News of the Week for May 13^th, 2018

• Gun Rights
• Hide the Decline
• Obamacare
• War & Terror
• National News
• Economy & Taxes
• International News
• Opinion

 

Gun Rights

 

Illinois counties pull the trigger on Sanctuary status for gun owners
A few weeks ago we talked about a rural county in Illinois which was threatening to declare themselves a sanctuary for gun owners if the state moved to pass restrictive gun control laws. While largely symbolic in nature, it was a warning shot across the bow of the state legislature and a case of more conservative voters using the left’s own language against them. The movement started in Effingham County, but as the Washington Times reported this weekend, it quickly spread and nearly a half-dozen counties have joined the cause.

Letting Cops Decide Who Gets to Own Guns Is a Terrible Idea
At the Huffington Post, Jonathan Cohn has an article about the “toughest gun law in America”: Massachusetts’s permitting regime, which not only requires applicants to jump through various hoops (training, character references, background checks) but also grants local law enforcement the discretion to deny permits based on nothing more than “credible evidence that somebody may pose a threat to public safety.”

Student hauled in for questioning over ‘Come and Take It’ flag
A student at South Pasadena High School was brought before administrators for questioning when he tried to wear a “Come and Take It” flag to a pro-Second Amendment walkout.

More Proof The Left Really Does Want To Abolish Legal Gun Ownership
Gun control advocates hide behind the rhetoric of “common-sense gun laws,” but sometimes the mask sometimes slips off and their real goal is revealed.

Margaret River murder-suicide: Seven people found dead in house near WA holiday town
Seven people including four children and three adults have been found dead at a home near Margaret River in Western Australia’s South West.

Autistic student in Conroe ISD arrested for playing with ‘imaginary rifle”
Handcuffed and hauled away. It happened Monday to a 5th grade autistic student at Conroe Independent School District’s Bozman Intermediate school.

Bill targets school riflery teams, citing “gun culture”
Jillian Zakrzeski’s skills with an air rifle earned her three New York state high school shooting championships, a berth in the Junior Olympics and even recruitment to a college rifle team.

 

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

2 shock studies frost cherished climate change “science” claims
Climate skeptics are cleaner; US drops its carbon dioxide emissions while Europe’s increases.

California, land of the mandatory solar panels
Thinking of building or purchasing a newly constructed home in California? Even assuming you can somehow afford to own one in one of the most brutal real estate markets in the country, get ready for the cost to go up further. The state government is preparing to pass a new law which will mandate that every new house, condo or other building up to three stories high must have solar panels installed and comply with a “net-zero energy” profile. (This means that they have to produce enough of their own solar power to offset all electricity off the grid and natural gas consumed over the course of a year.)

Trump’s EPA Will Axe Obama’s “De Facto Ban On New Coal Plants”
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans on repealing an Obama-era requirement effectively mandating all new coal-fired power plants be outfitted with unproven emissions technology, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

405 thousand year climate cycle discovered related to Earth’s orbit around the sun
In ancient rocks, scientists see a climate cycle working across deep time.

Residents in Salem, Oregon Will be Fined For Putting Wrong Items Into Recycling Bins
“We’re going to monitor everybody a lot more closely”

The study you won’t be hearing about: No impact on groundwater from fracking
Protests by environmentalists against hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) have been going on for years now, along with the Hollywood efforts of serial fabulists such as Josh Fox. One of the biggest concerns surrounding the process is the possibility of contamination of groundwater. While a previous study in Pennsylvania by the state Department of Environmental Protection revealed zero instances of this happening (except for surface spills during transport of hydraulic fluids), critics discounted the study and the protests continued.

Trump dismantles NASA climate change program
The Trump administration has cut off funding for a major NASA satellite-based climate change research program, according to the latest issue of Science magazine.

Open Physics vs Secret Climate Science
Should scientists share their data and method? EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt stirred a hornet’s nest when he issued a demand for the end of secret science. But isn’t open sharing of data and method the way we have all been taught science is supposed to work?

