One woman's tough and tender approach to grassroots conservative principles in an era of unreasonable logic from those who claim progressive strategies but fail to heed how those same strategies have failed miserably throughout history.
"Be wise as serpents ... harmless as doves."
If the Clintons don’t know what they’re up against in Donald Trump, a new ad put out by the Republican this week should be enough to clear up any lasting confusion. In the short, online ad, the tearful words of Bill Clinton rape victim Juanita Broaddrick are played over a sinister photo of the cigar-smoking president.
“He starts to bite on my top lip and I try to pull away from him,” Broaddrick says in voice-over taken from a 1999 NBC Dateline interview.
The ad then plays Hillary’s chilling cackle while the words “Here we go again?” are imposed over the background. The ad finishes with the usual Trump for President logo.
Can you say…we’re just getting started?
This is going to be an election like none other, and it’s already obvious that Hillary Clinton is out of her depth. Trump is going to show her the true meaning of a “vast right wing conspiracy.” He’s not going to hold anything back, and he’s already proven to be a master of controlling the narrative. He systematically found the weak spots in each one of his serious primary challengers, re-framed the public’s view of these contenders with a nickname or two, and steamrolled over them on his way to the nomination.
And yet the media thinks he’ll be unable to do it again.
Their confidence is remarkable, considering that Trump is headed into one of his weakest challenges yet. You can’t even compare Hillary Clinton to Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz. These are men of principle, honor, and integrity. People who respect the common values of most Americans. People without a laundry list of scandals, accusations, and greed comprising their histories. They weren’t right for the Republican nomination at this time, in this year, but they are all far better presidential prospects than Hillary.
Granted, the electoral map, by default, is greatly in favor of the Democrat nominee. So even though Trump is up against a fatally-flawed candidate, he’s going to need every trick in the book to emerge victorious.
Thankfully, this ad proves that he will indeed use those tricks.
As for Broaddrick, the new ad doesn’t even get to the worst of it. After describing how Clinton – then an Arkansas gubernatorial candidate – took advantage of her, Broaddrick went on to talk about how Hillary treated her at an event several weeks later.
“She grabbed a hold of my arm and my hand, and she pulled me close to her, I think so no one else could hear, and said to me very sternly with a frown on her face, ‘Do you understand everything you do for Bill?'” Broaddrick said in an interview with a Boston radio station. “It shocked me. I got my hand from hers and my two friends and I left immediately.”
Once this stuff really starts churning around in the zeitgeist, women are going to realize there’s a big difference between Trump’s off-color insults and the threats, sexual assaults, and intimidation the Clintons have subjected women to for nearly 40 years. If she’s a feminist, then feminism is the last thing women need.
GOP HOUSE CODIFIES OBAMA'S TRANSGENDERISM IN DARK OF NIGHT
Many are asking what Republicans plan to do to stop Obama’s executive war on culture and religious liberty in pursuit of cultural Marxism. Now we know that not only will this party do nothing to stop Obama, they will use their control of Congress to codify Obama’s agenda into law.
Late Wednesday night, Republicans allowed a vote on an amendment from Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY), which codified Obama’s executive order 13672 making transgenderism the law of the land. Obama’s executive order, promulgated in July 2014, instructed bureaucrats to sever contracts with companies that don’t follow the Obama mandated sexual identity agenda. This could include companies that don’t allow men into female bathrooms in their private corporate offices. The Maloney amendment to the $37.4 billion FY 2017 Energy &Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 5055) codified that unilateral act into law.
The amendment passed 223-195 with 43 Republicans supporting it. The GOP House just supported arguably the most radical Democrat agenda item in the dead of night.
Enshrining Obama’s specific edict into law and then passing vanity language reaffirming the general importance of religious liberty is like doing CPR on a dead body.
Defenders of House leaders will contend that leadership had to allow this amendment to come to the floor. After all, they promised an open amendment process and they just couldn’t stop all the RINOs in the conference from voting with Democrats. This argument is weak on many accounts:
GOP leaders are forever blocking key conservative initiatives and legislation in order to violate the GOP platform; certainly they can block an anti-religious liberty transgendered amendment from Democrats to protect the integrity of the GOP-controlled House. Could you imagine Democrats allowing an amendment to pass on an issue that violates their very essence while they are in control of the chamber?
