Amidst the negative news surrounding the state of marriage and the family in the U.S., a bright spot is beginning to emerge: the number of children being raised by their married mothers and fathers is slowly rising.
A new analysis from Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, found that “[s]ince a low ebb around 2014, the share of kids living with their parents has actually risen by about 1.5 percentage points.” While the relatively low growth rate might seem inconsequential, it stands in stark contrast to the overall pattern of decline in stable American families over the last 50 years. From the early 1960s until around 2014, the share of children living in intact families steadily nosedived from 87% down to around 62%.
As Stone observes, there are a number of reasons behind the increase in stable households for children. Even though marriage rates are falling, so is divorce, which means that the marriages that are happening are more stable. On top of this, the rate of children born to married parents has remained stable. At the same time, writes Stone, “birth rates of unmarried women have fallen very rapidly” over the last 20 or so years. So despite falling fertility and marriage rates, “the children who are born are more likely to live with two married parents.”
This is good news for children, as an abundance of studies show that kids raised in an intact, two-parent household have vastly better life outcomes than their peers who are raised in single-parent households. One recent research brief found that children raised in intact homes are “more likely to be flourishing economically, educationally, and socially” with regard to child poverty, college graduation rates, and rates of incarceration than their counterparts in single parent homes.
In addition, a summary of the effect that family structure has on children noted that kids who grow up with their married mother and father are more often involved in community activities like sports and other extra-curricular activities, spend more time with their fathers, are 20 to 35% more physically healthy, score higher in cognitive tests like verbal reasoning, and are less likely to exhibit problematic behavior at school than their peers from non-intact families.
As family sociologist Brad Wilcox and other researchers have observed, there has been a notable recent challenge to the social scientific consensus on the benefits that intact families give children in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Harvard Gazette, which argue that family structure has negligible consequences on children. But as Wilcox contended, these arguments ignore what the consensus in the sociology field has been for decades. “It is simply the truth that white and black children usually do better when raised by their own mother and father, compared to single-parent and stepfamilies,” he wrote.
According to Stone’s most recent analysis, this means that the future is looking a little bit brighter for America’s children. “All in all, the decline in intact families in America appears to have bottomed out for now,” he wrote. Stone also noted that not even a global pandemic could stop the rising trend of children growing up in intact families.
“Naturally, these trends could change in the future, but as of now, it appears that not only did COVID fail to undo the trend of rising intact families, it may have accelerated it for certain groups,” he pointed out.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-18 15:03:052023-01-18 15:03:05The Number of Children Growing Up in Intact Families Is Rising
Gay activist couple accused of sodomizing adopted sons, ages 1 and 9 and distributing home-made porn of the abuse. Sick. Throw them in prison! https://t.co/MTmTtOKOVw
“Whoever succeeds in telling the stories to the children gets to control the future.” That was Kirk Cameron’s answer to people wondering why he’s joined the debate over America’s libraries. As parents everywhere fight to keep graphic content out of their children’s hands, Texas officials are warning the battle is taking an ominous turn. It’s not just the forces of the Left that communities will have to contend with. It’s the federal government, whose new investigation into a local school district could upend every grassroots effort to protect kids.
For leaders in Texas’s Granbury School District, the bomb dropped shortly before Christmas. Officials in the Civil Rights Division of Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) said they’d received a formal complaint from the ACLU that the small community outside Fort Worth was somehow violating the government’s definition of “sex” by pulling books from school library shelves.
The ACLU’s beef dates back to November 2021 when Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) urged the state’s association of school boards to “ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.” His letter, which keyed off parents’ growing outrage about the material on school shelves, insisted on greater transparency about the content students can access. Abbott said his office had been contacted by a number of moms and dads who were “rightfully angry” about the “pornographic and obscene” content.
Granbury officials took the governor’s directive to heart, ordering a review of the district’s book titles. But what ultimately landed the district in hot water was a candid conversation Superintendent Jeremy Glenn had with the schools’ librarians — which was eventually leaked to the press. He talked about the conservative make-up of the community and insisted that they would act accordingly. “We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said in a reference to the two new school board members. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”
At the end of the day, Glenn insisted, “I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries. … And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” the superintendent went on. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries. … I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn insisted. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”
Over the next two weeks, Granbury embarked on what the Texas Tribune called “one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review.” Two months later, the volunteer review committee inexplicably voted to return all but three books that they’d permanently banned.
By then, the audio of Glenn’s meeting had made its way to the media, and liberal news outlets like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and NBC News pounced, accusing Glenn of anti-LGBT bias. That’s when the local chapter of the ACLU got involved, demanding an apology and calling for every book to be reinstated.
Glenn didn’t oblige, conveying through district spokesman Jeff Meador that all the titles they’d pulled from shelves are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate.” That said, the libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including,” he pointed out, “books that analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”
Naturally, that didn’t satisfy the ACLU, whose lawyers decided to involve the federal government in a local dispute that could have a chilling effect nationwide. “If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor,” The Washington Post cautioned, “the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and requiring administrators — amid a rising tide of book challenges and bans — to develop procedures ensuring student access to books that some Americans, especially right-leaning parents, deem unacceptable.”
Of course, the heart of the ACLU’s allegation — that Granbury (and Glenn, especially) is violating the Left’s new definition of “sex” — is a stretch by almost every legal standard. The Biden administration may have twisted the word “sex” to mean “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” but that interpretation has never been passed into federal Title IX law.
And yet, the ACLU’s Chloe Kempf maintains (unconvincingly) that the “book removals and also the comments create this pervasively hostile environment.” “Both send a message to the entire community that LGBTQ identities are inherently obscene, worthy of stigmatization — and the book removals uniquely deprive LGBTQ students of the opportunity to read books that reflect their own experiences.”
Conservatives pushed back, insisting that this isn’t about LGBT hostility but age-appropriate content. Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, insisted that this whole controversy amounts to a leftist intimidation campaign. “The ACLU is bullying school districts who have responded to parental concerns about pornographic library books offered to children. Access to pornography at school is not a civil right.” Even if the law had been changed to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX, “children still do not have a right to sexually explicit or violent content in public school library books. And school systems are under no obligation to support a publishing industry who can’t sell these books to parents and so sells them to librarians instead.”
Frankly, Kilgannon argued, “This is federal overreach into the education system, which is supposed to be a state issue.” Not to mention that “Biden is weaponizing another government agency: the DOE.”
If the president does intervene, dictating how school libraries handle certain book titles, the issue will almost certainly end up in court. “This isn’t the sort of civil rights issue that requires federal intervention,” Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argued. “It’s a question about books in schools, not about individual rights being violated.”
Either way, it does show one thing: the potency of the parents’ movement. Cameron, who’s in his own fight to host story hours in the same libraries that allow drag queens, is witnessing the momentum firsthand. As many as 1,000 people turned out in Placentia, Calif. to hear the “Growing Pains” actor read his new book, “As You Grow.”
“I know why parents and grandparents are coming out of the woodwork,” Cameron told The Federalist. “They understand there is a war on children — and nobody’s going to stop it but us.” So if there’s one thing Americans can do, he told the crowd, it’s this: “Don’t just talk about what’s going on. Change what’s going on.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-18 14:49:272023-01-19 11:35:51Team Biden Joins the School Library Wars, Launching Federal Investigation
Gay activist couple accused of sodomizing adopted sons, ages 1 and 9 and distributing home-made porn of the abuse. Sick. Throw them in prison! https://t.co/MTmTtOKOVw
”The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” according to a 12-country policy review by medical advocacy group Do No Harm. The group compared “different legal requirements for gender change-related treatments and actions” among the U.S. and the 11 countries of Northern and Western Europe. These countries — Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — “share the United States’ broad support for transgenderism” yet “reject the gender-affirming care model for children.”
