Where Does Your State Rank in Education Freedom?

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Florida ranks highest among the states in education freedom, while the District of Columbia trails behind all of them, according to a new “report card” from The Heritage Foundation.

The leading think tank’s 2022 Education Freedom Report Card, released Thursday, measures all 50 states and the District based on four broad categories: school choice, transparency, regulatory freedom, and spending. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Rounding out the top five states after Florida in overall education freedom are Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, and South Dakota.

The bottom five states, coming in just before the District in descending order, are Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.

The authors write:

This report card sets a high bar for achieving and maintaining education freedom in the states. Our goal is that this annual ranking of states will not only inform parents and policymakers of what their states do well and where they need improvement, but that it will spur necessary and lasting reform.

The first of what will be a series of annual report cards from Heritage further divides categories into discrete factors that together determine the level of education freedom in each state.

Arizona ranks first in school choice as well as second in overall education freedom in Heritage’s analysis.

In July, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed into law a bill extending education savings accounts to all K-12 students. Eligible students may use these accounts to pay for almost any schooling option—including private and charter school tuition as well as homeschooling expenses.

Florida and Indiana are among 13 states that also expanded existing school choice programs. Other states passed new school choice policies.

A Real Clear Opinion poll found in June that 71% of Americans surveyed, an all-time high, said they support school choice.

But simply giving parents the freedom to choose their child’s private school isn’t enough, the authors of Heritage’s report write:

Although education choice is critical for the future of education freedom in this country—and some would argue that it is the reform that catalyzes all other necessary reforms in K–12 education today—it is one of many factors we assess in this report card.

As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, a contributor to the Education Freedom Report Card, previously has written:

When COVID-era remote learning began in 2020, parents gained an unprecedented view inside their students’ classrooms and their counties’ school board meetings. What they saw—fraudulent, woke propaganda disguised as curricula; union-driven closures; punitive mask and vaccine mandates; and the Democratic Party’s crackdown on objections to any of the above—has changed the moral and political foundations on which our education system rests.

With Americans’ trust in the public school system dropping by over a third in the past two years, according to Gallup Poll tracking, academic transparency is another growing priority.

New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Massachusetts are among states that Heritage’s report card ranks low in transparency as well as in overall education freedom. These states, it says, have failed to bar or limit the teaching of critical race theory to K-12 students.

Florida ranks first for academic transparency, followed by Montana and South Dakota.

In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed into law a requirement that school districts share course materials and library books with parents.

“In Florida, our parents have every right to be involved in their child’s education. We are not going to let politicians deny parents the right to know what is being taught in our schools. I’m proud to sign this legislation that ensures curriculum transparency,” DeSantis said during a signing ceremony in March.

A month later, DeSantis signed another bill into law that bars Florida’s K-12 schools from teaching critical race theory, which views all interactions through the lens of race.

Florida ranks second for regulatory freedom, following Mississippi with its perfect score because of low barriers to teaching, no chief diversity officers in school districts, and no testing based on Common Core education standards.

Jay Greene, senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, has argued that chief diversity officers “may be best understood as political activists who articulate and enforce an ideological orthodoxy within school districts.”

Greene writes:

In recent decades, the role of parents in determining the education of children has increasingly been displaced by a professional class of experts. The fact that these experts have pushed schools through a revolving door of failed educational fads, from whole language reading instruction to open classrooms to Common Core, has done nothing to diminish their confidence. This time they have it right, we’re told, so parents just need to get on board and hand their students over.

Return on taxpayer investment in K-12 education also contributes to a state’s overall education freedom ranking on the report card.

The District of Columbia ranks among the lowest for return on investment. The nation’s capital spends more per pupil than any state, yet takes 48th place in students’ average reading scores.

Idaho ranks first place in return on investment, spending almost the least per student to get the greatest academic returns.

Below is a list of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, ranked highest to lowest for overall education freedom, according to Heritage’s report card:

  1. Florida
  2. Arizona
  3. Idaho
  4. Indiana
  5. South Dakota
  6. Mississippi
  7. West Virginia
  8. Montana
  9. Louisiana
  10. Tennessee
  11. Utah
  12. Texas
  13. Arkansas
  14. Georgia
  15. North Carolina
  16. Alabama
  17. Missouri
  18. Oklahoma
  19. New Hampshire
  20. Virginia
  21. Wyoming
  22. Iowa
  23. South Carolina
  24. Vermont
  25. Nevada
  26. Maine
  27. Michigan
  28. Nebraska
  29. California
  30. Kentucky
  31. Delaware
  32. Wisconsin
  33. Colorado
  34. Ohio
  35. North Dakota
  36. Kansas
  37. Pennsylvania
  38. New Mexico
  39. Minnesota
  40. Oregon
  41. Hawaii
  42. Illinois
  43. Washington
  44. Rhode Island
  45. Alaska
  46. Connecticut
  47. Massachusetts
  48. Maryland
  49. New Jersey
  50. New York
  51. District of Columbia

AUTHOR

Gillian Richards

Gillian Richards is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal. Twitter: @gn_richards

RELATED ARTICLE: Back To School: If You Can’t Change Your School, Do These 5 Things Instead

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Voting Booms in 5 States That Passed Election Reforms

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A left-leaning New York think tank sounded a familiar warning about Arizona’s “voter suppression bills” being “dangerously close to becoming law.”

