What do we do? The solution is simple. And so self evident it needs no further explanation. Of course, I haven’t said it would be easy.
Hating Your Mama Over Politics.
****************
Smartphones were introduced in 2007; social media soon followed. Whenever I talk to middle school and high school teachers, I hear the same thing: there is nothing that competes with the power of social media to socialize young people (or rather, un-socialize them) — and it is tearing these kids up inside.
That’s young people — but what about the elderly woman who leaves her husband because he voted for Trump? What’s her excuse? What about the man in his twenties to cuts his mother off because she voted for Trump? What about the middle-aged man who turns family members against each other by going to holiday gatherings and not shutting his big fat mouth about how the “Demonrats” are going to be the death of us all?
What do we do about a person like this?:
Bandy X. Lee isn’t some nobody. She is a Yale University psychiatrist and holder of a master’s of divinity degree from Yale. And she believes that Trump supporters can only be persuaded to abandon their support for the sitting President of the United States by having some immense trauma visited upon them, along the lines of the firebombing of Dresden.
How does someone come to believe that their countrymen need to be treated that way — need to see their cities leveled! — because of their politics? Again, I remind you: this isn’t some fringe nut, but a Yale-trained psychiatrist and religious thinker. This is the kind of elite figure who will usher in soft totalitarianism because she does not think her fellow Americans are simply wrong, but evil.
I’ll take riots in Philly for $500, Alex
Why people are buying guns at a record pace in Pennsylvania in the run-up to Election Day
Charlotte Heller, a 71-year-old grandmother from Lower Macungie Township, was never a fan of guns.
Then came 2020.
This September, Heller and her 73-year-old husband Ira joined scores of other Pennsylvanians in becoming first-time gun owners during a year expected to break gun purchase records across the country.
“Let me tell you, I’ve never liked guns. I was always kind of afraid of guns,” Charlotte Heller said. “I felt like we didn’t need them.”
But 2020, of course, is a year like no other ― fueling gun sales with a combination of factors, experts say. Start with the coronavirus pandemic and shortage of basic supplies, then add a wave of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the resulting property damage and violence, and cap it with one of most divisive presidential elections in modern history, and you’ve got a perfect storm for one of the most basic human emotions. Continue reading “”
Seven dead and several injured in gun attack near #Vienna synagogue. Is it a coincidence that these terror attacks happening in Europe after #Erdogan's threat that Europeans would not be able to walk safely on the streets if they kept up their current attitude toward #Turkey? pic.twitter.com/bs7liOvz7D
— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) November 2, 2020
Is This The Beginning Of The End For Gun Control?
That’s the very optimistic take from Stanford Ph.D. candidate Scott Borgeson, who writes in a new column at the Stanford Review that the millions of new gun owners across the country this year heralds the impending demise of the gun control movement.
Borgeson believes that the influx of new gun owners, most of whom have purchased a firearm for self-defense because of concerns over riots and unrest in recent months, has the potential to upend support for gun control laws at both the state and federal level.
Cultural Superiority Isn’t Racism: Why Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries
Elements of the left and their allies in the media are constantly driving this point home: White people are bad and so is the culture that they have created. Everything we value as a society is bad and, more than that, little more than an ex post facto justification for the subjugation of non-whites. Western culture is white culture, and all things white are bad.
But as with everything else which these elements of the left and their allies in the media push, this is simply false. While the overlap between white people – that is, people of European descent and some Christian populations in the Caucasus – and Western culture is undeniable, it is likewise undeniable that Western culture is no longer the exclusive domain of whites. What we can call, without the slightest bit of stretching the truth, Western culture is present not just in Western Europe, North America and Australia, but also in former British colonies such as Israel, Singapore and Hong Kong.
What’s more, a country simply being part of Europe does not make it “Western” in any meaningful sense. While there is a certain Western cultural continuum based around Christianity that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok, it would be overly simplistic (and indeed, a bit demeaning) to label the post-Soviet countries as “Western.” They have a similar set of cultural values rooted in Christianity, however, even the introduction of democracy has not made many post-Soviet and post-colonial nations more liberal in the true sense of the word – open markets, an emphasis on free speech, strong private property rights, an independent, impartial judiciary, and the primacy of the individual over that of the group.
