Displaying posts published in

March 2021

Garland Heralds Return of the Obama Justice Department — Radical as Ever By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/garland-heralds-return-of-the-obama-justice-department-radical-as-ever/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Biden is not so much presiding over Obama’s third term as he is the doddering passenger riding in first class while Obama’s faithful pilots navigate.

I t appears that the Justice Department under soon-to-be attorney general Merrick Garland will be the Biden administration in microcosm. Judge Garland, like President Biden, is the “pragmatic moderate” sign you hang on the front door, to give mainstream America confidence that the woke Left is not running the asylum. On paper, Garland, like Biden, has the right credentials for that job. When you observe him up close, though, as we had a chance to do during his confirmation hearing this week, that confidence takes a big hit.

Naturally, it’s important to set expectations accurately. This is a left-wing Democratic administration. Even if Garland were as advertised, you are out of luck if you were expecting a constitutionalist Justice Department, one that is solidly pro–law enforcement, deferential to individual liberty, and committed to equal protection under the law.

Biden is not so much presiding over Obama’s third term as he is the doddering passenger riding in first class while Obama’s faithful pilots navigate. Democrats did not yearn for a President Biden; they yearned to beat President Trump and restore the status quo ante. Biden’s job is to give his people what they want: Obama policy and practice.

Consequently, this Justice Department is going to be political and racialist. Garland may not strike you as either of those — in that stealthy way, he’s perfect for the job.

The judge emphasized that his top priority is domestic terrorism. But not all domestic terrorism. It is domestic terrorism as Democrats are defining it — viz., white supremacism, as instantiated by the rioting at the Capitol on January 6.

Was COVID-19 Our Neutron Bomb?By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/28/was-covid-19-our-neutron-bomb/

In the 1970s and 1980s, furor arose over our possible use of the “neutron bomb” that macabrely would “kill people, but not destroy property.” The logic of the perverse weapon was that on allied and friendly European ground, outnumbered defensive NATO troops might radiate and destroy invading masses of Soviet armored troops by periodic detonations of low-yield thermonuclear shells, rockets, and bombs. 

The ensuing blasts of heat would sear flesh, but would lack commensurate repercussion power to destroy most structures and buildings, and leave far smaller toxic radiation trails. In eerie Strangelovian terms, once the enemy was finished off, returning friendly troops and populations could sort their way among the mass dead to find their infrastructure intact—without “collateral” damage or fear of serious radiation sickness. 

In some ways, COVID-19 was our neutron bomb. When we reach the now politically incorrect, taboo term “herd immunity” through vaccinations and antibodies, and when the virus ceases to be a pandemic, the lethal tally may have exceeded 600,000 Americans. 

If so, the nation will have lost more countrymen than were killed in World War I and World War II combined—with thousands more suffering disabilities, from “long haul Covid” to stress and psychological impairment from losing livelihoods and lockdown cabin fever. 

Americans have additionally suffered likely over $15 trillion or so in economic damage from the lockdowns, lost labor, soaring healthcare costs, and the silent killers of substance, familial, and spousal abuse, along with missed medical procedures and surgeries, aborted K-12 schooling, depression, and suicides. It will take years and millions of hours of scholarship to tally all the losses and damage. 

Biden Lied And 105,334 People Died

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/01/biden-lied-and-105334-people-died/

” Biden deserves none of the credit for the gains we’ve made against COVID-19 since he took office. But if he wants to blame Trump for every virus death that happened before Jan. 20, he should take the blame for every one that’s happened since.”

During one of his presidential debates last year when about 220,000 people had died from COVID-19, Joe Biden said that “anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” So should Joe be looking for another job, now that more than 100,000 have died in just the two months that he’s been president?

Biden said, after all, that he had a plan on “day one” as president to tackle the disease. He was going to move “heaven and earth” to save lives, etc., etc. But since Jan. 20, there have been 105,334 deaths attributed to the coronavirus as of Saturday, according to the COVID Tracking Project. That means that one-fifth of all the COVID-19 deaths have occurred just since Biden took office.

Now Biden is busy casting blame for why the disease continues to claim lives, while repeatedly lying about what he inherited from President Donald Trump in order to make his own efforts seem more heroic.

On Thursday, Biden again claimed that he inherited no vaccination plan when he came into office.

“Were moving in the right direction,” he said, “despite the mess we inherited from the previous administration, which left us with no real plan to vaccinate all Americans.”

It’s been a constant refrain of his administration.

Voting Rights at the Supreme Court The Justices have a rare chance to clarify federal election law.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voting-rights-at-the-supreme-court-11614553224?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Election laws have become a dangerous political flashpoint, as Americans recently learned the hard way. On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear a potentially landmark case (Brnovich v. DNC) that offers an opportunity to restore the Voting Rights Act to its original purpose.