The Brennan Center for Justice added in a press release that Arizona was “taking center stage in the relent­less effort to rein in voter parti­cip­a­tion in the name of ‘elec­tion secur­ity.’” Pending bills, the think tank claimed, were “aimed at making voting by mail harder.”

That was in April 2021, before Arizona passed several reform measures that state legislators said they crafted to ensure secure and honest elections.

Little more than a year later, in August 2022, Arizona notched a record for high turnout in a primary election as 1.45 million voters participated, or 35.1% of those registered, surpassing the previous record in a 2000 primary by 7,000 ballots.

Voter turnout in Arizona for 2018, the last primary in a non-presidential election year, was 1.2 million voters, or 33.4%.

In 2021, Democrats and pundits attacked election reform laws enacted in 19 states as attempts at “voter suppression.” The five states that appeared to come under the most attack were Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa—all of which saw boosted voter turnout so far in 2022 compared to the 2018 primaries.

As a rule, non-presidential elections and primary elections attract lower turnout than presidential elections or general elections.

But voter turnout was significantly higher in the 2022 primaries in Georgia, Texas, and Arizona and nominally higher in Florida than in the comparable 2018 primaries.

So new election laws in these states did a lousy job of suppressing the vote, if that’s what Republican lawmakers designed them to do.

Florida’s new law, known as Senate Bill 90, is working its way through the courts. One litigant, Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said the law “was clearly an anti-voter measure that raised barriers to voting with specific impacts on elderly voters, voters with disabilities, students, and communities of color.”

Florida, which also had an August primary, saw voter turnout go up slightly, Newsweek reported. The article quoted Andrea Mercado, executive director of the left-leaning advocacy group Florida Rising, as saying that overall 2022 turnout equaled that of 2018.

Voter turnout was expected to be lower because both parties had major competitive primaries in 2018 and only Democrats had state primaries this year. Still, Mercado said there is a “need to energize black communities to get out to the polls in November.”

After lititigation with varying decisions, most of Florida’s law was kept in place by courts pending the resolution of lawsuits. The U.S. Justice Department joined the lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters, calling the law discriminatory.

In March 2021, Mark Stringer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, criticized Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, for signing an election reform bill.

“This law is nothing less than voter suppression, pure and simple,” the ACLU leader said.

However, Iowa logged its second-highest primary turnout on record in June with 356,000 voters, or 22.6%. The record from 1994 still stands. But the 2022 turnout marked a 123% increase from 2018, when primary turnout was 17%.

“The turnout should dispel the narrative that states are restricting voting,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told The Daily Signal, adding:

The left has made it an article of faith that there is systemic voter suppression. Some politicians are happy to do that to, one, demonize their opponents and, two, score points with their base. Ironically, they often use voter suppression as a turnout tool.

Among the laws that President Joe Biden took the most swipes were those of Georgia and Texas.

In May 2021, Biden said: “Texas legislators put forth a bill that joins Georgia and Florida in advancing a state law that attacks the sacred right to vote. It’s part of an assault on democracy that we’ve seen far too often this year.”

Texas held its primary election in March, one of the year’s earliest. Turnout was 17.7%, with 3 million ballots cast, up from  the 2018 primary turnout of 17.2% and 2.6 million ballots cast.

Texas election officials did reject about 18,000 mail-in ballots for failing to meet the new voter ID requirements. However, the state took action to educate voters on how to add an ID number to an absentee ballot in subsequent runoffs and special elections after the initial primary, Snead said.

The later elections in Texas had minimal problems, he said, while Georgia, which enacted the same voter ID requirements for mail-in ballots, reported virtually no problems.

Of the Georgia voting law, Biden had said: “It makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”

Turnout for this year’s May primary in Georgia hit a record high with about 850,000 ballots cast—a 168% increase from the 2018 primary.

“The incredible turnout we have seen demonstrates once and for all that Georgia’s Election Integrity Act struck a good balance between the guardrails of access and security,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said in a prepared statement.

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. Lucas is also the author of “Abuse of Power: Inside The Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter:

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

No, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich

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The historical record of the post-war economy demonstrates slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance. 

In 1847, Karl Marx wrote that

Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry…cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.

As with most of his postulations concerning economics, Marx was proven wrong.

Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, historical data show there was a recession, but after that, post-war economic growth rates rivaled or surpassed the pre-war growth rates, and America continued on its path to becoming the number one political and economic superpower, ultimately superseding Great Britain (see Appendix Figure 1).

The historical record of the post-war economy, one would think, obviously demonstrated slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance, as Marx thought it was. And yet, somehow, even with the benefit of hindsight, there are many academics and media pundits still echoing Marx today.

For instance, in his essay published by The New York Times’ 1619 Project, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond claims the institution of slavery “helped turn a poor, fledgling nation into a financial colossus.”

“The industrial revolution was based on cotton, produced primarily in the slave labor camps of the United States,” Noam Chomsky similarly stated in an interview with the Times. Both claims give the impression that slavery was essential for industrialization and/or American economic hegemony, which is untrue.