GOP leaders are always twisting arms to get conservative members to vote for bad bills. Somehow we are to believe they were impotent in ensuring “moderate” members (what is moderate about transgenderism?) adhere to the party’s platform?
The reality is that Paul Ryan has long been a supporter of ENDA (Employment Non Discrimination Act), the legislative vehicle for enshrining transgenderism into law and mandating adherence to its dogma on private businesses. That is why he’s been absent in this fight. Moreover, Republicans have failed to allow a single anti-religious bigotry bill to the floor since the illegal gay marriage decision was issued by the Supreme Court, despite the ubiquitous threats against private businesses, states, and private property. Clearly, whipping against this vote was not a priority.
Once the Maloney amendment passed with GOP votes, Republicans proceeded to do what they always do so well. They offered side-by-side amendments in an attempt to cover up the damage. They passed the “Pitts amendment” as a second-degree by voice vote to affirm the constitutional importance of religious liberty. Then they passed the Byrne Amendments to reaffirm that RFRA is still in place and the government cannot discriminate against religious individuals. Well, as we all know, the Constitution and RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) have been in place for the entire Obama administration, yet he is still able to get away with anti-religious bigotry edicts by claiming they don’t interfere with religious beliefs. Enshrining Obama’s specific edict into law and then passing vanity language reaffirming the general importance of religious liberty is like doing CPR on a dead body.
To begin with, this entire spending bill was something that should never have come to the floor. It increased spending and retained a number of green energy programs for a department that shouldn’t even exist. The sad reality is that Republicans will wind up passing a continuing resolution or an omnibus in September and will jettison even the few good provisions they secured in these individual spending bills. As such, the only remaining purpose of spending weeks passing these bills [that will go in the garbage anyway] is to draw a sharp contrast with Democrats on important issues in the news and drive a wedge between the Left and the voters. Now that they are using this process for just the opposite purpose – to codify the most pernicious agenda of the left – why not abort this wasteful process anyway? Why not focus on slam dunk winning legislation if they are not going to use the power of the purse?
Now that leadership has loaded this already sub-par spending bill with transgenderism, conservatives should vote against final passage on Thursday. It’s bad enough that a Republican House cannot be used as a tool to go on offense against cultural Marxism and anti-religious-liberty initiatives. To pass a bill placing an exclamation mark on that agenda is unforgivable.
My Dad Was Transgender. Why I Still Think Gender Can’t Be Changed.
Maybe parallel universes really do exist. Maybe, as my husband and I hiked through the deep, dark forest a few years ago, we somehow crossed through a portal, a stargate into another dimension—a universe that, superficially at least, looks quite similar to the one I’d known most of my life.
I almost hope that’s true. I’d like to believe it, because in the world I now inhabit—which outwardly resembles the one I remember—everything seems to have been turned inside out and become utterly bewildering.
Yes, I find myself wanting to believe that weird matrix explanation and to resist the more likely truth that the world I grew up in could have changed so completely.
I’d like to believe that somewhere back there the world I accidently exited still exists—that world where gender was a fixed biological fact, determined at conception.
But no, this is not the Twilight Zone; it is not an inexplicable parallel universe.
This is 21st century America, and, according to an ABC news article on guidelines recently handed down by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education:
There is no obligation for a student to present a specific medical diagnosis or identification documents that reflect his or her gender identity, and equal access must be given to transgender students even in instances when it makes others uncomfortable, according to the directive.
Yes, we really do live in a nation in which our government tells us girls and boys should be able to share restrooms and locker rooms. We really do live in a culture that values transgender rights over basic morality and children’s safety.
But the very hard reality in this topsy-turvy world is that transgender people are hundreds of times more likely to attempt suicide than the general U.S. population.
And what does our enlightened culture do about this very sad statistic?
My father gave in to his make-believe transgender impulses and became Becky.
Well, we make it easier for people to transition to this sad and depressing lifestyle. Helping them struggle down the hard road of facing reality is just too judgmental; it’s better to let them move into a make-believe life in which they face a 4-in-10 chance of attempting suicide.
My father gave in to his make-believe transgender impulses and became Becky. He’d spent most of his life dreaming of making that transition. When he finally left his family and got what he’d long desired, he still wasn’t fulfilled.