At issue is Arizona’s requirement that voters cast ballots on election day in their assigned precinct and its ban on ballot harvesting by outside groups. A majority of states require in-precinct voting, and 20 or so limit ballot harvesting, which allows third parties to collect ballots in bunches. Both rules are intended to bolster ballot integrity.

Democrats say this violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits states from adopting voting qualifications, standards, or practices that result in “denial or abridgement” of the right to vote “on account of race or color.” But they provide no evidence that Arizona’s rules limit minorities’ ballot access.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to stop states from disenfranchising blacks with underhanded methods like poll taxes and literacy tests. But Democrats now argue that any state regulation that makes it a little harder for anyone to vote violates the law—even if it applies equally to minorities and whites.

Academic Freedom Is Withering Surveys of faculty opinion show the growing extent of political discrimination and cancel culture. By Eric Kaufmann

https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-withering-11614531962?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Academic freedom is in crisis on American campuses. Last year, the National Association of Scholars recorded 65 instances of professors being disciplined or fired for protected speech, a fivefold increase from the year before. Yet many of academia’s defenders brush aside worries about dismissal campaigns and the lack of ideological diversity as little more than a collection of anecdotes cherry-picked to feed a right-wing moral panic.

My new report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology gives the lie to these claims. Based on eight comprehensive surveys of academic and graduate-student opinion across the U.S., Canada and Britain, it buttresses the findings of numerous studies to provide hard data on the absence of viewpoint diversity and presence of discrimination against conservative and gender-critical scholars. High-profile activist excesses are mere symptoms of a much wider problem of progressive authoritarianism. Roughly 1 in 3 conservative academics and graduate students has been disciplined or threatened with disciplinary action. A progressive monoculture empowers radical activist staff and students to violate the freedom of political minorities like conservatives or “gender-critical” feminists, who believe in the biological basis of womanhood—all in the name of emotional safety or social justice.

Political discrimination is pervasive: 4 in 10 American academics indicated in a survey this summer that they would not hire a known Trump supporter for a job. In Canada, the share is 45%, while in Britain, 1 in 3 academics wouldn’t hire a Brexit supporter. Between one-fifth and half of academics and graduate students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning grant applications, journal submissions and promotion cases. On a four-person panel, this virtually guarantees that a conservative will face discrimination.

Rachel, Rachel Is this the world’s most unsalutary health official? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/rachel-rachel-bruce-bawer/

If you consult the mainstream news media on a regular basis, you’ve probably heard that last Thursday was a red-letter day in American history – an occasion for dancing in the streets from Bangor to Burbank, and for socially distanced champagne toasts from Key West to Ketchikan. Why? Because, for the first time ever, a transgender nominee for a government office was up for Senate confirmation. That nominee was Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s pick for Assistant Secretary for Health.

Is Rachel a great, or even a competent, physician? Who cares? It’s 2021, and Rachel is trans!

Rachel’s birth name was Richard, though there’s no way you could tell that from, say, Wikipedia. (In fact, on the “talk” page for Rachel’s Wikipedia entry, you can see anxious contributors earnestly debating how to deal with the ticklish fact that Rachel had a bar mitzvah, not a bas mitzvah.) Now aged 63, Rachel transitioned a decade ago and was divorced a couple of years later. Neither Rachel’s ex nor their two children appear to have attended the hearing.

Importantly, Rachel is not only a trans person; Rachel is a trans activist, a self-described champion of transgender youth. Meaning what? Meaning, among much else, that Rachel supports giving puberty blockers to children who say they’re the opposite sex, and is open to ordering “gender-confirmation” surgery to kids under age 18 with or without parental permission.

Rachel’s last job was as Health Commissioner in Pennsylvania. There were national headlines when it emerged that Rachel’s mother had been removed for her safety from a care home even as Rachel was ordering elderly hospital patients who’d tested positive for COVID back into nursing homes. Like Andrew Cuomo’s similar move in New York, this action doubtless contributed to the state’s elevated toll of COVID deaths in such establishments – a matter that Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) brought up at the hearing.

But hey, Rachel is trans!

Because Rachel’s appointment broke a glass ceiling, the Democrats treated the hearing as a celebration. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had to spoil the party. Noting Rachel’s support for puberty blockers and the “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia,” Sen. Paul, who is a physician, pointed out that genital mutilation is internationally considered “a violation of human rights” and that “80 to 95% of prepubertal children with gender dysphoria” snap out of it “by late adolescence” if left alone. This being the case, asked Sen. Paul, “do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?”