Dana Nuccitelli: Support a Carbon Tax or Climate will Punish Trump Voters
According to Dana, the wrath of Gaea will strike down Trump voters unless Republican leaders embrace a Carbon Tax.

 

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

Bait & $witch, Part 1
Regular readers may recall the story of Dave and Sally (now former) longtime clients who ditched their Medical Mutual grandmothered plan for the (allegedly) greener pastures of a Health Care Sharing Ministry.

Bait & $witch, Part 2
In Part 1, we revisited the story of Sally and Dave, who had decided last summer to ditch their grandmothered major medical plan in favor of a Health Care Sharing Ministry. While searching for alternatives, they ran across a Texas-based agent with … questionable … claims and offerings. The first plan she offered turned out to be a standard issue Short Term Medical (STM) that didn’t actually match what she’d originally promised.

 

War & Terror

 

Gunship Crews Practice Extra Vigilance Amid Jamming in Syria
The electronic jamming signals affecting AC-130 gunships over Syria may have crews checking and cross-checking their data, including target information, before they lock on with their cannons, according to a top commander here.

Trump to withdraw from landmark nuclear accord with Iran, dealing blow to U.S. allies
AP sources: Trump to withdraw from landmark nuclear accord with Iran, dealing blow to U.S. allies.

California’s US Senators’ tortuous exchanges with CIA Director Nominee
Haspel deftly handles the questions and the attitudes.

Judge refuses to dismiss charges against Antifa leader Yvette Felarca
Yvette Felarca is a leader of a Berkeley area Antifa group called By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). Last July Felarca was arrested on charges of inciting a riot and felony assault over an incident that took place in Sacramento in 2016. In February of this year, Felarca and two other Antifa defendants asked a judge to dismiss the charges on the grounds that she is the victim of a “political witch hunt” involving a cover-up and police collusion with fascist protesters. Today, County Court judge Michael Savage ruled the felony case against Felarca could proceed.

Russian Nuclear Bombers Intercepted Near Alaska
F-22s shadow two Bear H bombers over Aleutian Islands

 

National

 

Admiral Cuomo prepares for war
To stop the US Interior Department’s approval of offshore drilling, he vows “to commission a citizen fleet from throughout the state to go out and interfere with their federal {drilling} effort just as Winston Churchill did in Dunkirk…If you think I’m kidding, I’m not and I’m going to lead that citizen fleet”.

He Makes a Joke. She Isn’t Laughing: “Lingerie” Comment in Elevator Leads to Uproar Among Scholars
He says he was joking when he asked to be let off an elevator at the ladies’ lingerie department. A female scholar who was attending the same annual meeting of the International Studies Association was not amused, and neither was the association when she complained.

Glenn Jacobs, expected to be elected mayor is a libertarian. What that means for Knox County.
Search “Glenn Jacobs” on Google and once you get past stories transcribing his rise to being the GOP nominee for Knox County mayor and once you get past the videos of him as WWE wrestler Kane throwing much smaller people around the wrestling ring, you will find old blog posts and political essays with his byline.

11 Key Points From The Explosive Manafort Hearing The Media Missed
A full read of the nearly 50 pages of transcript from the hour-plus long hearing bares eleven facts worth noting beyond their entertainment value.

Conservative student cries foul after school revokes award
A conservative student at Lone Star College-Tomball claims that administrators revoked his “academic excellence” award in retaliation for his exposure of anti-conservative bias on campus.

Arizona Passes Goldwater-Based Campus Free Speech Law
On April 25, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed into law a bill ensuring comprehensive protection for campus free speech at public universities in his state. The bill, expertly shepherded through the legislature by House Education Committee Chair Paul Boyer, is based on model campus free speech legislation published by Arizona’s Goldwater Institute. (I co-authored that model, along with Jim Manley and Jonathan Butcher.)