He considered suicide, but, thankfully, resisted. But later, pumped full of unnatural hormones and chemicals and adorned in women’s clothing, he died a sad, confused, forgetful, and regretful old man.
I missed Harold, the one who, during his periods of resisting his impulses, treated me as a father should treat his daughter.
I miss all those times when he accepted the reality that he was Harold, a man—a husband, father, and grandfather.
I miss him dancing with my little feet placed on top of his, his big hands reaching down to clasp my little five-year-old hands. I miss those days of his sexual sobriety when we worked together at his father’s seed company and went to lunch together. I miss all those times when he accepted the reality that he was Harold, a man—a husband, father, and grandfather.
I don’t miss Becky, or those transition times when my father gave in to his transgender impulses. I don’t miss him telling me, when I was just nine years old, of his desire to become a woman and then requiring me to keep that confession a secret. I don’t miss the fanciful alternate world he transported into, leaving my mother emotionally distraught and financially destitute.
My father was the one who had entered another dimension, a make-believe dimension. And rather than returning to the real world, he wanted the real world to accommodate his make-believe world.
That’s what this small but vocal minority and their enablers want from the rest of the real world.
I’d like to believe that world in which truth is objective, and children’s modesty and safety is more important than being politically correct still exists and somehow I might find the portal to return to it. Back to that world where adults looked out for children’s best interests, even if doing so meant saying no and then dealing with rather than succumbing to the resultant temper tantrum.
I’d like to think that, in that parallel universe I inadvertently ambled out of, women and children’s safety is still more important than appeasing a tiny-but-very-vocal minority.
I find myself in a world in which stating a very plain and evident biological fact is now considered a form of hate speech.
But it appears I’m no longer in that universe. I’m in one where choices—no matter how illogical—trump obvious facts.
I find myself in a world in which stating a very plain and evident biological fact is now considered a form of hate speech.
I’m now in a world that tells me I must not only tolerate but also celebrate behaviors that in just a relative eye’s blink before were condemned as detrimental to society.
Soros-Backed Group Funded Obama's Media Push on Iran Nuclear Deal
A left-wing foundation linked to the Obama administration gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to several left-wing groups and news outlets -- including National Public Radio -- to promote the Iran nuclear deal.
The Ploughshares Fund, established in 1981, describes itself as follows:
[A] public grant-making foundation that supports initiatives to prevent the spread and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and other weapons of war, and to prevent conflicts that could lead to the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Ploughshares opposes America's development of a missile defense system, and has expressed sympathy with the Iranian regime. They are funded by, among others:
-- Carnegie Corporation of New York
-- Ford Foundation
--Minneapolis Foundation
-- George Soros’s Open Society Institute
The Ploughshares Fund partners with a roster of well-known anti-American groups, such as:
-- Code Pink
-- Demos
-- United for Peace & Justice
-- U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
The recent New York Times profile of Obama adviser Ben Rhodes named Ploughshares Fund as a key surrogate responsible for creating the media "echo chamber" that promotedthe Iranian nuclear deal and shot down fact-based criticism of it.
According to Ploughshares' annual report, it gave $100,000 last year to NPR "to help it report on the pact and related issues." And since 2005, they have given the federally funded broadcaster at least $700,000.
In the New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran's nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.
"We created an echo chamber," said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, adding that "outside groups like Ploughshares" helped carry out the administration's message effectively.
While there is a disturbing trend of outside groups giving money to news organizations for special projects or even news coverage, the AP notes that most news organizations have rules that protect journalistic independence.
Yet it found Ploughshares' backing "more unusual, given its prominent role in the rancorous, partisan debate over the Iran deal":
The Ploughshares grant to NPR supported "national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security," according to Ploughshares' 2015 annual report, recently published online.
"It is common practice for foundations to fund media coverage of underreported stories," Ploughshares spokeswoman Jennifer Abrahamson said. Funding "does not influence the editorial content of their coverage in any way, nor would we want it to."
Ploughshares has funded NPR's coverage of national security since 2005, the radio network said. Ploughshares reports show at least $700,000 in funding over that time. All grant descriptions since 2010 specifically mention Iran.
