A Fair Trial

For John, BLUF:  I am thinking she didn't really mean what she wrote, but the first part of the sentence seized her brain into completing it this way..  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Here is what InstaPundit Blogger Robert Shibley posted:

I ASSUMED THIS WAS FAKE, BUT IT’S NOT. Super-professional highlighting mine.

What is she?  French?.

We have a legal system derived from Anglo-Saxon law.  One is innocent until proven guilty by a jury of our peers.

The Epoch Times had an article on this,

I wonder if former Speaker Nancy Pelosi subscribes to Blackstone's ratio, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."  Which we attribute to English jurist William Blackstone, back in the 1760s.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Parents Strike Back

For John, BLUF:  .  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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NY Parents Set to Sic the Law on School Board That Insists on Porn in School

From PJ Media, by Reporter Megan Fox, 26 March 2023, 9:45 AM.

Here is the lede plus two:

The school board wars are turning up the temperature on porn-pushing administrators.  In Fairport, N.Y., a group of parents has grown tired of asking for the school board to remove explicit books and materials from their schools.  After months of asking nicely, speaking to the board, writing letters, and other efforts, the Fairport Educational Alliance has filed a claim against the board’s insurance bond.

This type of claim has been tried with forced masking in other parts of the country but has been unsuccessful.  However, parents in Fairport say the major difference between those complaints and this one is that the school district is breaking federal and state laws which are tied directly to the complaint.  This was the major flaw in trying to file insurance claims against schools for masking, as there were no laws on the books preventing them from imposing masks.  There are, however, multiple laws against endangering children and distributing child pornography.

Going through the usual channels to remove the material hasn’t worked, as radical board members simply refuse to remove pornographic and obscene material despite months of petitioning.  But filing a claim against the insurance bond could have expensive consequences if the insurance company investigation finds the board has violated its oath of office and put the insurance company at risk.  The Fairport Educational Alliance believes this action will be successful because it is tied to several violations of state and federal law regarding the protection of children from obscenity and harm.

Schoiol Boards, or School Committees are the fundamental political building block.  From there politics flows, up to the White House.  But, all politics is local, per Tip O'Neil, and it starts at the local level.

It is the duty of Parents, and Grandparents, and interested Citizens, to be informed about what is going on in schools.  From there voting can pick the best peoople to sit on the School Committee.  Our goood future is based on a goood education for our children.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

How to be Liked

For John, BLUF:  If you show interest in people, they respond.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A Harvard Study Reveals the Secret to Being Likable

Here is the sub-headline:

It’s not being polite, helpful, or having a good sense of humor.

From Medium> by Ms Margaret Pan, 18 Januart 2023.

Here is the lede plus five:

It might be an inconvenient truth, but being likable is something we all (deep down) crave.

That’s because it makes life easier.

If you think that people are born charming, you’re mistaken — likability can be learned and honed, just like any other skill.

But what is it that makes a person likable?

According to this Harvard study, described in an HBR article, the secret to being more likable and improving interpersonal bonding isn’t being polite, helpful, or having a good sense of humor.

It’s asking more questions.

I am a bit surprised at this, in that some suggest that asking questions, especially of immigrants, is a sign of disrespect, or even racism.

I don't find this true in my own experience, but i am careful.  Monday i had my blood drawn and asked the lady doing it where she was from.  She played along and asked "Where do you think?"  I said Goa.  She turned to the young lady observing and asked her if she knew where that was.  She said no and I explained it was a former Portugese colony on the Southwest coast of India.  From there we eased into her becoming a US Citizen and me encouraging her in that.  I thought it was a good experience all around and I hardly noticed when she inserted the needle.

I encourage you to ask questions, find common ground and show interest.

But thoughtfully.  When my Visiting Nurse made his first visit I asked him where he was from and he responded New Hampshire, in a way that didn't invite a follow-up question.  I didn't.  Respect another person's privacy.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

RMV Does Good

For John, BLUF:  Here is a case of the RMV performing well.  Should the reward for a job well done be lack of punishment?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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I applied for a handicapped parking pass and it arrived while I was in Prescott Rehab, recoveringz from an operation.  I looked at it, put it back in its legal size envelope and handed it to my wife, who put it in her purse or a briefcase or something black.

Alas, it went adrift.  We have checked purses and brief-cases.  We have checked both cars.  Stacks of papers.  Nowhere too be found.