NY attorney general resigns after allegations of physical abuse
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned Monday night after a bombshell report detailing allegations from multiple women of physical abuse against him.

Rosenstein: ‘Central Lesson of the Holocaust’ Is the ‘Importance of Enforcing Rule of Law’
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the Anti-Defamation League’s National Leadership Summit on Sunday that law enforcement must study the Holocaust “not only to understand the depths of depravity that people can perpetrate, but also as a reminder to guard against the risk of moral corruption in our own time.”

Trump NRA Speech Draws Ire In France, Britain
“France is proud to be a country where acquiring and carrying firearms is strictly regulated”

Ex: Schneiderman called me “brown slave,” slapped me until I called him “Master”
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called his Sri Lankan girlfriend his “brown slave” and wanted her to refer to him as “Master,” the woman says.

Soros Drops $1.5 Million in San Diego for Far-Left District Attorney Candidate
Geneviéve Jones-Wright appeared on Soros-hosted panel at dark money donor conference

“Deodorant Challenge” leaves teen with second-degree burns
A 15-year-old girl in England was left with horrific burns after deodorant was sprayed on her in the latest school craze.

Clinton Meets Secretly With New Zealand PM, Complains About Trump
Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton met with the leader of New Zealand at an unofficial breakfast Monday, where she complained that she didn’t receive fair treatment in the U.S. election.

DHS Secretary Gives Democrat Senator A Lesson On Following The Law
On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen gave an education to a Democrat Senator on following the law during a congressional hearing on illegal immigration.

Google urges attendees to wear ‘pronoun stickers’ at developers conference
Google’s annual developers conference i/o 2018 starts Tuesday, and many are sharing on Twitter that attendees are being encouraged to wear “pronoun stickers.”

Course critiques ‘superficiality’ of ‘dominant white culture’
The University of Colorado-Colorado Springs is offering students three graduate academic credits to implement an 11-part “Witnessing Whiteness” workshop series in their home communities.

Roman Polanski threatens to sue film academy over expulsion
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts recently rose up in righteous indignation and booted convicted child rapist and pedophile Roman Polanski from their ranks over things they’d known about for more than a quarter of a century but did nothing about. Simply saying “better late than never” doesn’t really excuse all sins, but at least they didn’t wait to do it posthumously, I suppose. So until we hopefully find a way to put a bag over his head and drag him back to the United States and throw him in prison, that’s pretty much the end of it, right?

University gets $1 million to fight “implicit bias” in STEM
The University of Texas at San Antonio has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to combat “implicit bias” and promote “diversity” in STEM disciplines.

Banner removed after conservative answers race relations prompt
A banner at Lone Star College-Tomball inviting students to share their feelings about the current state of racial relations was mysteriously removed just one day after a conservative student added his response.

Rutgers trains students to empathize with illegal immigrants
Rutgers University recently held a training workshop intended to help students, faculty, and staff empathize with the illegal immigrant community.

Sheldon Adelson donates $30 million to House Republicans, triple the amount in 2016
Billionaire businessman Sheldon Adelson is pouring $30 million into the pockets of House Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections in the hope of helping the GOP maintain its majority.

San Diego Charter School Mural Featuring Spear Through President’s Head Sparks Outrage
Contrary to rumors, Kathy Griffin was not the art teacher.

How much CCSD teachers make will shock you
A first-year teacher at the Clark County School District will make $15.25 an hour – just in benefits. He or she will make $31.53 an hour in pay, for a total compensation package of $46.78 an hour. If that seems like an incredibly high rate of pay for a 22-year-old college graduate, that’s because it is.

It’s Not Sci-Fi: China Is Developing Tech That Can Mold U.S. Kids’ Minds
Chinese companies are buying up U.S. companies that store mammoth personal data on American children and adults. National-security analysts are starting to take notice.