Throughout this article we will provide some terms to define what we mean by “Western culture.” We will also make the case that Western cultural values have a universal aspect in the sense that they can be applied with success anywhere in the world, that these values are objectively superior to other value sets at maximizing human freedom, quality of life, and potential, and that the belief in this superiority has nothing to do with “racism” in the sense that it is commonly understood by ordinary people.
One demonstration of the proof that these values are objectively superior is that “people vote with their feet”, as Dr. Jordan Peterson points out: “The fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid. Here’s how you know: Which countries do people want to move away from? Not ours. Which countries do people want to move to? Ours! Guess what, they work better. And it’s not because we went around the world stealing everything we could get our hands on. It’s because we got certain fundamental assumptions right – and thank God for that.”
What Are Western Values?
Before going any further, it is necessary to define what we mean by “Western values.” Indeed, what we mean by this is very specific and has a basis not in the West at large, but specifically in Anglo-Saxon culture. Virtually all of the values that we will identify in this article as being “Western” are perhaps more accurately termed “Anglo-Saxon values.” However, as the former term is more concise, succinct and in greater general use, we will use “Western values” throughout this article.
So what are these values? What is their origin? Where do they come from?
Again, it is our belief that what we call “Western values” are rooted firmly in the Anglo-Saxon tradition above all else. The formalization of these values can be found in the Magna Carta, but this simply codifies values that had been practiced in long standing in post-Anglo-Saxon Britain and likely long before it in some sense, going back to the days when the Angles and Saxons roamed the border regions between what is now Germany and Denmark.
While the Magna Carta is a complicated document, for our purposes it means something succinct and simple: it means that the king is not above the law.
There are a number of principles that flow from this general recognition that form the bedrock of Western civilization: Legal norms apply to everyone regardless of social class. The right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers and the right to face one’s accuser in open court. The right to one’s own property and the right to defend that property using deadly force. While these rights have all been hemmed in – in extreme ways in some cases, particularly since the events of September 11, 2001 – the point is that they form the bedrock of our legal structure and value culture in the West.
To boil this down to a single sentence: the West believes that men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that these rights can only be deprived through due process of law. Both national constitutions and prevailing moral attitudes prevent angry mobs or powerful oligarchs from systematically depriving unpopular and powerless minorities of their rights. Continue reading “”
Off-duty police officer shoots armed robbery suspect at Dearborn Heights 7-Eleven
DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. (FOX 2) – An off-duty Detroit police officer shot and wounded an armed robber inside a 7-Eleven on Cherry Hill Friday.
Just before 4 p.m., a male suspect entered the store near Inkster for an armed robbery in Dearborn Heights. The off-duty police officer had words with him, before an exchange of shots, Michigan State Police say.
The officer was not injured, but the suspect was wounded. He was transported to a nearby hospital and is in critical condition.
History Demands We Wake Up the Woke
Editorial cartoonist Branco recently designed artwork showing an Antifa donkey with BLM explosives in its hand threatening America with, “Biden wins or the country gets it.”
At first blush, it seems extreme. But is it?
Most liberal “woke” do not participate in violence. But their blind silence on riots and authoritarianism perpetrated by their fellow leftists is a mindless stab in the heart of their own future liberty.
They refuse to view anything that doesn’t fit what they believe is their compassionate narrative, and seem oblivious to the human cost of socialism and its better-dressed uncle, communism. Thinking Constitutional protections only apply to them, they holler “love not hate” while normalizing censorship and threats to anyone who disagrees with their left-wing talking points.
It is almost as if history doesn’t exist for the woke. Yet Americans who have fled oppressive regimes know the erosion of human rights at the core of leftism and socialism doesn’t occur overnight.
Like Katarina Lindley, a successful family physician who is a leader in the osteopathic family physician community, and a board member for DPC Action, an organization supporting doctor/patient-based healthcare reforms.
She started out as Katarina Sokolic, a Croatian girl born in Soviet Yugoslavia in the 1970s behind the Iron Curtain of hunger and despair.