I then turned to the Internet, putting "Mass, Handicapped, pass and lost" into my search line.  The top item that popped up was the RMV and lost Handicapped Plackardss.  It opened and a quick scan revealed a button for a form to apply for a new Handicsapped Plackard.  It was a form and I was able to type in a few pieces of identification on the screen and then print it out.  I initialed in a few places, and signed and dated.  Doing the labels for the envelope took almost as much time.

My request for a replacement went into mail last evening.  The process was quick and easy.  Kudos to the RMV for providing a quick, smooth, process.

UPDATE:  And they turned it quickly.  I had my replacement Parking Pass in about ten days,

Diversity in Body, But Not in Mind

For John, BLUF:  This is about a college professor being fired for asking questions about the received orthodoxy, which makes one wonder about the future of Western Civilization.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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‘Apparently, I am the wrong kind of black’: California equity director fired for viewpoint diversity

Here is the sub-headline:

Dr. Tabia Lee alleges that she was fired from De Anza College’s Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multiracial Education because she does not subscribe to anti-racist “orthodoxy.”

"Absolute compliance with the new authoritarian order is veritably guaranteed and opportunities for diverse viewpoints to be expressed are crushed and silenced at every turn.”

From Campus Reform, by Reporter Gabrielle M. Etzel, 13 March 2023, 4:29 pm.

Here is the lede plus two:

Dr. Tabia Lee, faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at De Anza College, alleges that she is being terminated for not adhering to anti-racist “orthodoxy.”

Lee, a Black woman who grew up in central California, was fired last week from her position as a tenure track Faculty Director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at the community college in Cupertino, California, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Among the alleged reasons for Lee’s termination include her objection to the school’s indigenous land acknowledgment statement, successful hosting of a “Jewish Inclusion” event, her reasoned objection to “Latinx” and “Filipinx,” and her questioning of the ideological implications of capitalizing “Black” and lowercasing “White” in the school’s official Educational Master Plan.

Thw Woke♠ agenda is one that seems to lack self-reflection.  If we don't periodically re-examine our assumptions and our goals how do we know we have not taken a wrong turn, slipped off the path we should be on?.

Ms Lee seems to be a reflective woman, as befits a college level educator.  For this she is questioned (OK) and censored (perhaps not as OK) and fired (definitely not OK)  In a world seeking improvement this isn't on Ms Lee, buzt on De Anza College.

Some days I wish i had a business, so I could offer employment to people like Ms Lee.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  My Middle Brother is uncomfortable with me ussing the word "Woke" to describe this approach.  Would he prefer "Progressive"?

Getting Everyone on Board

For John, BLUF:  The Environmentalists are not bringing along the larger population in their efforts to save the world.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Dutch farmers’ party secures landslide victory

Here is the sub-headline:

The BBB's huge election win is a direct challenge to Mark Rutte's coalition

From UnHerd, by Ms Senay Boztas, 16 March 2023.

Here is the lede plus three:

With the highest turnout in 30 years, Dutch voters gave an extraordinary signal to their four-party Government on Wednesday: the Farmer Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, or BBB) is set to come first in regional elections, which decide the make-up of the Dutch Senate.

In a long voting day, with locations from repurposed drive-through testing centres to ancient churches, an estimated 61% of Dutch people turned out. The result was astonishing, even though the party has been creeping up the polls, feeding on anti-establishment feeling after unpopular Covid lockdowns.

Some analysts saw the election as a fight between two ‘moods’ in the Netherlands: a mood of (Right-wing) discontent, echoed also across other countries, versus the traditional consensus-driven Dutch mood. With 18 parties in parliament, politicians have typically found a way to muddle along, but this election was different thanks to the thorny issue of nitrogen compound pollution, which is tying the country in knots before a bill has even passed through parliament.

EU rules, Dutch laws, and court verdicts mean the country must reduce emissions of ammonia, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide from farming, transport and building machines. The question is who takes the hit — and whether 30% of productive farms should be shut, forcibly if necessary. The Netherlands, which feeds the world with its intensive farming and livestock-heavy agriculture, is at the sharp end of the international climate debate.