“Compassion fatigue” from hyper-exposure to negative news growing problem, scholar warns
Technology puts bad news in forefront all day, everyday

Lib Rag Vox Blames Ebola Outbreak On Trump…
Good grief.

Race, PC, and 2016
This summary of the research is very good, and cuts through a lot of the confusion caused when researchers label conservative attitudes on race “racial resentment.”

UConn creates Minor in ‘social justice community organizing’
The University of Connecticut is launching a new minor in “Social Justice Organizing” starting in the Fall semester, which requires at least 15 credits in courses addressing “social identities” and “structural inequalities.”

Harvard organization doxxes professor because she criticized its portrayal of Trump voters
Had access to her email address used to create the commenting account

What is Elizabeth Warren up to with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe?
Here’s a bit of legislative mystery which has mostly flown under the radar. It involves a piece of legislation introduced in the Senate in March which would clear the way for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in Massachusettes to restart construction on a massive casino complex located south of Boston. Nothing too unusual about the bill, really, since native tribes have been pushing to develop casinos and generate tribal revenue for decades. But this bill was sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Mom pleads guilty to letting elderly man rape girls for cash
A mom in Georgia pleaded guilty to allowing several men, including one 78-year-old, rape her little girls for cash, officials said.

Male Student Accuses Female Student of Sexual Assault. She Says He Wanted Revenge.
Title IX creates a prisoner’s dilemma: students have to file sexual misconduct complaints to avoid becoming the accused.

 

Economy & Taxes

 

White House Rolls Out Agenda for More Deregulation to Boost Business
President Donald Trump will continue to target duplicative and ineffective regulations as part of his administration’s “spring agenda,” the White House announced Wednesday.

 

International

 

Oslo Police Declare “We Have Lost the City”…Islam Has Taken Over
All Non-Aquaintence Rapes Were Committed By Muslims Immigrants

German high schoolers complain English exam was too hard
High school students in Germany have gathered tens of thousands of signatures in an online petition to complain about an “unfair” final English exam, saying the test was much harder than in previous years.

Decolonising education: How one SA university is getting it done
It’s a task that universities nationwide have been grappling with: how to “decolonise” their curricula.

Scientists build ‘synthetic embryos’
Dutch scientists have built “synthetic” embryos in their laboratory using mouse cells other than sperm and eggs.

Portugal’s president vetoes new gender-change law
Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has vetoed a law that would have made it easier for people to change their gender and name in documents.

UK Proposes Prison Time For Offensive Online Posts
The Sentencing Council for England and Wales has drafted new guidelines proposing prison sentences of between 26 weeks and six years for social media posts deemed hostile toward a race, religion or sexual identity.

UK: School Bans Pencil Cases to Eradicate Any “Stigma”
The problem here is less about inequity and more about attitude.

It’s racist for white people to lodge complaints…
It ended with these words: As such, members of the culturally dominant group must commit to engaging with resistant imaginings with a critical openness to the other and their testimony, and they must develop their capacities as listeners and a propensity to epistemically esteem the other in recognition of their alterity, if we are to prevent such injustices in the future.

 

Opinion

 

How Is The Culture War Fought?
Jonah Goldberg’s response is more evidence of the reordering of the coalitional hierarchy of priorities within the American right.

Striking Teachers a Boon for Homeschooling
Parents and their children can be the big winners once freed from statist baby-sitting controls.

Here’s The Biggest Legal Flaw In California’s Sexual Orientation Therapy Ban
The problem is this: academics and lawyers don’t agree on what “sexual orientation” actually is. The term is infamously ambiguous.

Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web
An alliance of heretics is making an end run around the mainstream conversation. Should we be listening?

Why The STEAM Fad In Schools Isn’t About A Better Education
Identity-group “diversity” is now ‘an explicit job qualification’ in scientific disciplines, altering the selection and training of future scientists.

Here’s Your Quick Guide To The American Founders’ Mentors
The Scottish Enlightenment was an explosion of creative intellectual energy. It arrived just in time to have a decisive influence on the American Founders.

