TENNESSEE: Bill advances to ban drag shows, other adult entertainment on public property

A society is in a moral crisis when it becomes necessary for a bill to be sponsored to safeguard kids in public places. Although the bill is aimed at “go-go dancers, exotic dancers, and strippers on public property,” it is hardly a secret that the trans agenda has come to include grooming children in vulgar performances that are inappropriate for children.

Republican Rep. Chris Todd, who sponsored the bill, called it a “common-sense” “child safety” bill. Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson introduced the bill. People have lost sight of what responsible censorship is even means. It is glaring how the far Left uses charges of censorship to shut down speech that does not suit its agenda and that they claim to consider “offensive,” but they have no problem with the overt, public corruption of children. The sexualizing and grooming of young children is relentlessly becoming normalized. That’s why laws of this kind are needed.

Tennessee bill aims to ban drag shows, other adult entertainment on public property

by Lawrence Richard, Fox News, February 1, 2023:

The state of Tennessee could bar drag shows and other adult entertainment performances, pending a bill that is advancing through the state’s legislature.

A bill banning go-go dancers, exotic dancers, and strippers on public property and for those under the age of 18 was approved by the Tennessee House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Tuesday, according to FOX 17 Nashville. It will now advance to the House Criminal Justice Committee.

“This is a common-sense child safety bill,” said Rep. Chris Todd, a Republican who sponsored HB. 9, per the report.

The bill intends to prohibit “adult cabaret entertainment” that is “harmful to minors,” including “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers.”

“There’s confusion in the law of what performances are covered. This clarifies what is crossing the line that is harmful to minors,” Todd added.

While the bill effectively bans drag shows, it does not specifically use the term.

Republicans in the state have contended that drag shows can result in the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican, introduced the legislation near the end of 2022 with his own bill that limits gender-care surgeries for those under 18.

“We are not going to expose our children to this type of inappropriate, sexually explicit performances,” Sen. Johnson told the station in November 2022, after drag performances where kids were present were becoming more popular……

Read more.

AUTHOR

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

Trump Demolished The GOP Status Quo. Some 2024 Contenders Want To Bring It Back

After former President Donald Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential run in November, a favorite parlor game of the chattering class has been to guess the identity of his first formally announced challenger for the Republican nomination. This week answered that question: Nikki Haley. The former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is set to declare her candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in Charleston, South Carolina, on Feb. 15. (N.B. deeply unpopular former national security adviser John Bolton made an offhand remark to a British television station last month that he would also run, but since then has merely intimated he is considering such a bid.)

Haley’s announcement will likely open up the floodgates for additional Trump challengers. Just as Haley had barely made an effort of late to contain her 2024 presidential ambitions, so too might we expect announcements to soon follow from other not-so-thinly-veiled aspirants, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and perhaps former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Later this spring or early summer, numerous other candidates are poised to also enter the fray: chief among them Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and perhaps also Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, 2016 GOP presidential primary runner-up Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has also been teasing a possible presidential run, despite his rather dubious credentials.

All of this will be sorted out in due time — by June or July of this year, at the latest. And as we approach that time, the key question facing the Right, and the Republican Party that is the Right’s natural partisan vehicle, is whether it will seize upon the Trump phenomenon and move forward, or instead move backward to the pre-2016 GOP status quo ante. Put another way: Was “Trumpism” a one-time flash in the pan based around an eponymous larger than-life personality and universal celebrity status, or was it a substantive wake-up call for the GOP to ditch its outmoded bromides and sober up on issues pertaining (especially) to trade, immigration, and foreign policy?

There is at least some reason for optimism that the latter formulation is correct.

In the current way-too-early 2024 polling for the presidential nomination, DeSantis consistently polls by far the best of any non-Trump alternative. DeSantis also happens to embody the tenets and overall ethos of the more nationalist- and populist-infused “New Right” movement better than almost any other current elected official in America. He is a fiery culture warrior who dives headfirst into the fight against woke-ism, with a clear appreciation of the governing imperatives to wield power in the service of good political order and to recapture institutions previously lost to woke-ism. His well publicized fight last year against The Walt Disney Company was straight out of the “New Right” playbook: Wield political power to punish a woke corporation pushing insidious gender ideology and to protect parental rights and the innocence of children.

More recently, DeSantis claimed a huge scalp from the College Board when it revised its AP African American Studies curriculum after the Florida governor objected to the initial course framework’s pervasive indoctrinatory leftism, including its suffusion of critical race theory pablum. His latest much-publicized moves with the New College of Florida’s board of trustees, furthermore, perfectly demonstrates how one can prudentially wield power to recapture and reorient woke-addled institutions. Even on his signature issue, COVID-19, DeSantis did not reflexively defer to private-sector actors, as many libertarians or right-liberals might have; rather, he properly wielded power to preclude private-sector vaccine mandates, demonstrating a recognition of the manner in which professional managerial class elites weaponized such mandates against dissenting “deplorables.”

President Trump, along with some of his loudest social media supporters, have recently taken to smearing DeSantis as a clone of former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who perfectly personifies the older chamber of commerce-friendly GOP. That is laughable; Ryan, now a distinguished visiting fellow at the neoliberal American Enterprise Institute, would object to most, perhaps all, of DeSantis’ moves mentioned above.

On the other hand, there are a number of possible 2024 candidates who do embody the failures of the pre-2016 GOP status quo ante.

The foreign policy-centric Pompeo, for instance, has recently sounded a lot like Bush-era Donald Rumsfeld when he has opined on the Russo-Ukrainian war, defining America’s purported national interest at a cartoonishly high level of abstraction and urging for ever-more taxpayer-funded weapons shipments. Haley, for her part, gives off the strong impression of a “market can do no wrong”-style laissez faire fundamentalist, denigrating “hyphenated capitalism” — such as Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) proposal for “common good capitalism” — and hilariously tweeting in March 2020, on the precipice of the COVID-19 lockdowns, that “as we are dealing with changes in our economy, tax cuts are always a good idea.” Hogan and Suarez, for their part, both encapsulate the Republican National Committee’s infamous advice found in its post-2012 presidential election “autopsy”: namely, to soften on immigration, avoid those icky “culture war” issues and focus on economic issues more palatable for suburbia. Trump’s win four years later single-handedly proved the myopia of such thinking.

Assuming most of these likely 2024 contenders do indeed make the plunge, Republican primary voters will face a big decision. Let’s hope they choose to move forward, not backward — in terms of repeating either discredited public policy or, as the case may be, repeating sullied candidates.

To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

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.

AUTHOR

JOSH HAMMER

Contributor

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Yes, Biden And The Left Are Coming For Your Gas Stove One Way Or Another

Remember when worries about the government coming for your gas stove were dismissed as just another conservative fever dream? At least that was the canned response from everyone from the Biden White House to the party loyalists in the corporate media.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm even chimed in, saying: “That is so ridiculous, that story. Because, it sounds like the government’s coming in to take your stuff. That is so not true. That is just not true.”

That’s a relief! Well, not really.

Less than two weeks after dismissing the gas stove furor as little more than tinfoil hat conspiracies, Granholm’s own agency proposed energy efficiency standards that ignited opposition from the gas appliance industry.