In a statement to the AP, NPR denied any wrongdoing:
It's a valued partnership, without any conditions from Ploughshares on our specific reporting, beyond the broad issues of national and nuclear security, nuclear policy, and nonproliferation. As with all support received, we have a rigorous editorial firewall process in place to ensure our coverage is independent and is not influenced by funders or special interests.
Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas is questioning the independence of NPR's coverage on the Iran nuclear deal. Pompeo says he repeatedly asked NPR to allow him on the air to be interviewed as a counterweight to a Democratic supporter of the agreement who regularly appeared on the station:
NPR refused to put Pompeo on the air, he said. The station said it had no record of Pompeo's requests, and listed several prominent Republicans who were featured speaking about the deal or economic sanctions on Iran.
Another who appeared on NPR is Joseph Cirincione, Ploughshares' president. He spoke about the negotiations on air at least twice last year. The station identified Ploughshares as an NPR funder one of those times; the other time, it didn't.
Other media outlets have taken money from Ploughshares, including the Guardian, Salon, Huffington Post and Pro Publica. AP reports that the Ploughshares Fund also gave money to individual reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones to generate news coverage, and that other groups Ploughshares funded last year include:
The Arms Control Association ($282,500); the Brookings Institution ($225,000); the Atlantic Council ($182,500); the liberal Jewish political action group J-Street ($576,500) and the National Iranian American Council ($281,000).
We’ve learned several things since President Barack Obama dictatorially demanded that public school restrooms now be co-ed or risk federal funding. The first thing we learned is that in spite of well-intending parents saying their school is “different from all the other schools,” we now know they will all be the same with regard to restroom and locker rooms practices. Follow the money to D.C.
Second, regardless of how sincere Christian teachers are in their desire to bring Christ into the classroom, they are spiritual eunuchs, who were long ago emasculated and their message muted. To give true testimony of Christ in their classroom is to suffer termination, a risk that is too great for most to take.
Third, local school boards are powerless as Washington D.C. controls every facet of education down to dictating bathroom policy.
Finally, Christian parents are in a showdown with the state with regard to whose will is absolute in the raising of their children, as they seek to answer, “How important is eternity for our children?”
The Scriptures make it undeniably plain: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). Statistics bear out this truth as the church is losing between 64% – 88% of her professing youth after their first year in college. Others studies reveal that the compromise which leads to this departure begins as early as junior high.
Public school students receive around 15,000 hours of indoctrination in the religion of secular humanism, while Christian parents seek to counteract this avalanche with pizza parties at youth meetings and a thirty-minute weekly sermon. Our children are leaving the faith by the tens of thousands, and we can’t figure out why?
Sadder yet, many will go into eternity unprepared. How long can we Christians elicit the grace of God for our children while sending our children into a culture that we know is spiritually destructive?
How much spiritual carnage do we have to witness before we say, “Enough is enough. This is the last straw. There must be an alternative!”
Not only is there an alternative, it’s been proven to work experientially, statistically, and historically. It’s called homeschooling.
While homeschooling is not a silver bullet, 94% of homeschooled children do keep the faith of their parents, and 93% stay active in their local church after graduation. These numbers alone should motivate parents to train their impressionable children at home in accordance with Deuteronomy 6.
While many parents feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of this task, there are innumerable resources to help, not the least of which is God. Ignorance and feelings of inadequacy are no longer justifiable excuses, especially since a parent’s level of education has been found to be a non-factor in their children’s academic success.
I was a public school teacher as was my wife. When we started to homeschool twenty years ago, I shared that I was not anti-public schooling, just pro-homeschooling. That is no longer the case. I know far too much. The public school system is not broken. On the contrary, it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: indoctrinate the next generation into a socialist perspective of voluntary slavery. Consider what educational leader John Dewey wrote:
The moral responsibility of the school and of those who conduct it is to society. [A]part from participation in social life, the school has no moral end or aim. [In religious terminology] the moral trinity of the school [is] the demand for social intelligence, social power, and social interests.
Can the point be made any clearer than that?
I call on all parents who profess the name of Christ to reevaluate their decision to send their children to government schools. We will each stand before God Almighty and have to give an account for the stewardship of our children’s souls. What will we say on that day when we knowingly sent them into a system that rejects His name and teaches doctrines that are diametrically opposed to His Word?