Six Ideas for Depoliticizing the College Campus
The desire of “progressives” to take over the commanding heights of society so they can control people has been very successful and especially so with regard to our educational institutions. Collectivist ideas suffuse the K–12 curriculum, and our colleges are full of people who want to create as many Social Justice Warrior types as they can. Is it possible to reverse that?

The President Is Not Your Daddy
The President is not your daddy. Do I really have to say this? To supposed adults? To people qualified to vote in a democratic republic? There are two items I came across this week that seem to indicate that indeed I do. No one ever taught these people to reason their way out of a paper bag, or even told them why they should.

Disney Admits To Star Wars SJW Agenda
from “Geeks + Gamers”

In the Transgender Debate, Conservatives Can’t Compromise the Truth
Over on the home page, J.J. McCullough has penned a piece urging a “compromise on transgenderism,” but as I read it, this proposed compromise looks a lot like capitulation. While J.J. rightly notes that the Left has overreached in its “effort to strong-arm sweeping social change as a flex of their power,” he asks conservatives to essentially abandon their central argument and accept the radical left’s premise that a man can be a woman or a woman can be a man.

How to Argue With a Feminist
Rule One: Never argue with a feminist.

The Right Is Wasting Ammo On Friendly Fire When It Should Be Building Infrastructure
While the self-labeled remnant challenges conservatives to live up to a higher standard, others counter that we should leverage unified Republican government to secure policy wins.

5 Ways Liberals Create Racism
One of the worst things about Barack Obama’s presidency is that it turned the Left’s focus on race into a monomaniacal obsession. If you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail and if you’re a liberal, every conflict that involves a minority in any way is racism. We like to believe that our country relentlessly moves forward, but unquestionably the Left has dragged America backward on race over the last decade.

Teaching Students about the Consequences of Socialism
We keep hearing that a distressingly high percentage of college students favor socialism. That is as absurd as believing in astrology, but at least astrology is a harmless bit of nonsense. Belief in socialism has terrible consequences when acted upon.

“The Immature, Demagogic Phase”
Who is J.J. McCullough? Never heard of him before yesterday, when someone called my attention to his latest National Review column.

We Can’t Afford Socialism
This morning, as I sat down to write this post, I stared at the computer screen wondering what in the world I was going to blog about. I didn’t have a book review ready to go (those will resume next week, thanks to the generosity of TRX). Looking at the headlines didn’t lead to anything I felt I could sink my teeth into – at least not without lots of cussing and Sarah sort of frowns on that. VBG

A Professor’s Revolt
Peruse the front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education, a publication geared toward “people in academe,” and you will be confronted primarily with issues affecting the journal’s core audience: college “faculty members and administrators.” But administrative issues are rarely of interest only to administrators. On Friday, May 11, for example, those issues ranged from the fallout at Michigan State University, the institution that convicted child molester Larry Nassar called home, to a snowballing scandal over the unfair dismissal of a campus barista following a complaint about the profane rap music playing over the coffee shop speakers. From the tremendous to the trite, these are the day-to-day affairs that consume not just bureaucrats but the professorate and student body, too.

It’s time to replace medals with bangles and brooches
It’s been a while since this webpage was graced with the words of wisdom from “Iffiayah Wazza-Lefte”. But she’s never far away when social justice is at stake and she’s back in the wake of the Australian Defence Medal kerfuffle, ready to defend progress.

The Anti-American Party
Do Democrats even understand how bad this looks?

The EU, Teen Vogue and the Sanitization of Karl Marx
To deny that Karl Marx was, at times, a startlingly original thinker, would be nutty. To deny that he was, in many respects, one of the most lethal of a long line of millenarian preachers, is to embrace ignorance. And to deny that his work inspired the death of maybe one hundred million victims is something altogether more sinister. Marx may or may not have anticipated the scale of the slaughter to come, but he understood perfectly well that mass murder was part of the package.