Do No Harm explained that America has adopted a “gender affirmation” policy for children, which “assumes that gender incongruence can manifest as early as age four and that questioning a minor’s gender self-definition is harmful and unethical. The American Academy of Pediatrics has embraced an affirm-only/affirm-early policy since 2018, and most states abide by its guidance despite withering medical and scientific criticism.” By contrast, some European countries “have explicitly abandoned” the gender-affirming care model and “now discourage automatic deference to a child’s self-declaration on the grounds that the risks outweigh the benefits.” They also recommend “months-long psychotherapy sessions to address co-occurring mental health problems.”
The report proceeded with a country-by-country comparison of requirements for the medical and legal gender transition of children.
American restrictions on puberty blockers vary by state, but “the most permissive states do not impose restrictions,” and blockers have been prescribed “as early as age eight.” Oregonians “are legally entitled” to blockers “from age 15,” with Medicaid assistance and without parental consent. In Iceland, there is “no minimum age” except as a “matter of clinical judgment.” The U.K. permits blockers “from the earliest stages of puberty,” while Belgium, France, and Norway permit blockers from Tanner Stage II, or “once physiological signs of puberty manifest.” Denmark, Netherlands, and Sweden allow puberty blockers “from age 12.” Finland allows them “about age 13.” Ireland allows them “under 16 years old.” In tiny Luxembourg, “no official guidance exists,” but “in practice, adolescents almost always receive blockers in a neighboring country.”
Restrictions on prescribing cross-sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone) to minors also vary state by state across the U.S., but “the practice has been documented with parental consent in children under the age of 13.” In Oregon, minors may “access cross-sex hormones from age 15 without consent and with Medicaid assistance.” France has “no age restrictions” on cross-sex hormones, but “clinicians generally will not administer them before Tanner Stage II.” Again, Luxembourg has “no official guidance,” but “Patients almost always receive hormones in a neighboring Country.” In every other European country studied, cross-sex hormones were available “from age 16,” although the U.K. requires that “individuals must have been receiving puberty blockers for at least one year.”
Do No Harm provided few specifics regarding the status of parental consent for these chemical gender transition procedures. They do say that, besides Oregon, “in most states, puberty blockers cannot be administered before age 18 without parental consent,” but they provide no insight on cross-sex hormones. However, California passed a bill in September effectively removing any parental consent requirement.
By contrast, children may not access gender transition chemical treatments until age 16 or 18 in nearly every country. Denmark is the most permissive, allowing children without parental consent to access puberty blockers at 15. In the U.K., “instances of children under 16 receiving blockers without consent are reportedly rare,” although such consent is not required. To access cross-sex hormones without consent in either country, children must be 16. In Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, and Norway, children must be 16 to access either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, although Norway raises the age for cross-sex hormones to 18 “if the treatment is considered irreversible.” Sweden also allows cross-sex hormones without consent at 16, “so long as the individual is deemed sufficiently mature,” while it bars puberty blockers without consent until age 18. In Belgium, Finland, and France, neither treatment is available without parental consent until a person turns 18.
The report also compared the number of youth gender clinics in the various countries. The U.S. led by far, with “more than 60 pediatric gender clinics and 300 clinics” that “provide hormonal interventions to minors.” France also has many locations because “care is decentralized,” and “any doctor can prescribe treatment for medical transition.”
But after that the number quickly dwindles. Sweden administers all gender transition procedures through four hospitals, of which three provide surgery. Denmark administers gender transition hormones at only three locations. There are only two hospitals or clinics providing medical gender transitions in Belgium, Finland, and soon the U.K., which currently has one. Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway have one gender transition facility apiece. Granted, the United States is far larger than many of these countries. But the U.S. has a population 2.5 times larger than all the countries except France, while it has 20 times as many clinics providing hormonal interventions to minors.
Do No Harm also compared the minimum age at which countries allow persons to legally change their gender in civil registries. In the U.S., “there is no minimum age” for federal documentation, such as passports or Social Security cards, but such changes require the consent of both parents. There is more variation in state documentation, such as ID cards and birth certificates, but at least seven states “permit minors to change their birth certificate gender markers with parental consent.”
Three European countries, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the U.K., have policies similar to the U.S. federal government in that there is no age limit, but children under the age of 18 need parental consent to change legally recognized gender. In Norway, gender markers can be changed, with parental permission, from age six, and from age 16 without parental permission. Netherlands also allows 16-year-olds to legally change their gender without parental permission. In Belgium and Ireland, 16-year-olds may change their legal gender identity with parental consent, and 18-year-olds may change it without parental consent. Denmark, Finland, France, and Sweden do not allow minors under the age of 18 to legally change their gender identity.
The U.S. also exceeds most European countries in legally recognizing genders other than male or female. Federal “passports offer an X gender option,” and a sizable number of states allow a gender marker of “X” on identification documents (22 states plus D.C. on driver’s licenses, and 16 states plus D.C. on birth certificates). Only Iceland permits gender variation, allowing “third gender and/or nonbinary designations” on official documents. Denmark and Ireland allow a third gender option on IDs and passports respectively, but their “civil registry is binary.” In the Netherlands, a person may only obtain a gender neutral designation through a court. In the other seven countries, Belgium, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K., “male and female are the only recognized genders.”
“The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” concluded the review. “Only France comes close, yet unlike the U.S., France’s medical authorities have recognized the uncertainties involved in transgender medical care for children and have urged ‘great caution’ in its use.”
“Given the growing body of evidence and the European consensus, which is grounded in medical science and common sense,” pleaded Do No Harm, “the United States should reconsider the gender-affirming care model to protect the youngest and most vulnerable patients.”
“I respect everybody and I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.”
Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov on refusing to wear a rainbow jersey for warm ups during “Pride Night” due to his Russian Orthodox faith. pic.twitter.com/wCUl8slmRB
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-18 14:35:242023-01-19 15:54:29Report: U.S. Is ‘Most Permissive Country’ for Minor Gender Transition
For a man who ran for president to save the soul of America from racism, former segregationists’ buddy Joe Biden resembles few people more than the infamously abusive police chief Bull Connor. Both allowed domestic terrorists aligned with the Democratic Party to vandalize, bomb, and set fire to their opponents’ churches with impunity while using maximum force to arrest peaceful, Christian, protesters.
Sixty years later, little more than the names and faces have changed: Connor’s allies rallied behind the banner of white supremacy, while Biden’s supporters mobilize around “abortion on demand without apology.” The Biden administration’s refusal to protect pro-life Christians bears an eerie resemblance to Bull Connor’s collusion and selective prosecution. Imagine how civil rights protesters would have fared if George Wallace won the 1964 presidential election, and you get a sense of Biden’s treatment of peaceful, prayerful, pro-life advocates.
‘We’re Going to Allow You 15 Minutes….’
The Freedom Riders, who tested Southern segregation laws from Virginia to New Orleans, planned to stop in Birmingham on May 14, 1961. The Ku Klux Klan — and the Alabama lawman they helped elect Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor — had other plans. The KKK plotted a series of coordinated strikes against the protesters spanning multiple cities. Klansmen knew the details of the demonstrators’ travel itinerary, because the Birmingham sheriff’s department told them — and the sheriff’s department knew, because the FBI told them. As the protesters departed Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. warned the Freedom Riders, “You will never make it through Alabama.”