For those of you who feel this tug but don’t know where to start, I want to personally invite you to attend the Illinois Christian Home Educators’ Annual Convention in Naperville, June 2-4. For the past 17 years, my wife and I have made the five-hour trip north in order to be encouraged, instructed, and equipped to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. For more information and to register, go to www.iche.org and click on the convention icon.
Kirk and Joely Smith have been married since 1991. Kirk graduated from Greenville College, teaching and coaching for two years at the high school level before founding the House of Prayer church in Albion, IL, which he pastored for almost 25 years. Joely graduated from the University of Southern Indiana and taught first grade for two years before the birth of their first child after which she stayed home.
The Smith family live in southeastern Illinois with their 11 children who range in age from toddler to young adult. They are looking forward to building new relationships and spreading the home discipleship vision of ICHE to all corners of Illinois.
Barack Hussein Obama Accelerates His ’Emasculation Jihad’ On The U.S. Military
He chose a woman who had never flown a plane to head the Air Force in the Pacific and has nominated her to be the first woman to lead the U.S. Northern Combat Command. Now he has nominated an openly sodomite man to be Secretary of the Army. What’s next – a tranny to head the Navy?
AIR FORCE
Washington Times: In 2014, the White House picked the first female general to head the Air Force in the Pacific, which will make her the first non-pilot to command air power in such a large theater of operation.
The Pentagon announced that Air ForceLt. Gen. Lori J. Robinson (below) has been nominated for promotion to four-star general and as commander of Pacific Air Forces, the Air Force component of U.S. Pacific Command. It is a major combatant command whose air, ground, and naval forces have broad responsibility for security in the Asia-Pacific region.
Until now, only experienced Air Force pilots had held this position. Gen. Robinson is not a career pilot. Her military profession is air battle manager. She has served aboard the Air Force’s surveillance aircraft, the E-3 AWACs and E-8 JSTARS, and she was nominated for a promotion amid a drive for more diversity in the Pentagon.
A retired pilot said there is a reason the Air Force historically has put a pilot in charge of large combatant command Air Forces.
“It is because you make operational decisions that require the understanding of what you are going to ask pilots to execute in combat where the wrong decisions mean the difference between life and death,” the retired pilot said. “Now her vice commander and director of operations will be rated fighter pilots, but still she makes the decisions.”
Washington Times: But it gets even worse. Obama will name Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson head of U.S. Northern Command, making her the nation’s first female combatant commander, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced in March.
The position, which is subject to Senate approval, is one of the most senior in the U.S. military and would make Gen. Robinson — who now leads U.S. air forces in the Pacific — the top general overseeing activities in North America. “General Robinson, it just so happens, would be the first-ever female combatant commander,” Mr. Carter said.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
Military1: The Marines are resisting having women in combat because they have proven to perform much worse than men in terms of weapons training, strength and endurance, which puts their male counterparts in danger.
An experiment conducted by the Marine Corps on the effectiveness of gender integrated units showed women were twice as likely to be injured, had more difficulty shooting weapons, and struggled to remove wounded troops from war zones.
Out of 134 tasks asked of troops in the experiment, all-male teams out-performed integrated squads on 99, with no difference calculated on the remaining 35.
Upper body strength was a noted deficit for female troops working within the group. “For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top,” the summary said.
The Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force consisted of 300 male soldiers and 100 female soldiers who volunteered to be part of the assignment, which was carried out at both Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Twentynine Palms, Calif., and lasted nine months.
No Women Passed Marines Infantry Officer School by Experiment’s End
FOX NEWS: The last two female Marines hoping to make their way through the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course as part of an experiment to integrate the program washed out on April 2, ending the research phase of the project.
*Female Marine officers who sought entry to IOC were not expected to meet the same physical fitness screening standards as male Marines, but they were required to match male performance in the course, Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Maureen Krebs told Military.com in November.
The 13-week school historically averages a 25-percent attrition rate.
During the first day’s grueling Combat Endurance Test, Marines wear combat gear, perform various physical tasks, and answer tactical questions while negotiating a land-navigation course, Krebs said.
The experiment began more than two years ago as part of a broader look at the possibility of opening ground combat specialties to women. Since then, 29 women volunteered for IOC at Quantico, Krebs said Friday.
