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Ruth King

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Abu Akleh report is CNN’s latest anti-Israel hit job Ruthie Blum

By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-707833

CNN has a history of anti-Israel bias, but the left-wing Cable News Network outdid itself this week. In its coverage on Wednesday of the May 11 killing of 51-year-old Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid on terrorists in Jenin, the outlet concluded that it had been a targeted shooting.

It did this by providing a dramatic headline about “new evidence suggest[ing]” that this was the case. The body of the story included a bit more context, but not enough to camouflage the slant of the six reporters in the byline. 

The description in the feature-like article of the “shaky video, filmed by Al Jazeera cameraman Majdi Banura, [which] captures the scene when Abu Akleh… was killed by a bullet to the head” glossed over the part about “the footage not showing [her] being shot,” and slid effortlessly into eyewitness accounts. 

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Majority Report: Canada’s Latest Advance in Precognitive Legislation By David Solway

By on May 27th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/05/25/majority-report-canadas-latest-advance-in-precognitive-legislation-n1600764

The 2002 film Minority Report was a box office success and, like the Matrix franchise, emerged as one of the most talked-about movies of recent times. The crux of the film involved a “precrime” policing unit that could act to prevent crimes before they were committed, on evidence provided by a team of comatose subjects with precognitive abilities. Of course, the plot was utterly absurd, demanding major suspension of viewer disbelief, but nonetheless provocative in its social and political implications. 

Though the story descends into complicated but typical melodrama — abducted child, failed marriage, false accusation, eventual resolution — resulting in the abandonment of the clairvoyant project, the idea of precrime prevention is the fanciful “hook” on which the narrative depends. It serves as the fiction within the fiction that has to be initially accepted if the film is to retain its unlikely coherence. Of course, what the film calls a “minority report” is an anomalous factor, different from the more comprehensive reports of predictive infallibility, but second sight remains the rule. Obviously, no such precognitive technology is even remotely conceivable — or so we might have thought.

Leave it to the Canadian prime minister, as many have noted, to translate the central premise of the movie into the realm of public policy. Bill C-261, currently pending before Parliament, proposes to deal with the newly formulated crime of online “hate propaganda” and “hate speech” before said crime has actually been contemplated, let alone occurred, assuming the plaintiff believes that he or she is the intended target of hate. An individual can thus be accused of a crime and made to pay the price — censure, compensatory damages, or even imprisonment — before the event has taken place. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

WH Denies Biden Is Talking About the Second Amendment One Day After He Said It ‘Is Not Absolute’ Spencer Brown

By on May 27th, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/05/26/wh-denies-biden-is-talking-about-the-second-amendment-one-day-after-he-said-it-i-n2607868

In Thursday’s White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked multiple questions about federal legislation being bandied about in Congress ahead of the President and First Lady’s recently announced visit to Uvalde on Sunday. 

After refusing to comment on Thursday’s latest updates from Texas DPS officials — she said the White House would not “prejudge” local law enforcement’s response to the shooting — and repeating many of the anti-gun left’s talking points lamenting the fact that “America has more guns than people,” Joe Biden’s press secretary faced a question from Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann. 

What does the president believe, at this point, is the purpose of the Second Amendment?” he asked as Michael Moore and other leftists renew their calls for a repeal of the right to keep and bear arms. 

Unsurprisingly, Jean-Pierre couldn’t offer a specific answer as to what President Biden — sworn to uphold the Constitution — believed the purpose of the 27-word Second Amendment to be.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Joe Biden and the I.R.S are Performing Criminal Acts To dismantle our borders and destroy our country.David Horowitz and John Perazzo

By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/how-joe-biden-and-irs-are-performing

In an earlier article about Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to fix the 2020 presidential election, we observed that the root cause of America’s current problems, beginning with broken borders and off-the charts urban violence – is lawlessness.[1] We also observed that this lawlessness originates in the White House, and includes the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Executive Branch generally.

Discussions of the border problem often touch on the criminal element that violates our unenforced border laws beginning with drug dealers, sex traffickers, and migrant smugglers. But the crime problem is vastly understated in these references which give the impression that it is largely confined to the countries they have left, and has no impact on the country they have invaded. In July 2018, the Government Accountability Office issued a report containing “Criminal Alien Statistics,”[2] which serves to correct this false impression.  Among its conclusions, the report states that one in five federal prisoners in the United States is a criminal alien. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The G.A.O. report covered the period between 2011 and 2016. During that time frame, approximately 2 million foreigners crossed the border into the United States illegally – which is just about the number of unvetted foreigners whom border officials predict will cross the border illegally this year alone. In that same time frame there were more than 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, federal and state, and local jails. Criminals are not usually arrested the first time they commit a crime, and are often released with minimal time served when they are. So while there were 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, they accounted for 4.9 million arrests and 7.5 million offenses – which would translate into a 10 times greater number of victims than offenders. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Unraveling of Education in America The bad news from the education industrial complex just keeps on coming. Larry Sand

By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/unraveling-education-america-larry-sand/

It’s no secret that education in America has been in bad shape for some time, and now, low student proficiency has been exacerbated by the hysterical response to the Covid outbreak. Most recently, the results of a Harvard University study, which investigated the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty, have been released.

Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states and D.C., the researchers found that “shifts to remote or hybrid instruction during 2020-21 had profound consequences for student achievement. In districts that went remote, achievement growth was lower for all subgroups, but especially for students attending high-poverty schools. In areas that remained in-person, “there were still modest losses in achievement, but there was no widening of gaps between high and low-poverty schools in math (and less widening in reading).”

Another study, by curriculum and assessment provider Amplify, examined test data for some 400,000 elementary school students across 37 states and found a spike in students not reading at grade level, with literacy losses “disproportionately concentrated in the early elementary grades (K-2).” The report also found that minority children suffered disproportionate learning loss. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “During the last normal school year, only 34% of black and 29% of Hispanic second graders needed intensive intervention to help catch up. This school year 47% of black and 39% of Hispanic second graders have fallen this far behind on literacy, compared to 26% of white peers.”

And distressingly, a longitudinal study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that kids “who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers,” and “for the worst readers, those [who] couldn’t master even the basic skills by third grade, the rate is nearly six times greater.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The FBI is on the November Ballot The incoming Congress could stop the FBI’s warrantless spying on more than three million Americans. Lloyd Billingsley

By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/fbi-november-ballot-lloyd-billingsley/

As the midterm election approaches, the Annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Intelligence Community’s Use of National Security Surveillance Authorities shows why the Federal Bureau of Investigation is also on the ballot.

One of the few to give this document the attention it deserves was historian Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and affiliated scholar at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law.

The report “provides statistics and contextual information concerning how the Intelligence Community uses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  and certain other national security authorities to accomplish its mission.” The Act authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets.

As Guariglia discovered, FISA is “still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant.” This abuse takes place under Section 702, an amendment to FISA.

Between December 2020 and November 2021, Guariglia notes, the FBI potentially queried the data of more than three million Americans without a warrant. Collection of the data, from telecom and internet providers, renders conversations described as “incidental,” but they aren’t. Each intelligence agency’s rules on “targeting” and “minimization,” Guariglia shows, allow access to access to the communications of Americans caught in  the “702 dragnet.”

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EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Chiefly Illiterate in San Francisco Schools The district pulls ‘chief’ from its CFO’s title as a progressive gesture to Native Americans

By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chiefly-illiterate-in-san-francisco-schools-chief-native-american-11653599414?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The San Francisco school district is a slow learner, apparently. In February voters ousted three school-board members in landslide elections. One complaint was that the board was more interested in progressive gestures, such as scrubbing Abraham Lincoln’s name off school buildings, than in reopening classrooms amid the pandemic.

Now the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the school district is planning to phase out the word “chief” in its job titles, “given that Native American members of our community have expressed concerns.” Currently the district has executives with the customary roles of chief financial officer, chief of staff, and so on.

Here’s what is particularly amusing in this attempt at progressive sensitivity: While the English language has lots of words that can be traced to the native peoples of the Americas, including “chipmunk,” “barbecue” and “hurricane,” they don’t include “chief.” That word comes from Old French, and originally Latin, and the Oxford English Dictionary has citations back to 1297.

“Farewell great Chiefe,” says a character in Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” That’s dated to the early 1600s. Somehow we doubt he was thinking about the Sioux. A biblical translation from William Tyndale in 1526 speaks of “the power of Belzebub, the chefe of the devyls.” The earliest examples are hard to parse unless you’re fluent in Beowulfese, but here’s one we grasp from 1483, a decade before Columbus sailed to the west: “She was made abbesse and chyef of al the monasterye.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Militarizing The Baby Formula Crisis Is Infantile Iain Murray and Michelle Minton

By on May 27th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/27/militarizing-the-baby-formula-crisis-is

A military cargo plane lands filled with vitally needed baby formula to be greeted by a top government official. A relief flight to a developing world country? A ray of hope for a war-ravaged Ukraine? A blockade broken? No, America in the year 2022.