In the days leading up to their arrival, Bull Connor personally gave the Klan the green light to rough up Yankee “meddlers.” Connor’s right-hand man, Birmingham Police Department Sgt. Thomas H. Cook, arranged for a meeting with a man named Gary Thomas Rowe, a member of a violent chapter of the Klan — but also an FBI informant. Historian Raymond Arsenault recounts the scene:
Unaware that Rowe planned to relay his words to the Birmingham FBI office, Cook laid out an elaborate plot to bring the Freedom Ride to a halt in Birmingham. He assured Rowe that other members of the Birmingham Police Department, as well as officials of the Alabama Highway Patrol, were privy to the plan and could be counted on to cooperate. “You will work with me and I will work with you on the Freedom Riders,” he promised. “We’re going to allow you 15 minutes. …You can beat ‘em, bomb ‘em, maim ‘em, kill ‘em. I don’t give a s***. There will be absolutely no arrests. You can assure every Klansman in the country that no one will be arrested in Alabama for that fifteen minutes.”
“By God, if you’re going to do this thing,” Cook later told the Imperial Wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Shelton, “do it right.” Similarly, Bull Connor instructed the Klan to “make them look like a bulldog got a hold of them.”
The Klan didn’t have to be told twice; they planned to strike twice. They swarmed the first of the two vehicles, a Greyhound bus, when it arrived in nearby Anniston, breaking its windows and slashing its tires. Police escorted the protesters as far as the city limits … where the Klansmen were waiting. One Klansman threw an explosive device into the back of the bus and, as protesters scurried out of the door for their lives, the mob beat them savagely. “Then, God Almighty intervened,” remembered Hank Thomas: The bus’s gas tank exploded in two bursts, frightening the crowd away. “A miracle happened in Anniston.”
Klansmen posed as passengers of the Trailways bus carrying the other group of Freedom Riders. In Anniston, the Klan insisted the riders segregate the bus and pummeled several passengers — including Walter Bergman, then age 61 — to make their point. Although Bergman would remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life and have to learn to feed himself again, a local policeman told his assailants, “Don’t worry about no lawsuits. I ain’t seen a thing.”
Unfortunately, the real violence awaited in Birmingham. Confident they would face no repercussions, the Klan invited CBS News reporter Howard K. Smith to witness the violence as the bloodied protesters descended the bus stairs to desegregate the terminal’s lunch counters. A mob of Klansmen (including the FBI informant, Rowe) and members of the National States Rights Party swarmed, sometimes beating protesters 12-on-one. The melee continued until one of Connor’s detectives, Red Self, told the Klansmen: “Get the boys out of here. I’m ready to give the signal for the police to move in.”
Faced with local intransigence, the FBI would soon arrest the four people responsible for firebombing the Greyhound, but it would be far from the last act of unpunished violence. A tragic 40 unsolved bombings over two decades earned the city the nickname “Bombingham.”
Not content to outsource his brutality to the Klan, Bull Connor ordered his police to use all means necessary to quash the message of Christian civil rights protesters.
Release the Guilty, Jail the Innocent
Bull Connor’s police proved more likely to arrest peaceful protesters than the Klansmen perpetrators. In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” courtesy of Connor’s constabulary. As King and his supporters went to jail for “parading without a permit” (holding unauthorized demonstrations), Connor said:
[W]e are not going to stand for this in Birmingham. And if necessary we will fill the jail full, and we don’t care whose toes we step on. I am saying now to these meddlers from out of our city, the best thing for them to do is stay out if they don’t want to get slapped in jail. … I’ve never seen anyone yet look for trouble who wasn’t able to find it.
Volunteers evaporated from the desegregation campaign. King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), responded with “The Children’s Crusade,” recruiting more than 1,000 schoolchildren to march through Birmingham on May 2 and 3, 1963. As the youngsters left the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church carrying signs with such messages as, “Segregation is a sin,” Connor’s men arrested 959 the first night. But they did not merely apprehend the marchers: Police blasted young children with high-powered firehoses, beat them with batons, and sicced police dogs on them.
The cruelty was the point. The pretense of law masked ruthless hatred, as segregationists used overwhelming force to discourage them from ever again publicly voicing views disfavored by the powerful.
As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Joe Biden Bull-ies the Pro-Life Movement
Fast forward 60 years, and violent hatemongers with powerful political allies have again received free rein to terrorize their nonviolent, Christian foes. But Jane’s Revenge has enjoyed more than a 15-minute reign of terror. Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last May 2, pro-abortion fanatics have launched a wave of arsons, vandalism, and death threats against at least 101 pro-life churches or pregnancy resource centers. Abortion activists firebombed pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the same way Bull Connor let the Klan firebomb Freedom Riders’ buses — with the same number of arrests: zero. Leftist extremists perpetrated 52 attacks before the FBI even announced its investigation.
This wave of violence, like most cowardly violence, targets the powerless — unborn babies, their desperate mothers, and the nonviolent Christian churches and nonprofits that serve them — but this wave also victimized the powerful with impunity. On June 13, two people threw a lit flare into the offices of Washington State Rep. Andy Barkis (R). Eight days later, vandals smashed the windows at the local office of U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.). Like the Klan in Alabama, pro-abortion fanatics feel confident enough to leave their calling card — often scrawling, “If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you” on pro-life women’s centers and churches — and to alert the media they will take “increasingly drastic measures.”
Biden’s nonfeasance embodies the administration’s defiant message that its ideological opponents enjoy no legal protection — a far cry from the promise Biden made the day after the media declared him winner of the 2020 election: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” The atmosphere of hatred has resulted in an 84-year-old pro-life woman being shot. (The male suspect said he shot her by accident.)
At least one congressman has connected the dots. The wave of anti-life terrorism represents “the death cult’s echo of the KKK’s burning cross — brazen, violent intimidation,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). “But the federal government responded to the KKK. Where is the Biden Justice Department amid this violent campaign of national scope?” The administration, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), instead aim to “put a stop” to pro-life pregnancy resource centers.
“To my knowledge, no one — no one — has been prosecuted under the FACE Act,” noted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as House Republicans passed a resolution condemning violence against pregnancy resource centers on January 11. J. Edgar Hoover, who shared the racial views of his time, arrested the Anniston bombers in a matter of days. In a world of high-definition security cameras and facial recognition software, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have apparently arrested no one in eight months.
At least, no one who shares the administration’s extreme commitment to abortion. “But if you’re a pro-life activist, and you’re praying outside of an abortion clinic like Mark Houck, guess what happens to you?” asked Jordan. “The FBI kicks in your door, arrests you, puts you in handcuffs, and does it in front of your wife and seven children,” using dozens of heavily armed agents. Biden’s DOJ meted out similar treatment to Paul Vaughn, a 55-year-old father of 11. Just as black-and-white footage of Bull Connor unleashing his dogs on children inspired national revulsion of segregation, Biden’s overreach should inspire outrage at federal collusion with the abortion industry.