“We are concerned that this is another attempt by the federal government to use regulations to remove viable and efficient natural gas products from the market,” American Gas Association President Karen Harbert told Bloomberg.

“This approach by DOE could effectively ban gas appliances,” echoed Jill Notini with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. “We are concerned this approach could eliminate fully featured gas products.”

National Propane Gas Association President and CEO Steve Kaminski indicated that “[o]ne area clearly in [the Energy Department’s] crosshairs is pilot light usage.” Indeed, in its current form, the Energy Department admits its proposal would effectively take half of gas stove models off the market.

The reality may be worse, according to Notini, who told Bloomberg “‘it appears’ that 95% of the market would not meet the proposed levels.”

“This is what I would consider a more serious threat because the Department of Energy has greater authority than the [Consumer Product Safety Commission],” Kaminski went on to tell another outlet.

He’s right. The Energy Department has sweeping authority to squeeze your favorite household appliances out of existence should it so choose. In fact, the Biden Energy Department has issued over 100 energy efficiency rules on appliances and household equipment, which they claim will fight climate change and save you money.

But ask yourself this question: if this is so great, why is the government forcing it on us?

If history is any guide, every appliance the Energy Department touches will end up performing worse and costing way more. That, combined with state and local efforts to ban natural gas hook-ups in new homes and buildings, is how the left can take your gas stove from you without ever having to set foot inside your home.

It was never very believable that the president who promised to “end fossil fuels” would simply leave your gas stoves alone. Sure, the White House says they don’t support a ban, but they sure as heck aren’t working to make gas stoves more affordable or widely available.

Except gas stoves to die by 1,000 regulatory cuts. The Energy Department’s proposal is only one slash of the knife. The aforementioned state and local attacks on gas appliances and infrastructure will also cause the gas stove industry to bleed out.

The Biden Interior Department’s restrictions on drilling will cause more pain, as will the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax on methane emissions from natural gas operations.

Likewise, the Consumer Product Safety Commission could still take a swipe at your stoves. Even as the commission walked back a commissioner’s initial claim that a gas stove ban was “on the table,” its chairman said the group was “researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks.”

In other words, keep an eye on them.

And don’t forget to keep an eye on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was petitioned by a coalition of environmental groups in August to crack down on gas stoves and other gas appliances.

The environmentalists’ petition even makes the ludicrous claim that gas appliances carry “significant health impacts, from increasing the rates of asthma to causing thousands of premature deaths each year.”

Junk science claims like that defy logic and commonsense. And as journalist and author Robert Bryce recently noted, this distinctly anti-working class campaign is being funded by billionaires who probably use gas stoves in at least one of their many mansions.

If gas stoves get more expensive, the Mike Bloombergs and Jeff Bezoses of the world wouldn’t blink. They can afford to buy a gas stove at any price. If electricity rates skyrocket because everyone is forced to “go electric,” you think they would even notice?

Probably not, but middle class Americans sure would.

AUTHOR

MICHAEL BASTASCH

DCNF Managing Editor. Follow Michael on Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Schools To Host Black Lives Matter At School Week Which Teaches Kids About ‘Trans Affirmation,’ ‘Restorative Justice’

  • Several of the nation’s schools are preparing to celebrate “Black Lives Matter at School” week which features curriculums on “restorative justice” and “globalism.” 
  • With lesson plans, reading, documentaries and activities, students learn about activism and “structural racism.” 
  • “Any education leader interested in building awareness on the history and struggles of the African American community should seek meaningful policy solutions rather than virtue-signaling,” Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, a group that focused on combating racial discrimination, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Schools across the country are celebrating national “Black Lives Matter at School” week which teaches students about “restorative justice,” “globalism” and to be “trans-affirming,” according to the curriculum.

National “Black Lives Matter at School” week, which takes place from Feb. 6 to 10, focuses K-12 curriculums on 13 guiding principles including “restorative justice,” trans-affirmation and “diversity and globalism,” according to the curriculum. Through lesson plans, suggested reading, documentaries and activities, students learn about “structural racism” and how to be activists for the movement. (RELATED: Wisconsin School Board Bans Pride, BLM Flags From Classrooms)

“Black Lives Matter (BLM), as a political movement and an organization, has been proven to be a corrupted trojan horse that hijacks public education and injects hate and division into our young students,” Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, a group that focused on combating racial discrimination, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The national group suggests schools start the week teaching about “restorative justice, empathy and loving engagement,” the curriculum showedLessons include “Who You Gonna Call, exploring alternatives to policing” which asks students to read articles that detail how to rely on community organizations rather than the police and participate in a workshop that discovers “viable alternatives to policing.”

On day two, educators are advised to focus on “diversity and globalism” with suggested reading on Palestine including “Determined to Stay,” a story about Palestinians fighting for their land against “Israeli efforts,” the lesson plans stated. Educators are given suggested lessons on diversity, including “Teaching Tolerance,” which features an “anti-racism activity” where first through fifth-grade students learn about “unfair practices” and discrimination using Dr. Seuss’s picture book, The Sneetches.

During the week, students learn about “homophobia and transphobia” and to “recognize that LGBTQ people exist,” the curriculum showed. A suggested lesson plan for third through sixth graders focuses on the past of LGBTQ people and “events in American history that are often omitted from textbooks.”

A guiding principle of the week includes “black families” with lessons on the patriarchy, its “system of oppression” and the privileges men have over women, the curriculum showed. Suggested reading for the guiding principle includes the picture book “My Rainbow,” a story about a mom who makes a rainbow wig for her transgender daughter.

Schools throughout the country have begun their celebration of the week; San Diego Unified School District raised a BLM flag below the American flag on Wednesday, according to KPBS News. In Maryland, Howard County Schools began teaching the BLM at Schools curriculum on “Diversity and Globalism” including lessons on “speciesism,” a type of oppression against animals.

“I understand and can advocate for the principles of Black Lives Matter,” the lesson plans state.

Milwaukee Public Schools is hosting events in honor of “Black Lives Matter at School” week including “BLM Family Night” where families can participate in “cultural experiences” at the Black Holocaust Museum, according to the school website. Shoreline Public Schools in Washington plans to celebrate the week in order to help students “understand inequities based on race” and to “affirm that the lives of people of color matter,” the school district website showed.

BLM at School raised more than $103,000 for its national week of action as of Friday, according to its website. Several teachers unions have backed the week-long event in the country’s schools including the National Education Association, Chicago Teachers Union and the Virginia Education Association.

“Giving the BLM brand legitimacy in public schools is handing ideologies, radicals and groomers a license to harm our next generation,” Wu told the DCNF. “Any education leader interested in building awareness on the history and struggles of the African American community should seek meaningful policy solutions rather than virtue-signaling.”

BLM at School, San Diego Unified School District, Howard County Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools and Shoreline Public Schools did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The United States of the Communist Chinese Party

Good morning, Joey Kahn esteemed executive editor of the tabloid, The New York Times. I hope today finds you well on this brisk New York day. I’m sure you are a busy beaver covering all the accomplishments of our warrior, installed leader Joey Robinette Biden. It is almost like this man (I think he identifies as a man), can do no wrong. I know that by all the unbiased, apolitical investigative reporting your fine tabloid provides—nary a critical word about our installed leader.