The Industrial Revolution paved the way for modern economic development and is widely regarded to have occurred between 1760 and 1830, starting in Great Britain and subsequently spreading to Europe and the US.

As depicted in Figure 1., raw cotton produced by African-American slaves did not become a significant import in the British economy until 1800, decades after the Industrial Revolution had already begun.

Although the British later imported large quantities of American cotton, economic historians Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode note that “the American South was a late-comer to world cotton markets,” and  “US cotton played no role in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution.”

Nor was the revolution sparked by Britain’s involvement with slavery more broadly, as David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman assessed that the contribution of British 18th-century slave systems to industrial growth was “not particularly large.”

There is also the theory that the cotton industry, dependent on slavery, triggered industrialization in the northern United States by facilitating the growth of textile industries. But as demonstrated by Kenneth L. Sokoloff, the Northern manufacturing sector was incredibly dynamic, and productivity growth was broad-based and in no way exclusive to cotton textiles.

Eric Holt has further elaborated, pointing out that

the vast literature on the industrial revolution that economic historians have produced shows that it originated in the creation and adoption of a wide range of technologies, such as the steam engine and coke blast furnace, which were not directly connected to textile trading networks.

The bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset, and they were forced to maintain America’s most exported commodity… the profits from cotton propelled the US into a position as one of the leading economies in the world and made the South its most prosperous region.

This is the argument made by P.R. Lockhart of Vox.

While slavery was an important part of the antebellum economy, claims about its central role in the Industrial Revolution and in America’s rise to power via export-led growth are exaggerated.

Olmstead and Rhode have observed that although cotton exports comprised a tremendous share of total exports prior to the Civil War, they accounted for only around 5 percent of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, an important contribution but not the backbone of American economic development (see Appendix Figure 2).

One can certainly argue that slavery made the slaveholders and those connected to the cotton trade extremely wealthy in the short run, but the long-run impact of slavery on overall American economic development, particularly in the South, is undeniably and unequivocally negative.

As David Meyer of Brown University explains, in the pre-war South, “investments were heavily concentrated in slaves,” resulting in the failure “to build a deep and broad industrial infrastructure,” such as railroads, public education, and a centralized financial system.

Economic historians have repeatedly emphasized that slavery delayed Southern industrialization, giving the North a tremendous advantage in the Civil War.

Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that across the Americas, the more dependent on slavery a nation was in 1750, the poorer it was in 2000 (see Appendix Figure 3.). He found the same relationship in the US. In 2000, states with more slaves in 1860 were poorer than states with fewer slaves and much poorer than the free Northern states (see Appendix Figure 4.)

According to Nunn,

looking either across countries within the Americas, or across states and counties within the U.S., one finds a strong significant negative relationship between past slave use and current income.

Slavery was an important part of the American economy for some time, but the reality is that it was completely unnecessary and stunted economic development, and it made Americans poorer even over 150 years later.

The historical and empirical evidence is in accordance with the conclusion of Olmstead and Rhode—that slavery was

a national tragedy that…inhibited economic growth over the long run and created social and racial divisions that still haunt the nation.

Figure 1. US share of British Cotton Imports over time

Figure 2. Cotton Exports and Gross Domestic Product

Figure 3. Partial correlation plot between the slave population as a share of the total population in 1750 and national income per capita in 2000 of countries of the Americas

Figure 4. Bivariate plot showing the relationship between the slave population as a share of the total population in 1860 and state incomes per capita in 2000

AUTHOR

Corey Iacono

Corey Iacono is a Master of Business graduate student at the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science and a minor in Economics.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Pandemic ‘Learning Loss’ Actually Reveals More About Schooling Than Learning

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The alleged “learning loss” now being exposed is more reflective of the nature of forced schooling rather than how children actually learn.

There are mounting concerns over profound learning loss due to prolonged school closures and remote learning. New data released last week by the US Department of Education reveal that fourth-grade reading and math scores dropped sharply over the past two years.

Fingers are waving regarding who is to blame, but the alleged “learning loss” now being exposed is more reflective of the nature of forced schooling rather than how children actually learn.

The current hullabaloo over pandemic learning loss mirrors the well-worn narrative regarding “summer slide,” in which children allegedly lose knowledge over summer vacation. In 2017, I wrote an article for Boston NPR stating that there’s no such thing as the summer slide.

Students may memorize and regurgitate information for a test or a teacher, but if it has no meaning for them, they quickly forget it. Come high school graduation, most of us forget most of what we supposedly learned in school.

In his New York Times opinion article this week, economist Bryan Caplan makes a related point: “I figure that most of the learning students lost in Zoom school is learning they would have lost by early adulthood even if schools had remained open. My claim is not that in the long run remote learning is almost as good as in-person learning. My claim is that in the long run in-person learning is almost as bad as remote learning.”

Learning and schooling are completely different. Learning is something we humans do, while schooling is something done to us. We need more learning and less schooling.

Yet, the solutions being proposed to deal with the identified learning loss over the past two years promise the opposite. Billions of dollars in federal COVID relief funds are being funneled into more schooling and school-like activities, including intensive tutoring, extended-day learning programs, longer school years, and more summer school. These efforts could raise test scores, as has been seen in Texas where students receive 30 hours of tutoring in each subject area in which they have failed a test, but do they really reflect true learning?