🚨 One of the pro-life leaders targeted by Biden's DOJ sent me footage of the early morning FBI raid on his family home. Paul Vaughn was placed in handcuffs by armed FBI agents in front of his children just before school drop-off. Watch as his wife pleads for answers mid-arrest: https://t.co/lUP6tJOSzWpic.twitter.com/XeYComC6mZ
As pregnancy resource centers burned, in July Biden’s Justice Department established the Reproductive Rights Task Force to take “proactive and defensive legal action” to protect the abortion industry (and punish its foes) — and tapped as its leader Vanita Gupta, who as a “civil rights” officer in Obama’s DOJ tried to force all public schools to allow men to use women’s restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations or lose all federal funding. She applied her ideological fervor equally well to abortion. Biden’s Justice Department arrested 26 pro-life advocates by last October, with more following, including:
Franciscan friar Fr. Fidelius Mocinski (whose birth name was Christopher), just as local New Jersey prosecutors dropped charges for conducting his “Red Rose Rescues”: entering abortion facilities and giving mothers red roses. In this case, he lay down in front of an abortion facility’s entrance, just as protesters in the ‘60s laid down in front of Lyndon Johnson’s presidential limousine. (“If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car,” cracked segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama (D) during the 1968 presidential campaign, “it’ll be the last car he’ll ever lay down in front of.”);
Eleven defendants who entered an abortion facility in Tennessee in March 2021. If convicted, some of the defendants stand to serve up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars;
Pastor Daniel Courney of Enfield, N.J., one month after it wrung an agreement out of him not to commit “future FACE Act violations” — which, out of fear, would effectively cause him to end his presence outside abortion facilities; and
Bevelyn Williams and Edmee Chavannes, who happen to be black women from the South, for allegedly violating the FACE Act as far back as June 2020. (Curiously, their indictment begins with peaceful pro-life activity in 2019.) In one alleged violation in the indictment, Chavannes told an abortion facility employee, “Do not touch me.”
The arrest total seems all the more lopsided, since pro-life women’s centers are 22 times more likely to be attacked than abortion facilities. Both Gupta and Garland touted their work prosecuting pro-life advocates at a civil rights assembly last December. Both invoked Martin Luther King Jr.
As noted, in many cases the Biden administration presses pro-life advocates to sign agreements not to protest any more — a similar tactic employed by the Obama-Biden administration. A federal judge questioned whether the Obama-Biden administration’s prosecution of Mary Susan Pine “was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion provider], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities.” (Ultimately, the DOJ paid Pine $120,000 in legal fees.) One could be forgiven for asking the same question of these cases.
A trial may conclude some of these acts violated the law, just as civil rights protesters violated the law of their day — the law their peaceful, prayerful actions aimed to change. But today’s prayerful pro-life advocates see their homes raided, not aided, by the federal government led by a vice president who raised bail money for the BLM’s “mostly peaceful” rioters. They face enormous legal bills, a criminal record, huge fines, and perhaps more than a decade in prison.
Despite these pressures, the pro-life movement has not buckled, as the terrorists and their federal government enablers wished. When bombed, they have rebuilt. When denied protection, they have secured their ministries of mercy. When denied justice, they hired their own private investigators. They have suffered long and done good. They have emerged from the fiery crucible of persecution with a stronger resolve to help the weak and save the innocent. The pro-life movement is “hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” … And, one day, manifested in our laws.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-18 14:05:342023-01-25 09:37:28Joe Biden: The Bull Connor of the Pro-Abortion Movement
Yesterday, I told you how government healthcare programs are getting bigger and how this is the wrong direction for the country. I also mentioned a relatively new theory from the Left – social determinants of health [SDOH] – that is about to make government healthcare programs even bigger.
Social determinants of health is the idea that social factors like housing, income, and employment have more to do with a person’s health than do individual risk factors like behavior and genetics. So, if you give poor people free housing, free food, free employment services, free education, free transportation, other free services, and guarantee their income, their health will get better. This will reduce hospital admissions, as well as overall health spending, the theory goes. At least that’s the cover story. The real agenda is radical egalitarian redistribution of income. But the theory sounds good. It sounds right. It sounds plausible. However, there’s just one problem. There’s very little evidence for this happy-face assertion. Billions have already spent on the theory, but the track record of real-world results is not good.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the government from rushing pell-mell into social determinants of health and into the arms of the people pushing it. The Biden administration recently announced it is giving states discretion to cover social services under their Medicaid programs.
No one is asking how much this is going to cost. The federal deficit is already $421 billion for the current fiscal year which began in October. Sorry, but Uncle Sugar doesn’t have unlimited pots of money. If the true agenda is redistribution, how much more do you think there is to get with a deficit like that? Would we even be talking about spending money on social determinants of health if we had to balance our budget? Also, no one is asking about the downsides. Nothing in life is perfect. Shouldn’t lawmakers be informed of the negative consequences before being asked to vote on such a thing? And speaking of Congress, this sounds like a major change that cannot be done by agency regulation alone under recent Supreme Court jurisprudence. So where is Congress on this? Are they falling down on the job again by not reining in agencies from committing us to huge new expenditures without congressional authorization? Why am I the only one asking these questions?
Tax-exempt hospitals spent $2.5 billion on social determinants of health – housing, employment, education, and food security – from 2017 to 2019. They are obligated to provide community benefit in exchange for their tax exemptions. But their spending on social determinants initiatives has fallen off more recently because the evidence such initiatives are effective is limited, a study found. Another study found social spending reduces unnecessary healthcare use but the costs outweigh the benefits. Other researchers found no association between overall community benefit spending and hospital readmission rates. These researchers concluded “the evidence for health outcome improvements from interventions focused on social determinants is thin…. This is very little evidence on which to base billions in investment….” The study concluding the costs outweighed the benefits found $3.4 million in healthcare savings after $22.4 million was spent on a social determinants case management program. Costs running seven times bigger than the savings – doesn’t sound like a smart investment to me.
This begs the question: if the evidence is so thin and even counter to what proponents claim, why proceed? Why is the federal government itching to spend more money on social determinants of health? Especially when social determinants theory has been criticized for ignoring the importance on health outcomes of personal choices and responsibility regarding alcohol, tobacco, junk food, drugs, and gambling. Moreover, in a previous commentary, I criticized social determinants theory for ignoring the magnet effect of free stuff from the government drawing ever-larger numbers of people into government dependency. Wrong direction.
The current administration has made no bones about working towards ‘equity’, ensuring equal outcomes, and redistribution. Social determinants of health theory – which comes from the redistributionist World Health Organization – is tailor-made for the Biden administration’s goals, whether the theory makes any sense or not.
In making its announcement states can add social determinants to their Medicaid programs, the administration said it will require states to show their social outlays are cost-effective, something the research has failed to show convincingly, so far. Whether the administration really means it is anybody’s guess, but Republicans on Capitol Hill need to police this to make sure the analysis is on the up and up and to shut the initiative down if it turns out it’s just another redistributionist boondoggle without any real benefit, aside from making redistributionists feel good about being so virtuous in giving away other people’s money.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) considered having FBI agents monitor President Joe Biden’s lawyers as they rifled through classified documents before ultimately rejecting the idea, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday.
Biden’s lawyers found classified materials at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, D.C., just before the midterm elections. The president’s legal team then conducted a search of Biden’s properties for other such materials. The president’s lawyers and the DOJ discussed the possibility of having FBI agents monitor the search but later decided against it, according to the WSJ.
The two parties instead agreed to notify the DOJ of any classified materials they found, after which law enforcement would promptly remove the documents from the premises, according to the WSJ.
WSJ EXCLUSIVE "the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them." https://t.co/fKRZQzDDyI
In addition to the materials found at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s lawyers found additional documents next to his Corvette in the garage at his Wilmington, Delaware, home in December. More documents have been discovered at his home throughout January.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of the classified documents. “The extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,” Garland said in a statement.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment about the alleged plan.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-01-18 13:42:452023-01-18 16:09:52REPORT: DOJ Decided Against Having FBI Agents Monitor Biden’s Lawyers As They Rifled Through Classified Docs
“And when you stop and think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we select group of human beings…are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet. I mean, it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about quote ‘saving the planet.’ If you said that to most people, most people they think you’re just a crazy tree-hugging lefty, liberal, you know, do-gooder or whatever, and, and there’s no relationship. But really, that’s where we are.”