Of the first group of 10 to volunteer for the course, nine failed to make it through the first day. The remaining female Marine dropped out a week later, after being injured on the course.
Last October, three of the seven female volunteers made it through the Combat Endurance Test. Two of those who passed were captains. However, none of the women completed the program.
Supporters of the decision to integrate combat units frequently point to the Israel Defense Forces as a model, but the IDF has, in fact, limited its gender integration. Units at the tip of the spear – those engaged in classic infantry combat – are all-male, and the IDF does not allow women to serve in tanks because it found that women were less physically capable and that it was “problematic” for men and women to serve in close and confined quarters for days at a time.
ARMY
Defense News: The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Eric Fanning (photo below), the White House nominee to be the next secretary of the Army, making him the first openly sodomite man to hold an armed service’s top civilian position.
The landmark move was praised by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, sodomite, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization. His nomination comes five years after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation barring open sodomite from serving.
“Eric Fanning’s historic confirmation today as Secretary of the U.S. Army is a demonstration of the continued progress towards fairness and equality in our nation’s armed forces,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “Eric Fanning has spent his career serving this nation with tireless dedication, skill and ability, and as secretary he will bring that same commitment to the men and women of the U.S. Army.”
SODOMITE RAPE: DON’T ASK DON’T TELL. Sodomite men responsible for the majority of sexual assaults in the military.
Frontpage : “It appears that the DOD has serious problems with male-on-male sexual assaults that men are not reporting and the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about.”
Liberal activists speak endlessly about heterosexual rapes in the military, but they remain silent about the fact that the majority of sexual assaults in the military… are homosexual.
Instead of denouncing the culture of homosexual sexual abuse, they practice a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward it while demanding that the military bring in more homosexuals to commit even more sexual assaults.
More military men than women are sexually abused in the ranks each year, a Pentagon survey shows, highlighting the underreporting of male-on-male assaults.
When the Defense Department released the results of its anonymous sexual abuse survey this month and concluded that 26,000 service members were victims in fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30, an automatic assumption was that most were women. But roughly 14,000 of the victims were male, according to a scientific survey sample produced by the Pentagon.
“It appears that the DOD has serious problems with male-on-male sexual assaults that men are not reporting and the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about,” Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness, said. She noted that only 2 percent of assailants are women.
The problem will now only get worse as the sodomite agenda dominates the military. There was a reason that sodomite men were kept out of the military.
NAVY
Considering the way Obama has treated the Navy SEALS, I’m sure an unqualified gender non-specific person will soon be named to head the Navy.
This week, the University of Chicago Student Government decided that freedom of speech and freedom of expression just wasn’t their thing.
Instead, they’d rather side with groups who seek to minimize dissent, ban speakers and silence voices – all in the name of “tolerance.”
The resolution – “reaffirming the University’s commitment to free expression” – called on school administrators to condemn any student who “obstructs or disrupts” free speech, including threats of violence.
It seemed rather mundane for the University of Chicago, which was recently hailed by a campus free-speech group for protecting the First Amendment.
But Cosmo Albrecht didn’t see things that way. The Class of 2018 representative didn’t want to rush to embrace free speech. (I mean, what is this? A free country?)
We shouldn’t condemn violence and demonstrations against people too quickly.
“I don’t think we should use this idea of elected officials being … banned from speaking as evidence that free speech is under attack,” he added, clearly not grasping the definition of “free speech.”
Other student senators got into the discussion and they quickly confused the idea of “banning speech” with “protesting someone else’s speech.” From The Chicago Maroon:
In debating the resolution, several General Assembly members referenced the event with Anita Alvarez, who has been widely criticized for her office’s role in delaying the release of a video of a Chicago Police Department officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
“I do think that at a university, a variety of viewpoints are supposed to be put in front of us,” said Class of 2018 CC Representative Calvin Cottrell. “I was going to show up [to the Alvarez event] and ask very tough questions about what had happened in her office and I think many people were denied the opportunity to ask those questions.”
SG President Tyler Kissinger explained that while he does not usually speak on these issues, he urged General Assembly members to vote against the resolution. “As a public official it is my obligation not to run out of the room. I was at the Anita Alvarez event, an event with someone whose office has consistently refused to meet with black and Latino communities that her office has over-policed and I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “I think it is well within the rights of people to protest events particularly for public officials…and I urge a no vote.”