The Man can do no Wrong

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of this political dynamo—the man in my eyes, as well as yours, seems to do no wrong. I understand they are already making plans to include him at Mount Rushmore. Details are being worked out: it seems planners are not sure if they will include his trademark waffle cone, and propeller hat, that he likes to wear, while riding his big wheel through the halls of the White House. Oh that Joey Robinette, such a scamp!

Well, it seems those lunatic right wingers are at it again—attacking Joey on all fronts. Why can’t they ever focus on all the great things he has accomplished, like…..well, ah, um, well, we can talk about those later Kahny.

Spy or Weather Balloon?

It seems that there is a balloon hovering over the United States, Montana specifically, that has been identified as property of Communist China. Conservatives are outraged as to why this spy/weather balloon was not identified as soon as it entered across our sovereign border? Perhaps officials in Portland or Seattle were busy holding the doors of jewelry and drug stores open, so criminals can more easily leave with their garbage bags of stolen property. Give them a break radical right wingers, what are you racist!

Well, back to the balloon. The CCP has said there is no cause for alarm, as this is a weather balloon. But, our Pentagon was not going to be bullied, no sir—they said this has all the ear markings of a spy reconnaissance balloon. Ok, you militarily warriors, what do we do next? Well, the powers that be said let’s just monitor it. Wait a minute! Didn’t you just say the CCP was SPYING on us? What gives Kahny?

General Milley: Military Genius

Well, after Joey got up from his usual 1:00-4:00 p.m. nap, he was all over this. He wanted to shoot it down (although, no one specifically heard him say this), there is the decisive installed leader we all know. Well, the military advised against this and decided to monitor the situation. Word is—General “I will give the enemy a heads up” Milley met with CCP officials and concurred that it is a weather balloon. When pressed for specifics, the “General” said, that CCP officials said, “I cross my heart and hope to die if we are lying,” and then they pinky sweared! Ole “keep the enemy in the loop” Milley, said that was good enough for him. Beijing Biden was briefed about this exchange after his 5-6pm pre-dinner nap. He had to run as his mac and cheese was getting cold. His press Secretary Karine Goebbels said, he has clearly stated that he is closely monitoring the situation……sort of like the southern border.

Alternative Points of View

Well Kahny, there has been a ton of speculation as to what is really going on, see if you think any of these are plausible:

  • This is the new form of money drop for team Biden. After all, the big guy has to get his 10% somehow from the CCP.
  • Joey likes balloons as much as ice cream and cartoons.
  • It is being used to monitor domestic terrorist parents, the ones that don’t want to have their kids indoctrinated with CRT, or gender ideology in KINDERGARTEN. Crazy Conservatives, right Joe Kahn?
  • It is the new rallying cry of the oppressed BLM….Balloons Lives Matter.
  • Heels Up Harris likes to look up at the pretty balloon and wave at it from her toney estate in Brentwood California. When asked to comment she said, “balloons are so beautiful, they reflect freedom, because freedom is beautiful like balloons, which in their own right are beautiful, which is much like our beautiful freedom.” I still can’t believe she only garnered 2% of the vote in the Democratic primary in 2020……I claim racism as the reason.
  • It is being sent to Mar-a-Lago, and will be protected 24/7 by F-16’s, on the orders of “General” Milley.

Conservatives Viewpoint

Well Kahny, it seems that conservatives I hear from are fed up. They have said that the corrupt puppet occupying the White House is at best woefully incompetent (as well as his equally incompetent administration), or at worst bordering on treasonous. They point out the United States, which has not protected our land borders, now is doing likewise in regards to our airspace. They want to know what the tipping point is? When foreign fighter jets fly over our sovereign nation, will the Vegetable-in-Chief be propped up with cue cards and teleprompters to say, “we are closely monitoring the situation.” If foreign troops land on our shore, will Beijing Biden say, “this is only a minor incursion,” sort of like him green lighting Russia before they invaded Ukraine. But if they start dropping bombs, they better watch out. Talibiden says that if this were to happen, he may consider cutting short his long weekend at his beach house, then come back to Washington and then……closely monitor the situation. So, we have that going for us.

What Gives Joe Kahn?

So, this country can put a man on the moon, but cannot figure out how to dismantle a balloon? What gives Kahny? Word from the pentagon was they didn’t want to endanger the 14 people who live in Montana. I can imagine all the evil despots around the world belly laughing at this entire clown show.

I did see that while this was on most front pages when the story broke, I found this story on page 18 in your Pravda, sorry The NY Times. We now know that the clown car administration knew this balloon was in our airspace for a week before releasing the information to the public. It seems that they wanted this tidbit hidden, so Secretary of State Blinken could go to China to take his usual tongue lashing from his masters, without this being exposed. Always the consummate professional you are Joe Kahn, this did not make it to print in your tabloid. You are a good servant to your masters. After all, wasn’t your publicity photo when you were installed over at Pravda—of you drinking coffee/herbal tea out of a CCP mug on your office floor in your stocking feet, while reading the latest edition of Pravda? Keep running cover for Bidenflation, nothing to see here.

This News Just Disappeared

Hey what happened to all the stories about the STOLEN documents taken by President Trump? Oh, that’s right, Botox Joe then MISPLACED documents from multiple places, when he was a Senator and VP, and NOT President—and miraculously the story disappeared. See the little play on key words there Kahny, I picked that up from you consummate “journalists” at Pravda.

Next Time

Next time we talk Kahny, maybe we could analyze the total meltdown by squad members on removal of IIhan Omar’s removal from the House of Foreign Affairs Committee. She is best known for her disparaging antisemitic and anti-American remarks, such as her reference to 9/11, when she said, “some people did something.” I don’t know why they are all upset, this precedent was set by their leader—the effervescent, lovely, grandmotherly, stock trading guru, Chardonnay Pelosi.

Poor AOC

Cries of racism, misogyny and tears, by the other members of the squad. AOC, was visibly upset, and ended her show with “no one has apologized to me yet, after my life was threatened.” Huh? I understand she was visibly upset behind the scenes also saying, “she is still upset Tommy asked Jenny to the prom instead of me, and that I should have been named class most attractive girl, and not Carol…..IT’S JUST NOT FAIR,” she screamed. We also found out that she was let go from her bartending gig, because she just couldn’t remember the ingredients to a gin and tonic. Poor, poor Sandy.

Well, I’ll let you get back to work Kahny. Remember the old Gray Lady’s mantra: printing all the propaganda that is fit to print. You’re a good servant indeed, Joe Kahn.

Sincerely,

Chris Cirino

©Christopher Cirino. All rights reserved.

A Brief History of California’s Eugenics Program (1909-2013)

After decades of forced sterilizations followed by feeble apologies, California is shifting to the endgame of its century-long sterilization program: taxing innocent citizens to pay off its victims.


It is a commonsense view that government spending is generally inefficient compared to spending by private people and businesses. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously argued, “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.”