Marc Morano comment:
“Kerry and the World Economic Forum, the UN, and Al Gore all seem to believe they are the chosen ones to save the planet. But, Kerry actually said something we can all agree with when he noted, ‘most people they think you’re just a crazy tree-hugging lefty, liberal’. Yes, Kerry is correct, most people do think that.
Morano: “The Great Reset crowd assembling in Davos genuinely believe themselves to be above the rest of humanity and are able to own multiple mansions and fly private jets while spewing ‘saving the planet’ rhetoric or even picking up environmental awards.
Kerry may be on to something! Kerry’s friend and fellow climate activist Al Gore was born nearly nine months after the Roswell, New Mexico incident, so there may be a linkage to Extraterrestrials! The Roswell incident was on July 8, 1947. Al Gore was born on March 31, 1948.”
Flashback 2015: Aliens Could Attack Earth to End Global Warming, NASA Scientist Frets – The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and the NASAPlanetary Science Division, entitled “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis.”
The WEF is now calling for millions of cats and dogs worldwide to be killed in an attempt to reduce the "carbon footprint" that they produce as a result of eating meat. They’re introducing an international policy that would require most pet owners to euthanize their animals. pic.twitter.com/EUiqtR3SBy
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Marc Moranohttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMarc Morano2023-01-18 12:03:422023-01-23 15:32:30Unhinged in Davos: Kerry Likens Self to ‘Extraterrestrial’ Here to ‘Save the Planet’
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail
In a letter to his father and youngest sister, General Ulysses S. Grant wrote,
“There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party.”
Faith, family and freedom are now the primary targets of the party of traitors in America.
After serving in our military for 23-years I distinctly remember the mottos of two of the Army units I served with. The motto on the crest of the 321st Field Artillery Regiment, with which I served in combat in Vietnam, is Noli Me Tangerewhich means Don’t Tread on Me. The motto of the 7th Special Forces Group, to which I was Adjutant, is De Oppresso Librewhich means Free the Oppressed.
These mottos are embedded in my heart and soul. I took an oath, before God almighty, to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
This oath does not expire until I do, therefore this is the reason for my using as the title of this column “As He Died To Make Men Holy Let Us Die To Keep Men Free.”
This is a paraphrase taken from the last verse of the Union marching song The Battle Hymn of the Republic written by Julia Ward Howe, in 1861 which is,
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote a letter that warns us of what is happening today. Dr. King was then the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. King was invited to Birmingham, Alabama to hold a peaceful “direct-action” march in 1963. In 2021 a similar peaceful “direct-action” march was held in Washington, D.C.
Both marches lead to arrests, imprisonment, torture and brutality by government, prison and police officials.
In his letter Dr. King wrote, “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” Those who attended the January 6th, 2021 marched because injustice was also, like in Birmingham in 1963, there in Washington, D.C. 58 years later.
Just as traitors “deplored the demonstrations” that took place in Birmingham in 1963, these same traitors deplored the demonstrations that took place in Washington, D.C.
IN ANY nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action.
January 6th was a direct-action nonviolent campaign about a stolen election that was an injustice to the 79 million Americans who voted for President Donald J. Trump. The facts today have proven that their campaign was right.
Dr. King’s 1963 march in Birmingham was labeled as “extremist” but it was not. Just as those who marched peacefully in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021 was not an “insurrection.”
I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodyness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable devil.I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. [Emphasis added]
We are seeing, as did Dr. King, black nationalists like Sheila Jackson Lee join with Islamic supremacists to attack those who disagree with them on securing our borders from illegal aliens. It seems that anyone, regardless of skin color, are their enemies and a threat to their efforts to gain, keep, expand and maintain power, absolute power over we the people.
Black nationalists do not believe in judging people by their characters. Rather they, like Sheila Jackson Lee, judge people by the color of their skin. This is reminiscent of the propaganda of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis against the Jews, Christians, and others who fought against them in what became known as the Holocaust.
We the people are in a new civil war whether we like it or not. This war was begun by the traitors on January 6th, 2021.
We are now in a battle between the party of traitors and the party of patriots.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2023-01-18 11:14:362024-01-23 16:32:33As He Died To Make Men Holy Let Us Die To Keep Men Free
This is why they don’t want the surveillance tapes released.
As one commenter opined, “If the footage supported the leftist narrative it would have been released almost immediately. Instead the left wants to hide the footage because it wants to hide what really happened that day.”
Body-worn camera footage obtained by American Greatness of a D.C. Metropolitan police officer on duty on January 6, 2021, shows the chaos unfolding in real-time that day and how law enforcement’s response to the protest led to rising tension and deadly violence.
Officer Terrence Craig, an 11-year veteran of the force, testified last week in the criminal trial of Richard Barnett, the Arkansas man notoriously photographed with his feet on a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office on January 6, 2021. Nearly two-and-a-half hours of video was captured by Craig’s body-worn camera, providing an uninterrupted and shocking view of what happened inside and outside the building.
Never-before-seen interactions with police and protesters bolster demands by House Republicans to release all surveillance video recorded by Capitol security cameras on January 6.
Craig’s video starts with a group of D.C. Metro and Capitol Police advancing toward the west side of the building at 2:30 p.m. The first physical breach occurred about 15 minutes beforehand; Capitol police had used “nonlethal” munitions such as flashbangs, pepper balls, and tear gas on the crowd assembled outside on Capitol grounds for roughly an hour—the first time in department history that officers were ordered to use such dangerous crowd control devices on political protesters.
D.C. police were ordered to dress in full riot gear, including gas masks, face shields, gloves, and ballistic vests. Under cross-examination by Joseph McBride, one of Barnett’s defense attorneys, Craig admitted the officers were “fully geared up” before taking their positions.
McBride: So you’re fully geared up. You’re strapped up from head to toe? Craig: Yes. McBride: Ready to rock and roll? Craig: Yes.
And “rock and roll” they did. The footage showed a dramatic shift in tone from the massive crowd assembled on the Capitol lawn as jack-booted cops arrived on the scene. Craig admitted as much. “[It] was peaceful heading up to the Capitol,” he told McBride. “You can hear the noise and the sounds, and you see the officers on the side.”
But chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A!” quickly dissipated as the crowd grew agitated at the sight of police officers, faces obscured while dressed in military-type gear, forming groups on the upper terrace. (At least a few SWAT officers can be seen mingling with local police at around 2:45 p.m.)
Police continued to douse the crowd with chemical spray even though protesters were not attempting to breach a line of officers down below.
Craig entered the Rotunda around 2:50 p.m., about five minutes after the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. The area at first appears sparsely populated with protesters and police; in one scene, officers appear to be tending to the injuries of an elderly man lying on the floor.
Physical and verbal confrontations started inside the Rotunda around 3:10 p.m. as police forcibly tried to move the increasingly packed crowd out of the area. “Do you feel big and strong now?” one woman asked the officers. “Does that get you off pushing around a bunch of women? A bunch of fucking unarmed women?” A female voice is then heard screaming, claiming she’s “trying to” get out of the building.
Craig walks throughout the building, at parts chaotic and other parts relatively calm. One man approached Craig to explain that police took his cell phone and asked how he could get it back. Craig’s answers are unintelligible, impaired by the gas mask and face shield. “Sir, I can’t understand you,” the man said as he followed Craig down a set of stairs.