As we know from research on unschoolers and others who learn in self-directed education settings, non-coercive, interest-driven learning tends to be deep and authentic. When learning is individually-initiated and unforced, it is not a chore. It is absorbed and retained with enthusiasm because it is tied to personal passions and goals.

Certainly, many children have been deprived of both intellectual and social stimulation since 2020, as lockdowns and other pandemic policies kept them detached from their larger communities. I wrote back in September 2020 that these policies were damaging an entire generation of kids, and urged parents to do whatever possible to ensure that their children had normal interactions with the wider world.

Children who were not able to have those interactions will need more opportunities now to play and explore and discover their world. It is through this play, exploration, and discovery that they will acquire and expand their intellectual and social skills. This is best facilitated outside of a conventional classroom, not inside one.

“What we need is less school, not more,” writes Boston College psychology professor Peter Gray. “Kids need more time to play and just be kids. Mother nature designed kids to play, explore, and daydream without adult intervention because that is how kids develop the skills, confidence, and attitudes necessary for mental health and overall wellbeing.”

Fortunately, non-coercive schooling alternatives are becoming more widely available. My latest Forbes article describes an Illinois public middle school science teacher, Josh Pickel, who quit his job this summer to open a new self-directed microschool. As Pickel wondered: “What if we removed coercion and those kids were allowed to focus their energy and their intellect on things they care about?”

The start of this new school year brings with it greater education possibilities, including those like Pickel’s that enable children to joyfully explore content they care about, in pursuit of goals that matter to them, leading to genuine learning retained for years to come.

We can criticize school shutdowns and affirm that they never should have happened, while also recognizing that imposing more schooling is not the solution to presumed pandemic-era learning loss. It might raise test scores, but it’s unlikely to lead to true learning. Only freedom can do that.

Like this story? Click here to sign up for the LiberatED newsletter and get education news and analysis like this from Senior Education Fellow Kerry McDonald in your inbox every week.

AUTHOR

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and host of the weekly LiberatED podcast. She is also the author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019), an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, education policy fellow at State Policy Network, and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly email newsletter here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Heritage Foundation Ranks Florida No. 1 in Education Freedom

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

We Need Fewer Rulers and More True Leaders

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“The beginning of wisdom,” said Confucius, “is to call things by their proper name.” 

With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the British Commonwealth is entering a time of transition not seen in 70 years. What’s clearly mapped out is who will get the crown. What’s not so clear is the future of the monarchy as an institution.

At times like these, questions inevitably arise that are otherwise deemed too inconsequential to ask. What practical purpose does the monarchy fulfill, exactly? What are the powers of the head-of-state, and why should one person be given these powers?

But perhaps we should step back and ask a more preliminary question first: why should we care?

My gut response is to say we shouldn’t care. In fact, at first I wanted to ignore this story. I don’t think it’s healthy for a culture to be so fixated on political figures.

Having thought it through, however, I realized there’s an important point to be made here, and that this is the time to make it. After all, times of transition present opportunities to reflect and rethink things—not just the little things, but the big things too.

One of the primary points of discussion is of course whether there should even be a monarchy. Many people (rightly) point out that the institution no longer serves any practical purpose, and that it’s about time we finally did away with the vestigial elements that remain to this day. At the very least, the taxpayers could surely use the break.

But others say it still serves an important purpose. The monarch is a figurehead, they say, even if only ceremonially. Society needs a leader that we can look to and rally around, and the monarch fills that role.

Now, it’s true that society needs leaders. But monarchs are not so much leaders as they are rulers. They did not win willing followers like true leaders. They were simply born into a government-privileged position. The authority and status they have exists merely because of power. They did nothing to earn it.

For some, this is what makes democracy better than monarchy. Whereas monarchs are simply entitled to power, democratically-elected politicians must win the hearts of their people. They must champion the causes people care about and earn their followers and admirers.

But while it’s tempting to think democracy is a more genuine form of leadership, this isn’t really the case. Politicians in democracies are rulers, too. Though they may inspire some, they still exert power over others. A genuine leader simply invites others to follow them. A politician, on the other hand, demands compliance with their wishes. When the politician can’t persuade, they resort to force. They compel the hearts they cannot win.

That’s not leadership. That’s tyranny.

It’s also not entirely true to say that their supporters are followers in the genuine sense of the word. Quite often, people vote for a politician simply because the politician has promised them a share of the money extorted from taxpayers. To that extent, the voters are acting more as co-conspirators, working with the politicians to profit at the expense of their neighbors.

That’s not a leader. That’s a demagogue.

The distinction between leaders and rulers is subtle, but important. It’s important because it paints a more accurate picture of what politics is really about, one that reveals the true nature of the beast.

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name,” said Confucius. When politicians get away with calling themselves our leaders, the euphemism makes their role sound lofty and inspiring. But when we call them what they really are, our rulers, the true nature of their position is laid bare. It’s akin to saying the emperor has no clothes. Except in this case, the con is the idea that the emperor is your friend, and the truth is that he is your master.