Katarina learned about oppression early when instructed to keep her family’s religious faith secret as it could cause her father to lose his job in a time of unrelenting unemployment. She escaped her homeland in its early post-Soviet phase, trading violence and suffering under a different leftist regime for America.
According to Katarina, “it took years to realize Yugoslavia was not ‘utopia.’ Eventually, everything was controlled by government, and freedom of thought was highly discouraged.”
Midwest physician “Elizabeth Williams” fled Liberia at 14. Her family was chased off ancestral lands by leftist Liberian president Charles Taylor after her father spoke against Taylor’s suppression of speech.
As Elizabeth notes, “first they didn’t allow us to air our views. That led to their stealing our entire lives.”
Left-wing violence destabilized Colombia for decades, and led to wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands and displacement of millions. Young “Enrique Velez,” who now lives in the Washington, DC area, recalls “my family saw kidnapping and extortion of friends and family.
“My parents made the difficult decision to join millions of displaced people after my father was held up and threatened by leftist groups. In America, we finally felt safe. Many families do not get the opportunity to flee here. We pray this country never experiences the same thing.
These now-liberated Americans have real fear for our future. The obliviousness of the woke heightens that fear.
Socialism was previously abhorrent to Americans, but has been sold to America’s youth as “progress,” thanks in part to the false, glorified view Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders presents of central control. It has permeated the ranks of the Democrat’s progressive leaders.
The socialism embraced by the wokes has a history of global oppression. Chairman Mao “freed” Chinese peasants by murdering 45 million of them. National Socialist Adolf Hitler harnessed his leftist power base by murdering six million Jews. Wikipedia has an entire page dedicated to “Mass killing under communist regimes.”
Totalitarianism starts out as the rhetorically more benign socialism. First they come for books and newspapers, then guns, then property, then people’s lives.
The woke may argue these horrors would never come to America. But if they opened their eyes and their minds, they’d know it’s already here, and they are ushering it in.
Social and mainstream media are suppressing and censoring content critical of the Democrat candidate for president. Citizens participating in a New York Jews for Trump convoy were attacked and children threatened with pepper spray by a leftist demonstrator. Liberal officials are closing houses of worship but allowing leftist riots.
Antifa and Black Lives Matter are radical left/Marxist groups who do not embrace peace. Their rioting and blind eye toward looting has cost countless billions and robbed minority and immigrant business owners of life savings and livelihoods. These groups and their woke supporters do not free people—they enslave them to tyrannical mobs and oppressive government.
History is a lesson book. Americans who lived it, or understand it, must explain to the woke that they are sleeping through a montage that heralds an oppression which will eventually include them.
Thanks to liberal educators and entertainment culture, young people are not even aware that socialism is the precursor of abject misery, and the loss of even the smallest of freedoms.
Kat Lindley says America is a beacon of hope. Katarina Sokolic fears a nation that loses its liberties to the deliberately misinformed will never get it back.
That would leave freedom seekers nowhere left to go.
American hostage Philip Walton rescued in dramatic military operation: Officials
Walton was abducted recently in Niger, where he had been living.
An American citizen abducted last week in Niger has been rescued during a high-risk U.S. military raid in neighboring Nigeria, officials told ABC News early Saturday.
The mission was undertaken by elite commandos as part of a major effort to free the U.S. citizen, Philip Walton, 27, before his abductors could get far after taking him captive in Niger on Oct. 26, counterterrorism officials told ABC News.
The operation involved the governments of the U.S., Niger and Nigeria working together to rescue Walton quickly, sources said. The CIA provided intelligence leading to Walton’s whereabouts and Marine Special Operations elements in Africa helped locate him, a former U.S. official said.
Then the elite SEAL Team Six carried out a “precision” hostage rescue mission and killed all but one of the seven captors, according to officials with direct knowledge about the operation.
“They were all dead before they knew what happened,” another counterterrorism source with knowledge told ABC News. Continue reading “”
Police say clerk’s husband stopped robbery with gunshots
Update: Dequan Lamar Rushing was arrested Wednesday and jailed in the Washington County Detention Center under $151,000 bond awaiting a Sessions Court appearance set for Thursday.