This point about economic efficiency may be true, but it often lets government officials off the hook far too easy. A chilling example of this is how California is currently dealing with its long history of forcing sterilization on unwilling victims and then legislatively immunizing themselves from responsibility.

If you were a taxpayer in the Golden State as recently as 2010, your earnings probably helped fund the forced sterilizations of hundreds of inmates such as the Native American woman Moonlight Pulido.

“While in prison in 2005, Pulido said a doctor told her he needed to remove two ‘growths’ that could be cancer,” the Associated Press reported earlier this month. “She signed a form and had surgery. Later, something didn’t feel right. She was constantly sweating and not feeling like herself. She asked a nurse, who told her she had had a full hysterectomy, a procedure that removes the uterus and the cervix, and sometimes other parts of the reproductive system.”

“I felt like less than a woman,” Pulido told reporter Adam Beam. “We’re the only life-givers, we’re the only ones that can give life and he stole that blessing from me.”

Pulido was not alone. Other victims of this ghoulish policy shared stories with media, including Kimberly Jeffrey, who recalled resisting a tubal ligation procedure while she was sedated and strapped to an operating table.

“Being treated like I was less than human produced in me a despair,” Jeffrey told NPR.

Kelli Dillon, a former inmate at Central California women’s facility, explained how she found out that her ovaries had been removed in 2001 without her knowledge or consent after she was told surgeons were going to take a biopsy and remove a cyst.

“It was like my life wasn’t worth anything. Somebody felt I had nothing to contribute to the point where they had to find this sneaky and diabolical way to take my ability to have children,” Dillon told the Guardian in 2021.

It was not until years later, while still a member of the California State prison system, that Dillon began to realize other inmates were receiving hysterectomies and sterilization procedures without their knowledge, often after being told the procedures “were necessary to look for cancers or correcting gynecological issues.”

If the perpetrators of these violations were held accountable for their actions, such atrocities would be less likely to happen. But instead of being brought to justice for their malfeasance, the California State government is forcing innocent people to pay the price and getting off virtually scott free themselves. It is this sort of application for the expropriation of funds from private and productive citizens that has allowed governments to terrorize their citizens since time immemorial—a pattern that will have no reason to end until measures have been taken to eliminate the power of governments to enact such cruel legislation.

Timeline: California’s Forced Sterilization

1909: The state government of California created a sterilization program that became the largest eugenics movement in the United States, sterilizing more than 20,000 unwilling victims and also inspiring eugenics practices in Nazi Germany. The practices were carried out in public hospitals and other tax-funded institutions for the disabled and mentally ill, because people with disabilities or mental illnesses were deemed unfit for reproduction.

1927: By now the eugenics movement had become mainstream in the United States. It was widely thought among elite American policymakers that the human population could be improved by coercively preventing the reproduction of disliked demographics such as the disabled, the poor, the “feebleminded,” and even people deemed “sexual deviants” such as rapists, prostitutes, or even women who had sex out of wedlock. California’s constitutional right to continue its eugenics practices was enshrined by the United States Supreme Court in the Buck v. Bell case, in which the right of the state of Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck (who the state falsely declared “feebleminded”) against her will was upheld—and with it the rights of other state governments to make similar decisions for their inhabitants.

Writing for the majority, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (considered an idol of “progressivism” in his time and still by some today) stated, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”

And thus, he concluded in a famous line that, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

1968-1974: Although the eugenics movement had peaked in the 1930s, California government officials oversaw continued tax-funded sterilizations into the later half of the 20th century. For example, according to an official document released by Los Angeles County five years ago apologizing for a series of sterilizations county officials had overseen between 1968 and 1974, “Over 200 women who delivered babies at the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, the majority of whom were low income and born in Mexico, were possibly coerced into getting postpartum tubal ligations. At least some of the women were not aware they had been sterilized, and only learned that they had lost their reproductive rights during subsequent doctors’ visits. It is significant and necessary to acknowledge the irreparable harm inflicted onto the women who were subjected to these coerced sterilizations at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, and to their families.“

1979: California’s eugenics laws were repealed, supposedly ending the practice of state-funded eugenics in CA.

1999 – 2010: California’s eugenics movement was mysteriously revived, but this time under the guise of prison healthcare. According to the Associated Press less than two years ago, “Sterilizations in California prisons appear to date to 1999, when the state changed its policy for unknown reasons to include a sterilization procedure known as “tubal ligation” as part of inmates’ medical care. Over the next decade, women reported they were coerced into this procedure, with some not fully understanding the ramifications.”

2003: While the California government was still funding involuntary sterilizations in their state prisons, California Governor Gray Davis apologized on behalf of “the people of California” for the government’s “past” eugenicist actions. “To the victims and their families of this past injustice, the people of California are deeply sorry for the suffering you endured over the years,” the apology read. “Our hearts are heavy for the pain caused by eugenics. It was a sad and regrettable chapter in the state’s history, and it is one that must never be repeated again.”

2013: The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR, now Reveal) discovered that between 1997 and 2010 California state officials spent at least $147,460 of taxpayer funds to sterilize 148 female inmates. The above-quoted Moonlight Pulido, Kimberly Jeffrey, and Kelli Dillon were just three among them. Many of the records of these sterilizations were “lost or destroyed,” the Associated Press reports. NPR notes that the true number of illicit sterilizations during that period may have been significantly higher than reported, and that the operations appeared to disproportionately target repeat offenders.

The CIR’s claims were denied by the few state officials who commented in this early phase of the scandal. Valley State Prison’s former OB-GYN Dr. James Heinrich claimed that all sterilized inmates had consented to the operations. He even justified this use of tax dollars in a way that seemed to echo Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s disregard for the value of human life back in 1927. “Over a 10-year period, [$147,460] isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more,” Heinrich said according to NPR.

2014: Prompted by the CIR’s findings, auditors conducted their own investigation to confirm or disconfirm the CIR’s claims. “A state audit found 144 women were sterilized between 2005 and 2013 with little or no evidence they were counseled or offered alternative treatments,” the audit found. The auditors’ report, published at www.auditor.ca.gov, found that the misconduct had occurred with the oversight of either the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or California Correctional Health Care Services.

“This report concludes that during our eight-year audit period, 144 female inmates were sterilized by a procedure known as bilateral tubal ligation, a surgery generally performed for the sole purpose of sterilization,” the auditors wrote.

Later that year, in response to the revelations, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill supposedly written to prohibit future involuntary sterilizations in California prisons. However, as reporting from the Guardian noted, “While the bill passed unanimously, its carefully negotiated language allowed the state to escape further responsibility.”

2021: The California government approved legislation intended to compensate its sterilization victims through tax-funded reparations payments. The program will pay out at least $15,000 to any applicant who can prove to have been one of the victims.

2022-2023: California is searching for the victims that are still alive today, of which there are believed to be more than 600, according to reporting from the Associated Press in 2021 (although many of the victims never knew what was done to them, so it is unclear how they would know to apply for reparations). The government’s search strategy consists of sending posters, flyers, and fact sheets to libraries, prisons, and other establishments across the state, the AP reported this month.