Georgia governor blasts transgender student order -- Online Athens
Tue, 17 May 2016, 09:22 PM
ATLANTA | Georgia's governor and other statewide leaders on Tuesday criticized the Obama administration's recent directive on transgender students as an abuse of federal authority.
But in his first comments on the issue since Friday's directive, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal stopped short of pledging legal action, a step demanded by GOP state senators objecting to the guidance that transgender students at public schools must be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
Senators wrote a letter to Deal this week calling for Georgia to join legal challenges over transgender students' access to bathrooms at public schools and defend any school district sued individually over the issue. The state's Republican attorney general, Sam Olens, also made no mention of legal action in a written statement issued Tuesday.
Robbie Medwed, education director for the faith-based LGBT advocacy organization Southern Jewish Resource Network, called the mounting opposition from Georgia Republicans leaders "really disappointing."
"The directive letter outlines best practices from across the country," Medwed said. "Far more important than what the governor says or what the president says are the actual facts of the situation: that transgender kids and all kids are safer when transgender kids are treated with respect."
Courts have issued mixed rulings on whether transgender people are protected by federal civil rights law. But the directive says schools that refuse to comply could face federal lawsuits and lose federal aid. Georgia's budget for the financial year starting in July includes nearly $2 billion in federal education funding and grants.
Conservative leaders in other states rushed to criticize the administration's guidance. Since it was issued, some urged school districts to disregard it while several states have signed on to a brief asking a federal appeals court to rehear a case over a Virginia transgender student's access to the boys' bathroom.
Deal instead asked state Superintendent Richard Woods to "provide guidance" to school districts aimed at "uniformity" across the state. Each district "must determine an appropriate response to this federal overreach," he said.
"Until Congress acts, I assure the citizens of Georgia that the offices of the governor, attorney general and state school superintendent will work cooperatively to protect the interests of Georgia's children from this abuse of federal executive authority," Deal said.
Asked for comment, Woods spokesman Matt Cardoza cited a statement the Republican issued on Friday. In the statement, Woods said the state Department of Education will "communicate with districts when we've had time to fully evaluate the issue." Woods also said he did not believe "a student of another gender should use a restroom alongside students of the opposite sex."
Olens said local officials and parents can make the best decision for their community.
"As the State's chief law enforcement officer, I will take steps, when appropriate under the law, to ensure that these decisions are being made at the appropriate level," he said in the statement.
As many as 4 in 10 gay men have HIV in some Southern cities -- Online Athens
Tue, 17 May 2016, 04:33 PM
NEW YORK | Three out of every 10 gay or bisexual men in several cities in the U.S. South have been diagnosed with the AIDS virus, three times the national rate, according to a study about how common HIV infections are in metro areas.
The study echoes other research that reported higher rates of HIV diagnoses in the South, in urban areas, and in gay and bisexual men, but it is the first to look at how common HIV diagnoses are in these men by city.
"For the first time, we can see not only the numbers, but the proportions," said Dr. Jonathan Mermin of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report found 21 of the 25 metro areas with the highest levels of HIV diagnosis in gay and bisexual men were in the South. HIV was diagnosed in about 3 in 10 gay and bisexual men in El Paso, Texas; Augusta, Georgia; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In Jackson, Mississippi, the rate was 4 in 10, the highest in the nation.
According to the report, about 11 percent of gay and bisexual men had been diagnosed living with an HIV infection nationwide during the time covered by the study.
Emory University researchers produced the new numbers using national counts of HIV diagnoses in different communities. Lacking good census counts of sexually active gay and bisexual men, they used data from previous studies to calculate how many men had sex with other men.
In its look at metro areas, the study counts only those who have tested positive for HIV. Because many HIV cases are not diagnosed, those numbers don't reflect how common HIV infections really are in each area. It's also not clear what factors may vary from city to city that might explain differing rates.
Still, while the largest total numbers of gay and bisexual cases are in large cities like New York and Los Angeles, this research gives a better understanding that the chance of encountering an infected gay or bisexual man is far greater in some smaller communities, some experts said.