A Georgia man was arrested Tuesday on robbery, assault and kidnapping charges after being shot by a store clerk’s husband during a hold-up, according to Johnson City police.
The shooting, which police described as self-defense, happened at Scotchman, 1101 E. Unaka Ave., around 10:15 p.m.
Before the Scotchman incident, police responded to Tri City Wholesale Tobacco, 2518 S. Roan St., on a report of an attempted armed robbery. In that incident, police said a man demanded money from the clerk, but he left with nothing. Police said that at some point in the robbery the man fired a pistol inside the store. No one was injured in that incident.
Police had a description of the would-be robber and were looking for him.
Around 10:15, officers were dispatched to a report of a robbery at the Scotchman.
In that incident, the clerk complied with the man’s demands while being threatened with a firearm and controlled by the man, police said.
The clerk’s husband, who has a valid handgun carry permit, intervened and shot the man two times in self-defense after the man pointed the weapon at him. Witnesses gave the police a description of the man, which matched the alleged robber from the first attempt.
A police K9 located Rushing nearby with two gunshot wounds. He refused officers’ commands to surrender, so the K9 was sent in to apprehend him.
Rushing was taken into custody and transported to an area medical facility, where he remained in serious but stable condition on Wednesday.
They better be careful, they might get exactly what they’ve asked for.
Win or Lose, Dems Have Big Plans for America
Only a victory large enough to preclude the theft of the presidency by the Democrats and their minions in the media can forestall their plans for America’s future.
The rioting, physical violence, and destruction of property estimated in the billions of dollars experienced by Americans since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day was merely practice for the left’s coming exercise of power whether Biden wins or loses.
“It cannot happen here” has been the mantra of those blessed by God with the grace of living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yet, aphoristically, “past is prologue” and history is replete with the ruins of civilizations whose citizens believed the same.
Democrats thought their long march through the institutions had succeeded in giving them permanent power. They were convinced when Barack Obama pulled off the unique trick of descending from the heavens to ascend to the presidency.
Academia had long become a social justice warrior training ground with the supremacy of critical theory, implicit bias training, and a cadre of professors better than 90% steeped in leftist dogma having provided an army of reliable Democrats.
During the Obama Presidency, media, always biased and comprised of reporters and editorialists politically mirroring that of academia dispensed with even the pretense of “objectivity” to become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Truth had become a matter of opinion with talking heads providing the opinions.
Intelligence bureaus, the administrative state, top military leadership, and every regulatory agency was purged of anyone not steadfastly liberal.
The left deluded themselves into believing that cradle-to-career indoctrination, deliberate media misinformation, and politically forced demographic change had finally created a permanent Democratic majority. They were “bigly” surprised when they lost more than 1.000 federal, state, and local elections. Donald Trump was the straw that broke the spavined camel’s back.
They refused to accept the condign defeat of all they worked so hard to trick or treat Americans into believing. What followed was four years of one confected attempt after another to execute a slow-motion, multipronged coup concluding with a failed impeachment on grounds so slim, had it been tried on a President Biden, it would have elicited a collective “C’mon man” from the variegated components of not only the leftist machine but the American population as well.
Fair-minded Americans are not only cognizant of the rules, but willing to obey them. Not so afflicted, the left follow rules only when winning — when they lose, the rules must change.
We saw this with redistricting, a tactic Democrats used for decades to maintain control of the House of Representatives, as well as state and local governments. When the Republicans started beating them at their own game, the process became “unfair,” “unconscionable” even.
A constitutional republic with an Electoral College system and equal representation of each state in the Senate worked fine until they decided it prevented them from ruling all 50 states from the left coast and the Acela corridor. Then, the notion of strict majority rule in all things became popular.
The courts for years were stacked by Democrats with judges willing to bypass the legislative process and enact laws from the bench. They used the filibuster prodigiously to prevent conservative judges from being seated but were outraged when it was used against Obama’s nominees. So, Harry Reid waved “Bye-Bye” to the judicial filibuster.