After a year of searching, the government has approved only 51 out of 310 reparations applicants, denied 103 people’s applications, and closed three incomplete applications. According to the AP, “They say it’s difficult to verify the applications as many records have been lost or destroyed.” Therefore, according to Executive Officer of the California Victim Compensation Board Lynda Gledhill, “We try to find all the information we can and sometimes we just have to hope that somebody maybe can find more detailed information on their own. We’re just sometimes not able to verify what happened.”

Of the 51 victims who have been approved for reparations payments, three were sterilized under California’s eugenics laws that were repealed in 1979. The rest were sterilized more recently.

2024: The $4.5 million reparations program, for which an additional $2 million is being spent on advertising, will end.

Any victims still unpaid will have lost their chance to be compensated for the damages to their bodies, sexual identities, human dignity, and potential to pass their genes onto future generations.

The “public servants” governing California appropriated funds from innocent citizens against their will, used those funds to capture and sterilize involuntary victims, “lost or destroyed” the associated records, passed legislation to protect themselves from responsibility (after being caught), finally decided to pay reparations but passed the cost onto unwilling innocent citizens instead of facing any financial or legal repercussions themselves, and have only paid 51 out of at least 600 living victims now that about half the term of the reparations program has passed.

The above history of self-serving legislation and empty apologies confirms the suspicion common sense should lead us to anyway—namely that California government institutions cannot be trusted to legislatively protect the citizenry from continued atrocities given that the atrocities in question are often perpetrated by the government institutions themselves.

When unjustified coercion is consistently used by a group of people, the way to stop them is to impose costs on the guilty individuals that they themselves must suffer until their transgressions are atoned for. It is good that (albeit grossly inadequate) reparations are being paid, but until the perpetrators of the crimes are the ones to pay the price, the crucial lessons will not be learned and the crucial incentives not imposed.

There are several destructive institutions that allowed these eugenics operations to take place, but among them is the practice of government taxation itself. It allowed the perpetrators to conduct their operations without incurring personal expense, and through taxation the innocent many are now being scapegoated to protect the guilty few from what punishments they might otherwise be forced by the outrage of the public to endure.

If the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity aren’t going to be jailed for life or otherwise severely punished as any private citizen likely would for committing the same offenses, then at the very least the citizens who involuntarily pay their salaries and fund the programs of their twisted imaginations could be struggling to end the forced involvement of the citizenry that finances such programs with their tax payments.

If your tax dollars were spent solely to improve the health, education, and protection from violence of your fellow countrymen, instead of often funding the exact opposite of all these things as has been the case in California, then opposing the predation of tax collectors would not be quite so urgent. But in the real world, those malevolent enough (or those sufficiently under the sway of malevolent ideas) to think they should get to spend your money against your will often turn out to be malevolent in many other ways as well.

There are plenty of reasons one might struggle against government taxation. Perhaps you’re a poor or middle-class laborer at pains to afford your childrens’ education. Perhaps you’re a visionary entrepreneur trying to fund some world-changing new technological or medical research.

But at least as good a reason as any to oppose your wealth being confiscated is to prevent institutions such as the California State government from spending another dime on their campaigns of terror and reproductive destruction.

AUTHOR

Saul Zimet

Saul Zimet is a Website and Data Coordinator for HumanProgress.org at the Cato Institute and a graduate student in economics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

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

‘Child Abuse’: Trump Presents Plan to Stop ‘Mutilation of Our Youth’ in the Name of Transgender Identity

In the buildup to the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump has begun laying out his campaign platform.

On Wednesday, the former president released a video condemning the radical Left’s gender ideology and plans to protect children from experimental transgender surgeries and procedures.

“The left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children is an act of child abuse, very simple,” the former president began. “Here’s my plan to stop the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our youth.”

Trump called for the rescinding President Joe Biden’s “gender-affirming care” policies, which involve putting children on “puberty blockers,” transforming their bodies through cross-sex hormones, and committing surgeries on minors.

Trump plans to replace this program with an executive order to cease all federal programs that promote gender transitioning at any age. He also plans to urge Congress to stop taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries and ban minor sex surgeries in all 50 states.

“I will declare that any hospital or health care provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare and will be terminated from the program immediately,” Trump continued. “Furthermore, I will support the creation of a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who have unforgivably performed these surgeries on minor children.”

Trump also plans to use the Department of Justice to investigate pharmaceutical companies’ potential cover-up of minor sex-transition surgeries for profit and the marketing of unlicensed drugs to children.

“My Department of Education will inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they can be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences, including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination and the elimination of federal funding,” Trump said. “As part of our new credential body for teachers, we will promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.”

Trump will also urge Congress to pass legislation that affirms there are only two genders, enforce Title IX to ensure men are not participating in women’s sports, and stop any individual changing a minor’s sex without informing the child’s parents.

“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender, a concept that was never heard of in all of human history,” Trump added. “It was all when the radical Left invented it, just a few years ago.”

Trump concluded the video by promising to end the “madness” of transgenderism, once and for all.


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AUTHOR

Michael Ippolito

@mikeipps

Michael Ippolito is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

RELATED ARTICLE: Mom Demands Investigation Into School That Hid Her Daughter’s Gender Transition, Provided Chest Binders

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House Oversight Investigates John Kerry’s Secret Communist China Deals That Undermined U.S. Economy and National Security

This parasitic scumbag has made a career out of selling out this country, undermining our economy and national while acquiring enormous wealth. Climate is a euphemism for corruption. Imaginable corruption.

Has the FBI searched Kerry’s homes for classified docs?

John Kerry’s secret CCP negotiations probed by GOP Oversight chairman

Kerry’s activities, conducted ‘under the guise of climate advocacy,’ could undermine American interests, top Republican says

By Thomas Catenacci | Fox News

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is probing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry’s secretive negotiations with his Chinese counterparts.

Comer informed Kerry in a letter sent Thursday afternoon that the committee, under his leadership, has opened an investigation into Kerry’s role in the Biden administration and, in particular, his high-level climate negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To date, Kerry has ignored information and document requests from Comer and other committee Republicans sent when they were in the minority.

“To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests,” Comer wrote to Kerry. “Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy.”

“The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities,” he continued. “As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars.”

[….]

Letter to Kerry Re SPEC 118… by Jim Hoft

Despite the high-level role leading the Biden administration’s global climate strategy, Kerry’s office has been tight-lipped about its internal operations and staff members, sparking criticism from Republicans, including Comer, who have demanded transparency for such an important office.

“We are left with an insufficient understanding of your office’s activities, spending, and staffing,” Comer continued. “To enable long overdue oversight of your office, please provide the following documents and information.”

The Oversight Committee chairman added that Kerry has been too soft on China’s human rights violations “while promoting climate negotiations that the CCP does not even appear interested in entering.”

Kerry has been blasted for various comments that have appeared to downplay vast human rights abuses tied to China’s green energy supply chain. After he was asked in November 2021 about how slave labor was reportedly employed by solar panel firms in China, Kerry said he had to stay in his “lane” when negotiating with Chinese officials.