The research was released Tuesday through an obscure publication, the Journal of Medical Internet Research. CDC officials described the work as important and useful in deciding how to target HIV prevention funds.
The Transgender Straw Broke the Camel’s Back: It’s Time to Declare Independence from Public Schools
You may not have realized it yet, but the Obama administration just destroyed the traditional American public school. Without an act of Congress, without a ruling from the Supreme Court, and without even going through the motions of the regulatory rule-making process, the administration issued a letter drafting every single public educational institution in the country to implement the extreme edge of the sexual revolution.
The Department of Justice and the Department of Education have declared that they now “interpret” federal law to not only support the fantastical notion that boys can become girls but also to impose new legal requirements that impact every aspect of school life. The administration’s letter sweeps far beyond bathrooms — imposing a new speech code on school employees and even students, opening girls’ showers to boys, requiring schools to allow boys to sleep in girls’ rooms on overnight field trips, requiring boys to room with girls even in single-sex dorms, and putting boys on girls’ sports teams.
Moreover, schools are prohibited from making any inquiry to ensure that the boys using girls’ facilities are, in fact, transgender. They can’t ask for medical documentation. They can’t ask for treatment information. They can’t ask for identification. They have to take the boy at his word.
And yet the administration’s letter isn’t significant just for what it says — it’s significant for what it means. The federal government can and will use extralegal means to override local control, the rule of law, and even the Constitution itself when social justice demands it. That principal you love? He’s not in control of your school. The great school board you just elected? They’re puppets. The teacher your child bonds with? She doesn’t run her own classroom.
The federal government can and will use extralegal means to override local control, the rule of law, and even the Constitution itself.
And the political fights are only escalating, with local school boards exercising decreasing amounts of control over curriculum, textbook selection, and school policies. The progressive thumb is always on the scales, often nudging and sometimes shoving instruction in a comprehensively leftward direction: Islam is wonderful and peaceful. American history is a story of unrelenting repression and intolerance. Academic standards and in-school discipline matter less than social and racial justice. Orthodox Christians are bigots.
The majority of families are left with no meaningful choice. Only small minorities have either the time and ability to homeschool or the resources to send their children to private schools. So during the school year, Americans hand their children over to educators who often spend more waking hours with their kids than parents do.
Private-school families face a double burden — paying the property taxes that keep the public schools afloat while also paying private tuition. At my kids’ school — a very reasonably priced private school in Tennessee — parents make enormous sacrifices for the sake of independence and for the sake of teaching God-honoring values.
The stakes are now clear: We must fix our education system or slowly but surely lose our culture. Indeed, virtually every other conservative endeavor — whether it’s winning elections, transforming media, or infiltrating pop culture — will fail if the entire edifice of public education is arrayed against us. The system, however, can’t be reformed from within: It’s stacked top-to-bottom with progressive activists even in red states.
We must fix our education system or slowly but surely lose our culture.
So that means creating a new model. States should consider rejecting federal education funding entirely (Texas is considering doing just that). At the very least, charter schools should be completely disentangled — and not just from public employees’ unions but also from federal funds (in order to insulate them from federal influence); voucher systems should be dramatically expanded — giving every family the option to spend their share of tax dollars at the school of their choice; and private institutions and philanthropists should step up to provide needed funding. Indeed, private citizens don’t have to wait for government reform. Scholarship funds can expand the ranks of tuition-paying private-school students immediately, and coalitions of churches can provide substantial support for their communities’ best private schools.
America’s fractured Evangelical community still has enormous resources to allocate, but has traditionally showed little unity of purpose. However, in communities where pastors know and trust each other, joint effort isn’t just possible but arguably necessary.
Pastors and families often idealize the public-school experience, calling it a “mission field,” and holding out hope that their children can be “salt and light” in a difficult environment. But the process of education largely involves one-way communication, with the teachers and administrators seeing the students as their secular “mission field.” Isolated young children are more vulnerable than powerful, and I’ve seen many parents come to grief as fully indoctrinated, peer-pressured kids make mistakes with lifetime consequences.
It’s not enough to sue the Obama administration, to protest, or to vote. It’s time to create and sustain excellent, accessible, and fiercely independent alternatives to the government’s schools. If we don’t, we lose. It’s that simple.
— David French is a staff writer at National Review, and an attorney.