It is my secret belief that when folks talk about Caucasian European Males they are really talking about the Anglo-Dutch project, which brouoght Democracy to Europe and North America.  So, a major political change such as the recent Dutch elections should be seen as a possible signal of the system being out of adjustment

Through my narrow lens I see that the Progressive Environmentalists in the Netherlands have failed to build a sufficiently broad concensus among all voters, conidering all equities, to pass commonly agreed legislation, with all feeling they have a fair oppoortunity to make their case.  This is about building consensus,  That appears not to have happened before these recent elections. 

This should be a warning to all political parties and movements in the United States.  Just because you think your cause is righteous does not mean you don't have to build a consensus across the fruited plain.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Terror Threat this Year

For John, BLUF:  Intelligence Agencies are now loooking out and seeing terrorists threats to the US and Europe emerging in Afghanistan.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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U.S. Commander: ISIS in Afghanistan 6 Months Away From Foreign Attack Capability

Here is the sub-headline:

‘They can do an external operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,’ says the Army general in charge of regional operations.

From US News and World Report, by Reporter Paul D. Shinkman, 16 March 2023.

Here is the lede plus four:

The Islamic State group branch in Afghanistan will be able to conduct terrorist attacks in Europe and Asia within six months, the top U.S. officer for operations in the region told Congress on Thursday.

“They can do an external operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,” Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

The general later specified that the group known as ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K could potentially conduct attacks in Asia or in Europe. It will have greater difficulty attacking the U.S. homeland directly, he said in response to questions.

U.S. intelligence offered a similar assessment of ISIS-K’s ability to attack the U.S. in October 2021.

The potential threat posed by the group, whose brutal acts became more prolific in the final years of the U.S. involvement in the conflict, has become a renewed matter of attention as lawmakers scrutinize the extent the U.S. can still conduct counter-terror operations in Afghanistan after fully withdrawing from it.

Som 20 years and 2429 US Dead (and 46,319 Afghan civilians dead) we are six months away from a potential terrorist event on our soil.  This does not smack of a successful outcome.  It will be worse if there is a terrorist event in the near future.

A planning question for both the Department of State and the Department of Defense is what should be our reaction to a terrorist event out of Afghanistan?  Included in that should be the White House National Security Advior (Jake Sullivan)  Some prior planning will tend to suppress hairbrain ideas thrown on the table at the last minute.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Disguised Theft

For John, BLUF:  Richmond Law Schoool has shown that between ethics and money, it picks money.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A Law School’s ‘Denaming’ Evokes Donor Family’s Ire

From Tax Prof Blog, by Professor Paul Caron, 11 March 2023.

Here is the lede plus one:

Following up on my previous post, After Richmond Law School Removed Slave-Owner Benefactor From Its Name, Family Demands Return Of His Donations ($3.6 Billion With 132 Years Of Interest): Inside Higher Ed, A Law School’s ‘Denaming’ Evokes Donor Family’s Ire:

When the University of Richmond’s Board of Trustees voted last fall to remove the name of alumnus and donor T. C. Williams from its law school, Williams’s descendants were irate. The board was following a new set of principles adopted earlier that year to ensure the namesakes of buildings, colleges and professorships lived up to the university’s values; the trustees decided that Williams, a wealthy tobacco farmer and slave owner, did not.

A successful law suit is very unlikely.

To me this is straight forward.  The school wishes to distance itself from a benefactor, but is unwilling to give up the financial benefit from that person.  Keep the money, but take down the name.  Hide the fact that the school benefitted from money earned in part via slavery.

This is rank hypocrisy.

I would be happy if they changed the name and then added at the end "formerly T C Williams."

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The White Rose

For John, BLUF:  Not everyone gets noted by a nation's President upon their passing.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Traute Lafrenz, last survivor of White Rose group that resisted Nazis dies at 103

Here is the sub-headline:

The last known survivor of a German group known as the White Rose that actively resisted the Nazis has died

From The Boston Globe, an Obit, 10 March 2023, 5:13 pm.

Here is the lede plus one:

Traute Lafrenz, the last known survivor of a German group known as the White Rose that actively resisted the Nazis, has died. She was 103.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences to her family Friday, describing Ms. Lafrenz as a “wonderful and immeasurably brave woman.”

“Your mother was one of the few who, in the face of the crimes of National Socialism, had the courage to listen to her conscience and stand up to dictatorship, fascism and war.”

According to an obituary published in The Charleston Post and Courier, Ms. Lafrenz died on March 6. She had emigrated to the United States after the war, marrying fellow physician Vernon Page and eventually retiring to South Carolina.