The seating of Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Supreme Court Justice, done strictly in adherence to the constitution, Democrats have threatened “consequences and repercussions” including eliminating the filibuster in all things, admitting new states to guarantee more Democrat Senators and Representatives, and a new “balanced” Supreme Court — at whatever number of justices necessary to ensure a liberal majority.
The result is an election that only a Trump landslide can prevent the left from stealing using what Biden called in a Freudian slip, the “most extensive voter fraud organization” in history. Nothing short of overwhelming electoral triumph for Trump will stymie their machinations.
The Democrats already have a plan in place to flood the streets with “mostly peaceful” riots before, during, and after November 3. A Trump landslide will open Americans’ eyes to the left’s usurpation of the nation and perhaps provoke action.
To expedite post-election thievery, riots will again become endemic. Every judge that might rule against the Democrats’ lawfare efforts to steal the presidency will be doxed and confronted. Their families will be terrorized in their homes. Special care will be taken to threaten members of the Supreme Court.
Leftist agents will confront congressmen and senators at their homes, offices, and out in public with their families. If need be, they will block them from returning to Washington D.C. and resuming the functions of government. The same will be done to governors and mayors, lest they try to use the National Guard to regain control.
Cabinet members, military leaders, and their families will also be doxed and intimidated.
All these tools will continue to be used by a Biden Administration to implement their Green New Deal agenda, killing the oil industry, gun confiscation, raising taxes, open borders, and citizenship and Medicare for all.
To have a chance of preventing this, Trump must win reelection by a margin so huge it will be impossible to steal in the courts or on the streets.
A landslide will prompt outraged citizens to fight back and confront the left’s revolution in the cities and towns during the days, weeks, and months after the election. To paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, in the course of these events, good people of our free and independent states have the full power and the right to rise up and prevent the left’s attempt to steal our country.
Trump must win by epic proportions so that this rebellion may be defeated.
Looks like an interesting drill.
Skills Check Live: The Forty-Five Drill
For our November 2020 Handbook, Richard Mann pulled together a half-dozen drills culled from some of the most renowned self-defense trainers in the industry. One of the drills Mann included was what he calls the “Forty-Five” drill, not because it’s designed for testing 1911s, but because of the various factors involved. Mann uses this drill as a standard test when he’s evaluating handguns, as it provides a practical measure of how well suited a pistol may be for self-defense.
The Forty-Five drill is so-named because it has four components, all with “five” somethings. It involves five rounds, fired in 5 seconds or less, at a 5-inch target from a distance of 5 yards. All five rounds must land inside the five-inch circle within the time limit specified to “pass” the drill. It is intended to be conducted with a concealed pistol to more accurately assess the drawstroke and target acquisition in addition to shooting speed and accuracy.
Mann assigns a point system to the drill as well, so that once you’ve mastered getting five shots on target in 5 seconds or less, you can still chart progress. Each hit (inside the circle) is worth 4 points, and your score is the total points minus the time. Mann assigns 15 points as the minimum for qualifying—which precludes misses, as you would automatically be starting with 16 points before you deduct time. For example, getting all five shots in the circle in 4 seconds even would be a 16.
The Forty-Five drill is an excellent method to assess your carry method as well as your drawstroke in conjunction with your ability to rapidly acquire a target and your shot-to-shot variability. If there are any deficiencies in any of these areas, they should become apparent quickly, and you can see where you need to devote more of your practice. Best of all, you can perform this test with a J-Frame revolver and not have to worry about a reload!
At least the French have no qualms about calling moslem terrorism,
moslem terrorism.
Also. Anyone still trying to complain about the nutjob cavorting about with knife of about the same size getting sent straight to the morgue by the Philly police; direct them to the grave of the woman decapacitated with one by another nutjob and tell them they’re full of it.
Tunisian man beheads woman, kills two more people in Nice church
PARIS/NICE, France (Reuters) – A knife-wielding Tunisian man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday before being shot and taken away by police.
President Emmanuel Macron said France would deploy thousands more soldiers to protect important sites such as places of worship and schools, as the country’s security alert was raised to its highest level.