“Well, we’re honest about the differences,” Kerry said at the time. “We certainly know what they are, and we’ve articulated them, but that’s not my lane here… My job is to be the climate guy and stay focused on trying to move the climate agenda forward.”

Since assuming the SPEC position, Kerry has engaged in various private talks with Chinese counterparts, including two 2021 meetings that took place in China. Following a regional climate summit in April 2021, Kerry told CNBC that solving climate change was “not about China.”

“This is not about China. This is not a counter to China,” he told the outlet. “This is about China, the United States, India, Russia… a bunch of countries that are emitting a pretty sizable amount.”

China accounts for about 27% of total global emissions — nearly tripling the total in the U.S., the world’s second-largest emitter, according to Rhodium Group — and continues to approve and construct a large amount of coal power plants.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: John Kerry’s office consulted left-wing environmental groups while crafting policies, emails show

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

House Judiciary’s First Hearing Highlights Border Crisis

Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held its first full hearing on immigration. The hearing, entitled Biden’s Border Crisis—Part I, highlighted the impacts of illegal immigration on the American people, from schools to health care, to public safety, to families who have lost loved ones to drug overdoses.  It highlighted how Border Patrol is being moved from the border to help process individuals for asylum, allowing fentanyl to pour into the country between ports of entry.  It also discussed the threat that cartels and traffickers may bring their dangerous and lethal antics to our soil.

All of the witnesses at the hearing had personally experienced the impacts of the crisis at the southern border.  The first witness was Mr. Brandon Dunn, the father of a fifteen-year-old boy who died from fentanyl poisoning.  His son, Noah, was a sophomore in high school and was murdered by a drug dealer who sold counterfeit pills that contained 8 milligrams of fentanyl, which is four times the lethal dose.  Noah’s family is not alone; Mr. Dunn testified that there are countless people that have been lost to fentanyl, which is smuggled across the border.

The second witness was Arizona’s Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels.  He testified that he has experienced the good, the bad and the ugly, and today is the worst it has ever been.  He said border deaths are at an all-time high, and that the threats to his county residents and law enforcement are endless.  He shared that the morale of agents is extremely low and that calls for help have been ignored by this administration.

The third witness, Dale Carruthers, is a judge and rancher from Terrell County, Texas.  He stated that the chaos caused by this administration’s open-border policies is the reason he and many others have switched parties.  He described in detail how his ranch has suffered from illegal alien traffic, and in particular, has experienced water system damage that threatens his livestock and crops. Families like his, he said, live in fear because trespassing on their land, stealing of food, and damaging property is commonplace.

Finally, the Democrats’ witness, Texas Judge Ricardo Samaniego of El Paso, shared how his local community is treating asylum seekers and transporting them to other places in the country.  He described their expeditious processing of illegal aliens as “a success story,” describing how the county is processing over 1,000 people per day and has moved nearly 27,000 people since they started working with nonprofits to provide same-day travel to the destination of their choice.  He said the border is not open, that there is no invasion, despite the fact that there were 162,000 encounters in the El Paso sector in the first quarter of this fiscal year – and 55,000 encounters in December alone. He, like many Democrat lawmakers, did not see the correlation between illegal immigration and other serious issues like drug smuggling and human trafficking. He suggested the committee was conflating the issue of the border crisis with people seeking a better life.

Indeed, many Democrats in attendance complained about the entire premise of the hearing on the border crisis, even claiming that securing the border is racist.  Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) opened the hearing by declaring it would showcase “the racist tendencies of the extreme MAGA Republican wing of the party.”  Similarly, Rep. Jayapal (D-WA) criticized Republicans for using the hearing to make “a lot of statements that aren’t true” and using “nativist rhetoric” such as “invasion and flooding” to “demonize immigrants.” The Democrats’ witness echoed these statements, arguing: “There is no invasion of migrants in our community,” and that “claiming this continues a false, racist narrative…”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) also objected to the hearing.  She declared that its purpose was “to amplify the anti-immigrant hysteria and right-wing conspiracy theories” and that her presence there was “in opposition to any racist agenda pursued by Republicans.” She excoriated Republicans’ attempts to enforce the immigration laws and said their position on immigration “is to inflict as much cruelty as possible on the people fleeing suffering and persecution.”

Despite these objections, many Democrats also called the immigration system broken, and that the laws needed to be fixed.  Some argued that “legal pathways” or “functioning legal pathways” or “additional pathways” are needed to solve the problem at the border.  These lawmakers, however, appear to have forgotten that enforcing the laws also secures the border and restores order to our immigration system.

Between 2017 and 2020, President Trump robustly enforced our immigration laws, and the border was much more secure.  The data also show how border security collapsed during the first two years of the Biden Administration, and how the borders were thrown wide open to drug dealers, cartels, traffickers and criminals. Thus, there isn’t a problem with the law. The problem is that the Biden Administration refuses to enforce the law.

RELATED INFOGRAPHICS:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Republicans Proceed With Hearing to Investigate the Border Crisis Despite Biden Stonewalling

Arizona Republican Introduces Another Impeachment Resolution Against Alejandro Mayorkas

Bills to Shut Down Immigration Detention Spring up in Multiple States

EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR column is republished with permission. © Copyright 2023 Federation for American Immigration Reform, all rights reserved.

DeSantis Admin Moves To Revoke Liquor License Of Venue That Allowed Kids To See ‘Sexual’ Drag Show

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration moved to revoke an Orlando venue’s liquor license after it allowed minors to attend a “sexual” drag performance, according to a complaint filed by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco.

The department said Friday that the venue, The Plaza Live, operated by the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation, violated Florida statute and that the department would move, therefore, to “enter a penalty revoking [its] license,” according to the complaint. The decision came after the DeSantis administration warned in December it would revoke the venue’s liquor license if it did not age-restrict its “A Drag Queen Christmas” show which featured “sexual” acts. 

“Governor DeSantis stands to protect the innocence of children, and the governor always follows through when he says he will do something,” DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Children as young as 6 years old were permitted in the audience despite the warning, according to the complaint.

The department alleged the venue’s advertisement of the event, which reportedly read it was for “all ages,” did not disclose the sexual content of the show. While the venue posted a sign at its entrance that “some may think the context is not appropriate for under 18,” the text was “barely visible” and used “small font,” according to the complaint.

The drag show featured skits including “Screwdolph the Red-Nippled Reindeer,” the use of fake breasts and female genitalia, “intentionally” mooning the audience and “stimulating masturbation,” the complaint read. The performers also changed the lyrics to popular Christmas songs to allude to sexual acts.

In a rendition of “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,” performers reportedly sang “I’ll sit on his lap, he can put his milk and cookies all between my gap.”

Performers also swapped the lines of “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” to read “you know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen Vomit and Stupid and Dildo and Dicks-in…,” “Screwdolph the Red-Nippled Reindeer, had a very shiny bust…” and “then one soggy Christmas Eve Santa came to say ‘Screwdolph with your nipples so bright won’t you guide my sleigh tonight.’”

The Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

ALEXA SCHWERHA

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Florida Department Launches Investigation Into ‘All-Ages’ Christmas-Themed Drag Show

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House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan Officially Subpoenas Department Of Education Over School Boards Issue

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan officially subpoenaed the Department of Education on Friday, the Daily Caller has learned exclusively.