“Wait, is this the Capitol?” the man asked Craig. “Are you serious?” he replied. “I’ve never seen it,” the man said, underscoring the fact many individuals had never before been in the Capitol and did not know where to go or how to exit.
Craig then takes a position outside the building around 3:50 p.m. amid a heavy police presence. The situation is relatively calm. Chants of “We the People” can be heard.
Some police are again confronted by protesters. “Are y’all gonna tear gas us?” one unidentified man said to a line of officers. One D.C. Metro police officer nodded his head. “It’s we the people, not we the cops,” another man shouted. By that point, three Trump supporters were dead, either wholly or partially due to excessive force.
At 4:20, Craig and several other officers suddenly rush back into the building and march toward the lower west terrace tunnel, the scene of the most violent clashes between police and protesters. (This is the same location where police are caught on camera beating women, including Victoria White.)
As Craig approached the mouth of the tunnel, angry shouts can be heard. “You need to stop! Stop!” one individual yelled at police. Several other men can be heard screaming for help while police spray more chemical gas into the crowd.
At least three men and a few officers are seen dragging the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland to the mouth of the tunnel. Her shirt is pulled up near her head; one man is attempting to administer CPR. Previously-released footage and eyewitness accounts indicate that Boyland, 34, likely died after succumbing to the effects of toxic gas sprayed by police in the enclosed space and what appears to be a beating by another D.C. Metro officer.
“She’s fucking dead! This is on you, motherfuckers!” one man screamed at the officers, who continued to spray the men tending to Boyland. “This is the woman you killed, you fuckers!”
Some throw items at the front line of police as Boyland’s body is dragged face-up through the tunnel and into the building. Physical confrontations with officers continued for another 20 minutes.
Craig relayed his version of events to McBride. “I saw the dead young lady, and they dropped her right in front of me,” Craig calmly explained. “They just brought her and said, ‘Hey, do your job and take care of her.’”
(After prosecutors objected to the line of questions, Judge Christopher Cooper instructed McBride to avoid “[talking] about the circumstances of people dying.”)
Several men involved in the confrontations related to Boyland’s death were arrested, detained, and charged with assaulting police officers. The Department of Justice and news media have carefully controlled the narrative, portraying protesters as the perpetrators of violence rather than the victims, while justifying the fatalities of four Trump supporters on January 6. (Boyland was officially pronounced dead at 6:09 p.m. The D.C. coroner later claimed she died of a drug overdose, a dubious conclusion given public evidence to the contrary.)
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-18 09:54:502023-01-18 09:54:50New Body Worn Camera Footage from J6 Supports Calls for Release of All Video
A man who was wearing a t-shirt that read “Jesus Saves” was reportedly kicked out of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota for his shirt being too offensive for others.
Footage of the incident went viral and shows security officers telling the man wearing the green “Jesus Saves” shirt that his shirt was “offending” other shoppers in the mall.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-18 09:27:572023-01-18 09:30:31WATCH: Man Wearing ‘Jesus Saves’ Shirt Kicked Out of Mall of America in Minnesota
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) has been tapped as the new chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and even though the new Congress has barely gotten started, he already has the censorious Left up in arms. Newsweek reported last Monday that Trump nominated Green to be Secretary of the Army, but “he ended up withdrawing his nomination from consideration for the role in 2017 after coming under fire for past comments about members of the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender people.” It seems that Green said: “If you poll the psychiatrists, they’re going to tell you transgender is a disease.” Horror of horrors! Everyone can see that men who think they’re women and vice versa are as sane and well-adjusted as the day is long. And now it has come to light that Green has violated Leftist pieties in another way as well: he has a history of making “anti-Muslim comments.”
The HuffPo sounded the alarm on this Thursday, doing its level best to portray Green as a racist, redneck yahoo. HuffPo claimed that Green, whom it identified as “a physician, Iraq War veteran and former GOP state senator,” that is, just the sort of person Leftists abhor, once said “that Iraqis smelled like ‘curry mixed with sweat.’” Sabina Mohyuddin of the American Muslim Advisory Council fumed: “If you hold stereotypes about communities, how can you effectively move on issues that are really nuanced and require a greater understanding of the issues?”
However, Rachel Del Guidice, Green’s communications director, shot back that “some media outlets cut and spliced” what Green said, and added: “Rep. Green has not, and will not ever, force his religion on anyone. He believes that every American has a right to defend their country. Having served three tours of duty overseas during the War on Terror, Rep. Green acted as a steadfast protector of everyone in this nation. Vilifying people of faith because they don’t agree with progressive policies is against America’s founding principles — the very principles he fought to protect.”
The HuffPo, however, wasn’t done. It claimed also that Green “once said he didn’t want students in Tennessee to learn about Islam.” This came up at a Tea Party meeting in 2016, “when an audience member read a passage from a textbook that correctly stated that Muslims believe in all the prophets in the Old and New Testament,” and Green replied, “When you start teaching the pillars of Islam … we will not tolerate that in this state.” According to the HuffPo, Green went on to say that “if students did have to learn about Islam…they should only learn ‘the history of the Ottoman Empire’ and ‘the assault of Islam out into the Levant and North Africa and into Constantinople.’”
You see? He’s ignorant as well as racist! And so Sumayyah Waheed of Muslim Advocates, which the HuffPo says is a “national civil rights group based in Washington, D.C.,” declared: “Rep. Green’s well-documented history of hate speech against Muslims, LGBTQ people, and immigrants made him unfit to be Secretary of the Army, and that history makes him unfit to chair the House Homeland Security Committee. As chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Mark Green is a threat to Muslims ― especially to those that live at the intersections of the communities he has gleefully attacked for political gain.”
But the HuffPo, true to form, doesn’t bother to tell you that what Green was actually talking about was his opposition to Islamic proselytizing and indoctrination in public schools, which has been abundantly documented. Green was pushing back against the whitewashed version of Islam that is taught in all too many public school textbooks around the country, but of course the HuffPo doesn’t give you even a hint that there was ever a controversy over the way Islam was taught in public school textbooks.
The only thing that could legitimately be seen as offensive is his alleged statement that Iraqis smelled like “curry mixed with sweat,” although to jump from there to the claim that he is a “threat to Muslims” is beyond ridiculous. It’s certainly impolite, at the very least, to say it, but I’m sure Americans smell like all sorts of strange things to non-Americans, too, and HuffPo is making a big deal out of a pungent quip in order to try to defame and destroy Green.
This is, of course, how the “Islamophobia” industry always operates: quotes without context given the worse possible spin, no explanation or rebuttal allowed, and demonstrably true statements presented as not only false, but offensive. These gutter tactics have worked wonderfully well for the Left in the past, but people are beginning to wake up. Green may not lose his chairmanship over these remarks; if he doesn’t, that may be an indication that the new House leadership really does have some spine.
Here at PJ Media, we’re always on top of the stories that the establishment media doesn’t want to report, or spins beyond all recognition. Want to know what’s really happening with the new Republican House? We’ve got it! And you can get access to even more first-rate content when you become a PJ Media VIP member. VIPs get deeper dives into important issues as well as podcasts and an ad-free experience. VIPs also have more fun, whiter teeth, fresher breath, and a certain sly charm that people find absolutely winning. With VIP Gold, it gets even better. VIP Gold membership gives you access to all of the Townhall family of sites, including Hot Air, Twitchy, Bearing Arms, and RedState, along with live chats. A PJ Media VIP membership is a tremendous value on its own, but we currently have a 40% off deal with the promo code SAVEAMERICA. Sign up today!