So yes, society absolutely needs leaders. But genuine leaders are those who set an example and inspire us to follow them. Do you see the difference? A leader has followers. A ruler has subjects. A leader inspires. A ruler commands. A leader wins loyalty. A ruler demands loyalty. A leader offers guidance. A ruler insists you follow his path. A leader sets an example. A ruler makes an example of those who refuse to obey.

So rather than obsessing over queens, kings, and presidents, let’s focus our time and attention on the genuine leaders in society, the people making a positive difference. Let’s not fixate on the Elizabeth IIs and the Charles IIIs of the world, or the Joe Bidens and Donald Trumps: rulers and demagogues who often bring out the worst in us and set us against each other. Instead, let’s pay more attention to the people—whether public figures or personal mentors—who bring out the best in us. Let’s look to entrepreneurial visionaries, creative trailblazers, philosophical, moral, and religious inspirations, and see what guidance they have to offer. Maybe they will inspire us to become true leaders ourselves.

Which would be a very good thing. The world could use a lot fewer rulers and a lot more genuine leaders.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The FBI in Peace and Politics

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In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration and Congress made a number of panic-induced reorganization and statutory errors. As Senator Rand Paul said at the time, the panic-enacted Patriot Act (2001) would allow our federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to have virtually unchecked powers. [By the way, if President Clinton had acted on the three opportunities he had to dispatch Osama bin Laden, 9/11 might just be another ho-hum date on the calendar.]

The FBI raid on the home of former President Trump and other abuses of power by the FBI prove Senator Paul was correct. Moreover, the heavily redacted Affidavit presented to a Clinton-appointed judge to authorize a search of President Trump’s home suggests the FBI may have been trying to recover documents implicating the FBI in crimes against the former President. If so, that would be a case of criminals committing crimes and then committing another crime to recover evidence of their previous crimes.

Here is a way to prevent the FBI from further 1st and 4th Amendment abuses: Divest the FBI of any role in domestic counterintelligence. Limit the FBI to its traditional role of catching bank robbers and kidnappers. Under the Office of National Intelligence (ODNI) create an Office of Counterintelligence (OCI). Staff the OCI with counterintelligence-experienced members from the Navy NCIS, Air Force OSI, and Army CIC. Forbid the OCI to hire former FBI agents.

But who should control the OCI? The Judicial Branch staffed by nine unelected judges is not the place. Closer to the voters is the Executive Branch that came is turned over every four years. Closest to the voters is Congress. But Congress has a history of disruptive turf battles between the House and the Senate. So, how about a bi-partisan OCI Oversight Board with members nominated by the President and subject to Senate confirmation?

Dismissed FBI counterintelligence agents can find plenty of work by continuing to do Opposition Research for the Democratic National Committee and for Hillary Clinton. Many police departments were defunded in the wake of the George Floyd riots. Inevitably besieged by crime, the “woke” cities are now hiring cops again and would probably welcome FBI counterintelligence agents trained in breaking down doors, conducting perp walks, and arranging for favored media outlets to film and air their wee-hours raids in progress. Apparently, even Uvalde, TX, could use some aggressive cops.

Taking domestic counterintelligence away from the FBI is no big loss. Recall, that the FBI failed to detect the communists in the Manhattan Project who gave Stalin our atomic secrets. The Unabomber eluded the FBI for 17 years. Recall, FBI special agent, Robert Hanssen, who worked for the KGB. Hillary Clinton’s exposure of state secrets via her unprotected, home-grown server went undetected far too long. Indeed, the list of FBI counterintelligence and other failures is too long to recite here. Also, recall Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian massacre. Clearly, it is time for the FBI to go back to pursuing bank robbers and kidnappers and leave the political hit jobs to the left-loving MSM.

Nota bene: Between 1944 and 1958, one of the most popular radio programs was: The FBI in Peace and War.

©2022. William Hamilton. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: US Navy Denies FOIA Request of UFO Videos, Says Release Would ‘Harm National Security’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis removed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in Faith and Community Initiative.

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Governor DeSantis Ousts CAIR

  • Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will be removing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in the governor’s Faith and Community Initiative.
  • CAIR has been identified by the Justice Department as an “entity” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
  • CAIR’s Florida chapter is in particular turmoil; two former leaders have been accused of sexual harassment and abuse. Additionally, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in 2014, at which participants yelled, “We are Hamas.”

DeSantis Accuses CAIR of Deception, Ousts It from Florida Program

The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has told FWI it will be removing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in its Faith and Community Initiative.

In 2019, the governor founded the Governor’s Faith and Community Initiative “to facilitate the efforts of the state’s faith-based entities by improving communication and collaboration among them,” according to Dylan Fisher, the program’s director.

On August 18, a Facebook post by the Florida branch of CAIR claimed to be a leading member of the initiative, declaring, “Governor Ron DeSantis recently presented CAIR-Florida with a Certificate of Recognition for our continued work in service of the vulnerable populations of Floridians.”

Read More

©Clarion Project. All rights reserved.