According to the subpoena, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is “commanded” to produce documents before the Judiciary Committee on March 1, 2023, at 9 a.m. ET. The subpoena comes as Jordan sent four letters to various officials Friday, calling for information and interviews the committee has been requesting, in a final warning shot before he sent the subpoena their way.

The Daily Caller first obtained the letters, which were sent to Chip Slaven, former Interim Executive Director and CEO of the National School Boards Association; Nina Jankowicz, former leader of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) “Disinformation Governance Board;” Viola Garcia with the National School Boards Association, and Jennifer Moore, the Executive Assistant Director for the Human Resources Branch at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In the letters, Jordan accuses each official of ignoring requests for transcribed interviews, as well as not providing the committee with the documents and information they previously requested. Jordan gives the officials one last chance to come before the committee before sending subpoenas to the officials.

Cardona allegedly solicited a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) likening parents to domestic terrorists, according to emails obtained by Parents Defending Education (PDE). The letter reportedly advocated for federal investigators to monitor and intervene in activities by concerned parents, PDE emails showed. After the letter was publicized, the NBSA sent out a memo to members saying, “We regret and apologize for the letter.”

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Chief national correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

House Judiciary subpoenas Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland for targeting parents

‘Child Abuse’: Trump Presents Plan to Stop ‘Mutilation of Our Youth’ in the Name of Transgender Identity

Rep. Jim Jordan Sends Final Warning Shot To Various Officials Before Subpoenas Fly

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

Rise of a Global Cult of Charlatans

Charlatan (shär′lə-tən) noun — A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble [twisted] claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud.


“A basic problem for people in politics is that approximately none have the hard skills necessary to distinguish great people from charlatans.” — Dominic Mckenzie Cummings, British political strategist.

“Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.” — Thomas Sowell, American author, economist, and political commentator.

“Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator.


In the book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft American horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novel author Stephen King wrote,

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”

It has come to our attention that there are a growing number of influential charlatans in this world.

Interestingly there are forty-two synonyms for charlatan: fraud, sham, fake, pretender, mountebank, quack, misleader, deceiver, faker, impostor, phony, imposter, fakir, hoaxer, phoney, counterfeiter, actor, humbug, operator, quacksalver, ringer, dissembler, trickster, swindler, poseur, imitator, sharper, impersonator, copycat, fraudster, mimic, skinner, bluffer, scammer, scamster, defrauder, dodger, feigner, duper, cozener, sharpy, sharpie.

There’s almost as many synonyms for charlatan as there are personal pronouns. Get my drift?

Charlatans come in all ages, of all ethnicities, political persuasions, genders (of course we know there are only two of those, unless you are a charlatan), religions, professions, societies and cultures.

Charlatans have become so numerous and invasive in everyone’s lives as to become a cult.

We have gone from the 1960s and the dawning of the age of Aquarius to the 2020s and the dawning of the age of the Charlatans.

Cult of Charlatanism

One cannot avoid reading, watching, listening to those who are charlatans. It’s impossible to avoid them and their cult in today’s cyber-connected world.

It almost seems as if they have learned their horrors, supernatural fictions, suspense’s, crimes, science-fictions, and fantasies from Stephen King.

From the world is going to end unless we stop cows from flatulating, to you must get multiple Covid booster shots to save mankind.

While there are many offenders the most egregious charlatans are those who have power. Power to force others to do things that they know are wrong. This power allows these charlatans to recruit new members into their cult of charlatans.

The cult of charlatanism is designed to create new charlatans by indoctrinating them at the youngest of ages to believe what is false, fake, phony, etc.

You see, in order to gain and keep power, the charlatan must have a growing number of charlatans who not only fall for their scams but actually believe and promote these scams.

At some point the charlatans take over a nation state, start wars, imprison those who don’t fall for their myths, lies and untruths.

Remember the dire warning about charlatans contained in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15:

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

At a certain point the charlatan becomes first a tyrant, then a dictator, and finally a genocidal mass murderer.

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Some in this world are waking up and fighting back against the charlatans. We’re on the side of the anti-charlatans.

But that is a discussion for another column.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Damar Hamlin, Paul Pelosi, and the Culture of Cynicism

Damar Hamlin is not dead. And Paul Pelosi was not engaging in funny business with his attacker.

Over the past few weeks, not everyone has agreed on those two points. Those who have reconciled the point with Hamlin seem to be more plentiful, and the consensus on the Pelosi opinion seems to be settling as well. Still, a cursory search of social media shows not everyone is convinced. But let’s back up a bit.

On January 2, 2023, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin dropped quickly to the ground after taking a hit in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals. He didn’t get up. Hamlin was hospitalized following a frighteningly long time on the field (the game was suspended), and a surprising nationwide prayer effort ensued. The social media rumor mill spun up immediately, with many attributing his cardiac arrest to his vaccination status. When that speculation didn’t lead to any conclusive ends, and public information about Hamlin’s case became scarce, another rumor began to circulate: Damar Hamlin was really dead. After all, even during his few public appearances following the incident, his face was obscured. It must be a body double, right?

Before the Hamlin incident, the slowly-emerging facts around the attack on then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband sparked its own slew of conspiracy theories on social media. Last fall, police responded to a 911 call about a home invasion at the Pelosi residence in San Francisco (Pelosi was in Washington at the time). When police arrived, Paul Pelosi was attacked by a man wielding a hammer. When initial public reports about the incident seemed hazy and incomplete, speculation and rumors ensued, often posed in the form of a question. Had Pelosi let the attacker in? Had he invited him? Did Paul Pelosi have an illicit relationship with the attacker? There were too many unanswered questions, went the narrative, and the official story didn’t add up.

Of course, as has now been shown neither conspiracy was true. Damar Hamlin is very much alive. Case closed. And the now-released video and audio of the Paul Pelosi incident show that, though the interaction was indeed weird (what home invasion isn’t a little weird?), Pelosi was most likely trying to keep the attacker calm — which ultimately failed when the police arrived.

Where do conspiracy theories like these emerge? What’s wrong with our society that people are so instantly cynical of anything and everything? Are we doomed to be a culture so enveloped in distrust that we can’t take anyone at their word?

Such an environment is not new. The prophet Jeremiah spoke about this as a warning to a people who weren’t following the Lord:

“Let everyone beware of his neighbor,
and put no trust in any brother,
for every brother is a deceiver,
and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.
Everyone deceives his neighbor,
and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongue to speak lies;
they weary themselves committing iniquity.
Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit,
they refuse to know me, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:4–6, ESV)

The further a culture strays from truth, the more it must search for it. Conspiracy theorists masquerade as the ultimate truth-seekers, except for the fact that they never arrive at the truth. Living in an age where flat earthers really do exist, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that any one of us might become swept up in a lesser conspiracy.