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-01-18 07:35:362023-01-18 11:45:37The New House Homeland Security Committee Chair Already Has the Left Enraged
Unhinged racist Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) introduced a House Bill last Monday criminalizing “conspiracy to commit white supremacy,” which includes criticism of non-white people that influences an individual to commit a hate crime.
The legislation, H.R.61 “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023,” states that someone engages in a white supremacy-inspired hate crime “when white supremacy ideology has motivated the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of actions that constituted a crime or were undertaken in furtherance of activity that, if effectuated, would have constituted a crime.”
“Conspiracy” to engage in white supremacy-inspired hate crime entails the publishing of material “advancing white supremacy, white supremacist ideology, antagonism based on ‘replacement theory’, or hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-White person or group.”
It also calls for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to gain “authority to conduct operations and activities pursuant” to what it deems “necessary and appropriate to interdict, mitigate, or prevent such action from culminating in violent activity.”
The bill would grant the department authority to “prosecute” persons engaged in such actions, with “records of white supremacy inspired hate crimes” maintained and annual reports provided.
In response, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote, “In case you weren’t aware of what the Democrats were prioritizing in the 118th Congress, just take a look. When they’re not bankrupting our country, they’re busy making a mockery of the First Amendment.”
“Who wants to tell her about the First Amendment?” asked conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon.
“Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee just introduced a bill that would make it a federal crime for White people, and White people only, to criticize mass immigration or to say anything that she claims would vilify ‘a non-White person or group,’” wrote one Twitter user.
“Sheila Jackson Lee should be introduced to the Bill of Rights. Particularly the first amendment pertaining to free speech,” another wrote.
“This is a disturbing, yet not surprising, piece of #AntiWhite legislation,” yet another user wrote.
Jackson Lee Has Repeatedly Accused Others of Racism
Over the course of her career as a legislator, Jackson Lee has often accused her political opponents of racism. For example:
On March 2, 2021, CNN’s Don Lemon asked Jackson Lee: “The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today that could weaken voting rights in Arizona. Major push nationwide to make it harder for people to vote. What does this mean particularly for black voters?” The congresswoman replied: “Well, I think tragically we have not had this historic opposition to our rights since slavery, during the Jim Crow days and of course the harshness of the 1960s. The tragedy of this is an entire party, the Republican Party, is committed to voter suppression, committed to avoiding the opportunity of votes. Donald Trump laid out he only wants one day for votes. They don’t want opportunities for absentee ballot, extended voting, same-day registration, all things that empower young people and people of color, African-Americans. This is a war on black people as it relates to voting…. It’s tragic that Republicans want to take that stand because they can’t win fairly. They can’t draw people to their positions. They are now trying to suppress the votes.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2023-01-18 07:23:582023-01-18 07:26:52Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) Introduces Bill Criminalizing ‘Conspiracy to Commit White Supremacy’
Teaching Lab bills itself as a “non-profit organization whose mission is to fundamentally shift the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity.”
Part of Dr. Bostic’s job role is to sell teaching curriculums to school districts – and he says that both Cobb County and Fulton County have his curriculum.
Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:
Dr. Quintin Bostic, Content Manager, The Teaching Lab: “I would say I’m a good salesman, but I’m also an evil salesman.”
Dr. Bostic: Teaching Critical Race Theory is “still banned in schools” in Georgia.
Dr. Bostic: Framing the curriculum as DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] “is more accepted than, like, anti-racist education or Critical Race Theory.”
Dr. Bostic: “He [Governor Kemp] is, like, such an idiot. Like, his wife does a lot of stuff on education here [in Georgia] … I would get nailed” if Governor Kemp’s wife found out what I’m doing.
Dr. Bostic: The goal is “to get the kids to influence their parents to make the [ideological] shift too.”
The “evil salesman” explains how he secretly sneaks in Critical Race Theory [CRT] ideology into the classroom, including to kindergarteners, by disguising it as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [DEI]. He does this to avoid being caught violating Georgia State Law.
“If you don’t say the words ‘Critical Race Theory,’ you can technically teach it,” Dr. Bostic said.
“They [Georgia State Government] have no clue [what is in my curriculum] and I’m like, ‘This is great! This is good!’”
Dr. Bostic claims that he “would get nailed” if Governor Kemp’s wife were to find out what he is up to. But he also appears to play down the risks to his career even if the state were to act.
“If they come and take my business license…I can keep consulting,” he said.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00O'Keefe Media Grouphttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngO'Keefe Media Group2023-01-18 06:51:082023-01-18 06:54:01VIDEO: ‘Evil Salesman’ Admits Plan to Violate Georgia State Law by Secretly Indoctrinating Children with ‘Critical Race Theory’
A new book describes the importance of memory, history, and national identity in saving America from desolation.
One of the worst sins of the present — not just ours but any present — is its tendency to condescend toward the past, which is much easier to do when one doesn’t trouble to know the full context of that past or try to grasp the nature of its challenges as they presented themselves at the time.
— Wilfred M. McClay, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story
Jay Leno used to do a regular schtick, Jaywalking, in which he would interview random persons on the street, often young ones, and ask them questions about American history, such as: “Who did America fight in the Revolutionary War?” “How many branches of the U.S. government are there?” “What year was the War of 1812?” Invariably, they could not answer the question, standing mute with Leno’s impertinent microphone pointed at their gaping mouths, or they gave a ridiculous answer.
As deflating as these performances were, it turns out that the state of American education is even worse than Leno documented. Not only does ignorance characterise so much of the citizenry, but Americans are now also imbibing, i.e., being taught, pernicious lies or partial truths about the founding and history of the United States from a tendentious, ideological, and solidly left-wing perspective.
The distortion of history now routinely fed to elementary and high school students, as well as those attending hopelessly “woke” universities and colleges, has produced many young people who are “cynical, entitled, and aggrieved.” Continues Goeglein:
Rather than being thankful, they are indignant. Rather than proud, they feel ashamed. Rather than feeling free, they feel oppressed. Rather than wanting to fix America’s faults, they want to burn America down. Rather than asking what they can do for their country, they demand to know what their country can do for them — and the answer is increasingly to “cease to exist.”
We have created “a citizenry divorced both intellectually and emotionally from its heritage.” Further, “[w]hen we disassociate history — and memory — from facts, we are lost,” writes Goeglein, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, a former Senate staffer, and, presently, vice-president of external and government relations for Focus on the Family.
In a feat of historical and moral inversion, it maintains that the American Revolution was designed primarily to protect the institution of slavery from being destroyed by the British Empire.
Such a one-sided view of history will alienate Americans from one another, given the dissolution of a common identity and love of country, and disregards those who struggled to make the Declaration of Independence a reality in spite of its obvious flaws, such as slavery.
On the matter of slavery, always a leading complaint against America’s founding, the Washington Post’s George Will has rightly observed that the founders’ Constitution “gave slavery no national validation. It left slavery solely a creature of state laws and therefore susceptible to the process that, in fact, occurred — the process of being regionally confined and put on a path to ultimate extinction. Secession was the South’s desperate response when it recognized this impending outcome that the Constitution had facilitated.”
So, it comes as no surprise that, as “a 2020 Pew Research study found a month before the presidential election, roughly eight in ten registered voters in both camps said their political disagreements with others were about core American values, with roughly nine in ten — liberal and conservative — worried [that] a victory by the other would lead to ‘lasting harm’ to the United States” [emphasis added]. We are now in a situation in which tribe is pitted against tribe, race against race, rich against poor, red against blue states.