So Many Imperfect Humans, So Little Time

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Among the smooth assurances advocates gave us when passing assisted suicide laws was the idea there would be safeguards built into the laws so assisted suicide would only occur when the requirements of law were met.  Hah! What a bunch of bunk, as we now know.  A doctor who advocates euthanasia just admitted in a journal article that safeguards fail.  “(S)afeguards will never be perfect,” he wrote.  “All laws about anything result in some instances in which the outcome is other than what the law intends.”  Too bad that, when something other than what an assisted suicide law intends happens, it means that someone is dead who shouldn’t be.

This doctor was writing rather abstractly, but Belgium shows you exactly what happens when the safeguards in assisted death laws fail.  One safeguard is that the person is supposed to ask for assisted death.  In Belgium in just one year, over a thousand assisted deaths were done without explicit request.  Another safeguard is that assisted deaths would be reported, so the government could keep tabs on what was happening and dial restrictions up as needed.  Another bad joke.  In Belgium that year, almost half of assisted deaths were not reported.

Hidden agendas thrive in darkness.  And here, the authoritarian Left is getting its way.  More people are dying from assisted suicide and euthanasia than ever before.  Assisted death numbers continue to climb in places where such laws have been passed, regardless of safeguards, including the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Victoria Australia, and Oregon.  Assisted deaths were up 36 percent in Ontario in a recent one-year period and 32 percent in Canada overall in 2021 over the previous year.

Canada is of interest because it’s out in front on this issue in many ways and what’s happening there is downright disturbing.  Vulnerable populations are being deliberately targeted and pushed into assisted death – people who are less able to protect themselves from outside pressure, like veterans with PTSD, people with dementia, the mentally ill, children, the disabled, and the poor.  In Australia, it’s the elderly.  In Belgium, it’s infants.  Gee, get rid of all these groups and we just might end up with a super-race. Sieg Heil!

It’s no accident the early Progressives and the National Socialists in Germany were all in for eugenics to create the perfect super-race.  There’s a straight line from eugenics to the authoritarian Left’s preoccupation with assisted suicide and euthanasia today.  But a funny thing happened on the way to Utopia.  We ended up in a very sick place, instead.  The Hitlerian doctrine of some lives being unworthy of life holds sway.  We’re making the short jump from ‘the government needs to save money on social spending’ to a shift in societal attitudes that actively demonizes and targets the vulnerable.  Once these demons are let loose, they cannot be controlled.  We’ll end up like that psychology experiment at Stanford where ordinary people assigned to prison guard roles became unbearably authoritarian and cruel in a matter of days – except it will be real life, not just an experiment, and there will be no escape.

In the authoritarian Left’s drive to save humanity from itself, there eventually won’t be a shred of humanity left.  As someone I know put it:

  • Here’s my thought on assisted suicide:  in a world without disabled people, and terminally Ill people, how do humans learn true compassion and empathy?  (No church needed for those qualities) And for those who believe in the grace of God, where does one get the special grace that comes from caring for those who suffer?

So no matter what you thought of assisted suicide when it was sold through the siren songs of safeguards, personal autonomy, and compassion, it’s time to rethink your position.  How can you continue supporting the monsters on the authoritarian Left now that you see the implications?  Right now, they’re targeting less than perfect humans.  One day, they will come for you.  It’s another short jump from government-assisted suicide to government-directed death and, when that day comes, your ‘personal autonomy’ won’t mean a thing.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Women’s Logic

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Men’s logic: Is it or is it not?

Women’s logic: Is it or Is it not? Either is or is not? Neither is nor is not? Sometimes is and other times isn’t?

Traditional institutions of education teach a linear view of logic, which is only expected because traditionally only men went to and taught in school. This is not to say the linear view is correct. It is just that men readily fall for it, while many girls can’t stand math and science. I feel that feminine intelligence and women’s logic were inadvertently preserved before girls were pushed into STEM.

Today, I see an epidemic of linear logic. Take, for an example, white privilege. Men’s logic suggests that a white person can either be privileged or not. Women’s logic gives us a better picture. A white person can have white privilege when he is present in a racist environment. At the same time, he has no privilege when he is living or working among minorities. At the same time, he can be disadvantaged if he is working at a firm concerned about racial diversity. Applying women’s logic, we realize that it was never a binary situation (one that yields only two responses). So the debate is futile.

It only follows that women’s logic can’t be preserved in mathematical structures but only in literary ones, because words can have multiple meanings at the same time.

©Ujjwal Anand. All rights reserved

A Photo Montage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

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As others write about the passing of Queen Elizabeth one man posted a montage of her live on Twitter.

As the Chinese proverb says a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a montage of many pictures of Elizabeth II, Queen of England. Long will she and her family remain in our thoughts and prayers.

©SherlockHolmez, @Holmez1922. All rights reserved.

ULTIMATE IN BRAINWASHING: An Unbelievable 22% Of Democrats Believe A Male Can Get Pregnant

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Brainwashing: the process of pressuring someone into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means.

We have been reporting on how Democrats have become unbelievably unhinged to the point where we now believe that they have become victims of long term brainwashing.

After WWII the concern about brainwashing became headlines. In 1946 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was so worried about the spread of Communism, by brainwashing, that it proposed removing liberals, socialists and communists from places like schools, libraries, newspapers and entertainment. Prophetic isn’t it.