Speaking outside the church, Macron said France had been attacked “over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief … And I say it with great clarity again today: We will not give any ground.”
The attack came just under two weeks after a middle-school teacher in a Paris suburb was beheaded by an 18-year-old attacker who was apparently incensed by the teacher showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in class.
Chief anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said the suspect in Thursday’s attack was a Tunisian man born in 1999 who had arrived in Europe on Sept. 20 in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia that is the main landing point for migrants from Africa.
A Tunisian security source and a French police source named the suspect as Brahim Aouissaoui.
Ricard told a news conference in Nice that the man had entered the city by train early on Thursday morning and made his way to the church, where he stabbed and killed the 55-year-old sexton and beheaded a 60-year-old woman. Continue reading “”
Even the Girl Scouts Abandon Justice Barrett
The message to our young girls is clear: Your success matters only if you subscribe to a certain type of progressive feminism.
Yesterday, the Girl Scouts congratulated Justice Amy Coney Barrett on her confirmation. Then, they deleted the tweet. Apparently, it is too “partisan” for the Girl Scouts to congratulate Justice Barrett on becoming only the fifth woman ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court since 1789.
Of course the @girlscouts caved to the mob and deleted this tweet congratulating Amy Coney Barrett.
SAD. pic.twitter.com/vRiJIgE8C8
— Independent Women's Forum (@IWF) October 28, 2020
Earlier today, we shared a post highlighting the five women who have been appointed to the Supreme Court. It was quickly viewed as a political and partisan statement which was not our intent and we have removed the post.
— Girl Scouts (@girlscouts) October 28, 2020
The tragic irony for our nation’s young girls is that the “too partisan” label runs one way. The Girl Scouts’ organization just hosted an event about encouraging women to run for office — and the panelists were all liberal. On President Trump’s inauguration day in January 2017, moreover, the Girl Scouts retweeted Hillary Clinton, thanking her for continuing to lead. It’s hard to imagine a more partisan statement at a more political time.
As a professor for over 35 years, I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong. Who would have thought that the first words of our Miranda rights, rights enjoyed even by suspected criminals, would no longer be something ordinary people could expect to enjoy from members of their own community?
Now it seems that a desire to keep one’s thoughts to oneself can be regarded as immoral because “Silence is Violence.” Increasingly, people who are minding their own business are being pressured to make politically correct proclamations while in public, at work, and, incredibly, even at school. This includes colleges and universities, where free speech and free thought are supposed to be cherished. These are very dangerous developments for any free society because they are inconsistent with freedom.
For many years there were calls against politically incorrect speech, things you were not supposed to say because they were deemed politically repugnant by some group.
Over time, especially on college campuses, this flipped into a duty to be politically correct. This is a much more onerous and destructive requirement that forces thought and speech. Too often, it also has the effect of shutting down independent thinking far more than a mere insistence against politically incorrect utterances.
Our society is now running in reverse, demanding conformity from adults that was once demanded only of children. Small wonder, then, why increasing political correctness has increasingly infantilized adults. What’s the point in thinking for yourself if it can only get you into trouble?
One of our greatest freedoms is the right to remain silent — to mind our own business. But today, some activists threaten shaming and even violence against those who don’t take the initiative to endorse what they deem to be politically correct.
Not long ago, if someone made such threats, others would automatically say, “Hey, leave that guy alone. He has a right to his opinion, and he has the right to keep it to himself.”
Not long ago, most adults believed that not having an opinion was often a sign of maturity, an indication of waiting to hear all sides on an issue before making a judgment. Such persons were not presumed to be cowards. They were presumed to be thoughtful, mature, and wise.
So, when did opining about everything become a virtue? And when did repeating the party-line in lockstep with the mob become an act of courage?
The internet has allowed a great deal of opining to be done anonymously, which has dramatically sped up positive reinforcement for repeating popular ideas and negative reinforcement for failing to do so. Because we are hard-wired to crave acceptance, this has produced several generations of cowed adults. We are, as a society, forgetting how to think for ourselves and how to have civil arguments over important matters.