We have succumbed to the “termites of self-loathing,” to use a term coined by Ben Stein. There is hardly a historic personage — Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, St Junípero Serra — who is not vilified, “cancelled,” and banished into outer darkness by woke activists and educators. One should be grateful that at least Frederick Douglass and Dr Martin Luther King Jr are spared such treatment, given their devotion to American ideals in the Declaration of Independence, classical literature, and Scripture. They are just ignored.
Dearth of patriotism
Recently, a friend whose daughter attended one of the tonier prep schools in Washington, DC, related that his conversations with her on US and Western history were disappointing. She, and her friends, showed no “piety” toward her country or heritage.
It was an interesting word choice and recalled my own school days studying Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem written between 29 and 19 BC. It tells the story of the Trojan Aeneas, who fled the destruction of his city, travelled to Italy, and would later become the ancestor of the Romans.
I remember my Jesuit instructor lauding “pius Aeneas,” “pious” being the most used adjective throughout the poem. In following the will of the gods — he even left the captivating Dido in Carthage — Aeneas demonstrated pietas, a virtue in the eyes of Virgil and my teacher, in his devotion to family, country, and mission. Such piety is no longer encouraged in our educational institutions, or so it would seem.
Major culprit
What brought America to this sorry state? In the beginning there was the “Original Zinn” — Howard Zinn, that is, a Boston University professor of political science and “the godfather of the radical attack on America’s history”, as Goeglein outlines in a pivotal chapter of Toward a More Perfect Union.
Zinn’s “epic screed,” A People’s History of the United States (1980), and his supplemental book for high schoolers, A Young People’s History of the United States (2007), have had an unparalleled impact on social studies teachers. The historian “refram[ed]” and “reimagin[ed]” facts to fit a Marxist critique of the US and a Western civilisation marred, claimed Zinn, “by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money.” For Zinn, “standards of historical analysis are merely ‘technical problems’ to be dismissed.”
“You wanna read a real history book?” Matt Damon’s titular character, Will, asks Robin Williams’ Dr Sean Maguire in the movie Good Will Hunting (1997). “Read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll f***ing knock you on your ass.” Indeed, it does. It also boggles the mind.
Zinn claims that the nation “has been taken over by men [the founders] who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties.” Again, in service to ideology, Zinn does not believe in objective history as documented by Mary Grabar, PhD, a refugee of communist Yugoslavia, on whom Goeglein draws heavily.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the main author of the 1619 Project, backtracked after respected historians critiqued her work. She claimed that the project was not about history but about “memory.” This is not historically grounded memory, but memory saturated with ideology and politics. This is pure Zinn in methodology. Hence, noted historians such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Eugene Genovese, and Michael Kammen — hardly a crowd of right-wingers — criticised Zinn as a “polemicist, not a historian.”
“His ultimate goal is not a historical one but a political one,” writes Goeglein. “[H]e wanted to depict the United States as an illegitimate enterprise, one demanding a revolution.”
Pushback
According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, today, only 18 percent of colleges require that students take a US history or government class to graduate. Maybe that is a blessing, given what passes for “history” in today’s woke environment. Ultimately, however, this is devastating to national unity.
Goeglein describes survey after survey that all indicate Americans’ ignorance of their rights under law and history. When the Constitution is taught, it is derided as being not radical enough in terms of the outcomes desired by left-of-centre teachers and advocates.
Toward A More Perfect Union does not specify a political agenda for reform, although it does note efforts made by some governors to reign in educational bureaucracies on, say, critical race theory. It does make a plea for parents to make a concerted effort to teach and counsel their children on the history of the nation and to pay close attention to what their schools are teaching.
It points to excellent resources available with which parents can educate themselves and their children on the complete story of American exceptionalism, not excluding the darker chapters. Parents who can afford the cost should look for alternatives to public schools that sacrifice true learning for the sake of ideology. “Classical” schools, home schooling, and parochial schools — all of which boomed during the COVID lockdowns — are possible options.
Parents who cannot afford private schools or who have special-needs children “must be extra vigilant and expect to receive the full wrath of Leftist activists if they stand up and demand that civics be taught while also standing against the indoctrination their children are receiving.” Specifically, they need to insist on the rights to inspect curricula, to opt out of the teaching of certain subjects, and to insist that controversial issues be discussed impartially. No easy tasks these.
Goeglein concludes:
[W]e must rededicate ourselves to the teaching of history — true, verifiable, factual history, with all its glories and tragedies. We need not fear to teach the ugly truths about America alongside the beautiful ones, because America’s founding vision is pure and her ideals are noble. Our failures do not change that.
Toward a More Perfect Union makes a compelling case that the country’s future, as one nation, demands a reclamation of our educational system and a recovery of the authentic teaching of history and constitutional government rightly understood.
G. Tracy Mehan, III, was Assistant Administrator for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Administration of President George W. Bush. He is an adjunct professor at Scalia Law School,… More by G. Tracy Mehan III
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-01-18 06:34:302023-01-18 06:37:13Recovering a more perfect union: A rebuke of the 1619 Project
Vice President Kamala Harris has apparently disappeared from leading any public events on migration — dodging one of the responsibilities bestowed upon her by the president — for over seven months, a Daily Caller analysis found.
The last time Harris led an event on migration was on June 7, 2022, when she announced nearly $2 billion in additional funding to address the “root causes” of migration. She has not led a migration event since and did not accompany President Joe Biden on his first trip to the border, according to a Daily Caller analysis of White House public statements.
In December, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she didn’t have any updates on what Harris has been doing on migration. Harris’ office did not respond to an inquiry from the Daily Caller posing the question, “has she done anything on migration” since June?
Instead of Harris tackling illegal migration issues, White House public statements show her attention visibly shifted to abortion, diplomacy and diversity events in the second half of 2022.
A large part of Harris’ summer was spent pushing abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in May and speaking to state leaders across the country about reproductive rights. Since her last migration related event, Harris had at least 28 meetings with various leaders about reproductive rights, including with Latina state legislators and disability rights leaders.
Harris’ abortion efforts were accompanied by meetings with foreign leaders. In the last seven months, she met with the presidents of Mexico, France, South Korea, South Africa and Moldova; traveled to South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan; spoke with leaders of the Pacific Islands, Nigeria, and the Caribbean, the president of Guyana, and the prime ministers of Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Poland, Jamaica and Lithuania. She also participated in the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
She also participated in at least 10 events for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), held events as the chair of the National Space Council, and advertised the administration’s legislative agenda — like the Inflation Reduction Act — across the country. Other Harris events include those on climate, LGBT rights, and a flurry of Democratic campaigning before the midterms.
Biden appointed Harris to lead the migration efforts of the administration in March of 2021, saying, “it’s not her full responsibility and job, but she’s leading the effort.”
“I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border,” Biden said at the time.
The Biden administration has experienced record numbers of illegal immigrant encounters, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recording 250,000 encounters in December — the highest in history. Several CBP agents have committed suicide amid the record numbers, and the U.S. is undergoing a fentanyl epidemic due to the drug being smuggled across the border.
On Jan. 5, before Biden’s trip to the border, the president said he was “proud” of Harris for securing $3.2 billion in private sector funding for Central America. Harris did not participate in the remarks on the administration’s border strategy, and just jumped in to fill in for Biden’s gaffes.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-01-17 16:37:042023-01-17 16:41:00Where Has Kamala Harris Been For Seven Months?
