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MARCH 27,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

A WELL-DESERVED HONOR – FROM FOX:   A fallen Missouri police officer will be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor Society's Citizen Honors Award after he died protecting a friend's business from looters during police brutality protests last year.  Capt. David Dorn was named Thursday as a recipient of the 2021 Single Act of Heroism Award, recognizing his service after he was shot in June 2020 while responding to an alarm at a pawn shop.  Dorn, who was retired at the time, is one of two recipients, the society announced. The award is given to those who risked their lives for the benefit of others in a dire situation.  "To find out that Dave was awarded this great honor just floored me," Ann Dorn, his widow, told "Fox & Friends" on Saturday. "It’s a bittersweet moment."  Dorn said her husband died "doing what he loved."  "He would have been humbled and honored by this," she continued. "I can see him smiling right now, saying ‘No, I don’t deserve this.’ That would be his reaction, but, yes, he deserves this."  He certainly does.  And so do other brave officers, including several wounded in the last few days.  If we don't honor law enforcement people, male and female, we'll never get the best officers.  Time to send the "defund the police" crowd back to their "we love Lenin" meetings.

A VICTORY FOR THE DECENT GUYS – FROM JUST THE NEWS:   A public university violated a professor's constitutional rights by punishing him for refusing to use a transgender student's preferred pronouns, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.  In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Amul Thapar, a Supreme Court short-lister for former President Trump, the court compared the Ohio university's behavior to a "McCarthy era" law against "subversive" government employees.  Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether, a "devout Christian," sought an accommodation under which he would not have to address the student as a woman in classroom discussions, which often touched on gender identity as a cultural controversy.  Shawnee State University officials belatedly ordered Meriwether to stop addressing the student only by name and instead use female pronouns. They also shot down his offer to tell students in the syllabus that he was being forced to use preferred pronouns.  Provost Jeffrey Bauer "openly laughed" when Meriwether's union representative explained why his religious beliefs forbade him from using the student's preferred pronouns, the professor claimed. Bauer twice rejected the faculty grievance on Meriwether's behalf — first as provost and then as interim president of the university.  Oral argument didn't go well for Shawnee State last fall. Judge Thapar asked then if the university would force a Jewish professor to honor a student's request to be addressed as "My Fuhrer."  The tide is still against us, but our side is, one by one, winning some significant victories in the courts and in state legislatures.  If we are firm in our belief in the basic Constitutional rights of Americans, we can win.  The 2022 elections, now only 20 months away, loom large as an opportunity to correct some of the madness we see before us today.

March 27, 2021     Permalink

SOMEONE WAKE THE PRESIDENT – AT 11:30 P.M. ET:  The Gallup organization has some timely information for the presumed president of the United States.  Maybe it can be put on 3x5 cards and slipped under his basement door.  From American Greatness: 

The CEO of Gallup has publicly warned President Joe Biden that approximately 42 million people south of Texas want to migrate into the United States.

In a blog post published on Wednesday, Jim Clifton, the chairman and CEO of the Gallup polling company, warned Biden as he and his administration struggle to deal with the surge of migration at the border:

Here are questions every leader should be able to answer regardless of their politics: How many more people are coming to the southern border? And what is the plan?

There are 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roughly 450 million adults live in the region. Gallup asked them if they would like to move to another country permanently if they could.
A whopping 27% said “yes.” This means roughly 120 million would like to migrate somewhere.
Gallup then asked them where they would like to move. Of those who want to leave their country permanently, 35% — or 42 million — said they want to go to the United States.

Seekers of citizenship or asylum are watching to determine exactly when and how is the best time to make their move.

In addition to finding a solution for the thousands of migrants currently at the border, let’s include the bigger, harder question — what about all of those who would like to come? What is the message to them?

What is the 10-year plan?

330 million U.S. citizens are wondering. So are 42 million Latin Americans.

According to the Breitbart report, the United States already has very high rates of legal and illegal migration.

There are around “four million young Americans who turn 18 each year and begin looking for jobs, careers, spouses, homes, and families, yet the federal government imports roughly one million legal immigrants per year, each of whom compete for the jobs and housing sought by Americans,” according to the Breitbart report.

According to the Western Journal, “Clifton is no right-wing pundit," his warning shows that the border crisis is not only a concern to conservative Americans as Gallup is not a right-leaning pollster.

COMMENT:  Once again we point out that we can only deal properly with the crisis at the border if the facts are given to the American people. But what happens when a good chunk of the news media has a chronic loyalty to the political left?  What happens is the kind of shallow, indifferent reporting we see today, with little sense of outrage and a clear attempt to soften the truth.

The problem will get worse.  And of course it will be Donald Trump's fault.  CNN told me.