Simultaneously, the president invoked the Defense Production Act to force American companies to produce more baby formula. Our response to a problem caused by domestic regulation and protectionism has been to militarize it.

I’m sorry, Mr. President, but this solution is infantile.

America is unique in having this problem because its regulatory state caused it. The proximate cause of the shortage was the February recall of products made at America’s largest manufacturer of baby formula, Abbott Labs’ facility in Michigan. The Food and Drug Administration was concerned about outbreaks of death and illness among infants fed with the formula but was slow to inspect the facility. Abbott has indeed announced that it will reopen the facility, as the FDA found no evidence of contamination. As 40% of America’s supply comes from that facility, the shortfall hit supplies hard.

Ordinarily, however, the market would respond to such a shock by two means – raising prices to signal a shortage and importing substitutes from abroad. However, regulation precludes those two responses. Much of the American market depends on price agreements with the country’s welfare agencies, which are there to stop poor mothers from having to face difficult choices for their pocketbooks. Higher prices could lead to mothers choosing to limit formula use, with nutritional detriments to the baby.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The White House’s Specious Gender Manifesto The White House is claiming that the debate about childhood gender medicine is settled—even as numerous international experts are coming forward to say it‘s not. Bernard Lane

By on May 26th, 2022

https://quillette.com/2022/05/13/joe-bidens-faulty-gender-diktat/
“How will history judge gender-affirming care if professional groupthink has in fact served to improperly justify the medicalisation of vulnerable minors with no good evidence to confidently predict the effect on their welfare? ”

On March 31st, Joe Biden’s White House issued a lengthy “fact sheet” claiming that science has spoken in favour of medicalised gender change for young people. What used to be called “sex-reassignment” is now the more seductive “gender-affirming care” —from puberty-blocker drugs to interrupt natural development, on to lifelong synthetic hormones, even surgery. And now we have the leader of the free world boldly “confirming the positive impact of gender-affirming care on youth mental health” for children and teens who identify as transgender or non-binary.

“Confirming” is the new asserting, and the Biden-Harris administration is also “confirming that providing gender-affirming care is neither child maltreatment nor malpractice.” It’s a small step from confirming to enforcing, and so the federal Justice Department has written to state attorneys-general warning them that if they deny minors the benefits of gender-affirming medical science, they will fall afoul of constitutional and statutory guarantees of equality, not to mention funding rules tied to grants from Washington. The first state under federal fire is Alabama, where a new law would impose up to 10 years’ prison time on clinicians taking anyone under 19 on a medicalised gender journey. The White House is even taking the fight offshore, pledging to uphold trans health rights with its foreign policy and overseas aid programs.

Biden’s blizzard of initiatives was unleashed on Transgender Day of Visibility. Timing matters in politics, and Biden’s may be a little off. Americans are starting to get their first glimpse of gender medicine as an intensely contested field; it’s nowhere near settled science. For several years, big left-leaning media outlets have told a simple story in which the medicalised gender-affirming approach is lifesaving, at least for those kids who say they can’t live without it. It follows, we’re told, that any restriction is a suicidally dangerous denial of health care, there being supposedly no alternative to hormonal and sometimes surgical interventions.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Please Don’t Go To College Higher education has become simpler and less effective as we have fetishized a modern misunderstanding of equality. By William M. Briggs

By on May 26th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/25/please-dont-go-to-college/

“If learning were profaned by being made available to all and sundry,” Cardinal Richelieu predicted in 1625, “it would be found that there were more people capable of creating doubts than of resolving them, and many would show themselves more apt in opposing truth than in defending it.”

Passing by, only for a moment, the shocking elitism, so appalling to our modern ears, how did the Red Eminence fare?

The answer is obvious, as is the answer to the growing madness which surrounds us: Less, not more, education. And more elitism.

You’ve heard the slogan: “We want our college to look like America.” They say it about college, about Congress, the bureaucracy, the bar, the professoriate, almost anything. The reply should be: “No, we don’t.” I don’t want my pilot looking “like America.” America looks like the furtive guy at the end of the bar who should have been arrested years ago. Or America looks like that nice old lady we just helped load groceries into her trunk. Pilots look nothing like that. I want my pilot looking like he has the skills, and the intelligence, to fly the marvel of engineering that is a jet aircraft. I also do not want those aeronautical engineers to look like America. I’m keen on them understanding differential equations, and what stress does to aluminum welds.

The exceptions to that “almost anything” were, until recently, things like combat soldiering and professional sports. Alas, even in those sanctuaries of reality, the cry of looking like America has taken hold. Because of a false understanding of equality.

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