The Daily Wire’s Christina Buttons in her column Nearly 1 In 4 Democratic Voters Believe Men Can Get Pregnant wrote,

A new poll finds that significant numbers of Democratic voters believe things that are false.

Nearly one in four Democratic voters believe men can get pregnant, according to a new poll.

The online survey, conducted by WPA Intelligence from August 22-25, found 22% of Democrats agreed with the statement, “Some men can get pregnant.”

Read more.

But it gets worse. You would thing that those who Democrats who are well educated would disagree. But the didn’t!

Christina continues,

The percentage [of those who believe men can get pregnant] rose when only including women, and a whopping 36% of white, college-educated female Democrats concurred. 

“Overall, few Americans think men can get pregnant,” said WPAi Managing Director Conor Maguire. “But with 36% of a core Democratic constituency (college-educated white Democratic women) and one out of five Democrat voters believing this, one can see why Democratic leaders coddle the radical gender theory movement.”

A Pew Research poll found that about 5% of young adults in the U.S. believe it’s possible to identify into a gender that differs from their biological sex.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and numerous liberal media outlets, including CNN and MSNBC, are increasingly opting for terms such as “pregnant people,” or “birthing parent,” instead of “women” when referencing pregnancy, fertility and abortion.

Of course we now have Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson who cannot define the word “woman” because she’s not a biologist.

This idea of gender identity is pure brainwashing.

It appears that the more educated women have been brainwashed the most.

Does this survey data mean that the more education the more brainwashing.

It appears so because Wisconsin schools have been sued for helping children ‘transition’ their gender identity. The Daily Wire’s Dillon Burroughs reports,

A school district in Wisconsin was sued on Wednesday over its gender identity training which allows teachers and school staff to hide student gender transitions from parents.

America First Legal (AFL) and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of parents against the Eau Claire Area School District (ECASD), along with its board members and superintendent, claiming the current policies violate their freedom of religion and parental rights.

“Policies like Eau Claire’s blatantly violate parents’ constitutional rights to raise their children. School staff do not replace parents while their children are at school. A gender identity transition is a major event in a child’s life; schools must defer to parents about this,” WILL Deputy Counsel Luke Berg said in a statement.

Read more.

Are K-16 schools indoctrinating rather than educating?

We report. Your decide.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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HISTORIC: Miami-Dade School Board votes 8-1 to reject a resolution declaring October as LGBTQ History Month

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“Our students should go to school to learn their ABC’s, not their LGBT’s.” — Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez

We have written about how the LGBTQ agenda has entered our public school systems nationwide. Initially is began as an anti-gay bullying program, then is moved to creating gay clubs like GLSEN in public schools, then it morphed into teaching about sex to underaged children.

Then is moved to actual grooming of children to have sex with perverts, pedophiles and pederasts by public school teachers and sodomites.

Today if you as a parent criticize any of these policies, programs or  behaviors in public classrooms you are designated a domestic terrorist.

In Florida the epicenter for child abuse has been in the Miami-Dade school system. We have seen child molesters like Jason Edward Meyers a teacher at Palmetto High School in Miami-Dade, Florida who is a pedophile who stalked his underaged students for sex for a decade.

Governor Ron DeSantis has made it his mission to protect the innocence of Florida’s children.

But there may be a ray of hope.

In an email The Christian Family Coalition Florida wrote,

In a historic turnaround victory for parental rights and children’s protection, the Miami-Dade School Board voted 8-1 on Wednesday to reject a resolution declaring October as LGBTQ History Month in Miami-Dade Schools.

The decision was a major reversal from last year, when the same board voted 7-1 in favor of declaring October 2021 as LGBTQ History Month in the public schools.

The stunning about-face reflected the new political reality in Florida schools and in much of the nation as outraged parents have stood up over the last year to oppose the extremist LGBTQ indoctrination of our children.

That movement of concerned parents was on full display at Wednesday’s school board meeting, as more than 200 residents packed the chamber to oppose the “LGBTQ History Month” resolution, which was sponsored by liberal school board member Lucia Baez-Geller.

Many parents pointed out that Baez-Geller’s resolution – which called for special lesson plans to celebrate same-sex marriage and the transgender movement – would have violated the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act signed this year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which prohibits LGBT indoctrination in grades K through 3.

The overwhelming majority of the school board agreed, as all eight of Baez-Geller’s colleagues of both parties voted to reject her resolution.

“This is a huge win for parents, and it proves that we can force the extremist LGBTQ movement into retreat if enough folks stand up and say enough is enough,” said Christian Family Coalition Founder and Executive Director Anthony Verdugo. “CFC Florida rallied well over 200 parents to come to the school board meeting and speak their minds, and many more responded to our email alerts to contact their board members to let them know how they feel. That definitely made a difference. We also want to thank all the school board members who voted to defend parental rights and protect our children from sexual indoctrination.”

Please take a moment to email the following board members your thanks for rejecting LGBTQ indoctrination.

Now there is a documentary titled Keep This Between Us about Jason Meyers and other predators in our public school classrooms.

In this documentary three women re-examine their past relationships with predator teachers, exposing the shocking statistics of widespread grooming in U.S. high schools, including Florida.