March 27,  2021     Permalink

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MARCH 26,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

FIGHTING BACK AT THE BORDER – FROM DAILY MAIL:    Senator Ted Cruz and 18 of his Republican colleagues have released shocking photos and video showing children packed into migrant camps, blaming President Joe Biden for the crisis at the southern border.  'This is inhumane, it is wrong and it is the direct consequence of policy decisions by the Biden administration to stop building the wall, to return to catch-and-release, and to end the stay-in-Mexico policy,' Cruz said at a press conference on Friday.  Cruz, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma and others shared heartbreaking images of a severely overcrowded holding facility in Donna, Texas, where Lankford said that 'pods' designed to hold 80 children are packed with more than 700.  The remarks and new images came after Cruz led the delegation on a midnight border tour late Thursday, during which Cruz claimed he could hear human smugglers 'taunting' Border Patrol from across the Rio Grande.  'I know why President Biden doesn't want the media to be here -- because we do have an open border,' said Lankford, referring to Biden's continued refusal to let journalists visit holding facilities or accompany Border Patrol agents on patrol.  'Last night we stood under that bridge and watched as families, if they had a six-year-old or younger, within hours you were processed and released into the country,' he continued.  A national scandal of the first magnitude, despite the attempts by some news organizations to minimize it, or at least reduce its impact.  The Biden administration has botched its first two months in office.  We await future adventures...with dread.

LIFE UP ON THE WICKED STAGE – FROM DAILY MAIL:  A local Minnesota theater has cancelled a production of Roger & Hammerstein's Cinderella because its cast was 'too white'.  Chanhassen Dinner Theatres was scheduled to stage the show later this year before its artistic director stepped in to slam its lack of diversity.   'It was 98 percent white, ' the artistic director, Michael Brindisi, told the Pioneer Press on Wednesday after looking at who had been cast.   However, Chanhassen - located southwest of Minneapolis - has a population that is overwhelming white, and the racial demographics of the cast were not strikingly different from the city as a whole.   According to the most recent census, 92.5 percent of people  in Chanhassen are white. Less than 3 percent of residents are Hispanic, while 1.1 percent are black. 
No photos of the Cinderella cast were officially released before the show was scrapped.   In a statement released on Monday, the theater stated:  'After careful consideration and with our ongoing commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we have made the decision to cancel our upcoming production.'  I'm so moved and impressed.  I wonder how many artists from the "Cinderella" production lost jobs over this virtue signaling.  The people who made the decision will get a little publicity, maybe a little medal from some obscure organization, then fade away.  There are far better ways to advance the interests of minority artists.

March 26, 2021       Permalink 

THE CONTINUING DEMISE OF NEW YORK – OVERNIGHT:  The Marxist mayor of New York is in his last year in office, and seems determined, with the help of the city's radical-left City Council, to do as much harm as possible.  First target, the police.  From Fox: 

The New York City Council moved to end qualified immunity for police officers Thursday, making it the first big city in the nation to do so.

The measure passed as part of a broader overhaul of police practices.

The legal doctrine has for decades protected officers from lawsuits alleging misconduct against those they’re arresting, unless the officer had violated a clearly established constitutional right.
Qualified immunity first came under scrutiny during the racial injustice and police brutality protests that roiled the nation in the light of George Floyd’s death.

The city council said in a statement the bill would protect New Yorkers against unreasonable search and seizures and against excessive force, in addition to banning qualified immunity. The Big Apple joins two states, Colorado and Connecticut, in curbing the immunity defense.

The bill now goes to the desk of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is expected to sign it.

At the same time, city lawmakers approved de Blasio’s plan to spend $72 million to improve police practices and accountability. This came after the city moved to divert $1 billion from the police budget last summer.

Another provision gives the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates police misconduct, resources to investigate racial bias in policing, and it requires police to collect data on traffic stops, including the race of people apprehended.

Another resolution the council passed requires newly hired cops to live in New York City limits.

New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said qualified immunity was "rooted in our nation's history of systemic racism" and "should never have been allowed.

Opponents of the bill said it might discourage some from getting into law enforcement. "Ending qualified immunity will prevent the best young men and women in our city from joining the police force," Councilman Robert F. Holden said as he voted no, according to the New York Times.

"New Yorkers are getting shot, and police officers are on the streets day and night, trying to stop the bloodshed," Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement, adding that the new bill would "chill the operations of law enforcement."

COMMENT:  What smart young man or woman would want to be a police officer in the WOKE New York of today?  There won't be too many.  Standards will be lowered – always a dream of the left in almost any situation.  And the police force will be reduced, squeezed for money, and blamed for almost anything.

New York in the 1990s, under Rudy Giuliani, produced a miracle:  rapidly declining crime rates.  The greatest beneficiaries were minorities.  Leftist journalists were furious, some claiming the statistics were false.  They weren't.  Others claiming the numbers were lowered by turning minority communities into prison camps.  In fact, they were liberated.  The police commissioner got a standing ovation every time he went to a black church.

But the WOKE types kind of like high crimes.  With high crime rates they can demand money for "programs" that never work.  And high crime rates confirm their vision of a society, where some people have to kill to get money to survive.  A blatant lie.

And yet, the people of New York, ordained in the church of liberalism, will probably go to the polls and elect, as next mayor, a carbon copy of the current one. 

Cities do die, and some commit suicide.

March 26, 2021       Permalink