One contributing factor to this susceptibility is our appetite for immediate, omniscient knowledge about everything. Because he is a public figure, we take it for granted that we should know every detail about Damar Hamlin’s recovery. The fact that so many of us share much of our lives with the world on social media contributes — if we share everything about ourselves, then why shouldn’t we know everything about everyone else? The truth is, however, that social media personas are only part of the picture. The only way to fully know someone still requires some amount of physical proximity. That’s why most conspiracies are entertained from afar.

Even with the video evidence of Hamlin’s survival and Paul Pelosi’s genuine-yet-weird behavior during his attack, some will continue to refuse to acknowledge reality. Their never-ending pursuit of conspiratorial truth would come crashing down if they did. The cynic’s constant vigilance to see through everything and everyone causes them to miss what’s really present in front of them.

Jeremiah’s warning to his people was rooted in a refusal to know the Lord – a condition that’s not far removed from the conspiracy theorist’s refusal to ever arrive at the truth. Thankfully truth really does have an end in the person of Jesus Christ. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8, ESV). In him, we can find rest from the endless search to find a truth with endless depth.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

20 State AGs: Abortion-by-Mail Scheme Is Unsafe, Illegal

Distributing abortion pills through the mail is unsafe and illegal under both federal and state law, wrote Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the attorneys general of 19 other states, in letters to the headquarters of national pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens. Both companies are seeking certification from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to dispense abortion pills through the mail. “We will use every tool at our disposal to uphold the law if broken,” said Bailey.

The Missouri attorney general was joined on the letters by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.”

“Federal law expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will ‘be used or applied for producing abortion.’ 18 U.S.C. § 1461,” state the letters (the bodies of which are identical). “The text could not be clearer: ‘every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion … shall not be conveyed in the mails.’ And anyone who ‘knowingly takes any such thing from the mails for the purpose of circulating’ is guilty of a federal crime.”

While the law is clear, the letters suggested the confusion originated from another source. “In December, the Biden administration’s Office of Legal Counsel encouraged the U.S. Postal Service to disregard this plain text.”

“But,” continue the letters, “the text, not the Biden administration’s view, is what governs. And the Biden administration’s opinion fails to stand up even to the slightest amount of scrutiny. The Biden administration’s opinion admits that the plain text of § 1461 prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will be used for abortion …. But then the Biden administration argues that the text should not be ‘“[t]aken literally”’ by “marshalling a series of increasingly strange antitextual arguments.”

Because of the weakness of the Biden administration’s opinion, pharmacy giants cannot protect themselves from legal liability by hiding behind its opinion, the letters warn. The AGs predicted that courts will “reject the Biden administration’s bizarre interpretation” because “courts do not lightly ignore the plain text of statutes.” In particular, “the Supreme Court has been openly aversive to other attempts by the Biden administration to press antitextual arguments.”

Additionally, “a future U.S. Attorney General will almost certainly reject the Biden administration’s results-oriented, strained reading.” A simple change of administration — guaranteed every four to eight years — would leave the abortion pill-by-mail infrastructure out in the cold.

But “consequences for accepting the Biden administration’s reading could come far sooner,” the letters warn. “Section 1461 can be enforced … through civil litigation by State Attorneys General and private parties under § 1964(c).” In other words, these state AGs have threatened to sue CVS and Walgreens if they follow through on their intention to become abortion dispensaries.

In addition to the violation of federal law, “the laws of many states also prohibit using the mail to send or receive abortion drugs,” continue the letters. Using the example of Missouri, not only is it “unlawful to distribute an abortion drug through the mail,” but also “Missouri law also prohibits unfair or deceptive trade practices — and trade practices that violate federal law necessarily are unfair and deceptive.” This prohibition on unfair or deceptive trade practices is far more difficult to dodge or challenge in court, and it is likely paralleled in the laws of other states.

The letters justified Missouri’s state-level prohibition by explaining that abortion pills are unsafe. First, they “are far riskier than surgical abortions, … ‘5.96 times as likely to result in a complication as first-trimester aspiration

abortions.’” Second, “when these heightened complications invariably occur, women suffer those harms at home, away from medical help.” Third, “mail-order abortion pills also invite the horror of an increase in coerced abortions … because there is no oversight. Outside the regulated medical context, a person can obtain an abortion pill quite easily and then coerce a woman into taking it.”

CVS and Walgreens have come under increasing pressure after they announced plans to obtain FDA certification to dispense abortion pills. Earlier this month, 14 pro-life groups wrote letters to both pharmacy corporations, urging them to reconsider. Meanwhile, other pharmacies, like Walmart, are waiting in the wings to see whether the decision backfires.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE:  Youngkin: Virginians Want Fewer Abortions, Not More

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Get Woke. Go Broke?

According to a Rasmussen poll released on January 24, 2023, under the title “Get Woke, Go Broke?” what matters most to 87 percent of Americans is product quality. A majority of those polled want corporate officers and their boards to focus on making their products safe, effective, and more affordable. Not spending their time “virtue signaling” about how “woke” they are. Or, riding their “wokeness” to invitations to trendy cocktail parties in Georgetown or on NYC’s Upper East Side.

Arguably, there is a difference between boycotting certain “virtue signaling” products and simply choosing not to buy them anymore because you, as a consumer, think management is paying more attention to being “woke” than to product quality, safety, and value.

So, if one is put off because that pretty Native American Princess is no longer on the butter carton, buy some other brand. If the welcoming smile of the lady on the pancake box is gone, buy a different brand. If your favorite little chocolate bits go “woke,” buy something else. Or, better yet, save your teeth from sugar-caused decay.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with the concepts of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE). Applied fairly, they are quite laudable. For example: How wonderful if college faculties were more “diverse” by “including” more conservative professors among the faculty for a change. Or, not punishing professors for having a different interpretation of history from others. (Surveys show liberal professors outnumber conservative professors by a ratio of 12 to 1.)

And no one should be excluded because of race, religion, or ethnic origin. Unfortunately, some think Equity means “free stuff” at taxpayer expense in exchange for no work. In other words: perpetual welfare. But, as U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) says, “Welfare should be a bridge. Not a parking lot.”

Moreover, racial quotas are a very bad idea. Professor Thomas Sowell, himself a person o color, says racial quotas have done more harm than good for people of color. Who among us, of all colors, has not wondered if someone appointed or even elected to high office got there due to merit or solely due to skin color, gender, or sexual orientation? Quotas provide a mental shortcut to being dismissive of others.

An unfortunate side effect of quotas is that they attach a stigma that cannot be detached. For example: In 1960, Major League Baseball attached an asterisk to Roger Maris’ home run record because it took Maris* more games to break the previous home run record set by Babe Ruth.

If “woke” CEOs would like to “virtue signal” their support for our military veterans and for the elderly in general, how about spending some effort to make the cooking instructions on their cans and other packaging more readable? Or, how about finding ways to make packaged goods easier for the physically challenged to open? It should not take a pair of garden shears or a saber saw to open a package.

Manufacturers should stay in their own lanes and leave the politics to the voters and to the politicians who are fully capable of messing everything up, all on our own.

Suggested reading: Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell, 2005. Preferential Policies by Thomas Sowell, 1990. Econ Journal Watch, September 2016. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman, 1980.

©2023. William Hamilton. All rights reserved.