Those who love freedom and free speech need to be ready for the next time they see someone being badgered into stating any party line. Coercion to speak is just another form of bullying, and it must be pointed out. It is indecent, and it is un-American.
David C. Rose is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, author of Why Culture Matters Most from Oxford University Press, and a member of the Missouri Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights since 2014.
This is how freedom fails. When parents let their children get their heads filled with the mush of marxist professors let loose in our schools, colleges and universities.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”—Ronald Reagan
Kids today: 4 in 10 call Constitution ‘outdated,’ OK with silencing speech.
Free speech, support for the Constitution, and even having a variety of friends are taking a hit on America’s campuses as college undergraduates appear to be adopting a “my way or the highway” attitude.
A new survey of campuses developing the nation’s future leaders shows an antagonistic approach by students to views they don’t agree with. And worse, a majority feel that they can’t express a view different from those of their professors.
The survey for Yale University’s William F. Buckley Program, provided to Secrets, is the latest to show the fading of thought diversity on campuses and shrinking support for the First Amendment and the Constitution overall. Continue reading “”
WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANONYMOUS SOURCING? all you need to know:
The New York Times’ “Anonymous”? The the “senior administration official” was actually just a staff guy out in the bureaucracy.
New York Times’ Miles Taylor Op-Ed Shows Everything Wrong With Anonymous Sources
If The New York Times was willing to lie about its anonymous source for their high-profile information operation, imagine the lies they’re willing to tell about all the other anonymous sources they use.
Two years after the New York Times published an op-ed from what they described as an anonymous, principled conservative “senior administration official,” it turned out to have been written by a low-level bureaucrat who later worked for tech giant Google and gave money to far-left Democrats.
Miles Taylor revealed he was the author of the highly hyped op-ed headlined “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” He claimed to secretly work to thwart Trump’s policy goals as the elected president of the United States.
While constitutional scholars worried about implications of such unaccountable thwarting of the will of the people, most media focused instead on identifying who “Anonymous” was. The New York Times assured readers that when it said “senior administration official,” it meant someone “in the upper echelon of an administration.”
Not A Senior Administration Official
People took seriously the New York Times’ claim that the anonymous writer was in the upper echelon of an administration. In “13 people who might be the author of The New York Times op-ed,” CNN followed the New York Times’ lead by offering the names of actual senior administration officials, such as Don McGahn, Dan Coats, Kellyanne Conway, Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly, Jeff Sessions, James Mattis, Nikki Haley, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. Chris Cillizza also suggested it might be Fiona Hill or Melania Trump.
He also wrote of the Times, “They aren’t publishing an anonymous op-ed from just anyone in the Trump administration. They especially aren’t publishing one that alleges a near-coup … If some midlevel bureaucrat in the Trump administration comes to the Times — or has an intermediary reach out to the Times — asking to write a piece like this one without their name attached to it, the answer would be an immediate ‘no.’” He added:
Given all of that, it’s telling that the Times was willing to extend the cloak of anonymity to this author — especially, again, because of the stakes and the target. This is not a decision made lightly. That the decision was made to publish it should tell you that this isn’t some disgruntled mid-to-upper manager buried in the bureaucracy. This is a genuine high-ranking official. A name most people who follow politics — and maybe some who don’t — would recognize. The Times simply wouldn’t do what it did for anything short of a major figure in Trump world.
In fact, they were willing to do it for a very low-level political appointee. Taylor has been billed as “chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security,” but he didn’t have even that position that nobody knew existed when he wrote the op-ed and was described as a senior administration official.
Property owner shoots alleged break-in suspect in Oklahoma City; suspect in critical condition
One dead, one arrested after southside resident confronts alleged car burglar
TUCSON (KVOA) – The victim of a fatal shooting that occurred Monday evening on the south side was identified by Tucson Police Department Tuesday afternoon.
According to TPD, 27-year-old Christiaan Miguel Silva was found lying in the roadway next to a Jeep near a home located in the 1700 block of E. Holladay St. at around 10:20 p.m. Monday. Officials say Silva had obvious signs of gunshot trauma when police located him.
Despite rendering aid and CPR, Silva was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said Silva was allegedly fatally injured in connection to a shots fired report in the 2300 block of E. Calle Joya de Ventura near Tucson Boulevard and Bilby Road.
According to TPD, the occupants of the home reportedly observed a man, later identified as 35-year-old David Anthony Santos-Esqueda, attempting to “gain entry in their vehicle” from their home security video.
One of the residents reportedly retrieved a firearm and then confronted the man. Police say shots were fired during the confrontation, resulting in Santos-Esqueda reportedly fleeing the scene in a white Jeep.
TPD said “detectives believe Silva was driving the white Jeep and was
parked several yards away waiting for Santos-Esqueda.” Silva was allegedly shot when during the confrontation between Santos-Esquda and the resident.
Santos-Esquda was also located and detained nearby the home at 1700 block of E. Holladay St.
He was later arrested for attempted theft of means of transportation, attempted third-degree burglary, possession of burglary tools, and first-degree felony murder.
The 35-year-old is currently being held at Pima County Jail.
Man fatally shot during Orange County home invasion robbery attempt
ORLANDO, Fla. – A 21-year-old man was shot and killed late Friday in Orange County during an attempted home invasion robbery, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office on Monday identified the victim as Michael Ramos.
Deputies said Ramos was found shot to death around 10:45 p.m. on Lake Pleasant Road in northern Orange County. Investigators said Ramos was among several people involved in a home invasion robbery attempt around 10:10 p.m. on the 100 block of South Lake Pleasant Road.
Additional suspects fled in a vehicle parked in a nearby neighborhood, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Investigators are seeking information from the public regarding suspicious persons or vehicles in the neighborhood on the night of Oct. 23.
An investigation is ongoing. No other details have been released.
Homeowner shoots burglar in Webster
A Webster New York homeowner shot someone who allegedly had broken into a Gravel Road home early Tuesday morning, according to Webster police.
Webster Police Chief Joseph Rieger said that officers were called to a residence on Gravel Road, near Klem Road, just before 1:30 a.m. Rieger said it appears that the homeowner “encountered and shot” an alleged burglar.
Specifically, officers said that the homeowner encountered an intruder in an outbuilding (a garage/barn) on the property, not attached to the residence.
Webster Police investigate an early morning shooting on Gravel Road. Police said a homeowner shot an alleged burglar.
The injured man suffered serious injuries and was taken to an area hospital for treatment where he is listed in critical condition, according to Webster police. Officers have not released the name of the alleged burglar or homeowner.
A portion of Gravel Road was temporarily closed Tuesday morning. Officers continue to investigate the encounter.
No charges have been filed in connection with the incident.
Triggered: Church shooting heroes rip Biden gun control as ‘insane.’
The heroes of two Texas church shootings who used their own legal arms to take out the gunmen are warning that Democrat Joe Biden’s “insane” gun control plans will hurt public safety, raise billions in taxes, and force millions to give up their weapons.
“If it was Hunter Biden and your wife and family sitting in those pews at that church, would you still not want me to have this gun to protect them with?” asked Stephen Willeford, who on Nov. 5, 2017, used his AR-15 to stop a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that killed two dozen.
“The fact is, the only thing that will keep us safe in times of evil are our guns. Evil will always exist,” added Jack Wilson, who, with his pistol, stopped the fatal shooting Dec. 29, 2019, at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas.
They are featured in a new National Rifle Association video that decries the Biden gun proposals that include taxes on gun parts, rifles, and a potential ban of some weapons. Both are NRA members, and the group has endorsed President Trump.
“Biden’s dream is to leave us all defenseless against criminals,” said Wilson. “I put a terrorist down in a matter of seconds with this gun, and it’s not even a weapon of war or whatever that means. You know what Joe told me? That I shouldn’t have been armed in that church,” he added in the video that shows Biden criticizing the use of the weapon.
The duo also raises two key issues worrisome to gun owners — taxes on guns and a ban of online purchases. And they note that Biden has promised to put anti-gun advocate Beto O’Rourke in charge of gun policy and let gun control advocate Sen. Kamala Harris lead the charge.
“All of this is nuts,” said Willeford.