This is just one part of the larger war against the sodomites and their enablers.

Never give up. Never surrender to them and their sick policies.

Get them out of our public schools and the public square. Pride is a sin.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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TAKE ACTION: Urgent Warning for Parents! Tell Disney to Drop ‘Little Demon’ Television Series

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Disney’s new series ‘Little Demon’

Take Action—Please sign our petition

Urgent warning for parents!

Disney has taken yet another dangerous step into the darkness with its new animated sitcom series, Little Demon. Sadly, this disturbing program is brought to viewers on FXX, courtesy of The Walt Disney Company, which took control of FXX Network through its purchase of 20th Century Fox.

Disney describes the storyline as follows: “Thirteen years after being impregnated by Satan, a reluctant mother and her Antichrist daughter attempt to live an ordinary life.”

The show makes light of hell and the dangers of the demonic realm. Even the previews and commercials include such horrific content that it is difficult for families who watch FXX to avoid its evil subject matter completely.

So disturbing is Disney’s new show that Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA) posted a response on his Facebook page, saying in part: “I could write volumes this morning, and unpack pages of Bible verses here, but instead I’m just going to state the obvious: Please be careful. Our job as parents is to guard the hearts and minds of our kids…Disney and FXX have decided to embrace and market what is clearly evil. STAY FAR FROM IT.”

Here is some insight into the show’s background:

  • The series focuses on Laura and her daughter, Chrissy, who is the “love child,” produced from her “fling” with Satan.
  • The trailer is filled with satanic imagery, animated gore, and graphic violence, such as beheaded chickens, pentagrams, dismembered bodies, and melting human flesh.
  • Rather than being represented as dangerous, demonic, and terrifying, Satan is depicted as an average, middle-aged, cardigan-wearing suburban dad.

The Little Demon series is TVMA-rated, so Disney already broke its recent promise to keep R-rated content from its streaming platform. A TVMA-rated series is equivalent to R-rated films.

Take Action—Please sign our petition

Please tell the Walt Disney Company to cancel this demonic show, ‘Little Demon,’ immediately.

EDITORS NOTE: This FAA column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Listen To The Very Clear Message From Bridget Ziegler A Florida School Board Member

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A Message From Bridget Ziegler:

I appreciate Slate giving me an opportunity to air out some FACTS when it comes to The DeSantis Education Plan for Florida.

With so many politically motivated lies and false narratives being slung around, it’s vital for Conservatives to hit them head on, especially in left-leaning outlets such as Slate.

There is no doubt that voters agree with Conservatives on education issues, but as Conservatives – we MUST do a better job of explaining our positions.

Listen to the interview and let me know what you agree or disagree with.

©Bridget Ziegler. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Heritage Foundation Ranks Florida No. 1 in Education Freedom

How Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Electronic Voting Machines

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Strange stories about voting machines continue to surface in the news.

Voting machines in Rhode Island displayed the names of 2018 candidates in a 2022 election, and misspelled another candidate’s name.  Voters who used the machines were disenfranchised.

In Alabama, voting machines in two counties accepted Xerox copies of ballots while the machines were being tested, and machines in seven precincts showed more votes than voters.  Who programmed it to do that?

An Arizona Corporation Commissioner sent a letter to all election officials in the state asking that they stop using voting machines.  He said the machines are unreliable and vulnerable to attack, citing the case of a hand recount revealing a 62 percent error rate in tabulation machines.  Who programmed the tabulator so it couldn’t even add?  Even simple hand-held calculators can add.

A New Mexico county refused to certify the results of a primary election this year because of distrust of machines, but was ordered by the state Supreme Court to do so.

Citizen investigators found machines flipped the results of 2020 Supreme Court Justice races in Michigan, throwing the Court to the Democrats.  The investigators also found voting systems in two states had the easily cracked password ‘123456’ and had Microsoft SQL software in three states which is unnecessary and allows data to be manipulated.

If you find it hard to believe voting machines flip votes, listen to this: An official post-election audit in Kansas uncovered the fact that thumb drives inserted into voting machines during an election flipped votes from one candidate for county commissioner to another who was initially mistakenly declared the winner.  The company said it was a programming error and, supposedly, no other races were affected.  That was some error.  Who sat down and wrote a computer program for the machines to flip votes?   Doesn’t sound like an accident to me.

So what happens when there are questions about machine results but the Secretary of State gets to certify the results of his own election and declare himself the winner?  It happened in Georgia where citizen investigators monitored the voting in one precinct and found Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger got 53 percent of the vote in the GOP primary, but the machines gave him 68 percent of the vote.  That one is being contested with a request to look at the actual ballots.

Trust in elections will not be rebuilt until vote-flipping and other documented problems with voting machines get resolved and stories like these stop appearing.  It doesn’t help that all of this is a black box and the machine manufacturers scream bloody murder about proprietary information whenever citizens want to look inside their machines to see what is really going on when things don’t add up.  Top Democrats like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are on record expressing concerns about voting machines.   Concerns from that side of the aisle about machines date back to at least 2003 but, nowadays, Democrats for the most part embrace voting machines and dismiss any questions that get asked as crazy-talk.  Gee, I wonder why.  The lady doth protest too much.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays