played a big part in that success, because the decade was a bad one for stocks and bonds. Thus, the fund made better returns on its unorthodox real estate portfolio than it would have on a conventional mix of investments. The unionized trucking sector was younger, too. And it was growing, so there was more money available from employees and fewer pensions coming due. Starting in the early 1960's, the fund loaned tens of millions of dollars for investments in Las Vegas casinos, including the Desert Inn, Caesars Palace, Stardust, Circus Circus, the Landmark Hotel and the Aladdin Hotel, according to a history by Edwin H. Stier, a former federal prosecutor hired by the union as part of its efforts to clean house. The loans in those days typically involved a front man who signed the papers and a crime family raking off cash behind the scenes. The loan approval process involved kickbacks, threats and, in at least one case, a kidnapping. By the time Hoffa disappeared in 1975, the Central States pension fund had loaned an estimated $600 million to people connected with organized crime, according to Mr. Stier, who resigned his union appointment in April after questioning the union's ongoing commitment to rooting out corruption. But many of the loans did serve their intended purpose, making money to pay for Teamsters' retirement benefits. The hotels, casinos and other real estate projects, not all of which were connected to organized crime, were generally profitable, according to Mr. Stier, and before his disappearance Hoffa saw to it that his loans were repaid. By 1977, after years of indictments, prosecutions, Congressional hearings and murders, federal regulators pressured the Central States trustees to resign and turn over the fund's assets to an independent money manager. The 1982 consent decree reduced the trustees' powers permanently, requiring the pension fund to choose an outside fiduciary from America's largest 20 banks, insurance companies and investment advisory firms. The first to be named fiduciary was Morgan Stanley. Its duties were to pick money managers, to allocate the assets among them and to advise the new board of trustees on investment objectives and strategies.",0.7673387787741428 "Real estate investments in Las Vegas casinos and hotels once threatened the integrity of a Teamsters pension fund that the federal government wrested away from corrupt trustees and organized crime after five years of legal battles. A quarter-century later, the professionals who replaced them—Central States Pension Fund administrators; the Goldman Sachs & Co. and Northern Trust Global Advisors fiduciaries; and Department of Labor regulators—stood watch while the financial markets accomplished what the mob had failed to: which was to smash the fund’s long-term solvency with massive money-losing investments. The debacle unfolding at the $16.1 billion Central States fund in Rosemont, Illinois, is a cautionary tale for all Americans dependent on their retirement savings. Unable to reverse a decades-long outflow of benefits payments over pension contributions, the professional money managers placed big bets on stocks and non-traditional investments between 2005 and 2008, with catastrophic consequences. When the experiment blew up, rather than exhume the devastated portfolio to better understand the problem—and perhaps seek accountability—Central States administrators lobbied Congress to pass legislation giving them authority to cut retirement benefits by up to 50% after Treasury Department approval. That’s close to Central States’ astonishing 42% drop in assets—and a loss of about $11.1 billion in seed capital—in just 15 months during 2008 and early 2009. And while the investment losses are not the source of the retirement plan’s unsustainability today, they accelerated the pension’s problems, and almost certainly made the benefits cuts deeper. The professionals made more money disappear in a shorter period of time than the mobsters ever dreamed of. The Treasury Department under Special Master Kenneth Feinberg—who previously administered the 9/11 victims fund, and kept a rein on executive compensation at financial companies that received taxpayer assistance during the financial markets crisis—now has until May 7 to review an 8,000-page application by Central States to reduce the average pension benefit by 22% for more than 400,000 American workers, retirees, dependents and survivors. In practice, some pensioners approaching retirement age—like 64-year-old Thomas Holmes of Avon, Indiana—expect to see about a 50% benefit cut after 31 years of hard work. And while Congress and the Central States administrators may have correctly identified and assessed one side of the problem—insufficient pension contributions to pay for benefits obligations—I’m suggesting that the fund’s investment portfolio also went off track, possibly beginning in 2005, or earlier. That’s when federal tax authorities agreed to defer a statutory funding-deficiency notice for a decade, under an accord that required Central States to immediately begin repairing the pension’s finances. And it corresponds to increased allocations of stocks, particularly compared to most Taft-Hartley union plans, and also lower-rated bonds, including mortgage securities. The 10-year IRS extension was scheduled to expire in 2015, coinciding with the nuclear solution of legislated benefits cuts that passed in December 2014. Sen. Chuck Grassley has questions about the Central States pension. Getty Images This February, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the Government Accountability Office to inform Congress on a series of concerns, among them: •Was the allocation of Central States investments consistent with comparable pension plans that have managed to remain solvent? •Has the Labor Department appropriately reviewed Central States’ decisions regarding changes in investment managers and strategies? •Has Labor maintained proper oversight of a special independent counsel whose appointment was a condition of the 1982 federal consent decree that broke the grip of organized crime at the fund? “While Central States is not the only multiemployer pension fund that is facing severe funding issues,” Grassley wrote, “what is unique is the role the federal government has played in the operations of the fund since at least 1982.” The consent decree, he noted, “granted DOL considerable oversight authority as to the selection of independent fund managers as well as changes in investment strategies. DOL was further granted oversight of a court-appointed independent counsel.” As we await the government watchdog agency’s response, I aim to fill in some gaps never addressed during the limited public debate over the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act in late 2014. That law laid the historic groundwork to cut benefits at pensions deemed to be in “critical and declining status.” Central States is considered to be a multiemployer plan because thousands of independent trucking companies paid into a shared retirement fund for union drivers. One problem with multiemployer plans is that as some employers went bankrupt, or otherwise shirked their obligations, the remaining employers faced larger liabilities, and the pensioners fewer funds. Today, only three of the plan’s 50 largest employers from 1980 still pay into the plan. And for each active employee, it has 5.2 retired or inactive participants. Labor Department investigators fought a heroic battle against corrupt trustees and mob influence decades ago, culminating in the 1982 consent decree to “assure that the fund’s assets are managed for the sole benefit of the plan’s … beneficiaries,” according to a July 1985 report by the Government Accountability Office. At issue then were more than $518 million in real estate loans involving “apparent significant fiduciary violations and imprudent practices,” the GAO said. Under the decree, a new fiduciary—originally, Morgan Stanley—was granted “exclusive responsibility and authority to 1) control and manage the fund’s assets; 2) appoint, replace, and remove investment managers; 3) allocate fund investment assets … and 4) monitor the performance of all investment managers,” the GAO said. Union officials and company executives who served as pension trustees were removed from investment decision-making, but that did “not diminish” their obligation “to monitor the performance of the fund’s investment managers, or relieve (them) of any (other) fiduciary liability,” the GAO said. Instead, trustees were to be consulted when investment objectives or policies changed. Any such changes also had to be reported to the secretary of Labor and the independent special counsel, and ultimately be approved in federal court. Rudy Giuliani, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, followed up Labor’s efforts with a racketeering lawsuit in 1988 to smash the “devil’s pact” between organized crime and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters that allegedly included mail fraud, embezzlement and murder. In “one of the most ambitious lawsuits in U.S. history,” federal prosecutors helped expel more than 500 union officers and members, according to the legal scholars James B. Jacobs and Dimitri Portnoi. Yet the consent decree also had the effect of replacing a strong union hand at the pension with multiple layers of administrative, managerial and regulatory oversight, none with particularly strong incentives to protect the fund before, during, or after the financial markets crisis. The Central States administrator itself “is not responsible for the fund’s asset allocation and management of the fund’s investments,” Executive Director Tom Nyhan told me. Rather, investments were the exclusive province of the fiduciaries—Goldman Sachs GS, -1.80% and Northern Trust NTRS, -2.75% during the crisis—who were vetted and approved by the Labor Department, under the consent decree. In turn, while Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust were paid a fee based on assets under management, they didn’t invest the portfolio directly but hired managers to do so. And Labor Department spokesman Michael Trupo conveyed a statement that described the government regulator as rubber stamp, at best. “The department’s role under the consent decree is limited to reviewing proposed trustees and named fiduciaries before they are appointed; [and] reviewing proposed changes to the investment policy statement prior to implementation,” Trupo said. “While the department may object to actions proposed or discovered in its review, the court order gives the department no role in the day-to-day operation or investment decision-making of the fund.” One more layer Still, that left one more layer to help safeguard the retirement plan: the special independent counsel who reports to the federal court under the 1982 consent decree. During the financial crisis, the special counsel was former federal judge Frank McGarr, who died in January 2012 at age 90 “after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease,” according to his obituary. He’d tendered his resignation four months earlier but temporarily continued to fulfill the assignment. McGarr’s reports are among the few public records available about how the pension and its fiduciaries wrestled with their finances. And these records are invaluable. But McGarr produced only three quarterly reports during the final year of his service, and there were other untimely lapses even though presiding Judge Milton Shadur credited the reports as “thorough,” “detailed” and meticulous”—so much so they “obviated any need for further questioning or commentary.” When I asked Central States Executive Director Nyhan how vigorous the special independent counsel was during the later years, when the retirement plan came under such great financial stress, he replied, “I take great offense to your veiled accusation” that McGarr “was unable to fulfill his responsibilities because he was of advanced age and suffered from Parkinson’s disease. … Judge McGarr may have been suffering from Parkinson’s, but he was in no way infirm.” In contrast, the late judge’s daughter, Patricia DiMaria, took no exception. “He was in a wheelchair, but mentally he was very sharp,” she told me. What remains of the Central States fund clawed its way back in recent years, in part after Goldman Sachs resigned the account. But the unrecovered losses ensured that the fund would start over at a much smaller base, and be unlikely to ever close the huge gap in its unfunded liabilities. Today, only pensioners are to be held accountable. And that is why the long, torturous tale of this tragic fund should resonate for all Americans. No social safety net is secure without reliable guardians. In response to Sen. Grassley’s questions to the GAO, I offer the following: Q: Was the allocation of Central States investments consistent with comparable pension plans that have managed to remain solvent? A: No. Central States’ portfolio allocation was about two-thirds stocks, and less than one-third bonds entering the 2008 financial markets crisis. That is much more aggressive than the 48% median allocation to stocks by all Taft-Hartley Union plans at the beginning of 2008; and well above the median allocation of 59% of Taft-Hartley plans with assets of more than $2 billion. What’s more, Central States’ investment loss of 29.81% in 2008 exceeded the 25.9% loss of its median peer, as well as the 20.46% median decline of all Taft-Hartley plans, according to data prepared for MarketWatch by Wilshire Associates. And Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust each underperformed their investment benchmarks for the fund in at least three out of four years, from 2006 through 2009. “Even skilled and prudent asset managers incur losses, and no asset manager or process can guarantee gains during every period during every set of market conditions. They were particularly challenging market conditions during 2008,” Goldman Sachs spokesman Andrew Williams told me. He said that Goldman Sachs produced overall positive returns from August 1999 to July 2010. Northern Trust spokesman John O’Connell said that “to protect client confidentiality, Northern Trust does not discuss specific clients or details about their programs, including investment performance.” Q: Has the Labor Department appropriately reviewed Central States’ decisions regarding changes in investment managers and strategies? A: Labor spokesman Trupo replies: “While the department may object to actions proposed or discovered in its review, the court gives the department no role in the day-to-day operation or investment decision-making of the fund.” I’m not sure that answers if Labor provided appropriate oversight but it does suggest that the government regulator was not very proactive. Trupo also provided me with the statement that: “The chief problem facing the Central States plan has been underfunding. Trucking deregulation in the 1980s exacerbated the funding problem because of the dramatic contraction of the industry, and the accelerated number of contributing employer bankruptcies that rapidly and substantially reduced the fund’s contribution base. At the same time, those bankruptcies substantially increased the fund’s legacy costs with no foreseeable way to make up those lost contributions. These converging factors, rather than poor investment strategy or performance, were primarily responsible for the severe underfunding that the fund is now experiencing.” Q: Has Labor maintained proper oversight of a special independent counsel whose appointment was a condition of the 1982 federal consent decree? A: Trupo: “The special counsel is chosen by the court, not the department.” This suggests that Labor did not provide active oversight. Finally, Central States’ benefits-slashing application to Treasury says “the Trustees have taken all reasonable measures to avoid insolvency of the plan.” The request elicited about 2,800 comments to Treasury officials, and 5,500 more to the fund. On their behalf, and all 400,000 pensioners, I’d like to be sure of the answer. “We are not bonus-receiving bankers riding the coattails of bad decisions asking for a bailout,” says David Maxey, a retired Teamster in Indiana, who faces a monthly benefit cut of half to $1,151 a month. “We are over 400,000 blue-collar Americans asking for some fair consideration. When this is scheduled to go into effect, I will be 68 years old. Walking a freight dock or driving a truck are not likely.”",-0.19157389919136691 "Flying cars never came to pass, and neither did Blade Runner. The past several years have been witness to any number of distasteful spectacles in American presidential politics as Barack Obama has transformed himself into a hybrid of priest-king and celebrity — caesaropapism as filtered through the sensibility of Hollywood, The Golden Bough meets Us Weekly. The perfect expression of this was Michelle Obama, surrounded by the splendid plumage of her ceremonial military guard, presenting an Academy Award as the assembled Central Committee of Celebrity Inc. prostrated itself before the blessed image. Our ministers of culture like to think of themselves as the bold few who Speak Truth to Power, but in fact they could not be more abject in their subservience to power. And as Sean Penn’s pilgrimage to view the soon-to-be enshrined carcass of Hugo Chávez reminds us, the more naked and brutal the power in question, the deeper the genuflection it inspires. Advertisement Mrs. Obama’s move to occupy the Oscars put me in mind of Max Barry’s 2003 science-fiction novel, Jennifer Government, one of the saddest displays of subservience to political power in recent literature. In Barry’s dystopia, the libertarians (or at least a cartoon version of them) have finally won out, and the state has been reduced to a Nozickian nightwatchman. People adopt the surnames of their employers, with the novel’s principal conflict playing out between the heroic field agent Jennifer Government and her wicked antagonist, the sneaker potentate John Nike. The novel was a success, the production company owned by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh optioned the film rights, and Mr. Barry said he hoped that Nicole Kidman would be cast as Jennifer Government. The film was never made, but Mr. Barry enjoyed a measure of cultural cachet: Another of his novels, Company, was listed by the business magazine Fast Company among the top ten “people, ideas, and trends that will change how we work and live.” In case his theme has escaped anybody, Mr. Barry currently operates a website called “Tales of Corporate Oppression.” Advertisement That the future will be dominated by amoral international (or interstellar) corporations is a constant theme of science fiction and, not unrelatedly, of progressive political thought. The rogues’ gallery includes Cyberdyne Systems (Terminator), Weyland-Yutani (Alien), Omni Consumer Products (Robocop), and Charlton Heston’s friends at Soylent Inc. The gold standard of the genre is the Tyrel Corporation, from Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film, which is indisputably a visual masterpiece, is much heavier on the theme of corporate dominance than the novel is, which is strange: The corporation of 1982 was a smaller and weaker thing than the corporation of 1968. At its best, science fiction imagines a future that illuminates the present, but on the subject of the social role of the corporation, science fiction has long been backward-looking, out of touch with the reality it would analyze. The cultural imagination at large shares this error, though it is difficult to say how much this defect in science fiction is a result of the cultural error and how much it is the cause. But it would be difficult to overstate how deeply the specter of the villainous corporation shapes American political thought. The influence is more visible the farther to the left one moves along the political spectrum. Occupy Wall Street was probably at least as much influenced by science-fiction visions of corporate dystopias as it was by any kind of organized political thought. There were unmistakably Maoist elements to Occupy, but the sinister connotations of the very word “corporation” are by no means heard by only those ears attached to the addled heads of committed leftists. Advertisement Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was set in 1992, Blade Runner in 2019, yet here we are, well into the 21st century, and there is still no colossal Tyrel Corporation bestriding the globe, and nothing like the corporate sovereignties of Jennifer Government. As myth, the corporate dystopia remains undiminished in its power. But the function of myths is to illuminate reality, and the reality is that there is no Tyrel Corporation today, and none on the horizon. If you want to know what the corporation of tomorrow looks like, don’t think Cyberdyne — think Groupon. Advertisement You would not know it from reading fiction, speaking with Occupy types, or listening to the speeches at the Democratic National Convention, but the corporation as we know it is in decline: The average size of a corporation as measured by personnel has been diminishing since 1975. In 1955 the largest U.S. company, General Motors, employed 576,000 people out of a U.S. population of 166 million; today Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. company, employs only 82,000 people. Microsoft employs fewer than 100,000 people worldwide; Google employs about 54,000, and Facebook fewer than 6,000. More significant, the economic footprint of the biggest corporations is contracting. At one point, the market value of U.S. Steel was about 4.5 percent of the U.S. GDP; Exxon Mobil is worth barely half that today. GM’s world market share was about 50 percent in 1960, and its profit was about $8 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. Today no single automaker has a market share of more than 20 percent in the United States or Europe, and in 2012 there was not one firm in the world with manufacturing profits exceeding GM’s $8 billion level of 1960. The biggest manufacturing-oriented firm in 2011 was General Electric, but half of its profit came from financial services, and at about $5 billion, its manufacturing profit was far less than GM’s was in 1960. In fact, there were only about 20 firms worldwide with larger profits than GM’s 1960 benchmark, most of them technology firms (Google, Apple) and financial groups (JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs). Only 67 of the firms in the Fortune 500 in 1955 remained there by 2011. And the rate of corporate extinction is accelerating. Corporations are shorter-lived now: In the early 1960s, the average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company was about 75 years; today it is 15 years and declining. It is difficult to imagine building a corporate monument like the Chrysler Building today: Few firms will live long enough to justify the expense. (And if you think that corporate executives live large in the 21st century, consider the curious fact that the Chrysler Corporation never owned the Chrysler Building, though it was headquartered there. Walter P. Chrysler paid the expense of building the world’s tallest skyscraper out of his own pocket, because he wanted eventually to make a gift of the building to his children.) Advertisement The relevant force here is the division of labor, with firms growing ever more specialized in their core functions, farming out secondary and tertiary tasks to other specialized firms. The division of labor is the story of human social progress, but it is difficult to make an opera about it, to say nothing of a space opera. The one major exception to the trend — oil-and-gas companies — is notable in that the global energy trade is dominated by state-run firms, such as Saudi Aramco, and their partners and subcontractors. Normal corporations are increasingly ad hoc collections of people, processes, and capital, but firms that are united with states are more like government agencies, a fact that highlights the fundamental difference between market processes and political processes. Petróleos de Venezuela produces fossil fuels, and is a fossil itself. Advertisement The fetishization of the political through regulator-heroes such as Jennifer Government relies on the point-counterpoint of corporation and state; without the threat of the monolithic, immortal, all-powerful corporation hovering silently in the cultural background, the rhetoric and philosophy of (for instance) Elizabeth Warren is faintly ridiculous. Which is not to say it is entirely indefensible in every particular — Senator Warren is right in demanding to know, say, why nobody at HSBC has been charged with a crime as a result of the bank’s money-laundering case, which involved such worrisome entities as Mexican cartels and Saudi financiers of terrorism. (Senator Warren might think about addressing some of her questions to the president rather than browbeating his underlings at a politically safe arm’s length.) But the overarching narrative — if not for the far-seeing, brave, and selfless heroes of the political class, we’d end up living in the world of Jennifer Government — is a fantasy, and a childish one at that. Literature helps to distill the complexity of life into a more usable approximate understanding, but the literature of the corporation is outdated. There is a rich, deep vein of skepticism of political power that runs from Aesop’s fables to the poetry of Ted Hughes, but we have in the main lost the thread when it comes to the relationship between business and politics. A few writers have groped their way toward an understanding of those complexities, for example David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and its humorous conceit of “Subsidized Time” — the calendar years of the future do not have numbers but instead corporate sponsors, beginning with the Year of the Whopper, the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, and the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar and culminating in the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland, the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment, and the climactic Year of Glad. William Gibson gave us some very standard corporate dystopias in books such as Virtual Light, but in his more recent work — which is, not coincidentally, set in the present or the indistinguishably immediate future — he more deftly describes our multipolar, anarchic world, one in which governments and corporations are players, but so are obscure marketing companies, fashion entrepreneurs, celebrity cults, freelance terrorists, drugs, container shipping, and a thousand other factors. Advertisement Technological and social change can flummox even the most insightful observers. No less a reporter than the great Tom Wolfe had readers throwing their shoes at him in frustration when, in the course of I Am Charlotte Simmons, he had sophisticated and well-to-do college students equipping their dorm rooms with fax machines — in 2003, a year in which the typical college freshman had probably never seen a fax machine. It is hard to keep up, but it is important to do so, because technological and economic changes are reshaping important aspects of our shared social lives. The dozen or so major media outlets that dominated American political and social life for a generation are increasingly irrelevant, while bestselling books increasingly come up outside the reach of the major publishing houses, with conventional publishers trying to grab a piece of the next big thing as it passes them by. Hugh Howey, the author of the popular Wool science-fiction series, was offered a six-figure advance by a major publisher at a time when he was already making that much every month selling his work through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform. And while conventional firearms makers worry about the impact of new regulation, a nonprofit is distributing plans for using the increasingly cheap and accessible technology of 3-D printing to create 30-round Kalashnikov-style magazines — and they’ve mockingly dubbed the design “the Feinstein” after the enthusiastic California gun-controller. Colt’s Manufacturing Company will comply with whatever new regulations come down from the Hill — but a few million Kalashnikov enthusiasts with access to 3-D printers will practically ignore that law out of existence. Advertisement The antagonism between the monolithic corporation and the heroic regulator-god is an attractive scenario for progressives (and for conservatives hostile to globalization), because it keeps alive the delusion that the world can be controlled. But that is not reality — not today, and not in the future, and there is nothing that the messianic pretensions of Barack Obama and the political tendency he represents can do about that. The far-off year of 2019 is going to be a lot more unpredictable, and a lot more interesting, than Ridley Scott ever imagined. — Kevin D. Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent. His newest book, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome, will be published in May.",0.28096278169434225 "Detail of George Washington (Constable-Hamilton portrait) by Gilbert Stuart, 1794. It is time to roll back the imperial cult. Monday is Presidents’ Day, a.k.a. Washington’s Birthday (federally), a.k.a. Washington and Lincoln Day (Colorado, Ohio, Utah), a.k.a. Washington and Jefferson’s Birthday (Alabama), a.k.a. Washington and Daisy Gatson Bates Day (seriously, Arkansas?), a.k.a. another excuse for the sort of underemployed worthless miscreants who get federal holidays off to enjoy another three-day weekend while contemplating the absolute historical and epoch-defining splendor of an august office held by the likes of Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson’s wife, William Jefferson Clinton’s humidor, and Donald J. Trump. Advertisement Worst. Holiday. Ever. Oh, it started off with the best of intentions: a national commemoration of George Washington’s life on his birthday. George Washington was a natural aristocrat, a man of impeccable probity and great personal courage, whose dignity and humility after kicking King George in the pants set a new standard not for American political leaders but for political leaders per se. When Washington said he intended to return to his farm rather than establish himself as a lord in the new dominion he had wrested away from the British Empire, King George famously declared: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” He did just that, resigning as commander in chief and going home to Virginia. The new republic was not yet done with him, though, and he returned to serve as president before returning to the farm for good. Washington was, as David Boaz put it in his excellent essay of that title, “the man who would not be king.” He would not accept a title or an honorific, and established the excellent republican practice of referring to the chief executive simply as “Mr. President.” George Washington did not need the presidency — the presidency needed him. Advertisement There have been some great men and some good men (and a few who were both) in the White House since then: Jefferson, Lincoln, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Reagan. Some of them took Washington’s example to heart: Lincoln was incapable of personal grandiosity, Coolidge eschewed pomp and ceremony, and Eisenhower insisted that he be laid out in the plain pine box of an ordinary soldier, wearing a field jacket with no medals or ribbons on it. Reagan had a touch too much Hollywood in him — perhaps he was only overcompensating for the gloom of the Johnson-Nixon-(Ford)-Carter years — and elevated the showmanship of the office to an unwelcome level. Among other things, he popularized the lamentable practice of having the president, who is a civilian rather than a uniformed military officer, returning salutes. (Ike, who knew better, did it, too.) But in many ways the ceremonial aspect of the modern presidency stems from the horribly abbreviated career of John Kennedy, whose political martyrdom invited a more Catholic approach to the public rites. The presidency today is a grotesquerie. It is a temporary kingship without the benefit of blood or honor or antiquity, which is to say a combination of the worst aspects of monarchy with the worst aspects of democracy, a kind of inverted Norway. (King Olav V, the “folkekonge,” was famous for using public transit.) It is steeped in imperial ceremony, from the risible and unworthy monkey show that is the State of the Union address to the motorcades and Air Force One to the elevation of the first lady (or, increasingly, “First Lady”) to the position of royal consort; our chief magistracy gives the impression of being about five minutes away from purple robes, if not togas. (There is in Philadelphia a wonderful statue of Ben Franklin in a toga, which one can sort of imagine so long as one also imagines him chugging beer with the wild boys in Tau Delta Chi.) And what kind of god-emperor does not have a national day set aside for worshiping him and his kind? Advertisement This is nuts. Advertisement The president of the United States is the chief officer of the federal bureaucracy, the head of one branch of a government that has three co-equal branches. Strictly speaking, it is not given to him even to make law, but only to see to the enforcement of the laws passed by Congress (and maybe to veto one here and there) and to appoint appropriate people, like the former CEO of Carl’s Jr., to high federal offices. In the legislative branch, the House of Representatives is the accelerator and the Senate is the brake; the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are pretty much all brake; the presidency is a kind of hybrid, sometimes pressing for needful reform and action, sometimes standing in Congress’s way when it is rash or overly ambitious. The architecture of our constitutional order is a complicated and delicate balance. But the president is not the tribune of the plebs. He is not a sacred person or the holder of a sacred office. He is neither pontifex nor imperator. He is not the spiritual distillation of the republic or the personification of our national ideals and values. (Thank God Almighty.) He is not even primus inter pares like the chief justice of the Supreme Court or the Patriarch of Constantinople. He is the commander in chief in time of war (which, since we have abandoned the advice of Washington and Eisenhower, is all of the time, now) and the chief administrator of the federal bureaucracy. That is it. He is not a ruler. Advertisement But men demand to be ruled, and they will find themselves a king even when there is none. (Consider all of the hilarious and self-abasing celebration of Donald Trump as an “alpha male” among his admirers, an exercise in chimpanzee sociology if ever there were one.) But they must convince themselves that they are being ruled by a special sort of man; in ancient times, that was the function of the hereditary character of monarchies. In our times, it is reinforced through civic religion, including the dopey annual exercise that is Presidents’ Day. Abolish it. Mondays are for working.",1.0180353379081752 "Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., February 28, 2021. (Joe Skipper/Reuters) Former president Trump disavowed speculation that he would start a third party on Sunday, in his first public speech since leaving office at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. Trump also spent much of the speech slamming the Biden administration’s immigration policies and calling out the so-called “Republicans in name only” — those who supported his impeachment and criticized his fomenting of the Capitol Hill riot. Advertisement “We need Republican leaders with spines of steel, we need strong leadership,” Trump said. “We cannot have leaders who show more passion condemning their fellow Americans than they have ever shown for standing up to democrats, the media, and the radicals who want to turn America into a socialist country.” Trump then listed all seven senators who voted to convict him, saying “the Democrats don’t have grandstanders like Mitt Romney, little Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, [and] Pat Toomey.” The former president also named the ten House lawmakers who voted to impeach, singling out “the warmonger, a person that loves seeing our troops fighting, Liz Cheney, how about that.” “Hopefully they’ll get rid of her with the next election,” Trump said. “Get rid of them all.” While he trained much of his fire on fellow Republicans, he also attacked President Joe Biden on the grounds that he is turning the U.S. into a “sanctuary nation.” While administration officials have warned migrants not to attempt to cross into the U.S., illegal border crossings from Mexico rose in recent weeks. Some migrants have cited the perception of more lenient immigration policies as the reason for crossing. “We did such a good job,” Trump said of his immigration policies. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like we did, and now [Biden] wants it all to go to hell.” Advertisement Trump added, “Joe Biden has triggered a massive flood of illegal immigration into our country…We’re one country, we can’t afford the problems of the world, as much as we’d love to.” “Joe Biden’s decision to cancel border security has singlehandedly launched a youth migrant crisis that is enriching child smugglers, vicious criminal cartels, and some of the most evil people on the planet,” Trump said. “The Biden administration has put the vile coyotes back in business.” Since Trump’s defeat in November, some Republicans have supported the creation of a third party as a vehicle for the former president. However, Trump began his speech by mocking the notion that he would split off from the Republican party. “You know they kept saying, ‘he’s going to start a brand new party.’ We have the Republican Party: it’s going to unite and be stronger than ever before,” Trump said. “I am not starting a new party. That was fake news,” the former president added. “Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Let’s divide our vote so that we can never win.” However, Trump indicated he could run for president in 2024, and again implied that he had not lost the election to Biden. Advertisement Advertisement “Actually as you know they just lost the White House,” Trump said, referring to Democrats. “I might even decide to beat them for a third time.” Circling back to claims of election fraud, Trump called to advance policies to strengthen election integrity. Trump has refused to publicly concede losing to Biden, instead alleging that Democrats stole the election via widespread voter fraud. However, allies of the former president failed to prove the allegations in court, and in some cases did not challenge the legality of enough votes to change the results of the election. “Our election process is worse than that, in many cases, of a third world country,” Trump said, complaining that “The Supreme Court didn’t have the guts or the courage to do anything” regarding his fraud claims. Send a tip to the news team at NR.",-0.9164784151561869 "It certainly has not spiked yet. The measure of inflation that the Fed targets, the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index (which tracks the cost of food, housing, clothing and more), was well below 2 percent in 2020. So inflation hawks have highlighted the difference in yields between Treasury bonds that are adjusted for inflation and those that are not. That difference has been rising in a way that seems to imply that the market is forecasting inflation a little above 2 percent. But the Treasury ties its inflation-adjusted bonds to a different measure, the Consumer Price Index, and it typically runs higher than Personal Consumption Expenditure inflation. More important, the Fed’s own purchases of these bonds has made the market for them more liquid, thus decreasing their yield. Take account of such factors, and the forecast for the average inflation rate over the next five years is under 1.5 percent, well below the Fed’s target for action. For all of the recent alarms sounded about inflation, expectations are below where they were before the pandemic started. Other projections aren’t showing high inflation either. The consensus of the Survey of Professional Forecasters is for inflation to just hit the 2 percent mark over the next five years. The Fed’s own policymakers don’t think inflation will rise to 2 percent until 2023. The Cleveland Fed’s widely cited measure of inflation expectations is similarly subdued, and below its pre-pandemic level. To infer rising future inflation from the expansion of public debt or the money supply is to miss half the story. The demand for relatively safe assets such as Treasury bonds, which are more attractive in times of global uncertainty, has also been rising during the pandemic. Low interest rates, meanwhile, are not very stimulative when the economy’s equilibrium interest rate is low too. Ignoring these issues led some commentators to erroneously predict high inflation 10 years ago, in the aftermath of the Great Recession.",-1.3969233855146848 "On the nauseating spectacle that is the State of the Union address The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship — it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting — with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live. Advertisement It’s the most nauseating display in American public life — and I write that as someone who has just returned from a pornographers’ convention. Advertisement It’s worse than the Oscars. The national self-debasement begins well before the speech is under way. Members of Congress — supposedly free men and women serving as the elected representatives of the citizens of a self-governing republic — arrive hours early, camping out like spotty-faced adolescents waiting for Justin Bieber tickets, in the hope of staking out some prime center-aisle real estate that they might be seen on television, if only for a second or two, being greeted by the national pontifex maximus as he makes his stately procession into the chamber. When the moment comes and the sergeant-at-arms utters the sacred words — “Mr. Speaker! The president of the United States!” — the chamber will erupt, as though the assembled have entirely forgotten that the mysterious entity that is the object of this curious act of national worship only a decade ago was an obscure legislator in a destitute and corrupt state, a man whose most prominent legislative accomplishment was the passage of a bill requiring police to videotape confessions in potential capital cases — in a state in which there were as a practical matter no potential capital cases. (Illinois had not carried out an execution during the century in which the law was passed and was on its way toward abolishing capital punishment categorically.) Advertisement But they will listen, rapt, and the media mandarins afterward will evaluate each promise with great sobriety, ignoring entirely that the central promise made during the same charlatan’s first State of the Union address was subsequently labeled “Lie of the Year” by the great man’s own frustrated admirers. That an entire class of people should be so enthusiastic about being lied to, serially, is perplexing. And then there are the human props. This year’s victim du jour is one Jason Collins, an aging professional basketball player boasting more than $32 million in lifetime earnings who has publicly affirmed his homosexuality. For this act of courage/oversharing, he is to be seated in the first lady’s box. That there is such a thing as the first lady’s box is lamentable in and of itself. There is a royal box at London’s Royal Opera, complete with a private, Victorian-style toilet. And while the antiquated royal toilet may be a perfect metaphor for the State of the Union festivities, this is a republic, not a monarchy, and honors and offices are not accrued through marriage. Michelle Obama is a currently unemployed former part-time hospital administrator and mother to two lovely daughters. That is admirable enough, but she is a figure of public importance through marriage only, which is to say, properly a figure of curiosity, not of policy. She is not a royal consort, and proximity to her in seating should not constitute a message about the direction of government. (Even Lady Macbeth was known to dispense with such pretensions when pressed: “Stand not upon the order of your going,” she advises her dinner guests.) Advertisement There will be other totems, of course: victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, the District of Columbia’s teacher of the year (cf. “tallest building in Wichita”), and a kid who built an “extreme marshmallow cannon” for a White House science fair — an act of engineering that almost certainly would have gotten him kicked out of any D.C. teacher of the year’s classroom, if not imprisoned. The State of the Union has not always been a grotesque spectacle. George Washington delivered his briefing in person, but he was dealing with a self-respecting Congress that understood itself to be his equal in government. When he wanted the Senate’s advice and consent for an Indian treaty, he visited the chamber personally to seek it — and was so put off by the questioning and debate to which he was subjected that he vowed never to put himself through that again. It was an excellent idea. Thomas Jefferson, ever watchful against monarchical pretensions in the federal apparatus, discontinued the practice of delivering the State of the Union in person before Congress, instead submitting a written report. For a blessed century, Jefferson’s example was followed, and, despite civil war and the occasional financial panic, the nation thrived without an ersatz Caesar to rule over it. Advertisement It will come as no surprise that the imperial model was reinstated by Woodrow Wilson, Princeton’s answer to Benito Mussolini and the most dangerous man ever elected to the American presidency, a would-be dictator who attempted to criminalize the act of criticizing the state, dismissed the very idea of individual rights as “a lot of nonsense,” and described his vision of the presidency as effectively unlimited (“The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can”). A big man needs a big show, and it is to Wilson’s totalitarian tastes that we owe the modern pageant. The next Republican president should remember why his party is called the Republican party and put a stop to this. The State of the Union is only one example of the deepening, terrifying cult of the state that has taken root here. Many heads of state — and some royals, for that matter — fly on commercial aircraft. Presidents of the Swiss federation and members of the federal council receive . . . an unlimited train pass. They have occasional access to a Cessna maintained by the air force, but are known to use mass transit — just like the people they are elected to represent. An American president stages a Roman triumph every time he heads out for a round of golf. The president’s household costs well more than $1 billion annually to operate. The president’s visage is more ubiquitous than was Vladimir Lenin’s in his prime, his reach Alexandrian, his sense of immortality (they call it “legacy”) pharaonic. Washington has become a deeply weird and alien place, a Renaissance court with armored sedans and hundred-million-dollar paydays. Advertisement It’s expensive maintaining an imperial class, but money isn’t really the object here, and neither is the current occupant of the White House, unlikeable as he is. Whether it’s Barack Obama or some subsequent pathological megalomaniac, Republican or Democrat, the increasingly ceremonial and quasi-religious aspect of the presidency is unseemly. It is profane. It is unbecoming of us as a people, and it has transformed the presidency into an office that can be truly attractive only to men who are unfit to hold it. George Washington showed the world that men do not need a king. We, his heirs, have allowed the coronation of something much worse. — Kevin D. Williamson is a roving correspondent for National Review.",0.5203955834902285 "WASHINGTON – Governors are asking President Joe Biden for more say in how the federal government is distributing coronavirus vaccines to local pharmacies and community health centers in their states. They also want the public to better understand which distribution programs states are running and which ones the federal government controls. ""Due to the anxiety created by the demand and supply of the vaccine, it is imperative that the American people fully understand the process,"" the executive committee of the National Governors Association wrote in a letter sent to Biden on Monday. The governors complained that the public reporting on vaccine distribution by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created ""unnecessary confusion."" They asked that the CDC be clear about which doses are being distributed through state-controlled efforts and which through programs the federal government is handling. The Trump administration partnered with pharmacies to administer vaccines to nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Biden:Many Democrats are furious over Trump's acquittal, but President Biden just wants to move on Biden launched programs to send vaccines to select retail pharmacies and federally funded community health centers that serve predominately low-income patients. Governors said the pharmacy and community health center programs should be coordinated with states, which are better positioned to know the needs of their communities and to assess facilities' ability to administer vaccines. ""As usual, some pharmacies and (community health centers) are better suited for the task than others,"" they wrote. ""If the federal government distributes independently of the states to these same entities without state coordination and consultation, redundancy and inefficiency may very well follow."" Kevin Munoz, a White House spokesperson, said the administration is ""discussing these important issues around data and reporting with our nation's governors on an ongoing basis."" ""Our strong partnership with states over the last several weeks is helping us vaccinate more people,"" Munoz said in an email, ""and we look forward to continuing to be a strong, receptive federal partner as we work with the relevant stakeholders to improve our data and reporting."" That includes enhancing Tiberius, the government's tracking software, so states can better see what's happening. Localities can also now submit data on priority groups for the federal pharmacy program. Biden has promised to work closely with governors as he accelerates the vaccine distribution process that began under President Donald Trump. He met with a group of governors and mayors last week. His coronavirus task force holds weekly calls with governors. The administration has increased the amount of vaccines going to states and given governors a three-week forecast so they have more time to prepare distribution plans. ""We understand the pressure the governors are under,"" Andy Slavitt, Biden’s senior adviser for COVID-19 response, told reporters last week. ""We are taking a collaborative approach as much as possible."" States have faced questions about why some are distributing vaccines faster than others. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat and chair of the National Governors Association, emphasized Monday there are multiple distribution points. Cuomo said better coordination is needed in part so state and local governments aren't sending vaccines to the same places. ""If the federal government is sending to CVS,"" he said during a news conference, ""I don't send to CVS."" Study:Roughly 40% of the USA’s coronavirus deaths could have been prevented More:There's no 'giant national campaign' for COVID-19 vaccine education; experts say there's a better way",-0.14060541721066025 "The COVID-19 epidemic presents New York — and, indeed, the world — with a rare moment of enforced solidarity. The virus is no respecter of racial or economic boundaries, being all too happy to ride the No. 4 train from Kingsbridge Road right down to Wall Street and on to Crown Heights, hopping from white to black to Latino as easily as from Christian to Jew to Hindu or from Wall Street finance bro to vegan pastry chef in Brooklyn, with no regard at all for social justice. The virus doesn’t care about ticking demographic boxes — it just cares about the gross numbers. The people running New York’s vaccination effort could learn a thing or two from the virus. What is going to make vulnerable populations safer is not the issue of how many black, brown, immigrant, or poor people get vaccinated but how quickly we can vaccinate a large enough share of the overall population to get the epidemic under control. We are, at least in this case, all in this together. Not that you’d know it from New York’s political class. With progressive leaders seeking to preempt complaints about racial and economic disparities, New York’s vaccine program has been unnecessarily complex and overly restrictive from the beginning. For example, the first set of rules allowed the vaccination of some people who work at pharmacies and funeral homes but not others — and the state imposes severe penalties for violations. Misinterpret the rules and you could face a $1 million fine and jail time. And so vaccine doses went to waste when providers could not round up enough qualifying patients to use all of their allotted doses before they expired. New York would have been better off if every 1,000 expiring doses had simply been given to the first 1,000 people collared on the street. Instead, those expired doses went in the trash. The pursuit of “equity” left everybody worse off. Along with the elderly and essential workers, priority was also given to black and Latino neighborhoods that were identified by the Task Force on Racial Inclusion and Equity — and where the majority of the city’s vaccination sites are now located. Some sites are restricted by borough of residency, others are restricted by occupation (a Queens site is partly restricted to those with taxi driver’s licenses) and other criteria. Some 60 percent of the reservations at the Fort Washington Armory have been reserved to residents of Washington Heights, Inwood, the South Bronx, and parts of Harlem. And there is a good medical reason for prioritizing these communities, which are among those hit hardest by the epidemic. Vaccine sites, like this one in Yankee Stadium, are designed to help the communities hit hardest by COVID. Instagram @nygovcuomo But it also makes sense to have enough discretion and flexibility in the program to maximize the use of all available resources. The current restrictions have resulted in the one thing New York should be trying to avoid: vaccinating fewer people than it could. Rather than trying to ensure that flexibility, Gov. Cuomo has terrorized providers with threats of million-dollar fines and criminal indictments. Even with all those heavy-handed measures in place, black and Latino New Yorkers are being vaccinated at a rate lower than whites. Whites make up about a third of New York’s population but account for nearly half of those who have been vaccinated. Age contributes to this: New York has more whites over 65 than Latinos or African Americans, so a program that favors the elderly will skew more white than does the city overall. But there are other factors at play, too: African Americans and Latinos report heightened skepticism and hesitancy regarding the vaccine, often citing concerns such as insurance coverage or immigration status, both of which are irrelevant to receiving the vaccine. Anti-vaccine conspiracy groups have specifically targeted African Americans with reminders about such abuses as the Tuskegee syphilis study, an unethical experiment in which black Americans were used as unwitting lab rats. New York has managed to get the worst of both worlds: a highly restrictive and highly politicized program that somehow managed to achieve the opposite of its intended outcome. Similar stories have played out in other big, Democrat-run cities from Washington to Dallas. West Virginia has used the National Guard to successfully deploy the vaccine to the public. AP Compare these rollouts with the experience of West Virginia, which has serious challenges — including a relatively poor, dispersed, and rural population — but took a much less restrictive approach to its vaccinations. Rather than try to shut out commuters or rigidly enforce an inflexible eligibility schedule, West Virginia has relied on some reasonably effective institutions — the National Guard and Walgreens — and managed its priorities more loosely where vaccine supply has allowed. The difference in results is stark: For every three New York state residents vaccinated, West Virginia vaccinates four. That’s important, because what actually matters most is not the political fallout from who gets the vaccine first but how large a share of the total population gets vaccinated quickly. In short, rules meant to protect the poor and the powerless have hindered the overall vaccination effort. And the very people those rules were meant to help are being hurt the most. Kevin D. Williamson is the author of “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the ‘Real America,’ ” out now.",-0.6684278594888156 "Hotels, motels, trains, and cultures The wonders of modern American life are, most of the time, utterly invisible to us, for the same reason that water is invisible to fish. What begins as extraordinary becomes, over time, ordinary, and, if it survives long enough, an object of contempt. Consider the case of the great American roadside hotel. Outside of a shopping mall, there is probably no privately owned yet undeniably public space so familiar, so intuitive, so aggressively generic in the literal sense of that word as the American business-class hotel. I write this from a desk at a Hampton Inn, Hilton’s contribution to the genre, …",0.9854962905960218 "The rise of a German politician with a record of Putin pandering is bad news for the new administration. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T hose who expect President Joe Biden to singlehandedly fix the transatlantic relationship are in for a disappointment. Although the new administration in Washington takes a far more sympathetic view of Europe than its predecessor did, it is not clear that the sentiment will be reciprocated — especially in Berlin. Following nearly two decades of Angela Merkel’s leadership, Armin Laschet, premier of Germany’s most populous state, Nordrhein-Westfalen, was elected on January 16 as the new leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Barring large swings in polls before the parliamentary election in September, Laschet is on track to become Germany’s next chancellor. That …",-0.7191015334876366 "Jay talks once more with one of his favorite writers and people — Kevin D. Williamson, whose new book is “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the ‘Real America.’” Among the topics: poverty, drugs, gambling, porn, and despair. But don’t worry: The conversation is much more pleasurable than it sounds.",0.7289047083411394 "Cliven Bundy’s racial rhetoric is indefensible, and it has inspired a lot of half-bright commentary from the left today directed at your favorite correspondent, mostly variations on this theme: Don’t you feel stupid for having compared him to Mohandas Gandhi? Short version: No. There is a time to break the law, and the fact that the law is against you does not mean that justice is against you. The law was against Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., too. That does not mean that what is transpiring in Nevada is the American Revolution or the civil-rights movement; it means that there is a time to break the law. As I wrote, “Cliven Bundy may very well be a nut job, but one thing is for sure: The federal government wouldn’t treat a tortoise the way it has treated him.” Advertisement Critics on the left, being an ignorant bunch, may be unaware of the fact, but the example of Mohandas Gandhi is here particularly apt, given that the great man had some pretty creepy ideas about everything from race to homosexuality, for example writing that blacks aspired to nothing more than passing their time in “indolence and nakedness,” objecting to blacks’ being housed in Indian neighborhoods, etc. Americans, many of whom seem to believe that Mr. Gandhi’s first name was “Mahatma,” generally confuse the Indian historical figure, a man whose biography contains some complexity, with the relatively straightforward character from the Richard Attenborough movie. We remember Gandhi and admire him because he was right about the thing most closely associated with him. In the same way, there is more to the life of Thomas Jefferson than his having been a slave owner. The question of standing in opposition to a domineering federal government that acts as the absentee landlord for nine-tenths of the state of Nevada is only incidentally related to Cliven Bundy’s having backward views about race. Mr. Bundy’s remarks reflect poorly on the man, not on the issue with which the man is associated. As I told Talking Points Memo this morning, I am sure that the men who died at the Alamo by and large did not share my own views on the social status of blacks, homosexuals, or women. Martin Luther King Jr. had some pretty backward ideas about social organization and the treatment of women. Franklin Roosevelt’s record on race was not very good at all. Yes, that was all long ago. But the Democratic party maintained a Klansman in the U.S. Senate until four years ago. The same people who will spend the next couple of days explaining that Nevada is and has always been about racism were studying their navels with great interest when Robert Byrd was engaged in loose talk about “white n—–s” not at some point in ancient history but just a few years ago. Advertisement Those who are scandalized by the presence of firearms among the rebels in Nevada would do well to reconsider the career of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was one of the inspirations for Gandhi’s nonviolent noncooperation, but he was also the author of “A Plea for Captain John Brown.” John Brown, as you may know, was a practitioner of a rather different form of noncooperation. Thoreau writes: “Not to mention his other successes, was it a failure, or did it show a want of good management, to deliver from bondage a dozen human beings, and walk off with them by broad daylight, for weeks if not months, at a leisurely pace, through one State after another, for half the length of the North, conspicuous to all parties, with a price set upon his head, going into a court-room on his way and telling what he had done, thus convincing Missouri that it was not profitable to try to hold slaves in his neighborhood? — and this, not because the government menials were lenient, but because they were afraid of him.” Advertisement And that, of course, is what this ultimately is all about. Advertisement Because our political discourse is conducted at the lowest possible intellectual level, expect to hear me, Sean Hannity, and everybody else who has encouraged Mr. Bundy in his confrontation with the federal authorities to be denounced as a racist. I’ve been here before: Criticize the IRS for its abuse of power? Martin Bashir says you’re a racist. Note that Barack Obama went to Harvard? Jonathan Capehart says you’re a racist. Etc. Bill Clinton bestows the nation’s highest civilian honor on a noted and fairly nasty segregationist? Barack Obama sits for years upon years listening to racist harangues in his church? Uh . . . When it is convenient for the Left to ignore racial nastiness, it does so. That’s why Al Sharpton has a show on MSNBC, which also indulged Melissa Harris-Perry’s grotesquely racist remarks about adoption. When it is convenient to ignore something else, then racial nastiness is the only subject of conversation. This is going to be one of those times — never mind the other issues in question here. There’s no explaining away Mr. Bundy’s remarks, and I abhor them, and am pleased that Rich Lowry and others have taken the time to address them. Advertisement There’s no explaining away the lawlessness of the Obama administration or the crimes of the IRS, either. A nation can survive its cranks, but not a criminal government. A final thought from my piece in the current print edition of NR: “Mr. Bundy is no doubt breaking the law, just as those lawless veterans were when they disregarded President Obama’s theatrical barricades during the government shutdown. No good society can afford to make Mr. Bundy’s example the general rule, but somewhere between his ranch in Nevada and the North Bridge in Concord is the place at which we say, ‘Enough.’ The terror of that is in the fact that every Timothy McVeigh thinks himself a Paul Revere — but still there are Paul Reveres, and times for Paul Reveres. A little sedition from time to time is like fireworks on the Fourth of July: inspiring, illuminating, and — do not forget it — dangerous.”",1.5484377546381798 "[ Read an excerpt from “The Zealot and the Emancipator.” ] H. W. Brands’s study of Brown and Lincoln, which features this dramatic moment, is at heart an appraisal of contrasting political designs and personas in prerevolutionary times. A distinguished professor of American history at the University of Texas, Brands is a hyperprolific scholar, the author of more than two dozen books on subjects ranging from the life of Benjamin Franklin to Lyndon B. Johnson’s foreign policy. “The Zealot and the Emancipator,” describing Brown’s and Lincoln’s development in alternating chapters, builds on strengths long evident in Brands’s books, combining expert storytelling with thoughtful interpretation vividly to render major events through the lives of the chief participants. Apart from a biography of U. S. Grant, Brands has until now had surprisingly little to say about the Civil War era, but this book presents a gripping account of the politics that led to Southern secession, war and the abolition of slavery. [ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of October. See the full list. ] By calling John Brown a “zealot,” Brands appears to mean a fanatic in a righteous cause. An ironclad patriarch of Puritan rectitude — his admirers likened him to Oliver Cromwell — Brown, when in his mid-30s, consecrated his life to destroying the institution of slavery. As it was founded in wicked violence, he believed, so holy violence, including terrorist atrocities when called for, would weaken it, all leading to a final reckoning when oppressed Black people and their white allies would vanquish the Pharisee slaveholders. Brown regarded all conventional politics, including antislavery politics practiced by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, as a sham, as dangerous to the cause of liberty as the power of the slaveholders. The escalating supremacy of the slave South and its racist abettors in the 1850s, culminating in the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857, hardened Brown’s contempt, and it propelled his attack on Harpers Ferry. Brands offers a detailed, almost minute-by-minute account of Brown’s raid, which he rates a “wretched fiasco,” a “quixotic venture” that, far from unshackling the enslaved, tightened their shackles even further. Brands affirms the justice behind Brown’s actions, no matter how zealous, when measured against the cruelty of slavery. He describes how Brown’s self-dramatizing performance during his trial turned him into the inspiring popular martyr whose soul would mythically go marching on. But Brown’s story ends roughly two-thirds of the way through Brands’s book. The denouement — and the achievement of slavery’s destruction — belonged to Abraham Lincoln. In calling Lincoln “the emancipator,” Brands takes exception to a view of Lincoln, now in vogue in some quarters, as a reluctant freedom fighter, a moderate politician who was devoted only to preserving the Union until the vagaries of the Civil War forced his hand. In fact, Lincoln’s hatred of slavery, established early in his life, ran deep: Brands quotes one Illinois abolitionist who got to know him in the 1840s and found “his view and mine on the wrong of slavery … in perfect accord.” As a working politician, Lincoln heeded practical limits, but he did not conceal his antislavery convictions: During his single term in Congress, from 1847 to 1849, he gravitated to antislavery colleagues, withstood abuse for opposing the American war against Mexico as pro-slavery and introduced legislation to eradicate slavery in the District of Columbia, a longtime abolitionist goal. Lincoln’s emergence as an antislavery leader in the 1850s had a long foreground. In line with recent writings by, among others, James Oakes and Sidney Blumenthal, Brands refuses to diminish Lincoln’s antislavery moral commitment because of his politics, any more than he absolves Brown’s uncompromising higher judgments of their untethered recklessness. He quotes Frederick Douglass, who knew both men and who said in retrospect that while abolitionist agitators (including Douglass himself) might have dismissed Lincoln before the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation as cold and indifferent, in fact, given the difficulties he faced, “he was swift, zealous, radical and determined.”",0.05766377725744797 "If the Democrats don’t have to fight Republicans, they’ll fight each other. And you know who’s going to lose that ugly Democrat-on-Democrat fight? Conservatives. After blowing their Senate majority with the incompetent performances of two feckless millionaire-dilettantes in Georgia, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Trump-loving Republicans responded with a riot and attempted coup d’état, storming the Capitol in a violent and ultimately deadly scene. It was an act of spectacular self-marginalization. Without the presidency or control of either house of Congress, Republicans will have very little power in Washington for the next two years. Democrats will be liberated from the need to placate the opposition party, and they may find themselves in an even stronger position after the 2022 elections — coup attempts are the kind of thing voters rightly tend to punish parties for collectively. Without the normal give-and-take of a functioning opposition party, the Democrats will be free to have a different political fight altogether. Biden’s administration will be a mix of hard-left elements and Clinton-Obama-style corporate Democrats, with senior figures ranging from such nuts as future Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to anchors of sanity such as Janet Yellen. Congressional Democrats are divided between old-line leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and the restive progressives who identify with Bernie Sanders but were happy to have Biden as a consolation prize. The more tribalistic Kulturkampf Democrats believe that this is their moment, that with Republicans on the ropes it is time for radical change. Mitch McConnell might have made life tough for Joe Biden at times, but it’ll be even tougher without him. Reuters Usually in a closely divided government, leaders make deals to placate the various factions in their own party while trying to bring in some collaborators from the opposite party, which means offering a little something to its rival factions, too. That often produces bad policy — Washington’s go-to compromise has been giving Republicans the tax cuts they cherish while giving Democrats the spending they demand — but it directs parties away from their extremes toward the center and toward bipartisanship. That is not what is going to happen to Democrats in 2021. Instead, with a 50/50 Senate, the power of far-left Democrats willing to buck party leadership will be amplified, because Democrats will need every single vote to get anything done. Drift in a leftward direction is almost assured. Far-left Democrats in the House will understand this, too, as will progressives inside the administration. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, et al. will have an opening to push their party to the left — and the Republicans will not be in a good position to push back. Joe Biden already has shown that he can be pushed around. He’s an old white dealmaker in a party that prefers another kind of politician, and Biden’s instinct for broad coalition-building has made him a yes man: He will say yes to almost anything, if the demand comes from a quarter to which he is sensitive. Politicians on the edge of 80 do not change their minds about, e.g., abortion policy — as Biden has done with the Hyde Amendment — out of principle. They do it because they have been overpowered. What Biden really needs is something he doesn’t really want: a functioning opposition party that can keep Democrats’ worst impulses in check. Batty boondoggles like student-loan giveaways for Harvard Law graduates were DOA in McConnell’s Senate, and so were unconstitutional gun-control measures, Elizabeth Warren’s corporate-micromanagement agenda, publicly funded abortion, and many other destructive proposals. Chuck Schumer complains about McConnell’s “legislative graveyard” and means to resurrect the measures buried in it. The country will be worse off for it — and so will Biden’s presidency, assuming Biden still wants to be a lunch-bucket FDR Democrat and not a woke culture warrior 24/7. Mitch McConnell might have made life tough at times for Joe Biden. In 2021, it’ll be a hell of a lot tougher for Biden without him. Kevin D. Williamson’s latest book “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the “Real America” (Regnery) is out now.",0.22424945448711217 "President-elect Joe Biden announces his national security nominees and appointees at his transition headquarters in Wilmington, Del., November 24, 2020. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Rejoining the Iran deal won’t solve the problem Iran poses. Welcome to “The Tuesday,” a weekly newsletter about culture, language, politics, and the odds of near-term nuclear annihilation. To subscribe to “The Tuesday,” which all the cool kids are doing these days, follow this link. Headlong De-Trumpification, from Paris to Tehran It is clear that President-elect Joe Biden believes that his most immediate and most urgent task upon assuming the presidency is un-Trumping things. He should be careful about that when it comes to Iran. As Barack Obama did for much of his presidency, Donald Trump has relied heavily on unilateral executive action to advance his policy goals, which is far easier than working out a compromise in Congress but which also produces policies that are unstable — that which can be done unilaterally by a president generally can be undone unilaterally by a president. And so Biden will make it his business to undo a great deal of what Trump has done, in some cases reinstating unilateral Obama administration policies that the Trump administration unilaterally undid. The president has a fairly wide scope of action in matters of foreign relations, and so, in addition to rejoining the Paris agreement on climate change, Joe Biden plans to recommit the United States to the Iran nuclear deal, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” How you think about climate-change policy depends to a very great extent on whether you think getting it wrong on climate will mean a marginally more painful and disruptive process of adaptation than the one we are likely to undergo in any case or instead think that getting it wrong on climate means unprecedented human suffering and even possible human extinction. Similarly, the question of whether Biden’s plans for Iran should be thought of as intelligent proactive diplomacy or as grievous miscalculation depends to a very great extent on how likely you think it is that Tehran will use nuclear weapons against the United States or our allies. In both the United States and in Europe, people who tend to be very risk-averse when it comes to climate generally are the opposite when it comes to Iranian nuclear ambitions, and vice versa. A signature on the Paris agreement may be all Biden actually wants or needs on climate. Even if simply reinstating the JCPOA with no changes were an option — and it probably isn’t — that would not settle the matter of Iranian nuclear development for the Biden administration or the United States. Cynics rarely are disappointed, and a cynic might conclude that the one thing Americans really need to know about the JCPOA is how desperate Tehran is to see it reinstated. Tehran is in the process of provoking a nuclear crisis with an eye to achieving that. The Trump administration pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018, leaving the Europeans trying to hold together a functioning agreement with support from Moscow and Beijing. This was ultimately unsuccessful. In January 2020, Tehran announced that it would no longer respect JCPOA limitations on its nuclear program. Tehran accused the Europeans of being in noncompliance with the deal for not taking a more defensive line against Trump’s sanctions regime and for “taking measures in line with the US pressure campaign,” as Iran’s Financial Tribune put it. And now the Iranian parliament has passed a law directing the nation’s nuclear agency, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), to begin a campaign of nuclear escalation. Writing in Haaretz, Henry Rome and Ariane Tabatabai spell out the details: AEOI is ordered to begin producing 20-percent-enriched uranium, which is closer to what is used in nuclear weapons, something AEOI hasn’t done since before the agreement was implemented; AEOI will increase production of less-enriched uranium as well; AEOI will install some 1,000 advanced centrifuges; it will begin work on a uranium-metal-production plant, necessary to a weaponized nuclear program; AEOI will design and begin work on a new 40-megawatt reactor; and perhaps most significant, the new law directs the Iranian government to reduce its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency to a bare minimum. “It is hard to sugarcoat this bill,” Rome and Tabatabai write. “It is a step-by-step guide to triggering a nuclear crisis akin to the pre-JCPOA period.” And, with an election coming up, hardliners in the Iranian government may be disinclined to make concessions. The Trump administration described its position on Iran as “maximum pressure,” and Tehran is now responding with defiance that is, if not maximum, then at least pointed in the maximalist direction. It is worth keeping in mind that the law already was under consideration before the death of Iranian nuclear-weapons developer Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, though his assassination may have intensified the campaign for the new law. The Trump administration’s sanctions campaign worked, but only in a limited way. The sanctions succeeded in imposing severe economic suffering on Iran, at least for a period, although Iran has seen some relief as its oil exports have bounced back, with bargain-hunters in China and elsewhere thumbing their noses at threatened sanctions. The sanctions caused pain, but imposing economic pain on Iran is not an end but a means to an end — an end the Trump administration has not achieved. As The Economist puts it: “Defenders of Mr. Trump’s policy insist that it simply needs more time to work, an argument that is impossible to disprove. Mr. Trump leaves office with Iran’s influence undiminished and its nuclear programme accelerated. Sanctions can be a useful foreign-policy tool. But they cannot be the only one.” What is it that Biden hopes to achieve vis-à-vis Iran? It may be that his goal is purely political, as it seems to be in rejoining the Paris agreement rather than negotiating a climate treaty that might actually be ratified by the Senate. The Democrats are eager to distance themselves from the bumptiousness of the Trump administration and, having become the party of the moneyed professional classes and the policy-making elites, they are very solicitous of international public opinion, here meaning for the most part European public opinion, which runs strongly in favor of the JCPOA. Biden is very likely to be a one-term president, and though he does not exactly dazzle with his intellect, he can do the math and is cunning enough to understand that neither a lasting settlement with Tehran nor an Iranian nuclear strike on Tel Aviv is very likely to come to pass during his time in office. As often is the case with new presidents taking over from a member of the opposite party, Biden indicates that he wants to concentrate on domestic affairs — as both Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him had hoped to do. Donald Trump was unusual in putting so many foreign-relations questions — China, Mexico, Afghanistan, trade agreements — at the center of his first campaign. Joe Biden probably would prefer not to think very much about Iran at all. But he does not have that luxury, and, if he intends to accomplish something more substantive on Iran, then simply rejoining the JCPOA and declaring our foreign policy cleansed of the stain of Trumpism is not going to get it done. Biden and others, including our European allies, have suggested that the JCPOA is something that can be built on, that rejoining it would only be the first step toward building a dialogue in which other outstanding issues (and there are many of them with Iran) can be addressed. If that is what Biden wants to do, then he has as much business to attend to with Senate Republicans as he does with Tehran, because any meaningful and stable long-term change in U.S.–Iranian relations is going to require reasonably broad bipartisan buy-in and consensus. Neither the Iranians nor our allies have reason to put much faith in an executive-only agreement that is likely to be voided in four years if the presidency changes hands. But Biden has shown little inclination to put seeking bipartisan consensus at the center of his program when it comes to climate change, which he says is important to him, and there is little reason to think he has the desire — or even the ability — to work out something more meaningful on Iran. And so that can probably will be kicked down the road, at the end of which is a nuclear-armed Iran. If anything, Biden’s accommodating left-wing efforts to hobble the U.S. energy industry is likely to strengthen both the position of Iran itself and the ayatollahs’ patron in Moscow. The last four years have shown that sanctions can hurt, that Iran’s Arab neighbors are, in their way, slowly coming around to the understanding that Iran is a much bigger problem for them than are 7 million Jews in Israel, that the American energy renaissance has put the United States in a much stronger position in the Middle East —and that none of this is quite enough. There is a lot of room between status quo ante and regime change in Iran, and the JCPOA, whatever its modest merits, cannot be the end of the road. There is at this moment not much reason to believe Biden has a credible program for what comes after. Words About Words I have a habit of typing really, really hard, as many people who have endured sharing an office with me can attest. I type so hard that my poor MacBook sounds like an old Royal manual typewriter, clackety-clackety-clackety, tap, tap, Whack. Etc. And sometime between when I began this newsletter and finishing it, I managed to break the “F” key, more or less. (It’ll still make an F if I hold it down for a bit.) I’ve been cutting and pasting Fs as needed, but I thought of trying to rewrite the newsletter with no Fs at all. There’s a word for that: lipogram, from the Greek word (λειπογράμματος) meaning “leaving out a letter.” Lipograms are a kind of literary stunt. A famous one was the novel Gadsby, which contains about 50,000 words but no letter E. Some works omit a letter by accident (there is no X or Z in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”), but the writer of a lipogram does it on purpose. Why? I don’t know. Writing is hard enough without imposing artificial constraints on oneself, and, unlike an acrostic, there isn’t much charm to a lipogram. Rampant Prescriptivism Slate headline: “Which of These Terrifying Real-Life Rat Scenarios Is Actually Worse?” This is a worse-case scenario! Not that it is wrong — it isn’t: Slate is considering only two horrible rodential situations, and, when there are two objects being compared, the comparative form is called for: worse, rather than worst. If you have three or more, then you want worst, the superlative form. Bad, worse, worst; good, better, best; ugly, uglier, ugliest, full, fuller, fullest — but not beautiful, beautifuller, beautifullest. (You want more and most there.) Some speakers, particularly children, are less than careful with that, asking: “Who is tallest — me or him?” To which the answer is likely to be: “One of you is taller than the other, but neither of you is the tallest.” If you are trying to think of the superlative form, just imagine what Donald Trump would say: biggest, best, most beautiful . . . Send your language questions to TheTuesday@NationalReview.Com Home and Away You can buy my recently released book, Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Wooly Wilds of the ‘Real America,’ here. I think you might like it: It’s the sort of thing you’ll enjoy if you enjoy that sort of thing. You can see Salena Zito and me discuss the book, and much else, on CSPAN here. Salena was in the middle of moving, and I have a dachshund barking in the background — we keep it real on CSPAN. You can hear me talk about Big White Ghetto with John J. Miller on Bookmonger here. You can hear me on Parallax Views, which I think is a lefty-ish podcast, here. We talk about that book, which you can buy right here. My National Review archive can be found here. Listen to Mad Dogs & Englishmen here. My New York Post archive can be found here. My Amazon page is here. To subscribe to National Review, which you really should do, go here. To support National Review Institute, go here. In Closing Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, an often-misunderstood solemnity. (Catholic beliefs about Mary are very often misunderstood, and as often misrepresented.) The Immaculate Conception does not refer to the conception of Jesus by Mary but rather to the conception of Mary by her mother, Anne. Catholic doctrine holds that Mary was given this gift by the grace of God “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of Mankind,” that she might be “kept free from all stain of original sin.” It always has been a mystery to me that some of my Protestant friends who ask Bob and Sue to pray for them are scandalized when Patrick or Bernadette asks Mary for her prayers in the same way. If we really believe that the dead still are with us in some genuine sense, then this should be entirely unremarkable. To subscribe to “The Tuesday,” follow this link.",-0.30066030974095015 "Iran referred implementation issues by France, Britain and Germany under the 2015 nuclear deal to the Joint Commission for resolution through the Dispute Resolution Mechanism set out in paragraph 36 of the agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Tehran's concerns were highlighted by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a letter to European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who is the coordinator of the commission, ISNA reported. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi said the move followed the three European states' ""irresponsible and illegal measure"" in submitting a draft resolution against Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors as well as their continued failure to fulfill their international commitments under JCPOA and the Joint Commission's directives. The three European parties to the nuclear deal pledged to protect Iran's benefits after the United States pulled out in 2018 and restored sweeping sanctions on Tehran. Not only have their feeble efforts failed to address Iran's economic woes, but they are also taking measures in line with the US pressure campaign. They submitted a resolution to IAEA’s Board of Governors last week, urging Iran to allow access to two sites the UN agency suspected of past nuclear activity. The resolution was adopted in a vote with two oppositions from China and Russia and seven abstentions. Iran rejected the resolution, saying it is already cooperating fully with the United Nations nuclear watchdog and has denied access to the mentioned sites because the request was based on inadmissible intelligence. ""It is stressed in the foreign minister's letter that any interference in Iran's current cooperation with IAEA regarding the [nuclear] safeguards is against the terms of JCPOA and can negatively affect the existing cooperation,"" Mousavi said. Parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Iran, have IAEA safeguards agreements to ensure they do not divert civilian nuclear programs to military purposes. Efforts in Good Faith In the letter, Zarif expressed Iran's readiness to preserve the deal in such a way that all parties properly implement its terms, and most essentially, Iran fully enjoys the economic rewards of the sanctions lifting. ""He [Zarif] has emphasized that in response to any excessive demand or irresponsible behavior, Iran will take appropriate measures,"" Mousavi said. The letter also calls on the three European states to contribute to JCPOA's full implementation by meeting their commitments instead of following the US maximum pressure policy. Iran had earlier referred the Europeans' lack of compliance to the Joint Commission under paragraph 36, but as the issue remained unsolved, it resorted to ""remedial measures"" foreseen in the deal and began to gradually scale back its commitments in five steps. It declared, however, that all moves would be immediately reversed once Iran can freely access international trade again. Borrell confirmed having received the letter in a statement published on EEAS on Friday. He stressed that the Dispute Resolution Mechanism requires ""intensive efforts in good faith by all"" and he expects, as coordinator of the Joint Commission, that all participants approach this process in this spirit. ""The JCPOA is an historic achievement for global nuclear non-proliferation contributing to regional and global security. I remain determined to continue working with the participants of the JCPOA and the international community to preserve it,"" he said.",-0.10405988086663327 "U.S. soldiers attend welcoming ceremony for NATO troops near Orzysz, Poland, in 2017. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters) The accusation that the military is full of racists and extremists is false, and damaging. During the 1960s and ’70s, those of us who fought in Vietnam became accustomed to having many of our fellow countrymen slander us as, at best, victims of a government that sent its poor to fight a criminal war and, at worst, war criminals ourselves, complicit in the routine commitment of atrocities. But the pendulum began to swing back the other way in the 1980s, and continued in the same direction through the Gulf War and 9/11 until, by the time of George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers had been elevated to the status of “secular saints.” Advertisement My fellow Vietnam veterans and I would no doubt have preferred such reverence to the chilly reception we received after the war, but secular sainthood has created its own set of problems — isolation from American society at large, unequal burden sharing, and a belief in the moral superiority of those who serve over those who haven’t — that threaten to undermine the bond between service members and veterans on the one hand and American society at large on the other. After all, healthy civil-military relations depend on mutual trust between soldiers and the society they serve. Now, the pendulum seems to be swinging back to the bad old days of slandering the military, as part of broader claims that Donald Trump normalized “white supremacy” and other forms of right-wing extremism. The fact that there were veterans among the rioters who unlawfully entered the Capitol on January 6, the persistent claim that Trump appealed to extremist groups, and Trump’s popularity with the military form the basis for proliferating allegations that the military has become a friend to racism and extremism. Indeed, some have even raised the specter of active duty and National Guard troops constituting an “insider threat.” For example, Representative Steve Cohen (D., Tenn.) told CNN that: The [National] Guard is 90-some-odd percent, I believe, male. Only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden. You gotta figure that in the Guard, which is predominantly more conservative, and I see that on my social media . . . they’re probably not more than 25 percent of the people that are there protecting us who voted for Biden. . . . The other 75 percent are in the class that would be the large class of folks who might want to do something. And there were military people and police who took oaths to defend the Constitution and to protect and defend who didn’t do it who were in the insurrection. So, it does concern me. Cohen added that people on social media had referenced and reminded him of the assassination of then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Responding to a question about white supremacy during his CNN Town Hall on February 16, President Biden said: I would make sure that my Justice Department and the Civil Rights Division is focused heavily on those very folks, and I would make sure that we, in fact, focus on how to deal with the rise of white supremacy. And you see what’s happening, the studies that are beginning to be done, maybe at your university as well, about the impact of former military, former police officers, on — on the growth of white supremacy in some of these groups. To address concerns about extremism in the ranks of the military, Biden’s secretary of defense, retired Army general Lloyd Austin, has called for a “stand down” across the force to address the issue. “I really and truly believe that 99.9 percent of our servicemen and -women believe in [their] oath. They believe, embrace the values that we are focused on, and they’re doing the right things,” Secretary Austin said on February 19. “I expect for the numbers [of extremists in the ranks] to be small, but quite frankly, they’ll probably be a little bit larger than most of us would guess. . . . But I would just say that, you know, small numbers, in this case, can have an outsized impact.” But Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, argued that the problem has been overstated. “They have self-admitted that the problem doesn’t exist, to their knowledge, and that’s because it doesn’t,” Patel said on Fox News: White supremacy is not rampant throughout the Department of Defense. That is outrageous and offensive to our men and women in uniform. . . . The Biden Pentagon is trading in politics instead of logic and fact. . . . Their own spokesperson and their own secretary of defense, they have said they do not know the problem and whether it exists. They don’t have a name for it. They don’t have a solution for it. But they’re going to label it anyway. There is indeed a “real problem”; it’s just not the one people are talking about. It is instead that political and military leaders have failed to define their terms. Racism vs. Racial Prejudice Let me be clear: There have been serious racial incidents involving military service members in the past, and military leaders were quick to deal with the perpetrators appropriately. But the idea that racism is somehow pervasive in the military is nonsense. The problem with this latest campaign is that most of the recent claims about racism in the military conflate true racism and white supremacy on the one hand and racial prejudice on the other. The former has traditionally referred to membership in, or sympathy with, the KKK, neo-Nazis, skinheads, or other groups that preach violence. The U.S. military has long been vigilant about the possibility of extremist groups taking advantage of military training to advance their own goals. Background checks have always been a part of the recruitment and enlistment processes. And the services have been quick to separate individuals whose background checks raise red flags. The latter is a manifestation of what both Plato and Aristotle called “love of one’s own,” a feature of human nature. The Greeks preferred their ways to those of the Persians. The Athenians preferred their own laws to those of the Spartans. All humans prefer their own families and communities to others’. Racial prejudice arises from generalizations about other racial groups, and is not unique to any one group. It has been my own experience that military service undermines such prejudice. Because service members learn to work toward a common goal with others from different backgrounds, the service often teaches them to rise above their preexisting prejudices. Advertisement It is also the case that although the services reflect the racial attitudes of Americans at large, they have done well in overcoming racial problems. As the late military sociologist Charles Moskos observed a quarter-century ago, the United States Army is the only American institution in which black men routinely give orders to white men. The military is, by necessity, a meritocracy, which gives it a leg up on other institutions in grappling with the problem of prejudice. Extremism Although extremism and racism overlap in many cases, they are different phenomena. In the current debate, “extremism” apparently does not include the groups that instigated mayhem across America in the summer of 2020, rioting, looting, and committing arson. The media has persisted in representing those groups as “peaceful protesters,” and since peaceful protesters can’t be extremists, the term is reserved for right-wing militia groups and the like. But even when one confines the discussion to one side of the political aisle, where does one draw the line? Is supporting the Second Amendment or advocating smaller and less intrusive government “extremist”? Is a service member or veteran who supported President Trump an extremist? Is it extremist to be skeptical of the single-minded quest for “diversity”? Ironically, the military’s attempts to address an alleged lack of diversity in the ranks, like all identity politics, risks dividing people rather than unifying them by suggesting that justice is a function of attributes such as skin color rather than individual character. In the military, where institutional effectiveness depends on cohesion born of trust between and among service members, this is a serious problem. Undermining Trust Thus, the claim that extremism and white supremacy are widespread in the military undermines trust on two levels: First, between the American people and the military as an institution; and second, between the military rank-and-file on the one hand and their leaders on the other. Advertisement Americans hold the military in high regard, perhaps too high. But if civilians have tended to place members of the military on a pedestal, implying that extremism and white supremacy are rampant in the military can only engender civilian disrespect for the armed forces and lead to unjust condemnation. This, needless to say, does not bode well for healthy civil-military relations. Advertisement Regarding trust within the force, what is the rank-and-file soldier to think when both politicians and especially senior officers seem to suggest that supporting President Trump or traditionally conservative ideas such as gun rights and smaller, less intrusive government might make him or her a threat to the country? What will be the consequences for morale and discipline if the ranks believe that senior leaders have sold them out by their apparent willingness to go along with such accusations? Advertisement I am personally aware of increasing disillusionment on the part of service members who feel betrayed by their senior leadership. Individuals join the military for a variety of reasons, but a dominant one is a sense of patriotism, which is undermined if service members believe that senior officers are willing to sacrifice them to trendy political ideas. It is disheartening to note that no senior officer to my knowledge has stepped forward to denounce this latest slander against the American soldier. While real instances of extremism and white supremacy must be identified and perpetrators separated from the service, as has been the practice in the past, suggesting that white supremacy and extremism are rampant in the military is a disservice to the force. Both political leaders and senior officers owe it to the country in general and the military in particular to define extremism, identify actual cases, and provide data supporting their claim that a real problem does in fact exist. To do otherwise is to contribute to a calumny against those they claim to lead.",-0.5368444081579092 "Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a televised speech in Tehran, Iran March 11, 2021. (Official Khamenei Website/Handout via Reuters) We can start by figuring out how to defend ourselves. Washington’s policy-makers are being misled by the intelligence and defense communities that are grossly underestimating the nuclear threat from Iran, just as they did with North Korea. Washington’s mainstream “worst-case” thinking assumes Iran does not yet have atomic weapons, but could “break out” to crash-develop one or a few A-bombs in a year, which the intelligence community would supposedly detect in time for warning and preventive measures. Rowan Scarborough recently reported in the Washington Times that “during a private talk in July 2017 before a Japanese-U.S. audience,” the Pentagon’s director of Net Assessment James H. Baker briefed that “Iran, if it chooses, may ‘safely’ possess a nuclear weapon in 10-15 years time.” Another mainstream “worst-case” view is that Iran could abide by the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and legitimately glide toward nuclear weapons capability in ten to 15 years. The Trump administration canceled the JCPOA for legitimate reasons, but the Biden administration has pledged to revive it. In contrast to these views, we warned in these pages in February 2016 that Iran probably already had atomic weapons deliverable by missile and satellite: We assess, from UN International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] reports and other sources, that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. . . . prior to 2003, Iran was manufacturing nuclear weapon components, like bridge-wire detonators and neutron initiators, performing non-fissile explosive experiments of an implosion nuclear device, and working on the design of a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-III missile. When our World War II Manhattan Project reached this stage, the U.S. was only months away from making the first atomic bombs. This was Iran’s status 18 years ago. And the Manhattan Project employed 1940s-era technology to invent and use the first atomic weapons in only three years, beginning from a purely theoretical understanding. So by 2003, Iran was already a threshold nuclear-missile state. But for at least the last decade, the intelligence community has annually assessed that Iran could build atomic weapons in one year or less. On the other hand, less than a month ago, independent analysts at the Institute for Science and International Security assessed that Iran had a break-out time of as short as three months for its first nuclear weapon and five months for a second. And there is no reason to believe U.S. and IAEA intelligence capabilities are so perfect that they can assuredly detect Iran’s clandestine efforts to build atomic weapons. Indeed, the U.S. and IAEA did not even know about Iran’s clandestine nuclear-weapons program until Iranian dissidents exposed it in 2002. The IAEA and the U.S. intelligence community have long been poor nuclear watchdogs. IAEA inspections failed to discover clandestine nuclear-weapons programs in North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya. In 1998, the intelligence community’s “Worldwide Threat Assessment” failed to warn that, just a few months later, Pakistan and India would overtly “go nuclear” with a series of nuclear-weapons tests. U.S. intelligence often underestimated nuclear threats from Russia, China, and North Korea. It is likely now doing the same with Iran. Contrary to mainstream thinking: Iran can build sophisticated nuclear weapons by relying on component testing, without nuclear testing. The U.S., Israel, Pakistan, and India have all used the component-testing approach. The U.S. Hiroshima bomb was not tested, nor have been more sophisticated U.S. thermonuclear warheads during the past 30 years. Pakistan and India’s 1998 nuclear tests were done for political reasons, not out of technological necessity. IAEA inspections are limited to civilian sites, and restricted from military bases, including several highly suspicious underground facilities where Iran’s nuclear-weapons program almost certainly continues clandestinely. Imagery of one vast underground site, heavily protected by SAMs, shows high-voltage powerlines terminating underground, potentially delivering enormous amounts of electricity, consistent with powering uranium enrichment centrifuges on an industrial scale. So IAEA reports on Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile almost certainly are not the whole story. The U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran suspended its nuclear-weapons program in 2003 is contradicted both by Iran’s nuclear archives, stolen by Israel in 2018, indicating Iran’s ongoing nuclear-weapons program (reported at several sites in 2006, 2017, and 2019) and by Iran’s rapid resumption of enriching uranium to prohibited levels. This demonstrates an existing capability to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium. Reports from the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission elaborate these and important related issues. Most estimates assume Iran needs five to ten kilograms of highly enriched (over 90 percent) uranium-235 or plutonium-239 to make an atomic weapon, as with the first crudely designed A-bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But a good design requires only one to two kilograms. Crude A-bombs can be designed with uranium-235 or plutonium-239 enriched to only 50 percent. Iran’s nuclear and missile programs are not just indigenous, but are helped significantly by Russia, China, North Korea, and probably Pakistan. While the intelligence community uses an in-country nuclear test as confirmation that a country, including Iran, has developed a nuclear weapon, this leaves it wide open to deceiving itself, our leadership, and our allies. Iran and North Korea have close working relations, North Korea will do anything for Iranian oil, and Iranians have reportedly been present at some of North Korea’s nuclear tests. North Korea could easily have exchanged information with Iran and even tested Iranian nuclear weapons as well as their own — if there is any difference — without the U.S. and its allies knowing whose weapons were being tested. North Korean scientists are known to be in Iran helping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard “space program” that provides cover for developing ICBMs. As we warned five years ago, it is implausible and imprudent to assume that Iran refrained from making atomic weapons for more than a decade, when they could do so clandestinely: Iran probably has nuclear warheads for the Shahab-III medium-range missile, which they tested for making EMP attacks. . . . And at a time of its choosing, Iran could launch a surprise EMP attack against the United States by satellite, as they have apparently practiced with help from North Korea. Why has Iran not gone overtly nuclear, like North Korea? There are several explanations. For one, North Korea is protected by China and lives in a safer neighborhood, where South Korea and Japan are reluctant to support U.S. military options to disarm Pyongyang. In contrast, Iran’s neighbors, Israel and moderate Arab states, are far more likely to support air strikes to disarm Tehran. As we warned five years ago, Iran probably wants to build enough nuclear missiles to make its capabilities irreversible: Iran could be building a nuclear-capable missile force, partly hidden in tunnels, as suggested by its revelation of a vast underground missile basing system. . . . Iran is building toward a large, deployable, survivable, war-fighting missile force—to which nuclear weapons can be swiftly added as they are manufactured. Moreover, Iran wants to preserve the fiction of its non-nuclear status. It has derived far more economic and strategic benefits from the JCPOA and threats to “go nuclear” than has North Korea from “going nuclear” overtly. Ominously, Iran may be forgoing the deterrence benefits of an overt nuclear posture because it is building toward surprise future employment of nuclear capabilities to advance the global theological agenda of the ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the world’s largest and most sophisticated terrorist organization. So what can we do to meet this almost-certain threat? Some better options are, unfortunately, far more difficult at this juncture. Arms control non-solutions like the JCPOA will only make matters worse, just as arms control did with North Korea, by offering false hope while the nuclear threat grows. Disarming Iran of nuclear capabilities by airstrikes or invasion would be very risky since we do not know where all of its nuclear missiles are hidden. The U.S. was deterred from disarming North Korea when that nation’s nuclear-missile capabilities were merely nascent. Regime change by sponsoring a popular revolution may be a practical solution — the Iranian people would overthrow their Islamist government if they could. But the regime itself has proven adept at suppressing popular uprisings, and may use U.S. involvement, whether purported or actual, as a propaganda tool in such an effort, as it has before. But there are things we can do right now, including: Harden U.S. electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures against a nuclear EMP attack, which is described in Iran’s military doctrine and would be the regime’s most easily executed and most damaging nuclear threat. The White House and STRATCOM should regard Iran as a nuclear-missile threat right now, increase scrutiny by national technical means of verification and by human intelligence to locate nuclear-weapons capabilities, and prepare preemptive options should action become necessary. Strengthen National Missile Defenses and especially deploy modern space-based defenses. For example, the 1990s Brilliant Pebbles project, canceled by the Clinton administration, could begin deployment in five years, cost an estimated $20 billion in today’s dollars, and intercept essentially all ballistic missiles ranging more than a few-hundred miles, including from Russia and China. Our national survival should not depend only upon striking first or deterrence. The American people would rather be defended than avenged. Ambassador R. James Woolsey is a former director of central intelligence; William R. Graham was President Reagan’s science adviser and acting administrator of NASA, and chaired the Congressional EMP Commission; Ambassador Henry F. Cooper was director of the Strategic Defense Initiative and chief negotiator at the Defense and Space Talks with the USSR; Fritz Ermarth was chairman of the National Intelligence Council; Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.",-0.8874707818489039 "Somehow, I don’t think the European Medicines Agency helped matters much with their decision today. In fact, they may very well have just enabled the worst of both worlds: The European Union’s drug regulator said on Thursday that the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe, a finding that officials hope will alleviate concerns about possible side effects and prompt more than a dozen countries to resume using it against the resurgent coronavirus. But the European Medicines Agency said a new warning label will be added to the shot so that people in the medical community can be on the lookout for a potential rare complication leading to bleeding in the brain. The risk from the AstraZeneca vaccine is the same today as it was a week ago, before so many European countries paused administering it. Vaccine skeptics will look at the warning label as evidence to support their preconceived notion that the vaccines are unsafe. Meanwhile, these countries have stopped administering vaccines for a few days while cases are increasing, and now it appears they had no good reason to stop using them. As I noted Tuesday, vaccine skepticism or opposition is surprisingly widespread on the European continent. And as I noted in today’s Jolt, the odds of developing of blood clots or having significant adverse reactions from getting vaccinated are on par with the odds of being struck by lightning. These countries never had a good reason to halt using a safe vaccine, and now the EU’s top regulator is putting a warning label on them.",-0.3838500339690129 The national media may not want to look too closely at which states rank at or near the bottom of the vaccination effort.,-0.45362101302751956 The national media may not want to look too closely at which states rank at or near the bottom of the vaccination effort.,1.7272156343711957 "From left: Cyborg (Ray Fisher), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman (Henry Cavill), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), and Aquaman (Jason Mamoa) in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. (HBO Max/Trailer image via YouTube) He’s remaking our moral need into more than comic-book stuff. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (that’s the complete title) differs significantly from the 2017 film Justice League, a project Snyder began that was mutilated when Warner Brothers assigned Joss Whedon to rework it. Through the confluence of venal corporate interference, a rare instance of public outcry about the movie business (the online demand #ReleaseTheSnyderCut), and the opportunity to jump-start the new streaming service HBO Max, Snyder got carte blanche to complete his vision, to make things right. Advertisement Snyder takes the idea of Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) uniting with three more superheroes, Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Victor Stone), following Superman’s death at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), as a metaphor for spiritual endeavor. In Snyder’s mythic distillation of moral combat, this league of superheroes fights an evil threat from another dimension, the horned villain Steppenwolf and his even more rough-hewn master Darkside (they promise, “Down with the modern world. Back to the Dark Ages”). ZSJL shows the superheroes’ dynamic, physicalized anxieties that, in the grand scheme, are sometimes confusedly political but go back to primordial conditions and foundational myths. The opening scenes linking different eras and characters in parallel situations and life instances are fantastically designed and with the most emotionally intense facial portraits since Joseph von Sternberg. This is a modern epic about worry and longing. Advertisement The passion behind #ReleaseTheSnyderCut was inspired by Snyder’s fans (a minority in today’s dumb-downed film culture), who favor his aesthetically rich D.C. comic-book storytelling over the juvenile mechanisms of Marvel’s Avengers films. Snyder’s characters don’t wink at the audience but call on personal recognition. These Superheroes — like gods on earth — personify human exertion. They represent myths for an age of disbelief, and their idealized traits derive from more than teenage wish fulfillment. At the close of Aquaman’s introduction, an Icelandic woman inhales the scent of his discarded sweater (like the wife illicitly recalling the aroma of a soldier’s jacket in The Searchers). This throwback to film history can also be scarily sensual, especially for an eroto-phobic age in which mainstream media pursue the dissolution of sexual differences. (Flash’s brief meet-cute with a girl in a sportscar extends into a slo-mo existential romance, to “Song of the Siren” — a divertimento out of Snyder’s underrated Sucker Punch.) Our social reality has become so absurd — political gaslighting has reversed right and wrong, demeaned truth and faith — that Snyder’s reliance on the verities, summoning social unity through myth, goes against the grain. And yet, ZSJL demonstrates the most irrefutable, assuredly flamboyant filmmaking in years. ZSJL gives comic-book myth a classical look that formulaic Marvel movies and Peter Jackson’s unfocussed Lord of the Rings series lacked. Snyder pushes typically flimsy video-game extravagance toward Homer and Malory’s romantic depth. Each of ZSJL’s battle scenes move ingeniously with stunning details: a zigzag bolt of lightning; a cut-off hand still glowing with life force; Cyborg’s intuitive vision of a Russian bear charging a Wall Street bull; plus Flash and Wonder Woman converging at sword point, a moment so rousing that not even Whedon could resist it, now an oldie but goodie. Advertisement It was obvious that Whedon didn’t care about Justice League’s themes any more than Ridley Scott cared about the issues of his visually astonishing Legend (1982). But Snyder brings such conviction to his craft that he gives substance to unusual comic-book lore, as in his masterpieces Watchmen and Man of Steel. His grand vision here drops a few narrative strands: Batman’s troubled conscience and Superman’s resurrection and reunion with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) get neglected in exchange for closer examination of Aquaman’s origin and Cyborg’s agon. (There’s more to say about the latter.) Unlike most Hollywood filmmakers, Snyder has a lot to say — especially about retrieving our moral compass. He answers a faithless age with a film about faith. “For once, I’m operating on faith not reason,” Affleck’s soulful Bruce Wayne reminds the team, and his last scene is a test. The essential point of Snyder rebounding from a career catastrophe and making it right is demonstrated in the personal dilemma of each superhero. ZSJL’s restored vision reminds us of pop art’s value. ",0.44051907358934306 "Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton. (Walt Disney Studios/Trailer image via YouTube) What happened to Hamilton and movie populism? Back in the days when people actually cared about the Academy Awards, I used to follow them as an event that perpetually kept record of film-culture excellence. But excellence went out of the game, the public felt betrayed, and the show’s TV ratings began to drop. This year, there’s not one entertaining film among the Academy’s eight Best Picture nominees. Advertisement Three potential explanations: Hollywood has given up on the idea of entertaining viewers; the COVID year of American movies was completely bereft of pleasure; or the idea of entertainment has been, to use the Obama–Bernie Sanders threat, “fundamentally transformed.” Now movies are only about indoctrination and self-congratulation; the man behind the curtain says, Pay no attention to freedom, liberty, your bill of rights, or fun. After the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ recent “diversity initiatives” changed its membership rolls, it seems that all the voters just want to have their biases confirmed. Selecting such contraptions as The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, and The Trial of the Chicago 7 out of all the releases in 2020 is the end result of the Academy’s cultural engineering. It ratifies how the industry has altered — mutilated — its sense of aesthetic quality, merely to fit the times. At first, that Best Picture list looks politicized — like a race and gender-studies reading list. It doesn’t look amusing. Instead, it lacks broad attraction and the promise of a good time that used to be proven by the fact of popularity. Advertisement One 2020 release is conspicuously absent from the list: Hamilton. Yes, even Disney’s streaming presentation of the overrated Broadway musical Hamilton, intended to rock last summer’s July 4th celebrations, had indicated a nod toward entertainment and the notion of wide, if specious, appeal. But the dismissal of Hamilton — the hallowed show conceived to celebrate “hope and change” politics — proves the almost tangible failure of that movement. Hailed as the cultural event of the era, it failed to have a lasting impact. You could argue that many of the nominees show the obvious influence of Hamilton’s facile presentation of history and politics, but none are compelling, and none have proved culturally galvanizing. I’m not displeased by Hamilton’s shut-out; it was minimally cinematic (repeating the stage production’s proscenium perspective and the mishmash of nontraditional equity casting that yet was guilty of left-wing racial bias). Those jumpy non-melodies and knotty rhymes you hear in Hamilton are not rap music but dog whistles. It communicates to those who don’t like hip-hop but feel hip when they hop to the commands of the mainstream media that celebrated Hamilton and its Obama-era politics. (John Bolton’s memoir viciously alluded to Hamilton’s romanticized political vengeance.) In the past, film adaptations of such Broadway hits as West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Funny Girl, Hello, Dolly!, Fiddler on the Roof, even the cynical Cabaret, once united our cultural identity, and, as a result, all were Oscar-nominated. The Academy’s rebuff of Hamilton has revealed that the show’s cultural status was not insuperable; it was always simply a means of progressives’ self-intoxication. It entertained no one outside of Broadway and editorial-page writers. Advertisement That Hamilton’s Tony Award–winning co-star Leslie Odom Jr. got an Oscar nomination for a different film (impersonating Sam Cooke in the miserable One Night in Miami) certifies that Hamilton lacked real star power (creator Lin-Manuel Miranda sucked up all the publicity, yet his whiney-voiced characterization left viewers cold). In Disney’s streaming version, Odom gave the show’s emotional void no more than the superficialities of black belligerence — acting the role of Aaron Burr as if to showcase Dixiecrat black villainy, a black Judas to Miranda’s Latin messiah. And yet, none of the Academy’s eight Best Picture nominees rival the “legendary” impression that Hamilton made. Each soon-to-be forgotten film offers a passive-aggressive reorganization of American principles into sentimental sermons about class, race and sex, as if progressives have finally convinced everyone to think alike, but without joy, satisfaction, or social harmony in return — just self-righteousness and misery, well symbolized by Frances McDormand’s grim visage in Nomadland. Not a single film is uplifting; but neither was Hamilton, which surely is the reason it flopped. This year’s Oscar nominees all flop. They’re anti-populist non-entertainments. Advertisement Fact is, the Academy’s choices show that the film industry no longer cares about any sort of popularity, not even in Hamilton’s elitist, pseudo-populist fashion — its exclusive, exorbitantly priced tickets, its Beltway and media cachet. COVID has made the studios so craven that they lazily chase the couch-potato home audience. Including Hamilton among the Oscar nominees might have acknowledged some cultural consensus. Instead, the hateful eight nominees are all about coterie rule, same as the one-party domination of our executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The Oscars’ resemblance to election irregularity resembles the irregularity of Millennial movies. This year’s Oscars are the reeducation Oscars.",1.6036652166660683 "It’s hard to keep up with all the targets of cancel culture, whether they be ordinary citizens, historical figures, or fictional characters. One of the latest under fire is Pepé Le Pew, the very much not-beloved animated French skunk of the classic 1950s Warner Brothers cartoons. New York Times columnist Charles Blow charges that Pepé “normalized rape culture.” After appearing in the bizarre 1996 Michael Jordan/Bugs Bunny film Space Jam, Pepé has been cut from the inexplicable LeBron James sequel, due out this summer. I do not weep for Pepé Le Pew, who is pretty low on the list of great cartoon characters, …",0.9728720110992304 "(Dado Ruvic/Reuters) Disney has restricted access to classic movies including Dumbo and Peter Pan on its streaming service over concerns about racist stereotypes that appear in the films. The movies, which also include Swiss Family Robinson and The Aristocats, will be removed from Disney+ menus for children under the age of seven, while viewers older than seven will continue having access to the film, according to the New York Post. Advertisement The decision comes months after Disney added content warnings to the movies in October, which read: “These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.” Disney detailed the stereotypes over which it was concerned in the service’s Stories Matter section. In Peter Pan (1953), which was made in 1953, it is racial stereotypes of Native Americans, including a song called What Made the Red Man Red that yielded its restriction, while Swiss Family Robinson (1960) reinforced “otherness” in showing the pirates who attack the family as a “stereotypical foreign menace,” with many of the pirates in “brown” and “yellow” face. The Aristocats (1970) features a Siamese cat named Shun Gon who uses poor English, plays the piano with chopsticks and has stereotypes such as slanted eyes and buck teeth. Dumbo (1941) depicts a group of crows who “pay homage to racist minstrel shows, where white performers with blackened faces and tattered clothing imitated and ridiculed enslaved Africans.” The head crow, Jim Crow, shares a name with the laws that enforced segregation in much of the U.S. until the Civil Rights movement. Send a tip to the news team at NR.",-0.8580810151901465 "Oliver Stone poses for a portrait in 2008. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters) The maker of Platoon, JFK, and Natural Born Killers was told that his films were ‘too much.’ He wore the label as a badge of honor. William Oliver Stone is the rare Hollywood figure who, you come to understand, probably downplays his outlandish antics in his book. “There were a few ‘Oliver Stone’ stories that I’d heard, bounced back at me, often with unbelievable outcomes,” he writes, a little prissily. He notes that a fellow screenwriter once told him that his legend had become a kind of model for other writers who wished to be seen as bad boys. Stone drily notes that at parties, “I would do something, never violent or intentionally harmful, but often outrageous, to make the moment less boring.” He withholds many of the details, which no doubt were gory (and perhaps delicious). Advertisement Less Boring would be an apt title for Stone’s memoir, but in the one he entitled Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game, Stone shouts with the exuberance of a free American man — an obnoxious, abrasive loudmouth like the one played by Eric Bogosian with a buzzsaw voice in one of the director’s best films, Talk Radio (1988). As did many other Stone efforts, Talk Radio (available on Amazon Prime) took a true American story (the 1984 murder of Alan Berg, a liberal talk-show host gunned down by white supremacists) and filtered it through the director’s self-destructive passions: Bogosian’s Barry Champlain just can’t stop enraging people by shoving what he knows to be the truth in their faces. He’s a sort of lone gunfighter of the new American West, armed only with sleek, modern weapons (sarcasm, putdowns) in sleek, modern Dallas as hostile forces plot to ambush him in the night. Their weapons are more atavistic, but their goal is simply to shut his mouth. For Stone, living loudly, nakedly, and extremely is the only way, even if it means dying extremely. Like his idol Jim Morrison, who channeled William Blake into acid rock, Stone is an archetypal Sixties Romantic (“Nothing was sacred — it was all possible — we were all going to ‘break on through to the other side,’” he writes) who places subjective feeling over objective fact and seeks elevated truths by burrowing into lived experience. Hence his accomplished career as a drug user; drugs cut you off from the distraction of external reality and help you bore down into yourself. Advertisement All of this is why I wouldn’t trust Stone to accurately report the score of a baseball game. As Gabriel Seidl once wrote of Beethoven, “He feels through his mind, he thinks through his heart.” But Stone serves what he sees as the truth. Late in the book, he discovers that the story that became his Oscar-winning script for Midnight Express (1978), which was first told to him as “hapless American kid smuggles a tiny amount of hashish to pay for college” (the amount in question was actually two kilos), was not what he thought it was. Billy Hayes, the subject of the film, laughingly told Stone many years later that he wasn’t busted until his fourth smuggling run, and though discarding inconvenient facts to make a better story is Hollywood S.O.P., Stone was hurt by the revelation. Midnight Express would almost certainly never have been made if Hayes had told Stone the truth beforehand, which might in turn have cost Stone his career — the movie became an out-of-the-box sensation just two years after he arrived in Hollywood. But instead of shrugging off Hayes’s after-the-fact admission, he’s genuinely upset that he was conned into participating in a lie, seeing himself as a weapon of truth in dangerous circumstances. Despised Cassandras are everywhere in Stone’s pictures, from Tom Cruise’s Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July to Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison in JFK to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Snowden. Though Stone has worked with and known many famous people, his book (which ends after his third directorial effort, Platoon, wins the Best Picture Oscar) is almost entirely inward-facing; there are very few “as I told my good friend Laurence Olivier”-style anecdotes. Olivier, though, does pop up, in a funny second-hand way, as the source of the most perfect distillation of acting, relayed to Stone by Frank Langella: “Look at me. Look at me — that’s my bloody motivation!” Advertisement Chasing the Light is a study in Stone’s fears, his frustrations, and his addictions, as he tries to put his obsessions on the screen for us to share. Throughout his career, he has composed in his own brutal, vulgar, ostentatious key, scolds be damned: “The hell with good taste!” he writes. A recurrent phrase in his book — he heard it many times from people to whom he pitched his scripts — is “too much.” Too much sex, too much violence, too much everything. It took a while for the industry to grasp that, as the Eighties roared forth, “too much” could be the raison d’être of a highly successful filmmaker. Stone started to attract allies who loved the idea of going too far, such as the gonzo San Francisco journalist Richard Boyle, who would be played by the gonzo actor James Woods in Salvador. (Woods stole the role from Martin Sheen, who was originally cast, by telling Stone that Sheen’s wariness of the profanity in the script would result in “another bull**** Hollywood picture.”) As Stone was struggling to get Salvador made after his only previous directorial effort — a piece about a murderous, creeping appendage called The Hand — occasioned more laughs than screams, producer John Daly told the director, eyes twinkling, “I hope you live up to your reputation.” What he meant, Stone writes, is “be who you are, ‘the lunatic.’ . . . John was saying, ‘I want that Oliver, not their Oliver.’” Stone’s matter-of-factness about his many mistakes makes for lots of dryly funny episodes. He once held a pound of heroin in his closet for friends, for instance. He doesn’t remember his 1981 wedding because he was high on marijuana, quaaludes, and cocaine during the ceremony. He notes that Gore Vidal once proposed a three-way tryst with Stone and Mick Jagger. On a Scarface research trip to Bimini to chat with some wealthy gentlemen who just happened to have a lot of theoretical knowledge about how one might go about sneaking cocaine into Miami, Stone unwisely mentioned a defense attorney he knew. The lawyer had once been a prosecutor, and the mention of his name made Stone’s interlocutors wonder if their new friend might perhaps be an undercover agent. The fellows excused themselves to discuss the matter in the men’s room, and Stone believed he was about to be tortured and fed to the gators. As dicey as it was to research, though, Scarface turned out to be useful in surprising ways: When Stone went to beg right-wing Central American government officials for help making Salvador, his leftist follow-up, their affinity for vigorous anti-communist Tony Montana made them incorrectly think the director was ideologically simpatico. (It helped that Stone whipped up a phony two-page treatment that suggested Salvador was a film about brave right-wing governments battling despicable Commie insurgents.) Advertisement Stone refers to his and his wife Elizabeth’s cocaine-defined years (as opposed to later ones, when he clarifies that he merely used the drug “socially”) as “monster time.” He was formed in a painful time for America, from the assassination of JFK and on through Vietnam, the shattering of Sixties idols, and Watergate, and he covered it all in his films. Did he engage with his subjects accurately? No, but I think he was honest about what he felt about them: panic, outrage, excitement, desperation, and anguish. He felt he had lived through America’s monster time, and set about sharing his sense of horror with as much operatic gusto as he could.",2.808567477465833 "A vial with the AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in Berlin, Germany, March 16, 2021. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters) Today on The Editors, Rich, Charlie, Maddy, and Jim discuss the latest uproar concerning women in the military, Europe’s temporary delay on the AstraZeneca vaccine, and Amazon’s reasons for banning books questioning trans ideology. Editors’ picks: • Rich: Phil Klein’s post “Public Behavior Led the Way on COVID-19 Lockdowns — and It Will Lead Us Out” • Charlie: Dan McLaughlin’s piece “The Populist Dilemma on Free Speech and Cancel Culture” • Maddy: MBD’s piece “National Review Is Irrelevant” • Jim: Rich’s piece “It’s Trump’s Fault” Light items: • Rich: The latest NR fund-drive • Charlie: Going skeet shooting • Maddy: Talking to her great-uncle about the Great Books • Jim: His boys both being back in-person for school Sponsor: Freshly The Editors is hosted by Rich Lowry and produced by Sarah Schutte.",-0.1419927410081076 "Duration:01:03:40 Today on The Editors, Rich, Charlie, Maddy, and Daniel discuss the slew of rotten bills being passed by the House, the absurd overreaction to Texas and Mississippi’s mask mandate repeal, and the debate over removing the security fencing from around the Capitol.",-0.10827158031376637 "Bahnsen and his guest Ramesh Ponnuru do a deep dive into all things monetary policy, with a fascinating conversation about what a truly ‘conservative’ view of the Fed looks like ...",0.4417089639814211 "Bahnsen and his guest Ramesh Ponnuru do a deep dive into all things monetary policy, with a fascinating conversation about what a truly ‘conservative’ view of the Fed looks like ...",1.293124335848145 John J. Miller is joined by Desmond Jagmohan of the University of California at Berkeley to discuss Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery.,1.1885957085728327 "A customer looks at books by Dr. Seuss in a bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., March 2, 2021. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) San Diego-based Dr. Seuss Enterprises announces the premature deaths of several Seuss titles it deems offensive. It’s no accident that Meghan and Harry settled in California, the engine room of American woke politics. Fact-checking Gavin Newsom’s feckless State of the State speech. The Biden administration surprises nearly everyone with a SCOTUS filing that says California officials, including Kamala Harris, violated the First Amendment rights of nonprofits by demanding lists of donors. Music by Metalachi. Contact: dbahnsen@thebahnsengroup.com Will@calpolicycenter.org Follow Us: @DavidBahnsen @WillSwaim @TheRadioFreeCA Show Notes:",-0.2890066653719828 "The Hoover Tower rises above Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., January 13, 2017 (Noah Berger/Reuters) Stanford University’s lefty professors work overtime to take down the affiliated free-market Hoover Institution. David says if the ACLU is to mean anything, it ought to at least stand for each of the nouns in its name. Will says public-safety unions are more concerned about conservative lawmakers than lefty Defund Police campaigns. California’s auditor says the state air-resources board isn’t hitting its own goals and has turned to alternative facts to say that it is. Also: Teachers’ union lockdown hypocrisy, using tech to surveil LA’s students for public health, Newsom Corruption Watch, and your letters. Music by Metalachi. Contact: dbahnsen@thebahnsengroup.com Will@calpolicycenter.org Follow Us: @DavidBahnsen @WillSwaim @TheRadioFreeCA Show Notes:",0.6903509859247828 "President Martin Van Buren, c. 1860-1862 (Library of Congress) Martin Van Buren, nicknamed the Red Fox of Kinderhook and the Little Magician, was the first American president born after American independence, the first raised in a home where English was not the primary language, and the first true political organizer. A political genius, who created the model of the nineteenth-century political machine, Van Buren is sadly consigned to the second or third tier of American presidencies. Jay and Luke push back against his undue relegation in this episode, the first of two covering Van Buren. They discuss his unique cultural background, his rise through the ranks of Jeffersonian politics, his creation of what became known as the Albany Regency, and his controversial efforts on behalf of James Crawford’s unsuccessful candidacy in 1824. That election saw Van Buren cast out of the center of political life with the return of DeWitt Clinton to the New York governorship and John Quincy Adams’s presidency. Yet in four short years, Van Buren managed to organize the Jacksonian resurgence, as well as his own political revival in New York. We end the episode with Van Buren elected governor of New York and called by Jackson to join his cabinet as Secretary of State.",-0.475294180874856 "Detail of portrait of John Quincy Adams by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1858. (White House Historical Association/Wikimedia) Like his father in so many ways, JQA was a man of immense talents, a statesman of vast achievements, a brilliant political mind, and — like his father — a one-term president. JQA may, still, be the most qualified person ever to reach the presidency. And yet from the outset, his presidency was a failure. His political angling to get the presidency, the so-called “Corrupt Bargain” between Adams and fourth-place finisher Henry Clay, pitched Adams into the presidency via the House of Representatives. Even though this conformed to the formal constitutional method of selection, it offended the political sensibilities of most Americans and limited Adams’s effectiveness. Jay and Luke trace Adams’s policy priorities, his role in advancing what became the American System, and how his administration paved the way for the Jacksonian era.",1.3101499257949456 "CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021. (Susan Walsh/Reuters) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday vowed to prioritize “equity” in “everything we do” at the health agency, two days after it released a report showing that there are disparities in vaccination rates between various racial and socioeconomic demographics. “I can promise you as long as this team of people are here, as long as I am here, we will bake into the cake of everything we do our commitment to equity, to science and to bring back the health to the American people and to keep it there,” she said during President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta, Ga. Advertisement The Biden administration has focused on creating equity in its vaccine distribution plans. However, a CDC report published Wednesday that analyzed the first 2.5 months of the country’s vaccine data showed the U.S. falling short in meeting its goal. The analysis of the 51,873,700 Americans who received at least one dose examined how many of those individuals lived in communities identified as vulnerable by the CDC’s social vulnerability index, which is calculated using 15 indicators including area poverty, household demographics and minority status. Nationwide, vaccine coverage was reached for 13.9 percent of people in counties with high social vulnerability, compared to 15.8 percent in counties with low social vulnerability, the report shows. Advertisement The largest disparity occurred in connection with socioeconomic status, with vaccine coverage 2.5 percentage points higher in counties with low vulnerability in such areas than in high-vulnerability counties. The report says “equity in access to COVID-19 vaccination has not been achieved nationwide.” Researchers said they found “equity” in vaccine coverage in just two states: Arizona and Montana. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has received much blowback over his state’s vaccine distribution after a pop-up vaccination event at a wealthy community in Manatee County, just south of St. Petersburg, drew national attention and criticism. Democrats accused the governor of playing politics and favoring white, wealthy Republicans in the state’s vaccine distribution efforts. State Representative Michele Rayner, a St. Petersburg Democrat, accused the governor of prioritizing “affluent neighborhoods in Manatee County over our underserved populations.” However, the state ranked ahead of California and five other states in distributing shots to the communities that have seen the worst infection rates during the pandemic. Jared Moskowitz, Florida’s emergency management director and a Democrat, told National Review last month that ultimately vaccine distribution in the state is based on math, not politics. Advertisement Moskowitz said the media breathlessly covered the Manatee County vaccination event because it “fit a narrative that many wanted to tell.” “We’re trying to vaccinate as many seniors as possible,” Moskowitz said. “Does a senior who lives in a housing project who might get COVID versus a senior that lives in Century Village or The Villages, if they get COVID, they both wind up in the hospital potentially in each of their communities. And that end of the day, we have to vaccinate everybody.” Florida leads the nation in vaccinating seniors 65 and older. Send a tip to the news team at NR.",-0.009142498707032235 "President Joe Biden speaks prior to signing the “American Rescue Plan,” a package of economic relief measures to respond to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, at the White House, March 11, 2021. (Tom Brenner/Reuters) Did Joe Biden mislead the country about his tax plans during his campaign for president? Unless Jen Psaki misspoke this afternoon, it sure looks as if he did. Here’s what she said: Psaki says potential tax increase on those making $400,000 or more means that income threshold applies to ""families."" — Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) March 17, 2021 This is directly at odds with the promise on Joe Biden’s website, which reads: Joe Biden will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. Period. One cannot square “anyone” and “families.” And what is that “period” doing there, if not to make the preceding statement emphatic? It is also at odds with what Biden said this morning on Good Morning America: “Anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase,” Biden said during an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “You make less than $400,000, you won’t see one single penny in additional federal tax.” Anybody. Not any family. And it is at odds with what Jen Psaki said yesterday: “The president remains committed to his pledge from the campaign that nobody making under $400,000 a year will have their taxes increased.” Nobody. Not no household. Watch this space.",0.186799345239384 "President Joe Biden delivers remarks as he commemorates the 50 millionth coronavirus vaccination at the White House, February 25, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) President Biden signed a $1.9 trillion spending bill, which is being described as both “COVID relief” and “stimulus” legislation. It isn’t really either one: Much of it has little to do with COVID, and the case that it would rescue a depressed economy is not strong. Since the bill narrowly passed the Senate, a third purpose for it has come to the fore. Having sold the legislation as a necessary response to a public-health and economic crisis, its fans are now saying that its great contribution to the commonweal is bringing back the New Deal. Supposedly, its popularity will buoy Democrats in the midterms and its example will re-legitimate big government. The New York Times reports that there has been “a realignment of economic, political and social forces, some decades in the making and others accelerated by the pandemic, that enabled a rapid advance in progressive priorities.” Advertisement What is really happening is that progressives are building a — federally funded, over-budget — castle in the air. If Biden wants to spend even larger sums on infrastructure in future legislation, he will not have the helpful context of his first weeks in office and a continuing pandemic. And even in this bill, they were unable to secure an increase in the minimum wage, losing the votes of eight Senate Democrats and all the Republicans. (They can’t blame the filibuster for that.) Its biggest-ticket items, money for state and local governments and checks to households, will do little to expand the federal government on a permanent basis. Meanwhile, polls continue to suggest that most Americans do not believe the federal government should grow larger and do not trust its competence. These are generalities, of course, and have in the past been compatible with public support for specific government interventions. But there is not much evidence the public is part of any grand “realignment.” Advertisement It may well turn out that voters will feel well-disposed toward the ruling Democrats over the next two years as we emerge from COVID-19. The Democrats are making a dubious bet, though, if they believe voters will be more inclined to credit them for any happy conditions because of this legislation. CNN found 61 percent support for it, yes. But CNN found 54 percent support for President Obama’s stimulus in February 2009. The Democrats still lost the House in the next election.",-0.22530762836174847 "President Joe Biden disembarks from Air Force One as he arrives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 16, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) President Joe Biden will hold his first solo news conference on March 25 after receiving criticism for having gone roughly two months in office without doing so, the White House announced Tuesday. Biden’s first press conference will take place 64 days into his presidency, meaning he will have gone longer than his 15 most recent predecessors without taking questions from the press in an official public forum, according to the New York Post. Advertisement Former President Donald Trump held his first solo press conference 27 days after taking office, while President Barack Obama held one 20 days into his presidency. While Biden has briefly taken questions before boarding the presidential aircraft and after making public statements about the coronavirus and other issues, he has not held an extended press conference since taking office in January. Send a tip to the news team at NR.",-0.5983819728193104 "What can Republicans do about Biden’s next multi-trillion-dollar spending binge? NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE W elcome back to “infrastructure week.” Having already blown $2 trillion on “COVID relief,” Democrats would like to pile another $2–4 trillion on top, this time largely on infrastructure. And where the COVID bill was deficit-financed, word is that this new round of spending could have tax hikes attached. Conservatives should root for this to fail, because the case for this level of federal infrastructure spending is weak. But resistance from free marketeers might be futile. As you may recall from the previous administration, big infrastructure spending has some Republican supporters too, in part because it provides jobs to guys who wear hard hats. …",-0.8450139292807899 "'It’s completely ridiculous that it took us more than eight years to get relief from the courts from this utterly meritless suit,' said NR editor Rich Lowry.",-1.0545515692956855 "Pro-choice demonstrators in London, Britain, May 11, 2019 (Peter Nicholls/Reuters) Abortion-rights activists want to dismiss the heartbeat of an unborn child as ‘fetal pole cardiac activity.‘ It is difficult to find anyone willing to defend the right to end innocent human life. This is something we should celebrate. Human beings tend to have an instinctive aversion to harming the innocent. Society stigmatizes those who would openly advocate the right of the strong to subjugate the weak merely because they have the power to do so. Advertisement This natural human tendency to abhor injustice and oppression explains why the arguments in favor of abortion rights become increasingly inane with every passing day. Abortion intentionally terminates the life of a human being residing within his or her mother. This is a fact that can be concealed only with word games. It is not an article of faith imposed on believers by religious groups. It is not a fiction invented by misogynists who want to control women’s bodies. It is a medical reality, available to anyone willing to use their rational faculties to comprehend the mechanics of human reproduction and abortion. The politicians and activists defending and promoting abortion rights are in essence claiming that women ought to have the right to terminate the life of a distinct human being. There are comprehensible, varyingly defensible ethical arguments for why women should have this right, arguments that privilege the woman’s right to bodily autonomy over the right to life of the developing human being inside her. Those are not the arguments we’re hearing. As a number of Republican state legislatures advance bills to regulate abortion earlier in pregnancy, abortion-rights supporters are deploying a wide array of ignorant, incoherent, and inaccurate arguments in service of the idea that the abortion debate is a mere matter of women’s health care — that it has nothing to do with whether the government should allow some people to end the lives of some others. Just last week, CNN contributor Christine Quinn asserted, “When a woman is pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her. It is a part of the mother.” Quinn managed to avoid giving an explanation of how a being with distinct human DNA is anything other than a human being or how a being inside the mother is in fact a part of the mother. Shortly thereafter, in the wake of Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s signing of a heartbeat bill — which prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually at about six weeks’ gestation — opponents of the law allowed us a glimpse inside the twisted ways they craft their nonsensical methods of denying that abortion kills. “‘Heartbeat’ Bills Get the Science of Fetal Heartbeats All Wrong” was the title of an article published on Monday in Wired, the scare quotes around “heartbeat” a helpful hint as to what author Adam Rogers will be up to in the piece. Here’s what he has to say at the start of his report: These bills generally say that a “fetal heartbeat” helps predict whether a pregnancy will result in a living baby; the model legislation many states use refers to that fetal cardiac activity as a marker of “an unborn human individual,” defining a moment where alive-ness starts. And, yes, it’s true that detection of cardiac rhythm is a marker for the health of a pregnancy and a good sign that it’ll continue — that, if everything works out, it’ll result in the birth of a living baby. Rogers carefully uses the term “a pregnancy” to ensure that no one might suspect we’re considering the “cardiac activity” of an individual human being. “You have to note the use of the phrase ‘unborn human individual,’” he cautions a moment later. “This part of the debate over abortion depends on whether you think a 3- to 4-millimeter-long, partially organized blob of cells is a human individual or not.” Evidently this intrepid science reporter isn’t terribly impressed by the biological reality that this “3- to 4-millimeter-long, partially organized blob of cells” has its own human DNA, entirely distinct from its mother, its father, and, indeed, every other human being in the course of human history. Rogers goes on to quote a variety of apparent medical experts, explaining why fetal heartbeats aren’t really that at all: “At six weeks, the embryo is forming what will eventually develop into mature systems. There’s an immature neurological system, and there’s a very immature cardiovascular system,” says Jennifer Kerns, an ob-gyn at UC San Francisco and director of research in obstetrics and gynecology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The rhythm specified in the six-week abortion bans, she says, “is a group of cells with electrical activity. That’s what the heartbeat is at that stage of gestation. . . . We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system.” . . . As the ob-gyn Jen Gunter wrote three years ago, this is, more technically, “fetal pole cardiac activity.” It’s a cluster of pulsing cells. “In the mouse embryo, for example, there is a definite cardiac rhythm in the tiny, little, immature heart at 8.5 days of development, but it is certainly not enough to support viability,” says Janet Rossant, senior scientist and chief of research emeritus at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “It is just helping to encourage the development of an organized vasculature and circulatory system — a prerequisite for future viability but not sufficient alone.” Rogers never bothers to explain why a mouse embryo is relevant to the discussion of human heartbeats, nor does he disclose that Gunter is a virulent abortion-rights activist and one of just a few ob-gyns in the country who will perform abortions well past the point of fetal viability. Feminist actress and abortion-rights advocate Alyssa Milano, though, was convinced by Gunter’s advocacy, demanding that the press refer to heartbeat bills as “fetal pole cardiac activity” bills. This is to be expected. It is much more difficult, after all, to affirm that abortion ends a human life and defend this particular form of killing on those terms than it is to dismiss a fetus as inhuman, a clump of cells, or a parasite within the mother. Advertisement Under the guise of being the real champions of science, they reduce a human heartbeat to utter meaninglessness. To avoid defending abortion for what it is, they resort to blatant dehumanization of living human beings. Heartbeat bills such as Georgia’s won’t survive legal challenge, but their chief success is in exposing the abortion-rights movement as being deeply anti-science.",0.9814800426338919 "Texas governor Greg Abbott chose to end the statewide mask mandate on March 10. The day before the mask mandate ended, March 9, Texas had 5,119 new cases of COVID-19. On that day, the state had 126,404 active cases of COVID-19. The state had 168 deaths from COVID-19 that day. (This figure bounces around a lot; it was 69 March 8 and 231 on March 12.) Advertisement Now, it will take a while for any public-health effect of a rescinded mask requirement to take effect. And as I noted at the time, it wasn’t like masks are disappearing from public life in Texas. Major grocery chains and Walmart and Target still require them, as do many public-school districts, some localities, and so on. Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso will require them in city-owned buildings. But yesterday, March 16, one week after the state mask mandate was rescinded . . . Texas had 5,043 new cases of COVID-19. The state had 113,972 active cases of COVID-19. The state had 133 deaths from COVID-19. All of those numbers are slightly lower than a week ago, although not enough to count as dramatic movement in Texas’s case or death numbers in the past week. Even if it’s too early to see any big changes, this is useful to keep in mind as a baseline for the coming weeks and months. We can at least conclude that rescinding the state mask mandate did not trigger a quick increase in new cases, active cases, or deaths. And we shouldn’t be shocked if Texas’s numbers don’t get significantly worse, particularly the daily new death number. Texans above age 50 or with health conditions are now eligible for vaccinations. While the state’s percentage of allocated doses used still isn’t great — 76 percent — the state has put 8.6 million shots into arms, and ten percent of the state’s adults are fully vaccinated, 19 percent have at least one shot. And the pace is picking up, considerably. The state administered 1.4 million shots last week. Advertisement Maybe it’s too early, and the coming weeks and months will show worse numbers in the Lone Star State. Maybe Texans will regret rescinding the statewide mask mandate in early March. But for the past year, much of the discussion of the pandemic restrictions has focused on allegedly good and wise Democratic governors and “absolutely reckless” “Neanderthal” Republican governors. Week after week, month after month, the data keep complicating and contradicting this simple and easy narrative.",-0.5949879619696589 "Colorado will further relax the COVID-19 restrictions managed through the state’s color-coded dial next week, with plans to ease the statewide mask order in two weeks, then turn over control of most public health orders to local governments in mid-April. The proposed changes to the dial include reopening bars in most parts of the state for the first time since last summer and lifting all statewide limits on the size of personal gatherings. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Friday evening released the draft plan for what it calls “Dial 3.0,” and asked for public feedback on the proposed changes, which will take effect — with possible modifications — Wednesday. The main thrust of the new plan: making it easier for counties to reach Level Green, the lowest end of the dial, and removing most virus-related restrictions in counties at that stage of the dial, including any limits on dining capacity at restaurants. Further changes would allow bars to reopen in Level Blue counties at reduced capacity and lift all capacity limits on outdoors events in Level Green and Blue counties. The plan released Friday evening also calls for a modified statewide mask order to be issued April 4. That directive would lift mask requirements in Level Green counites for everyone except for students 11 to 18 years old through the end of the school year. Private businesses and local governments still could issue their own mask mandates. For Levels Blue, Yellow, Orange and Red, the mask mandate would remain in place for that same group of students and for any indoor public places with 10 or more people present. The existing state mask order would remain in place for any counties reaching Level Purple, the highest phase. Under this plan, Dial 3.0 would remain in effect until April 16, at which point a new statewide public health order would be issued to continue limits on indoor, unseated gatherings. Beyond that, the dial and previous state public health orders would become guidance that local governments could choose to follow or not. The announcement of further changes to the state’s COVID-19 dial came on the same day the state opened up vaccination eligibility to 2.5 million more people, and as public health officials acknowledge rising numbers of infections by more-contagious coronavirus variants in the state and a plateauing of overall cases and hospitalizations. “Because of the commitment of all Coloradans, we are where we are now, able to be less restrictive and provide local communities and their public health agencies more control while still protecting the public’s health,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of the state health department, in a statement. “It’s all about a balance. We’ve enacted the restrictions we need to slow the disease while attempting to limit the ramifications of closing down parts of the state and the impacts that come with that.” Colorado implemented the color-coded dial in September as a way to move the state’s 64 counties to different levels of public health restrictions based on local transmission of the virus and hospitalizations for COVID-19. The state, however, has changed the metrics on the dial multiple times since then, including adding a new top end — Level Purple — when it appeared that many counties were headed toward another lockdown, and a relaxation of restrictions with the rollout of “Dial 2.0” last month. Currently, only two counties are at Level Green — Crowley and Otero — and 45 are at Level Blue, the second-lowest level of restrictions. Counties at Level Blue in the metro area include Arapahoe and Jefferson. The remaining 17 counties are at Level Yellow, the next stage up the dial, and that includes Denver, Adams, Douglas and Boulder counties. Broomfield had moved to Level Blue but earlier this month was bumped back to Level Yellow. Denver recently approached qualifying for Level Blue before a small uptick in cases set the city back; numbers are trending in that direction again, and it’s possible the city could qualify sometime next week. Changes under the Dial 3.0 plan include: Metrics for Level Green change to make it easier for counties to reach that stage, moving to 35 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people from 15 cases per 100,000 Most restrictions in Level Green are removed entirely, including dining caps for restaurants. Bars, gyms and indoor events would still be held to a 50% capacity limit or a 500-person cap, whichever is smaller Metrics for Level Blue also would change, to 36 to 100 cases per 100,000 people, from 15 to 100 cases per 100,000 Bars would be able to reopen in Level Blue, with a 25% capacity limit or 75 people, whichever is fewer Outdoor events in Levels Green and Blue would have no capacity restrictions, unless counties chose to implement them on a local level Retail, offices and non-critical manufacturing in Level Blue counties could operate at 75% capacity, up from 50% No state limit on personal gathering sizes, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends avoiding large gatherings Businesses with 5 Star state certification in Level Blue counties could operate at 60% capacity, not to exceed 50 people above caps for restaurants and indoor events, and 25 people above the caps for gyms State health officials say they’re moving forward with the changes because of the increasing number of Coloradans who’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19. By the middle of next month, the state health agency plans to move to “a more local model,” which would allow county health departments to take greater control over the types of capacity restrictions that currently are dictated by the dial. The state health department invites Coloradans to review the Dial 3.0 proposal and submit feedback through an online form. The deadline for feedback is noon Monday. The state will release an updated draft on Tuesday with the changes going into effect Wednesday.",-0.7295231851994859 "The strange odyssey of the Browders Editor’s Note: This is an expanded version of a piece we published in our January 22 issue. Ten years ago, at the home of Robert Agostinelli, the financier and National Review trustee, I met Bill Browder. Browder, too, is a financier, and he was soon to be famous as a truth-telling foe of the Putin regime. “Any relation?” I asked him. He said, “To Earl Browder?” Advertisement I thought this was puzzling, because who else could I have meant? Anyway, it transpired that Browder was indeed related — he is the grandson of Earl Browder. “My grandfather was the biggest Communist in America,” Bill remarked, “and I became the biggest capitalist in Russia.” Earl Browder was head of the CPUSA — the American Communist party — in the 1930s and ’40s. Bill Browder created his hedge fund, Hermitage, in 1996. The Kremlin turned on him hard in 2005, declaring him persona non grata. He had been a thorn in the side of Putin’s oligarchs. In 2008, the authorities arrested Browder’s fearless and whistleblowing lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. They tortured him to death. Real slow, over the course of a year. That began Browder’s career as a human-rights activist. Advertisement At the end of 2016, I read an obituary of Felix Browder, Bill’s father. I then realized why Bill had asked me, those years ago, to be more specific — to be more specific when I asked, “Any relation?” Felix Browder was one of the greatest mathematicians in the world. I don’t know from mathematicians. But others do, and they sometimes ask Bill, “Any relation?” Earl Browder and his wife, Raisa, had three children, three boys. The first, Felix, became chairman of the math department at Chicago. The second, Andrew, became chairman of the math department at Brown. The third, William, became chairman of the math department at Princeton. And there is more Browder talent where that came from. Let’s go back to Earl. He was born in 1891 in Wichita, Kan., which is also the home of the Kochs, those illustrious capitalists. America obviously gives birth to many types. Earl’s father was a schoolteacher and a populist — who was kicked out of the school system on account of his populism. He then opened a café. This establishment served, among other people, black people, which was uncommon and scandalous at the time. Browder went bust, and his children had to leave school and go to work. Earl did this before he was ten. He would educate himself in other ways. Advertisement A radical, Earl first went to the Soviet Union in 1921. The dream of Communism excited people from all over the world. He was in the Soviet Union in 1926 when he married Raisa — Raisa Berkman, a lawyer from Leningrad. Their first two sons were born in Moscow. In 1932, Earl returned with his family to America, setting up shop in Yonkers, N.Y. The third son, William, was born in ’34. By the way, Bill Browder, the investor and activist, was not named after his uncle, the mathematician. He was named after Shakespeare, having been born on the 400th anniversary of the writer’s birth (April 23, 1964). When the Browders decamped from Moscow to New York, they brought with them a nanny, who stayed with the family for the rest of her life — some 40 years. Andrew’s daughter Laura, a professor at the University of Richmond, discovered something in the KGB archives: The dear nanny had been a spy, charged with keeping tabs on Earl. Of course. Earl coined the famous (or infamous) slogan “Communism is 20th-century Americanism.” He ran for president in 1936, getting some 80,000 votes. That was a lot fewer than his fellow Kansan, Alf Landon, the Republican nominee, got — but they both lost big to FDR. In 1938, Browder was on the cover of Time magazine, as “Comrade Earl Browder.” He again ran for president in 1940, faring worse than he had in ’36: He got about 50,000 votes. Advertisement In the summer of 1939, the Soviets had made their pact with the Nazis, meaning that the Communists in America were in particularly bad odor. In early ’41, the U.S. government sent Browder to prison on technicalities: passport fraud. But that summer, Hitler double-crossed Stalin, and the United States would soon be allies with Uncle Joe. Molotov, the foreign minister, was expected in Washington. In advance of the visit, FDR commuted Browder’s sentence as a goodwill gesture. “I was released by President Roosevelt personally,” said Browder toward the end of his life. “It was a political pardon.” Here is a billboard from 1943, in an image sent to me by Browder’s grandson Bill: After the war, Earl Browder got on the wrong side of Moscow and was expelled from the American party. That was always happening: If you were a Communist, you never knew what would get you on the wrong side of the Kremlin — until it did. The line was often changing faster than you could keep up. I once asked Eugene Genovese, the American historian, why he was kicked out of the party (which he was in 1950, at 20). He shrugged and said, “I zigged when I should have zagged.” Advertisement Genovese was present on March 30, 1950, at New York’s Webster Hall for the famous debate between Browder and Max Shachtman, the head of the Independent Socialist League. Browder was still defending Stalin and the Kremlin, no matter what. Shachtman lit into him, saying the only reason Browder was still alive — instead of done in by Stalin — was that he was safe on American shores. Here is Shachtman, talking about Browder: “When I saw him standing there at the podium, I said to myself: Rajk was the general secretary of the Hungarian Communist party and was shot, or hanged, or garroted. Kostov was the general secretary of the Bulgarian Communist party. And when I thought of what happened to them, I thought of the former secretary of the American Communist party, and I said to myself: There but for an accident of geography stands a corpse!” (Rajk was never head of the Hungarian party — he was in charge of the secret police and then foreign affairs — but close enough.) Advertisement (In my presence, Gene Genovese imitated Shachtman, making the famous statement quoted above. Genovese was a superb mimic. “Shachtman had a face like a pig,” he told me, “and he talked that way.” He was also a phenomenal rhetorician, said Genovese.) In the last 25 years of his life, Earl Browder did a little of this, a little of that. He wrote books, articles, and pamphlets. It was hard for him to find work. As his grandson Bill says, “The Communists didn’t like him,” because he was persona non grata, “and America didn’t like him,” because he was Earl Browder, the onetime Communist chief. So, “he was basically supported by his family.” He died in 1973, having spent his final years with his son Bill in Princeton. They lived at 21 Maple Street. In my mind, that is such a homespun American address for a Communist who had been a world figure and had shaken the hand of Lenin, his hero. Bill Browder — the younger one — was nine years old when his grandfather died. He remembers him as a genial white-haired fellow, smoking a pipe, working amid a pile of books. Occasionally Bill would sit on his lap. Now, imagine yourself in the position of Raisa Berkman Browder, a Russian mother, and a Russian-Jewish mother at that. Forget Communism and politics. Your highest aspiration for your sons is that they succeed in the most rigorous academics — that they become top mathematicians or something like that. You steer them that way. Advertisement Well, the three Browder boys rewarded their mother in spades. Felix entered MIT at 16. He had his bachelor’s degree in two years. By 20, he had his Ph.D. from Princeton. When he was 25, in 1953, he was called up for the draft. This is a peculiar story, like most Browder stories. Felix was working at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, though he was not the most distinguished researcher: That was Einstein. In the ordinary course of things, the director of the institute would have signed a letter in behalf of the young genius, asking for a deferment. But the director was J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was under suspicion for Communism. He felt queasy about signing a letter for Earl Browder’s son. Was Felix a Communist? The question came up at a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee. One of his undergraduate professors testified that Felix was not a party member — and, moreover, that Felix had been the best math student in the history of MIT (founded in 1861). Bill Browder affirms that his father was not a Communist. Rather, he was “a hard-core leftist professor,” like all the others. “I never met one who wasn’t,” says Bill. Felix was indeed drafted into the Army. Not trusted with sensitive work, he spent two years pumping gas at Fort Bragg. This was not all bad, says Bill: Felix worked on his math and, for the first and only time in his life, was around regular folks. After his service as a gas-station attendant, Felix applied for a job at Brandeis — where the math department was thrilled to have him but where the board of trustees balked. The son of Earl Browder? Lucky for Felix, Eleanor Roosevelt was chairman of the board, and she used a word that was highly significant at the time: “un-American.” It would be “un-American,” she said, “to deny a great scientist his profession because of who his father was.” He got the job and went on with his glittering career. In 1999, he became the president of the American Mathematical Society. (One of his brothers, Bill, had already served in the job.) The next year, he received from President Clinton the National Medal of Science. The citation said that Felix had “played a key role in the explosive growth of nonlinear functional analysis and its applications to partial differential equations in recent years.” Felix Browder was known for, among other things, his library: over 35,000 books. He read them all too, at least once. They covered virtually every topic under the sun, in several languages. “I am interested in everything,” Felix said, “and my library reflects all my interests.” The library has not been disposed of, scattered hither and yon. Bill (Felix’s son) is keeping it intact, as a memorial to his father, and for new generations of Browders to enjoy. Felix and his wife, Eva, had another child besides Bill: their son Tom. He entered the University of Chicago at 15. Today, he is a leading particle physicist, dividing his time between Hawaii and Japan, searching for the origin of the universe. I ask Bill, “Do you have a mathematical mind?” “No,” he says, “I’m the dummy in the family.” Color me skeptical. To begin with, he is one of the world’s leading financiers. And I will quote Felix, who in 2000 said, “Computers are fundamentally mathematical, as is biotechnology. The problems of physics are increasingly mathematical in nature, and finance, in its global complexity, is mathematical as well.” Advertisement Bill was a rebellious kid, and he figured out how to rebel against a family of leftists: become a capitalist. He majored in economics at Chicago, whose department was a den of free-marketeers. After a stint at Bain & Company, he went to Stanford for an MBA. He then went to work for the Boston Consulting Group. He was interested in Eastern Europe, and just about the only one who was. Soon, the Berlin Wall fell, and Browder was off to the races. These days, he goes around the world campaigning for “Magnitsky acts” — laws in honor of the murdered lawyer. These laws apply sanctions to human-rights abusers in Russia. They freeze their assets and deny them visas. There are now five Magnitsky acts, the latest having been adopted by Lithuania in November. The first was the American act, adopted in 2012. Boris Nemtsov, looking on in the House gallery, called it “the most pro-Russian law ever enacted by a foreign government.” What he meant, of course, was that those who persecuted, stole from, and killed Russians were at last being penalized, in some fashion. No longer would these thugs and thieves operate with impunity. Nemtsov, you recall, was the leader of the opposition to Putin in Russia — murdered in 2015 within sight of the Kremlin. Bill Browder has gotten under Putin’s skin. Putin denounces him, by name. And harasses him day after day. On a recent morning, Browder was late in calling me because he had to deal with something new: A Russian court had sentenced him, in absentia, to nine years in prison. The charge: deliberate bankruptcy and tax evasion. But Browder has had to deal with far worse. In an act of shocking gall, the Russian state is investigating Browder for the murder of Magnitsky — and three other men. Thus do the murderers finger the champion of the murdered. The word “Kafkaesque” can’t possibly cover it. Putin’s predecessors in the KGB would grin in admiration. Try to wrap your mind around this: The Russian state won’t concede that Magnitsky was murdered. They say he died of natural causes. Nonetheless, Bill Browder sneaked into Russia, from which he had been banned. Infiltrated the prisons. And murdered his own lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky — possibly with his bare hands. Got it? Advertisement Three years ago, Browder published a book called “Red Notice,” relating his experiences. It is dedicated to Sergei Magnitsky, “the bravest man I’ve ever known.” Magnitsky was indeed brave — unfathomably brave, to blow the whistle on these thieves, as he did. But Browder has been brave himself. He could have walked away, tending his millions, but instead he has put himself in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful and ruthless governments on earth. “It’s interesting,” says Browder. “I live a normal life in that I still take my kids to school and try to go on the treadmill and try to make sure everyone’s got their birthday present on time and all that. Life goes on in a normal way — 95 percent of the time.” The other 5 percent is hair-raising. In Moscow, they have a poster hanging on a building. It shows Browder as a British manipulator — he took U.K. citizenship in 1998 — with Alexei Navalny as his little dog, on a leash. Navalny is now the leader of the political opposition to Putin. Needless to say, Navalny is banned from running for president. Here is that poster, a specimen of Soviet-style propaganda: Why not end with yet another generation of Browders, in the person of Bill’s son Joshua? “He was clearly blessed with a great intellect at a very early age,” says Bill, not only out of paternal pride but also as a matter of simple, honest reporting. “He tended not to do the things that all the other kids were doing. He was always scheming up new ventures and ideas for how to change the world.” A playwright — the one Bill was named after — had a line: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Well, Joshua is doing this in a way. He is an undergrad at Stanford and is figuring out how to get artificial intelligence to perform a variety of legal tasks. This will save a lot of people a lot of money. It will also cost a lot of lawyers a lot of money. In any event, Silicon Valley has a keen interest in what Josh is doing. In an article for MIT Technology Review, Josh said, “It should never be a hassle to engage in a legal process, and it should never be a question of who can afford to pay. It should be a question of what’s the right outcome, of getting justice.” Earl Browder, possibly, would smile at that. Joshua is a poster child, quite literally. IBM put him on a poster as a tech phenom, and that poster appeared in Times Square (New York) last summer. (See it below.) So, the family Browder presses on.",0.7332874579689835 "ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called for lower interest rates on Friday and described them as the “mother and father of all evil”, triggering a fresh slide in the lira as investors worried about the central bank’s ability to rein in high inflation. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a meeting of his ruling AK Party in Ankara, Turkey, May 11, 2018. Cem Oksuz/Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE. The lira TRYTOM=D3 weakened as far as 4.3080 against the dollar after his comments, from a close of 4.2374 on Thursday. On Wednesday it had hit a record low of 4.3780 before rebounding strongly the following day. “If my people say continue on this path in the elections, I say I will emerge with victory in the fight against this curse of interest rates,” Erdogan said in a speech to business people in Ankara, referring to snap elections on June 24. “Because my belief is: interest rates are the mother and father of all evil.” The central bank last month raised its late liquidity window rate TRLLW=ECI, which it uses to set policy, to 13.5 percent from 12.75 percent. Inflation stood at 10.85 percent year-on-year in April, far above the bank’s target of 5 percent. Thursday’s rebound in the lira was driven by news that Erdogan had held an unscheduled meeting of his economic team to address the sell-off in the currency, which has fallen more than 11 percent against the U.S. currency this year. At the meeting, Erdogan and the economic team agreed to take measures to help shield the lira. Turkey's central bank governor and the general managers of the largest state lenders, Ziraat Bankasi, Halkbank HALKB.IS and Vakifbank VAKBN.IS attended Thursday's meeting. Investors appear to have been hoping for some additional tightening measures from the central bank, which added liquidity to shore up the lira this week. Its next policy-setting meeting is scheduled for June 7. “I see it likely that the central bank will take action ahead of the monetary policy meeting to decrease its inflation outlook and the increasing volatility in the lira before the June 24 elections,” said Isik Okte, Strategist at Teb Yatirim/BNP Paribas said. “I think, a minimum of a 200 bps rate hike and a simplification step will come at the same time.” Cemil Ertem, one of Erdogan’s top economic advisers, said on Friday the central bank would continue to use all instruments to address exchange rate volatility, but that forex rates were not the only factor determining policy. The yield on the benchmark 10-year government bond TR10YT=RR stood at 13.59 in spot trade and rose to 13.66 in Monday-dated trade. The yield briefly spiked to its highest for at least eight years on Wednesday, topping 14.2 percent. Borsa Istanbul's bluechip index .XU100 fell 0.7 percent to 101,643 points.",0.7736267045462231 "A while back, I noted some research on last year’s $600 weekly boost to unemployment benefits. Those benefits, despite paying most workers more than they’d made while employed, didn’t seem to reduce employment much. I cautioned that these results didn’t imply we should keep paying a big boost as the economy recovers, but Congress extended a $300 boost through early September anyway. Advertisement An elaborate new study provides some more information, leveraging data from the job-search website Glassdoor. Last year’s boost does seem to have reduced applications from the categories of workers who saw the largest increases: “a 10% increase in the benefit replacement rate . . . leads to a 3.6% decline in job applications.” However, this effect came at a time when job vacancies were down 26 percent — and applications still managed to rise 4 percent overall thanks to the sheer number of workers who were unemployed. So it’s not surprising the effect on overall employment was incredibly muted. With these results in hand, I’m even more worried that the new boost was not the right policy. But it’s too late to change it, and soon enough, there should be solid research on how this latest effort pans out.",0.39475377797838945 "Editor's Note: The National Association of Scholars is proud to announce The Civics Alliance, a new coalition of education reformers, policymakers, and concerned citizens dedicated to preserving traditional civics education against the threat of New Civics. What follows is an open letter announcing the Alliance, our Civics Curriculum Statement, and the list of signatories. To join The Civics Alliance as a signatory, click here. To learn more about why we formed the Alliance, click here to read an explanatory article. To take immediate action to support traditional civics education, click here to view our toolkit. Signatories of the Civics Alliance Open Letter and Curriculum Statement sign as individuals. Organizational affiliations and positions are listed for identification purposes only. Join The Civics Alliance The teaching of American civics in our schools faces a grave new risk. Proponents of programs such as action civics seek to turn the traditional subject of civics into a recruitment tool of the progressive left. We write to express our objection to this subornation of civics education and to dedicate ourselves to joint work to restore true civics instruction, which teaches American students to comprehend aspects of American government such as the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, elections, elected office, checks and balances, equality under the law, trial by jury, grand juries, civil rights, and military service. American students should learn from these lessons the founding principles of the United States, the structure of our self-governing republic, the functions of government at all levels, and how our key institutions work. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education issued A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future (2012), a report which called for a “New Civics” to replace the traditional approach. This new form of civics sidelines instruction on the responsibilities of American citizenship, and instead emphasizes identity politics, highly contestable forms of environmental activism, and a commitment to global citizenship. The New Civics, or “action civics,” replaces classroom civics instruction with political commitment, protest, and vocational training in progressive activism. It does so with the support of the Federal Government and through a host of private organizations such as Generation Citizen and iCivics. Since 2019 the New Civics advocates have become much bolder. In August 2019, the New York Times launched “The 1619 Project,” which called for “reframing” all of American history (and civics) as the story of white supremacy and black subjection. The 1619 Project’s advocates brag that tens of thousands of students in all 50 states have used its curriculum resources and that “five school systems adopted the project at broad scale.” Not every advocate of action civics supports the 1619 Project, but the 1619 Project Curriculum already promotes action civics lesson plans. Action civics is taking over our K-12 civics and history classrooms. Activists in states such as Massachusetts and Illinois now seek to impose action civics on teachers and students by state law and through mandates by state departments of education. We oppose all racism and support traditional American pluralism, e pluribus unum—out of many, one. These beliefs are not those of the radical New Civics activists, which espouse identity politics with overlapping ideologies of critical race theory, multiculturalism, and so-called “antiracism.” Unfortunately, these dogmas would ruin our country by destroying our unity, our liberty, and the national culture that sustains them. They have replaced traditional civics, where historical dates and documents are taught, with a New Civics based on the new tribalism of identity politics. Their favored pedagogy is service-learning, alternately called action civics, civic engagement, civic learning, community engagement, project-based civics, and global civics. These all replace civics literacy with a form of left-wing activism that adapts techniques from Alinsky-style community organizing for use in the classroom. The New Civics has already advanced in America’s education system to a far greater extent than most people realize. It has succeeded partly because it has received unwitting support from those who fail to see the many wolves in sheep’s clothing. Well-intentioned reformers must not collaborate with those promoting an ideology that would destroy America. They should not endorse supposedly nonpartisan New Civics education that is really left-wing activism in disguise. They must instead work for true civics education that explicitly excludes the imposter New Civics and its favored pedagogies. We endorse the general principles of the Civics Curriculum Statement below and we ask our fellow citizens to join us in working to restore American civics education according to its principles. Some of the signatories prefer different programmatic specifics, such as curriculum standards and testing controlled at the local level rather than the state level. Independent commissions are favored by some but not others. We endorse the Civics Curriculum Statement as a series of exploratory options designed to inspire initiatives by states, local communities, schools, and patriotic citizens, rather than as a binding legislative program. The concern that unites us is the need for legislation that prevents New Civics from retaining any power within America’s schools. CIVICS CURRICULUM STATEMENT INTRODUCTION Whereas Ever shrinking numbers of American high school graduates and college graduates know crucial facts of the history of the American republic, such as the date of our nation’s founding with the Declaration of Independence, the date or context of the Emancipation Proclamation, The Gettysburg Address, or the speech, I Have a Dream; Ever shrinking numbers of American high school graduates and college graduates know the framework of the United States Constitution or principles such as federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, or the Bill of Rights; and Instead of this factual and historical knowledge, American students are being subjected to a relentless form of anti-American propaganda teaching that the United States is a uniquely evil and racist country, by means of deceptively named theories and pedagogies such as Action Civics, Anti-Racism, Critical Race Theory, Globalist Civics, and Neo-Marxist forms of “Social Justice” Activism; We call on all Americans to insist that their local institutions of public education adopt real and rigorous civics education, in both K-12 schools and state universities, and to exclude from these institutions the pseudo-civic education that instills hostility to America and its heritage. This real civics education will be based on instilling knowledge of historical documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and will teach foundational principles of our limited and representative government such as federalism and the separation of powers. It will ban the teaching of political activism and will prepare our young people to become informed citizens in a self-governing republic who respect the differing political viewpoints of fellow Americans. K-8 CIVICS CURRICULUM Elementary and middle schools should lay the foundations for knowledge of American geography, history, and government. English Language Arts and Social Studies should include substantial coverage of admirable Americans, such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Abraham Lincoln, who will inspire young Americans to love their country. HIGH SCHOOL CIVICS CURRICULUM The 9-12 Civics Curriculum should include: a one-year course on the history and structure of the American government. This course should include and test for knowledge on documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, extracts from the Federalist Papers, and the Emancipation Proclamation. a one-year course on American history from the Mayflower to the present. This sequence should include significant material on the War of Independence and the Constitutional Founding. Throughout, it should be designed to include significant biographical material on exemplary Americans—civic heroes—and to provide both our constitutional history and its historical context. For example, materials and teaching on slavery should situate the American practice of slavery within the pervasive practice of slavery throughout human history and mention how exceptional was the American abolitionist movement. A ban on political activism. The 9-12 Civics Curriculum should contain exclusively academic instruction and should ban any form of political activism, with no credit for and no encouragement of service-learning, civic engagement, action civics, or any cognate activity. COLLEGE BOARD The College Board’s AP United States Government and Politics Advanced Placement Examination now asks students to complete a Project Requirement of action civics. No high school class should teach an Advanced Placement class that requires action civics; no state money should fund taking advanced placement tests that require action civics; no public university should give credit to courses that require action civics. HIGH SCHOOL CIVICS ASSESSMENT All public K-12 students should take a culminating civic literacy examination that was developed independently (i.e., not by the local school or classroom teacher). Such tests, which could cover both American history and American government, would provide a means of assessing civics instruction in the high school, and would provide information that colleges can use to determine whether incoming students possess sufficient civics literacy to take a college-level course. COLLEGE CIVICS LITERACY TEST: MATRICULATION Each state should require all incoming students at public universities to take a civics literacy test, for which the high school civics examination described above can substitute, to determine whether they possess basic civic literacy. Students who have not passed that test must take a remedial civics literacy course that will cover the material they should have learned in high school. Students who have completed this course must take the civics literacy test again and will not be allowed to graduate, or progress to more advanced civics instruction, until they pass this test. COLLEGE CIVICS CURRICULUM Each state should integrate a college civics curriculum into their public university General Education Requirements. The College Civics Curriculum should include: two semesters of European history, from Periclean Athens to the present, which highlight the historical development of republics and democracies, and the intellectual, social, and cultural developments that have sustained the birth of free nations in Europe. These courses should also fulfill distribution requirements in the Humanities. two semesters of United States history, providing an undergraduate-level survey. These courses should also fulfill distribution requirements in the Social Sciences. two semesters of United States government, fostering students’ ability to engage in intelligent discussion and argument about the core political texts of our republic, and to integrate associated historical material as a supplement (but not a replacement) to close reading of these texts’ actual words. The two courses in the United States government sequence should consist of: The American Founding. This course should focus on the texts and debates of the period between 1763 and 1796. It should include extracts from philosophical inspirations, such as the works of Locke and Montesquieu; revolutionary polemics by figures such as John Adams and Thomas Paine; close discussion of the work of Thomas Jefferson, including the Declaration of Independence and the Notes on the State of Virginia; the Constitution; the Federalist Papers; the Bill of Rights; and George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796). The American Debate. This course should focus on the political debate among the different heirs to the Founding Fathers, and the debate’s institutionalization in the party system. This course should include material on the Jacksonian challenge to the remnants of social and political deference in America; the crisis of slavery and secession that led to the Civil War and reshaped America’s constitutional order; the Progressive and New Deal re-modelings of the constitution; a survey of contending philosophies of constitutional interpretation; and a parallel survey of notable judicial decisions from Marbury v. Madison (1803) to District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). These courses should also fulfill distribution requirements in the Social Sciences. This College Civics Curriculum should contain exclusively academic instruction, with no credit for and no encouragement of service-learning, civic engagement, action civics, or any cognate activity. DUAL-COURSE CREDIT, CORE TRANSFER CURRICULUM, AND MUTUAL RECOGNITION AMONG STATES All courses in the College Civics Curriculum should be available for high school students, both as dual courses taught in public K-12 schools and as dual credit courses in community colleges. All courses in the College Civics Curriculum should be incorporated into a Core Transfer Curriculum, to allow students to transfer credit easily among public institutions. Different states should review the courses in their College Civics Curricula and allow students to transfer course credit between different state university systems. COLLEGE CIVICS LITERACY TEST: GRADUATION Each state should require all graduating students at public universities to take a civics literacy test. Students who have failed this test must take the civics literacy test again and will not be allowed to graduate until they pass this test. TEACHING LICENSURE Teachers in state public schools who teach English or Social Studies must have passed all six (6) courses in the College Civics Curriculum, taught by the college of liberal arts and not in schools of education. PERSONNEL Each state legislature should create two commissions, both independent of the state board of education and the state department of education, one to create state civics standards and one to enforce them. One of these commissions, composed of national and local scholars who support traditional, academic civic education, should develop civics curriculum standards and assessments that meet the requirements outlined here for rigorous and real civics education. The second commission, also composed of national and local scholars who support traditional, academic civic education, should be empowered to investigate and report upon administrative and classroom practice, to ensure that the required civics curriculum standards are being observed and put into practice. PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES The civics curriculum throughout should focus on educating students exclusively on the academic content of civics. The courses should not be exercises in partisanship or ventures in social activism. Students will study primary sources throughout and read serious secondary books and articles in quantities appropriate for college-level courses. They will learn the tools of analysis and critique and be able to converse and argue about any key idea in both oral and written forms. While these courses will go into depth on the topics of how our government works and why it is organized as it is, they must also aim to help students acquire some of the civic virtues that higher education is especially suited to provide, especially the ability to engage in civil debate. Civics classes must teach these virtues and capacities because legal protections of rights in a free republic ultimately depend on a cultural consensus that must be transmitted to each new generation. This consensus includes individual liberty for every citizen, especially with respect to political speech and conscience. When such traditions decay in everyday life, purely governmental protections risk becoming a dead letter. NO ACTION CIVICS No funds disbursed by a state may fund, facilitate, or in any way support any “Service-learning,” “Service-learning Coordinator,” or “Service Sponsor,” as defined in 42 U.S.C. §12511(40, 41, 42) (Definitions: Service-learning, Service-learning Coordinator, Service Sponsor). This ban should be broadened as necessary to prevent funding of civic engagement, action civics, or any cognate activity. FEDERALISM The different states should each adopt their own version of this Civics Curriculum. The federal government should play no role in this effort and no state should accept federal funding for the Civics Curriculum, since such funding inevitably entails federal regulation and control. Neither should a compact of the states attempt to subvert federalism by establishing a monolithic, effectively national Civics Curriculum. The mutual recognition of state Civics Curricula to allow course credit transfer between different state university systems, for example, should not inhibit each state’s ability to set its own Civics Curriculum. LOCAL CONTROL Any state-level education bureaucracy or assessment may itself be captured by radical activists. State-level Civics Curriculum reforms therefore should grant authority to local school boards and independent charter schools to adopt or develop their own K-12 civics curricula and assessments. SPIRIT The civics curriculum throughout should emphasize tensions among ideals within the constitutional system—how different liberties can conflict, how some may be irreconcilable, and how some are subject to compromise that leaves mutual dissatisfaction among contending parties. The civics curriculum, in other words, should teach students to understand their opponents, to live with their political to-do lists unfulfilled, and, most importantly, to understand that true civic engagement includes an appreciation for the constitutional order, whose preservation should be deemed a virtue outweighing any substantive political goal—save only the imperative to preserve every American’s inherent and inalienable liberties, which the Constitution is intended to secure, but did not create. Loading&amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;amp;#38;amp;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;#38;amp;amp;amp;amp;#38;amp;amp;amp;amp;#38;amp;#8230; INITIAL SIGNATORIES J. Christian Adams, President, Public Interest Legal Foundation Dean Allen, President, FreedomSource University Michael Anton, Senior Fellow, Claremont Institute Mark Bauerlein, Senior Editor, First Things Jeremy Beer, Chairman, American Ideas Institute Chris Buskirk, Publisher, American Greatness Victoria Coates, Senior Fellow, Center for Security Policy Brandon Dutcher, Senior Vice President, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs Will Fitzhugh, Founder and Editor, The Concord Review John Fonte, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for American Common Culture, Hudson Institute Jamie Gass, Director of the Center for School Reform, Pioneer Institute David Goldman, Columnist, Asia Times and PJ Media Katharine Gorka, Director of the Feulner Institute's Center for Civil Society and the American Dialogue, Heritage Foundation Mary Grabar, Resident Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for Western Civilization Mark Henrie, President, Arthur N. Rupe Foundation John Hinderaker, President, Center of the American Experiment Deal Hudson, Publisher, The Christian Review Christopher C. Hull, Senior Fellow, Americans for Intelligence Reform Christina Jeffrey, President, U.S. Allegiance Institute S. T. Karnick, Director of Publications, Heartland Institute Katherine Kersten, Senior Policy Fellow, Center of the American Experiment Roger Kimball, Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion Stanley Kurtz, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies George Leef, Director of Editorial Content, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal Thomas Lindsay, Distinguished Senior Fellow of Higher Education and Constitutional Studies, Texas Public Policy Foundation Clare M. Lopez, Founder/President, Lopez Liberty LLC Glenn Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Brown University Wilfred McClay, G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, University of Oklahoma Allen Mendenhall, Associate Dean, Troy University, Sorrell College of Business Arthur Milikh, Executive Director, The Claremont Institute, Center for the American Way of Life Alain Oliver, Chief Executive Officer, Love and Fidelity Network Robert Paquette, President, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization Matthew Peterson, Vice President of Education, The Claremont Institute; Editor, The American Mind Pete Peterson, Dean, Pepperdine University, Pepperdine School of Public Policy Sue Peterson, Representative, South Dakota House of Representatives Julie Ponzi, Senior Editor, American Greatness Joy Pullman, Executive Editor, The Federalist Paul Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage, Hillsdale College Theodore Rebarber, CEO, American Achievement Testing Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow (retired), American Principles Project Jenna Robinson, President, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal Christopher Rufo, Director, Center on Wealth and Poverty Eunie Smith, President Emeritus, Eagle Forum Terry Stoops, Director of the Center for Effective Education, John Locke Foundation Sandra Stotsky, 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas Kevin Stuart, Executive Director, Austin Institute Virginia Thomas, President, Liberty Consulting Keith Whitaker, Chairman, National Association of Scholars Ryan Williams, President, The Claremont Institute Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars Robert Woodson, Founder and President, Woodson Center Scott Yenor, Washington Fellow, Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life; Professor of Political Science, Boise State University SIGNATORIES Click to view full list of signatories Anthony Anadio, Visiting Assistant Professor, Empire State College James Anderson, Member, Emeritus, East Lyme, Connecticut Board of Education Brian Barbour, Professor of English, Emeritus, Providence College Paul Bartow, Ph.D. Candidate, University of South Carolina George Borkow Lester Brickman, Professor Emeritus, Yeshiva University Timothy Burns, Professor and Graduate Program Director, Political Science, Baylor University Charles Busbey Ralph Calabrese Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, University Professor Emeritus, George Mason University David H. DeJong Marshall DeRosa, Professor, Florida Atlantic University Leon Dixon Elizabeth Eastman, Senior Scholar in Residence 2020-2021, Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization Brian Fanelli Jane Fraser, President, The Stuttering Foundation Nels Frye, Writer, Springfieldian LLC John Furutani Shawn Glanville Eric J. Gourley, General Surgeon, Baylor Scott & White Healthcare; Texas A&M University William Harris, Retired Professor of English John Hendrickson, Policy Director, Tax Education Foundation of Iowa Chris Henyan John Hood, Adjunct Faculty, Duke University Sean Hurt, Assistant Professor, Del Mar College Al Jackson, Retired teacher Gregory Josefchuk, President, National Coalition For Men Carolinas (NCFMC) Kathryn Kelly, Executive Director, I∙School Chance Layton, Communications Director, National Association of Scholars Glen J. Kissel, Associate Professor of Engineering, University of Southern Indiana Pia Klein Francis X. Meaney Rod Miller, Professor, Hendrix College Eleanor Moyer, Retired teacher Peter Myers, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire James Newman, President, Witherspoon Analytics Inc Steve Newton Karl T Noell, Former Director, Radiation Oncology, Duke University Medical Center Nicholas Olson Mackubin Owens, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute Dave Peterson, Forensic Psychologist, Retired, State of Wisconsin Juliana Geran Pilon, Senior Fellow, Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization Paul du Quenoy, President and Publisher, Academica Press Steven Reick, State Representative, Illinois House of Representatives Karen Richardson Keith Riles, Professor of Physics, University of Michigan Paul Siewers, Associate Professor, Bucknell University John Singleton, Secondary Teacher, Frisco TX Independent School District John Sneed, Researcher Robert Snider, Attorney Robert Speed, Structural Engineer (Retired) Kathy Strand Richard Sypher, Retired Professor and Attorney Blaine VanDerSnick, Social Studies Teacher, Kennedy Catholic High School Michael Wiant, Physicist Tim Wilson Image: Sean Valentine, Public Domain",-0.18954597562420164 "A massive new national project called “Educating for American Democracy” will be launched on Tuesday with the explicit aim of “redefining” and then “harmonizing” American civic education nationwide. From the days of Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Horace Mann, and the McGuffey readers to Ronald Reagan’s farewell address and the controversy over national history standards, citizenship education (broadly understood) has always been a vital function of American schools for the perpetuation of the American way of life. That’s about to change for the worse. Educating for American Democracy (EAD) is a coalition of educators that aims “to transform teaching of civics and history to sustain our constitutional democracy and meet the needs of a diverse 21st century K-12 student body.” EAD in 2019 received start-up funding of $650,000 from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Under a cooperative agreement with the federal agencies, iCivics will lead an EAD collaboration in partnership with four other organizations: Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Tufts’ Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE); Tufts’ Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life; and Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. The core argument of EAD is, on the surface, a compelling one with widespread support. To wit, that education in civics and history is vital for American citizenship, but this education has been neglected in recent years and must be strengthened. Indeed, Ronald Reagan made a similar argument in his farewell address in which he called for an “informed patriotism.” EAD proclaims that its project “will require a sweeping national commitment that includes everyone, from educators to school and state administrators to local, state, and federal lawmakers, to parents. It will require a harmonized effort across all jurisdictions—local, tribal, state, and national—to ensure adoption.” (Bold in the original.) Further, a draft report narrative states that K-12 educational “Standards and curricula can and should be developed in alignment with this [EAD] Roadmap.” The project insists that “The Educating for American Democracy Roadmap demonstrates that an ideologically, demographically, and professionally diverse group agrees about content and pedagogy.” Since it appears that EAD is about to promote a de facto national curriculum, let us examine this project in some detail. Successor Ideology While there are a few genuine conservatives and non-leftists (about 10) among the over 300 participants in Educating for American Democracy, the critical mass and thus the dominant and driving force within the project is overwhelmingly progressive. Four of the five institutions involved in the project (iCivics, Harvard’s Center for Ethics, Tufts’ CIRCLE, and Tufts’ Tisch Center) are decidedly left of center. Right of center scholars on the executive committee are outnumbered 8-2. The same is true with the other task forces that developed the EAD Roadmap. Moreover, EAD leadership is not simply liberal in the Walter Mondale sense, but more reflective of what journalist Wesley Yang calls the “successor ideology,”—that is, the “successor” to liberalism. The successor ideology is the woke progressivism of the 21st century that has superseded traditional Arthur Schlesinger 20th century liberalism with a new emphasis on racial, ethnic, and gender group consciousness over the rights of individual citizens. EAD wokeness manifests in its embrace of “equity.” We are told that “EAD teachers focus on inclusion and equity in both content and approach,” not on the traditional American concept of equality. Indeed, “equity” has come to mean a repudiation of the traditional principle of equality as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and (as Shelby Steele recently discussed) in the original civil rights legislation. Instead, equity signals an embrace of a neo-Marxist narrative of “systems of oppression,” in which the explicit end goal is equality of outcomes for oppressed racial, ethnic, and gender groups. Addressing Myriad Injustices EAD rightfully notes that post-1960s historians have, to their credit, examined previously understudied histories of minorities and women. Yet it ignores the fact that contemporary historians have, to a large extent, presented America’s story through the crude lens of oppressor versus oppressed groups, thereby damaging the spirit of American citizenship. For example, in September 2020, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) declared: The best historical inquiry acknowledges and interrogates systems of oppression—racial, ethnic, gender, class—and openly addresses the myriad injustices that these systems have perpetuated. . . . Critical race theory provides a lens through which we can examine and understand systemic racism . . . .” The prevailing mindset of the “Educating for American Democracy” project is clear enough. Louise Dubé, executive director of iCivics, told the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Rick Hess that civic education “is undergoing a transformation in leadership and rethinking about how diversity and equity must be addressed.” Since the George Floyd protests, she notes, “it’s about realizing that we have been teaching civics primarily from one perspective, that of the white male.” White male perspective? This is an artificial, meaningless category. Think of D-Day and General Eisenhower versus German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, both white males. Which one represents “the white male perspective”? Dubé further insists, “we no longer gloss over systemic racism, but give students the tools to address it.” iCivics, Dubé declares, “made a commitment to pointing out institutional systemic racism in teaching about our institutions. This will alienate some, but it is the moral imperative of today.” The current text of an EAD document laments that “students can make it into their teens without knowing, for instance, that George Washington was not only a foundational leader but also enslaved people.” Really? George Washington took people who were free and enslaved them? This is a blatant lie that apparently escaped the notice of the 300 or so educators involved in this project. Obviously, students should learn that Washington was a slaveholder who made provisions for freeing his slaves in his will while also providing for their economic and educational future as free individuals. With a more than 96 percent majority among the participants and a 75 percent majority on the executive committee, it is not surprising that Educating for American Democracy has produced a left-wing product in tune with the latest theories of the wokerati. They prefer to denigrate George Washington as an active “enslaver,” rather than present him as a slave owner who wrote of slavery in 1786, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.” Civic Participants Educating for American Democracy degrades the meaning of American citizenship and the stirring oath of allegiance that naturalized citizens take to our Constitution by using the term “civic participant” to include anyone living in the United States, citizen or noncitizen, legal permanent resident or someone who just crossed the border illegally. EAD suggests that noncitizens as “civic participants” should be engaged in politics, policy, and public decision-making. In so doing, the “civic educators” of the EAD project reject and repudiate the very essence of American citizenship. The EAD is not entirely devoid of positive content. There are references to the necessity of a “reflective” and “informed patriotism.” The project states that it is important to leave “space to both love and critique this country” and to cultivate “civic honesty.” No arguments there. But what role, if any, do conservatives and non-leftists play in the “Educating for American Democracy” project? As noted, there are around 10 out of over 300 participants in the project that could be described as serious right-of-center scholars and practitioners. Of the five lead institutions in EAD, only one, Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership has a proven track record of comprehensive civic education that focuses on America’s founding principles and on the intellectual, economic, and cultural framework of the American regime. Interestingly, EAD leaders made a great effort to recruit conservative scholars for the purpose of lending the project a façade of national credibility as a “cross-ideological” and “trans-partisan” initiative. (Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute was particularly active on this score.) An EAD draft statement proudly announces: “We reached a consensus on a substantial educational vision.” One wonders what kind of national “consensus” agrees that equity (narratives of “oppression”) is preferable to equality under the law; that post-1960s historical scholarship is a “great achievement,” that simple residency in our nation (permanent or transient, legal or illegal) is tantamount to American citizenship; that George Washington was an active “enslaver”; that training students to be left-wing activists should be at the heart of 21stcentury civic education. Is this what the few conservatives and non-leftists involved in EAD signed up for? Are they improving the product or providing political cover for the debasement of American citizenship education? The Predominance of “Action Civics” In the final analysis, the end goal of the Educating for American Democracy project is to mandate “action civics” nationwide, (advocating “a sweeping national commitment”) particularly in red states. “Action civics” is sometimes called “new civics” and “project-based learning.” The origins of action civics go back to the thinking of John Dewey and the progressive educators of the early 20th century. The theory is that students learn citizenship better by “doing civics” (participating in public policy and social action) than by learning book-based facts (studying about the separation of powers, federalism, and the like.) Educating for American Democracy stipulates that students should both master the requisite civic knowledge and participate in civic action. EAD claims action civics is consistent with different ideological and political perspectives and helps students to become better citizens. Nevertheless, whatever assurances the leaders of EAD provide, action civics is (in practice) almost always ideologically biased in favor of the progressive Left. Students are trained to be activists in left-wing protests. Thomas Lindsay and Lucy Meckler of the Texas Public Policy Foundation examined 27 action civics projects at the college level. They found students protesting in support of the Green New Deal, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, the Dream Act, climate change action, gun control, increasing teachers’ salaries, “LGBTQ+ homelessness in Berkeley,” and “critical stances to help people rethink what is normal.” One can assume, with a fair degree of certainty, that “action civics” will not see students involved in pro-life and pro-gun rights protests or in projects supporting the hardworking, underpaid (often Latino) agents of the U.S. border patrol who risk their lives daily to enforce our nation’s laws. In a vivid video example of “action civics,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is confronted by a group of school children ages 7 to 16 from the Sunrise Movement, a climate change group, demanding she support their version of the Green New Deal. Feinstein sensibly tells the children, “There is no way to pay for it, so nothing will happen.” Feinstein ends by suggesting they read her version of the legislation before criticizing her. The Coming Civics Mandates Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has described in detail how “leftist action civics is already widespread in blue states and activists (and EAD) hope to force it onto deep-dyed red state school districts via statewide civics mandates.” What will these state mandates look like? EAD points to Illinois as an example of “best practices” and a model for the nation. What is Illinois doing? New state rules, called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards,” mandate that all teachers “assess how their biases . . . affect their teaching . . . how they access tools to mitigate their own behavior (racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, Eurocentrism, etc.)” Teachers are required to embrace the narrative of “systems of oppression . . . teachers . . . understand that there are systems in our society that create and reinforce inequities, thereby creating oppressive conditions.” Teachers must create “a risk-taking space that promotes student activism and advocacy.” Illinois’ mandatory standards appear to be directly tied to teacher certification and licensure. It seems likely that teacher performance appraisals, promotion, and career prospects are related to how enthusiastically they implement the progressive agenda. This would apply to every teacher in the most conservative, rural, small-town counties in the state. And this, of course, is the ultimate goal of left-wing educators and of the critical mass of the leaders and participants of EAD—to force “action civics” and woke civic education down the throat of every school district in red-state America. Stanley Kurtz has outlined how action civics and the EAD project would be implemented nationwide. Under the guise of promoting long-neglected civic education, state legislatures would pass bills requiring courses in civics and history. At the direction of state boards of education, state curriculum specialists (overwhelmingly left-wing) would develop standards, curriculum, and rules that include mandatory teacher certification and licensing requirements “aligned with” the Roadmap of the “cross-ideological” EAD project. In a fashion similar to the Obama Administration’s promotion of the “voluntary” Common Core agenda, the Biden Administration will claim the initiative is “optional” but use carrots (funding) and sticks (regulations) to promote action civics and the “latest” (meaning most woke) history and civics scholarship as de facto national mandates. At the same time, left-wing private foundations would provide lavish funding to train teachers in understanding new forms of “civic engagement” including Ibram X. Kendi’s critical race theory. Thus, traditional American citizenship education would be replaced by what the National Association of Scholars describes as the “anti-civics” mindset at the heart of “action civics.” The Educating for American Democracy project working with the progressive educational establishment and the Biden Administration to “harmonize” and “redefine” citizenship education serves as a Trojan Horse in the ongoing undertaking to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” It must be stopped.",0.9110861045494844 "A U.S. Army paratrooper assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division pulls security during a base-defense exercise at Camp Taji, Iraq, January 19, 2020. (Specialist Caroline Schofer/US Army) In a little-noticed development on Friday, a House panel scheduled a vote to repeal the Congressional resolution that authorized the Iraq war. National Review has learned that the House Foreign Affairs Committee will vote next Thursday on a measure to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iraq. This resolution to eliminate the Iraq War AUMF is expected to pass, likely with the support of all of the panel’s Democrats and Representative Peter Meijer (R., Mich.). Advertisement Repealing the 2002 AUMF and the 2001 AUMF that authorized force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks has gained widespread popularity in both parties, as a war-weary public and top politicians have called for an end to the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. But ahead of the vote on repealing the 2002 measure, some Republicans say they aren’t convinced, warning of ongoing threats from Iran, which backs proxies and operates in Iraq. “Repeal of the 2002 AUMF is a deeply flawed idea and a dangerous mistake given our current global threats,” Representative Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told National Review. “Only two weeks ago, Iranian-backed militias attacked US troops and we must have all tools at our disposal to ensure our troops can succeed in the Global War on Terrorism protecting American families at home by defeating mass murderers overseas.” Wilson, who also leads the Republican Study Committee’s task force on national security, was referring to a recent rocket attack on an Iraqi air base that hosts U.S. personnel likely carried out by a group backed by Iran. No U.S. service members were killed in the incident, but an American contractor died of a cardiac incident as the rockets rained down. Advertisement That assault in early March followed an earlier, fatal rocket attack targeting coalition personnel in Iraq, which triggered a response from the White House. President Biden responded with air strikes on an Iran-backed militia’s position in Syria, renewing Congressional calls to repeal what critics assert are outdated Congressional war authorizations. Since the beginning of the Biden presidency, progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups have led a push to repeal these laws, and following the airstrikes, the administration gave them a nod (though it only cited the constitution, not the 2002 AUMF, as justification for the strikes). Press secretary Jen Psaki told Politico that the White House supports efforts to replace the existing AUMFs with a “narrow and specific framework.” And in a sign of how drastically the politics of these conflicts has shifted, a number of Republicans have started to sign onto such reform efforts. Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, was one prominent voice during the Trump administration supporting moves to rein in the executive’s war powers. He’s now joined by some more of his House colleagues. Meijer and Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) joined with Representatives Abigail Spanberger (D., Va.) and Jared Golden (D., Maine.) to introduce a bill this week that would repeal the 2002 AUMF, in addition to the 1957 and 1991 authorizations for Middle East conflicts and the Gulf War, respectively. Meijer hailed the proposal as “a necessary first step towards reclaiming Congress’s constitutional war powers and ending America’s forever wars,” and Gallagher called those existing authorities “no longer relevant,” adding that their repeal “would not affect ongoing operations.” They argue that while the 2002 authorization has been cited as justification for certain recent military action, those acts could still be authorized under Article II of the constitution and the 2001 AUMF. Advertisement Advertisement But Jim Banks, the Indiana congressman who chairs the RSC, warns that a clean repeal would hamper the president’s ability to respond to attacks. “Repealing this AUMF without a replacement would be a dangerous mistake that would make America less secure. Iranian backed militias attacked Americans in Iraq just last week,” he said. “Repealing the AUMF now would send a dangerous message to our adversaries: attack our troops and we’ll stand down.” He cited the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, which the Trump administration partly justified under the 2002 authorization. Still, Banks, Wilson, and other hawks aren’t totally loath to repealing the 2002 AUMF — they just worry about leaving a gap in the president’s ability to use force. Advertisement The task force that Wilson leads issued a report calling the 2001 and 2002 resolutions “outdated” and in need of replacement. The RSC proposal suggests repealing the existing authorizations and enacting one instead that, for a specified amount of time, authorizes force against all officially designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. This would only apply to those groups designated at the time of the bill’s passage to ensure that its scope cannot grow without Congressional approval. It’s unclear if the would-be AUMF repealers could go along with the innovative proposal, though. That version of AUMF reform would provide explicit statutory authority for the president to use force against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which President Trump designated as an FTO. It also has yet to be seen if a full-on 2002 AUMF repeal stands a chance of passing in the senate, as long as there are concerns about limiting the president’s options when it comes to responding to foreign threats. If one thing is clear, though, it’s that Congress, which once laid dormant as the executive’s war powers ballooned, has entered a period of heightened interested in war powers reform — and this time, it might result in some concrete changes.",-0.14083438667012724 "President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, D.C., February 10, 2021 (Carlos Barria/Reuters) The critics of President Biden’s strikes on Iran-backed militias in Syria are already swarming. “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances,” Senator Tim Kaine said in a statement this morning. The administration quickly issued its legal justification for last night’s strikes — which the Pentagon confirmed were carried out as retaliation for an Iran-backed militia’s rocket attacks that wounded several Americans, including a U.S. service member. The National Security Council announced this morning that Biden acted under the authorities granted to him by Article II of the Constitution. “The targets were chosen to correspond to the recent attacks — the facilities are utilized by [the militias] — and to deter the risk of additional attacks over the coming weeks.” This isn’t very surprising, considering his response to a 2019 questionnaire from the New York Times: The Constitution vests Congress with the power to declare war and authorize the use of force. As is well established and as the Department of Justice has articulated across several administrations, the Constitution vests the President, as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive, with the power to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad without prior Congressional approval when those operations serve important U.S. interests and are of a limited nature, scope, and duration. Although Biden also said later in his answer that action targeting Iran and North Korea would rise to the level of seeking congressional authorization, this reading of president’s authority here maps onto what presidents of both parties have long asserted. Just consider the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel’s 2018 memo on President Trump’s decision to target Syrian government facilities after a chemical-weapons attack. The document runs through the history of executive–legislative relations on military action: And that history points strongly in one direction. While our Nation has sometimes debated the scope of the President’s war powers under the Constitution, his authority to direct U.S. forces in hostilities without prior congressional authorization is supported by a “long continued practice on the part of the Executive, acquiesced in by the Congress.” All of this sets the stage for a familiar debate about war powers that’s played out for years: The president takes action, members of congress complain that it exceeds the scope of his powers, and they do nothing. Some commentators have suggested that Biden could invoke previous congressional authorizations to justify the strikes. Biden could invoke the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, as Presidents Obama and Trump both did as the rationale for the anti-ISIS campaign and the Soleimani strike, respectively. With such a strained interpretation of the statute — it was, after all, intended to permit action against Saddam Hussein’s regime — Biden would be all but daring Congress to eliminate that authority. But if recent history is any guide, those efforts might also not go anywhere. In recent weeks, progressive lawmakers have already set their sights on ending the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs (the 2001 statute authorized force against individuals and groups linked to the 9/11 attackers), and we can expect last night’s news to inspire further calls for this. But the prospects of rolling back these measures remain unclear, though Biden’s apparent decision not to cite either of the AUMFs could signal his desire to minimize his reliance on the statutes, potentially limiting his options for deterring Iranian-backed attacks in the future. There’s also a more optimistic reading of these events for Iran hawks and proponents of a broad interpretation of presidential war powers: Citing either of the AUMFs could have exacerbated the political onslaught against the measures even more. And the decision to rely exclusively on his Article II powers for domestic legal justification could also suggest that Biden is asserting his war powers more broadly than if he were to also rely on congressional authorization. Until the administration offers a fuller explanation of the rationale for last night’s strikes, though, we won’t know for sure.",0.41105604636103954 "Republicans plot a new demographic future In the course of a few weeks early in the Biden administration, Republicans have been making a rapid shift in their agenda, message, and perhaps philosophy. Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah) proposed an ambitious plan to send checks from the federal government to parents. With Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), he sponsored legislation to raise the minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour, to $10, and at the same time to require companies to verify that their employees are legally eligible to work in the United States. Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) came out for a $15 minimum wage for employees of …",-0.39516406331120163 "Of crisis and bad policy One year ago, I wrote: “Returning to normalcy after the coronavirus epidemic is going to take a concerted and programmatic effort — it is going to be a political project of some consequence. And it will be resisted.” We are, it seems, at the beginning of the end of this horrible plague, and so it is time to begin unwinding many of the extraordinary measures that were in many (but far from all) cases appropriately adopted in these extraordinary times. Expect resistance. The politics are, as they almost always are, on the side of a state of semipermanent semi-emergency: Politicians like power, …",-0.01143292242942803 "Herbert Hoover’s vice president blazed an early trail for racial inclusion Charles Curtis had a favorite line in his stump speeches: “I’m one-eighth Kaw Indian and 100 percent Republican!” He used the quip so much that his Democratic foes tried to turn it against him: Curtis, they retorted, was “one-eighth Kaw Indian and seven-eighths incompetent!” Perhaps one day historians will join the dispute over the man who was Herbert Hoover’s vice president. First, however, they’ll have to pay attention. Until recently, they haven’t bothered. Curtis is one of the most overlooked veeps in American history. The subject of precisely zero scholarly biographies, he shows up briefly, when he shows up at all, …",1.5637515198035743 "Mikhail Bakhtin: The Duvakin Interviews, 1973, edited by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova, translated by Margarita Marinova (Bucknell University Press, 340 pp., $19.95) Mikhail Bakhtin, Russia’s greatest literary critic and arguably its most important philosopher, studied ancient Greek and Latin literature and neo-Kantian philosophy before turning his attention to the Russian classics. So great is the prestige of literature in Russia that philosophers often express their ideas as commentaries on a great writer, and so Bakhtin’s first masterpiece, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929; expanded edition 1963), can be read either as the most insightful book ever written about Dostoevsky or as an essay on ethics and human nature elucidated with examples from Dostoevsky’s fiction. In the present volume, Bakhtin asserts that he always …",0.4249710445202648 "The Language of Thieves: My Family’s Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate, by Martin Puchner (W. W. Norton, 288 pp., $26.95) The Language of Thieves is a historical inquiry, family memoir, and meditation on the idiosyncrasies of language. If the parts cohered, the book would be smashing. They don’t, which is frustrating, but Martin Puchner’s book has its merits. The origins of The Language of Thieves are situated in Nuremberg, where Puchner grew up. As a very young boy in the 1970s he watched his mother charitably feed “strange figures” who spoke a “strange dialect.” When he was older his father told him that the perplexing language was called “Rotwelsch” and the strangers were “travelers, . . . people of the road, …",-1.0949247870077625 "In 1962 Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman wrote this song: “Pardon me, miss, but I’ve never done this with a real live girl. . . . Nothing can beat getting swept off your feet by a real live girl.” The lyric always puzzled me, as I could only interpret it as the testimony of a recovering necrophiliac. I found another example of calm acceptance of the macabre in Rodgers and Hart’s “With a Song in My Heart,” where we find, in the break, “When the music swells I’m touching your hand. It tells me you’re standing near . . .” Unless …",2.8806730556365934 "U.S. soldiers conduct a joint foot patrol with Canadian and Afghan National Army troops in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in 2009. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters) A response to Bing West. In his National Review article “Three Wars, No Victory — Why?” (February 18, 2021), Bing West, my former colleague at the Pentagon and the Naval War College, lays out a compelling case for why the U.S. — which he argues is the most powerful country in the history of the world — has lost the three major wars it has fought over the past 50 years: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Bing divides blame for each of these losses among three hubs — namely, the military, the policy-makers, and the popular mood among the people of the country. He argues correctly that the policy hub, or the policy-makers, were primarily responsible for the failures. Advertisement While I have some experience in each of these conflicts, having served in Vietnam and having visited Iraq three times and Afghanistan once, it does not match that of Bing, who is one of the bravest people I have ever known. However, I still believe that he presents a sometimes incomplete and misleading picture of why we lost these three wars. For example, in analyzing the Vietnam disaster, he ignores the fact that the war was fought under false pretenses. President Johnson received congressional authorization in 1964 to begin the massive escalation in Vietnam in response to an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. But, even before the congressional investigation, it was clear to any experienced naval officer that what the administration claimed had happened was bogus. I remember my commanding officer in VP-1, who had flown combat missions in World War II and Korea, telling us that the attacks did not happen the way it was claimed. This was something that Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who was Bing’s and my boss at the War College and who received a medal of honor for his courage as a POW in Vietnam and who was in the area at the time, also affirmed. As did a naval officer who convinced Senator Wayne Morris (D., Ore.) to become one of the two senators who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. (Both lost their next election.). When this came to light, it also increased opposition to the war among the American people. Advertisement Another reason we failed in Vietnam is that the war was never winnable in the first place. Bing argues that our poor military strategy from 1965 to 1968, bad policy decisions, and the popular mood doomed the Vietnam War. These factors played a role, but in truth only heightened an already existing reality — a reality made clear to me in 1966, when my colleagues and I got lost coming back from a meeting with SWIFT-boat officers in the northern part of Cameron Bay, South Vietnam. As we rode around aimlessly trying to find our way back to our base, we came upon a Catholic monastery. A priest there gave us directions and fed us. But as we were leaving, one of the monks asked me in French (which I had studied in school) why we thought we were going to make out any better in Vietnam than the French. President Eisenhower was conscious of this when he refused to bail out the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, even though most of his national-security advisers, including then–Vice President Nixon and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Radford, recommended it. But Army chief of staff General Matthew Ridgway, who prevented us from losing in Korea, helped convince Eisenhower not to intervene, because he, like the monks I met, believed Vietnam was unwinnable. Advertisement Similarly, the majority of the American people turned against the war in Vietnam not just because there was a draft, as Bing correctly points out, but because of how the privileged were able to avoid the draft, thus leaving it to the lower class to bear most of the burden. For example, the four most recent presidents who could have served in Vietnam avoided that war and the draft by dubious means. Bill Clinton pretended to join the Army ROTC; George W. Bush used political connections to get into the Air National Guard, when President Johnson made it clear that the reserve component would not be activated to fight the war; Donald Trump, of course, had his family physician claim he had bone spurs, (Trump himself cannot remember which foot); and Joe Biden claimed that the asthma he had in high school prevented him from serving even though he brags about his athletic exploits while in high school. Advertisement Similarly, in his analysis of why we did not win in Iraq, Bing ignores the fact that the Bush administration got the U.S. into war falsely claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, in criticizing the Obama administration for withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, Bing ignores the fact that Obama had no choice. He did this because in 2008 the Iraqi government, which we had helped install, made it clear to us that it would not sign a Status of Forces Agreement unless we agreed to withdraw completely by the end of 2011. I saw this firsthand when I worked in the Obama campaign and in the summer of 2008 met with Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister. When I asked him about the agreement to withdraw, he told me it was a non-negotiable demand. When I relayed this to Denis McDonough, who was on the campaign trail with Obama and eventually became his chief of staff, he was surprised and asked me if I was certain about what I heard. In 2009, while on a visit to Iraq, I brought this up with several Iraqi government officials in the parliament and the executive branch and received the same answer. Finally, in December 2011, when Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki came to Washington to finalize the deal, I and several others, including Obama’s first national-security adviser General David Jones and future Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, met with him. I asked him directly if there was anything President Obama could have done to keep the troops in Iraq. He essentially said that Bush made an agreement and the U.S. must stick to it. At the meeting, Jones said Obama was willing to leave 10,000 troops. Bing also ignores the fact that the Bush administration never publicly or privately praised Iran for its help in Afghanistan but actually publicly criticized that nation. I saw this myself. On 9/11, I was working at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. After the attacks, the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. invited me to dinner and told me to let our government know that Iran detested the Taliban and would be willing to help us in Afghanistan. I relayed this to the Bush administration, and Bush’s representative to the Bonn Conference in December 2001, which established the Karzai government, told me that the Bush administration would not have succeeded without the Iranians. Iran’s reward? In early 2002, Bush put the country on the axis of evil. It is an understatement to say that as a result Iran no longer played a positive role in the region. Advertisement Advertisement Finally, in his Afghanistan analysis, while Bing correctly points out that our military could never transform Afghanistan, he is wrong to argue that we should remain indefinitely in the country to avoid damaging our reputation. Many who fought in this 20-year war already believe our reputation is damaged and want us to leave before it is damaged further. Sunk-costs logic should not apply here. How bad will it be if we agree to leave on May 1, as Trump agreed to, and the Taliban takes over, especially for women? When I visited Afghanistan in 2011, I asked a Taliban official how they would treat women if or when they took over. He told me not to worry — that they would not treat them any worse than our allies, the Saudis. Bing’s article should be read by all those who believe that the U.S. can develop and sustain democracies by using military power. However, they should keep in mind that there are some other factors that also play into this decision.",-0.08679453115110211 "(utah778/Getty Images) On his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith of the University of San Diego Law School wrote a post that was sharply critical of Chinese government policies. Shortly thereafter, the academic mob accused him of ethnic bias against Chinese people. You would think that law students should be able to distinguish between the two, but either their previous education has left them incapable of making such distinctions or they are so intent on finding a pretext to attack a non-woke professor that they will say any foolish thing. Advertisement So, the dean of the law school, Robert Shapiro, has to decide what to do — tell the students that their claims about Smith are ridiculous or appease them with a promise to investigate him for thought crimes. If you guessed the latter, you understand the nature of higher education in America today. Writing on Legal Insurrection, Bill Jacobson has the story (and links to many similar ones). He notes, “It is [reminiscent] of the worst days of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, in which students were the most aggressive in demanding ideological obedience from professors, with public shaming one of the tools used to humiliate the target and scare others into silence.” He’s right. The great “progressive” project of turning our education system into one for indoctrinating young people so they’ll unthinkingly do what the revolution requires is far along.",-1.332215769384606 "A woman who is five months pregnant attends a sonogram at a local hospital in Shanghai, China, September 12, 2014. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) It is no secret that the efforts of pro-lifers receive precious little recognition from mainstream media outlets. Indeed, journalists and commentators devote hardly any attention to the 53-percent drop in the U.S. abortion rate that has taken place since 1980. On those occasions when there is reporting on abortion-rate reductions, journalists typically parrot talking points from abortion-rights groups, claiming that the abortion rate has dropped only due to an increase in contraception use. Pro-life legislative, educational, and service efforts are simply ignored. Advertisement However, on Wednesday afternoon, the Washington Post published a column by David Von Drehle about the long-term U.S abortion rate decline that is unbelievable, even by the standards of mainstream media. Unsurprisingly, Von Drehle refuses to give pro-lifers any credit for the long-term decline in the U.S. abortion rate. Instead, he makes the ridiculous, bizarre, and illogical argument that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade is responsible for the abortion-rate declines that have occurred since 1980. Again, he actually attempts to claim that today’s historically low abortion rates are a result of the decision in Roe, which legalized abortion, and he claims that “those who seek a return to the days before Roe v. Wade would take us to a time when abortion was more common than it is now.” It should come as no surprise that Von Drehle’s column is full of inaccuracies. He acknowledges that the U.S. abortion rate increased in the years immediately after Roe, but he claims that this is because “desperate women came out of the shadows.” In reality, the abortion rate increased because, unsurprisingly, many more women sought and obtained abortions after it was made legal. In the years immediately prior to Roe, abortion actually was legal in several states, including New York and California. However, Roe effectively legalized abortion in all 50 states throughout all nine months of pregnancy, so it should come as no surprise that the incidence of abortion increased dramatically. Von Drehle then claims that the U.S. abortion rate has fallen since 1981 because “couples have easy access to a variety of birth-control methods.” However, he fails to explain why increases in contraception use during the 1970s failed to reduce the abortion rate during that decade. Advertisement Furthermore, if Von Drehle is correct, increases in contraception use should lead to a consistent reduction in the rate of unintended pregnancies — but since 1980, the unintended-pregnancy rate has fluctuated. In fact, the most recent data from the Guttmacher Institute show that the unintended-pregnancy rate in the U.S. actually increased between 2001 and 2008, even as the U.S. abortion rate was declining. Clearly, there is more to the reduction in the abortion rate than increases in contraception use. A serious analysis of available data suggests that an important reason for the long-term reduction in the abortion rate is because a higher percentage of women are carrying unintended pregnancies to term. Von Drehle cavalierly dismisses this possibility. In his piece, he explicitly asserts that “the decline in the abortion rate has not been a function of more (unwanted) pregnancies being carried to term.” Advertisement But the data simply do not support this assertion. Indeed, statistics from Guttmacher — until recently Planned Parenthood’s research arm — show that approximately 54 percent of unintended pregnancies were aborted in 1981. That fell to 42 percent by 2011, the most recent year for which we have data. Advertisement If more unintended pregnancies are being carried to term, that means that pro-lifers are succeeding at changing hearts and minds, offering resources to more women through pregnancy-help centers, and passing protective pro-life laws. For instance, there is a strong consensus among both pro-life and pro-choice researchers that the Hyde amendment alone, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980, saves tens of thousands of unborn lives every year. Pro-lifers are accustomed to commentators claiming that pro-life laws are an ineffective strategy for lowering abortion rates. But this poorly argued column in the Post, riddled with inaccuracies and claiming that legalized abortion contributed to a long-term decline in the abortion rate, demonstrates that the media can always sink to new depths. However, pro-lifers should not be discouraged. A substantial body of academic research suggests that the incidence of abortion is sensitive to its legal status and that incremental pro-life laws help to reduce the abortion rate. As always, pro-lifers would do well to stay the course.",2.187174612178249 "Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, on Sunday urged the Biden administration to act “right away” to ease the massive surge at the southern border that's “overwhelmed” Customs and Border Patrol officials. In an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Portman recounted his view of the situation after visiting the border with a number of other elected legislators last week. There are things that “we can do and should do right away” to ease the surge, he said. “One is help the Border Patrol, they're overwhelmed,” he said. “Second, stop the magnet of work by putting a mandatory E-Verify system in place,” Portman added. “And then third, let's deal with this asylum issue in a much more logical way. Let's have rapid adjudication at the border,” he urged. “Finally, in terms of the third country agreements that the Biden administration entered right away, let's allow these kids to seek asylum, and families and individuals, in their country of origin, but also in third countries,” Portman suggested. According to Portman, it’s not unreasonable for the Biden administration to ask for $4 billion over the next four years for Central America to help countries of origin keep their populace within their own borders. But there has to be a better oversight of the spending, he said. “Let's face it, we've spent $3.6 billion, so roughly that amount, in the last five years in those three countries in the Northern Triangle alone — El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,” he said. “There's a lot of corruption down there. They've also had issues and natural disasters, including the hurricanes. So it hasn't made much of a difference in terms of the poverty rates. It's a little better.” Portman added “let's begin the process, but let's be sure we do two things.” “One, let's tie that aid to them helping us in terms of the asylum process and working through this issue that otherwise overwhelms our system,” he continued. “And second, let's tie the aid to actually dealing with the corruption and make sure that there is transparency, there is an adherence to the rule of law so that we can actually make the fundamental changes in these countries to be able to help those people rather than just sending more money down as we have been doing.” Related Stories:",0.8890899099606061 "The Biden administration's giving into renewable energy, unwinding U.S. energy independence, is ""magical thinking"" and virtually ""Disney World"" ideology, according to Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. ""This 'new energy economy,' as people are calling it — the Green New Deal — rests on this belief that technology in wind and solar and battery storage are undergoing a disruption technological revolution and, as such, we can depart from hydrocarbons in generating electricity and power across the United States,"" Pruitt told Sunday's ""The Cats Roundtable"" on WABC 770 AM-N.Y. ""That's just simply fanciful. It's legendary."" Technology just is not there yet, Pruitt added to host John Catsimatidis. ""This belief that we have technologically achieved this level in the U.S., where we can simply take hydrocarbons off the grid and at no cost to consumer with respect to reliability and resiliency of our grid: It's truly magical thinking; it's Disney World,"" Pruitt said. Pruitt pointed to Texas' grid struggles during winter storms as a disastrous example for all states. ""Utilities across the country have been making bad investments, symbolic investments, as opposed to ensuring the resiliency and reliability and lower cost for consumers across the country for power generation,"" Pruitt continued. ""When you look at taking off hydrocarbons and natural gas from our grid and replacing it with wind and solar, well, there are days, obviously, that wind doesn't blow, even in Oklahoma, and days when the sun doesn't shine, even in Texas."" It is not just Democrats missing the boat here either, as Republicans too fail to show leadership. ""Unfortunately, our political leadership in Washington is incapable of engaging in meaningful discussions, both Democrats and Republicans, around solutions,"" Pruitt said. Former President Donald Trump ""made the right decision to exit the Paris Accord,"" he added. ""It had little to do with CO2,"" Pruitt said. ""It had little to do with carbon reduction. It had everything to do with putting us at a competitive disadvantage with countries across the globe."" China and India are the big beneficiaries in lieu of America. ""China in particular, and India: China and India don't have to take any steps of compliance with the Paris Accord,"" Pruitt noted, ""until the year 2030. We front-loaded our cost. They backloaded theirs."" The unwinding of the Trump administration energy independence is a victory for globalists and other countries. ""The rest of the world applauded when the U.S. entered the Paris Accord because it put us at a disadvantage, and they were concerned when we exited [under Trump] because they knew that we were serious about making sure we were not put at a disadvantage,"" Pruitt concluded.",-0.07283054237696376 "President Joe Biden on Thursday slammed Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a ""killer,"" a charge that prompted Putin to challenge the 78-year-old Biden to a live debate – which was nearly forgotten hours later as Chinese diplomats castigated Secretary of State Antony Blinken in front of a stunned press corps. And now, the United States' increasingly tense rivalries with Russia and China may be getting too big to contain on Earth.",0.5594410104436112 "A new tool developed by Microsoft Corp. to contain damage from a massive hack of its email server software has helped reduce the number of vulnerable entities in the last week, according to a National Security Council spokesperson. The tool was created by the technology giant after recent discussions with the White House. Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, worked with Microsoft to find a simple solution for smaller businesses facing time consuming and difficult cleanup of the hack, the spokesperson said. The company released the ""Exchange On-Premises Mitigation Tool"" last week, and it's been downloaded 25,000 times, the official said. The tool protects against future attacks, and scans the system for known compromises then attempts to remediate them. The company has said its software should still be updated to the latest version after running the tool. Companies in the U.S. and around the world have been pummeled recently by twin attacks stemming from Russian and China, which together scooped up tens of thousands of victims and underscored the vulnerability of the world’s computers to nation-state hackers. In December, Russian hackers were found inside the networks of nine government agencies and at least 100 private companies, where they had been collecting intelligence for months. Then Chinese hackers breached tens of thousands of companies in an unusually aggressive campaign using flaws in Microsoft’s business email software.The White House has said that one solution is increased cooperation with the private sector, including companies like Microsoft, whose software runs on the majority of the world’s computers. About 45% of the vulnerable systems had been patched over the past week, the spokesperson said. There are now fewer than 10,000 vulnerable systems remaining in the U.S., down from at least 120,000 at the start. Hackers have been racing to exploit the vulnerability in the software, which Microsoft has said started with a Chinese government-backed hacking group and has racked up tens of thousands of victims. The attack came months after the SolarWinds Corp. breaches by suspected Russian cyberattackers, and drew the concern of U.S. national security officials, in part because the latest hackers were able to hit so many victims so quickly. Microsoft has said customers that use its cloud-based email system are not affected.",0.5339214616959699 "Several law enforcement officials told NBC News on Sunday they have not found enough concrete evidence to convict the man accused of killing eight people, mostly Asian women, in Atlanta-area massage businesses, of a federal hate crime. Six of the 8 people killed were of Asian descent and 7 were women. The suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, told investigators he had a ""sex addiction"" and carried out the shootings because he saw the businesses he targeted as a ""temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate."" He is white. The Associated Press on Friday first reported the constraints in filing hate crime charges. Federal statutes require prosecutors to prove that the victims were targeted because of specific factors, like race, gender identity, religion, national origin or sexual orientation, or the suspect infringed on a federally or constitutionally protected activity. To successfully prosecute a hate crimes case, prosecutors typically seek tangible evidence, such as the suspect expressing racism in text messages, in Internet posts or to witnesses. No such evidence has yet surfaced in the Georgia probe, according to the officials, who have direct knowledge of the investigation into Long. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Friday. Three of the women died at the Gold Spa in Atlanta, while the fourth woman died across the street at Aromatherapy Spa. Four other people were killed, and one was wounded at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock, in Atlanta's northwestern suburbs. Their deaths come as crimes against Asian Americans are spiking. Police said Long visited two of the spas where four of the women were killed. Many political leaders and civil rights activists condemned last week's attack as an act of terror. ""I don't want to draw any conclusions, but it's obvious to me that if 6 victims were Asian women, that was a target,"" Georgia State Rep. Calvin Smyre, a Democrat, told The New York Times. President Joe Biden in a speech Friday expressed grief for the victims, saying the shooting was part of a ""skyrocketing spike"" in violence against Asian-Americans. He also pushed for Congress to pass hate crime legislation in response to violence against the minority group. ""They've been attacked, blamed, scapegoated and harassed; they've been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed,"" Biden said from Atlanta after meeting with Asian-American leaders. ""It's been a year of living in fear for their lives."" There have been roughly 3,800 anti-Asian bias incidents since March 2020 when the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic due to the novel coronavirus, according to the Stop AAPI Hate Project.",-0.7019116407140857 "Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., who was accused last week of rubbing a female lobbyist's back and unhooking her bra without her consent in 2017, apologized to the woman Sunday and announced he will not run for reelection next year. Reed, 49, said in a statement the incident involving then-lobbyist Nicolette Davis occurred ""at a time in my life in which I was struggling."" He said he entered treatment that year and realized he was ""powerless over alcohol."" Reed apologized to his wife and children, and to Davis, and said he planned ""to dedicate my time and attention to making amends for my past actions."" Reed, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, had been among the members of Congress calling for the resignation of Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo over sexual harassment allegations. In late February, Reed said he was seriously considering running for governor against Cuomo should the Democrat seek a fourth term next year. Reed said in his statement Sunday he would not seek any elective office in 2022. The announcement came two days after The Washington Post reported the allegations from Davis, who was 25 and a lobbyist for insurer Aflac when she said Reed, seated next to her at a Minneapolis bar, unhooked her bra from outside her blouse and moved his hand to her thigh. ""A drunk congressman is rubbing my back,"" she texted a co-worker at Aflac that evening, adding later, ""HELP HELP."" Reed released a statement Friday saying, ""This account of my actions is not accurate."" In his statement Sunday he said, ""In reflection, my personal depiction of this event is irrelevant. Simply put, my behavior caused her pain, showed her disrespect and was unprofessional. I was wrong, I am sorry, and I take full responsibility."" A former mayor of Corning, New York, Reed is co-chair of the House of Representatives' bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. He voted against impeaching former President Donald Trump in January but voted in favor of certifying the 2020 election of Democrat Joe Biden.",0.16777425498935997 "Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday three Trump administration policies sacked by President Joe Biden would be “simple solutions” to the current immigration surge at the southern border. In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Cotton said the policies put in place by former President Donald Trump were “highly effective.” ""The Biden administration keeps saying that Trump somehow dismantled the immigration system,” he said. “That's false.” “It was the Biden administration that dismantled three highly effective policies,” he said. “First, the public health exclusionary order, they lifted that as it relates to minors,” he said, referring to the order instituted in the early months of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. ""Well, guess what we have now at the border? Lots more minors. That's not a surprise.” He added the second policy that was dismantled was the “Remain in Mexico” policy that kept migrants there while their asylum hearings were arranged in the United States. The final policy dumped that should be restored is the “safe third country agreement,” Cotton said,. ""The so-called safe third country agreement with countries like Guatemala that says if you pass through a country that's not your own seeking asylum, you have to make that asylum claim in the first country you pass through. That's the international norm,"" Cotton said. ""Joe Biden could re-impose all three of those things this week if he wanted to,” Cotton said. As things stand now, however, “the border is wide open,” Cotton asserted. “There are reports now that [Customs Border Patrol] is simply processing people without appearing in court,” he said. “Processing all these bogus asylum claims… means we have other kinds of crises,” he added, including drug traffickers and screening for people on the terrorist watchlist, he added. Cotton also indicated he believed any infrastructure bill pursued by Democrats would be a wish-list of progressive priorities including programs related to the ""Green New Deal.” ""This bill is not going to be geared to those needs, this bill will be geared towards big tax increases and the Green New Deal,"" Cotton said. ""We spend too much money on things that are not roads, or bridges, or broadband access,"" he added.",-0.44820709117540863 "To the surprise of just about no one in Louisiana, Julia Letlow on Saturday handily won the special election to fill the seat her late husband Luke was poised to represent in Congress until his death from COVID-19 last year. With near final returns in, Letlow, 41, rolled up 63.6 percent of the vote and is expected to be sworn into Congress next week. Her election from Louisiana’s 5th District (Shreveport) is historic. Although widows of U.S. Representatives have been, far more often than not, succeeding their husbands since Republican Mae Ella Nolan won a special election for the California seat of her late husband John in 1921, Julia Letlow is the first widow of a U.S. Representative-elect to go to Congress. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy issued the following statement regarding Louisiana's 5th Congressional District special election: “Congratulations to Julia Letlow on her election to Congress from Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District,"" McCarthy wrote. ""Julia offered a message that united Louisiana voters and defied predictions by winning this special election outright with a clear majority — a remarkable accomplishment among a field of 12 candidates. “As Julia succeeds her late husband and our friend, Luke, we look forward to welcoming her to Congress, where her expertise in higher education will help us continue to deliver solutions for America.” Soon after winning the seat last year of his old boss Republican Rep. Ralph Abraham, Luke Letlow contracted COVID-19. On Dec. 29, four days before he was to be sworn into office, Letlow died of complications from the virus at age 41. Julie Barnhill Letlow, also 41, is considered a strong conservative in the mold of her late husband and ran proudly with the strong endorsement of Donald Trump. A Ph.D, she served as executive assistant to the president of the University of Louisiana at Monroe and was herself a finalist for the university presidency. Writing of his wife on Facebook, Letlow said “Anyone who truly knows my wife knows that her determination is a force to be reckoned with, her vision is inspiring, and her passion is contagious.” John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.",1.1858548807220217 "Former President Donald Trump remains the face of the Republican Party and the leading 2024 GOP presidential contender, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made inroads to become a top alternative amid his coronavirus pandemic response and his Trump-like toughness. ""I think he's the odds-on favorite to be the next president,"" according to Florida GOP chairman Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator, told NBC News. DeSantis' rise was quick after Trump endorsed him for governor of Florida, and he holds a 53% job-approval rating in the latest Mason-Dixon poll, including 59% among independents. The straw polls taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, has DeSantis, 42, as the second option to Trump, but the first when Trump was excluded from the survey's field. ""When you look under the hood of those numbers, DeSantis garners a lot of support from Trump voters in the absence of Trump,"" Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio told NBC News. ""As the media beat him up as the anti-Cuomo and DeSantis stood up for himself, voters liked that. They associate that type of scrappiness and speaking your mind with President Trump. He is inheriting a lot of that."" DeSantis has remained focused on the near term, the 2022 Florida gubernatorial reelection campaign, but most look ahead to 2024 include his name near the top of GOP minds. ""Ron DeSantis has quickly become the most recognizable Republican governor in the country, and I think that only bodes well for both his re-election and what he wants to do after that,"" DeSantis' 2018 campaign manager Brad Herold told NBC News. That sure does help the fundraising efforts, according to Nick Iarossi. ""I've been doing this for 20 years, and you normally don't have prominent donors from other states reaching out and saying, 'Hey, how do I meet this guy? How do I support him? I think he's going to be president one day, and I want to get to know him now. I want to support him for his 2022 election to make sure he wins if we need him running in 2024,'"" Iarossi, a DeSantis fundraiser, told NBC News. Even former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a bitter Trump rival, says he is ""a fan"" of the Trump-backing Gov. DeSantis, an Ivy Leaguer and an Iraq War veteran. ""I am out of the punditry business, but I am a fan of Ron DeSantis,"" Bush told NBC News. Who is not fond of Gov. DeSantis? Democrats and the media. Ron Be Gone has launched to oppose the surging MAGA Republican, who has the job-approval thumbs up from just 15% of Democrats in the Mason-Dixon polling. ""His arrogance and complete detachment from the pain and suffering of our communities is very telling of someone that is in this position to advance his political ambitions, and it's obvious because they're already discussing 2024,"" former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., a Ron Be Gone group leader, told NBC News. But moderates and Republicans have enjoyed freedom, security, health, and safety amid the pandemic under DeSantis' leadership. ""With all due respect to those who have gotten sick or who have passed or who know someone who passed, I think we were able to ride the storm without destroying people's businesses and people's economic lives,"" Republican strategist Nelson Diaz told NBC News. The leading challengers to DeSantis in 2022, including Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., and state agriculture and consumer services commissioner Nikki Fried, per the report. ""I think this may be one of the easiest gubernatorial re-elects that we've seen in Florida in a long time,"" former Florida GOP chairman Blaise Ingoglia told NBC news. ""What people like in general is standing up for what you believe in. Be a fighter, right? And this is why Ron DeSantis has endeared himself to the Donald Trump base — a base I predict is not going to go away.""",2.109754393383687 "Latin America faces risks as its economy rebounds from the worst downturn in two centuries, with better fiscal policy needed to ensure a sustained recovery, according to the region’s development lender. Output will grow 4.1% this year as vaccine rollouts proceed and businesses continue to open, the Inter-American Development Bank said in forecasts released Saturday at its annual meetings. The bank estimates that the 2020 contraction was 7.4%, the most for any single year since 1821, when some of Latin American nations were fighting for their independence from Spain. The region remains at risk for a more muted rebound where weaker growth in the U.S. and Europe, slower vaccine application and new virus strains limit the 2021 expansion to 0.8%, according to the Washington-based institution. That scenario would see a return to recession in 2022 before growth in 2023 –- a “W” shaped recovery. Latin America faces high unemployment, which is set to increase extreme poverty, and health systems stretched to the breaking point. With just 8% of the world’s population, the region has accounted for about a quarter of all coronavirus deaths. “In 2019, the region was flying with one broken engine,” said Eric Parrado, the IDB’s chief economist. “In 2020, its other engine also took a hit. The challenge we now face is to fly this aircraft to safety, rescue the passengers, and prepare for the necessary repairs.” Governments in the region provided almost a half trillion dollars in fiscal support during the pandemic, with packages averaging about 8.5% of gross domestic product, compared with 19% in advanced economies. That helped drive up public debt to 72% of gross domestic product in 2020 from 58% a year earlier. The IDB forecasts public debt to rise to 76% by 2023. Countries should pursue fiscal overhauls, with nations that have both high tax takes and high spending benefiting from greater efficiency and better targeted social transfer programs. Countries should spend on projects with high social and growth benefits, build infrastructure for a digital economy and invest in a more environmentally sustainable future, the IDB said.",0.47457925236053705 "Pick up the pace if you want to reduce your risk of COVID-19 and its complications. Walking at a snail’s pace may increase your risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19, says a new study, whether you are at a normal weight or obese. Researchers in the U.K. found that people of normal weight who walked slowly were a whopping 3.75 times more likely to die from the virus than fast walkers. Slow walkers were also 2.5 more likely to become infected with COVID-19. According to BBC News, scientists at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centre analyzed data reported by 412,596 volunteer study participants who shared their BMI and their perceived walking pace. The researchers measured slow walking as a speed less than three miles per hour and a brisk pace at more than four miles per hour. A normal pace was considered to be walking at a pace between three and four miles per hour. Another key finding of the study was even the slow walkers who were at a normal weight had a greater risk of both severe COVID-19 and mortality than obese participants who walked briskly, according to Science Daily. The risk was uniformly high among slow walkers of normal weight and those who were obese. Professor Thomas Yates, the lead researcher for the study and a professor of Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior and Health at the University of Leicester, said: “We already know that obesity and frailty are key risk factors for COVID-19 outcomes. This is the first study to show that slow walkers have a much higher risk of contracting severe COVID-19 symptoms, irrespective of their weight.” The expert said that by identifying people who are at increased risk of contracting the disease and suffering severe complications including death, officials may be able to ease the strain on healthcare services and communities, according to Science Daily. “Fast walkers have been shown to generally have good cardiovascular and heart health, making them resilient to external factors, including viral infection, but this hypothesis has yet been established for infectious disease,” said Yates. Experts have reported that regular, moderate-intensity exercise such as brisk walking, also boosts the immune system which can help your body stave off infections while reducing stress and anxiety during the pandemic. Yates said that public health officials should incorporate “simple measures of physical fitness such as self-reported walking pace in addition to BMI, as potential risk factors for COVID-19 outcomes that could ultimately enable better prevention methods that save could lives,” according to Science Daily.",1.3315510682654068 "The following article appears on the RPI Website Mask tyranny reached a new low recently when a family was kicked off a Spirit Airlines flight because their four-year-old autistic son was not wearing a mask. The family was removed from the plane even though the boy’s doctor had decided the boy should be exempted from mask mandates because the boy panics and engages in behavior that could pose a danger to himself when wearing a mask. Besides, four-year-olds do not present much risk of spreading or contracting coronavirus. Even if masks did prevent infections among adults, there would be no reason to force children to wear masks. Mask mandates have as much to do with healthcare as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screenings have to do with stopping terrorism. Masks and TSA screenings are ""security theater"" done to reassure those frightened by government and media propaganda regarding coronavirus and terrorism that the government is protecting them. Covid oppression will worsen if vaccine passports become more widely required. Vaccine passports are digital or physical proof a person has taken a coronavirus vaccine. New York is already requiring that individuals produce digital proof of taking a coronavirus vaccine before being admitted to sporting events. Imagine if the zealous enforcers of mask mandates had the power to deny you access to public places because you have not ""gotten your shot."" Even worse, what if a potential employer had to ensure you were “properly” vaccinated before hiring you? This could come to pass if proponents of mandatory E-Verify have their way. E-Verify requires employers to submit personal identifying information — such as a social security numbers and biometric data — to a government database to ensure job applicants have federal permission to hold jobs. Currently, E-Verify is only used to assure a job applicant is a citizen or legal resident. However, its use could be expanded to advancing other purposes, such as ensuring a potential new hire has taken all the recommended vaccines. E-Verify could even be used to check if a job applicant has ever expressed, or associated with someone who has expressed, ""hate speech,"" ""conspiracy theories,"" or ""Russian disinformation,"" which is code for facts embarrassing to the political class. Many employers will be reluctant to hire such an employee for fear their businesses will become the next targets of ""cancel culture."" Those who doubt this should consider how many businesses have folded under pressure from the cultural Marxists and fired someone for expressing an ""unapproved"" thought. Politicians and bureaucrats have used overblown fear of coronavirus to justify the largest infringement of individual liberty in modern times. Covid tyranny has been aided by many Americans who are not just willing to sacrifice their liberty for phony security, but who help government take away liberty from their fellow citizens. The good news is that, as it becomes increasingly clear that there was no need to shut down the economy, throw millions out of work, subject children to the fraud of ""virtual"" learning, and force everyone to wear a mask, more people are turning against the politicians and ""experts"" behind the lockdowns and mandates. Hopefully, these Americans will realize that, in addition to coronavirus lockdowns and mandates, the entire welfare-warfare-fiat money system is built on a foundation of lies. Ron Paul is a physician, author and former Republican congressman. Paul also is a two-time Republican pr'esidential candidate and the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in the 1988 U.S. presidential election. His latest book is ""Swords into Plowshares."" Read Ron Paul's Reports — More Here.",0.47926596089212076 "President Biden’s ""Build Back Better"" campaign is turning out to be nothing more than the Obama administration’s failures on steroids. News veteran, speechwriter, and Newsmax columnist Suzanne Downing couldn’t help but overhear a conversation among a group of retired men while on a ferry taking her to Seattle from Bainbridge Island, Washington — a bastion of liberal thought. ""Did you hear President Biden's 25-minute speech?"" she recalled one man asked the group. ""What really struck me is how empathetic he was, just so empathetic, something that's been missing the past four years.” In short, they seemed pleased that Biden was making America ""normal"" again — you know, back when politicians ran things instead of hard-nosed businessmen. On Sunday Legal Insurrection published a stunning list of events that occurred just within the previous seven days, and they each demonstrate America’s decline. Included among the 21 stories that made the news during the past week are: Ford Motor Company announced a decision to move a plant from Ohio to Mexico, raising the ire of the United Auto Workers There are now reportedly 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody, a number that continues to grow Biden said he will fly illegal migrants up to the northern border states for processing, to ease the situation at the southern border (which is emphatically not a crisis) The performance of U.S. diplomates at the hands of their Chinese counterparts at the Alaska summit was embarrassing and humiliating Violence by Antifa activists in Portland, Oregon continues despite the new administration, with murder rates actually on the rise Both Iran and China have stepped up their construction of underground missile facilities A month after Biden’s reversed the Trump-era terrorist designation on the Iran-backed Houthis group, it stepped up drone strikes against Saudi Arabian oil facilities In addition, the Biden administration announced that it will spend $86 million on hotel rooms to house the growing number of illegal migrants. Keep in mind all these events were reported within the last week. It doesn’t include the thousands of jobs lost by shutting down construction of the border wall and the Keystone XL pipeline, nor the jobs lost on gas and oil exploration and extraction on federal lands. From the actions of both China and Iran, plus Biden’s refusal to accept Russia President Vladimir Putin’s challenge to a televised debate, it’s clear that our enemies no longer fear us — in fact, they regard the United States as a weak opponent. It’s just as clear that our allies no longer respect us. Australia’s Sky News has been especially brutal and honest. Here are a few examples: On Sunday Sky News host James Morrow reported that a ""weak"" President Biden suffered a “tremendous diplomatic humiliation” by senior Chinese officials in Alaska which shows how Beijing thinks it’s ""in the driver’s seat now."" Last month Sky News host Alan Jones said Biden continues to ""blunder on"" while enjoying a “dream honeymoon” from the U.S. media. In January, weeks before the inauguration, Sky News host Paul Murray said that a Biden presidency seems like a “transition to inevitable Harris administration.” On the other hand, one of the diplomatic triumphs of the Trump administration took root and continues to grow and bear fruit. The Abraham Accords, the unprecedented Trump-brokered agreements to normalize relations between Israel and four other Arabian Gulf countries, is about to add four more nations to the list, which will further isolate Iran from its neighbors. ""I brought… four peace agreements, and there are another four on the way,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted last week during an interview with the Hebrew-language Ynet news site. ""I talked about one of them yesterday."" Because of the current weak leadership, our enemies no longer fear us; out allies no longer respect us. But it must seem just like old times to the liberal retired gents that Suzanne Downing overheard on that ferry ride — you know, when America wasn’t quite so great and a president bowed before kings and rulers. Weak leadership never ends well, and it often leads to war. But it’s all ""business as usual"" for Joe Biden. Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.",-1.5880873156103754 "America's worst-kept secret – and most terrifying – is to have elected a leader of the free world lacking the cognitive acuity to be safely trusted to operate heavy equipment, much less a code to the nuclear football. President Biden's transparently obvious and dangerous confusion likely explains why a letter signed by three dozen House members of his own party have urged that he relinquish full control over America's nuclear weapons in favor of a committee approach. Spearheaded by Rep. Jimmy Panetta of California, the letter says, ""Vesting one person with this authority entails real risks. Past presidents have threatened to attack other countries with nuclear weapons or exhibited behavior that caused other officials to express concern about the president's judgment."" On March 8, our Commander in Chief left millions scratching their heads when he bizarrely forgot the name of his own Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, and our nation's central defense headquarters, the Pentagon. ""I want to thank the … uhmmm… the former general, I keep calling him General … , uhh …. the guy who runs that outfit over there. I want to make sure we thank the secretary for all he's done,"" said Biden. It's a certain bet that our military adversaries paid gleeful attention to those remarks which came during an International Women's Day event pointed out Austin's key national security priority to ""take on sexual assault in the military."" Biden also highlighted Austin's bold, decisive leadership in providing updated hairstyle requirements and maternity flight suits. Not mentioned, was at what late stage of pregnancy expectant mothers would be encouraged to fly combat missions. Russia's President Vladimir Putin, for one, is clearly amused by Biden's obvious cognitive struggles in challenging him to an internationally televised debate. ""I've just thought of this now,"" Putin recently told a Russian state television reporter. ""I want to propose to President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it basically live, as it's called. Without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion. It seems to me that would be interesting for the people of Russia and for the people of the United States."" Putin emphasized that he didn't want to delay, proposing he and Biden hold the discussion as early as March 19. ""I don't want to put this off for long. I want to go the taiga this weekend to relax a little,"" Putin said. ""So, we could do it tomorrow or Monday. We are ready at any time convenient for the American side."" Putin's debate invitation followed the day after Biden said during an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that he thought Putin was a ""killer."" ""Mmm hmm, I do,"" Biden responded. Warning of a possible ""irreversible deterioration of relations,"" Biden's remarks provoked Russia to take the rare step of recalling its ambassador to Washington. The last time Russia recalled its ambassador for consultations was in 1998 in protest over the bombing of Iraq ordered by then-President Bill Clinton. In response to reporters' questions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki wisely suggested that ""the discussion"" was unlikely to happen. ""I'll have to get back to you if that is something we're entertaining. I would say that the president already had a conversation with President Putin,"" she said, adding that ""The president, of course, will be in Georgia tomorrow and quite busy."" Biden's White House handlers are understandably reluctant to allow Joe to embarrass the administration – the nation – with such disastrous tragic-comedy theater on a global international stage. Such prudent concern also readily explains why Vice President Kamala Harris, rather than exclusively Joe, is now conducting solo meetings with foreign leaders, a role seldom delegated to vice presidents. And yes, it's also a reason we might believe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she said that her proposal to create a sanity assessment tribunal under the 25th Amendment that can remove a president deemed mentally unfit from office was ""not about Donald Trump."" This is all the more understandable given that Joe has repeatedly confused Kamala's vice president position with his own. While celebrating the U.S. nearing the administration of 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, Biden said, ""Now when President Harris and I took a virtual tour of a vaccination center in Arizona not long ago, one of the nurses on that, on that tour injecting people, giving vaccinations, said that each shot was like administering a dose of hope."" Nor was this the first time Biden has given Harris an oral promotion. In December, Biden referred to Harris as the president-elect while discussing how they publicly received COVID-19 vaccine shots. ""I took it to instill public confidence in the vaccine. President-elect Harris took hers today for the same reason,"" Biden said at the time. Perhaps more frightening, a majority of America wasn't paying attention in voting for a president with obviously deteriorating cognitive deficits. A new book, ""Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency,"" by two New York Times best-selling authors attributed his win to a Biden camp campaign strategy of ""you put your dumb uncle in the basement.'' Joe's policies on key issues never even seemed to come up during the virtual election non-campaign trail from his protected basement bunker to rare parking lot appearances. The legacy media never bothered to ask. Others who dared to pose probing questions were rebuffed or ignored. Authors Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hill noted that President Biden won the White House because the coronavirus provided an excuse to let him stay hidden to protect his campaign from its biggest liability — the candidate himself. Scandalously, they didn't remotely consider protecting America. Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, ""What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional,"" (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.",1.2593032025375934 """Greed … is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit,"" according to Gordon Gekko. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) counts on the mindset of the Wall Street money-machine elite to finance its national ambitions in the deepest, most liquid capital market in the world — our own. Until recently, we ignored the massive capital transfusion in excess of $2.2 trillion from our stock exchanges to the CCP, our existential enemy — and the risk this represents to American investors and our national security. Thanks to President Trump, we have heard much about China's predatory trade practices harming Americans. But, according to Roger Robinson, Jr., former chairman of the Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the real battleground isn't trade, it's the capital markets. ""China is content for us to concentrate on … trade. Can they handle a tariff war? Yeah, it's painful, but yeah, they can, they can play that game all day…. But the U.S. capital market funding is where they live or die."" China depends on massive inflows of American capital to help finance its economy and its military. A decrease in our investment dollars would hurt them immeasurably more than a trade war. As of October 2, there were 217 Chinese companies, including 13 state-owned enterprises, with a market value about three-quarters the size of China's foreign exchange reserves, listed on the U.S. exchanges. In addition, there are companies which rely on offshore registration to disguise their primary Chinese corporate domicile, making it difficult to identify all Chinese companies engaged in our capital markets. Starting in 2018, the world's largest index provider, MSCI, increased its holdings of Chinese companies in its widely followed Emerging Markets Index, reportedly in response to heavy pressure by the Chinese government. Other indexes followed their lead. Asset managers of pension funds, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds held by millions of Americans did the same to align their investments with this index. Wall Street financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and Citigroup have made huge profits by underwriting the American listing of Chinese companies like Alibaba, PetroChina, Baidu, CNOOC and Tencent. China and Wall Street both profit, and if these companies are delisted, both suffer. Private as well as state-owned Chinese companies can be enlisted in activities to benefit China's national interests. Beijing's 2017 National Intelligence Law states, ""any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work,"" essentially allowing the weaponization of any Chinese company to commit espionage, technology theft or anything deemed to be in China's national interest. China refuses to comply with existing American securities laws like Sarbanes-Oxley (2002) and other regulations that require both transparency and U.S. oversight of financial data reporting for all companies trading on our exchanges. The CCP claims such disclosure endangers their national security. In 2019, Luckin Coffee manipulated its financial data prior to its American IPO. It achieved a $12 billion capitalization before collapsing on news of fraud, leading to American investor loss without recourse for compensation. Last June, Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., expressed outrage: ""We can no longer allow China's authoritarian government to reap the rewards of American and international capital markets while Chinese companies avoid financial disclosure and basic transparency and place U.S. investors and pensioners at risk."" American investors have purchased shares of Chinese corporate human rights abusers like Hikvision and Dahua, involved with the tracking and surveillance of the persecuted Chinese Muslim minority Uyghurs. They have financed national security abusers like Huawei and China Telecom, involved in espionage and disruption of U.S. communications traffic. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, voiced displeasure: ""The Chinese Communist Party uses its state-owned enterprises to further its cyber and economic espionage efforts against the United States, and they've been exploiting our telecommunications networks for nearly two decades while the federal government historically put in little effort to stop it."" In response to President Trump's November 2020 executive order barring any transactions in securities ""designed to provide investment exposure to … any Communist Chinese military company, by any United States person,"" the Defense Department placed 35 Chinese companies with links to the Chinese military (here, here and here) on a ""blacklist."" In December 2020, President Trump signed the bipartisan Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA), to close U.S. stock markets to foreign companies that do not comply with our financial data oversight. It also requires public companies to disclose whether they are owned or controlled by a foreign government. Non-compliance results in delisting. Finally, in early January, the New York Stock Exchange delisted three blacklisted companies — China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. Global index providers MSCI, S&P Dow Jones, FTSE Russell and Nasdaq also started removing military-linked Chinese companies from their portfolios. Beijing is threatening unspecified ""countermeasures"" and offering possible legal compensation to Chinese companies for the damage done from non-compliance with U.S. transparency regulations. The CCP sees itself as engaged in a long-term systemic struggle with the United States over the future world order. It uses its growing economic and military power to encourage other nations to accept its authoritarian one-party governance model as a superior alternative to liberal democracy, with the ultimate goal of replacing America as the world's only superpower. The American public understands the threat. In a recent Pew poll, most Americans support a tough stance toward China on economic issues and human rights. In the past, we were too timid to enforce our laws, let alone strengthen them. Thanks to a bipartisan effort under Trump administration leadership, that has changed. Naysayers on Wall Street object to this as politicizing the markets and restricting the free flow of global capital to the detriment of investor return. President Trump's screening and regulatory actions are a great beginning; but to be effective, they must be fully enforced by the Biden administration. Disclosing the results of financial audits to investors and identifying and delisting Chinese corporations endangering our national security are fundamental to protecting our capital markets and our citizens. Senator Marco Rubio wrote, ""Biden will have to make many tough choices. But when it comes to China's exploitation of U.S. capital markets, the choice facing him is simple: support American workers and our national security, or side with Wall Street and the CCP."" Ziva Dahl is a senior fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Ziva writes and lectures about U.S.-Israel relations, U.S. foreign policy, Israel, Zionism, anti-Semitism, and BDS on college campuses. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The Hill, New York Daily News, New York Observer, the Washington Times, American Spectator, American Thinker and Jerusalem Post. Read Ziva Dahl's Reports — More Here.",0.8801574888304128 "Recently elected President Biden began his term with a flurry of hasty executive orders, signing more than three dozen such orders in his first week in office — more than any of his predecessors. One area that received special emphasis was that of immigration —particularly from South and Central America across the southern border of the United States. Biden's Policies Are More Progressive Than Any Predecessor Indeed, within the first fortnight of his presidency, he enacted no less than eight executive orders concerning immigration — on issues ranging from the reunification of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, through the reversal of the defunding of American ""sanctuary cities"" by Trump, to the termination travel bans on residents of terror-engaging countries. Significantly, within hours of taking office, Biden signed an executive order that heralded the lax attitude that the new administration planned to adopt regarding immigration across southern border of the United States. The opening paragraph of that order declares: “It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall.” Accordingly, it called for the immediate cessation of construction of the southern border wall—within seven days at the most—and “the redirection of funds” allocated for that purpose. Another executive order annulled a previous one that involved robust efforts to locate and deport illegal immigrants. According to the assessment of the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, Biden’s “immigration policies are among the most progressive of any president” aimed not only at reversing Trump’s ""America First"" policy, but also “the policies designed and/or administered by previous presidents.” Sanctuary For Criminal Predators? Just how radical the new approach is can be gauged by a report that eighteen state attorney generals implored the White House to reverse a recent decision to shelve an operation targeting illegal immigrants with convictions for sex crimes. One concerned attorney general warned: “The cancellation of this program effectively broadcasts to the world that the United States is now a sanctuary jurisdiction for sexual predators…This message creates a perverse incentive for foreign sexual predators to seek to enter the United States illegally...” Of course, it is impossible to deny that the U.S. has benefitted immeasurably from the waves of immigrants, who have arrived on its shores over the centuries, bringing with them creativity, talent, ingenuity, and grit. Thus, a February 2 executive order aptly states: “[Immigrants] have helped the United States lead the world in science, technology, and innovation… Our Nation is enriched socially and economically by the presence of immigrants…” The American Ethos and Immigration Indeed in my recent ""De-Americanizing America,"" I wrote that for well over the last half-century, the United States has arguably been the most remarkable — and certainly the most powerful and prosperous — country globally — a magnet for immigrants around the world, wishing to partake in the material plenty and political and intellectual liberty it can provide. In many ways, it has been an inspiring — if not unblemished — model, showing how widely disparate societal elements can be synthesized into a functioning and cohesive entity, welding broad ethnic diversity, social tolerance, religious freedom, and individual liberties into a binding sense of national identity, that helped propel a highly effective and inclusive socio-political unit. In essence, this success was fueled by an ethos of rugged individualism, self-reliance and personal responsibility. It fostered a sense of national exceptionalism and propelled it to rarely surpassed heights of achievement in virtually every field of human endeavor. However, immigrants can only contribute beneficially to American society if they absorb and internalize its values and they themselves become absorbed and integrated into the overarching socio-cultural fabric of the host nation — otherwise they will, almost inevitably, become an onerous and disruptive element. An Unavoidable Outcome But when immigrants arrive in unrestricted, unregulated masses, such integration and absorption are liable to be very difficult, indeed, virtually impossible. Thus, the social values and mores to which they are liable to be exposed and in which they remain immersed, are those of their country of origin, which they left, rather than those of the country of destination, in which they reside. As the presence of such immigrant inflows increase, the environment in which they live will inevitably begin to resemble that which they left. Thus, for example, instead of a Mexican immigrant becoming Americanized, more and more of America will be transformed into Mexico. Accordingly, the inevitable outcome of the sustained application of the emerging mode of governance adopted by the Biden administration will be to transform America into an unrecognizable remnant of its former self, increasingly reminiscent of realities in South and Central America. This will induce accelerating emigration, with increasing portions of the more mobile and successful population fleeing higher taxes, socio-cultural alienation, and economic decline. Increasingly unable to compete in international markets, the U.S. will fall into steep decline, reeling ever closer to the status of a third-world nation — with a decaying nuclear arsenal — unable to keep up with more virile rivals. Soon it will begin to resemble the lands the immigrants left behind far more than the land to which they flocked — and with that, jeopardizing the very Union which, for over two centuries, held it together so successfully. Martin Sherman is the founder & executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and served for seven years in operational capacities in Israel's intelligence community. Sherman lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He holds several university degrees — B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance) and PhD in political science/international relations. He was the first academic director of the internationally renowned Herzliya Conference and has authored two books as well as numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He was born in South Africa and has lived in Israel since 1971. Read Martin Sherman's Reports — More Here.",-1.32640030727576 """The Talk"" will remain on hiatus amid an ongoing probe into the Sharon Osbourne controversy. CBS initially put the show on hold last Sunday for two days but extended that break as it launched an investigation into the Osbourne. ""The Talk,"" which was initially scheduled to return on March 22, is now expected to return in several days, according to People. The announcement comes as Osbourne faces allegations of racism following a heated exchange with co-host Sheryl Underwood over comments Piers Morgan made about Meghan Markle's revelations in her tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Osbourne defended Morgan prompting Underwood to state that ""while you are standing by your friend, it appears that you are giving validation or safe haven to something that he has uttered that is racist."" Osbourne responded by saying: ""I feel like I’m about to be put in the electric chair, because I have a friend who many people think is racist, so that makes me a racist."" She later apologized on Twitter, explaining that she ""panicked"" and felt ""blindsided"" but shortly after, former ""The Talk"" co-hosts Leah Remini and Holly Robinson Peete came forth with allegations of racism against Osbourne, prompting CBS to launch an internal review. Osbourne has since spoken out, claiming that CBS executives set her up by ordering producers of ""The Talk"" to have her co-hosts bring up questions about tweets she had posted supporting and defending Morgan. ""I blame the network for it,"" she told Variety. ""I was blindsided, totally blindsided by the whole situation. In my 11 years, this was the first time I was not involved with the planning of the segment."" The network addressed the controversy in a statement: ""CBS is committed to a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace across all of our productions. We’re also very mindful of the important concerns expressed and discussions taking place regarding events on 'The Talk.'""",-1.0165518198507777 "Actor Armie Hammer is facing accusations of sexual assault.y Police launched an investigation after a woman came forth with allegations that he raped her for several hours and performed sexually violent acts on her. The ""Social Network"" star has denied the claims that his accuser, who identified herself as Effie, has now publicly shared. ""He abused me mentally, emotionally, and sexually,"" she said Thursday during a press conference held by her attorney, Gloria Allred, according to CNN. Effie and Hammer were reportedly intimately involved from 2016 to 2020. Effie said he pushed her boundaries and grew ""increasingly more violent"" as time went on. Then, on April 24, 2017, he allegedly raped her for over four hours. He also reportedly committed violent acts that included using a crop to beat her feet to the point that she could not walk for the next week. ""I thought that he was going to kill me,"" Effie said. ""He repeatedly slapped my head against a wall bruising my face. He also committed other acts of violence against me to which I did not consent,"" Effie further stated, per Fox News. Hammer's attorney, Andrew Brettler, dismissed her claims as ""outrageous."" All Hammer's interactions with her, as well as his other partners, ""have been completely consensual, discussed, and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory,"" he said. In a statement, Brettler said Effie sent his client ""graphic texts"" in which she told him ""what she wanted him to do to her."" He responded by ""making it clear that he did not want to maintain that type of relationship"" with her. ""It was never Mr. Hammer's intention to embarrass or expose [her] fetishes or kinky sexual desires, but she has now escalated this matter to another level by hiring a civil lawyer to host a public press conference,"" Brettler said in the statement that included a screenshot of a sexually-explicit text conversation between Hammer and Effie. Evidence has been turned over to law enforcement, Allred said, adding that there were currently no plans to file a lawsuit. ""We do think it is important that an investigation of these serious allegations is conducted,"" she said. ""We look forward to learning if Mr. Hammer, rather than his representatives, will be willing to assist investigators in their search for the truth.""",-0.1165187355304346 "It's National Women's History Month, so lets celebrate the Women who changed automotive history. You may not realize that reason you have some great features and technologies in your vehicle because women didn't like the original method and invented a better solution. The first woman to drive a car was Bertha Benz, she was a pioneer, she also took the first road trip in a car. Bertha Benz was married to Carl Benz and supported him in the invention of the automobile. No one was very interested in his motorcar until Bertha and their sons took a now-famous road trip. Without Carl's knowledge, Bertha and the boys snuck the car out of Carl's workshop and took it on the first-long-distance road trip, from Mannheim to Pforzheim. It was a rough ride on roads built for horses and carriages. She made several repairs during her journey and even invented the first brake pad, made of leather, when the car's wooden brakes failed. But she is the first women to test drive a car. But this is just the beginning, these inventions make your life easier. Stay till the end, and I'll tell you about my design that changed the automotive aftermarket. Margaret Wilcox was a trailblazer. Born in 1838, she was one of the very few female engineers of the time. In 1893, she received the patent for the interior car heater when she engineered a system that pulled the heat from the engine then redirected the air inside the cabin of the car which kept its occupants warm. The revolutionary system became the basis of all future car heating systems. Wilcox was one of the first ever female mechanical engineers responsible for life-changing inventions such as the bake pan, combined clothes and dishwasher machine and the home heater. Mary Anderson and Charlotte Bridgwood invented the windshield wipers that help us to drive safely in rain and snow. Mary Anderson noticed that when it was snowing that drivers would stop every few blocks to clear off the windscreen. Mary created a hand operating device, with a hand operated handle on the inside and a rubber blade on the outside. A patent was granted to her in 1903. Manufacturers thought this had no value. She never made any money with the patent because it expired before manufacturers realized this was necessary. She became a successful developer. In 1917, Charlotte Bridgwood upgraded the wiper to be electrically operated, her design used rollers instead of blades to clean a windshield. Anderson and Bridgwood were too smart for their time because their patents expired after not getting enough attention from automakers. Little did they know windshield wipers would eventually become a standard feature in all cars. By 1922, Cadillac took Anderson's idea and applied it to their own cars as standard, with other manufacturers quickly hopping onto the bandwagon. At one point in automotive history, brake lights and turn signals didn't exist until silent-film actress Florence Lawrence saw the need. Drivers would use hand signals or nothing. Enter Florence Lawrence who starred in over 300 films and effectively became one of the world's first ever movie celebrity. She made a ton of money from her career and was rich enough to be able to purchase a motorcar. Driving was an activity that Lawrence found great enjoyment in; it was said to give her a brilliant sense of freedom and independence. There were just a couple of things missing and she decided to invent them! In 1913, Lawrence invented a device called the Auto Signaling Arm, a special mechanism which worked as a signaling arm to inform other motorists of which direction the driver was heading. This would form the basis of turning signals and was a revolutionary idea, as occupants usually lifted their arms left or right to indicate their intended direction. Lawrence then created a sign which would pop up on the back of the car upon pressing the brake pedal. The sign simply read the word, 'Stop'. In case you can't guess already, this formed the basis of the brake light! Dorothy Levitt invented the rear-view mirror. Levitt was the first British female racing driver and a pioneer of women in the automotive sector. She taught Queen Alexandra how to drive alongside the then royal princesses. She even holds the world's first water speed record. She wrote a book titled 'The Woman and the Car' which was published in 1909. In it, there was a recommendation that women drivers should always have a little mirror inside the car while driving. She stressed that it must be placed in a convenient spot so that things behind were visible. That formed the basis of the rear-view mirror, and manufacturers quickly caught on as it became a feature a few years later in 1914. June McCarrol invented road lane separation. She was a nurse who was involved in a pretty scary incident in 1917. While driving her Ford Model T, a truck was approaching in the opposite direction, forcing her to swerve off the road to avoid a nasty crash. She then had an idea which would change the roads forever. She personally painted a set of white lines across that road. The street is now known as Indio Boulevard in California. The idea was to separate traffic onto each side to avoid head-on incidents. By 1924, her idea was adopted by the California Highway Commission which made the center lines mandatory and proceeded to paint 3,500 miles of road lines across the county. Soon afterward, every state followed suit for drivers' safety. Many believe that in 1906 Edward Hines of Michigan made claim to be the inventor. Either way, the roads are much safer. Katharine Blodgett, an engineer and scientist, invented the non-reflective glass and anti-glare windshields. In 1926, at age 21, Blodgett was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Physics at Cambridge University. In 1938, she developed a liquid soap that, when 44 layers were spread over glass, would allow 99% of light to pass through. Her development paved the way for future engineers to create a more durable coating that wouldn't wipe off.",1.0439734281474677 "The economy is in a ""strong recovery"" from the pandemic shutdown, but the Biden administration wants to throw a ""wet blanket"" on a hot economy with proposed tax hikes, says former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore. ""You have to go back to the '70s to remember when tax rates would be as high as they'd be under the Biden plan,"" Moore said Sunday during an appearance on ""The Cats Roundtable"" on WABC 770 AM-N.Y. ""We're talking about higher taxes on capital gains income. We’re talking about higher small business taxes. We're talking about our corporate rate going up to one of the highest rates in the world. There is also an increase in the death tax. There is talk of a wealth tax. ""I think this is throwing a wet blanket on a hot economy."" Moore told host John Catsimatidis that locked down blue states like New York and industries like movie theaters and cruise lines are ready to get rolling again. ""If we want to get this economy booming again why would we be talking about $1 trillion or $2 trillion of higher taxes?"" Moore lamented. Despite the threat of rising interest rates and massive spending after President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion spending package that passed earlier this month, Moore hailed the ""strong recovery"" the economic signs are pointing to. ""This is the worst possible time to be raising taxes on American businesses and investors and consumers; we need to let the economy grow,"" Moore said. Democrats are taking about coming after the wealthy, but supply-side economics of the Trump administration has managed to help the U.S. economy boom before the pandemic. Also, Moore said, the tax-hike sales pitch is pulling the wool over Americans' eyes. The tax hikes will ultimately trickle down to everyone. ""When they say we're only going to soak the rich, my line is, 'Everybody get an umbrella because they're coming after you, too,'"" Moore concluded.",1.356383806662097 "Education mastermind John Dewey transformed the way we approach teaching and learning. He had the right idea, that is to engage the mind in learning, over a century ago: “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking: learning naturally results.” Learn by doing. It’s simple and it’s still revolutionary. Roblox is putting Dewey’s 19th and 20th century genius into 21st century practice. Think about how you learn to cook. A chef can tell you what to do, but until you start mixing ingredients and applying heat, it’s all theoretical. Roblox, a publicly traded company now valued at over $40 billion, is in the John Dewey zone. Born in 1859, Dewey received a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, becoming the quintessential thinker in a school of philosophy called Pragmatism. He is still a seminal figure in the progressive educational reform movement that emerged in the first half of the 20th century. One of that school’s main themes was that top-down teaching, or what William Glasser in his book The Quality School calls boss-led teaching, or authoritarian models of instruction, should be replaced with a curriculum that focuses on real-world experiences. In Dewey’s world, the democratization of education meant that schools should be “an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society and permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history and science … ” (The School and Society). Dewey once said that we should teach chemistry by having students cook breakfast. And why shouldn’t we? Imagination and motivation are built right in. What Dewey advocated for education we might today call entrepreneur education. There is another innovative education company, which is currently private, that students, professionals, and investors should keep an eye on. Founded by Roger James Hamilton, a futurist and New York Times best-selling author, Genius Group, is global entrepreneur education company. Through its ed-tech arm, GeniusU, they have already served 1.4 million students in 200 countries with hands-on, live, interactive entrepreneur-based content where students and professionals learn about the trends shaping the digital decade, artificial intelligence, digital currencies, decentralized finance, the metaverse, and more. Roblox is doing a version of that, but its bacon and eggs are ones and zeroes. Roblox is the highest valued content-based ed tech company in the $10 trillion global ed tech industry. It was co-founded in 2004 by David Baszucki, an entrepreneur, inventor, and engineer ranked by Goldman Sachs in 2018 as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. In January, the San Mateo, California-based company, which teaches kids how to create and code their own educational games, raised $520 million and now maintains a $40 billion-plus valuation. That’s nearly three times the valuation of the previously highest valued edtech company, Yuanfudao, a China-based K-12 online tutoring company valued at $15 billion. In a TechCrunch article, Baszucki explained that the genesis for Roblox came from his previous company called Knowledge Revolution, which made teaching software that allowed students to “simulate physics experiments,” which students ultimately turned into a game. Welcome to the gamification of education. Kids now spend far more time engaging with video games than watching TV, and research shows modest game-playing improves key skills because it’s active, not passive. Teaching kids by letting them build their own games comes with built-in motivation. Roblox leverages that motivation. Roblox meets John Dewey, 199 million users in this “embryonic community” (RTrack), learning real-life skills, solving real-life problems in a fun, interactive, collaborative environment with a working end product as the goal. Roblox now has an estimated 36.2 million daily active users, subscribers who are creating their own metaverse, with some of them making money from selling educational games they create on the Roblox platform. Wow. Students create and can sell their own new, engaging material, games that teach solving real-life problems. Roblox’s growth has been nothing short of astounding, driven by innovative content, a decentralized learning system with robust, easy-to-use technology, and the COVID-19 pandemic. According to backlinko.com, learners spent 8.71 billion hours of user engagement on Roblox in the third quarter of 2020, up from 2.1 billion hours in early 2018.” In fact, Roblox added 5 billion hours of engagement in the first 3 quarters of 2020 alone.” Revenue for Roblox reached $587 million for the first nine months of 2020, up 68% over the previous nine months. With their Roblox studio platform, a user can “create anything and release with one click to smartphones, tablets, desktops, consoles, and virtual reality devices.” Roblox also offers free lesson materials, with coding training to develop games that teach history, geography, art, and more. So here we have it, Dewey’s progressive educational ideas packaged in 21st-century technology. Roblox gives the students something to do, not just something to learn; and that doing leads to results that may become viable creative enterprises. The revolutionary thinking of John Dewey runs deep in the ed-tech revolution. Congratulations, Roblox. Job well done. Dr. Michael Busler, Ph.D., is a public policy analyst and a professor of finance at Stockton University in Galloway, New Jersey, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in finance and economics. He has written op-ed columns in major newspapers for more than 35 years.",-1.002814281158588 "The Federal Reserve concluded its two-day meeting on March 17 announcing that it will maintain interest rates and bond purchases while upgrading its economic forecast. Seven officials — up from five previously — see a rate rise in 2023 and economic growth is put at 6.5% — up from 4.2% — in 2021. This was a tricky and critical meeting for the Fed as they had to communicate a balance between a Covid-scarred economy and a booming outlook. It was a fine line to walk and, clearly, they don’t want to hamper a recovery that’s just getting going. Their continuing support will put markets at ease, as will the optimistic growth forecasts for the world’s largest economy as it looks ahead to the post-pandemic era. Against this backdrop of ultra-low interest rates and potentially the fastest growth in decades, understandably investors will now be seeking to top-up their portfolios to grow their wealth. However, those building up their portfolios should avoid being drawn into a rotation trap. “The danger is the massive hype surrounding rotation from growth stocks – those expected to grow sales and earnings at a faster rate than the market average – into value stocks. It should not be a case of either value or growth stocks. A properly diversified portfolio needs to have both. As I said here recently, “It’s likely we’ll maintain some lockdown habits like working from home more often, but we’ll also be back in the gym; we’ll travel and go to public events again, but we’ll also be more conscious of the environment and hygiene procedures. “In short, value stocks are in revival mode, but does anyone suddenly seriously think Amazon, Google, and Tesla are not companies of the future also?” As for concerns of longer-term inflation, such fears are, for now at least, premature. We can expect some price growth as economies reopen, but this is likely to be short term. I think, as it stands now, longer-term inflation fears, due to pent-up demand are being overplayed. For example, people might book one trip away, but they are unlikely to book five or six in one hit. There’s a wave of economic growth on its way and interest rates are set to remain low. Investors should use this time to build their wealth by topping up their portfolios — but they must do so judiciously. Nigel Green is founder and CEO of deVere Group. One of the world's largest independent financial advisory organizations, de Vere does business in 100 countries and has more than $12 billion under advisement.",-1.377458866512859 "When it comes to finances, nobody is perfect. If you are in your 50s however, it is incredibly important to be wise about the decisions you make. That is because retirement is just a few years away and, you can still grow your savings, but you do not have as much time as you once did. The key is to make sound financial choices. The first step? Avoid making these seven money mistakes, which were recently outlined by Cheapism. 1. Lifestyle upgrade. It is common for us to upgrade our lifestyle according to our salaries. By the time you reach your 50s, your paycheck is probably much fatter than it was a few years ago. It might be tempting to splash out a bit on your lifestyle however, financial coach Lauren Rilling advises against this. You need to first make sure you are saving for your retirement as well as future expenses before spending any additional income, she said. 2. Underestimating your costs in retirement. You might think certain expenses will no longer apply once you have retired. The house will be paid off, your children can look after themselves, and you will save money on your daily commute and all those lunches. Cory Nichols, the owner of Yes Life Financial, warned against underestimating your spending habits during retirement. ""The reality is, in retirement you have more time and therefore you do more things. Things cost money,"" he said. 3. Tackling your bucket-list. You have spent your life working, paying bills, and planning for retirement, so why not enjoy life a bit? We all have a list of things we would like to do at least once in our lives and while ticking some of those off are not a bad idea, avoid going overboard. First, focus on making important and realistic investments that can give you financial security when it comes time to retire, said Igor Mitic, co-founder of the financial news site Fortunly. ""Once you are comfortably retired and have your finances in order, then you can consider revisiting your bucket list,"" he said. 4. Not clearing up your debt. You will want to clear up as much of your debt as possible before retirement. Many people make the mistake of going into retirement with credit card and bank loan debt, Mitic said. It is best to minimize as many of your expenses for retirement as possible. 5. Not having an emergency fund. Things can go wrong during retirement, and you will want to have an emergency fund if they do. Whether it is an unexpected bill or sudden loss of income, it is best to be prepared, said Greg Klingler, director of wealth management for the Government Employees' Benefit Association (GEBA). ""A good baseline is three to six months of expenses in liquid cash,"" he recommended. 6. Skimping on investments to fund your children's education. It is important to put money aside for your children's education but make sure it is not at the expense of your future in retirement, advised Edith Muthoni, the chief editor at LearnBonds. ""Stop viewing your children as an investment and start pushing for a balance between your retirement plans and other financial commitments,"" she said. 7. Not diversifying your investment portfolio. The best decision you can make for retirement is to diversify your portfolio, according to Muthoni. The mistake most people in their 50s make is that they either invest too aggressively or too conservatively. If you are too aggressive, your savings are exposed to high risks, but if you are too conservative, you miss out on possible investment wins. ""You need to master the art of maintaining a healthy investment portfolio that balances between high-risk and high-reward investments,"" Muthoni said.",1.044963580265125 "MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico announced Monday that several top U.S. advisors on border and immigration issues will meet with Mexican officials on Tuesday to discuss migration and development in Central America. The talks come as a surge of migrants has hit the U.S. southern border. The trip to Mexico will include Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s lead adviser on the border, and Juan González, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere. Roberto Velasco, Mexico’s director for North American affairs, said the talks will focus on the two countries “joint efforts for secure, safe and regulated migration,"" and plans to provide economic development in southern Mexico and Central America so people won't come under pressure to migrate. Since Biden’s inauguration, the U.S. has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountered by border officials. There were 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children encountered in February — an increase of 168% and 63%, respectively, from the month before, according to the Pew Research Center. U.S. border patrol officials had encountered more than 29,000 unaccompanied minors since Oct. 1, nearly the same number of youths taken into custody for all of the previous budget year, according to administration officials. Mexico announced restrictions last week on nonessential travel across its southern border with Guatemala and Belize “to prevent the spread of COVID-19,"" and sent hundreds of immigration agents and National Guard to the southern border to clamp down on crossings. Mexico did not explain why the measure was announced now, more than a year after the start of the pandemic, but it came on the same day the U.S. confirmed it will send 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Mexico. Officials say migrant traffickers are encouraging people to make the trip by claiming the U.S. border is open to migrants, while Biden administration officials have stressed that the border is not open. Mexico has cooperated with U.S. efforts to stem the flow, while stressing that the problem can only be solved by addressing the root problems of poverty and joblessness that lead many to migrate. Mexico has proposed massive investment to promote economic development in those areas.",0.921185859863924 "BERLIN (AP) — The German government on Monday welcomed a decision by state authorities to examine the police response to a weekend anti-lockdown protest during which participants openly flouted coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Scuffles broke out between some of the 20,000 people participating in the protest in the central German city of Kassel on Saturday and counterdemonstrators trying to block their path. Footage showed police letting protesters march trough the city largely unhindered, with officers at one point forcefully hauling counterprotesters out of their path. The top security official of Hesse state, Peter Beuth, criticized protesters who had refused to wear masks, saying they put the lives of others at risk. “The federal government welcomes the willingness of Hesse's Interior Minister Beuth to, as he put it, thoroughly the review the entire police operation in Kassel,"" government spokeswoman Martina Fietz said. Germany has seen a rise in the number of coronavirus cases in recent weeks. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in the country has risen over the past two weeks from 9.95 per 100,000 people on March 7 to 15.54 new cases per 100,000 people on March 21. Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak",-0.34078056703579246 "SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Two Russian diplomats accused by Bulgarian prosecutors of espionage will be expelled from the country, Bulgaria’s foreign ministry announced Monday. The ministry said that the Russian Embassy in the capital, Sofia, has been notified that the diplomats have to leave Bulgaria within 72 hours. Earlier on Monday, prosecutors said in a statement that a pre-trial investigation established that “two Russian citizens with diplomatic immunity have carried out illegal intelligence activities.” It added that the suspects could not be charged with espionage because of their diplomatic immunity.",1.8450669364487944 "DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s state-backed oil giant Aramco paid the Saudi government 30% less in taxes in 2020, the company reported Monday, as the region’s largest economy grapples with the pressures of the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices. Saudi Arabian Oil Co, the kingdom’s largest taxpayer, transferred $110 billion to the government in 2020, down from nearly $159 billion the year before. The kingdom's 2021 budget plans to spend $263 billion, showing the significance of Aramco's payments to state coffers. The state-controlled company’s public figures offer key insight into the financial health of the kingdom, which relies on the energy sector for 80% of its exports and two-thirds of its financial revenues. That's despite Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious efforts to diversify the economy away from oil. The firm stuck to its promise to pay out $75 billion in dividends for the year. Still, the decline came as its royalties and income taxes more than halved. Nearly all of the dividend money goes to the Saudi government, which owns more than 98% of the company. Aramco announced on Sunday that its profits fell some 44% in 2020 to $49 billion, amid turmoil in global energy markets unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic. As virus-induced lockdowns slashed oil demand, the price of international benchmark Brent crude plummeted to all-time lows in April of last year. Despite Aramco’s steep losses, the company managed to keep its dividend pledge to shareholders by taking on a ballooning amount of debt. Aramco’s net debt to equity ratio more than doubled — to 55% in 2020 from 26% in 2019. The Saudi-based asset management firm Jadwa Investment reported that the kingdom’s fiscal deficit hit $79 billion in 2020, or 12% of gross domestic product, far surpassing previous estimates. The budget deficit has widened each year since oil prices dropped in 2014, prompting the government to borrow heavily and accelerate its shift away from oil largess. The kingdom has cut back some subsidies, tripled the value-added tax to 15% and accelerated its search for non-oil revenue.",-0.15175239015373532 "PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s newly-elected parliament held its first session Monday and is expected to nominate the country's new prime minister. The new parliament comes after the Feb. 14 election in which Albin Kurti’s left-wing Self-Determination Movement, or Vetevendosje!, won the most votes, but the party still needs the votes of non-Serb minority parties to create a new Cabinet. Vetevendosje! won 58 out of the parliament’s 120 seats. After their swearing-in, the new lawmakers voted to elect the new speaker, Glauk Konjufca of Vetevendosje!, and his deputies. Kosovo's acting president will send to parliament a letter of nomination for Kurti, who Vetevendosje! has designated as prime minister. The parliament may convene again in the afternoon. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after a brutal 1998-1999 war between separatist ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces, which ended after a 78-day NATO air campaign that drove Serb troops out and a peacekeeping force moved in. Most Western nations have recognized Kosovo's sovereignty, but Serbia and its allies Russia and China don’t. Tensions over Kosovo remain a source of volatility in the Balkans.",-1.2756991293049544 "There has been a rise in internet searches about whether people who received COVID-19 vaccines can spread the disease to others. Experts say that the current vaccines available do not contain SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and therefore cannot make you more contagious. According to Newsweek, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains that the three U.S. approved COVID-19 vaccines teach our bodies how to recognize COVID-19, and unlike several other vaccines, do not contain a piece of the virus itself. While the vaccines can cause side effects, experts say that this means the drugs are working. The CDC says: ""Sometimes this process can cause symptoms, such as fever. These symptoms are normal and are a sign that the body is building protection against the virus."" And the agency warns that it takes time for the vaccines to do their job. ""It typically takes a few weeks for the body to build immunity after vaccination. That means it's possible a person could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 just before or just after vaccination and still get sick. This is because the vaccine has not had enough time to provide protection."" There are three vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. As of March 17, at least 113,037,627 doses had been administered and roughly 12% of the U.S. was fully vaccinated, according to Newsweek. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology to impart immunity. The CDC explains that mRNA vaccines work by teaching our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. ""COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the ‘spike protein,’ says the CDC. ""The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19. ""Once the mRNA instructions are inside the immune cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them. ""Next, the cell displays the protein piece on its surface. Our immune systems recognize that the protein does not belong there and begins building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19. ""At the end of the process, our bodies have learned how to protect against future infection. The benefit of mRNA vaccines, like all vaccines, is those vaccinated gain this protection without ever having to risk the serious consequences of getting sick with COVID-19,"" concludes the agency. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine works by a similar technique using instructions and genetic material from an engineered virus, but not the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself, according to Newsweek. With all three vaccines, people will not be contagious because of their inoculation. However, vaccinated people can still spread COVID-19, so experts say that wearing a mask and social distancing are recommended. Dr. Sandro Cinti, an infectious disease expert at the University of Michigan, said that people who are vaccinated may still infect others. ""You have to wear your mask,"" he told CNN. The clinical trials of the vaccine candidates only tracked those individuals who developed COVID-19 symptoms but since 40% of people are asymptomatic, you could still have the virus in your nose and infect others, said Cinti.",-0.6476328425211273 "Calls to U.S. poison centers about incidents involving children and high-powered magnets surged more than 400% after a court overturned a ban on the magnets, a new study finds. ""Regulations on these products were effective, and the dramatic increase in the number of high-powered magnet related injuries since the ban was lifted — even compared to pre-ban numbers — is alarming,"" said Dr. Leah Middelberg. She's lead author of the study and emergency medicine physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital, in Columbus, Ohio. The small magnets began showing up in toys in the early 2000s and have caused thousands of injuries. They're considered among the most dangerous ingestion hazards in kids, because when more than one is swallowed, the magnets attract to each other across tissue, cutting off blood supply to the bowel and causing obstructions, tissue death, sepsis, and even death, according to Nationwide Children's. In 2012, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) halted sale of high-powered magnet sets and ordered a recall. Then it introduced a rule that effectively eliminated their sale, but the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the rule in December 2016. In this study, researchers analyzed calls to U.S. poison centers from 2008 through October 2019 for magnet exposures in children aged 19 years and younger. The average annual number of cases fell 33% between 2012 to 2017 due to the ban, but rose 444% after it was lifted. There was also a 355% increase in the number of cases that were serious enough to require hospital treatment. Cases from 2018 and 2019 increased in all age groups and accounted for 39% of magnet cases since 2008. ""Regulations on these products were effective, and the dramatic increase in the number of high-powered magnet-related injuries since the ban was lifted — even compared to pre-ban numbers — is alarming,"" Middelberg said in a hospital news release. In all, there were over 5,700 magnet exposures during the nearly 12-year study period. Most calls involved boys (55%); kids under age 6 (62%); and unintentional injury (84%). Nearly half (48.4%) of patients were treated at a hospital or other health care facility while 48.7% were managed at another site, such as a home, workplace, or school. Older kids were more likely than younger ones to be admitted to the hospital. The study was published online recently in the Journal of Pediatrics. Middelberg noted that parents don't always know if their child swallowed something or what they swallowed. ""They just know their child is uncomfortable — so when children are brought in, an exam and sometimes X-rays are needed to determine what's happening,"" she said in a hospital news release. ""Because damage caused by magnets can be serious, it's so important to keep these kinds of magnets out of reach of children, and ideally out of the home."" The researchers support federal legislation to limit the strength and/or size of magnets sold as part of a set, as well as reinstatement of a CPSC federal safety standard that would effectively restrict sale of magnet products.",0.19860620307244345 "A new study finds that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continues to hamper people long after childhood ends. Researchers found that adults with ADHD often have a harder time holding their own in the workforce. High school graduates with ADHD earn about 17% less than their peers without ADHD, are more likely to have stints of unemployment and to receive disability benefits because of their inability to work, according to a large study out of Sweden. These differences are only partially explained by how far along these kids got in school. Instead, ""factors such as school performance, behavioral aspects [e.g., inattention/hyperactivity], and others are likely of continued importance for occupational outcomes as individuals diagnosed with ADHD enter the labor market,"" said study author Andreas Jangmo, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. The research, published March 17 in the journal PLOS ONE, was funded by ADHD drugmaker Shire International GmbH. Marked by trouble concentrating, sitting still and/or controlling impulsive behaviors, ADHD symptoms often continue into adulthood, according to the organization Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD). To get a better idea of how kids with ADHD fare in the workforce as adults, Jangmo and colleagues followed 1.2 million Swedes for 6 to 16 years after high school graduation. Their information was then compared to a population-wide registry that tracks psychiatric diagnoses, medication use, education levels and job history. ADHD tends to accompany other conditions such as speech and language disorders, which is why many people with ADHD in this study ended up on disability. ""Our study shows that this occupational gap between individuals with and without ADHD is persistent over time, and starts already in young adulthood,"" Jangmo said. The study was not designed to say whether treating ADHD in childhood and beyond — usually with a combo of medications, therapy and behavioral changes — is enough to reverse any of these employment trends. But U.S experts not involved in the research said they believe that effective treatment of ADHD in childhood will help these kids become more successful adults at home, in relationships and on the job. ""Problems in controlling attention and controlling behavior — core problems in ADHD — hinder the capacity to learn and apply skills,"" said Richard Gallagher, an associate professor of psychiatry at Hassenfeld Children's Hospital at NYU Langone in New York City. People with ADHD enter the job market with less knowledge and fewer skills, he said. ""Once employed, the condition can interfere with job performance so it has an impact on advancement,"" Gallagher said. But, he added, kids and teens who continue their treatment have better outcomes than those who do not or who interrupt treatment. ""They show better school and work performance, have fewer legal difficulties, and use illicit substances at a lower rate,"" Gallagher said. Dr. L. Eugene Arnold is a professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State University College of Medicine. He agreed with Gallagher. ""If children go untreated, they are missing out on developmental opportunities, and this deficit will be a problem for them later on,"" Arnold said. ""Later achievements may not be attained because of a lack of foundation, and that is how treatment in childhood could affect adult adjustment."" Although the study took place in Sweden, the results are likely similar in the United States and other countries, Arnold said.",1.038116263189531 "The trauma and loss of stroke can often leave survivors with long-term depression, and women appear to be at special risk, new research shows. ""We did not expect that the cumulative risk of depression would remain so persistently elevated,"" said study author Dr. Laura Stein, an assistant professor of neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, in New York City. She said that, all too often, ""post-stroke depression is not simply a transient consequence of difficulties adjusting to life after stroke."" In the study, Stein's team analyzed data from Medicare patients aged 65 and older who were hospitalized for either ischemic stroke (more than 174,000) or heart attack (more than 193,000) from July 2016 to Dec. 31, 2017. An ischemic stroke is the most common form of stroke and is caused by blocked blood flow to the brain. The patients were followed for an average of 1.5 years. Those with any history of depression within the six months before their stroke or heart attack were excluded. While depression can affect any heart patient, Stein's group found the risk for depression was about 50% higher among stroke survivors than among heart attack survivors. Anxiety often played a role: A history of anxiety was found in 10.3% of stroke patients and 11.8% of heart attack patients, and stroke patients with a history of anxiety were nearly twice as likely to develop depression as those without anxiety, the study showed. Gender and younger age also seemed to matter: Patients 75 and older were 19% less likely to be diagnosed with depression compared to younger patients, and women who'd survived a stroke were 20% more likely to develop depression compared to male survivors. The findings are from two preliminary studies to be presented later this month at the virtual American Stroke Association's annual meeting. ""Depression following stroke is almost three times as common as it is in the general population and may affect up to a third of stroke patients,"" Stein said in an association news release. She's also an attending neurologist at Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai Queens Stroke Centers in New York City. One specialist unconnected to the new study said the findings echo the experience of many patients. Brittany LeMonda is senior neuropsychologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She said the reason why stroke is more apt to lead to depression than heart attack is clear: ""Individuals who suffer stroke may also experience greater disability – and loss of autonomy – whereas heart attack patients do not typically endure the same degree of life changes."" Spotting those patients at highest risk for post-stroke depression may be crucial ""for rapid intervention and better outcomes,"" she added. Stein agreed. ""Our current findings highlight the need for active screening and treatment for depression in the time period immediately and well after the stroke, and the importance of screening all stroke patients for post-stroke depression, including women and those with a history of mental illness,"" she said. Dr. Andrew Rogove directs stroke services at South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, N.Y. He offered up one caveat to the study, noting that ""the population studied was over 65 years old. It would be interesting to see the rates of post-stroke depression in a younger population and to assess whether there are gender differences in the frequency of post-stroke depression in this population."" Because the findings are to be presented at a medical meeting, they should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.",0.01056998536649245 "When a traveler became stricken at Newark Liberty International Airport, the police got an assist from a celebrity doctor: Mehmet Oz. The incident occurred late Monday night when Port Authority Officer Jeffrey Croissant saw the 60-year-old man fall to the floor near a baggage claim area. Croissant called for backup, and immediately began performing CPR on the unidentified man, who wasn't breathing and didn't appear to have a pulse, according to the Port Authority. When another person came over to help, Croissant didn’t immediately recognize it was Oz, the cardiac surgeon and longtime host of TV’s “Dr. Oz Show,” who had arrived on the same flight. The two performed CPR together on the man until three other officers brought oxygen and a defibrillator for the man, who eventually regained a pulse and was taken to a hospital for evaluation. “What better help than to have a cardiac surgeon?"" Croissant said afterward. Dr. Oz's popular column appears on Newsmax Health.",-0.5965404162432097 "A four-year college degree is becoming the key to living a longer life in the United States, a new study argues. In fact, education appears to be a more potent factor in determining lifespan now than race, researchers say. In the study, white and Black people who earned a bachelor's degree experienced an overall increase in their average adult life expectancy between 2010 and 2018. On the other hand, people without a college degree tended to have fewer expected years left to them. This ""education gap"" in life expectancy more than doubled between 1990 and 2018 for both Black and white Americans — at the same time that race-based differences in life expectancy decreased by 70%, researchers said. About one-third of Americans have a four-year college degree, and they are living longer and more prosperous lives while the rest face rising death rates and declining prospects, said researcher Angus Deaton, a professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Health Policy and Economics. ""The importance of having a BA has been increasing, while the importance of the color of your skin seems to be diminishing,"" Deaton said. ""The gap between Blacks and whites is narrowing, and the gaps between people who do and do not have a four-year college degree are widening."" Deaton places the blame for the education gap on diminishing economic opportunities afforded to people who don't go to college. Wages for people without a BA continue to decline, and automation and globalization have narrowed their career prospects, Deaton said. They also are more vulnerable to suffering a death of despair, either by suicide, drug overdose or addiction-related illness. ""The problem here is not so much that everybody doesn't have a BA,"" Deaton said. ""There are lots of people who don't want to have a four-year college degree, and shouldn't. What we really need to do is make good jobs for people who don't have a BA."" Without a four-year college diploma, it is increasingly difficult to build a meaningful and successful life in the United States, added Deaton, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who retired after 33 years at Princeton University. For this study, Deaton and his colleagues looked at what they refer to as adult life expectancy, or the life expectancy of people between ages 25 and 75. They combined U.S. federal death certificate data with population survey results to calculate mortality rates. They found that Black people with a BA tended to have 3.6 more expected years of life in 2018 than those without, compared with 1.4 years in 1990. A similar advantage held for white people with a college degree. They had 3.5 more expected years of life in 2018 than those who don't hold a degree. In 1990, the difference was 1.6 years. The findings were published March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Margaret Weden, acting director of the RAND Population Research Center, said the narrowing of the racial gap in life expectancy has been observed in prior studies. ""It suggested to me a real impact of the civil rights movement,"" Weden said. ""In these findings, you see a dramatic uptick for Blacks regardless of education."" However, the data set used by Deaton to make the education-based observation ""has been critiqued pretty robustly in the demographic literature"" because it combines information from two different sources that don't completely jibe, Weden said. The COVID-19 pandemic likely has shaken up these observations, particularly the narrowing of the racial gap in life expectancy, said Krutika Amin, associate director of the Kaiser Family Foundation Program on the ACA (Affordable Care Act). COVID has hit U.S. racial and ethnic groups particularly hard, and those deaths are not reflected in this data, Amin said. On the other hand, the pandemic might have fueled a further increase in the education gap, given that people without a college degree tend to work front-line jobs that carry increased risk of exposure to the coronavirus, Amin said. ""Folks who had higher education were able to work from home, whereas other folks didn't have that advantage,"" Amin said, adding that college-educated people might also have more time to take care of their personal health.",-1.2824748570650888 "Johnson & Johnson will launch its newly approved drug for adults with relapsing multiple sclerosis in the United States in early April at a similar price point to rival treatments, the company's unit said on Friday. With the approval, the drugmaker enters a market currently dominated by big names like Roche's Ocrevus, Novartis' Kesimpta and Gilenya, and Biogen's top-selling drug Tecfidera. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved J&J's treatment, Ponvory, as a daily oral drug to treat relapsing forms of MS, Janssen Pharmaceutical Co. said. Multiple sclerosis is a debilitating neurological condition in which the immune system eats away at the protective covering of nerves. J&J is pushing Ponvory as a once-daily oral treatment, as opposed to Kesimpta, which is injected by patients at home, or Ocrevus that is administered as an infusion in a clinic or hospital. The approval will be cause of concern for Biogen, as it is facing Tecfidera patent expiration and increasing competition in the MS landscape. The FDA approval was based on data from a two-year late-stage study where Ponvory demonstrated superior efficacy in significantly reducing annual relapses by about 30% compared to Sanofi's approved MS drug Aubagio, the company said. The drug has also outdone Aubagio at reducing fatigue among patients. J&J acquired Ponvory as part of its $30 billion buyout of Swiss biotech company Actelion in 2017, to diversify its drug portfolio as its biggest product, Remicade for arthritis, faced cheaper competition. Ponvory is also under review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).",0.27290338328624375 "Since President Joe Biden took office, the country’s borders are wide open and migrants know it, say immigration and law enforcement experts. Biden has reversed many of the Trump administration’s rules that tightened the country’s borders and limited the number of immigrants who entered the U.S. Now, experts say the border is on the verge of a crisis as the number of people lining up to cross into the country reaches thousands a day.",1.849411258905222 "The U.S. is already facing a forthcoming financial shortfall with the current Medicare system and healthcare policy experts say the problem will only be exacerbated if the program is ever expanded to a Medicare-for-All type system. Progressives are gunning to implement a single-payer system or form of socialized medicine in the U.S. and President Joe Biden campaigned on lowering the age for Medicare eligibility. Experts warn the current Medicare system is facing a financial crunch that wouldn’t be able to withstand monumental changes, especially as the country’s population ages rapidly.",-1.0407547442486447 "One week after his inauguration, President Joe Biden launched his $2 trillion environmental program with a promise to put “climate change at the center of our domestic, national security, and foreign policy.” He plans to eliminate coal, oil, and natural gas as electricity sources by 2035 and move from gasoline and diesel powered motor vehicles to electric, all with an eye toward attaining net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In addition to the projected cost, thousands of jobs have already been eliminated, projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline have been canceled in mid-stride, and the United States is in danger of once-again becoming energy dependent.",-0.9537910399074391 "Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector have started releasing illegal immigrants into the U.S. without a court date because there is no space to hold them due to a surge in crossings. Fox News, citing multiple border patrol agents, first reported on the releases. A senior source with Customs and Border Protection told the news outlet that immigrants were being registered into the system with biometrical data at a temporary outdoor processing site, forgoing the hours-long paperwork process to issue a Notice to Appear in court because the crisis has ""become so dire that [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately after apprehension"" due to space restrictions. Former President Donald Trump in a statement released Sunday slammed the Biden administration and called for an investigation into the ""huge cover-up."" ""We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history,"" Trump said. ""All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of just a few weeks, the Biden administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast."" Trump also called the performance of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday TV shows, ""a national disgrace"" and said his gag order on border agents and ICE officers should be ""the subject of an immediate congressional investigation."" Mayorkas said Sunday that the Biden administration has been expelling adults and families arriving at the U.S. southern border, but that children that are ""young, vulnerable"" would not be turned away. But he failed to give a timeline for when the Biden administration would open facilities capable of handling the surge of children at the border. CBP has over 5,000 unaccompanied children in custody, according to documents obtained by CNN. ""We established three new facilities last week. ... We are working on the system from beginning to end. We are working around the clock 24/7,"" Mayorkas told CNN's Dana Bash on ""State of the Union"" when pressed on the administration's timeline. ""We have dealt with surges in the past and the men and women of Department of Homeland Security will succeed."" The Biden administration is taking heat for restricting access to the border crisis, with CNN and Fox News calling Mayorkas out for the media blackout. ""He promised transparency … but has come up short so far,"" said CNN Pamela Brown. ""Sounds like an excuse,"" Fox host Chris Wallace said when Mayorkas said DHS was ""working on providing footage.""",-1.4326376052329743 "The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is considering releasing illegal border crossers who claim asylum without issuing a Notice to Appear (NTA) – meaning they will depart custody without a court date, according to Fox News. ""Such a decision would be unprecedented if enacted and would place the responsibility of seeking an asylum hearing on the migrants through Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or legal assistance. A source told Fox the situation has ""become so dire that BP [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately after apprehension because there is no space to hold people even to do necessary NTA paperwork."" The release of migrants without an NTA does not include unaccompanied minors, which have surged at the border, too, and have stressed out over capacity child detention centers. While the administration was working on immigration legislation to address long-term problems, it didn’t have an on-the-ground plan to manage a surge of migrants. Career immigration officials had warned there could be a surge after the presidential election and the news that the Trump policies, widely viewed as cruel, were being reversed. Now officials are scrambling to build up capacity to care for some 14,000 migrants now in federal custody — and more likely on the way — and the administration finds itself on its heels in the face of criticism that it should have been better prepared to deal with a predictable predicament. ""They should have forecasted for space [for young migrants] more quickly,"" said Ronald Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and chief of Border Patrol who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations. “And I think in hindsight, maybe they should have waited until they had additional shelter space before they changed the policies.” The situation at the southern border is complex. Since Biden’s inauguration, the U.S. has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountered by border officials. There were 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children encountered in February — an increase of 168% and 63%, respectively, from the month before, according to the Pew Research Center. That creates an enormous logistical challenge because children, in particular, require higher standards of care and coordination across agencies. Still, the encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families are lower than they were at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019. That May, authorities encountered more than 55,000 migrant children, including 11,500 unaccompanied minors, and about 84,500 migrants traveling in family units. Career immigration officials, overwhelmed by the earlier surges, have long warned the flow of migrants to the border could ramp up again. Biden administration officials have repeatedly laid blame for the current situation on the previous administration, arguing that Biden inherited a mess resulting from President Donald Trump’s undermining and weakening of the immigration system. The White House says it has taken several steps to address the situation. Migrant children are sent from border holding cells to other government facilities until they are released to a sponsor. That process was slowed considerably by a Trump administration policy of ""enhanced vetting,"" in which details were sent to immigration officials and some sponsors wound up getting arrested, prompting some to fear picking up children over worries of being deported. Biden has reversed that policy, so immigration officials hope the process will speed up now. The White House also points to Biden’s decision to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known for helping communities in the aftermath of a natural disaster, to support efforts to process the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the border. HHS announced Saturday it was opening an additional facility in West Texas to help with influx of unaccompanied minors. The facility will initially accommodate about 500 children but can be expanded to house 2,000. Biden and others have pushed back on the notion that what's happening now is a “crisis.” “We will have, I believe, by next month enough of those beds to take care of these children who have no place to go,” Biden said in a recent ABC News interview, when asked whether his administration should have anticipated the surge in young unaccompanied migrants as well as families and adults. He added, “Let’s get something straight though. The vast majority of people crossing the border are being sent back ... immediately sent back.” Adam Isacson, an analyst at the human rights advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America, said Republicans' insistence there is a ""crisis"" at the border is overwrought but the surge in migrants was predictable. He called it a perfect storm of factors: hurricanes that hit Central America last fall; the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic; typical seasonal migration patterns; the thousands of Central American migrants already stuck at the border for months; and the persistent scourge of gang violence afflicting Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Isacson said the Biden administration might have been ""2 or 3 weeks"" slow in preparing for the increase in unaccompanied young migrants and the subsequent housing crunch after announcing in early February it would stop deporting unaccompanied youths. But Isacson added] the bottleneck was also affected by the lack of cooperation by the Trump administration with the Biden transition. The Biden administration announced Feb. 2 it would no longer uphold the Trump administration policy of automatically deporting unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. Two weeks later, the White House announced plans to admit 25,000 asylum-seekers to the U.S. who had been forced to remain in Mexico. In subsequent weeks, the number of young migrants crossing without adults skyrocketed. Both Customs and Border Protection, and Health and Human Services officials have struggled to house the influx of children. Immigration officials say the number of adult migrants and families trying to enter the U.S. illegally also has surged. Border patrol officials had encountered more than 29,000 unaccompanied minors since Oct. 1, nearly the same number of youths taken into custody for all of the previous budget year, administration officials say. ""Getting capacity up to deal with the unaccompanied minors is critical, but the numbers just don’t bear out to pointing to a crisis,"" Isacson said. That has not stopped Republicans – including Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. – from pillorying Biden. ""It's more than a crisis; this is a human heartbreak,"" said McCarthy, who led a delegation of a dozen fellow House Republicans to El Paso, Texas, on Monday. Biden is also facing criticism from Republicans that his administration has sent mixed messages. Critics have focused on public comments from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who earlier this month said the administration's message to migrants was ""don't come now"" and a slip by Roberta Jacobson, the White House's lead adviser on the border, who said in Spanish during a recent briefing the “border is not closed,” before correcting herself. The president and other administration officials in recent days have stepped up efforts to urge migrants not to come. Embassies in Northern Triangle countries are airing public service announcements underscoring the dangers of making the trek north. Eric Hershberg, director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said Biden's team faces a powerful counter-narrative as it attempts to persuade desperate Central Americans to stay put: chatter on social media from migrants who successfully made it across the border and smugglers who insist that now is the ideal time. Hershberg cites a Honduran friend's reaction to U.S. warnings that migrants could face danger on the journey: ""You know, you don't need to go with such uncertainty. You can just stay here and know that you’ll be raped or killed.” Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.",-0.8480715793843786 "There's no evidence Tiger Woods attempted to slow down before his horrific rollover crash last month, it was reported Saturday. Law enforcement sources told TMZ it appeared Woods never took his foot off the gas or attempted to hit the brakes as his SUV veered off the road and rolled down a steep hillside. TMZ said the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had been studying Woods' SUV, the crash site, and evidence that included data from the SUV's black box. Although TMZ said it had been told Tiger approached the scene of the crash driving in ""normal"" fashion and not speeding, evidence indicated he accelerated and was speeding when he lost control. ""We are not releasing any further information at this time,"" an agency spokesman told the New York Post reported Saturday. Woods, 45, reportedly was conscious and alert when pulled out through the front windshield of the crumbled luxury Hyundai Genesis GV80 following the wreck in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., on Feb. 23. The Sheriff's Dept. said Woods told one of the first responders he had no recollection of the crash. Soon after the crash, the Sheriff said there was no evidence of impaired driving or alcohol. The department never attempted to get a warrant to draw blood in order to test for medications. Earlier this week, Woods’ Twitter account posted a message saying he had returned to his South Florida home where he continues to recover ""and working on getting stronger every day."" ""I am so grateful for the outpouring of support and encouragement that I have received over the past few weeks,"" the statement read. ""Thank you to all the incredible surgeons, doctors, nurses and staff at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. You have all taken such great care of me and I cannot thank you enough."" Woods suffered multiple fractures in the crash. Harbor-UCLA Medical Center chief medical officer Anish Mahajan detailed the extent of Woods' injuries in a statement posted to the golfer's Twitter account. ""Mr. Woods suffered significant orthopaedic injuries to his right lower extremity that were treated during emergency surgery by orthopaedic trauma specialists at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a level 1 trauma center,"" said Dr Mahajan said. ""Comminuted open fractures affecting the upper and lower of the tibia and fibula bones were stabilized by inserting a rod into the tibia. Additional injuries to the bones of the foot and ankle were stabilized with a combination of screws and pins. Trauma to the muscle and soft tissue of the leg required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling.""",-0.849449499757828 "As the coronavirus made an end-of-the-year surge across New York, few nursing homes escaped unscathed. But some proved especially helpless at stopping the spread of COVID-19, despite having nine months to stockpile protective equipment and refine preventative measures. At least 15 homes each saw at least 30 patients die between November and early February, with most of the deaths occurring in a matter of weeks, recently released public records show. Seven homes had more than 40 patients die, a tally that does not include specialized nursing homes that treat only COVID-19 patients. The unusually swift and deadly outbreaks stand out in a state where the great majority of nursing homes reported fatalities in the single digits during that time period. The Commons on St. Anthony, a 300-bed home in Auburn, was among those hit hardest. It held the virus at bay for months, making it to Christmas Day without a single COVID-19 death. But by the end of January, the disease had claimed 57 lives — just as vaccinations were beginning. Nursing homes had nearly a year to refine visitation policies, ramp up testing programs and hone infection-control practices. Yet the virus still got into facilities like the Commons, where 90-year-old Constance Cuddy, a former nurse being treated for Alzheimer’s disease, died Jan. 17 from COVID-19 complications, according to her family. “She worked hard her whole life,” said Cuddy’s daughter, Jody Courtemanche. “And I just wish that she could have gone on her own terms when she was ready to go, and not have COVID come in and grab her.” Until recently, the full extent of New York’s surge was partially obscured because Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration did not disclose data on thousands of nursing home residents who died outside of their facilities, a scandal that predates the accusations that he sexually harassed female aides. While the state has made some statistics on nursing home fatalities available since last spring, more complete information on where and when patients died was only released in February after an order from a judge in a public records case brought by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. The latest records provide more details on deaths at the Commons as well as homes outside Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester that suffered more than 40 resident deaths each during the late autumn and early winter surge. The Elcor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of the Commons, had 62 residents die from November through early February, despite precautions that included sanitizing arriving mail, administrator Edward Linsler said. The situation has improved substantially in recent weeks as most of the nation's nursing home population has been vaccinated. Tracing how the coronavirus breaches any facility can be difficult. Public health experts say adherence to infection protocols and proper staffing can make a difference. Larger facilities with shared rooms, which the Commons offers, can be more susceptible to outbreaks. “More than 99 percent of facilities in the country have had at least one case, and most of that has happened in this winter surge when we’ve known what to do,” said Tamara Konetzka, a research professor at the University of Chicago, who specializes in long-term care. “That just says to me that it’s really almost impossible to keep the virus out completely.” Loretto, the company that operates the Commons, said it took many steps to keep the virus out. Employees wore gowns, gloves and face shields when working with residents. Family members could only see their loved ones through a plate-glass window. The state Department of Health conducted six on-site infection-control inspections there along with another by the federal government between May and Feb. 3 and found no deficiencies. Cayuga County did not see its first major outbreak until the fall. Loretto spokesperson Julie Sheedy said “out of control” spread of the virus in the surrounding community overwhelmed the nursing home's defenses. Commons resident Kathleen Grader, 86, tested positive after getting the first of two planned vaccination shots in late December. The mother of 10, who was “always busy” even past the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, died of COVID-19 complications Jan. 12, said her daughter Theresa Smithler. “The only way these residents got the virus was from an employee,” Smithler said, noting that even at Christmas, visitors had been banned. Over the holiday, Smithler and her sister sang carols into a cellphone with their mother on the other side of a window at the home. The Commons tested and screened employees. But those procedures cannot catch every infected worker in time, especially if they do not have symptoms. By January, infections were surging among the staff, with 42 positive cases in three weeks, federal data shows. Kaylee Gabak, a 24-year-old certified nursing assistant, tested positive on Christmas after she went to a hospital to deliver her first child. The baby girl, Charlotte, was born healthy, but Gabak was soon back at the hospital in critical condition. Her mother, Cortney Haberlau, believes her daughter was infected at the Commons in mid-December, just before her maternity leave. She battled internal bleeding, a brain abscess and other complications and returned home this month. After Gabak awoke at the hospital in early February, her mother said she was soon using her phone to look up the obituaries of “her people,” the residents of the Commons. “She was really sad about it because a lot of her residents that she cared for, and cared about, were deceased,” Haberlau said.",-0.6621289238160001 "Two Atlanta area massage businesses where a gunman waged a deadly assault this week had been repeatedly targeted in police prostitution investigations over the years, raising questions about the mayor's earlier comments the spas operated legally. Police records show officers went to the businesses at least 21 times in the past 10 years, which appears to contradict Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' statement that officers in her city had not been to the businesses beyond a minor potential theft and that they were not “on the radar” of police. Bottoms added that she did not want to blame the victims. Robert Aaron Long, 21, is charged with killing four women at the Atlanta spas and four other people inside a massage business about 30 miles (50 kilometers) away in Cherokee County. Long, who is white, told investigators the attacks were not racially motivated and claimed to have a sex addiction, which caused him to lash out at what he saw as sources of temptation. Police in both Atlanta and Cherokee County said they were investigating if the killings could be considered hate crimes. Seven of the victims were women — six of Asian descent — and the gunman targeted the massage businesses despite a strip club and lingerie stores nearby. According to a 2019 report written by a group of academics, public health experts and community organizers, employees in massage businesses that illicitly offer sex often ended up working there because they had few options to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars they owed smugglers or to support parents or children back home in countries like China and South Korea. The authors of Illicit Massage Parlors in Los Angeles County and New York City Stories from Women Workers interviewed dozens of women who provided sex at the businesses. They said their employers sometimes offered them a place to live and eat in the businesses, which also made the work difficult to turn down. The authors stressed not all massage businesses are involved in the sex trade. And the majority of the women they interviewed who did sex work didn't see themselves as being trafficked, instead feeling they were helping their families or themselves, said author Lois M. Takahashi, who heads the USC Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento. But 40% of them reported a client forced them to have sex while 18% said a client hit them or physically hurt them. Takahashi said that for many of the women, getting arrested was an extremely traumatic process. A lot of times the women were thrust into a legal system that they did not understand and in a foreign language. ""They had a lot more fear of being arrested than they did of being robbed,"" she said. Police records released by the city Friday show 12 people were arrested at the two Atlanta massage businesses on prostitution charges, but none since 2013. Almost all the arrests came in undercover stings where an officer paid for a massage and an employee offered sex or a sex act for more money. The reports were first obtained by The Washington Post. All three businesses where people were fatally shot Tuesday have detailed recent reviews on an online site that leads users to places that provide sexual services. Authorities released the names of the Atlanta victims hours before President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Atlanta to meet with Asian American community leaders. Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63, were shot in the head, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said. Family members identified Grant by her maiden name, Hyun Jung Kim. Suncha Kim, 69, died from a gunshot to the chest, authorities said. Three of the women died at the Gold Spa in Atlanta, while the fourth woman died across the street at Aromatherapy Spa. The medical examiner didn’t immediately say which woman died at Aromatherapy. Four people were killed and a fifth wounded at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock, in Atlanta's northwestern suburbs. Cherokee County authorities earlier identified the dead there as Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Xiaojie Tan, 49, who owned Youngs. Georgia lawmakers last year passed a hate crimes law that allows additional penalties to be imposed for certain offenses when motivated by a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender or disability. A hate crime is not a standalone crime under the law, but it can be used to add time to a sentence once someone is convicted of another crime. Investigators believe Long had previously visited two of the Atlanta massage businesses where four of the women were killed, police said. Crabapple First Baptist Church, where Long was an active member, issued a statement Friday that it was seeking to remove Long from membership, saying “we can no longer affirm that he is truly a regenerate believer in Jesus Christ.” The church said its teaching does not condone violence against Asian Americans or women and it’s improper to view women as somehow responsible for male sexual urges. Long waived his right to an initial hearing in Cherokee County Magistrate Court.",-0.6258731125979258 "Federal investigators have so far not found evidence that clears the high bar for federal hate crime charges against a man who has been accused of killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Friday. Seven of the eight people killed were women; six were of Asian descent. The crime has stitched together stigmas about race, gender, migrant work and sex work. Though investigators have not ruled out ultimately filing hate crime charges, they face legal constraints in doing so. Federal statutes require prosecutors to prove that the victims were targeted because of specific factors, like race, gender identity, religion, national origin or sexual orientation, or the suspect infringed on a federally or constitutionally protected activity. To successfully prosecute a hate crimes case, prosecutors typically seek tangible evidence, such as the suspect expressing racism in text messages, in internet posts or to witnesses. No such evidence has yet surfaced in the Georgia probe, according to the officials, who have direct knowledge of the investigation into the suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Advocates have said even if the shooter didn’t specifically target the victims and because some were Asian, he still could have been acting with bias against them. Three of the women died at the Gold Spa in Atlanta, while the fourth woman died across the street at Aromatherapy Spa. Four other people were killed and one was wounded at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock, in Atlanta’s northwestern suburbs. Their deaths come as crimes against Asian Americans are spiking. Officials have identified those killed as: Soon C. Park, 74; Hyun J. Grant, 51, whom family members identified by her maiden name, Hyun Jung Kim; Suncha Kim, 69; Yong A. Yue, 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Xiaojie Tan, 49, who owned Youngs. Both federal and local investigators are still diving into the motive behind Tuesday’s killings. Most crimes are handled by local prosecutors. Federal officials may get involved when there is a violation of a U.S. statute, like civil rights crimes targeting someone in a federally-protected class — which include race, national origin and religion, among others — as well as crimes that affect interstate commerce or violent crimes involving, for example, a felon in possession of a firearm. After his arrest, Long told police he had a “sex addiction” and carried out the shootings because he was trying to snuff out the sources of temptation, according to authorities. Police said the gunman previously visited two of the spas where four of the women were killed and said the suspect equated the businesses to sex, and that drove him to kill. Authorities have said he may have been headed to Florida to carry out a similar attack on “some type of porn industry.” Georgia officials later backtracked on their earlier statements about the case, saying everything was on the table, including a possible hate crime charge, and they were still investigating. In a statement Thursday, Long’s lawyer, J. Daran Burns, offered condolences to the victims’ families. He said he was working on Long’s behalf “to investigate the facts and circumstances” surrounding the killings.",-0.5994339890303846 "The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination. These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying. Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of March 15, 2021:",-0.5272519055633405 "The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination. These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying. Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of March 1, 2021:",-0.7161283541404778 "The Russian government has historically been a force to be reckoned with on the world stage, from Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great to the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin. Ambassador R. James Woolsey Jr. and Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, in their new book, ""Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America,"" offer a unique perspective on Russian deception throughout history and particularly regarding the John F. Kennedy assassination. In a historical context, one should understand Russia through the old story that Abraham Lincoln use to tell about the farmer who said, ""I didn't want anybody's land except for the parcels that adjoin mine."" Woolsey, who was Bill Clinton's first director of the Central Intelligence Agency, believes that the likelihood of seeing Russia undergo full democratization or liberalization is slim given its historical posture. As he put it, ""Any movement toward liberalization in Russia when it comes to a successor never seems to work out. Before JFK['s presidency], the Russians only had one real chance of moving toward liberalizing, and that was Tsar Alexander II."" When it comes to understanding how Russia's history applies to Putin's Russia, Woolsey suggests, ""Putin is much shrewder and has lasted a lot longer than [predecessor President Boris] Yeltsin. It has been first a situation that Russians not only tolerated, but some even liked. Now, there are mass demonstrations in the streets, so there could be a vigorously chaotic transition. There could be progress through encouraging reformers, and that would be monumental in modern history."" The book by Woolsey and Pacepa, a major general in the Romanian Securitate (secret police) and the highest Eastern bloc defector to the U.S., tackles the Kennedy assassination in a new and unique light. ""From the point of view of trying to understand what happened, the precise analysis that my colleague Mr. Pecepa and his wife did on this book with regard to the handwritten material is just not done in any of the other research inquiries of this kind,"" Woolsey told Newsmax. The fresh analysis by Woolsey and Pacepa ties together historical events and timelines into a seamless garment of a single chronological account. As Woolsey highlighted for Newsmax, ""The U.S. Secret Service did own its research on that, and what they found is that the bullet cascaded through Kennedy's skull in a direction that nobody thought it would and the reason for that was the difference in consistency of the brain tissue. The Department of Treasury analyzed it, but the bullet's technological aspect was never thoroughly investigated until after the Secret Service personnel went through it. When you put all of the pieces together, then something strange emerges. Another aspect that is odd to consider is that two KGB case officers met a week or two before the Kennedy assassination. One of them was the head of Unit 13, which was the operation group in charge of overseas assassinations."" In looking to how this epic book will fundamentally shake up the established literature and the subject in the JFK assassination, Woolsey and Pacepa seek to spawn a new generation of researchers into one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history. In Woolsey's words, ""There is going to be a third wave of analysis of the [Kennedy] assassination. The first wave happened almost immediately after the assassination took place, and the Warren Commission's investigation was very poorly done."" Given his intelligence background, Woolsey suggests that the Warren Commission ""did not use much of the intelligence because they did not want to go to war with the Soviet Union, and it's a complicated set of issues. There was nobody with an intelligence background of the three people that did the Warren Commission staff work. So how could you really sift through intelligence if you don't have an intelligence background?"" The pertinence of the Woolsey-Pacepa treatise could not have come at a more critical time after the Trump administration declassified much of the remaining files. ""So many things have now been declassified, such as [Lee Harvey] Oswald going to Mexico City and being monitored by FBI,"" Woolsey told us. ""People deserve to know what happened. It is absolutely a driving event in our nation's history. In some sense, if you don't care about who assassinated JFK and you don't care about how it got covered up and who covered it up, then you don't care about American history."" The book's subject-matter requires the reader to engage with both the history and the documentary evidence with careful attention to detail. Perhaps the book's most groundbreaking aspect is its presentation of the evidence and how it will impact its American audience. Woolsey, along with Pacepa, argues, ""Both Russia and the United States did not want to know whether a Soviet agent had assassinated Kennedy because we would have been on the edge of war with the Soviet Union. It has to be a bracing attitude toward Russia, and we have to call Russia to account. We must notify Russia that we know. I think we're in a situation to be honest and accurate with Russia to admit what happened with one another."" There have been many scholars that sought to uncover the culture of mystery behind the Kennedy assassination. Yet, few if any offer a geopolitical account that propels an evidence-based investigation into a treatise on how to deal with one of America's most durable rivals in its history. The book's subject and substance are as exceptional as the insights within its pages and perhaps will answer the many questions that remain about President Kennedy's fateful day in Dallas. Michael Cozzi is a Ph.D. candidate at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.",0.1892165608667048 """The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire,"" by Lawrence Haas. Potomac Press, 331 pp. The lives of John F., Robert, and Ted Kennedy played a fundamental role in shaping America’s role in the world over 6 decades. Lawrence J. Haas, a journalist and onetime communications director for Al Gore, has written a well-researched book, titled “The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire.” At first glance, the title will certainly grab the readers’ attention as the term “empire” likely strikes dissonance in the minds of most Americans. Certainly, the U.S. has remained the predominant global power since World War II. Nevertheless, we do not typically think of our country as an empire in the historical sense. While the title leads us to consider America as a possible empire, the book does not center on this debate. Instead, it chronicles interesting, yet often overlooked, foreign policy dynamics from the second half of the 20 th century. Taking a biographical lens and examining the interplay among the three brothers, Haas innovatively covers many foreign policy challenges that faced the United States and how the Kennedy family influenced those debates. He starts with the brothers’ relationship with their father, Joseph P. Kennedy. Before the outbreak of World War II, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Joe Kennedy was well known for his more isolationist views. Controversially, he famously asserted that “Democracy is finished in England. It may be here [in the U.S.].” These views did not change when the war ended. He opposed the creation of NATO and the Marshall Plan. John F. Kennedy would break with his father on foreign policy because of JFK’s service in World War II and time abroad. One of the most striking parts of the book is the extensive travel that all three brothers embarked on from the 1930s to the 1960s. These young, privileged men saw much of the world that too many Americans still have not had the chance to see. Trips to Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and extended trips to Europe gave the Kennedys a very global, cosmopolitan world view, and many trips included meetings with captains of industry and world leaders. Most poignantly, during his time at Harvard, John F. Kennedy spent many months traveling Europe and speaking with major political actors, forming the basis of his thesis and best-selling book, “Why England Slept.” Importantly, John F. Kennedy’s travels gave him the insight that great power competition in the Cold War would be fought in the developing world. He catapulted these issues to center stage as president during his first State of the Union speech: “We are pledged to work with our sister republics to free the Americas of all such foreign domination and all tyranny, working toward the goal of a free hemisphere of free governments, extending from Cape Horn to the Arctic Circle.” President Kennedy further elaborated on his views with a speech that was essentially a second State of the Union, called a “Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs.” He championed the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, created the Peace Corps, and supported the establishment of the elite special forces unit known as Green Berets. If there is any disappointment in this tome, it is that Haas’s book hardly covers the impact of “The Ugly American” on President Kennedy, nor on the other brothers. The novel provided sharp comment on incompetent American soft power and military might in Asia during the Cold War, and Kennedy had a copy sent to all of his Senate colleagues. Many argue that “The Ugly American” was the impetus for President Kennedy to dramatically increase American engagement in the developing world, and perhaps, the author felt that this was already detailed in other fora. On Robert Kennedy, Haas covers his evolving thinking on Latin America and Vietnam after brother Jack’s death. Importantly, this shift in thinking led to the end of the Cold War consensus. Bobby Kennedy shaped a new progressive foreign policy that was skeptical toward US military involvement and emphasized human rights. Through the lens of foreign policy, Haas is also especially strong depicting the intense rivalry between Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy. The author adds fascinating context through his portrayal of Bobby Kennedy’s trip to South Africa and the then-famous and now less remembered “Ripple of Hope” speech. The powerful address served as a catalyst for the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa and abroad. After the tragic deaths of his brothers, Ted assumed a unique and influential role in American public life. However, his moral and political authority was irreversibly damaged by the still-discussed incident at Chappaquiddick. Although backlash was insufficient for Massachusetts voters to remove him from office, it doomed hopes of a Presidential run or formal Senate leadership. As a senator, Ted Kennedy was an ardent supporter of human rights, democracy, and development policy. He made important yet overlooked contributions in supporting the release of “Refuseniks,” Jewish Soviet dissidents. Haas’s book does a first-rate job of reviewing changes in American foreign policy through examining the Kennedy brothers’ evolving positions, actions, and influences on each other. At times, the author reveals a deep nostalgia for the Kennedys. For readers who were not around for John F. Kennedy nor Bobby Kennedy, Haas adeptly captures the powerful responses from the American and global public that the Kennedys elicited. It is unlike anything in American politics in the last 50 years. The closest we have come is perhaps some of the American and global response to then candidate Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign. The father and the three Kennedy brothers encapsulate much of the spectrum of modern American foreign policy. The brothers tried to understand the hopes and aspirations of other countries, while also trying to be faithful to our values and our national interests. The book also provides perspective for great power competition challenges we face today, where much of the contest with China and Russia will play out in less developed parts of the world. In this respect, looking at the Kennedy brothers’ dealing with the past offers considerable thought for the challenges of the future. Daniel F. Runde is the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Assistance",-0.927165738371115 "The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination. These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying. Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of Feb. 8, 2021:",0.05436753034129955 "One of the most indispensable ideas of American values is our industrial and entrepreneurial zeal. In an era where this spirit seems to be waning under the federal government's bloated bureaucracy, one author chronicles America's undying intrigue of money and all that it brings. That author, Lance Morrow, decided to put pen to paper and wrote ""God and Mammon: Chronicles of American Money."" He got the idea for these essays while he ""was thinking about Booker T. Washington and his conversation with W. E. B. Dubois about moneymaking and how the children and grandchildren of former slaves would proceed to become a part of the larger American society. ""Booker T. Washington believed that this would be through establishing a strong black middle class starting with learning trades."" Morrow was also quick to point out the dualistic side of the American mind — the spiritual and the worldly — that is in an unyielding battle between things of God and things of the world. ""Americans are highly self-conscious of their morality, standing, and self-image,"" he writes, ""and they always have throughout history dealt with the issue of how to square the use of their money with a way to be virtuous. ""This tension between the virtuous idea of America and the money, the crass, and materialistic aspect of our country explores that theme through our country's origins all the way through contemporary history by looking at a few historical characters to see how the 'emotions of money' were at work in their lives and in society around them."" Morrow's understanding of how money can be used in a virtuous way stems from his analysis of the early American colonies and the puritan mindset that entrenched American culture. ""The religious dynamic that goes through so much of American history originates and develops from the ideas of Puritans like Cotton Mather,"" he writes, noting that Mather ""gave the sermon of how men row to heaven using two oars, one oar of spiritual calling and the other of professional calling. If one uses one oar and not the other, then they row around in a circle instead of in a straight line to heaven."" Perhaps the most alarming and unsurprising aspect of the modern era of money is the growing discontent for the American entrepreneurial system. Morrow counters with a generational account of the problem. He recalls how ""I grew up acutely aware of the totalitarian aspects of communism and had a tremendous aversion of the left solutions because of the implications of socialism's answers to societal problems."" Now the younger generations, he concludes, ""don't have the same sense of danger of Marxism, Leninism, and socialism and because of a feeling of uncertainty for them due to student debt and poor economic prospects drive them toward an idea of a communal plan that includes and espouses social justice, and that disparages entrepreneurial attitudes for unjustly distributing money."" Simply put, there is an even more open push toward a socialist system of economics given this era of uncertainty. Morrow believes that younger generations ""want the government to take over … and we're at a pivotal role to determine where things will go from here because everything is up in the air. However, that generational attitude does suggest that there is a trend toward socialist answers."" Morrow offers the reader a parting parcel of ethics and therapy by suggesting that a way to remove the ferocity that has gripped the nation is by de-escalating our emphasis on feelings over facts. ""Feelings more than thoughts are so much the material of social media, and everyone has a cellphone,"" he states, ""Feelings are fired off in such instant flashes, so this makes our politics all the more emotionally charged, but politics have always been subject to feelings. Detachment is a precious quality and something to strive for, and it's good to practice so as not to get carried away by various energies or forces."" Michael Cozzi is a Ph.D. candidate at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.",-0.3939571084673733 "The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination. These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying. Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of Jan. 25, 2021:",0.7028694378257615 "The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination. These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying. Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of Jan. 4, 2021:",-1.1192277080544413 "The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination. These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying. Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of Dec. 28, 2020:",-0.0571420553174271 """Mario Cuomo: The Myth and the Man"" – by George Marlin (St. Augustine's Press; 348 pp.) It is hard to believe Gov. Andrew Cuomo is nearly finished with his third term as governor of New York. At 64, Cuomo's presidential dreams long behind him, and an appointment from Joe Biden highly unlikely, he has a fourth term in 2022 as his lone political option. In an odd case of déjà vu, Andrew Cuomo is in identically the same situation as his father-governor Mario in 1994. The elder Cuomo lost his fourth term bid. But he remained — and indeed remains — a beloved icon with the Democrat Party and, nearly six years after his death, is revered by liberals nationwide. Like Adlai Stevenson, Mario Cuomo's soaring oratory — rich in aphorisms and history — ""made us all proud to be Democrats,"" as late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., said of the two-time presidential nominee as he place his name in nomination for a third run at the 1960 Democratic National Committee Convention. Incredibly, the Adlai-of-the-80's enjoys a similar iconic status without having taken a single step toward pursuit of his party's presidential nomination — finally saying ""no"" twice after much very public soul-searching and breast-beating. In ""Mario Cuomo: The Myth and the Man,"" George Marlin takes a look at this curious and complex politician with no holds barred. Marlin's mastery of history and detail, so evident in his earlier books on the New York Conservative Party and the Catholic Archbishops of New York, is put to excellent use as he unearths Cuomo's defeats and eventual victories, his influence on the current Democratic party (notably on the issue of abortion), and just why he never became president or even tried to. Cuomo's ""no go"" for president, Marlin explains, had nothing to do with the incessant rumors of Mafia ties — which the uber-sensitive Cuomo himself frequently evoke to demonstrate he was the target of bigotry — and almost certainly had to do with his own prickly personality and dislike of criticism from the press or just about anyone. ""I have difficulty with the notion of wanting [the presidency] badly,"" he said following his decision not to run in 1992. ""I'm not sure what that means. I'm afraid some people want the office too much and I always tried to guard against that."" This, after Cuomo had two chartered planes — one for him and one for the press — ready to fly to New Hampshire on the final day of the filing deadline for the first-in-the-nation primary. But the governor backed down, citing his inability to get the Republican-controlled state senate to agree to a budget. Cuomo also sent out exasperating signals to President Clinton in 1993 he was not interested in a Supreme Court appointment Clinton and wife Hillary very much wanted him to take. (The press eagerly anticipated some highly intellectual jousts between Cuomo and the Italian-American jurist already on the court, Antonin Scalia. Incredibly, Cuomo was a fan of the conservative Scalia and said at the time of his appointment: ""[He] should be confirmed immediately. I'll take on the whole Democratic Party if they try anything on Scalia""). After telling son Andrew ""if you want me to, I'll call Clinton and I'll take it [the high court appointment]."" He then faxed Clinton a letter declining the appointment. As beloved as he remains among Democrats, Cuomo's relations with his contemporaries are fraught with bewilderment and animosity. After an embarrassing loss of the lieutenant governor primary in 1974 despite party organization support, Cuomo was rescued from oblivion by Democrat Gov. Hugh Carey with an appointment as secretary of state. But Cuomo and Carey never had a close relationship, even after Cuomo ran for mayor of New York with Carey's blessing and made it to lieutenant governor the following year. In an acrimonious race that is still discussed among New York pols, Cuomo lost the 1977 mayoral contest to future three-term Mayor Ed Koch — both in the Democratic primary and in November as the candidate of the Liberal Party. Marlin captures the contest brilliantly, and offers powerful evidence that candidate Cuomo and his son-campaign operative Andrew were behind the ugly posters suggesting lifelong bachelor Koch was gay: ""Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo!"" Cuomo got sweet revenge by defeating the mayor for the Democrat nomination for governor in 1982. Koch, who Marlin and most who knew him believe was asexual, never forgave the governor for what he considered a brutal smear. More than a quarter-century after he last sought office and five years after his death, Mario Cuomo's influence on his party is primarily in its approach to abortion. Once pro-life, Cuomo, as the politician on the make, sculpted the position that while ""personally opposed"" to abortion, he would not impose his position and that of his church on the public as a whole. As much as Cuomo irked many of his church's leaders (notably the late John Cardinal O'Connor of New York, who hinted at excommunication of the governor), his explanation of how he differed with it on the public handling of abortion inspired a generation of Catholic Democrats to style themselves ""Mario Cuomo Catholics"" — stating loyalty to their faith but exempting themselves from its teaching on the right to life. The most notable ""Cuomo Catholic"" is, of course, Joe Biden. This is a major part of the legacy of Mario Cuomo, a politician whose life author Marlin clearly demonstrates is worth delving into and examining. John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.",-1.1033810731712932 "Pharmaceutical drugs have very little, if any, ability to prevent disease, whereas many natural products have very powerful preventive properties. Most diseases can be prevented, or their risk can be greatly reduced, by consuming large amounts of nutrient-dense vegetables and some selected fruits. However, pharmaceutical drugs are designed to treat diseases once they have become full-blown. Worse still, most drugs do not address the cause of the disease, but only treat symptoms. Dr. Russell L. Blaylock writes in his book, “Dr. Blaylock’sPrescriptions for Natural Health:” “I often hear alternative health proponents say that headaches are not caused by a lack of ibuprofen and heart failure is not caused by a lack of beta-blockers. Nevertheless, the person with a headache is thankful that the medication provides relief, and the person with heart failure is grateful for the beneficial effects of beta-blockers. But many plant extracts also treat symptoms.” Coronary Heart Disease: 5 Tips to Reduce Your Risk As an example, hawthorn contains chemicals that stimulate the heart muscle to contract with more effective force, just like certain heart drugs, but it also stimulates dilation of blood vessels to improve blood flow. And the herb does these things with very few adverse effects, whereas cardiac drugs can have a number of severe, often deadly, side effects. Unlike the cardiac drugs, hawthorn can also reduce inflammatory factors in the blood that actually cause heart failure, thereby correcting a major cause of the disease. Hawthorn’s other “side effects” are mostly beneficial, such as protecting the brain, decreasing risk of cancer, and reducing harmful overreaction of the immune system. We see this with a number of natural compounds. Some examples: Curcumin is a brain protectant that also reduces inflammation in other areas of the body, has antibacterial and antiviral effects, reduces atherosclerosis, protects against radiation damage, improves cellular energy production, is a potent antioxidant, and is a powerful anti-cancer agent. More Than 50% of Older Americans Fail to Get Enough Magnesium Magnesium is critical for the operation of hundreds of enzymes in our bodies, is anti-inflammatory, increases levels of our internal antioxidants, reduces blood clots, opposes allergies, reduces autoimmune inflammation, stimulates cellular energy production, protects the heart muscle, reduces atherosclerosis, and protects the brain. No pharmaceutical drug can say the same. Most drug side effects are quite harmful and some are deadly.",0.9203953249118401 "Are some people born cheaters, while others are born faithful? According to a growing body of research, there may be science behind commitment. Researchers are examining biological factors and psychological responses in an attempt to see how either might influence marital stability. Their findings may suggest that some people are more likely to succumb to temptation, but they can train themselves to remain faithful and monogamous. A Swedish biologist at the Karolinska Institute studied sets of male twins and the bonding hormone vasopressin in the pairs. Biologist Hasse Walum found that the twins who carried a variation of gene coding for vasopressin were less likely to be married or more likely to have marital discord. Marital problems were even worse among those who carried two copies of the gene variant coding for vasopressin. Doctor's Warning: Performance Concerns Affect How Many Men By Age 40? Meanwhile, psychologists at McGill University in Montreal studied how individuals in committed relationships respond to temptation. Study authors planted attractive men and women to flirt with study participants in a waiting room. The participants were later asked about their marriage or relationship and how they would react to their partner being late or forgetting to check in. Men who were flirting with the actors reported that they would be less forgiving of the behavior, while women who were flirting said they were more likely to be forgiving. Study authors suggest that in the case of men, the flirting impacted their sense of commitment. For the women, they say the flirting made them want to protect their relationship. Dr. Kathryn Smerling, a marriage and family therapist, tells Newsmax that this research isn’t necessarily surprising, as most couples have at least 10 challenges that they’re dealing with at a time, from money to time management. “So it’s to be expected that you’re going to encounter all sorts of issues when you’re married, but it’s how you face those issues together that determines whether or not your relationship will flourish,” Smerling says. Dr. Brownstein: Eye-Opening NEW Vision Formula Protects Eyesight So while some may be “coded” to cheat, is there a way to curb that predilection? Smerling says the answer is yes. “A growing body of science suggests that we’re likely to be born non-monogamous, but we choose to be monogamous because of children, property, societal values, etc.,” she says. Smerling adds the foundation of an emotionally healthy marriage is being attuned to your partner, resilient in the face of adversity, and constantly curious about each other. “Emotionally attuned spouses listen with greater consideration, are extremely mindful, emotionally engaged, and regularly practice caring acceptance,” she tells Newsmax. The Hidden Cause of Fatigue & Low Energy The happiest couples, says Smerling, remember the little things that make a relationship work — holding hands with enthusiasm, practicing a three-second delay when having an argument, and not overthinking things. She says it’s also beneficial for couples to “change it up” and never allow themselves to get bored in the relationship. She stresses the importance of avoiding the blame game and overlooking tiny shortcomings while reminding yourself that you’re on the same team. Smerling says that these practices lead to emotionally healthy marriages and can safeguard against divorce and infidelity.",-2.5420407309502266 "Every 40 seconds. That's how often someone somewhere in the United States dies from heart disease. That adds up to nearly 600,000 American deaths every year, making cardiovascular disease the nation's No. 1 killer. Heart problems also fuel a multibillion-dollar drug industry that provides cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and other medications to millions of Americans. But if you're looking for a way to lower cholesterol and boost your heart health without the potential risks of pharmaceuticals, there are several potent natural alternatives. Top Cardiologist Reveals Secret for a Healthy Heart Among the best options: plant-derived compounds called phytosterols that have been shown to lower LDL ""bad"" cholesterol without the side effects some people experience with statins and other drugs. Foods rich in phytosterols include unrefined vegetable oils, nuts, legumes, and whole grains such as corn, rye, and wheat. According to the prestigious Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, such plant sterols — which are similar in structure and function to human cholesterol — were a key staple in early human diets. But that is no longer true today. Don't Buy CoQ10 at a Drugstore. Doctor Explains Why. That's why phytosterol supplements may be a good option for many Americans, experts say. They can be taken in combination with other heart-healthy vitamins, such as niacin, thiamine, and CoQ10. Renowned cardiologist Dr. Chauncey Crandall, author of Newsmax's Heart Health Report, recommends phytosterols as a good way to promote heart health, along with following a healthy diet and getting regular exercise. Crandall explains that the typical American diet — which is high in heart-damaging sugary, high-carb processed foods — is relatively low in phytosterols and doesn't come close to hitting the levels needed to boost cardiovascular health. Cardiologist Reveals How Heart Disease Can Be REVERSED Even though many clinical trials have demonstrated that daily consumption of foods enriched with these compounds lower LDL cholesterol, Crandall notes: ""The problem is that the average American diet contains only about 10 percent of the amount [that's needed]. The food industry has created many products, such as margarines, that contain plant sterols. But these products also contain unwanted ingredients [artificial flavorings and chemicals], so you are better off taking a supplement.""",-0.43521314257365473 "The most common type of arthritis, osteoarthritis, causes joint pain and stiffness, Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., writes in his book, “ Dr. Blaylock’s Prescriptions for Natural Health.” It doesn’t necessarily affect the same joints on both sides of the body. Those most commonly affected are the knees, hips, neck, lower back, thumbs, and fingers (in the joints closest to the nails). Its key characteristic is a degeneration of cartilage in joints. Cartilage is hard but slippery tissue that acts as a cushion in the joint, absorbs shock from movement, and allows bones to glide painlessly as the joint moves. With osteoarthritis, some of the cartilage wears away, narrowing the normal space between bones and allowing them to rub together, which causes pain, stiffness, and swelling. Small pieces of cartilage or bone, which can break off and float in the joint space, can cause more pain. Doctors Witness Amazing Joint Pain Changes In the past, osteoarthritis was considered a noninflammatory form of arthritis, but recent research shows that it is, in fact, inflammatory, but of a much lower intensity than, say, rheumatoid arthritis. This indolent inflammation weakens the cartilage, resulting in a slow erosion, leaving the joint without its natural protection. Repeated trauma to a joint can trigger the inflammatory process. Medications to control pain are a major conventional treatment for osteoarthritis, but risks of side effects increase with long-term use, and drugs do not heal degenerated cartilage or other tissue. Aching Joints? Don't Be a Victim All Your Life In terms of surgery, when pain and impaired function are severe, joint replacement surgery is often indicated. In recent years, exercise is more frequently recommended, as studies have shown that it reduces pain, increases mobility, and enhances an individual’s overall quality of life. Supplements can help. The combination of curcumin and quercetin, therapeutic components of plants, makes up one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory substances available, equal to prescription drugs, but without the terrible side effects. Biocell Collagen is a particular form of collagen which, in studies, has been shown to reduce joint destruction in a number of joint diseases, including osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Doctor Finally Discovers Natural Secret Weapon Against Aging Collagen is the “glue” that holds tissue together and is a key component of healthy joints. One good product is Collagen JS made by Pure Encapsulations. It contains 1,000 mg of BioCell Collagen in two capsules; take two to four capsules a day, with meals.",0.040354245968732744 "What 2018 Has Taught Us about Vegas and What is to Come for the City in 2019 and Beyond Las Vegas is one of the most dynamic cities in the world, ever changing and bubbling with energy, innovation, and creativity. Last year was full of interesting events, many of which are sure to gain historical value. 2019 has already promised brand new residencies, restaurants, shows, renovations, and highest paying new games. This includes a stadium that will change the city’s skyline permanently. When 2018 brought Fly LINQ and Park MGM to Las Vegas, people thought things had gone crazy, but 2019 may make things crazier. New Raiders Stadium Most Important Events of 2018 2018 was packed with important events, but none as powerful as the departures of Mark Frissora, chairman of Caesars Entertainment, and Steve Wynn, the founder of Wynn Resorts. The absence of Steve Wynn is going to be strongly felt in 2019. Wynn’s departure in 2018 sounded the death knell of his Paradise Park project. To make matters worse, there is a rumor flying around that Wynn sold stock worth $900 million in March 2018, which makes it quite clear that he doesn’t have anything to do with Wynn Resorts any more. He may have given it its present shape, but he is no longer in control of it. As far as Caesars Entertainment is concerned, the future of the company is rather uncertain in the absence of Mark Frissora. According to news reports of late 2018, Caesars Entertainment is not performing as well as it should and is considering mergers with stronger companies. Caesars Entertainment had rejected an acquisition offer from Golden Nugget, a chain of casinos belonging to Tilman Fertitta. However, it appears to be interested in merging with MGM Resorts. If Caesars Entertainment merges with MGM Resorts, the merged company would become the owner of half the hotel casino properties in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. And this could ring an alarm bell for the regulatory bodies in both New Jersey and Nevada. It’s not just the Wynn Resorts and Caesars Entertainment that are seeing some hard times. The Lucky Dragon, which has struggled throughout December, has pulled down its shutters. The Lucky Dragon is important because it was the Strip’s first resort after the Cosmopolitan. Based on a Chinese theme, this hotel casino could have fallen because of its failure to attract Asian and American gamblers. During its good days, the Lucky Dragon’s fine dining options were reminiscent of the street food of Beijing and Taipei. The hotel casino served some of the finest Chinese food, including Kurobuta pork and abalone. If ever the Lucky Dragon gets new owners, they are sure to scrap the tea garden as it is difficult to sell tea in an alcohol-loving city like Las Vegas. What to Expect in 2019 The losses of 2018 will definitely result in the birth of something new and exciting in Las Vegas this year. One can look forward to the successful completion of major ongoing projects and the launching of brand new projects. Resorts World Las Vegas – Work on the Resorts World Las Vegas began late in 2018 and is expected to complete in 2019. This hotel casino property may not only replace the fallen Lucky Dragon, but also prove to be more successful as it is also based on the Chinese theme. In fact, the new hotel casino was expected to go live in 2018, but Gerald Gardner, the general counsel of Resorts World, says that the construction was delayed because of the hotel casino’s complicated design. When it is completed, the Resorts World Las Vegas will emerge on the site on which the Stardust Hotel once stood. The project, which is worth $4 billion, is being developed by Genting Group, which is based in Malaysia. When complete, the hotel casino property is expected to have 3,500 rooms and a casino sprawling over 150,000 square feet. SLS Gets Facelift – Under the new ownership of Alex Meruelo, the SLS is getting a facelift worth $100 million. Part of its casino area, which sprawls over 60,000 square feet, has already been renovated, giving it the contemporary appearance it never had before. Meruelo also wants to renovate the pool areas, entertainment areas, and hotel suites. Station Casinos Purchases the Palms – The Palms is also undergoing a major makeover worth $690 million under the new ownership of Station Casinos. Two brand new restaurants—Vetri Cucina and Scotch 80 Prime—are going to be added to the property. The year 2019 is going to see a brand new nightclub, a new pool area, and many more exciting restaurants such as the Shark, which will specialize in serving seafood, and the Greene St. Kitchen, which will serve cocktails and American cuisine while offering arcade games from the 80s. Wynn Resorts’ Paradise Park – As previously mentioned, the departure of Steve Wynn has sounded the death knell for his Paradise Park project. Paradise Park was expected to have a convention center, a hotel tower, and many more attractions around a lagoon sprawling over 38 acres. But the lagoon has now been scrapped. As a result, the golf course that was shut down to make way for the lagoon is now coming back. Tom Fazio is going to redesign the golf course and it will be functioning several months before the Paradise Park convention center opens.",-1.176260208876103 "Despite a global coronavirus pandemic and Democrats passing another $1.9 trillion spending package as part of COVID-19 economic relief, political fundraising continues its record-setting run. The Democratic National Committee has reported its best-ever February fundraising total in a non-presidential election year, hauling in $8.5 million. The amount is the second-highest February total ever, a DNC spokesperson told Politico. The combined $18.4 million between January and February is also the most ever in any year, according to the report. Coincidentally, the best-funded Senate candidate ever, Democrat Jaime Harrison, who lost to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is leading the fundraising for the DNC as its new chairman. Harrison might have lost by 10 points, but he raising a record $131 million for his failed campaign, so he knows how to collect money from donors, if not draw vote. The DNC has $43 million in cash in the war chest, the spokesman told Politico, which is more than double and previous high at this stage in the year. Adding to the fiscal health of the DNC is the least amount of debt since 2008, the source told Politico. The DNC was $5.2 million in debt at the end of January, per the report.",-0.7905910012750051 "Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Sunday said Democrats are engaging in character assassination to “silence” him because he’s one of the few in Congress pushing back on an “inaccurate narrative” of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Johnson blasted Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., for his Senate floor remarks last week that described Johnson as a “racist.” Johnson had told a talk radio show that he wasn’t afraid of the pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6 but would’ve been had they been Black Lives Matter protesters or antifa members. “Unfortunately Democrats and liberals engage in assassination of character… and play the race card primarily to silence the critics or silence anybody they don't want their viewpoint spread around,” Johnson said. “There's two reasons are silencing me, they view the Wisconsin Senate seat as vulnerable and they would like to pick that up so they can complete the socialization of America,” he continued. “But also I’m one of the few people pushing back on their inaccurate narrative.” Johnson said he “condemned what happened"" on Jan. 6. “I condemned the breach and I condemn the violence but I was comparing what happened on Jan. 6 to the over 500 riots that occurred during the summer, basically left-wing, that resulted into 25 lives lost, 700… officers injured and $1 or $2 billion in property damage,” he said. “They want us to forget that the riots continue this day.” According to Johnson, Democrats and the media are wrong about expanding voting rights as outlined in H.R. 1. “Democrats are hypocrites. … the reason why they want to nationalize the election they want to completely consolidate power for all time,” he said. “They are trying to destroy conservatives in the Republican Party completely, so we don't compete in the arena of ideas. That is what is so dangerous about a biased media. “I support a free press but has to be an unbiased press and we're in a dangerous moment in the American history where we don't have an unbiased pressed we have a bias one that's chosen sides,” he added. Related Stories:",1.7278224297498794 "The military provides the perfect setting for every genre of television and film. Battlefield scenes are an ideal vehicle for action-adventures, highlighted by the grit and sweat of men at war, underscored with the sounds of war and military machinery in action. Even in peacetime, shows with a military theme promote drama, including the pain of family separation and the need to live up to expectations of superior officers. And the interaction of raw recruits with tough-as-nails non-commissioned officers can be comedy gold. Here are Newsmax’s picks for the 10 best of all time, divided evenly between action-drama and comedy, in alphabetical order. Action, Drama “Band of Brothers” was a 2001 HBO 10-part miniseries that received a 98% audience approval score from Rotten Tomatoes. It depicts a World War II unit called Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, and was based on the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name. The hyper-realistic series begins with their training in Fort Benning, Georgia, through the Normandy D-Day invasion, and ends with the May 8, 1945 V-E day. “It is doubtful that any war movie on the large or small screen has captured the varied experiences of ordinary soldiers better than Band of Brothers,” wrote Barry Garron for Hollywood Reporter. “It explains in large measure why this group of regular guys and others like them have come to be called the Greatest Generation.” “China Beach” was based on the book “Home Before Morning” and centered primarily on the nurses at the 516th U.S. Army Evacuation Hospital in Da Nang during the Vietnam War. It was nominated for numerous awards, picking up a Best Dramatic Television Series Golden Globe, as well as a Golden Reel Award, a Peabody Award, a People’s Choice Award, and a Best Actress Emmy for Dana Delany, among others. “A mature, beautifully realized piece of drama, it shows little evidence of the neutering, sanitizing process that usually compromises television storytelling,” wrote Robert Laurence for the San Diego Union-Tribune. ""’China Beach’ is ""M*A*S*H"" seen through a darker, bloodier lens.” “Combat!” depicted a squad of American soldiers fighting German forces during World War II. It began with the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and then followed the men as they fought their way across France. It initially ran on ABC from 1962 to 1967 before it went into syndication. “Melodrama, comedy, and satire come into play as Lieutenant Hanley (Rick Jason) and Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) lead their men toward Paris,” pop culture scholar Gene Santoro wrote. “Under orders, Hanley keeps sending or leading Saunders and his squad on incessant patrols though they're dead on their feet and always shorthanded; replacements are grease monkeys or cook's helpers who are fodder, and everybody knows it. The relentlessness hollows antihero Saunders out: at times, you can see the tombstones in his eyes.” “JAG,” an acronym for Judge Advocate General, was a U.S. Navy legal drama that ran for 10 years, initially on NBC, then picked up by CBS for the final nine seasons. “Hotshot military lawyer Lt. Harmon Rabb Jr. (David James Elliott), does his own detective work in the employ of the Judge Advocate General’s office,” wrote Todd Everett for Variety. “‘JAG’ borrows from recent features ‘Crimson Tide’ and ‘Apollo 13’ in being jargon-heavy to help generate atmosphere.” It received numerous accolades, including multiple ASCAP Awards for best series. “The Pacific,” like “Band of Brothers,” was an HBO 10-part miniseries, this one airing on the premium channel in 2010. The memoirs of Eugene Sledge, Robert Leckie, and Chuck Tatum provided the inspiration for the series. It followed three regiments of the First Marine Division as they took one Pacific island after another while making their way closer to the Japanese homeland. “The Pacific” is “a brutal but eloquent story that’s finally less about how men fight and die than what happens to them when they fight and survive,” wrote James Poniewozik for Time. “It will show you how character and sheer, unfair randomness combine to produce cruelty or decency.” Comedy “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” was a spin-off of “The Andy Griffith Show,” and followed the adventures of the naive, happy-go-lucky title character as a recruit in Marine Corps boot camp, played by Jim Nabors, and Sgt. Carter, his hard-nosed drill instructor played by Frank Sutton. The show's “excellence is due primarily to the chemistry between Jim Nabors and Frank Sutton,” wrote one viewer. “The writing was good too, but these pros made that easier because they could carry the load so effectively. “Hogan’s Heroes” depicted Col. Robert Hogan and his fellow Allied prisoners of war at a World War II Nazi POW camp. Col. Klink, the camp’s commandant, thinks he runs things, but it’s actually Hogan and his men. They routinely throw monkey wrenches into German plans and rescue other Allied troops caught behind enemy lines. As for Sergeant Schultz, Klink’s senior non commissioned officer, “I know nothing!” “The cast was top notch and worked well together in front of the camera,” wrote one viewer. “M*A*S*H” was based on the motion picture of the same name and is set at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War. Although “M*A*S*H,” was described as a situation comedy and depicted the hijinks of the surgeons, nurses, and wacky support staff, it also showed an occasional somber, serious side. The long-running CBS series had a loyal following, and more than 106 million fans tuned in to watch the capper, titled ""Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"" — a TV record at the time. “McHale’s Navy” was set in the Pacific theater during World War II and portrayed the skipper and crew of a U.S. Navy PT boat, PT-73, based at the fictional island of Taratupa. Although the zany, good-hearted crew loved to have fun, they always managed to get their job done harassing the Japanese while ignoring Navy regulations and protocol. “After years of playing primarily dramatic roles, Ernest Borgnine really shines as the lovable con man Commander Quentin McHale,” wrote one reviewer for IMDB. “The supporting cast was also great, especially Joe Flynn playing his usual hot tempered authority figure in Captain Binghamton and Tim Conway playing the role that made him famous, the nerdish Ensign Parker.” “The Phil Silver’s Show” was originally titled “You’ll Never Get Rich” and ran on CBS for four seasons from the mid to late 1950s. It centered on the fictional Fort Baxter motor pool run by Army Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko, who’s always coming up with get-rich-quick schemes that involve his men but never seem to come to fruition. “This is a classic TV series,” wrote an audience reviewer for Rotten Tomatoes. “This was confirmed critically with its winning the Emmy for Best Comedy Series, Best Actor, Best Writing. The cast is great, full of all the old comedians/character actors of the day.”",0.9688042877845593 "Barack Obama announced earlier this month that his memoirs, titled “A Promised Land,” will hit the bookshelves on November 17. Axios added what Obama neglected to mention, that “A Promised Land” is 768 pages long, and it’s only Volume 1, which Twitchy editor Greg Pollowitz called “the most Barack Obama thing ever.” But what of other political memoirs — not just by U.S. presidents but also foreign leaders and U.S. secretaries of state? Here’s Newsmax’s list of the 10 best in chronological order. “Memoirs of the Second World War” by Winston Churchill. Not only is Churchill considered one of Great Britain’s best prime ministers in the modern era, but he was also one of the strongest and most eloquent voices among the leaders of the WWII allied countries facing off against the axis nations. The book was originally available in six hardcover volumes: “The Gathering Storm,” “Their Finest Hour,” “The Grand Alliance,” “The Hinge of Fate,” “Closing the Ring,” and “Triumph and Tragedy,” published over a six-year period. It’s currently available in an abridged, paperback edition. “Memoirs” is the riveting tale of the fight between a tiny island nation and its allies against forces led by Nazi Germany, told by what was arguably the most powerful player in World War II. “In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal” by Richard M. Nixon. Despite the controversy surrounding Nixon, his administration was undeniably marked by many successes. He re-established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and laid the framework for ending the war in Vietnam. But Nixon was also caught up in the Watergate scandal, and as a result he was the only president in history to resign from office. Despite being known as a very private individual engaged in a very public profession, “In the Arena” is perhaps the most intimate memoir ever written by a major political figure. Nixon shared his private thoughts and feelings on his long political career, as well as American and world leaders. “Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises” by Henry Kissinger. Kissinger served as secretary of state under both Nixon and President Gerald Ford after Nixon’s resignation, and as such he was at the front lines during the breakout and end of the Yom Kippur War, and the closing days of America’s long conflict in Vietnam. “Crisis” is based upon formerly classified transcripts of telephone conversations Kissinger had with foreign leaders during those days, including with the Israeli prime minister, the U.N. secretary general and President Nixon. Amazon describes “Crisis” as “a book that presents perhaps the best record of the inner workings of diplomacy at the superheated pace and tension of real crisis.” “An American Life” by Ronald Reagan. Known as “the great communicator,” Reagan was also perhaps the father of the modern American conservative movement, based on his belief that prosperity flourishes best when freedom is at its maximum and taxes are kept to a minimum. “An American Life” recounts his days as a television and screen actor, to his pivot into the political arena, first as president of the Screen Actors Guild, then into California politics, and finally his road to the White House. Throughout Reagan’s eight years in office, he promoted freedom to other world leaders, and in the process arguably set into motion the fall of the Soviet Union. Amazon describes “American Life” as “a warm, richly detailed, and deeply human book, a brilliant self-portrait, a significant work of history.” “The Downing Street Years” by Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher was to the United Kingdom what Reagan was to the United States. Known as the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher, like Reagan, championed liberty and personal responsibility, and the two were also the best of friends during the years they were leaders of their respective countries. According to Amazon, “Margaret Thatcher frankly recalls the former British prime minister's dealings with U.S. presidents, the Falkland War, and her election victories in 1983 and 1987.” “A World Transformed” by George H.W. Bush. The former World War II Naval aviator served as Reagan’s vice president before entering the White House. Although in office for only a single term, he helped shape events that truly left “A World Transformed” in that brief time. Bush oversaw the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, and helped put together one of the greatest coalitions in world history to push Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait and back to Iraq. He also explained why he didn’t follow them back into Bagdad. The New York Times Book Review described it as ""The most important book yet written about the end of the Cold War."" “The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992” by James A. Baker III. Baker served as secretary of state under President George H. W. Bush, and “Politics” describes those tumultuous years and Baker’s role in shaping some of the most pivotal events of the second half of the 20th century. Those events included the end of the Communist Eastern Bloc, the invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, and the end of apartheid and corresponding birth of freedom in South Africa. “My Life” by Bill Clinton. As the title implies, “My Life” covers Clinton’s life from his earliest memories in Hope, Arkansas, through his eight years in the White House, and include his triumphs and tragedies, his winsomeness and his warts. Amazon describes “My Life as “the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written — encompassing not only the high points and crises but the way the presidency actually works: the day-to-day bombardment of problems, personalities, conflicts, setbacks, achievements.” “Decision Points” by George W. Bush. The “Bush-43” years can only be described as uncertain, ushered in by the al-Qaeda terrorist attack less than eight months after he was sworn into office, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan that resulted. Less than two months after its 2010 release, “Decision Points” outpaced Clinton’s memoir by selling more than two million copies within two months to become a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. “A groundbreaking new brand of presidential memoir, ‘Decision Points’ will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on eight remarkable years in American history — and on the man at the center of events,” according to Amazon. “No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington” by Condoleeza Rice. Like Kissinger and Nixon before her, Rice served first as national security advisor, then as secretary of state to George W. Bush, and remains to this day as one of America’s most admired women. “Surprisingly candid in her appraisals of various Administration colleagues and the hundreds of foreign leaders with whom she dealt, Rice also offers here keen insight into how history actually proceeds,” according to Amazon. “In ‘No Higher Honor,’ she delivers a master class in statecraft but always in a way that reveals her essential warmth and humility, and her deep reverence for the ideals on which America was founded.”",-0.4567109892441845 "From its inception in 1776 to the present day, the United States has been blessed with military geniuses in all the services. Each conflict served to magnify the bravery, tactics and intellect of at least one American commander. World War II gave us at least eight, offering proof that they were indeed part of the Greatest Generation. Here are Newsmax's picks for those who recognized opportunity on the battlefield, the ocean and the air when it came, and boldly struck and turned the course of the battle and perhaps even the war to America's favor. Revolutionary War Gen. George Washington: When the Founders declared their independence from King George III, they agreed that there was but one person to command America's Continental Army. Washington held his undisciplined, poorly trained and meagerly equipped force together until a decisive battle could be won to turn the war. That strategy was realized at Yorktown, leaving the British forces demoralized and defeated. War of 1812 Gen. Andrew Jackson: The future president made his mark at the Battle of New Orleans, where he found himself in circumstances similar to Washington: He commanded 5,000 inexperienced and poorly-trained men to defend the city against an approaching force of 10,000 highly-trained, battle-hardened British troops. Once the smoke had cleared, the American forces listed only 71 casualties to the British's 2,037. The battle prompted Billboard's 1959 top hit by Jimmy Horton, ""The Battle of New Orleans."" American Civil War Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: Following his graduation from West Point, Grant repeatedly distinguished himself during the Mexican-American War, but it was during the Civil War where he truly left his mark. His western victories, especially at Vicksburg, made Grant Lincoln's choice as general in chief and earned him the moniker ""Unconditional Surrender"" Grant. His tenacious 1864 Virginia campaign led to the final defeat of Robert E. Lee's army. Gen. William T. Sherman: Another West Point grad, historian B.H. Liddell Hart called Sherman ""the first modern general"" in history. Sherman's reputation and career sharply rose along with Grant's as the result of the Battle of Vicksburg. He ultimately proved his mettle by inflicting total war on the South during the Atlanta campaign and his subsequent March to the Sea. Adm. David Farragut: Farragut, the first admiral in the history of the U.S. Navy, fought in both the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. But he demonstrated the importance of sea power during warfare by capturing New Orleans in 1862 and Mobile two years later in decisive naval victories. Following the war, President Lincoln promoted Farragut to vice admiral — America's first. World War I Gen. John J. ""Black Jack"" Pershing: After Pershing was given the command of the American Expeditionary Force during WWI, he rejected British and French demands that his 3 million-man army be integrated with their forces. He insisted U.S. forces fight totally under U.S. command. He, like George Washington before him, rose to America's highest military rank, general of the armies. William ""Billy"" Mitchell: Just as Farragut demonstrated the strategic importance of sea power, Mitchell did the same for airpower, and is referred to as the ""father of the U.S. Air Force."" A spiritual intellectual, Mitchell commanded 1,500 American, French, British and Italian aircraft to victory at Saint-Mihiel in 1918. This was one of history's first coordinated air-ground offensives. World War II Gen. Dwight D. ""Ike"" Eisenhower: Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as supreme allied commander in Europe, the future two-term president oversaw the most successful allied coalition in military history. His successes included the daring D-Day Normandy invasion, defeating the German Ardennes offensive and spearheading through Germany's Western Front armies. Gen. Douglas MacArthur: Brilliant, controversial and born to a military family, MacArthur and his father, Arthur MacArthur Jr., became the first father and son to be awarded the Medal of Honor. He served in three wars — WWI, WWII and Korea — and led two campaigns in the Philippines, one from 1941 to 1942, when he was ordered to leave the islands to avoid capture by the Japanese, and another from 1944 to 1945. MacArthur achieved phenomenal success in the Pacific despite his inadequate supplies and limited troops and ships. Gen. George S. Patton Jr.: ""Ol' Blood 'n' Guts"" was almost universally believed to be America's best field commander of the Second World War. He led the Western Task Force in the North Africa Campaign where he took the beaches near Casablanca, Morocco, then commanded the U.S. Seventh Army in the Mediterranean, where he overwhelmed Sicily. As an encore, Patton led the Third Army in a race across France that overwhelmed Germany in something of a reverse blitzkrieg. Adm. Chester Nimitz: When President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Nimitz as commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet 10 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had his work cut out for him. Nimitz commanded World War II's largest geographical expanse with a fleet that had been largely decimated. His carrier-based naval airpower, combined with submarine fleet, augmented by the advantage of having cracked the Japanese diplomatic naval code, allowed him to spearhead history's greatest armada to victory. Adm. William ""Bull"" Halsey: Halsey was to the Navy what Patton was to the Army: bold and decisive in battle. Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Halsey took command of Carrier Division 2, using the carrier Enterprise as his flagship. After he conducted a series of successful raids on Japanese-held islands and provided a base for the Doolittle Raid, Halsey was appointed commander, South Pacific Area. His slogan of ""hit hard, hit fast, hit often,"" was soon used throughout the Navy. Adm. Raymond Spruance: Spruance commanded and was victorious in the two most significant sea battles in the Pacific theater. The first was the Battle of Midway in 1942, which marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific. The second was his defeat of the Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea at Leyte Gulf in 1944, which helped seal Japan's ultimate fate. After Leyte, Spruance steamed his fleet westward, hitting the islands of Truk, Saipan, and Iwo Jima. Gen. Curtis LeMay: LeMay is credited with developing and putting into practice daring and controversial low-altitude nighttime B-29 Superfortress firebombing attacks in the Pacific theater that devastated Japan's cities. Later, two of his B-29s dropped the first atomic bombs used in wartime, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which put an end to the Pacific War. Post-war, LeMay directed the Berlin Airlift, bringing in supplies to West Berlin after the Soviets blockaded that area, then directed the Strategic Air Command for 10 years. Gen. James H. ""Jimmy"" Doolittle: While a lieutenant colonel in the newly-formed Army Air Force, the forerunner to the U.S. Air Force, Doolittle was assigned the Herculean task of formulating a response to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Just as Japan brought the war to the United States, Doolittle decided to return the favor: He took the war to the Japanese homeland. His plan was to lead a flight of 16 B-25 medium bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier, fly into Japan and drop their ordinance, then land in China. Although the damage that the Doolittle Raid inflicted was minor, it sent Japanese forces that were sorely needed elsewhere back to Japan to protect the homeland. Korean War Gen. Douglas MacArthur: After North Korea invaded its southern neighbor, the United Nations authorized the United States to select a commander of a coalition of Allied forces to come to the aid of South Korea. In June 1950 the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously chose MacArthur as commander in chief of the United Nations Command. A falling out with President Harry S. Truman led to his discharge. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway: Like MacArthur, Ridgeway fought in three wars: WWI, WWII and Korea. He gained fame as an airborne commander during World War II in Sicily, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. Ridgway succeeded MacArthur in Korea on April 1951, where he revitalized U.N. forces and sent the Chinese offensive that had aided North Korea in retreat. Afterwards Ridgeway succeeded Eisenhower as supreme allied commander in Europe for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Vietnam War Gen. Harold G. ""Hal"" Moore: Moore was the first of his West Point class to be promoted to brigadier general, major general and lieutenant general, and was awarded the military's second-highest decoration for valor: the Distinguished Service Cross. He was presented with that for his legendary command of the Seventh Cavalry when it was outnumbered and surrounded by North Vietnamese Army troops at the week-long Battle of Ia Drang Valley. His conduct established the role for U.S. combat operations for the rest of the Vietnam War. Gulf War Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.: Known as a strategic thinker, ""Stormin' Norman"" saw action in Vietnam before being selected to command United States Central Command. While in that position he drew up contingency plans in the event Iraq, which was saber-rattling at the time, were to invade a neighboring country. Shortly afterwards, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Schwarzkopf drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and successfully ended the war in just six months, three weeks and five days. His frequent televised press briefings during the conflict made him America's favorite military figure.",-1.2464907329300852 "Many of our ideas of proper parenting come from not just observing out own parents, but also by observing how parents are depicted in that living room mainstay found in every American home -- TV. Here is Newsmax’s list of the best TV fathers. “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” -- Ozzie Nelson as himself This starred the real-life Nelson family, and it got its beginnings as a radio program in 1944 before moving to TV four years later. It remained as a staple through 1966. The series was a springboard to Ricky Nelson’s singing career, but Ozzie was the one who held the family together with his good humor, often self-effacing. “Father Knows Best” -- Robert Young as James Anderson This series also began on radio in 1949, with the James Anderson character portrayed as a somewhat sarcastic insurance salesman. When it was televised in 1954, Young asked that his character be softened, and the laughter and sarcasm of the radio series was shelved to depict a warm family relationship, with Young usually offering advice to his three children, “Princess,” “Bud,” and “Kitten.” The new formula worked as the series ran until 1960 and total of 203 episodes were produced. It also resulted in two reunion made-for-TV movies in 1967. “My Three Sons” -- Fred MacMurray as Steve Douglas After becoming widowed, it’s up to aeronautical engineer Douglas to raise and care for his three rambunctious boys on his own. The series enjoyed a long run -- from 1960 to 1972, due, in large part, to MacMurray’s portrayal of a thoughtful, pipe-smoking Douglas offering sage advice and keeping his family together. “Bachelor Father” -- John Forsythe as Bentley Gregg Wealthy Beverly Hills attorney Gregg accepts responsibility of raising his niece Kelly after her parents are killed in an automobile accident. Although the Gregg character occasionally dated in some episodes, he dedicated most of his time to raising Kelly, who literally grew into a young woman, from age 13 when the series started, to 18 when it ended. “The Brady Bunch” -- Robert Reed as Mike Brady Los Angeles architect Brady was depicted as a widowed father of three boys who marries a widowed mother of three girls. As the head of this blended family, he was famous for his one-on-one talks with his six children, usually conducted in his home office with him seated at his drafting table and the errant child sitting on a couch. The series ran for five seasons totaling 115 episodes. “Different Strokes” -- Conrad Bain as Phillip Drummond The Drummond character, a widower and wealthy New York businessman, and his daughter Kimberly, take in the two African American sons of a deceased employee, and he raises them as his own. Although “Different Strokes” was a sitcom, with the two boys providing much of the humor, it was also a vehicle for serious issues that included racism and illegal drug use, with the Drummond father-figure giving a steady hand and a voice of reason. The series ran for five seasons, comprising 138 episodes. “Family Affair” -- Brian Keith as William “Uncle Bill” Davis Similar to “Bachelor Father,” in “Family Affair,” wealthy New York City-based bachelor and civil engineer Davis takes in his brother’s three orphaned children at the insistence of other relatives who believe he’s financially best suited to do so. Initially neither he nor his English gentleman’s gentleman Mr. French are very happy with the arrangement, but they soon warm up to it, and “Uncle Bill” becomes a loving father to the children as they all form into a close-knit family. “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” -- Bill Bixby as Tom Corbett This series was based on a film and novel of the same name, and depicts a Los Angeles-based magazine publisher and widower raising a young, mischievous son, Eddie, with the help of their Japanese housekeeper, Mrs. Livingston. Because Eddie wants to experience having a mother again, he manipulates his father’s relationships with women in an attempt to create a romance. Mrs. Livingston always addresses Corbett as ""Mr. Eddie's Father,"" giving a hint as to who everyone thought was the most important member of the family. “The Andy Griffith Show” -- Andy Griffith as Andy Taylor The Andy Taylor character was a small-town North Carolina sheriff and single father, committed to raising his son Opie with the help of their Aunt Bea. The series ran for eight seasons, 249 episodes. Andy raised his son with a mixture of good humor and common sense, and held him to a high moral standard. “Happy Days” -- Tom Bosley as Howard Cunningham Milwaukee hardware store owner Cunningham was father to not only son Richie and daughter Joanie, but also to a large cast of their friends who enjoyed hanging out at the Cunningham home. They included Ralphie, Potsie, Fonzie, and Chachie, and Cunningham often offered them fatherly advice when the occasion called for it. The series enjoyed a long run of 255 episodes spread over 11 seasons. “Little House on the Prairie” -- Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls Based on the autobiographical “Little House of the Prairie” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, this TV series described life on a small farm in Walnut Grove, Minn. Ingalls was known for his cracker barrel wisdom, which made him something of a leader in his tiny farming community. He’s most of all a pioneer raising three daughters on the frontier along with his wife, Caroline. The series filmed 204 episodes over nine seasons. “Full House” -- Bob Saget as Danny Tanner In this series, which ran for eight seasons and 192 episodes, Saget played a young widower and father of four girls. Tanner is a bit of a neat freak and is very protective of his girls, making him one of every girl’s favorite dads. “The Waltons” -- Ralph Waite as John Walton Sr. Set in the fictional Walton’s Mountain, Va., from the Great Depression to World War II, “The Waltons” was inspired by Earl Hamner’s own childhood in rural Virginia. Although centered on “John Boy” Walton, the eldest of John and Olivia’s seven children, John Sr.’s. common sense, moral code, and steady hand made him the rock that kept the family afloat during harsh economic times, by farming, hunting, and managing a small lumber yard. The series ran for nine seasons, comprised of 221 episodes. “Eight Is Enough” -- Dick Van Patten as Thomas ""Tom"" Bradford Sr. This series was inspired by syndicated newspaper columnist Tom Braden’s autobiographical book of the same name, describing his life as a parent raising eight children. In the sitcom, Tom Brandon is a columnist for the fictional Sacramento Register, who successfully deals with the needs of eight children of differing personalities.",1.9626848891912467 "The American colonists broke away from England out of a desire to be independent and to attain the basic rights and liberties denied them under King George III. Benjamin Franklin, a founder, though not a president, cautioned future generations, ""Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."" Franklin is a source of many great quotes that have survived since the founding of our country and here Newsmax has put together as list of some of the most memorable quotes from each one of our presidents. George Washington: “In the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” John Adams: “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Thomas Jefferson: “I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” James Madison: “Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” James Monroe: ""If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy."" John Quincy Adams: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” Andrew Jackson: “Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” Martin Van Buren: ""As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it."" William Henry Harrison: “There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.” John Tyler: “Everything dependent on human action is liable to abuse."" James Polk: ""I am heartily rejoiced that my term is so near its close. I will soon cease to be a servant and will become a sovereign."" Zachary Taylor: ""It would be judicious to act with magnanimity towards a prostrate foe."" Millard Fillmore: ""An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory."" Franklin Pierce: ""The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded."" James Buchanan: ""The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among freemen."" Also, (to Lincoln): “If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am in leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.” (see also Van Buren and Polk) Abraham Lincoln: “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.” Andrew Johnson: “Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.” Ulysses S. Grant: “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.” Rutherford B. Hayes: “He serves his party best who serves the country best.” James A. Garfield: “If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.” “All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.” Chester A. Arthur: ""The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it."" Grover Cleveland: “Communism is a hateful thing, and a menace to peace and organized government.” Benjamin Harrison: “We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.” William McKinley: “The people of this country want an industrial policy that is for America and Americans.” Theodore Roosevelt: “Speak softly but carry a large stick.” “There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.” William Howard Taft: “We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.” Woodrow Wilson: “There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.” Warren G. Harding: “It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God.” ""Less government in business and more business in government."" Calvin Coolidge: “The chief business of the American people is business.” “The business of America is business.” Herbert Hoover: “Honest differences of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy making among free men.” Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.” Harry S. Truman: “The buck stops here.” “No young man should go into politics if he wants to get rich or if he expects an adequate reward for his services. An honest public servant can’t become rich in politics. He can only attain greatness and satisfaction by service.” “Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.” Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.” “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.” John F. Kennedy: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Lyndon B. Johnson: “There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.” Richard M. Nixon: “A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits.” Gerald R. Ford: “I have had a lot of adversaries in my political life, but no enemies that I can remember.” Jimmy Carter: “We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.” Ronald Reagan: “We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” “Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.” “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” George H.W. Bush: “We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.” Bill Clinton: “We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.” ""I may not have been the greatest president, but I've had the most fun eight years."" George W. Bush: “Everywhere that freedom stirs, tyrants fear.” “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” Barack H. Obama: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America.” Donald J. Trump: “You have to think anyway, so why not think big?” “Today, as we stand together upon this sacred Earth, we pledge that our nations will forever be strong and united. We will forever be together. Our people will forever be bold. Our hearts will forever be loyal. And our children, and their children, will forever and always be free.” (On the 75th anniversary of D-Day)",0.745310489954915 "The following article appears first and foremost on American Greatness Writing as someone who was slightly acquainted with the late Mario Cuomo and considered him a substantial political force — not out of place among the many distinguished men who have held the historic office of governor of New York, from General George Clinton and John Jay to the Roosevelts, Al Smith, and Nelson Rockefeller — I have always found both of the present public Cuomos unutterably obnoxious. The only positive thing about the present governor is that he is an improvement on Eliot Spitzer, an apparently megalomaniacal incarnation of the concept of malicious and reckless prosecution when he was state attorney general. With that said, the cascade of demands that Andrew Cuomo resign over the allegations of improprieties against him launched by present or former female co-workers is piffle. There is something particularly nauseating about the cowardly antics of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as he attacks Cuomo and demands his resignation. De Blasio is a catastrophic failure in his post, often occupied by accomplished individuals, from DeWitt Clinton to Fiorello LaGuardia, Ed Koch, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and, even as a debonair souvenir of the roaring 1920s in Manhattan, James J. Walker. De Blasio is, as former President Trump described him, the most incompetent mayor of New York in the 400-year history of that office. He has presided over a regime of unrelieved incompetence, corruption, and cowardice, culminating with the $1 billion defunding of the New York City Police Department in response to the racist violence of last summer. For all Cuomo’s failings, he deserves better than de Blasio sanctimoniously demanding that he resign because of this cascade of denunciations from women who over many years have worked closely with the governor and now claim that he behaved improperly towards them. The governor has a perfect right to await the results of the investigation being conducted by the attorney general of New York into his conduct, and there is no reason at all that he should resign now prior to any finding from that source. In fact, most of the agitation over the allegedly wronged women is years out of date, completely uncorroborated, stops well short of coerced sex, and even if entirely true, is sleazy, tasteless, and wholly inappropriate, but it cannot seriously be portrayed in any case that has been explicitly described up to now as a physically dangerous or psychologically traumatizing assault. Traditionally, these are matters to be taken into account by voters and the media, given the attention they deserve, along with the denials of them which the governor has repeatedly uttered. The complainants’ credibility must take into account, the delay in their complaint and, where appropriate, the continuation of their employment even under the conditions alleged. The much more serious charge against Cuomo is his apparent complicity in the wrongful death of many thousands of elderly coronavirus sufferers his administration consigned to homes for the elderly with tragic results. No one would suggest that the governor wished the terrible consequences of his administration’s mistaken decisions, but the issues of potential negligence, and of deliberate misinformation on a scale that may have violated the commitments of his oath of office, are serious questions of life and death and the criminal law that will require comprehensive and unbiased investigation to determine whether prosecution of the governor or other officials is justified. The charges involving the women, though very important, are essentially a comparative sideshow, and despite the hysteria that has been generated by militant aggrieved women, long-established rules of evidence are going to have to be resurrected and applied on the civil law standard of balance of probabilities and the criminal law standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt. There is, moreover, no doubt that many men have been unfairly victimized where charges of male sexual misconduct inflicted on women in subordinate positions have been accepted after insufficient administration of evidence and that some of the accused have been judicially punished or otherwise penalized beyond what objectively even-handed standards of proof would justify. The whole country saw how close the U.S. Senate came in 2018 to rejecting unjustly the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court because of what cannot reasonably be believed to have been politically convincing allegations of misconduct 36 years prior to his nomination. Senators and other commentators were demanding that the individual making the allegations against Kavanaugh be believed automatically because of her sex. It was to this almost unimaginable depth of vacuous injustice that the confirmation process of America’s senior legislative chamber for admission to the bench of its highest court was nearly reduced: a mockery of due process which would make the Red Queen appear a Solomonic source of justice and equity. Cuomo is almost certainly finished politically and very deservedly so; he is an ineffectual and megalomaniacal blowhard and anyone who would send thousands of COVID sufferers into homes for the elderly while rattling out a book in praise of his crisis management and accepting an Emmy Award for his self-serving daily propaganda sessions about a public health crisis he was chronically mismanaging, is not fit for high office. He does, however, have an opportunity to perform one service. He could defend the issue of his conduct toward the female plaintiffs who have accused him and help to clarify the level of proof required to validate such claims. Instead of weakly folding like a three-dollar suitcase in the manner of Fighting Al Franken, who floundered out of the Senate after the publication of a photograph in which he made a humorous ghoulish face while gesturing at the covered breasts of a beautiful sleeping woman whom he did not disturb, Cuomo should push the American justice system to restore a reasonable balance between the rights of the accused and the rights of women not to be intimidated by the physical or verbal sexually charged harassments of a man in a position of influence over the course of their careers. Cuomo should see this as an opportunity to be useful, and, even to some extent, to end his public career on a slightly redemptive note. As for New York, both New York City and New York state have had contemptibly incompetent and venal leaders before, but not for at least a century, if ever, have they been lumbered with such unworthy occupants of their highest elected offices simultaneously as they are today. The thought, a public rumination, that de Blasio is contemplating running for governor, is an obscenity. He is a personal wrecking ball to good government. The sooner both these unworthies are banished to the merciful obscurity of the memory, the better for the Empire State and the nation’s suffering metropolis. The preceding article also appears on American Greatness. Conrad Black is a financier, author and columnist. He was the publisher of the London (UK) Telegraph newspapers and Spectator from 1987 to 2004, and has authored biographies on Maurice Duplessis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard M. Nixon. He is honorary chairman of Conrad Black Capital Corporation and has been a member of the British House of Lords since 2001, and is a Knight of the Holy See. He is the author of ""Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other"" and ""Rise to Greatness, the History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present."" Read Conrad Black's Reports — More Here.",-0.07528030097613242 "March 18, 2021: Just 45% of Manhattan's roughly 1 million office workers are expected to be back in the office by this September.[1] A Partnership for New York City survey found that only 22% of Manhattan's large employers will require all workers to return to the office full-time. Three times as many are thinking of a mix that includes some days in the office and others at home.[1] An earlier Number of the Day reported a steep decline in the number of New York office leases over the past year. The cost of office space in the city has also declined. Footnotes: Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author. Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day is published by Ballotpedia weekdays at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author. Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of ""Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System,"" ""In Search of Self-Governance,"" and ""The People's Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt."" Read Scott Rasmussen's Reports — More Here.",-2.1901538328138064 "In California schools, it would seem that Jesus is out, but worshiping human-sacrifice-requiring Aztec deities may soon be in. In a 1996 book I wrote with D. James Kennedy, ''The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail,'' which dealt with today's anti-Christian bias, we noted the following: ''San Jose, California. City officials built a statue of the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, costing taxpayers half a million dollars. The mayor says the Aztec religion possessed 'those elements that seek to elevate the human consciousness to a higher plane.''' After observing the story, we offered this commentary, ''The irony is that the Aztec religion routinely engaged in human sacrifice. Here is a statue built to honor the god of human sacrifice — the worship of whom cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Yet the same city ruled that there is no room for a manger with baby Jesus in it. Jesus, whose teachings and followers have banished human sacrifice from every corner of this world, is out. A god demanding human sacrifice is in.'' Here we are a quarter of a century later, and now comes a story out of California about a proposed plan to promote such teaching, accompanied by ritual Aztec chanting, in the public schools there. Once the teachers' union says the schools can open, of course. Writing for the city-journal.com earlier this month, Christopher F. Rufo notes: ''Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new statewide ethnic studies curriculum that advocates for the 'decolonization' of American society and elevates Aztec religious symbolism — all in the service of a left-wing political ideology.'' If this passes, it could impact ''10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students.'' Rufo notes that this curriculum was developed by a Marxist and is part of the ''pedagogy of the oppressed.'' The chanting, of course, means that the children would be involved in not just learning about the deities, but in actually worshiping them. Rufo opines, ''The chants have a clear implication: the displacement of the Christian god, which is said to be an extension of white supremacist oppression, and the restoration of the indigenous gods to their rightful place in the social justice cosmology. It is, in a philosophical sense, a revenge of the gods.'' In the name of ''the separation of church and state'' — words not found in our Constitution — any remnant of our nation's Judeo-Christian tradition seems to find no place in our public schools. But chanting to pagan deities is fine with the left. The first Congress under the Constitution wrote the First Amendment in 1791. And the first liberty they guaranteed — before freedom of speech, of the press, or of assembly — was the freedom of religion. They wanted to make sure that there would be no national church at the federal level, forcing people of other denominations to conform. They also wanted to make sure the government would not restrict the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment later was twisted to mean we should have a strict ''separation of church and state'' — not allowing any reference to God in the public arena. That same Congress that gave us the First Amendment passed a law called the Northwest Ordinance, spelling out an expectation for territories that became future states, saying, ''Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary for good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.'' It is historically undeniable that when they said, ''religion,'' they meant Christianity (in one form or another). And when they said, ''morality,'' it was Biblical morality. Note the priority of the Congress as to schools. Teach them about God, morality, knowledge. How different is the anti-Christian curriculum proposed in California. Those Aztec deities demanded violence. Robert Ripley of ''Believe It or Not!'' fame writes about a carved circular stone found in the National Museum in Mexico City, where the human victims were slaughtered in Aztec worship: ''The prisoners, who for several years had been held in reserve for this festival, were ranged in files forming a procession nearly two miles long. This long line slowly walked to their death marking time to the shrieks of the dying as they were bent naked on this stone and their hearts torn from their bodies. It required four days to finish the slaughter.'' In contrast, Jesus, who said, ''Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'' — offered Himself as the sacrificial ''Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.'' But today, California educators apparently prefer pagan deities that demand human sacrifice for worship. Since recognition of God has been expelled in our public schools, too many of our learning centers have become secular wastelands. In California, it could get even worse. Jerry Newcombe, D. Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air host. He has written/co-written 33 books, including ""George Washington's Sacred Fire"" (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and ""What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?"" (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). Read Jerry Newcombe's Reports — More Here.",-1.8035917673829485 "Let me be perfectly clear about this: If Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York purposefully put elderly men and women infected with COVID-19 into crowded nursing homes and if he had any idea of how lethal a move that was, he should be prosecuted for a crime. Not sued. Not removed from office: prosecuted for negligent manslaughter at the very least. It was an act so reckless and contemptuous of human life that it was akin to murder. But I am not aware that there has been any proof produced that Mr. Cuomo knew what he was doing. This still raises the issue of negligence to such a high degree that it looks like textbook negligent manslaughter. I hope and believe that an investigation into this issue is taking place right now. The allegations by six women that Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed them or even committed ""sexual battery"" upon them are an entirely different matter. Some of the allegations against him are hard to understand. One is that he kissed her hand when she was leaving as if to say, “Adieu.” Another is that he invited her into a “dimly lit” hotel room and did not in any way touch her at that time and did not impede her leaving. Yet another is that he touched the small of the complainant’s back while saying goodbye. I am not sure what planet these complainants come from, or what the current state of lawlessness in New York is that it considers such matters to warrant the removal from office of a duly elected governor. To read Ben Stein's full article, please visit The American Spectator. Ben Stein is a writer, an actor, and a lawyer who served as a speechwriter in the Nixon administration as the Watergate scandal unfolded. He began his unlikely road to stardom when director John Hughes as the numbingly dull economics teacher in the urban comedy, ""Ferris Bueller's Day Off."" Read more more reports from Ben Stein — Click Here Now.",-0.07230792618324552 "Israel continues to need more allies. It was recently able to normalize relations with the UAE and Bahrain in part because of the Iranian threat. If, as a next step, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could visit Saudi Arabia, it might reverberate in a similar way as Nixon’s trip to China or Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia’s long history of opposition to Israel, and financing terrorism, would make everyone pause. Israel and Saudi Arabia each understand that Iran is a threat to both countries. According to former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, told him in a 2001 meeting that ""setting Israel on fire"" was at the top of Iran’s agenda. According to Aznar, Khamenei said that Israel is a “cancer condemned to disappear” and that he believed that an ""open confrontation"" with America and Israel was inevitable. In 2002, Khamenei was trying to make good on his threat when an Iranian opposition group revealed a secret uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. In September 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama revealed the existence of a second secret enrichment facility. If the Iranian nuclear threat was only an Israeli problem, the Saudis would not be secretly working with Israel. Saudi Arabia has actively promoted anti-Semitism in their ""educational"" textbooks. King Faisal, who ruled Saudi Arabia from 1964 to 1975, used to give visitors copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of the ultimate anti-Semitic texts. A normalization agreement between the two nations would also convince a significant number of Americans to share the Saudis’ fear that Iranian leaders are crazy enough to use nuclear weapons. Currently, the Biden administration is pushing in a different direction, wanting to return to the Iran Deal and to condemn Saudi Arabia for the 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Certainly, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is atrocious. A reading of the State Department’s 2018 Human Rights Report on Saudi Arabia confirms that the Khashoggi assassination may not be the worst thing that the Saudi government has done recently. Here are some of the most important takeaways from that report: In 2015, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of countries to fight a war in Yemen. According to the State Department’s report, between 2015 to 2018, an estimated 6,592 civilians were killed in Yemen, including more than 1,200 children. In Saudi Arabia, people can be killed for apostasy, adultery, and homosexuality. In August 2017, it was reported that more than 2,000 people had been detained for at least three years without a formal criminal charge or a trial. The court system is not independent of the monarch, and there is no presumption of innocence. This is no freedom of the press. On Feb. 8, 2018, newspaper columnist Saleh al-Shehi was arrested for criticizing the government. In July 2018, Safar al-Hawali, his brother, and four of his children, were arrested because he wrote a book critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. No one should go to prison for writing a book. That said, the United States is still better off keeping its alliance with Saudi Arabia. Fortunately, the United States is now less reliant on oil imports. According to the Energy Information Administration, in 2004 the United States imported between 9 to 10 million barrels of crude oil per day. In 2020 and 2021, the daily average ranges from 5 to 6 million barrels per day. This means we are now in a position to demand more from Saudi Arabia, which cannot rely on oil revenues forever. That said, the United States has a better chance of convincing the Saudi leaders to improve their human rights practices as their ally. If military action against Iran is ever necessary, it would be easier for Israel to bomb Iran if they could refuel their planes in Saudi airspace. This would increase the range of Israel’s fighter jets.In terms of soft power, one notable idea is that water-related cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia could help other countries in the Middle East while further isolating Iran. While Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, this terrorist group has maintained relations with Saudi Arabia. Hamas cannot officially accept Israel’s help, but they might accept Israel’s water technology if the Saudis give it to them. The leadership of Hamas has mismanaged the water situation in Gaza. The only aquifer has overdrawn the water. In 2018, the United Nations declared that Gaza was unlivable in part because of contaminated water, a collapsing health system, and 70% youth unemployment. In the last year, Watergen, an Israeli company, provided Gaza with two atmospheric water generators, which extract water from the air. These machines, which cost $61,000 each, can produce up to 6,000 liters of water per day. It would take about 1,000 of these machines to support the 2 million Gazans with fresh water. This would cost $61 million. Saudi Arabia could pay for these machines. It's doubtful Hamas could publicly refuse such a noble offer from an Arab country. In Syria, more than 500,000 people have died. There are over 5 million Syrian refugees abroad and at least 11 million people internally displaced. This war began in 2011 because Syria experienced the worst drought in 800 years from 2006 to 2010. As long as the water shortages persist, this war will continue because millions of Syrians have nothing left to lose. If the Israelis and Saudis can credibly solve the water issue, the Syrian factions might be willing to seriously discuss peace. Syria might even decide to end its alliance with Iran. Hopefully, success in Gaza and Syria could lead to other joint water initiatives in other parts of the Middle East. According to UNICEF, ""In 2020, an estimated 20.1 million Yemenis needed humanitarian assistance to access safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene provisions."" In 2018, there were protests in Iran because of water scarcity. The protests in Lebanon and Iraq in recent years can be partially attributed to water mismanagement. A normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia can change the Middle East for the better. The United States should encourage these two countries to make peace. Robert Zapesochny is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on foreign affairs, national security and presidential history. He has been published in numerous outlets, including The American Spectator, the Washington Times, and The American Conservative. When he's not writing, Robert works for a medical research company in New York. Read Robert Zapesochny's Reports — More Here.",-1.035188891888774 "Research Sheds Light on Dark personalities and COVID Compliance The COVID-19 pandemic impacted everyone; but different types of people responded in various ways. Some took health advisories seriously and followed all of the rules; others threw caution to the wind — sometimes with tragic results. Optimists hoped for the best but prepared for the worst; pessimists just prepared for the worst. Dark personalities, however, responded somewhat uniquely. Research reveals additional details: Dark and Darker Benjamin S. Hardin et al. in a study, ""Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Even Darker for Some?""(2021) examined how dark personalities responded to pandemic protocols. They describe the ""Dark Triad"" as referring to three subclinical personality constructs that overlap: narcissism, characterized by a desire for attention and self-aggrandizement, Machiavellianism as portrayed by a willingness to manipulate others, and psychopathy, characterized by callousness and impulsivity. Hardin et al. (ibid.) note the inclusion of sadism, characterized by a tendency towards cruelty for pleasure or dominance, as a fourth trait to form the ""Dark Tetrad."" Hardin et al. (supra) explain that these four personality traits, unique, yet united by a common lack of empathy, responded to the pandemic differently both in terms of behavior and emotional affect. Dark Personality and Pandemic Protocol Compliance In their sample of 412 Americans, when it came to pandemic best practices, Hardin et al. found that some dark personalities failed to follow the rules. Perhaps this should not be surprising, as they note that people high in Dark Triad traits are more likely to engage in health-related risky behaviors. They explain that psychopathy and Machiavellianism have been linked to behaviors such as unprotected sex and drug use, as well as less health-protective behaviors such as wearing seatbelts or adequate exercise. They note that narcissism predicts some health-related behaviors such as exercise, but negatively predicts others, such as unprotected sex. In their research, Hardin et al. (supra) found that people higher in psychopathy and narcissism reported less home cleaning behavior, which they suggest may reflect their impulsive tendencies and devaluation of future consequences, while sadism positively predicted cleaning behavior. Describing this particular finding as hard to interpret due to the lack of prior research into the association of sadism and health behaviors, Hardin et al. (supra) suggest that sadists’ cleaning behavior might be in response to the pandemic, or indicative of greater health protective behaviors in general. Do Dark Personalities Actuall Have a Positive View of the Pandemic? Regarding emotional adjustment, Hardin et al. (supra) found that narcissism and Machiavellianism predicted negative emotional responses to COVID-19 related instability, while only Machiavellianism predicted a higher degree of fear of infection. Hardin et al. (supra) explain that narcissists may be threatened by social instability because they are dependent on social feedback to sustain their grandiose self-concept, whereas Machiavellians fear it might threaten their ability to socially exploit others to achieve their goals. Hardin et al. (supra) found that psychopathy and sadism were not significant predictors of pandemic-related fear or instability, but impacted positive affect. Psychopathy negatively predicted positive affect, which they suggest may be due to the fact that public restrictions decreased opportunities to indulge in impulsive tendencies, decreasing positive mood. Sadism, however, was linked with greater pandemic-related positive affect. They suggest that perhaps because sadists take pleasure in the suffering of others, sadistic individuals may experience positive emotions in response to situations that negatively impact others. And then there was the curious case of narcissistic altruism — which sounds like an oxymoron. Hardin et al. (supra) explain, however, that although they found that narcissism positively predicted helping others impacted by the pandemic, consistent with previous research linking narcissism with prosocial behaviors, it may actually reflect opportunist performance of selfless acts in pursuit of approval from others. A Light at the End of the Tunnel Obviously, we cannot diagnose dark personalities merely through pandemic-related behavior. But understanding how different types of people respond to and comply with pandemic protocol can help all of us work together towards a bright future. This column was originally published in Psychology Today. Wendy L. Patrick, JD, MDiv, PhD, is an award-winning career trial attorney and media commentator. She is host of ""Live with Dr. Wendy"" on KCBQ, and a daily guest on other media outlets, delivering a lively mix of flash, substance and style. Her over 4,500 media appearances include these major news outlets: CNN, Fox News Channel, HLN, FOX Business Network and weekly appearances on Newsmax. She is author of ''Red Flags'' (St. Martin´s Press), and co-author of The New York Times bestseller ""Reading People"" (Random House, revision). On a personal note, Dr. Patrick holds a purple belt in Shorin-Ryu karate, participates as a concert violinist with the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, and plays the electric violin professionally with a rock band. Read Dr. Wendy L. Patrick's Reports — More Here.",0.019765182846325034 "Flordeliza Arejola, 32, was one of several Filipinas recruited to work in the United Arab Emirates before being trafficked to work in Syria. ""My employer slapped me and put my head into the wall. I escaped because he did not give me a salary for nine months,"" she recently told The Washington Post. ""I waited until he was asleep and climbed over the wall."" Flordeliza fled to the Philippine Embassy in Damascus, where dozens of women are seeking shelter, unable to return home. Many of them were similarly subjected to physical and sexual attacks and denied salaries they were promised. Now they are trapped in Syria. Some 5,000 miles away, authorities in the Ivory Coast detained four people and rescued 42 others, all nationals of neighboring Burkina Faso, in an anti-human trafficking operation. Nearly half of those rescued were children between the ages of 12 and 17. Recently, law enforcement in Hillsborough County, Florida, arrested 75 individuals in a large-scale human trafficking operation. Make no mistake: Human trafficking is a global crisis. As the U.S Department of State’s 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report reveals, about 25 million men, women, and children globally are victims of human trafficking. They are lured with false promises — often by people they trust — and forced into prostitution, domestic servitude, and other forms of modern slavery. The fight to eradicate human trafficking strikes at the core of our moral responsibility as human beings. Indeed, modern slavery is a stain on all of humanity, egregiously violating the unalienable rights that belong to every human being. The U.S. Government and our partners have been fighting human trafficking for decades. 2020 marked the 20th anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which established the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Last year also marked the 20th anniversary of the Palermo Protocol, which was adopted by the United Nations as a multilateral tool to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons. Today, 178 countries are signatories to the Protocol, making it one of the most widely adopted international accords in history. But governments cannot solve this crisis alone. Survivors, civil society, and faith-based organizations must work together. One organization that leads the fight against human trafficking with great courage and effectiveness is Talitha Kum, an international network of Women Religious. Talitha Kum is an expression from the Gospel of Mark which means, ""Young girl, I say to you, arise."" Since 2009, Talitha Kum has helped countless men, women, and children “arise” from the horrors of human trafficking, serving more than 10,000 survivors. Indeed, this dedicated network, comprised of over 2,000 Catholic nuns working across 92 countries on five continents, has reached people through anti-trafficking awareness campaigns, educational programs, international conferences, training manuals, and vocational training. Talitha Kum also accompanies survivors to shelters and residential communities, collaborates nationally and internationally on cases, and assists with voluntary repatriation. The women religious of Talitha Kum work each day to combat human trafficking. They are key partners for law enforcement globally, braving the omnipresent threat of criminal and terrorist organizations that profit from this global crime. Furthermore, since 2015, Talitha Kum has coordinated the International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking. Established by Pope Francis, this day is marked annually on Feb. 8, the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita, the patron saint of human trafficking survivors. Talitha Kum’s work has expanded under the leadership of Sister Gabriella Bottani, the network’s international coordinator. Sister Gabriella’s work has inspired generations of anti-trafficking advocates. The U.S. State Department honored her as a 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report Hero. As the United States Ambassador to the Holy See from 2017 to 2021, I had the honor and privilege of working with Talitha Kum and seeing first-hand how important their work is. Human trafficking, like COVID-19, is a global emergency affecting everyone. Together with organizations such as Talitha Kum we can raise awareness, save lives, and eradicate this horrific injustice. To read, hear, and watch more commentary from Ambassador Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Ambassador Callista L. Gingrich is president and CEO of Gingrich 360, a multimedia production and consulting company, and the president of the Gingrich Foundation. She is a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See (2017-2021). Ambassador Gingrich has worked to advance international religious freedom and combat human trafficking. She is a New York Times best-selling author, and the producer of nine films. In 2020 she received the Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Pope Pius IX by Pope Francis. Gingrich is married to former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Read Callista Gingrich's Reports — More Here.",0.47038818675525684 "Presidents and the press always focus on the first hundred days of a new administration and the initiatives it puts forward. In Joe Biden’s case, many of his new policies have been established during his first 50 days as president, as he laid out in his first major address to the nation. The president’s first address was notable not just for what it said but for what it did not say. Mr. Biden said fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is still job one, and he stressed that the national vaccination program is his main focus. What he did not say was that this ""miracle"" program was one he inherited from President Trump, whose ""Operation Warp Speed"" developed and produced hundreds of millions of vaccines in record time. Just a year ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, scientists warned that developing a vaccine to fight it could take five or more years. That would have left the U.S. exposed to COVID-19 for much of the next decade, with devastating consequences to American’s health and our economy. But the Trump administration spearheaded a successful alliance of government, research centers, and pharmaceutical companies that indeed brought vaccines to the public in ""warp speed."" Turns out, having a determined President with a businessman’s eye — who tirelessly pushed U.S. bureaucrats to get this job done — was just what the doctor ordered. Mr. Biden also touted his just passed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill as absolutely necessary to lifting our economy out of the negative economic impacts of the Covid epidemic. What he did not note was that under President Trump three separate bi-partisan Covid relief bills totaling $3.7 trillion were negotiated to deal with the pandemic. These previous spending bills helped pull the economy out of the doldrums well before Mr. Biden took the oath of office. Along with pushing covid vaccinations made possible by Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, Biden initially echoed President Trump’s call to re-open schools. But when confronted with push-back from powerful teachers’ unions, he backed down. His press secretary ridiculously insisted that opening schools would be met when half of K-6 classes opened one day a week. At that rate, schools won’t be fully opened this school year at all, and maybe not even next fall. Children from disadvantaged communities will suffer most. Some of these children may never make up the time they’ve lost. Instead of ""following the science"" which indicates that schools can safely re-open, Biden has followed the teachers’ union bosses who put students last. But the biggest mistake Biden is making is on our southern border. It seems that his administration so hates anything related to President Trump, it is determined to reverse even those policies that make sense and worked to secure the border. Trump had negotiated a ground-breaking agreement with Mexico to keep migrants on the Mexican side of the border while their asylum cases are considered by U.S. authorities. This policy had helped stem the flood of illegal immigration into the U.S. But in the race to undo all things Trump, Biden tore up this historic agreement with Mexico and signaled that illegal immigrants would again be allowed to cross the border into the U.S. and stay here while their legal cases are heard. This has opened up the floodgates on the border, with thousands of migrants crossing over each day and surrendering to U.S. border authorities. Many of these migrants are ""unaccompanied minors"" and women with young children who present a particularly daunting challenge to accommodate. The result is that U.S. migrant holding facilities have been overwhelmed. The very overcrowding conditions that Democrats decried under the Trump administration are being vastly worsened by this ill-considered wide-open-door policy. No one should be surprised by the pictures of families and kids in holding pens already showing up on the news. But the Biden administration has a ""plan"" for this too. It's rapidly releasing thousands of these young immigrants out of detention. Many are just dropped off at local bus stations, presumably to reunite with relatives already here. It’s anybody’s guess how many of these youngsters end up with child traffickers or into the clutches of gangs like MS13. This ""catch and release"" policy is a prescription for disaster on our border. Expect hordes of illegals to heed the call to cross our borders and swamp our immigration system. But not to worry, the Biden team will come up with a ""plan"" for that too. Just not a good one. None of this was unforeseen. Elections have consequences. If Biden and the Democrats continue to over-reach and under-perform, there’s always the 2022 midterm elections. If the nation can hold on till then. Former Senator Alfonse D’Amato served a distinguished 18-year career in the U.S. Senate, where he chaired the Senate Banking Committee and was a member of the Senate Appropriations and Finance Committees. The former Senator shares insights ""with a clear-eyed view of the political forces that shape the world we live in today."" Read Alfonse D'Amato's Reports — More Here.",0.6158168974547272 "Following the chaos of the 2020 presidential race, a growing number of Americans are realizing that election integrity is a critical issue that must be addressed. Americans of all political persuasions largely agree on key principles to protect America's election systems: voter ID laws for both in-person and mail-in voting, cleaning voter rolls, and common-sense election administration safeguards. For decades, leftist politicians and activists have relentlessly pushed legislation that has undermined election integrity in the United States. This effort culminated in the months leading up to the 2020 election, when Democratic officials circumvented the laws of their own states to ensure widespread mail-in voting, undermining the role of state legislatures in deciding the election codes of the states as envisioned in the U.S. Constitution and orchestrating the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg into Democrat election offices in targeted states. Now, President Joe Biden and his leftist allies in the Senate are vowing to pass H.R. 1, a disastrous bill that would undermine, if not destroy altogether, the integrity of elections nationwide. It's time for forward-looking, common-sense election reform. That's why FreedomWorks has created the Center for Election Protection, which aims to ensure that our nation's elections are free from partisan interest interference, that only legally eligible voters are allowed to vote, and that the integrity of the secret ballot is preserved. The events of 2020 must not be repeated going forward or Americans' trust in the nation's election systems will continue to decline. FreedomWorks will involve our millions of grassroots activists directly in these efforts to protect and preserve our election process, particularly in areas that have been traditionally dominated by Democrats. We have all seen what happens when control over election administration is placed in the hands of power-hungry leftists. Conservatives must fight back by participating as election officials and workers and serving as trained poll watchers and election observers. We cannot allow the leftist monopoly over election administration in various cities and states to continue. In the major urban areas dominated by the far left, there are few Republicans serving as election workers, examining the legitimacy of ballots being tallied, or ensuring that county employees are following the duly enacted election laws and procedures. If leftist election administrators are not checked and counterbalanced, election outcomes at all levels of government are at risk of being tainted by partisan interference. FreedomWorks will be identifying, training and encouraging patriotic conservatives to fill these important election office positions across the nation to truly provide a check on the massive influence of leftist operatives in the election process. Most importantly, FreedomWorks will mobilize our activists to fight the left's mass mail-in voting schemes, same day registration, expansive early voting, and unchecked, unsecured ballot drop boxes and ballot trafficking that allowed Democrat operatives to control the election process in 2020 and created much skepticism surrounding the election results. There is no question that restoring confidence in our elections will be a difficult task. Considering what we witnessed last year, it's not a surprise that millions of voters spanning the political spectrum are distrustful of the election process and have little confidence that those in power will take the steps to remedy the problems from last year. In fact, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and their underlings in the House and Senate are intent upon codifying into federal law the very problems that resulted in the post-2020 election distrust that we are now seeing. H.R. 1, a takeover of America's elections being pushed by the radical left, was recently passed in the U.S. House without a single GOP vote in favor. Now, one of the most radical bills in American history is before the U.S. Senate. H.R.1 would prohibit photo identification for voting, mandate Election Day voter registration, dramatically expand mail-in voting while restricting all security measures related to mail-in voting, infringe upon the First Amendment rights of every American, and force every state to succumb to the radical left's plans to transform America's election systems to favor their chosen candidates. Only by engaging in the fight, entering the arena, and opposing the radical leftist plans for our country can we protect our democratic republic. Citizens must increase their involvement and oversight of the election process if we are to maintain free and fair elections and regain control and restore confidence in our electoral process. FreedomWorks activists will be leading the fight for election integrity in the months and years to come. Truly, now is the time for every good American to come to the aid of his/her country. There is no time to waste. Cleta Mitchell is the Chairman of the FreedomWorks Election Protection Initiative. Adam Brandon is the president of FreedomWorks, a grassroots service center to millions of activists who support smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, personal liberty, and the rule of law. If he's not in a suit, you can bet Adam is wearing his Jim Brown jersey, watching the Cleveland Browns with his wife Jacqueline. Read Adam Brandon's Reports — More Here.",1.3499083702049484 "(PG-13) *** Out of **** (Three Out of Four Stars) Not long after it actually began, the Cold War became reliable fodder for feature films and television which continues to this day. A test of wills and not one of traditional engagements involving the exchange of gunfire on a battlefield, the Cold War still presented the very real threat of nuclear obliteration which, to many people, was far more nerve-wracking. In virtually all these dramatic presentations, spies, spooks, government officials and military brass on both sides engage in the ultimate form of chess and, to the credit of both the U.S. and the USSR, the world was spared World War III. One of the rare fact-based productions about the Cold War, ""The Courier"" (originally titled ""Ironbark"") examines the relationship between the two men who were instrumental in the behind the scenes operations of what became the Cuban Missile Crisis. Making this movie all the more historically significant is that it is the third production of the story (the previous being two BBC TV films from 1985 and 2007). More than a few people in key positions have found this tale something worth revisiting. Within the first 15 minutes, it becomes clear we’re not watching a traditional ""spy vs. spy"" affair. The film opens with a fiery speech about his plans regarding the United States being delivered by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (Vladimir Chuprikov) to an auditorium overflowing with enthusiastic sycophant politicians who — when you think about it — had no choice but to appear overjoyed. The lone exception in the crowd is Oleg Penkovsky (Merhab Ninidze), a longtime member of the KGB who can barely mask his contempt for Khrushchev and his worry of the true consequences of nuclear war. Penkovsky isn’t anti-Soviet or pro-U.S., but rather a patriotic Russian pragmatist who thinks all of the chest-thumping, saber-rattling and blusterous rhetoric is only Khrushchev marking his alpha-male territory. It is during this portion of the first act that we’re introduced to Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), an English engineer and business man representing an unnamed company hawking non-military machinery and parts to multiple Eastern Bloc countries (but not Russia). A button-down type with a wife and son, Wynne purposefully sabotages his golf game and laughs at his customer’s bad jokes as to better help with the closing of various deals. Wynne’s everyman soft touch and ability to blend into the background catches the attention of CIA operative Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) and MI6 executive Dickey Franks (Angus Wright) who (rightfully) believe Wynne would be the perfect candidate for thier new joint mission. During their getting-to-know-you ambush luncheon with Wynne, Donovan and Franks eventually transform his attitude from horrified, offended and skeptical to grudgingly dutiful, receptive and a way to make up for his lackluster World War II service record. Above all, the seasoned spies convince Wynne he will not be a spy but rather an unthreatening middle man — a courier, something he already does quite well. Frequently the weakest link in any movie, the second act here is arguably the best of the three as screenwriter Tim O’Conner and director Dominic Cooke strongly resist the temptation to rev up the pace and bring in unneeded action elements. As good as they are the nearly dozen or so installments in the ""James Bond"" franchise taking place in the Cold War and/or featuring KGB characters stretch the boundaries of believability. They’re immensely fun to watch, but are rooted more in fantasy escapism than a true reflection of real world espionage. For some viewers, the lack of action and gun fire in a spy flick could equate to tedium and complacency and eventually lead to boredom and indifference. Make no mistake, this is not another Bond film or the newest installment in the ""Jason Bourne"" franchise; it’s a slow-boil, character-driven piece with exactly one chase scene — and it is on foot. It’s also the kind of movie where knowing nothing of the real events taking place after what takes place in the first acts is crucial. Being aware of how it all ends will all but ruin the viewing experience. An often overlooked facet of any film is the musical backing score and the best of the lot do exactly that: remain in the background. Unfortunately that is not the case here. At first just a mild distraction, Polish composer Abel Korzenioski’s ham-fisted and repetitive accompaniment becomes a major irritant. This is a story which requires sinister undertones, not bombastic orchestration. It’s a major disappointment for fans of Korzenioski’s previous economical work on the ""Penny Dreadful"" TV series and his two movies with director Tom Ford (""A Single Man"" [2009] and ""Nocturnal Animals"" [2016]). Music aside, every other ingredient in ""The Courier"" makes it a must-see for spy-flick aficionados. If you like ""The Courier"" and are looking for other movies containing similar content, check out both ""Thirteen Days"" (2000) and ""The Good Shepherd"" (2006). Presented in English with frequently subtitled Russian. ""The Courier"" is now available only in select theaters. (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) Originally from Washington, D.C., Michael Clark has written for over 30 local and national film industry media outlets and is based in the Atlanta Top 10 media marketplace. He co-founded the Atlanta Film Critics Circle in 2017 and is a regular contributor to the Shannon Burke Show on floridamanradio.com. Over the last 25 years, Mr. Clark has written over 4,000 movie reviews and film-related articles and is one of the scant few conservative U.S. movie critics. Read Michael Clark's Reports — More Here.",-0.2150169921679 "It’s good to see President Donald J. Trump promise ""no more money for RINOs,"" but the grassroots will have to do the dirty work of finding fresh, red-blooded patriots to send to Congress. One man worthy of consideration is combat vet Cory Mills. After the red wave in 2020, conservatives are excited to build upon their wins in the House of Representatives. But let’s get real for a second. Republican candidates nearly always talk a different game on the campaign trail than the one they actually play if elected. The imminent danger of a returning corporatist, globalist, pre-Trump GOP must be confronted right now. Not next year. Now. If you know the name Cory Mills, it’s likely because you recognize him as a Newsmax contributor or perhaps you caught his writings or appearances on Fox News and other conservative outlets. Quite frankly, however, he’s not a household name. That needs to change. Mills has an impressive résumé, but that’s not the primary reason I’d like to see him make a run for Congress. No matter the credentials, a conservative in this day and age is worthless without the right mindset, a readiness to fight, and a tangible vision driving him to power. Thankfully, Mills has all of the above. He’s a combat veteran with over two and a half years in Afghanistan and another seven and a half years in Iraq. From 2005 to 2010, he was a subcontractor for the US State Department. He’s the founder and CEO of PACEM Solutions International, which helped take Fallujah, Iraq back from ISIS in 2016. To repeat, what’s paramount in determining whether someone is ready to take on the Washington, D.C. establishment is not what’s on paper. Look for key character traits and a keen sense of the true nature of politics. In this way, Mills exhibits the makings of the next conservative warrior. First, his temperament and outlook on the Republican Party and politics as a whole. Directly following the 2020 election, he called for a ""less cowardly"" GOP. Mills went after those holding elected office who benefited from Trump but remained silent in the face of that unfair election. ""In the next congressional races, patriots will rise,"" Mills wrote. He understands that politics isn’t merely about an R or D winning a race. It’s about gaining power and wielding it decisively in favor of what made this country great. Election integrity is one of the starting points he mentions. Another vital component of being an effective policymaker is having the know-how of getting things done on day one. In the case of Mills, the résumé does come into play here. He was an advisor to the US Defense Department, bringing the experience mentioned before from the military and experience as a successful entrepreneur. I’m certain that Mills would still be advising the DoD if the Biden administration had not done an about face on almost every national security issue. His approach to politics combined with this level of proficiency is about as good as you’re going to get for a potential recruit to Congress. But Mills brings more to the table. Pay enough attention to his political commentary, and you find he has a perception and implied strategy that fits for our time. When he praises Trump’s efforts to end the endless wars and promote national sovereignty at home and abroad, or when he labels China the greatest existential threat to the US, that’s the kind of vision that can’t be taken for granted. Most prescient of all, however, is Mills’ vision of America as a federal republic. It sure was founded that way, but the Constitution’s framers wouldn’t recognize the leviathan in D.C. today. Where’s the localism, the state sovereignty? Mills honed in on this in an op-ed for Fox News after the irredeemable unrest of the summer of 2020. He pressed his readers to remember our founding principles. ""One of those principles is federalism, which mandates that all governmental functions, including law enforcement, be controlled at the lowest level possible – so that the consequences of choices made by officials are felt most by those officials. That’s also part of the American way of life at risk today,"" Mills wrote. When federalism is at risk, the country is too. Our whole society depends on getting that right, because no matter how many Republicans take back the federal legislature in November 2022, the grassroots will still have work to do closer to home. That’s why we need future leaders like Cory Mills in Congress to truly restore America. Gavin Wax is president of the New York Young Republican Club, chair of the Association of Young Republican Clubs, an associate fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a frequent guest on Fox News and publisher of The Schpiel. You can follow him on Twitter at @GavinWax. Read Gavin Wax's Reports — More Here.",-2.635489108264738 "What exactly is the Biden administration’s policy on the ongoing and documented genocide against China’s Muslim Uighur ethnic group and what does the Biden administration intend to do about it? It seems to change every day. State Department spokesman Ned Price said on March 9 ""We have seen nothing that would change our assessment"" concerning the Biden administration’s decision to stick with the Trump administration’s 11th hour determination that Beijing’s persecution of Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province constitutes genocide. President Biden gave a different response last month at a CNN townhall when asked about the atrocities being committed against the Uighurs when he appeared to write them off as a matter of different ""cultural norms"" driven by President Xi’s efforts to unify the country by creating a ""united and technically controlled China."" Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a third answer during testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week. Blinken sidestepped Biden’s inexplicable statement and said the Biden administration will speak out against the persecution of the Uighurs and also said the administration might consider some sanctions and pressure on U.S. companies to not import goods made by forced labor or export goods to China that can be used ""for the repression of their people and minorities."" But Blinken indicated the Uighur genocide will not be an impediment to the administration’s broader agenda with China, including climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. Although he and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan plan to express U.S. concerns about human rights violations in China and the crackdown in Hong Kong at a meeting next week in Alaska with their Chinese counterparts, Blinken said this meeting also would be used to map out areas for cooperation and managing China’s ""competition"" with the United States. In other words, Blinken and Sullivan will check the box of raising the Uighur genocide issue at the Alaska meeting and then move on to other issues they view as more important. There will be no threats of ultimatums or sanctions in response to these atrocities. Blinken mentioned two other ways the Biden administration plans to sidestep the Uighur genocide issue at this week’s House hearing. Instead of stating the United States will take swift and decisive action under the 1948 Genocide Convention to sanction China and Chinese officials over the Uighur genocide, Blinken said the Biden administration plans to address the Uighur issue ""by building coalitions of like-minded countries."" Although this idea is certain to go nowhere because few nations are willing to confront Beijing, it will give the Biden administration an excuse for not taking action. In addition, Blinken called on China to allow the United Nations access to Xinjiang to prove that genocide is not taking place. T his is a ludicrous idea because in the unlikely event China ever agrees to let UN inspectors visit this province, it is certain that Chinese officials will show them a sham Potemkin Village of well-treated and happy Uighurs. Beijing would then use such a visit to discredit numerous reports – many of which include first-hand accounts and photos – that document genocide has occurred and continues in Xinjiang. There was a surprising fourth and significant view by an incoming Biden official this week when former UN Ambassador Samantha Power–who has been nominated to the head the U.S. Agency for International Development–tweeted the latest independent report on the Uighur issue. The report concluded: China bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uighurs in breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) based on an extensive review of the available evidence and application of international law to the evidence of the facts on the ground. The Biden administration’s approach to the Uighur genocide goes against the central purpose of the Genocide Convention and why it was implemented after World War II in the aftermath of the Holocaust: stopping one of the worst crimes against humanity. The convention requires that when acts of genocide have been declared signatories are obligated to take action to stop them and punish those responsible. This means the U.S. must cease normal relations with Beijing until the genocide against the Uighurs is halted. At a minimum, the Biden administration must lead a global boycott of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. But it appears the Biden administration plans to weasel its way out of America’s Genocide Convention obligations. While it is quite willing to slam and isolate states it dislikes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt for poor human rights records, its response to far more serious human rights violations in China (including persecution of other groups such as Tibetans, Christians, the Falun Gong and journalists) will be limited to public denunciations, calling on other states to take action, and proposing a UN visit to Xinjiang that will either not take place or be exploited by Beijing. This is an historic opportunity for presidential leadership. To truly be the leader of the free world, our new president needs to make a difficult and painful decision to implement drastic U.S. measures against the Chinese government in response to the genocide against the Uighurs and pressure other states to do the same. Tolerating these atrocities with the Biden administration’s proposed transactional approach to China will not only undermine America’s moral authority but also lead Beijing to believe the world will never hold it accountable for crimes against humanity within its borders. Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, served in 2018 as deputy assistant to the president and to the chief of staff of the National Security Council. He previously held national-security jobs with the CIA, the DIA, the Department of State, and the House Intelligence Committee. Twitter: @fredfleitz. Read more reports from Fred Fleitz — Click Here Now.",0.8503207979918792 "A limit of three official terms for members of Congress and two terms for Senators would be ideal for America’s representatives, and it is time we enact term limits to make this dream a reality. These rules would make elections fairer for challengers, and they would also offer several benefits for the nation. The mere fact that someone has served for several years does not dictate the quality of the elected officials, but term limits would guarantee that substandard officials could no longer serve. After leaving office, politicians could still be involved in politics and/or policy but not in the same elected role. Incumbents have tremendous advantages when seeking reelection. First, and most obviously, it is much easier for incumbents to raise money because individuals and political parties will contribute to them (in many cases to secure political favors in the future). Additionally, political parties help fund and support incumbents' campaigns. Because challengers do not have this money, they have less to spend on campaigns, and their chances of victory decrease. Second, special interest organizations will send mailers, advertise, and activate their networks for politicians who have helped them in the past. Other advantages include an established and experienced political staff, previously collected voter and volunteer data, name recognition, and the goodwill of individuals and groups (civic organizations, etc.) with whom the politician and/or his staff has met or helped throughout his term. Term limits would likely have the greatest impact in primaries rather than general elections because the districts or states would probably still vote based on their previous party affiliations. For example, if they had voted for a Democrat in the past, they would probably vote for a Democrat in the future. The benefit of term limits would be a new voice in Washington who is free of the disadvantages which incumbents bring. They wouldalso help eliminate the tension that exists between Congressmen and Senators' desire to keep their position and their duty to pass beneficial laws. One must not forget that, for Congressmen and Senators, serving in office is their job. To keep their jobs (i.e., get reelected), Congressmen and Senators know that they need donations and that the special interest groups or individuals providing these funds expect a certain vote or bill in return for their contributions. s Consequently, when given the choice, Congressmen and Senators often support and pass legislation which favors their financial benefactors rather than the districts or states that the Congressmen and Senators represent. Term limits would assist in eradicating this problem because it would remove the possibility of multiple reelection campaigns and the need to fundraise. In a related manner, term limits may limit the partisan divide because politicians would be free to vote for the other parties' initiatives without fear of their own party withholding funds from their reelection campaigns. Third, without term limits, it is difficult to remove a leader that is not doing a good job. This challenge contributes to the reality that many problems in Washington are never solved. Fourth, by eliminating layers of seniority, term limits would give more power to junior members to move their legislation forward or chair committees. Fifth, term limits would limit the likelihood of friendships or ""owed favors"" which may prevent harsh negotiations or investigations into wrongdoing by another politician. It is unlikely that the Congress or Senate would pass term limits because they would not want to eliminate their own jobs. The path to term limits, therefore, would be through a Constitutional amendment. Congressmen and Senators could also self-limit their number of terms and thereby set a positive example for other officials. Michael B. Abramson is a practicing attorney. He is also an adviser with the National Diversity Coalition for Trump. He is the host of the ""Advancing the Agenda"" podcast and the author of ""A Playbook for Taking Back America: Lessons from the 2012 Presidential Election."" Follow him on his website and Twitter, @mbabramson. Read Michael B. Abramson's Reports — More Here.",0.9815495131360411 "From Women's History Month to International Women's Day, the month of March marks the observance of women who greatly contributed to America's story. When President Jimmy Carter issued the Presidential Proclamation to celebrate National Women's History Week in 1980, he said, ""From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well."" Many of these unsung heroes served during the Civil War. Here are four remarkable women who we can learn leadership lessons from. Clara Barton: Be willing to risk it all. When the Civil War broke out, Clara Barton was working in the U.S. Patent Office. Barton began to serve on the front lines of the war – nursing, comforting and cooking for the wounded – earning the nickname ""Angel of the Battlefield."" After her service in the war, Barton founded the Missing Soldiers Office in 1865, which helped locate 22,000 missing men. Taking a break from her work, she traveled to Europe where she learned about the Red Cross. Upon her return to the U.S., she founded the American Red Cross in 1881. She served as the president of the organization until 1904. Barton is remembered for risking her life to care for others. Sojourner Truth: Be committed to your values. A former slave, Sojourner Truth became the first Black woman to win a case against a white man in the United States. As a Christian, Truth felt called to preach the gospel and speak out against slavery and oppression. Truth would become an equal rights advocate and later worked with suffrage activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Her most notable speech was ""Ain't I a Woman."" During the Civil War, Truth recruited Black soldiers and worked for the National Freedman's Relief Association to provide supplies to Black refugees. Due to her abolitionist work and service during the war, Truth received an invitation to the White House from President Abraham Lincoln. Truth stayed committed to her beliefs and even distanced herself from leaders she didn't agree with. Harriet Tubman: Be relentlessly courageous. One of the most recognized women in history, Harriet Tubman is remembered for her role as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Through her efforts, she is believed to have helped nearly 70 individuals escape from slavery and is said to never have lost a passenger. With her knowledge of the transportation routes through the South, Tubman became a spy and scout for the Union Army. She provided key information on the Confederate's supply route and helped liberate enslaved people. Following the war, she became a proponent for the women's suffrage movement, speaking at events and working with Susan B. Anthony. Not only was Tubman brave, but she was relentless in her efforts to help others find freedom. Dorothea Dix: Be a voice for others. After spending a year touring every jail she could, Dorothea Dix worked on legislation to reform prisons. Her research documented the horrendous treatment of prisoners and mentally ill individuals. Her advocacy work helped change people's perceptions and led to the expansion of state hospitals for the treatment of the mentally ill. During the Civil War, Dix was named the Superintendent of Army Nurses where she helped organize and outfit the Union hospitals. Through this appointment, she was the first woman to serve in such a high capacity in a federally appointed role. Dix transformed the field of nursing. Dix is remembered for her advocacy work, fighting for those who weren't able to speak for themselves. Although these are just a few of the many remarkable women who contributed to our history, we can learn key leadership lessons from the way they lived their lives. At a time when women still did not have the right to vote, these women used their platforms to advocate for others and played a vital role in influencing America. Dr. Kent Ingle serves as the president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, one of the fastest growing private universities in the nation. A champion of innovative educational design, Ingle is the author of ""Framework Leadership.'' As president of Southeastern University, Ingle founded the American Center for Political Leadership and is also a founding member of the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Before becoming Southeastern's president in 2011, Ingle held leadership positions in higher education and in the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle. Ingle is the author of several leadership books and the creator of the Framework Leadership podcast. He currently serves on the board of the Florida Chamber Foundation. Read Kent Ingle's Reports — More Here.",-1.5081429332093321 "The race is on! Every election campaign cycle we say that this is the most important election of our lives ---or in American history. Why? — Because it’s true. Had Hilary Clinton won in 2016, its possible 11 million illegal immigrants would now be voting straight Democrat. In 2018 the Dems won the House. It wasn’t pretty. And now, after a very controversial election, the Democrats are on the verge of ending the American experiment as we know it. Bye, bye American exceptionalism. No more federalism. No more free speech. Or the right to bear arms. Or the Electoral College. Or national borders. Yes, the race is on for 2022. Here we are in March of 2021. The Democrats have until November 2022 to turn our voting system into a ""heads-I-win-tails-you-lose"" forever victory for themselves. If the 2022 election is ""unbalanced"" our country is over, a one party crypto-Communist permanent authoritarian regime. If we get to November 2022 and we get a somewhat level electoral playing field, America will be saved; at least temporarily. Pay attention. The Democrats have loaded up their nuclear electoral bomb. It’s called HR (House Resolution) 1. It’s the culmination of the progressive movement; a knockout blow going back to 1913, the year of the graduated income tax and the Federal Reserve. If HR1 passes, America is over. Gone. Kaput. No turning back. The essence of HR1 is the turning of our electoral system from retail to wholesale. Retail is how we voted from 1789 to 2016. Retail means every individual voter decides whether or not he or she is interested in voting. If so, they get themselves registered, informed and to the ballot box on Election Day. Wholesale voting requires no effort on the part of the individual. The Federal government takes charge of all Federal elections; congressmen, senators and presidential. Adults are automatically registered for having visited the Department of Motor Vehicles, a public university or a social service center. Aggregators (or ballot harvesters) will get voters mail-in ballots. No ID, witness signature or notarization allowed. These same (paid) aggregators will ""harvest"" the ballots and turn them in up to ten days after Election Day. No voter ID required; not in the mail and not at the polls. There’s much more and it gets much worse. This is a stark example of the Democrats dream legislation It's not intended to help any other people, party, or group. Again — the end of America as we know it. If it becomes law, we become serfs. The U.S. Constitution turned on its head. The U.S. House of Representatives already passed this horror, sending it to the U.S. Senate. Not a single Republican congressman voted for it. If the Senate passes it, game over. What’s stopping them? The Senate is currently 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie vote. But this type of legislation is subject to the filibuster. And that means the Democrats need 60 votes; a mountain they’re unlikely to climb. The workaround? The Senate only needs 50-plus-one (the vice president) to vote to end the filibuster. If they get that they will pass HR1 and, just to rub it in, expand the U.S. Supreme Court so that HR1 and other anti-constitutional bills can magically become constitutional. If you aren't you scared yet, you have every reason to be. Can the Democrats get the 50-plus-one to end the filibuster? We don’t know. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., says, ""Never."" (At least he didn’t say, ""Read my lips""). We’ll see. They have 20 months to get it done and turn us into ""Venezuela North."" What if the Democrats can’t pass HR1? What will 2022 and 2024 look like for those of us on the right? The answer is: Not bad. We have advantages in leadership, unity and believe it or not, electoral reform at the state level. The Dems daily create disadvantages for themselves on the major issues of the day; opening the states, opening the schools, illegals, energy, taxes and crime. If we are still a viable Republic by next month, I’ll write a ""Part II,"" of this article: the head-to-head on 2022 and 2024. The race is on, keep your fingers crossed. Sid Dinerstein is a former chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. He founded JBS Associates, a 600-person financial service company, and currently combines politics and business with Niger Innis in Inclusive Elections LLC, a firm that brings urban electorate voters to the GOP. He is the author of ""Adults Only: For Those Who Love Their Country More Than Their Party."" Read Sid Dinerstein's Reports — More Here.",-0.9491400024894033 "Recent targets of cancel culture such as Gina Carano of ""The Mandalorian"" are all but expected in Hollywood's regular purge of conservative figures. Comedian Bill Burr on a recent podcast, dubbed those of the woke mob are ""just waiting, laying in the weeds"" to ruin the next victim they disagree with politically. Burr could not have been more correct. Now, the left-wing mob has gone so far as to cancel one of the most influential authors in American Literature ever in Theodor Geisel, otherwise known as Dr. Seuss, on his birthday, no less. Usually, the first week of March aims at celebrating American literature and Dr. Seuss, especially for his contributions to the education system through ""Read Across America"" Week. For years, notable guests travel from class to class, reading books by Seuss to children to symbolize the importance of literacy to children in the education system. This week, that celebration has taken a backseat to the mob coming after yet another historical figure. Dr. Seuss is the same man lauded for inspiring generations of young writers, illustrators, and teachers in prioritizing how important it is to teach students creativeness and imagination when they are learning. He has led students in our country's education system to being energized about going to class, inspired to be participative in reading, and motivated to pick up a book and start learning something new. Alas, all of these critical educational lessons have been tossed aside for the sake of awarding a vast minority of the population a win in canceling one of the most beloved American authors ever. Dr. Seuss himself championed being an active anti-racist individual. While working for the New York newspaper PM, Geisel illustrated political cartoons such as depicting figures shoveling out trash from an Anti-Semitic wagon and satirizing Adolf Hitler during the country's involvement in World War II. Geisel was instrumental in being anti-racist and criticizing the most notable white supremacist regime in world history. Still, because those in the left-wing mob continue to nitpick pictures and figures from his books to cancel the man, he is viewed now from an entirely different perspective than he should be. This week should be about championing Dr. Seuss, who was trite and right about his anti-racism and his passion for inspiring students of all ages to embrace the beautiful nature of English language arts. Instead, now all you can find on an internet search during ""Read Across America"" Week is a dismal demonization of a man who has done more for education and society than the ones that are trying to cancel him had ever dreamed of. Depicting Dr. Seuss as a racist is one of the most unbelievable attempts to create a caricature of the left yet. Instead of concentrating on dangerous demagogues such as Governors Andrew Cuomo or Ralph Northam for their atrocities, the left-wing mob has instead decided to set their crosshairs on Dr. Seuss. The next time anyone thinks about taking these people seriously, think of who they prioritize to go after every time, then reflect. They are not after the common good. They are just after preconceived ""wokeness."" Kenny Cody is a 24-year old conservative writer and activist from Northeast Tennessee. He has had pieces published on conservative news sites such as The Daily Wire, Townhall.com, and The Libertarian Republic, as well as serves as Chairman for the Cocke County Republican Party in his home state. In addition to his work as a conservative writer and activist, Cody also serves as an English teacher for Cosby Elementary School. Read Kenny Cody's Reports — More Here.",-1.3657499122117178 "To say that this first week of spring training for the New York Yankees was very positive would be an understatement. All the questions going into camp were answered during the course of the week. First, there was the question about Gary Sanchez and his overall game. Well, let me say this, even Stevie Wonder could see that Gary’s defense has improved from last year. Whatever workouts he did during the off season seem to be paying off dividends. The maneuvering of his feet has been picture perfect and the two throws to get runners out at second have been right on. I don’t need to say anything about the two homers in the first two games because at the end of the day we know Gary can do that. Domingo German threw two scoreless innings versus the Tigers and had three strikeouts. His curve ball and sliders were sharp and he had the hitters very much off balance. Off the field he seems to mentally be in a good place and the players have been very supportive. Domingo knows that what happened eighteen months ago was very wrong and he is very sorry for it. This group of Yankee players are a special breed and players like Gio Urshela and others will be there to help German out. Speaking of Gio Urshela, he played his first game and in the first inning was hit a hard ground ball to his left and made a picture perfect throw to first base. After the game he said that the elbow that was operated on during the off season felt great. Bench coach Carlos Mendoza said that when he played catch with Gio two weeks ago, it was as if Gio was in mid-season form. As one scout that was attending the game put it , with a guy like Urshela you don’t worry about him because he is as professional as they come. The other player that has also looked terrific is Gleyber Torres. He has looked very smooth on the field . His range has been very quick to both his left and right, possibly because he has come to camp in such great shape. He also looked great hitting his first homer to right center field. I was watching this game alongside the great hall of famer, and arguably the greatest second baseman off all time, Roberto Alomar. Alomar, who is probably the smartest baseball man that I have ever known. said that what he saw of Gleyber that day tells him that he will have a great season, No doubt about it. On Monday March 8, I was saddened at the passing of former Yankee Public relations director Larry Wahl. During the Steinbrenner era of the late 70s, Larry was with us for four years and he was truly a very nice person. I want to thank former Yankee Batboy, Shawn DeRosa, who later became an expert in the field of pacemakers. He gave our New York fans a thorough explanation on how they work and why it was a necessity for Aaron Boone to have a pacemaker inserted into his heart. If you missed Shawn’s explanation you can look up my last column. Ray Negron is a sports executive with over 40 years of experience in baseball. His first job came from a chance encounter with George Steinbrenner as a youth. He has become an American film producer, a best-selling author, and a philanthropist. His memoir is entitled, ""Yankee Miracles: Life with the Boss and the Bronx Bombers."" Read Ray Negron's Reports — More Here.",-0.4668776932212203 "Brad Pitt is ""heartbroken"" and ""devastated"" by the emergence of court documents indicating that ex-wife Angelina Jolie is willing to testify about alleged spousal abuse as they continue to fight for custody over their six children. The pair have been locked in a messy legal battle over child custody and are in the midst of a trial when sealed court documents revealing that Jolie is ready to offer ""proof and authority in support"" of alleged domestic violence were obtained by The Blast. Pitt is reportedly hurt that his ex has resorted to such measures in their trial. ""Brad is heartbroken that Angelina has gone that route,"" a source told Page Six. ""There’s a lot of emotion left after their marriage. He has taken responsibility for his actions and owned up to his past issues, he’s stopped drinking. The marriage was very passionate and toxic at times and — like all couples — they had fights, but also shared many good times together."" Angelina filed for divorce from Pitt after an alleged ""incident"" on a plane. She never indicated what happened but a TMZ report at the time stated that Pitt had allegedly attacked his oldest son, Maddox, on the flight. The ""Fight Club"" actor was never charged and there have never been any police reports filed indicating allegations of spousal abuse. ""Brad and his camp has never attacked Angelina. But his camp feels this leak was calculated to sway opinion ahead of the conclusion of their trial,"" the source said. ""Brad feels like he’s being more and more isolated from his children, and he’s devastated about it."" In August, Jolie requested that Judge John W. Ouderkirk, who is overseeing proceedings, be removed from the case on claims that he had business relationships with Pitt's attorney, Anne C. Kiley. Jolie claimed that the judge ""failed to disclose the cases that demonstrated the current, ongoing, repeat-customer relationship between the judge and Respondent’s counsel."" Pitt retaliated by accusing Jolie of using the demand to delay the ruling for the settlement and custody arrangements of their children, whom he claimed were being hurt the most by the stall tactics.",0.8000210412326699 "Sharon Osbourne's future with ""The Talk"" is filled with uncertainty following a heated exchange between her and co-host Sheryl Underwood. Osbourne has faced widespread backlash after she defended friend Piers Morgan, who criticized Meghan Markle for comments she made during her tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. During their conversation, Underwood explained that some of Morgan's statements could be seen as racist, to which Osbourne argued that her co-host was suggesting she herself had been racist. ""The Talk"" was subsequently put on hold as an investigation takes place. Now Osbourne has revealed that she is unsure whether she will return to the show. ""I wish we could go on and have an adult conversation calmly and work it out but I don’t know whether we can,"" she told Entertainment Tonight. ""I don’t know whether it’s gone past that. I would love to but I don’t know whether I even want to go back. ... I don’t know whether I’m wanted there."" Osbourne said she owned up to her mistake, adding that she ""got too personal"" with Underwood. However, she explained that she was taken by surprise when the topic came up, claiming that her co-hosts had prepared in advance with pre-determined questions that she was unaware of. ""I was p---ed off with my friend for not giving me the heads up,"" she continued. ""But in hindsight she was doing her job. ... So, she did what she was asked to do, and I can’t blame her for that. The only thing I don’t understand with Sheryl was in the break, why she wouldn’t talk to me and just say, ‘Aww s---, let’s get out of this or something,’ and she didn’t. She wouldn’t talk to me."" ""The Talk"" was initially meant to return this week but its hiatus was extended until next week, a CBS spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Fox News. ""CBS is committed to a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace across all of our productions. We’re also very mindful of the important concerns expressed and discussions taking place regarding events on 'The Talk,'"" the statement read. ""This includes a process where all voices are heard, claims are investigated, and appropriate action is taken where necessary. The show will extend its production hiatus until next Tuesday as we continue to review these issues.""",-1.5452692124392842 "Britney Spears' lawyer is seeking to have the pop star's temporary personal conservator made a permanent one. Jodi Montgomery temporarily took over the role from Britney's father, Jamie, when he stepped down in 2019 due to health issues, and now the singer's court-appointed attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, is filing a petition to have her remain as Britney's ""care manager"" on a permanent basis, according to Fox News. It is unclear whether the role will also apply to Britney's estate, which is jointly being overseen by Jamie and Bessemer Trust, as ordered by a Los Angeles judge last month, CBS News reported. Last year, Britney filed a petition to have her father removed as sole conservator of her estate. Instead, the ""Toxic"" hitmaker requested that a financial institution be granted power to manage her finances. The petition was denied but Judge Brenda Penny did appoint Bessemer Trust as a co-conservator. Jamie's objections, which included concerns of how the co-conservatorship would be delegated, were further rejected by Penny, who granted equal power to Bessemer Trust and Jamie in managing Britney's affairs. She ordered that the financial institution and Jamie work together on a budget and investment plan for the pop icon's estate. The controversial conservatorship has gained widespread attention following the release of The New York Times' documentary ""Framing Britney Spears."" Most recently, Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, lent their support to the #FreeBritney movement when they wrote a letter demanding a hearing from the House Judiciary Committee on the issue of court-ordered conservatorship, including Britney’s.",1.7907225979826242 """The Talk"" has extended its hiatus as CBS further investigates the heated exchange between co-hosts Sharon Osbourne and Sheryl Underwood last week and, in particular, comments made by Osbourne. A CBS spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that there would be no new episodes of the show until next week. ""CBS is committed to a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace across all of our productions. We’re also very mindful of the important concerns expressed and discussions taking place regarding events on 'The Talk,'"" the spokesperson said. ""This includes a process where all voices are heard, claims are investigated, and appropriate action is taken where necessary. The show will extend its production hiatus until next Tuesday as we continue to review these issues."" The news comes after last Wednesday's episode in which Osbourne defended her friend Piers Morgan following his comments criticizing Meghan Markle’s comments during her tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Underwood said that ""while you are standing by your friend, it appears that you are giving validation or safe haven to something that he has uttered that is racist.” Osbourne responded by saying that ""I feel like I’m about to be put in the electric chair, because I have a friend who many people think is racist, so that makes me a racist."" After the show, Osbourne posted an apology on Twitter to ""anyone of colour that I offended and/or to anyone that feels confused, or let down by what I said."" Since then she has faced other accusations including claims that she played a role in getting former ""The Talk"" co-host Holly Robinson Peete fired after saying she was ""too ghetto.""",0.17547341012349768 "Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson has been accused of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. Commenting on the filing, the alleged victim's attorney, Tony Buzbee, told Fox 26 that Watson was getting a massage from the unidentified woman when he ""went too far."" No further details were provided but Buzbee further spoke of the lawsuit in a lengthy Instagram post. ""Too many times women have put up with behavior that we all know no one should put up with,"" he wrote. ""Should we make excuses for the famous? Or those who hold special positions, or quarterbacks on a local professional football team? I don’t think so!"" Buzbee added the case was not about money but about ""dignity and stopping behavior that should be stopped."" Watson denied the accusations on social media. ""As a result of a social media post by a publicity-seeking plaintiff’s lawyer, I recently became aware of a lawsuit that has apparently been filed against me,"" Watson tweeted. ""I have not yet seen the complaint, but I know this: I Have never treated any woman with anything than the utmost respect. The plaintiff’s lawyer claims that this isn't about money, but before filing suit he made a baseless six-figure settlement demand, which I quickly rejected. Unlike him, this isn't about money for me — it's about clearing my name, and I look forward to doing that."" Watson has been in the spotlight in recent weeks, having requested to leave the Texans, which has been adamant about not trading him. On Tuesday, the Texans signed a one-year deal with quarterback Tyrod Taylor who would provide ""some valuable insurance"" should the team decide to trade Watson, ESPN reported.",0.7039014740291765 "Gospel music legend Kirk Franklin has apologized for threatening his son who leaked audio of a heated exchange between them. In a video posted on Twitter, Kirk describes his relationship with his estranged 32-year-old son, Kerrion Franklin, as ""toxic"" adding that his family had ""tried for many years through counseling, through therapy to try to rectify this private family matter."" Kirk explained that the recent argument with his son caused him to lash out, which he apologized for ""I felt extremely disrespected in that conversation and I lost my temper,"" he said. ""And I said words that are not appropriate. And I’m sincerely sorry to all of you."" In the leaked audio clip posted to Instagram Saturday, Kirk can be heard telling Kerrion ""I will break your neck"" at the end of the phone call. ""Don’t you ever disrespect me,"" he adds before cutting the call. ""He just hung up the phone. 'I'll break your neck' – is that a threat?"" Kerrion is heard saying. ""This is why I’m done,"" Kerrion wrote in a lengthy caption for the video. ""No father should speak to their children like this. If I have any issues it’s because Of this type of treatment that ii deal with behind closed doors."" Kerrion added that he would never trust to be around his father alone ""ever again."" ""No matter what ppl think I pray my dad deals with his deep hatred toward me,"" he continued. ""I don’t feel safe around him at all."" Kerrion described the recording as ""recent.""",-0.43296962958641916 "Don Rickles' widow has died at age 84 on what would have been the couple's 56th wedding anniversary. Barbara Rickles passed away on Sunday at her Century City home of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, publicist Paul Shefrin told The Hollywood Reporter. She lost her husband in April 2017 from kidney failure. He was 90. ""They were incredibly devoted to each other,"" Shefrin wrote to his Facebook page. ""She was the perfect woman for Don and vice versa."" Don's Twitter account shows his final tweet was a loving message to Barbara. ""We are celebrating our 52nd Wedding Anniversary March 14th. Happy Anniversary my dear wife, Barbara. You are my life,” he wrote, signing the message: ""Pussycat (Me)."" Don and Barbara met while Barbara was working for the famed comedian's secretary. They wed in 1965 and had two children, Mindy and son Larry, who tragically passed away in 2011 at age 41 of respiratory failure due to pneumonia. In a previous interview with Closer Weekly, Don spoke about the secret to his successful marriage with Barbara. ""The main thing is the friendship and loyalty you develop. When things are down, you have someone at your side who believes in you. And when things are up, you have great times – and that's been our marriage,"" he said. Don also opened up about what Barbara meant to him in a 2016 interview with Today. ""She’s everything,"" he said, describing her as ""somebody that cares genuinely about you, through good and bad."" ""I’m completely devoted to her,"" he added. ""She’s my life.” Barbara is survived by Mindy, and grandchildren Ethan and Harrison.",-0.038767999793670016 "Alex Rodriguez has flown out to see Jennifer Lopez in the Dominican Republic amid reports that the couple have called it quits. Rodriguez revealed his location, where Lopez is currently filming for her new movie ""Shotgun Wedding,"" on Instagram. ""Happy Monday. New week. New day. Onward. Upward,"" he posted in an Instagram story showing a luxury resort overlooking the ocean on Monday. He tagged Lopez in the post. On Friday, shocking reports emerged that the pair had called off their engagement. Page Six first broke the news over the weekend but Rodriguez and Lopez later issued a statement saying that reports of their split are inaccurate, and they are working things through. Sources told the outlet that the pair had been talking about things following the bombshell report. ""They are trying to work through things … but it’s unclear if that means they are staying together,"" one insider said. ""For the last two weeks they have not been together and the last few days they were not good … They’ve been having some crazy issues,"" another source noted. Last month Lopez revealed that she and Rodriguez underwent therapy during their time in quarantine. Speaking in an interview with Allure, the 51-year-old star explained that they, like the rest of the world, experienced anxiety at the start of the pandemic. So they sought counselling. ""It has been actually really good,"" she said of lockdown. ""We got to work on ourselves. We did therapy. I think it was really helpful for us in our relationship."" Lopez also spoke of her wedding, which had to be put on hold as the coronavirus spread. ""It was a big deal,"" she said. ""We had been planning for months and months and months, and it was overseas. Maybe that wasn’t the right time.""",-0.5344388578416706 """Amityville Horror"" killer Ronald DeFeo Jr., who brutally murdered his family in their sleep in 1974, has died at age 69 while in prison. DeFeo was serving a 25-year-to-life sentence at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg when he passed away, officials confirmed to Newsday. He was moved to Albany Medical Center and was pronounced dead at 6:35 p.m. Friday. The cause of death is pending autopsy. DeFeo was 23 when he used a 35-caliber Marlin lever-action rifle to shoot his parents, Ronald DeFeo Sr., 43, and Louise DeFeo, 43, as well as siblings Dawn, 18, Allison, 13, Marc, 12, and John, 9, according to the New York Post. His attorney unsuccessfully pleaded insanity, claiming that DeFeo heard voices telling him to kill his family. In a 2006 interview, he admitted to murdering his father, mother, and eldest sister, Dawn, who he insisted killed his other siblings. DeFeo, who was convicted in 1975 on six counts of second-degree murder, and received six sentences of 25 years to life, was scheduled for a parole hearing in July. The murderers have inspired dozens of films and documentaries over the years. Many detailed and embellished the events surrounding the Lutz family, who moved into the house where DeFeo killed his family. The Lutzes claimed the house was haunted and only lived there for 28 days. In 2017, the house finally sold for $605,000. The home is 5,000 square feet with 5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, and a boathouse and slip on a quarter acre. It was last sold in 2012 for $950,000, although it was listed at $1.15 million.",0.27917195448757653 "Philosophy is downstream from geometry. In our era, ideas that until quite recently would have bordered on insane have become thoroughly entrenched in academia and, increasingly, government. The “woke” ruling classes implicitly understand—as in all the cultural revolutions of history—that their power depends on punitively enforcing falsehoods. How could this have happened, so rapidly and so pervasively? How could the accrued common wisdom of mankind have come so quickly to be regarded by so many as not only false, but deeply pernicious? Insightful contemporary writers like Carl Trueman, Yuval Levin, and others have drawn on the resources of important 20th-century theorists like Charles Taylor and Philip Rieff to explain the rise of the “modern self” and its susceptibility to the delusions of woke politics. While their analysis is helpful, I believe that the true origins of these changes actually go much deeper and further back to the beginnings of modernity itself. The radical claims of our fevered age are rooted in what might initially seem to be the unlikely soil of early modern philosophy. The radical way that the early moderns reconceived the possibility of knowledge itself made the later cultural and political changes possible. It is sometimes claimed that politics is downstream from culture, but it is also the case that culture is ultimately downstream from epistemology and metaphysics. For ideas to have long-lasting consequences, they must become embodied with a culture. The consequences of early modern philosophy lie not just in the ideas it produced, but in the transformation of society it enabled through the subsequent explosion of modern technology. We now live a new “ethics of modernity” that has habituated nearly all of us to modes of life and ways of being that are fundamentally alienated from human nature as traditionally understood. To see this, however, will require us to delve into the fundamental nature of the modern project, and then explore how that initially elite early modern philosophical ethos became fundamentally “democratized” through the pervasive expansion of technology throughout all of everyday life. The late David Lachterman’s brilliant but now sadly neglected Ethics of Geometry is a particularly helpful resource for understanding the radical changes of the early modern period. In contrast with the earlier tradition, he argues that the early modern thinkers sought to re-establish the foundations of human knowledge on the model of “construction” borrowed from the (then) new mathematics. For Descartes, the fundamental problem with the Aristotelian tradition of philosophy was its failure to live up to a mathematical standard of certainty. He compares that tradition to “magnificent palaces” built on “sand and mud” since its central principles fail to meet the standards of knowledge set by the new mathematics. In the First Critique, Kant tells a similar story, pitching his “transcendental philosophy” as the key to establishing metaphysics on the “secure path of a science.” Modern philosophy presents mathematics as the gold standard of human knowledge—indeed the only true examples of knowledge at all in the pre-modern history of the West. While this is a familiar theme to students of the history of philosophy, Lachterman’s key innovation is to argue that the transformation of modern philosophy is actually secondary to the transformation of modern mathematics. Contrary to the standard histories that regard modern mathematics as simply a development of the ancient approach, Lachterman argues that modern mathematics “is essentially occupied with the solution of problems, not with the proof of theorems,” and so, for the moderns, “mathematics is most fertilely pursued as the ‘construction of problems or equations’—that is, as the transposition of mathematical intelligibility and certainty from the algebraic to the geometrical domain, or from the interior forum of the mind to the external forum of space and body.” In other words, where the old mathematics described what its practitioners saw as immutable and given in the world around them, in the new mathematics it is the practitioners’ ideas that are primary. The culmination of the modern project seek to conform the world to the mind instead of the mind to the world. This marks a revolutionary break. For the Greeks, “the source of the intelligibility of the figure…is the nature of the figure in its own right.” For the moderns, “it is to be found in the strategies and tactics certain to bring the figure into visible or ‘bodily’ being. A distinction in the manner of knowing entails a difference in the mode of being” (emphasis added). Shaping Thought In the older tradition, the geometrical task was really geometrical; that is, it takes off from the physical reality of the figure available to us, at least in some important respects, through the senses. The new methodology, by contrast, seeks to reconstruct the “figure” as “represented” within the new science of analytical (algebraic) geometry. While most believe that the modern methods just give more precise expression to what the ancients had approximated, Lachterman’s suggestion is that the modern method of knowing actually “entails a difference in the mode of being.” That is, the subject matter of modern mathematics is simply not the same as that of ancient mathematics. As modern mathematics grew and developed, the emphasis shifted from Euclidian deduction to the now customary methods of symbolization and formalization we all learned in school. Formal logic also later underwent a similar change. In an Aristotelian syllogism, the truth of the premises was thought to actually cause the truth of the conclusion. By contrast, in modern symbolic logic, the relationships within valid argument forms are entirely formal. Those formal systems unfold according to internally consistent rules, but the relationships are not regarded as causal. The significance of these changes is not restricted to abstruse philosophical debates in epistemology. They have become embodied in the success of the modern sciences over Aristotelian physics. For instance, Bacon complains in the New Organon that the lack of new “inventions” offers proof enough of the deficiency of the Aristotelian system. Our age of course teems with new inventions. There is no question that if the standard of scientific progress is the production of technology and the power it offers to make us “lords and masters of nature” (Descartes), then modern systems are unquestionably superior. One of the essential keys to this superiority has been the development of the new mathematical “models” we use to manipulate and control nature in continually unprecedented ways. While the ancients could stack the massive Pyramids through sheer determination and the medievals could fashion the stunning elegance of Chartres through unparalleled craftsmanship, only the moderns could bind the entire planet (and beyond) into what is essentially a single interconnected electro-mechanical system. It is less immediately clear, however, that this new technical mastery in fact resulted a new “ethics.” In the Meditations, Descartes acknowledges that while mankind is far inferior to God in intellect, “strictly in itself, God’s will does not seem any greater than mine.” The will, taken in itself, is boundless: this is fundamental to the modern understanding of knowledge as power. “To be ‘modern’ in the most exacting and exalting sense,” writes Lachterman, “is to be carried along this trajectory from mathematical construction (in its precise technical sense) to self-deification. The mind is not nature’s mirror; it is nature’s generative or creative source.” Inevitably, the dominance of the will over the intellect not only inverts the traditional priority of speculative over practical reason, but also produces in us a fundamentally new comportment to the world; that is, a new ethics. In the earlier philosophical tradition, ethics was primarily concerned with the development of a particular kind of character rather than a way of evaluating the moral permissibility of an action. We retain some of this in our directly borrowed term ethos, which even in English signifies a way things are done within a particular cultural context. The root sense of ethos is tied to what is customary or ordinary in a particular place or culture. To be “ethical” is to be the sort of person (i.e. to have the sort of character) that is characteristic of a place or culture. This reflects the fact that the way we live in some particular time and place is deeply formative of who we are and what we become. What is “normal” in the conditions of our daily lives determines the kind of people we are. Of course, as those conditions change, we are changed along with them, whether we are directly conscious of this or not. The new ethics of modernity has taken hold by transforming the conditions of our normal lives. This modern ethos underwrites, or even demands, the exponential growth of technology into an ever-accelerating feedback loop, unfolding according to its own internal logic and lack of constraints. Lachterman’s original notion of an “ethics of geometry” embodied in early modern philosophy has become democratized through the explosion of technology in our lives. The “way of being” that was inaugurated with the rise of early modern mathematics has now become now the default way of life of contemporary mankind. Modeling Reality We moderns now live in a world of “models”: climate models, economic models, digital models of all sorts. In the past, this kind of thinking was much more restricted simply owing to the sheer intellectual complexity involved; in the 17th century it required the genius of a Descartes to think in these terms. However, today’s technology allows the externalization of most of the intellectual heavy lifting. The construction of digital models, complete with sophisticated physics engines, is now literally child’s play. This is how the early modern mode of philosophy has become democratized in our age. It is no longer the exclusive purview of those with the intellectual capacity to reconceive the world in mathematical terms. Instead, we are nearly all required to participate in it, even if we do not really understand what actually goes into the models or how they are constructed. The complexity becomes hidden from us by being incorporated into the tools we use on a daily basis, and especially by being presupposed by the default modes of explanation offered by nearly everyone around us. As we grow habituated to this mode of life, we become transformed by it, and now unconsciously comport ourselves more to representations that fit our models and less to the realities to which the models putatively correspond. This is why we can be said to be living a new “ethics.” Without thinking much about it, we become what we are habituated to be through the intellectual tools that nearly everyone uses to frame almost all of our discussions. Political, cultural, even artistic explanations are framed in these terms, so much so that they become the only currency for explanation available to us. It has simply become the way we speak and think; it is our “normal”; it is common sense. It is precisely this kind of distancing between model and reality that enables us to even take seriously, much less believe, a “woke” claim like someone is actually a “woman in a man’s body.” As we become more and more accustomed to living in a world of models, we eventually see ourselves and our own bodies as part of our own self-generated abstractions. This ethos also explains why “intellectuals” were originally more readily drawn into thinking this way than “normal” people. People who work with their hands are much more intimately familiar with the straightforward intransigence of material reality to the human will. Wood, steel, and stone will ultimately yield, but only after a great deal of effort and a deep understanding of their proper natures. Master craftsmen become so only because they accustom themselves to the intrinsic properties of their materials and tools. In our age, however, the intellectuals have truly become the vanguard of the proletariat, not in the Leninist conception by leading the working class to their supposed liberation in Socialism, but in that ways of thinking that once primarily characterized the intellectuals have now become universal. As more and more “normal” people do jobs that primarily involve the manipulation of intellectual and mathematical models, instead of the literal imposition of form on matter, the “proletariat” itself becomes intellectualized. The Marxist proletariat putatively arose from the alienation of labor from meaningful work. Traditional skilled craftsmen were replaced by “wage slaves” doing low-skill labor within industrialized economies. We have largely exported much of that alienation overseas, but in the daily lives of our new economies we now find ourselves facing a new and deeper alienation from human nature itself. We are in the midst of political and cultural controversies over issues that would have seemed practically unthinkable just a scant few years ago. The plausibility structures of our lives have been radically transformed in ways that would have beggared belief even for the early modern philosophers. Seeing how the ethics of modernity has opened the door to our present woke debates, however, suggests that our contemporary controversies around gender and sex are mere precursors to even more radical changes to come. If something like “transgenderism” can go from Bedlam to the Whitehouse in just a couple of decades, it is not difficult to imagine what “transgressive” innovations are next, from engineered children with three or more genetic “parents” to the possibility of chimeras (human-animal genetic hybrids) and other posthuman and transhuman nightmares. The ethics of modernity is truly a Faustian bargain. We have traded knowledge and power for a deep alienation from Nature. I noted earlier Descartes’ claim that the human will is as unlimited as God’s. If that is true then nothing must hold it back, not even death itself. This is the true meaning of the modern project: the quest for immortality was built into it from the beginning. Descartes himself alludes to the possibility, and it’s the driving force behind the radical experiments in contemporary transhumanism. Of course, that pursuit is actually the supreme alienation from human nature. It is a flight from the fact of human finitude and contingency. It is, indeed, man’s ultimate non serviam to Nature and Nature’s God. Today’s woke convulsions are only the most recent expression of the unfolding of the modern ethos. The ethics of modernity reigns supreme in our age and there is no obvious path to return to sanity. However, as has been aptly observed: what cannot go on forever will not go on forever. Despite everything, the true limits are what they have always been: the contours of a human nature (and an objective reality as a whole) entirely apart from our wills. However, until we can rebuild and recover cultures that embody the perennial and truly multicultural understanding of what it means to be human, I fear we will continue headlong down the path of madness we now seem determined to tread.",1.1433507281977653 "Lessons for Our Current Crisis from the Other Harry Jaffa We present the second and concluding part of an original essay from Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Glenn Ellmers, author of the forthcoming The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America . The book is a pathbreaking study of his teacher, Claremont McKenna Professor Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont’s intellectual godfather. The first part of the essay can be found here . In addition to his interests in American political thought, Jaffa was a great student of Shakespeare. In a book he wrote on original intent jurisprudence, he addresses the question of whether government can simply declare by fiat that human wants and desires shall be fulfilled through some sort of mystical dispensation. To make his point he quotes a passage from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I: Glendower. I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur. Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? Jaffa points out that judges or politicians or political parties, “decreeing that the people shall be supplied with cabbages or doctorates, are like Owen Glendower calling spirits from the vasty deep.” This vignette pokes fun, but in fact raises a very serious issue. A regime that operates on the belief that nutritious cabbages (or healthcare) and prestigious doctorates (or college tuition) can simply be made “free” to all is radically, even diametrically, opposed to the regime envisioned by the Declaration of Independence—which, despite its lofty rhetoric and noble sentiments, is an eminently practical document. As an expression of what Jefferson called “the American mind” the Declaration does not represent a detailed plan of government, but it is still a fairly concrete statement on the nature, limits, and purposes of political life. In particular, the Declaration is emphatically anti-utopian. To cite only a few examples of its metaphysical and political realism, note the recognition of tyranny as a permanent threat to liberty; the existence of “savages” and “barbarians” as more or less permanent features of the human condition; the need for prudence to weigh risks and rewards; and the contingency of all human endeavors, which may depend for their success on “divine providence.” Notwithstanding these modest appraisals of man’s non-angelic nature, the Declaration is hopeful that humans are capable of rational deliberation and affirms that statesmanship can (at times) secure the conditions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Broadly conceived, these are the doctrines or opinions of what Jefferson described as “American Whigs.” And, notably, the republican government conceived by the founders was intended to be suitable only for American Whigs. This is not such an easy idea to grasp, especially in light of the discussion above, about the American political system inviting constant disputes over the meaning of the Constitution. One the one hand, most of our great policy controversies have expressed themselves as arguments over the meaning of the regime. But for precisely this reason, they are always bound within a certain conception of what makes free elections and rational debate possible in the first place. Jaffa argues that from Jefferson’s perspective, only those who accepted the principles of the Declaration “could be considered part of the political universe with respect to which majority rule would be possible.” This means that had a plebiscite on independence been possible in 1776, Whigs would (if they could) have excluded Tories from the vote! What constituted an “American Whig” was accordingly defined by the statement of principles in the Declaration of Independence, most notably by the passage beginning, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” We may therefore say that from the perspective of the Revolution, a free election can be conducted only among “Whigs”! And the acceptance of the idea of human equality, as that idea was comprehended within “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” would appear to be the necessary condition par excellence for defining who might participate in a free election, and hence who might be expected peacefully to abide by its results. This point is essential to understanding properly why elections, by themselves, cannot be regarded as the sufficient guarantee of republican government. Not only can tyranny arise from a majority vote, but the principles that make self-government possible cannot be decided by a poll. Jaffa points out that one cannot “imagine the issue that divided the Americans and the British Crown and parliament being decided by a vote,” because endorsing monarchy at the ballot box would mean repudiating the very idea of elections. Free government is only possible when political differences are “looked upon as arising within the boundaries of these common principles,” expressed in the self-evident truths of the laws of nature. Republican government depends on what Jaffa called the metaphysical freedom of the human mind—which includes the moral deliberation by which fellow citizens join in the partnership for the good life discussed above. Such civic friendship in the pursuit of happiness “implies a freedom in the mind to apprehend truth, and a necessity in nature, a necessity external to the mind, that determines what the truth is.” In the last analysis, freedom is the ability to be determined by the truth. A free society is a fellowship—a unanimity, or oneness of mind—of those who recognize these self-evident truths as the basis of their social and political relationship, within which they can resolve their differences peacefully by debate, discussion, and free elections. Jefferson’s inaugural testifies to the existence of this unanimity sufficient to validate this peaceful process. It also testifies to the continuing necessity for such unanimity if the process is to continue…. Jefferson had said that there was no threat to safety from “error of opinion… where reason is left free to combat it” and that truth had nothing to fear “unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons.” But what precisely are the conditions in which reason is “free”? And when is truth “disarmed”? Are not political campaigns for electoral supremacy precisely the times when the still small voice of reason is least heard, when passion and demagoguery obscure reason? (emphasis added) So what happens when this unanimity no longer holds, when the small voice of reason is overwhelmed by demagoguery and ideology? Such an eventuality is hardly inconceivable. The founders were quite realistic about human nature, and mindful that the realm of statesmanship contains no guarantees. Such inquiries would bring us out of the realm of action and into the theory. Turning away, then, from any further practical considerations, let me conclude with a few points about how the founders conceived of the social contract—merely for the sake of philosophical edification about the founders’ understanding. Jaffa was fond of quoting this pithy statement from the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, adopted in 1780: The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good. Reflecting on this, one might wonder (entirely on the level of idle speculation, of course) whether the United States has ceased to be “one people.” This hypothetical question would, of course, be a complicated and delicate one. It could plausibly be suggested that those who still adhere to the original compact remain one people, while those who are no longer what Jefferson called “American Whigs”—that is, those who no longer hold to the principles of the Declaration—have by word and deed left the compact, and believe in an entirely different set of principles. This would mean that there are two peoples, and two regimes, occupying the same country. Theoretically, there is no bar to this conclusion, however unprecedented and messy it may seem as a practical matter. This second regime might be characterized—hypothetically, of course—by such elements as show trials; public confessions of ideological deviation; the rewriting of history; and the subordination of facts, logic, and nature to the whim of the Party. I leave it to the reader to provide a name for such a regime. It is not the America of Madison or Lincoln. What would the relationship be between these two groups who live in the same nation, but belong to different regimes (assuming for the sake of argument that those who left the original compact constitute a single group)? Those who still consider themselves part of the original regime, and thus bound by and to the principles of the founding, would retain the obligations of citizenship and friendship they owe to each other. But it would seem that a state of nature would subsist between them and those who have left the original compact and now embrace new (and perhaps antithetical) regime principles. What would that mean? In social compact theory, a state of nature exists between independent and sovereign peoples, or nations. (Geographical considerations really have no bearing on these considerations, strictly speaking.) By the principles of natural justice sovereign individuals or nations in the state of nature have only the obligation not to harm each other without cause. The primary obligation of any people who have formed themselves into a compact is to preserve and protect their own safety and happiness. They have no right to injure anyone outside their compact without cause. Yet they may also do whatever is necessary to preserve and protect themselves. Self-preservation (aiming ultimately at happiness and the good life) is after all the point of forming the compact in the first place. War should be avoided, of course, because of the unjust suffering and unpredictable destruction it causes (for both victor and defeated); but it is justified whenever the members of the compact deem it necessary to their safety and security. Again, this seems clear enough in theory, though there would be tremendous complications if the two peoples, or two nations, were intermingled—not merely in the same states, but even within the same communities, and perhaps households. Of course, this was also the situation to some degree with pro-independence Patriots and anti-independence Loyalists during the American Revolution. (Most of the Loyalists relocated by choice or coercion to Canada.) In any event, pursuing a resolution to such practical difficulties is far beyond the scope of this essay. * * * At this point, some readers may wonder whether the notion of two separate regimes raises the question of secession. This essay is mainly an academic investigation into American political thought and history. Let me emphasize, then, that the following brief speculations are even more strictly theoretical, not practical. Moreover, this question is especially speculative if only because a return to the kind of robust federalism intended by the original Constitution would be such a drastic change from our current circumstances that reinstituting the states’ police powers and reviving local autonomy would for all intents and purposes look as if every state had seceded from the Union. But for the sake of philosophical completeness, let me pursue the question of forcible secession—which means an involuntary breakup of the Union. A voluntary separation agreed to by all the states (going beyond a return to vigorous federalism) and carried out with the consent of the people of each state, would not be secession strictly speaking, but simply an exercise by the people of their sovereign authority to remake the government. If we were to presume, however, that the current administration in Washington (and likely any future administration)—along with its supporters among sympathetic states—were to resist such a voluntary breakup, then any attempt to leave the Union would indeed amount to unconstitutional secession. There is no getting around this point that such action would contravene the Constitution and thus undermine any claim such states might make to be upholding the founders’ principles. With that stipulation, however, there are a few additional points to be noted. Let me state, once again, that it is exceedingly challenging to discuss this topic at all, because of the association of secession with slavery and the old Confederacy. Moreover, I think it necessary to confront—extremely briefly—at least one of the several myths which contaminate discussion of the Civil War on both the Left and Right. To the degree that several states today simply wish to detach themselves from the intrusive overreach of the central government, it must be emphasized this was certainly not the motivation of the slave states in 1860, which emphatically did not want merely to be “left alone.” On the contrary, it was their demand for an unprecedented expansion of national power—in the form of a federal slave code for the territories—which alienated the South from the rest of the nation, and caused the rupture. In April of 1860, well before the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln, the southern delegates at the Democratic convention in Charleston, South Carolina walked out when the party would not accede to their demands for new pro-slavery laws at the federal level. Both national parties rejected the South’s demand to repudiate the principles of the Declaration of Independence and commit the entire country to a more explicit pro-slavery agenda. It was against this background that the South, in 1860-61, attempted forcibly to break up the Union by rejecting the results of the election in which Lincoln became president. The myriad complexities of the Civil War are well beyond the scope of this essay, but it is noteworthy that the intransigent demands of the slave states (as well as the unique situation of the federal territories, which has no contemporary parallel) prevented any real discussion of voluntary separation on mutually agreeable terms. To name only one point, the southern states would not even consider Lincoln’s offers of compensated emancipation to end slavery—in part because several leading southern intellectuals no longer regarded slavery as a necessary evil, but had come to describe it as a “positive good,” to be further secured and enlarged with new federal guarantees. While any attempt at forcible secession today would still lack a basis in the Constitution, it is important to appreciate this distinction. To offer a Lincolnesque illustration: When you see a man standing by a riverbank with his hand on a woman’s coat, it makes a great deal of difference whether he is pulling her out of the river, or pushing her in. So too, there is a great deal of difference between secession over the demand for a federal slave code, and secession over the rejection of, say, a federal speech code violating the First Amendment. (Of course, in many ways—ranging from campaign finance laws, to the politicizing of the tax code, to the raft of anti-discrimination statutes—the erosion of the First Amendment is already well along.) There is, finally, one more argument which could be made today, and which the southern states pointedly did not invoke. That is the natural—as opposed to constitutional—right to self-preservation, which includes the right to revolution. To make such a claim would have immediately exposed the slaveowners to the charge that their slaves had an equal right by nature to revolt on behalf of their self-preservation. As Jaffa points out. “Slaves are by nature the enemies of those who enslave them. This is why the introduction of slavery is against the interest of the slaveholders themselves.” For this reason, he elaborates, the South was forced to make a specious claim to “secession as a constitutional right. They went to great lengths to avoid appealing to a right whose exercise would obviously apply far more to their slaves than to themselves.” Arguments for seceding from the central authority today would certainly be made on the very opposite grounds: to escape despotism, rather than extend it. Of course—hypocrisy being the common coin of all political disputes—one could expect any number of inversions of language and logic in response. The 19th-century slave power defended secession on the basis of the “liberty” to own other human beings. Similarly, given our current political divisions, those wanting to leave—even to restore the principle of equal, natural rights—would certainly be accused by their opponents of “racism.” This charge, it hardly needs to be said, is an Orwellian lie. The word “racism” today is a political weapon, and generally means the opposite of what it meant to Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln—who understood republican government to demand equality before the law. The propagandistic charge of “racist” today is deployed on behalf of racial preferences, anti-white “diversity training,” segregation on college campuses and elsewhere, and a Stalinist re-writing of American history. I leave aside the concomitant rejection of consent and representative government that underlies our administrative-state despotism, typically defended by “anti-racists.” Beyond the Constitution—and more fundamental than the specific social compact that formed the American people—is the most basic of all rights. No less a Union man than Lincoln observed: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.” Jaffa elaborates on his hero’s remarks with this statement: Throughout American history—at least since July 4, 1776—it has been conceded that all people everywhere have the right to resist intolerable oppression. This is a right which belongs not only to the people of the state, but of any part of a state. Indeed, it belongs to each individual, although it is a right which is seldom valuable to individuals, since they seldom have the power to make resistance effective. But this right—the right of revolution— is a right paramount to the Constitution, and to all positive laws whatever. It is a natural right…. At this point, I will end my purely abstract speculations. Even as a theoretical matter, this most radical step would take us into terra incognita. (“It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones,” Lincoln said.) I mention only that even at the utmost extremity, prudence retains—as always—its sovereign authority. If such a course were to be contemplated, it would be necessary to determine if the present situation is intolerable, whether there is a plausible alternative (that is, a sensible and fairly concrete plan for something better which would justify extreme action), and if there is a possible path to achieving that alternative. This latter condition need only be possible, not likely—for there are times when honor and justice may command great enterprises, even at immense risk, and even if the outcome depends to some degree on chance or providence. Practicing the prudence I preach, I conclude by echoing Federalist 43: the “flattering prospect of its being merely hypothetical forbids an overcurious discussion of it. It is one of those cases which must be left to provide for itself.”",0.08902270849011545 "Conservatives can’t rely on judges to wage their battles for them. President Trump’s America First agenda was derailed not merely by political pressure, but also by the federal courts, facilitated by liberal public interest legal organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In January 2017, President Trump issued the first travel ban, in keeping with his campaign promise to get Islamic terrorism under control. The momentum behind the rollout of his agenda quickly died, however, as the ACLU used the travel ban as a fundraising scheme, generating more than $24 million in online donations within two days of the executive order. To put this fundraising feat in perspective, that’s nearly seven times as much money as the organization raised online in all of 2015. Over the next year, the ACLU quadrupled its roster of paying members and accumulated $120 million in donations—roughly 30 to 40 times more than the donations received in previous years. There are few organizations that have prospered under Trump more than the ACLU, which now has an annual budget of over $300 million. And with this newfound wealth, the ACLU managed to stop almost every program aligned with Trump’s America First agenda. The ACLU won several cases relating to the travel ban, resulting in various iterations of the ban, with each iteration bearing less of a relationship to immigration from countries associated with Islamic extremism. Though the Supreme Court upheld a version of the order, it is hard to call the diluted travel ban a victory for the MAGA movement. Next on the ACLU agenda was to challenge the Administration’s effort to enforce federal immigration law in “sanctuary cities.” The ACLU won several federal injunctions, thereby ensuring that sanctuary cities could continue to flout federal law. Likewise, the ACLU litigated every Trump effort to narrow or limit the Obama Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order. After several lower court cases invalidated these efforts, the Supreme Court held that President Trump acted unlawfully in seeking to “wind down” the program. The ACLU was also active in cases involving the 2020 census. In 2019, the ACLU filed lawsuits seeking to block President Trump from including a citizenship question on the 2020 census, a critical question for determining the number of illegal aliens in the country. After winning the citizenship case in the U.S Supreme Court, the ACLU initiated a new line of census cases, addressing whether the Trump administration must count illegal aliens as persons in the 2020 census for purposes of congressional representation. The ACLU recently won this case in a New York federal court, thereby giving sanctuary states like California disproportionate representation in the House. After President Trump failed to get congressional authorization to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he sought to use already-allocated military funding instead. The ACLU put an end to that by getting the Ninth Circuit to find the use of this military funding unlawful. On almost every issue relating to Trump’s immigration agenda—the wall, the travel ban, DACA, sanctuary cities, the Census—the ACLU was able to use federal courts to stifle Trump. That’s not to say that the Trump Administration accomplished nothing. Indeed, the Administration’s foreign affairs, tax, and deregulation policies were left intact. As Ann Coulter quipped, “[we] voted for a Muslim ban and a wall and all [we] got was this lousy tax cut.” In other words, we voted for the Trump Republican Party, but the ACLU and federal courts made sure that we got the old one. Liberalism and conservatism operate asymmetrically in American law and politics. The right is weak partly because the left’s vast cultural power—particularly in entertainment, media, and education—empowers it to shape the terms of debate. The left uses its power to define certain conservative policies—such as defined borders, religious liberty, equality before the law, and the traditional family—as beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse. The right, by contrast, has no power to shape the left. Contrast the ACLU’s response to Trump with how conservative legal organizations responded to the Obama Administration. The Affordable Care Act was subject to many legal challenges, several of which were initiated by leading members of the Federalist Society, but the Obama Administration’s transformation of our social order was mostly ignored. In 2012, for example, when Obama issued DACA, changing the immigration status of nearly one million people, no conservative organizations or Federalist Society figures mounted legal challenges. The same was the case when the Obama Administration issued the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation, which placed every community in the nation under the thumb of HUD’s diversity agenda. There were complaints in National Review and elsewhere that AFFH threatened free markets, but there was not a single legal challenge. When the Obama Administration threatened federal lawsuits against public schools that disproportionately disciplined black and Hispanic students, there was more grumbling among conservative lawyers, but no legal action. There are, of course, right-leaning legal organizations that do good work, such as the Pacific Legal Foundation and Institute for Justice, but they tend to be libertarian as opposed to conservative in ideological orientation. The Institute for Justice, for example, has had some success in its 30-plus year libertarian crusade against excessive regulation of occupational licensing. But using the Fourteenth Amendment to defend shoe-shining and hair-braiding rights does little to combat the ACLU’s assault on our social order. The result of having a legal left devoted to transformation, and a legal right that does little to stop it, is that President Trump’s four years came and went, providing not a “populist uprising” but rather a mere blip in the trajectory of American law and politics, a short respite from the federal government’s open borders and racial equity policies. Following the 2020 election, it is back to business as usual. Only the ACLU now has a lot more money to advance this agenda, and there is no organization prepared to fight it. Conservative legal scholars and thinkers must activate themselves to become just as aggressive in the defense of the American constitutional tradition and ordered liberty as the left is in attacking it. And the emergence of this energized right better happen soon, for there will soon be nothing left of the American tradition to defend.",1.1874740996773223 "The Biden Administration is on track to stiff our desperate working class. Bill Clinton may have been lionized as the “first black President,” and Barack Obama actually was half African, but no politician in American history owes more to African-American leadership and voters than Joe Biden. His campaign never smoldered, much less caught fire, until he was embraced by South Carolina’s heavily black Democratic electorate. African Americans paced his path also through states such as Texas, where he did far less well among whites and Latinos. Yet will this triumph at the polls translate to a better life for most minorities, most of whom are working-class or poor? It depends which minorities. Biden’s commitment to healing the “sting of systemic racism” and repudiating “white supremacy” will certainly benefit the elite minorities—actors, lawyers, professors, media figures, corporate apparatchiks, non-profit functionaries—whose careers will be super-charged by demands that people be appointed to high office by race. Viruses have no known biases, but even the pandemic cannot escape the taint of “systemic racism.” States like California are basing their re-opening policies on whether the infections and fatalities can be equalized by race, despite differences between races in health factors, housing, and work life. Some at the CDC, many state officials—including in overwhelmingly white Oregon—and numerous academic health experts have even suggested minorities get vaccinated first as a demonstration of “racial justice,” even if it threatens the most vulnerable, but grievously whiter populations of seniors. The “Talented Tenth” v. the Vast Majority But what about the vast majority of African Americans and Latinos? Even in the best of times, back in February, our economy was failing many of these minorities, as well working people in general. Corporate mea culpas about racism and solidarity with BLM may blunt criticism, but assertions of guilt don’t address the fundamental problem of diminished expectations, particularly in minority and working-class communities that continue to suffer economic distress and hopelessness. Minorities make up over 40% of the nation’s working class and will constitute the majority by 2032. In writing about African-American progress, the great 20th-Century philosopher W.E.B. Du Bois embraced the notion of “the talented tenth”—the educated upper stratum of black America—as the primary vehicle for social change. Others with a more popular touch embraced either the crude nationalism of Marcus Garvey or the ameliorative, grassroots improvement approach of Booker T. Washington. The elitist vision of minority outlook was epitomized by the Obama Administration, where African Americans and other “people of color” enjoyed enormous influence and access while the conditions for middle- and working-class minorities generally declined. Minorities with elite degrees flourished, but policies that protected banks and targeted homeowners wiped out much black and Hispanic wealth. “The first black president in American history,” notes the widely-read Marxist blog Jacobin, “ turned out to be a disaster for black wealth.” Just as traditional liberalism has stopped benefitting the majority of workers, the new progressive version seems likely to fail even more spectacularly. A Biden Administration may coo more and say the “right” things, but it is unlikely to replicate the remarkable success, pre-COVID, of the Trump years, where minority unemployment hit record lows and the incomes of the least grew faster, for the first time in decades, than those of the upper classes. Indeed in a host of areas—starting with energy policy—the Administration embraces blue state priorities that often work against minority uplift and leave most abandoned on the edges of our society. What Works—And What Does Not For all that President Biden’s inspiring talk of unity represents a necessary salve after the often-excessive divisiveness of Trump, the new Administration’s focus on “systemic racism” simply nationalizes the race-based politics common in those areas, like California and New York, that now have control of the federal apparat. These policies—from affirmative action to Maoist “struggle sessions” reborn in corporate seminars—have catapulted minorities into important-seeming jobs but have brought little actual progress to most in minority communities. As the activists and their corporate sponsors preen over “defunding police,” it is predominately minority communities who face the greatest threat from renewed levels of violent crime in cities such as New York. But, as demonstrated in a recent report for the Urban Reform Institute, generally speaking minorities have done much better—in terms of income and homeownership—in deep red states and regions than in the more “enlightened” blue regions. In fact, among larger metropolitan areas such as Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, the median African-American income, adjusted for costs, is more than $60,000—compared to $36,000 in San Francisco and $37,000 in Los Angeles. The median income for Latinos in Virginia Beach-Norfolk is $69,000, compared to $43,000 in Los Angeles, $47,000 in San Francisco, and $40,000 in New York. One critical measure can be seen in homeownership. Property remains key to financial security: Homes today account for roughly two thirds of the wealth of middle-income Americans. Homeowners have a median net worth more than 40 times that of renters, according to the Census Bureau. Yet in some parts of the country, notably California and the Northeast, housing prices are often out of reach for most minorities. Black home ownership in areas like Atlanta and Oklahoma City borders on 50%, compared to one third in Los Angeles, Boston, or New York. Among Hispanics, Pittsburgh, Akron, and St. Louis stand out while the least affordable housing markets include the four large California metros, Honolulu, and Boston. Minorities may still vote blue, but they are moving red. African-American populations are stagnant or even declining in places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland (whose city council is demanding reparations for the very people who have been pushed out of the city) while rising in many red state metros. Minorities are also becoming suburbanites: In the 50 largest US metropolitan areas, 44% of residents live in racially and ethnically diverse suburbs, ranging from 20% to 60% non-white. Nationwide, in the 53 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 residents, more than three quarters of blacks and Hispanics now live in suburban or exurban areas. More than a third of the 13.3 million new suburbanites between 2000 and 2010 were Hispanic, with white non-Hispanics accounting for a mere fifth of suburban growth. The Pandemic Effect To be sure, minorities had ample reasons to dislike Trump, whose more unhinged racially charged outbursts appealed to the very toxic white nationalists who ended up sinking his legacy. There is certainly more support for liberalized immigration than many hard-core Trumpistas suspect. But the fact that he managed to pick up a larger share of minority voters in 2020 suggests there is a market for growth-oriented policies and against the squelching of the grassroots economy. The pandemic has inflicted intense economic pain on most minorities. Lockdowns, whether justified or overwrought, have pummeled low-income workers and those living in crowded housing. Roughly half of all job losses in April were in such low-paying fields as restaurants, hotels, and amusement parks. Minorities have been far less able to work remotely than tech workers, stock traders, and media figures. Barely 3% of low-wage workers can telecommute, but nearly 50% of those in the upper middle class can. Workers at restaurants and shops may face hard times, but professors and teachers generally continue to teach online and senior bureaucrats remain employed. Almost 40% of those Americans making under $40,000 a year have lost their jobs and watched wage gains from the first three years of the Trump Administration evaporate. Some 44% of black households and 61% of Latino households, notes Pew, have suffered a job loss or pay cut compared to 38% of whites. “Lockdown fanatics,” thunders the widely-circulated “labor populist” blog The Bellows, “ have helped manufacture consent for a brutal reorganization of labor that will plunge millions of people into serfdom.” The Political Prospect The woke brand of race politics now being injected into the Biden Administration is not particularly popular. The vast majority of all races, noted a 2018 survey, reject the woke Manichean “anti-racist” meme and scorn political correctness, even as it is widely adopted by the billionaire class and corporate HR departments. Generally, minorities do not want to turn away from law enforcement; the vast majority of Americans—including millennials and minorities—do not favor defunding the police, even as these policies are pushed in their name. Some politicians and progressive intellectuals have excused looting as a form of racial redress, although many victims of “no justice, no peace” are themselves minority business owners and their employees. Similarly, among the general public and many minorities, racial quotas are not particularly popular—as evidenced in the recent defeat this November, in deep blue California, of a proposition to introduce racial preferences (even though opponents were charged with defending “white nationalism”). What minorities and working-class people in general—a majority of whom will be non-white by 2030—need is not more Maoist “struggle sessions” but pro-family, pro-growth policies for the broad working class. Policies that transform schools into factories to combat “systemic racism”—with little emphasis on skills or discipline—will not nurture the kind of workforce that can move up. One has to wonder how employers will regard students coming out of systems such as that of San Diego, which is busily getting rid of mandates for such things as knowing course material, taking tests, doing work on time, or even showing up (all these, the district insists, are “racist” in nature). This is part of a racially charged effort to dumb down education: deemphasizing tests, excusing bad behavior, targeting selective high schools for extinction, politicizing education schools, and imposing ideology on often ill-educated students. Similarly, regulations that drive industries out of the country by raising energy prices will not affect grievance studies professors at the local university. But they could impact union jobs at the factories, or the energy and logistics facilities which often employ minorities. Having groups like the Realtors announce a drive to wipe out “hate speech” may make woke association executives self-satisfied, but it won’t help people leave dysfunctional neighborhoods, create affordable housing, or speed the path to homeownership. Ironically, the obsession with “systemic racism” is likely to spark a growing white nationalist reaction. As Michael Lind and others suggest, policies which focus on “white privilege” seem destined to further elicit resentment from those who carry original sin, according to the media and much of the political class, from sharing DNA with “settlers” and slaveowners—although the majority of Americans come from families that emigrated after the Civil War. Crowing about “the end of white America” might be popular in ethnic studies department but won’t bring a better life for most minorities. The war on “American exceptionalism” now being waged on Biden’s Congressional Left is no substitute for a common broadly unifying message. People, even white people, cannot be appealed to indefinitely by suggesting they are evil by nature of their racial history and skin pigmentation. This near-apartheid obsession with racist categories makes increasingly little sense in a country where one in ten babies has one white and one non-white parent, and 12% of all African Americans are now immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The key to addressing our racial and other divides, notes Richard Parsons, former President of Citigroup, lies not with racialist redress but with economic growth and opportunity. There will never be “unity,” he suggests, until people “feel it in their pockets.” A national campaign for racial penance may thrill the woke glitterati and corporate timeservers, but such moralism is unlikely to make things any better for most minorities. Americans of all colors cannot rise unless we see the American future not as a zero-sum game among diverse people but one that extends the American dreamscape to citizens of all races.",-0.9720279555946574 "We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.",0.9477574141355352 "State lawmakers must protect education from activism. Advocates of “Action Civics” are poised to press a novel practice on every state education system in the Union. Bills mandating Action civics will soon be introduced in state legislatures across the country; it is already required in Massachusetts and Illinois. The Biden administration is likely to support that effort with federal carrots and sticks, using the model of the Obama administration’s support for Common Core. Unfortunately, widespread adoption of Action Civics will definitively politicize an already politically tainted K-12 educational system, irrevocably cementing the partisan Left’s hold upon our culture. Action civics amounts to school-sponsored indoctrination and political action in support of progressive policy positions. It must be energetically opposed by all who value authentic liberal education. Despite its growing influence, the goals and premises of Action Civics (sometimes called “Civic Engagement,” “New Civics,” or “Project-Based Civics”) remain little-known to most Americans. The recent report of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission included a welcome, if brief, warning against Action Civics. The need for a more thoroughgoing critique of Action civics remains urgent, however. In the absence of expanded public awareness, this pernicious practice could be enshrined in the nation’s schools before the public realizes what it has approved. Americans are disposed to favor requirements in “civics.” Yet the premises and practices of the new Action Civics stand starkly at odds with civic education rightly understood. Under the deceptively soothing heading of “civics,” state legislatures may soon enshrine educational practices that are anything but benign. Action Civics conceives of itself as a living laboratory in which mere civic theory is put productively into practice. Students, it is held, best acquire civic know-how through direct political action, for example by protesting in favor of gun control or lobbying for legislation to address climate change. Whereas traditional civic education risks forfeiting a student’s attention with abstract lectures on the structure of our constitutional system, Action Civics is designed to turn a student’s most deeply felt pragmatic concerns toward engagement with the political process. The result is held to be deepened practical knowledge, lifelong learning, and enlarged participation in our collective life. This is an attractive presentation. Yet what distinguishes classroom-based protest and lobbying from manipulation of a student’s untutored prejudices in the service of a teacher’s or a school’s political agenda? In practice as well as theory, the answer is “far too little.” As one observer rightly put it: “When ‘action’ proceeds from unexamined assumptions, the result is not learning, but indoctrination.” True civic education conveys the purpose, nature, and contours of our constitutional republic, tells the story of the struggle to uphold its founding principles of equal rights and liberty, and cultivates virtues necessary to the republic’s preservation. What civic education very deliberately does not attempt to do is supply students with substantive political positions. That is for students themselves to determine as free individuals, in the fullness of time. Reasons for Concern There is an important distinction to be drawn between responsible civic action on the one hand and what Lincoln called “mobocratic” rule on the other. In the absence of informed and reflective respect for our fundamental rights and the constitutional framework that protects them, civic action risks descent into mobocracy. This helps explain why the right to free expression is endangered at this moment in our civic life. Our need is not for collective action per se, but for civic action tempered by regard for the rights of others. The ability to explore contending perspectives with patience and respect, including the strength of character to hold one’s own political convictions up to scrutiny, is a virtue essential to the preservation of our republic. That is why debate in various forms has long been a practicum of civics. Action Civics, to the contrary, skips a step, moving uncritically to turn grievance and anger into protest and lobbying. Too often this has the effect of forestalling self-examination and dampening tolerance of alternative perspectives. Critical self-examination and thoughtful debate are easily avoided in the heat of collective political action. That is why civic education is not the same as political action per se. Civic education is instead a preparation for, and a prerequisite to, mature political life. Recognizing the essential contestability of your own point of view is the preface to liberty. Learning the ways in which every policy position features strengths, weaknesses, trade-offs, potentially unintended consequences, and often error, encourages us to grant freedom of speech to others rather than merely to demand it for ourselves. Yet by intentionally agitating grievance, and at times even glamorizing the refusal of angry student activists to accord a respectful hearing to contrary views, Action Civics resists acknowledgement of the essential contestability of opinion. In this, it both reflects and exacerbates the tendencies now weakening our fundamental freedoms. The novelty of Action Civics is a clue to its problematic nature. Earlier educators avoided pressing their students into political activism, not because they were unimaginative teachers but because they recognized the impropriety of imposing political preferences on students. These educators understood how easy it would be for teachers to trade upon their authority for purposes of indoctrination. At the university level, statements of academic freedom once warned against the abuse of professorial authority to forward political indoctrination. It is a sign of our times that such statements have since been modified to reflect a changed vision of public education, one that takes the inculcation of particular political viewpoints as a positive mission. Particularly in the context of public education, that vision is at odds with the principles and habits of liberty. Abandoning Neutrality A pillar of free speech at the university level is the principle of “institutional neutrality.” In upholding institutional neutrality, universities seek to minimize the degree to which they take official institutional stands on controversial issues of public policy. To do so would effectively pressure individual students and faculty into following an official political line, thus inhibiting freedom of thought and discussion. Schools and universities that adopt Action Civics place their neutrality as institutions at risk—something public institutions in particular ought to avoid, given their obligations to the politically diverse citizenry that funds and relies upon them. Cultivating neutrality, and knowing when to do so, is every bit as necessary to the proper functioning of our democratic republic as is advocacy. Judges and jurors must set personal preferences aside in favor of the law. Journalists must overcome their biases in order to fully and fairly cover political controversies. Officials who supervise elections must do so impartially, without regard to their own partisan interests. So, too, ought teachers to put aside their particular political inclinations as they instruct their students in principles of civic life that apply to all, regardless of policy preference. This is not only just; it is itself an education. Classrooms can and should model the civic capacity of impartiality by striving to remain neutral on the great public-policy controversies of the day. The fact that the always-imperfect but nonetheless essential aspiration to impartiality has been abandoned by too many journalists, educators, and others at this moment in our civic life lends urgency to this argument. Advocates of Action Civics can sometimes be straightforward about their intention to deploy it on behalf of a progressive policy agenda. Other practitioners strenuously maintain that Action Civics does not impose a political viewpoint upon students, but merely encourages them to act upon their own pre-existing political convictions. Given the pressures easily and inevitably placed upon students by teachers and peers in classrooms dedicated to direct political action, this is difficult to credit. A student’s untutored political preferences are easily molded. A teacher may selectively encourage student views he finds congenial while challenging perspectives he disfavors well before they have a chance to inspire action. One or a few students who hold opinions at odds with the rest of a class might be intimidated into silence by a larger number of peers, or drafted into political efforts they do not truly support. This is particularly so given the emphasis of Action Civics on launching collective action on behalf of shared political goals. As group protests and lobbying expeditions are organized, who will want to be left out? Civic education includes the cultivation of independence, “the courage to stand apart from the crowd.” Yet in theory and practice alike, Action Civics discourages independence. Action Civics under Fire This assessment of Action Civics is part of a small but growing debate over this novel departure in civic learning. Having laid out some of the issues at stake, it will be helpful to trace the public debate to this point. The most thoroughgoing critique of Action Civics to date is Making Citizens, a 2017 report for the National Association of Scholars (NAS) by David Randall (with contributions by Ashley Thorne). Randall charges Action Civics with political bias. At its core, he says, this new practice “redefines civics as progressive political activism.” The goal of Action Civics, Randall adds, is nothing less than “’fundamentally transforming’ America” by way of policies such as “de-carbonizing the economy, massively redistributing wealth, intensifying identity group grievance, curtailing the free market, expanding government bureaucracy, elevating international ‘norms’ over American Constitutional law, and disparaging our common history and ideals.” In his Preface to Making Citizens, NAS President Peter Wood offers a “dictionary of deception,” describing the invariably progressive meanings encoded in the beguilingly soothing vocabulary of Action Civics. Phrases that seem in the abstract to draw upon our hallowed civic traditions, break decisively with those traditions in fact. NAS substantiates these claims with detailed investigations into the history of Action Civics, biographies of its leading practitioners, the sources of its ideology, and the actual practice of Action Civics at several public universities. Two practitioners of Action Civics—Amy Curran, Oklahoma Executive Director of the group Generation Citizen, and Generation Citizen’s CEO Scott Warren—energetically reject Randall’s charge of political bias. In reality, say Curran and Warren, groups like Generation Citizen organize student political action not in order to encourage progressivism, but because direct political involvement is the most effective way to teach civics to students unmoved by charts, figures, or tests on how a bill becomes a law. In their 2020 report on Action Civics for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Tom Lindsay and Lucy Meckler assess the controversy between NAS and Generation Citizen. To determine whether Action Civics almost invariably leads to protests on behalf of progressive political causes, Lindsay and Meckler reviewed 27 political projects listed on the websites of Generation Citizen and its allies. What emerged was an overwhelmingly progressive political bias, examples of which include protests in support of the Green New Deal, various gun control measures, driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, opposition to a border wall, etc. Lindsay and Meckler also reviewed public statements by Generation Citizen’s Director of Policy and Advocacy, Andrew Wilkes, and found that these statements strongly supported progressive positions. Given the contradiction between Generation Citizen’s denial of political bias and the actual content of their projects and statements, Lindsay and Meckler conclude that NAS’s charge of “deceptive language” is credible. Action Civics advocates are sometimes less than frank about the decidedly partisan politics at the heart of their enterprise. Crucible of Radicals The built-in progressive bias of Action Civics comes through as well in what is perhaps this movement’s most influential publication, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. Released in 2012 by a White House task force led by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, A Crucible Moment lent the imprimatur of the federal government to Action Civics. The implication of that endorsement was that federal regulation and funding would be deployed to steer universities in this new direction. Follow-on actions by the Department of Education in 2012 confirmed this. A Crucible Moment thus served as a catalyst for the rise of Action Civics in American higher education, and over time at the K-12 level as well. In subject matter, A Crucible Moment focuses on topics like diversity, sustainability, inequality, and global interdependence. Students are urged to undertake community service and political action at the local and global levels in order to forward “systemic social and political change.” “Shared responsibility for a common future” is a theme as well, so collective action is stressed. Crucible Moment’s commitment to “global citizenship” is so thoroughgoing that observers have commented on the report’s apparent “alienation from American politics.” “There is much talk in Crucible Moment of ‘local and global generative partnerships,’” notes political theorist Diana Schaub, “but the United States itself is oddly absent.” The word “patriotism” never appears, Schaub adds. In his brief but penetrating critique of Crucible Moment, political theorist Patrick J. Deneen suggests that the report’s novel vision of civic education is in fact “neither civic nor educative.” Crucible’s stance is not civic, says Deneen, because it is divorced from the ideal of civitas—of citizenship in a particular place with a particular history and polity, i.e., the United States. Crucible’s advocacy is not educative because it inappropriately substitutes the inculcation of substantive policy ends for knowledge of America’s polity. Here, the issue of political bias returns, and Deneen’s observations on that point are worth highlighting: Crucible Moment insistently, uncritically, and unself-consciously recommends the formal adoption of a set of substantive political ends—funded at least in part by taxpayer dollars—that would have the effect of giving government and university sanction to a set of partisan political positions. This is not civic education; it is the effort to institutionalize, fund, and advance a partisan platform. In sum, the novelty of Action Civics lies not merely in its relative neglect of civic education as traditionally conceived, but in its incompatibility with American civic principles. The partisan character of Action Civics endangers freedom of conscience. Its scant regard for neutrality disadvantages those who do not share its policy aims. This, in turn, drives a wedge through the polity. Adding a bit more American history to the mix will not repair Action Civics. This version of civics is simply incompatible with American civic education, rightly understood. What Should Civics Be Today? Should we, then, return to education as it was before the advent of Action Civics? Proponents of Action Civics insist that students find traditional civics boring and irrelevant. Are they right? If we ban contemporary controversies from the K-12 classroom for the sake of neutrality, do we forfeit our best chance of holding our students’ attention? The reply is that American civics, especially as originally conceived and taught, is anything but dull. That earlier approach in particular has been forgotten and needs to be recovered. Nor is civic education obligated to ignore contemporary policy disagreement. On the contrary, the tried-and-true practice of debate pivots around live controversy. Revitalizing and updating the practice of debate will invigorate student interest in civic education. It will also moderate our divisions by encouraging regard for the rights of others. All of this can be done in a way that respects the non-partisan nature of the classroom. America’s founders created our constitutional republic, yet there was something of great importance they could not create or devise. Founding our tradition of education in America’s own history and civics was necessarily a job for the post-Revolutionary generation. Daniel Webster, a United States congressman, senator, secretary of state, and the greatest American orator of his day, was the true founder of American history and civics. In the years before qualified historians had chronicled America’s story from the Pilgrims through the founding and beyond, Webster’s orations on patriotic occasions traced our history and wove it together with explorations of our civic principles and the virtues required to sustain them. Webster’s speeches were taught and recited in the schools, not only in his own day but down through the early decades of the 20th century. The speeches of other great leaders and orators were studied as well, along with documents of civic importance. There was no sharp separation in that era between history, models for character, and civics. The separating out of “civics” would await the creation of “social studies” in the early 20th century. In the days when Webster’s speeches were read and recited by school children, compelling lessons in personal character, American history, and our republican principles were part of the same unbroken story. Consider, for example, Webster’s tribute to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, delivered shortly after the extraordinary occasion of their death on the same day, the Fourth of July, 1826. Webster traces the lives of both, lingering over the moment when Adams agreed to represent the British soldiers put on trial for their role in the Boston Massacre. Webster reminds his listeners that this was a severe test of Adams’s character, given his political aspirations and the “perfect abhorrence” of the populace for the soldiers. In passing that test, says Webster, Adams brought everlasting honor to his country. The principle at stake was one we have already discussed: the right of an individual to equal treatment in a fair and neutral court of law, even in the face of the most intense partisan passions. Adams faced a choice between the rights of the individual and “mobocratic rule.” He took the better, if more difficult, path. Webster rests his patriotic praise not on jingoistic boasting but on a great man’s courageous choice to stand apart from the crowd. The later acceptance of Adams’s leadership by the citizens of Massachusetts, at least in part on account of his courage in service to these principles, is solid ground for patriotism. This is character, history, and civics together, and it is not boring. This lesson also holds the power to weaken our partisan rancor and restore respect for free speech, if we teach it aright. Debate Webster was a great debater. His brilliant and withering “Second Reply to Hayne” is one of the best-known speeches in American history. In some young people’s collections of Webster’s speeches, the text of the Constitution is inserted just after the Reply to Hayne. The compelling controversy between Webster and Hayne on the meaning of the Constitution served to enliven students’ interest as they approached the study of America’s founding charter. At the climax of Webster’s memorialization of Adams and Jefferson, he reconstructs the debate over the Declaration of Independence as it played out in the Continental Congress shortly before the Fourth of July, 1776. We have no transcript of the actual debate, although the general arguments on both sides were well-known at the time. Webster reconstructs the debate in the same manner as the ancient Greek historian Thucydides reproduces the speeches of the Peloponnesian War, using his knowledge of the arguments at the time. Webster’s reconstruction of the debate over the Declaration is a barn-burner. It encapsulates the life-and-death decision the founders faced in a concentrated point-counterpoint of extraordinary power. After reading Webster’s reconstructed debate, students studied the Declaration itself. This can be done today. Sobering Up Lobbying legislators in the state capital may seem more consequential than a high-school debate, but lobbying by school children is a sugar high. Legislators and staffers are less than frank with children about substantive or political obstacles to their policy goals. The optics of politicians pushing back against school children are poor. Knowing this, adults are liable to manipulate protesting children for political gain. That is not education. Facing a peer in a high-school debate is by far the more daunting and serious challenge, and every bit as likely, or more so, to promote “civic engagement” later in life. High-school debate programs often call on students to argue both sides of controversial topics. That breeds critical thinking, awareness of the weaknesses in your own position, and respect for those with whom you disagree. Part of Webster’s greatness was his ability to appreciate, even replicate, the power of his opponents’ arguments. This aspect of debate could be incorporated more broadly into civic education. Instead of having a class protest for or against a given policy, have every student write dueling essays, each one arguing the opposite side of some controversial question. Or classes could be randomly divided, with half writing essays in favor of, say, a gun control measure, while the other half writes essays in opposition. Then have the class switch political perspectives, with the half that wrote in favor of gun control writing essays in opposition to the Green New Deal, and vice versa. These or similar exercises designed to build an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of competing sides in public-policy controversies will supply excitement, while also respecting neutrality. The idea will serve as a handy reply, as well, when legislators who oppose Action civics are painted as stodgy old killjoys. Yes, someone has to be the adult in the room, nixing a diet of straight cotton candy. Float the debate suggestion, however, and watch what happens. Even a few school-districts making the experiment could draw publicity, and launch the right kind of national trend. Debates are fun, and very entertaining. Call for them and you’ll be a hero in the end. To combat the dangers of polarization and declining respect for our fundamental rights, we need a recovery of America’s lost tradition of civic education, in combination with an updated re-emphasis on the tried-and-true practice of debate. Politicizing the classroom will aggravate our divisions. Learning to debate fair and square will teach us how to live with our differences. Action Civics is no answer to our woes. On the contrary, it is more of what has torn the civic fabric to begin with. The coming push for Action Civics across the 50 states must be swiftly and firmly opposed.",0.9756453122381346 "An excerpt from the 1776 Commission's report. In an Appendix to the 1776 Report, which the new administration was quick to erase from its website, President Trump’s commission thoroughly and succinctly dispenses with the idea that America’s founders devalued religion or thought the regime they built could survive without it. We present that appendix below; another excerpt from the main text can be found here , and the full report is preserved on the Claremont Institute’s website . All members of President Biden’s team regularly insist that their leader is a faithful Catholic. But they have signaled their hostility to traditional religious principles from day one. Biden’s executive orders and sweeping policy agendas flatly defy the teachings of the Abrahamic faiths, and will make it still more difficult for believers in those faiths to live them out without fear of state encroachment. Few essential principles of American life are more poorly understood than that of religious liberty. Using selective misreadings of our founding documents, generations of anti-religionists have used the Establishment Clause of our Constitution unjustly to chase religion from the public square and discredit it in the minds of the people. This is not merely ahistorical—it is foolish and reckless. Ironically, it has also left us with no resources to prevent the establishment of a new, if unacknowledged, civic religion whose practitioners preach racialism and perpetual grievance. Faith and America’s Principles History underscores the overwhelming importance of religious faith in American life, but some today see religious practice and political liberty to be in conflict and hold that religion is divisive and should be kept out of the public square. The founders of America held a very different view. They not only believed that all people have a right to religious liberty but also that religious faith is indispensable to the success of republican government. “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote. “The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” The idea that faith sustains the principles of equality and natural rights is deeply rooted in American society and proven through human experience. The social, political, and personal value of religious faith within America’s public space has been recognized and honored from the start. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports,” George Washington observed in his Farewell Address. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens.” He went on to warn: Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. Civil and Religious Liberty By the time of the American founding, political life in the West had undergone two momentous changes. The first was the sundering of civil from religious law. Prior to the widespread adoption of Christianity, Western societies made no distinction between civil and religious law, between the demands of the state and the demands of the gods. Laws against murder and theft, for instance, had the same status as laws compelling religious observance, and all laws were enforced by the same political institutions. Pagan societies recognized no “private sphere” of conscience into which the state may not justly intrude. Christianity overturned this unity by separating political from religious obligation and making the latter primarily a matter of faith, superintended by a church whose authority was extrinsic to civil law. Thus began a millennium of tension and conflict between secular and ecclesiastical authorities. The second momentous change was the emergence of multiple sects within Christianity. In the pre-Christian world, all subjects or citizens of any given political community were expected to believe in and worship the same God or gods by the same rites and ceremonies. This basic unity held through the first several centuries of Christianity. But the Great Schism and, more significantly, the Reformation, undid Christian unity, which in turn greatly undermined political unity. Religious differences became sources of political conflict and war. The nations of Europe fell into internal sectarian divisions and external religious-political wars. British monarchs not only disputed one another’s claims to the throne but imposed their preferred religious doctrines on the whole nation. Gruesome tortures and political imprisonments were common. The Puritans proclaimed a “commonwealth” which executed the Anglican king. The executed king’s son proceeded to supplant the “commonwealth,” but because his brother was suspected of being Catholic, Protestants expelled him in the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 that installed the Protestant monarch of the Netherlands and his wife as England’s king and queen. In the 17th century, religious believers of many stripes came to North America as refugees from Europe’s religious persecutions. Ironically, the most famous attempt to form a separate religious community—the Pilgrims’ relocation to Massachusetts—eventually led to the core American principle of religious liberty. The Founders’ Solution The founders were ever mindful of the religious oppression and persecution that had existed throughout history. They knew that religious zeal often leads to the assumption that specific beliefs should be “established” by governments, meaning certain religious doctrines should be enforced by law as the official religion of the state. Individuals who are not members of that religious body and do not accept its teachings often did not enjoy the same rights as a result. Discriminations against nonbelievers ranged from mild to the most awful, but the “establishment” of one religious body by government always divided the population into privileged and non-privileged classes, resulting in endless bitter struggles for religious dominance. At the same time, the founders recognized man’s natural yearning to pursue the truth about God and freely practice the teachings inspired by those religious beliefs. They knew that religious beliefs, good for the ultimate happiness of the individual, were also good for politics because they encouraged the virtues (such as justice, self-restraint, courage, and truthfulness) necessary for self-government. To violate the consciences of citizens by using force to change their religious beliefs was a gross injustice. Violations of conscience by government would not strengthen the attachment of citizens to their government but would only foster hypocrisy, hatred, and rebellion. The American founders did not claim to settle the ultimate questions of reason and revelation. But for the first time in history, the founders believed they saw a practicable and just alternative to religious persecution and conflict. Unlike previous forms of government, the Constitution they framed did not include the power to “establish” a national religion, and it specifically denied that anyone could be prevented from holding office by a “religious test.” They underlined this by expressly forbidding the federal government in the First Amendment from “establishing” any religion and, to make it even clearer, guaranteeing the free exercise of religion. Together, these provisions give religious liberty primacy among the natural rights secured by our Constitution. This follows from the principles of the Declaration, as the foremost way individuals fulfill their well-being—in exercising their natural right to “the pursuit of happiness”—is through the religious teachings and institutions they believe and hope will lead to their salvation. We often use the phrase “the separation of church and state” to refer to the founders’ practical settlement of these questions, but this phrase is usually misunderstood to mean a complete separation of religion and politics, which is a very different idea. When the founders denied government the power to establish a religion, they did not intend to expunge religion from political life but to make room for the religious beliefs and free expression of all citizens. The Common Ground of Reason and Revelation The founders emphasized where the moral teachings of religious faith and the ground of political liberty were in agreement. Just as they were confident that government has no theological expertise to decide the path to salvation, they were equally confident that a well-designed republican constitution is sanctioned by human nature and open to moral reasoning shared among human beings. General moral precepts can be understood by human reason, and faith echoes these precepts. In other words, when the Declaration of Independence opens by appealing to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” it means that there is a human morality accessible to both reason and revelation. This is the common moral ground of the American founding, where reason and revelation work together for civil and religious liberty. Consider this from the Reverend Samuel Cooper in 1780: We want not, indeed, a special revelation from heaven to teach us that men are born equal and free; that no man has a natural claim of dominion over his neighbors…. These are the plain dictates of that reason and common sense with which the common parent of men has informed the human bosom. It is, however, a satisfaction to observe such everlasting maxims of equity confirmed, and impressed upon the consciences of men, by the instructions, precepts, and examples given us in the sacred oracles; one internal mark of their divine original, and that they come from him “who hath made of one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth.” [Acts 17:26] In proclaiming the self-evident truths of the Declaration, the founders interwove reason and revelation into America’s creed. One such truth is that there are fixed laws higher than those enacted by governments. Reason and faith secure limits on the reach of man-made laws, thereby opening up the space for civil and religious liberty. Another is that, in the act of creation, however conceived, all came into existence as equals: the Creator gives no person or group a higher right to rule others without their agreement. Yet another is that all are gifted through their human nature with intrinsic rights which they cannot sign away, above all the great rights of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In all of these things, the founders limited the ends of government in order to open up the higher ends of man. The purpose of the founders’ ingenious division of church and state was neither to weaken the importance of faith nor to set up a secular state, but to open up the public space of society to a common American morality. Religious institutions, which were influential before the American Revolution, became powerful witnesses for the advancement of equality, freedom, opportunity, and human dignity. The American Revolution might not have taken place or succeeded without the moral ideas spread through the pulpits, sermons, and publications of Christian instructors. On the nation’s 150th Independence Day celebration, President Calvin Coolidge said that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were found in the text, the sermons and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit. Even before the eighteenth century, Quakers and the faithful of other denominations, drawing on the Bible and on philosophy, began a crusade to abolish race-based slavery in the colonies. Anti-slavery literature was largely faith-based and spread through the free states via churches. One of the most famous anti-slavery writers in history, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the devout daughter of a great American reformist clergyman and wife of a well-known theologian. Her worldwide best-seller, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, fired the moral indignation of millions that helped lay the ground for abolition. America’s greatest reform movements have been founded or promoted by religious leaders and laypersons reared in faithful home environments. Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton in the early nineteenth century set up orphanages and established free schools for poor girls. The tireless effort to end Jim Crow and extend civil and voting rights to African Americans and other minorities was driven by clergy and lay faithful of a multitude of denominations, including most prominently the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who used nonviolent tactics to advocate for equal rights. The Pro-Life Movement today is led by clergy and the faithful of virtually every denomination. Local religious leaders have been a key buttress supporting our communities. Neighborhood and parish churches, temples, and mosques still are the strongest organized centers of help for the local poor, jobless, homeless, and families down on their luck. For generations, neighbors have assisted neighbors through church networks, helping the needy avoid the dehumanization of prolonged dependency on government welfare. Today, countless men and women actively feed and care for the poor, house and speak for immigrants and the disadvantaged, minister to jailed and released criminals, and advocate powerfully for a better society and a more peaceful world, supported by the charitable funding of Americans of all faiths. Clergy of various denominations have sacrificed career goals and risked their lives in order to minister to men and women serving in the armed forces. The brave soldiers who protect America against foreign dangers depend on the corps of military chaplains who help cultivate the warriors’ courage, inner strength, and perseverance they need to succeed in their missions. Religious chaplains open every session of Congress, and clergy pray at presidential inaugurals, state funerals, and other official occasions. Conclusion The United States has journeyed far since its founding. While the founders certainly had disagreements about the nature of religion, they had little doubt that faith was essential to the new experiment in self-government and republican constitutionalism. They knew that citizens who practiced the faith under the protection of religious liberty would support the Constitution that embodies their rights. The shared morality of faithful citizens would sustain a republican culture that would foster stable family relationships and encourage important virtues like fortitude to defend the nation in war, self-restraint over physical appetites or lust for wealth, compassion toward neighbors and strangers in need, self-disciplined labor, intellectual integrity, independence from long-term reliance on private or public benefits, justice in all relationships, prudence in judging the common good, courage to defend their rights and liberties, and finally, piety towards the Creator whose favor determines the well-being of society. We have arrived at a point where the most influential part of our nation finds these old faith-based virtues dangerous, useless, or perhaps even laughable. At the same time, many Americans feel that we have veered off the path that has brought so many happiness and success, and fear a growing factionalism cannot be overcome merely by electing a different president or political party. How can America overcome this partisan divide? The answer to this rising concern must begin by frankly and humbly admitting that the common ground of equal natural rights on which our common morality is based is no longer visible to many Americans. We must refocus on the proposition that united this nation from the beginning: the proposition of the Declaration of Independence that there are “self-evident truths” which unite all Americans under a common creed. But it is almost impossible to hold to this creed—which describes what and who we are—without reference to the Creator as the ultimate source of human equality and natural rights. This is the deepest reason why the founders saw faith as the key to good character as well as good citizenship, and why we must remain “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The proposition of political equality is powerfully supported by biblical faith, which confirms that all human beings are equal in dignity and created in God’s image. Every form of religious faith is entitled to religious liberty, so long as all comprehend and sincerely assent to the fundamental principle that under “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” all human beings are equally endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As the first American president wrote in 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island:",0.03337003513290403 "The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Matt Peterson, James Poulos, Seth Barron, and Spencer Klavan devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host. President Deepfake | The Roundtable Ep. 61 Did you watch the Grammys? Us neither. Won’t stop our editors from talking about it, though we’re more interested in a viral clip of Joe Biden—is it deepfaked? It’s not, but it might as well be. Our editors unpack both topics. Plus: it’s a battle of the Governors as Gavin Newsom faces recall and Ron DeSantis pops red pill after red pill.",1.4057175507778352 "A response to C. Bradley Thompson. C. Bradley Thompson, Clemson University’s BB&T-funded “libertarian in denial,” has once again come out swinging in these digital pages (and has since come out far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far more in these digital pages’ related Substack). Thompson, a scholar at a major research institution who claims to have studiously considered, and have earnestly concluded, that America’s Founding was not in any way rooted in “authority, order, stability, community, social cohesion, continuity, solidarity, sacrifice, duty, law, orthodoxy, virtue, goodness, and God,” has most recently directed his liberalized ire at my friend Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School professor and provocative public intellectual. In his recent response to Vermeule’s widely read March 2020 jurisprudential salvo, “Beyond Originalism,” Thompson excoriates both Vermeule himself and the broader concepts of a legal and political regime oriented toward the common good. Vermeule is fully capable of defending himself against Thompson’s colorful denunciation of him as a “dyspeptic enfant terrible.” Moreover, I have a difference of opinion with Vermeule as to the precise contours of the proper path forward for a genuinely conservative constitutional jurisprudence, as he and I have begun to hash out (and much more to come on that front). But I object—as two other friends, Sohrab Ahmari and David Azerrad, have similarly done—to Thompson’s cartoonish, Ayn Rand-ian view of the American Founding. Thompson, impressive bona fides notwithstanding, misunderstands the nature of republican self-governance in the classical tradition—and he misunderstands the nature of our specific constitutional order. Most germanely, he misunderstands the conceptual intersection thereof: namely, the overarching nature of a legal and political regime oriented toward the common good. In truth, Thompson has needlessly frenzied himself over a rather anodyne and unthreatening phraseology. Indeed, if nothing else, I hope to aid my individual autonomy-fetishizing professorial interlocutor to sleep just a bit better at night. Our libertarian friends tend to fret over the notion that government might have any positive, assertive role beyond an obsessive fixation with securing negative liberty at any and all costs. For those of this ilk, the idea that our actual political inheritance might entail “wielding ‘regime-level’ power in the service of good political order,” let alone “wielding the levers of state power…to reward friends and punish enemies (within the confines of the rule of law),” is anathema. This is not exactly a new debate, of course. But it has unfolded prolifically these past couple of years on the Right on issues as wide-ranging as “drag queen reading hour,” pornography regulation, and Big Tech corporate malfeasance (and everything in between). It will not end any time soon. Thompson’s Map of Misreadings Thompson’s view of the American Founding is predicated on elevating the Declaration of Independence—and interpreting it as dogmatic Lockean language about how “Governments are instituted among Men” to “secure” “certain unalienable Rights”—in such a way as to crowd out almost all other interpretations and sources. Now, I agree with Justice Clarence Thomas—contra his late longtime senior colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia—that the Declaration has a real and meaningful role to play in constitutional interpretation. I was even born on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and, as the Claremont Institute and its late founder, Harry Jaffa, have collectively dedicated more ink to explaining than anyone in modern American political life, it was Lincoln for whom the Declaration was the “apple of gold” around which the Constitution was but a “picture of silver”—and for whom the Declaration serves as an “electric cord” that “links…patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” In short: no Declaration skeptic, I. But the story is quite a bit more complicated than what Thompson depicts. “Electric cord” status notwithstanding, one cannot escape the rudimentary fact that the Constitution of 1787 was written under circumstances tangibly different than those surrounding the drafting of the Declaration in 1776. For one, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s penman, was missing in action in 1787—ever the Francophile, he was gallivanting in pre-Revolutionary France—a perhaps-serendipitous absence that the late Gertrude Himmelfarb apparently once described as “the clearest sign of Providence intervening in American history.” Accordingly, James Madison, Jefferson’s once and future protégé, fell under the interstitial influence of the men who came to be the Federalist Party, led by Anglophilic, common good-oriented statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton. In fact, those who would ultimately emerge as Federalists dominated the 1787 Constitutional Convention, something which we clearly see in the common good-centric language of the Constitution’s Preamble, drafted by the Convention’s Committee in Style, headed by the common good/nationalist-oriented Gouverneur Morris. The Preamble is the closest we might come to an express enunciation of the charter’s intent and purpose: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. The careful reader will note that this language does not entail individual liberty as an end unto itself at all. Rather, the closest we come is the enumerated purpose of “secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty,” wherein “Liberty” is an instrumental means toward the narrower end of “Blessings.” As Harry Jaffa once said: …reflection teaches us that the possession of health, wealth, and freedom are not the ultimate measure of human well-being. We know that there have been human beings who, being in the full possession of health, wealth, and freedom, have yet committed suicide. Health, wealth, and freedom must be combined with something else before they become ingredients of the human good, before they become blessings, properly so called. The idea of liberty—or the liberty which is a blessing—being an emancipation of the passions from moral restraint had no place in the constitutional doctrine of the novus ordo seclorum. The liberty which is a blessing must be good for the one who possesses it. It must therefore be a good in the sight of God, who is the source of blessings. Such a good must point to felicity, whether in this world or the next, as its consummation. By calling the advantages of liberty “blessings,” the Constitution, which in certain respects makes perhaps the most radical break in all human history with all that has gone before it, nonetheless, in its understanding of the connection between happiness and virtue, aligns itself decisively with traditional moral philosophy and moral theology. Sign-up for the newsletter to receive new features, podcasts, and more. Sign-up As I have argued numerous times here, the Preamble, like the Declaration itself, ought to imbue the words of the Constitution with meaning and thereby help guide its interpretation. Thompson does something closely approximating the precise opposite; he not only tendentiously downplays the extent to which references to the “public good” abound in Madison’s Federalist #10, as Tony Woodlief explains, but he also seems to outright ignore Madison’s framing, in Federalist #57, of the “aim of every political constitution” as being “first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society.” And that’s Madison, who, if he did not attain Jeffersonian levels of unyielding devotion to rationalist abstraction, was at least certainly more individual liberty-maximizing than those who would become Federalist Party leaders. Indeed, one must presume Thompson would outright blench at the balancing act between prudence and dogma evinced by Hamilton’s 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures. Thompson may claim with a straight face that American society was simply conceived as an “aggregation of individuals with rights,” but this is belied by historical reality. George Washington himself, for instance, cautioned in 1783 that “arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to licentiousness.” Founding Father Edmund Randolph similarly warned that “licentiousness has…contributed as much (if not more) as any other cause whatsoever, to the loss of…liberties.” The common law of defamation, at least up until the erroneously decided 1964 Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, was quite robust: blasphemy and obscenity were, until then, often jailable offenses. It is borderline dishonest to view the American Founding as a pure exercise in classical liberal doctrine—as an unblemished exercise of rationalist abstraction in unipolar governmental form. That is simply not true. Hostility to Religion It is also not unreasonable to suspect whether there might be some deeply personal, distasteful motives at work here. One cannot help but wonder, after reading Thompson’s recent Substack essay series, whether Thompson has a peculiar, dark obsession with the Catholic Church, specifically. In his fifth essay, he lets this overtly anti-Catholic cat out of the bag: “I will not…under any circumstances, permit individuals whose own moral lives are organized around an institution defined by systemic pedophilia to lecture me on the need for personal or public morality. Such people have no moral authority from which to lecture anyone on the higher or common good.” That is, in a word, grotesque. Similarly, in his second essay, Thompson advances the deceitful claim that America has a “de jure…practice of separation of church and State.” This is a manifestly ahistorical distortion of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as Philip Hamburger has persuasively demonstrated, and no well-read individual possessing a modicum of familiarity with America’s Founding ought to bestow it legitimacy. But to speak of a “separation of church and state” is not merely to dabble in rank ahistorical dishonesty—it is also to employ a term, whether wittingly or unwittingly, with a uniquely anti-Catholic linguistic provenance. Query what Thompson makes, then, of this specific critique coming from a very publicly Jewish essayist (yours truly). For that matter, query what Thompson might make of the fact that numerous highly prominent religious Jews are quite comfortable speaking in the rhetorical language of the common good. Fear of the Common Good This, then, takes us back to Thompson’s histrionic distress that Vermeule had the temerity to couch his criticism of foundering Originalism, Inc. in the phraseology of the common good. Setting aside Thompson’s ahistorical misunderstanding of the American Founding, he also badly misunderstands and dramatically embellishes the purported dangers of a political and legal regime oriented not toward the maximalization of individual liberty, but toward the common good of its citizenry. Thompson is unduly fearful of the prospect that common-good governing might be employed as a fig leaf for majoritarianism run amok, and the tyranny of might over right. To be sure, majoritarian trampling of one group over another is a reasonable fear, in the abstract—it cuts to the core of Lincoln’s objections to Stephen Douglas’s morally denuded, proceduralist pleas for “popular sovereignty” in the Western territories, and it tugs at the heartstrings of earnest pro-lifers everywhere we can be found. But this, let alone melodramatic lamentations about “dog-eat-dog competition[s] for power,” makes a farcical straw man out of common good-oriented conservatism. Rather, what we common good-oriented conservatives believe is very simple. We believe that individual liberty, let alone licentiousness or hedonism, is not the be-all/end-all of why governments are instituted among men. We believe that although individual liberty—especially religious liberty—might be an intrinsic end to a limited extent, it is more comfortably conceptualized as a means toward realizing the classical aims of politics qua politics: societal justice, human flourishing, and the common good of nation-state, communities, private institutions, and families alike. We believe, as Aristotle put it in his Politics, that “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only.” Elected statesmen and constitutional interpreters who take a common good-centric approach, therefore, prioritize the institutional and communitarian health that, contra the individual autonomy fetishists and laissez-faire fundamentalists, alone can lead to true human flourishing. This is all that is meant. It does not mean that individual rights or freedom are unimportant, or ought to be wholly negated. Far from it. It is simply a different, non-dogmatic analytical prism—far more communitarian, far less individualistic—through which to view the roles, duties, and normative preferences of our public decisionmakers and legal expositors. It just so happens, as Chief Justice John Marshall showed us in the epochal 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland, that this is also our true inheritance—our true political economy, our true legal regime, and our true constitutional order. There is nothing scary about this way of viewing the world, this way of viewing the rights of citizenry, and this way of viewing the duties incumbent upon the sundry constitutional actors in our system of governance. Thompson’s palpable fears about this anodyne, non-controversial set of political principles evinces either an extraordinarily doctrinaire, rigid form of libertarianism or a genuine ignorance as to the beliefs held by the majority of conservative-leaning thought leaders over the past few centuries who prioritize health of nation, family, home, and hearth over the maximalization at all costs of individual liberty. Thompson can try his hardest to depict the American Founding as a libertarian revolution, but there is simply no plausible reading of men such as Tocqueville that would indicate the Founding-era creed as anything other than religious, family-centric, common good communitarianism. Ours, then, is a much more traditional way of viewing the relationship between man and republican self-governance. Indeed, it is possible that there has never been a truly serious political thinker who has gone quite as far as Thompson has gone in making the claim that unvarnished maximalization of individual liberty is the singular end of a just and proper politics (and be it noted, Ayn Rand does not count as a truly serious political thinker). Thompson is venturing into relatively unexplored terrain. To the extent he merely wishes to elevate the role played by the Declaration of Independence in our public political life, I genuinely wish him all the best. We would all do well to emulate Lincoln in that noble respect. But to the extent Thompson would condemn those of us who support any role for public officials whatsoever beyond merely the incremental expansion of negative liberty as inconsistent with either good political order or the principles of the American Founding, I would encourage him perhaps to write another book.",-0.4287542843572511 "Last week, four Republican congressmen sent a missive to U.S. Attorney General William Barr. This one-page letter beseeched Barr to actually enforce extant obscenity law as it applies to legally relevant hardcore pornography. It would be prudent for Barr to “declare the prosecution of obscene pornography a criminal justice priority,” the congressmen argued. Accordingly, Barr ought to urge federal prosecutors to “bring prosecutions against the major producers and distributors of such material.” My colleague at The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh, wrote a column arguing for regulating or banning pornography. “At some point conservatives decided that government should not be used to advance the common good,” my coworker tweeted. “And at that point conservatism became limp, shallow, and ineffectual.” For these grievous sins of calling for government to play a greater role in regulating a noxious industry complicit in human trafficking, retarding children’s sexual development, and destroying marriages, the libertarian mafia on Twitter went haywire. “If you don’t like porn, don’t watch it,” tweeted high school activist CJ Pearson. “Social conservatives need to realize that we can handle pornography and other social ills without turning America into a Christian version of Saudi Arabia,” warned Casey Given. “We must never let lazy moralizing force us to surrender our freedom to the government.” Only libertarians understand “how the Founders wanted our government to run,” the Libertarian party’s official Twitter account hectored yours truly. What utter tripe. Once upon a time, opposition to the spread of pornography was a unifying political principle for self-described conservatives. Alas, it seems that in our increasingly liberalized conservative movement, such opposition is no longer unifying. For those who erroneously conflate liberty with libertinism, it is easy to focus on the Preamble’s avowed dedication to “secure the Blessings of Liberty” to the exclusion of its equally clear vows to “establish Justice” and “promote the general Welfare.” The result is that many on the so-called “right” now issue apologia for an industry whose lofty denizens were recently charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California with “forc[ing women] to perform certain sexual acts they had declined to do, or they would not be paid or allowed to leave.” It is embarrassing just how far, in 2019, are the depths to which some wings of the conservative movement have plunged. Knee-jerk classical liberal urging to merely “[l]et parents do their job” is sophomoric in the context of our pornography public health crisis. Rote sloganeering about rebuilding the culture from the ground up is an inadequate remedy for a systemic national emergency. The sheer ubiquity of and ease of access to pornography renders hollow meager pleas for civil society-centric solutions. Libertarians and classical liberals fail to recognize that using political power in the pursuit of national solidarity and wholesomeness can be both just and necessary. But more important, the online backlash to conservative calls for greater pornography regulation underscores the stark differences dividing solidarity-centric conservatives from our libertarian-minded brethren. At its core, libertarianism misunderstands the human condition. It is inimical to Aristotelian human flourishing. And it ultimately bastardizes the very thing it seeks to prioritize: Liberty, properly understood. Libertarianism has no answer for the pressing needs of the human soul—to belong, to parent, to worship, and to thrive. Its liberationist agenda has no political use for communitarian niceties. It cares not for John Adams’s warning that our Constitution and the political order it ordained was only designed for a religious and moral people. It cares not for Aristotle’s wisdom that “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only.” It pays little heed to the axiom that human beings are inherently tribal in nature, that we seek to form tribes with those similar to us, and that solidarity is necessary for a nation-state’s endurance. It has no answers to our metastasizing crises of moral decay and debilitating mass despondency. We know that libertarianism is uninterested in prioritizing the political pursuit of justice, the common weal, or human flourishing. But even when we judge them on their own terms, modern libertarians fail. The American founders were careful to distinguish between true liberty, which entailed the dutiful worship of the Creator in accordance with the moral guardrails of one’s Judeo-Christian conscience, and licentiousness. As Edmund Randolph once said, “licentiousness has . . . contributed as much (if not more) as any other cause whatsoever, to the loss of their liberties.” Unregulated pornography promotes licentiousness—not liberty. Yet today’s self-proclaimed liberty-minded “conservative” vanguard defends licentiousness by invoking the mantle of freedom. Such legerdemain would be merely dystopian were it not so societally ruinous. America will recover a sense of national solidarity and purpose, or else it will risk withering and dying. America will recover a sense of virtue-infused communitarianism, or else it will risk withering and dying. America will recover a sense of orienting our political order toward true justice, or else it will risk withering and dying. Just don’t ask the libertarians to help us along the way. They would rather criticize four congressmen for requesting enforcement of obscenity laws against hardcore pornographers. Josh Hammer is editor-at-large of The Daily Wire and of counsel at First Liberty Institute.",-1.4659414325032534 "Roger Scruton, writing in the Wall Street Journal last December, declared that ""September 11 was a wake up call through which liberals have managed to go on dreaming. American conservatives ought to seize the opportunity to utter those difficult truths which have been censored out of recent debate: truths about national loyalty, about common culture, and about the duties of citizenship."" In the more than 200 years of our history, the most difficult of all truths, and the one most often and most profoundly subject to censure or misinterpretation, is that beginning, ""We hold these truths to be self-evident…."" In 1860-61, 11 states justified ""secession"" from the Union, and forming a separate government, on the ground that they were exercising the right, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, to withdraw their consent to be governed. Yet the secessionists denied categorically the assertion of the universal equality of human rights in the same Declaration of Independence, which was the moral and logically necessary ground of consent. The doctrine of states' rights—central to much of American conservatism in the 20th century—has from the beginning divorced political right from the equal natural rights of individual human beings, under ""the laws of nature and of nature's God."" This was the principal ground of difference in the struggles against Jim Crow and for civil rights. Today, in the controversy over ""affirmative action"" in its many guises and embodiments we find the former leaders in the movement for civil rights—amazingly and paradoxically—demanding rewards and privileges, not as individuals but on the basis of their collective racial or ethnic identities. And we find conservatives (or at least some of them) on the other side—no less paradoxically—opposing affirmative action as contrary to the individual rights proclaimed in the Declaration! Clearly, precision concerning the real meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and its bearing on the institutions of government (especially the Constitution), is the most urgent order of business for us. For perspective on our present situation, consider another Wall Street Journal editorial page essay, published in 1976 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Independence. It is entitled ""The Meaning of the Declaration,"" and its author is George Carey, professor of government at Georgetown University and co-author, with the late Willmoore Kendall, of Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition. The most notable feature of Basic Symbols was the contention that Lincoln at Gettysburg had ""derailed"" the American political tradition by assigning to the proposition ""that all men are created equal,"" a meaning and importance that it did not have in 1776, or at any time in the ""four score and seven years"" thereafter. The most notable feature of Carey's bicentennial commentary in the Journal was his attempt to say what was the original historical meaning of the Declaration, the meaning it possessed before Lincoln's intervention. The ""most likely meaning"" of ""all men are created equal,"" Carey argued, ""is simply that all men or people who have identified themselves as one—as being a society of kindred souls, common values, and aspirations—are equal to all other peoples who have likewise identified themselves."" Hence the Declaration was not one of individual rights, among them the rights to life and liberty, rights with which every human soul was equally endowed by his Creator. It was instead one of ""community independence,"" with the status of individual rights within any community depending entirely upon the positive law of that community. Here is the origin of states' rights, as it came to be known in the defense, first of slavery, and then of segregation. But this interpretation did not originate with Carey or Kendall. It is to be found in the antebellum speeches of Jefferson Davis. It is unlikely that the editors of the Wall Street Journal knew anything of the historical provenance of Carey's rendition of the meaning of the Declaration. They probably relied upon the fact that he was a respected professor at a leading university who respresented ""objective"" scholarship. Little did they know how partisan such scholarship could be, and how much of it was the Civil War continued by other means. Little did they know how victorious in this latter-day war had been the cause of John C. Calhoun and of Jefferson Davis, and how little success had attended the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Consider now the unhappy fate of Senator Trent Lott, who saluted Senator Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday by saying that the country would have been better served by his election as president in 1948, than by the election of Harry Truman. Senator Thurmond in that year was the Dixiecrat candidate, representing the rebellion of the Jim Crow South against the first stirrings of the civil rights movement, in which President Truman had taken the lead, by desegregating the armed services. Senator Lott has, we might say, eaten crow for these remarks, and apologized profusely for having made them—but his apologies were not sufficient to save his position as majority leader of the Senate. In 1984, Senator Lott, in a speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi. declared that ""[t]he spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the Republican platform."" The spirit of Jefferson Davis alive in the platform of the party of Lincoln? Senator Lott is a run-of-the-mill politician, who runs easily at the mouth, and says what he thinks his immediate audience wants to hear, forgetting that there are other audiences overhearing him. He is also a symptom of an intellectual environment alienated from the principles of the Declaration of Independence. His contrition was less a dictate of conscience than of circumstance. He apologized because he was told he had to apologize: he never seemed to realizewhy what he had said was wrong. How the founding principles of this nation have been ""censored out of recent debate"" may be better understood from the argument in recent years between liberals and conservatives on how the Constitution is to be interpreted. Liberals, by and large, do not respect the original Constitution, in part because of the guarantees of slavery therein, but more profoundly because of their belief in Progress. In their view, the original Constitution reflects the defective moral consciousness of an earlier age, and should today be understood in the light of the higher stage to which moral understanding has now evolved. The conservatives, on the other hand, believe that the sovereignty—or ultimate authority—of the American people is embodied in their Constitution, and in the laws made pursuant thereof. Not only judges but all branches of government ought to interpret the Constitution in the light of the original intent of those who framed and ratified it. Until the people, in the exercise of their sovereignty, change the Constitution, the private consciences of judges or other office holders—or individual citizens—have no standing. The liberals call their progressive, evolving Constitution, a ""living Constitution."" The conservative argument against it is to be found, most concisely and famously, in Chief Justice Rehnquist's classic essay on ""The Notion of a Living Constitution."" Those who would read their own, allegedly advanced opinions, into law, he says, ignore…the nature of political value judgments in a democratic society. If such a society adopts a constitution and incorporates in that constitution safeguards for individual liberty, these safeguards do indeed take on a generalized moral rightness or goodness. They assume a general social acceptance neither because of any intrinsic worth nor because of any unique origins in someone's idea of natural justice but instead simply because they have been incorporated in a constitution by a people. Rehnquist accepts, without reflection or doubt, the idea that moral judgments—including the moral judgments upon which constitutional government rests—are ""value judgments."" This idea had its origin in Nietzsche, and became commonplace in American social science through the influence of Max Weber. It holds that there are no rational means by which any moral judgment, no matter how conscientious, can be proved to be superior to any other. It means that all moral judgments are arbitrary, and that there is no inherent reason for choosing the American constitution over a Nazi, Communist, Ku Klux Klan, or cannibal constitution. This understanding of moral and legal phenomena did not exist in the American mind at the time of the founding. It is as much a ""progressive"" belief as anything in the liberals' ""living constitution."" The non-rational character of Rehnquist's position is reflected in the assertion that the safeguards for individual liberty do not possess ""any intrinsic worth."" Such worth implies rational discrimination, or knowing truth from falsehood, right from wrong, good from bad. From Rehnquist's perspective, neither individual liberty, nor individual life, possesses intrinsic worth, at least so far as human reason can tell. This is light-years removed from ""We hold these truths to be self-evident…,"" and from the Declaration of Independence's denunciation of the evils of tyranny and despotism. It is light-years removed from the rights with which we have been endowed by our Creator, and from the Constitution designed to secure these rights. The original Constitution together with the first 10 amendments has many ""safeguards for individual liberty."" But it also has safeguards for slavery, most conspicuously in the fugitive slave clause. The safeguards for liberty and the safeguards for slavery were incorporated into the same Constitution by the same people. To Lincoln, the safeguards for slavery were compromises with evil, necessary to secure the ratification of the Constitution. As such they were lesser evils than any possible alternative. On Rehnquist's premises, the safeguards for slavery took on the identical moral rightness or goodness as the safeguards for liberty. That the safeguards for slavery possessed the same moral standing as any other provisions of the Constitution, was the contention of the seceding states in 1860 and 1861. That slavery was denounced as immoral by Lincoln and the Republican Party was, they held, a denial of the moral understanding that formed the Constitution. Rehnquist's premises underlie, perhaps to his chagrin but apparently not Trent Lott's, Jefferson Davis's justification of secession and disunion. Here is the darkest of the difficult truths that have been censored out of recent debate. Examples of such unrepublican, not to mention un-Republican, sentiments coming from conservative heroes could be multiplied. For instance, addressing the Gregorian Institute in Rome in 1996, Justice Antonin Scalia commented: It seems to me incompatible with democratic theory that it is good and right for the state to do something that the majority of the people do not want done. Once you adopt democratic theory, it seems to me, you accept that proposition. If the people do not want it, the state should be able to prohibit it. And again: The whole theory of democracy…is that the majority rules; that is the whole theory of it. You protect minorities only because the majority determines that there are certain minority positions that deserve protection. And again: You either agree with democratic theory or you do not. But you cannot have democratic theory and then say, but what about the minority? The minority loses, except to the extent that the majority, in its document of government, has agreed to accord the minority rights. Saddam Hussein recently held an election in which he received over 99% of the vote. Does that make him democratically elected? Does that make his regime any less tyrannical? Strictly speaking, what we call minority rights are not rights of the minority as such. They are rights of individuals, possessed equally by all. It is to secure these rights—the rights of man under the laws of nature and of nature's God—that governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Government, and majority rule, extend only to these ""just powers."" Adoption by a majority does not make an unjust power just, e.g., the taking of private property without just compensation, the extension of slavery, the waging of aggressive war. Majority rule, in itself, is not a justification of anything. It may be called democratic only within a process in which there is free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, of the press, and of association. The ends served by majority rule are not decided by majority rule. Scalia says that it is up to the majority to decide whether or not abortion should be lawful. One could substitute the word ""slavery"" for ""abortion"" to see that there is no difference between Scalia's majoritarianism and the ""popular sovereignty"" doctrine of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, in his debates with Abraham Lincoln in 1858. But Lincoln thought that slavery was wrong, and that it was condemned by the principle of human equality. He did not think that a vote of the people could make it right. These three examples display the alarming intellectual weakness, forgetfulness, and even unfaithfulness that underlie American conservatism's political success. The examples show clearly that modern conservatism suffers from the same nihilism and postmodernism that dominate liberalism and that suppress dissent on our campuses. If conservatism is not to become a mirror-image of decadent liberalism, we have to return the movement to its roots in the political thought and actions of the American Founders and Abraham Lincoln. Nothing is at stake but the soul of the American Revolution, and the salvation of Western civilization.",-0.34187978639613303 "As a jurisprudential theory becomes dominant, it tends to fracture. One reason is that academics are naturally both fractious and enterprising. They gain justified renown by recognizing subtle frailties as well as important difficulties in a major theory and by trying to improve both its content and articulation. Because there is so much at stake in these matters practically, litigants and politicians also try to reorient the theory to serve their own interests. So it has been with originalism. Originalism began in opposition to the free form jurisprudence of the Warren Court and largely defined itself as a theory of judicial restraint with that restraint being the anchor of original intent of the Framers and subsequently the original meaning of the Constitution’s text. But with the disappearance of its original opponent, originalism had to offer a positive defense and definition of itself. Currently originalists address fundamental questions about originalism, such as normative ones like why one ought to be an originalist, and positive ones like how to find the original meaning. Three issues currently being debated represent fundamental fault lines in contemporary originalism, the resolution of which may shape the future of constitutional jurisprudence. Size of the Construction Zone The so-called New Originalists introduced the distinction between interpretation and construction as a way to parry academic critics of originalism. Interpretation is the process of discovering the meaning of the Constitution. Construction is the process of giving the Constitution legal effect. Critics had argued that much of the meaning of the Constitution was vague or ambiguous. An indeterminate Constitution cannot constrain legal decision making. But the New Originalists contended that this criticism did not apply to the parts of the Constitution that had a clear meaning. These provisions were subject to determinate interpretation and thus the enterprise of originalism was both coherent and useful when interpretation was possible. Originalist interpretation did not rely on normative judgments about a provision, but rather about empirical facts concerning language. On the other hand, the New Originalists conceded that there was a “construction zone” where the Constitution was vague or ambiguous and the meaning ran out. There different normative theories may be needed to fill it in. The size of this construction zone is crucial to the salience and future of originalism. If the constitution’s meaning is thin with only a few relatively determinate provisions, like that authorizing two senators from each state, originalism will not figure much in actual decisions. The action will instead take place in the construction zone instead and, depending one’s normative views, forms of living constitutionalism will be candidates to fill it. But if the Constitution’s meaning is thick, as Michael Rappaport and I have suggested, and the construction zone is of more limited size, originalism will offer a more comprehensive theory of constitutional decision making. And these are but the polarities of the possible views. Some theorists, like Larry Solum and Randy Barnett, seem to hold intermediate positions on the size of the construction zone. The resolution of the size of the construction zone will turn on three matters, two theoretical and one practical. Theoretically, the first question is what degree of uncertainty moves a question from interpretation to construction. The second and related question is whether methods exist to resolve interpretation of many provisions that are thought ambiguous or vague. Rappaport and I have suggested that the language of the law does have such methods through its use of thick legal terms and through the surrounding legal context of interpretive rules. But reducing the size of the construction zone is ultimately a practical issue, the proof of which lies in the pudding that interpreters make. Will the growing number of originalist experts in the various provisions of the Constitution be able to use their knowledge to reduce the size of the construction zone? The answers so far look promising. For, instance, Nathan Chapman and Michael McConnell interpret the often thought to be vague term “due process” in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments as placing into the Constitution certain common law understandings. As a result, they provide a much more determinate meaning to the phrase by showing it is limited to preventing the legislature from exercising judicial power or violating common law procedural protections. Judicial Restraint v. Judicial Engagement The most contentious fault line among originalists is that between those advocating judicial restraint and those advocating judicial engagement. The judicial restraint camp argues that judiciary should defer to any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution by the political branches. It hearkens back to the beginnings of modern originalism as a restraint on the power of the judiciary. The judicial engagement camp argues against any deference to the judgments of the political branches. It emphasizes constitutional constraint—that the meaning of the Constitution is a constraint on all the branches and the judiciary has the last word in enforcing that meaning in cases and controversies. Some advocates of engagement bolster the case for judicial engagement on an empirical claim about the Constitution—that it reflects a presumption of liberty. As with the issue of the construction, there are positions in the middle like my own put forward in “The Duty of Clarity.” There I have suggested that the original meaning of judicial power requires that judges follow what I call a duty of clarity: the Constitution contemplates that the judiciary ought to exercise the power of judicial review only if the legislation at issue proved to be in manifest contradiction of a constitutional provision. But judges were also expected to use the ample legal methods of clarification available to pin down the Constitution’s precise meaning, thus narrowing the range of what lay legislators might believe reasonable. This issue is not unconnected to the size of the construction zone. Insofar as a question is in the construction zone, it is more difficult to discern a mandate in the judiciary to invalidate legislation so long as it predicated on an interpretation within that zone. But insofar as the question is one of interpretation, the judiciary has the duty to invalidate legislation contrary to the meaning of the Constitution. How to Approach Precedent The final fault line for originalism is precedent. The Supreme Court reporters contains thousands of decisions on the Constitution, some of them no doubt contrary to the original meaning. Should they be overruled? This issue is likely the most important pressing issue for modern originalism and originalists are sorely divided on it. Some like Gary Lawson believe that the Constitution does not permit following precedent at the expense of the originalist meaning. His view is that the Supremacy Clause only refers to the Constitution, not Supreme Court cases and thus the Constitution must always trump erroneous precedent. I doubt this position as an interpretative matter for reasons discussed here, but whatever its merits as a theory, it is wildly impractical because the Supreme Court is not going to overrule every case that did not reflect the best original interpretation of the Constitution. Some originalists like Randy Barnett have suggested that precedent might be respected in the construction zone, but otherwise overruled. I am not sure this is much more practical suggestion than Lawson’s. There are still a lot of cases that plausibly wrong as matter of original meaning, not construction, like the Legal Tender Cases, that the Court will never overrule. The real action here will come in trying to construct rules of precedent that mediate between the value of following the original meaning and the value of constitutional settlement. That question in turn may make the question of why one ought to be an originalist relevant. For instance, if one is originalist because originalism generally produces clear rules (not my view), the clarity of the line of precedent may be very salient. Mike and I have tried to begin to generate originalist rules for precedent based on our welfare-enhancing view of originalism. In my view, the debate over precedent is likely to become the most vibrant field of originalist theory in the next half decade.",0.16663423756760506 "The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Matt Peterson, James Poulos, David Bahr, and Spencer Klavan devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host. The War on Wall Street | The Roundtable Ep. 54 Those crazy kids actually did it: A group of redditors under the banner of r/WallStreetBets are singlehandedly taking the populist fight to Wall Street billionaires—and they’re winning. For now. Of course, elites of every stripe are spitting mad. Our editors discuss this strange and hilarious new movement. Plus: what is in Trump’s political future—and by extension, the GOP’s?",0.6515567636660821