Three leaders of the White Rose were exeuted for their activities just over 80 years ago, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, on 22 February 1943.

The White Rose originated in Munich, and then spread.  It lasted less than a year, but made an impression that continues on to today, at leasst with those who resist tyrany.

Regards  —  Cliff

Our Political Myths

For John, BLUF:  History is often written in the hedlines, with no one going back to double check the story.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The myth of a Southern Strategy

From donsurber substack, by Reporter Don Surber, 10 March 2023.

Here is the lede plus four:

Richard Nixon was the most maligned president in U.S. history until Donald Trump came along. Democrats still hate Nixon because he opposed communists in America early and often. He knew Moscow funded the American Communist Party four decades before the press admitted it — and only after the Soviet Union fell did the press report it.

Watergate was a frame up. He never knew about the plan to bug the DNC. But he had passed Mark Felt over as J. Edgar Hoover’s successor at the FBI, and so the deep state removed Nixon from office less than two years after his record landslide re-election.

The same press that created Watergate has defended Obama using the FBI to spy on President Trump. The press still insists there was a Russiagate that allowed a Democrat to use the government to spy on a Republican critic.

The biggest lie against Nixon was a Southern Strategy. I will allow the Washington Post to define it.

The Post said on July 26, 2019, “Most Americans have heard the story of the Southern strategy: The Republican Party, in the wake of the civil rights movement, decided to court Southern white voters by capitalizing on their racial fears. Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater first wielded this strategy in 1964 and Richard Nixon perfected it in 1968 and 1972, turning the solidly Democratic South into a bastion of Republicanism.”

Here are the numberss, which should tell us a story:

[Nixon] took 5 of the 6 Confederate states that LBJ took in his landslide.

And LBJ is the man who passed, with the help of the Republicans, the Civil Rights legislation.

Sure, four years later, Nixon took all 11 Confederate states. But he also took every other state in the country except Massachusetts. If you want to call that a Southern Strategy then your south extends to Alaska.

Why wass Massachusetts the odd man out?

Jimmy Carter would take 10 of those 11 states back four years later. And of course Clinton and Gore did well in the Confederate states. Were they dog whistling Dixie?

Yes, it appears that President Richard Nixon was smeaared regarding his so-called Southern Strategy.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

State Level Divorce

For John, BLUF:  As geographic areas seem to be more locked into alignment with one political party or another, people are looking for new ways to break the logjam.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Conservatives Want to Secede From Oregon, and Leftists Are ENRAGED

From PJ Media, by Mr Robert Spencer, 5 March 2023, 11:42.

Here is the lede plus one:

The people in eastern Oregon are generally patriotic and sane, and they’re tired of being subjected to the misrule of the far-Left kleptocrats in Salem, who care about them only as a cash cow to fund their socialist pipe dreams.  Accordingly, some have formed the Greater Idaho movement, which actually hopes to detach Oregon’s rural eastern counties from the state and attach them to Idaho.  This movement, as fanciful as it seems, is gathering steam, and that has Democrats enraged.  Whatever else it may be, their rage is revealing.

Idaho Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, a Democrat, said:  “I’m very pleased this measure has virtually no chance of advancing into reality.  It would be bad for all involved and bad for the country, and I am opposed to it at all levels.”  Bad for the country!  When Leftists who have nothing but contempt for the America-First movement and seem to put America last in all their policy considerations, start declaring that something is “bad for the country,” it must be very good indeed.

While the three Pacific Coast States, Washington, Oregon and California are known for their Progressive views and actions, for being the "Left Coast", it isn't the whole truth.  In fact, the Eastern part of each of the States is actually a much more conservative enclave.

Perhaps the solution to our differences is to allow voters with different political views to band together in their own political entities.  On the other hand, this might benefit the conservatives.  No wonder the left in Oregon are enraged.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Chicago Mayor Loses

For John, BLUF:  Chicago is a democrat party strongehold nd Ms Lightfoot's loss should be a bit of a shock.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Even After a Historic Landslide Defeat, Lori Lightfoot Doesn’t Seem to Realize It Was All About the Crime

From The Truth About Guns, by Mr Larry Keane, 3 March 2023.

Here is the lede plus two:

Chicago’s incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot just lost in a landslide.  She came in third place and barely received 17 percent of the vote from Chicago voters – 83 percent chose someone else.  That means she’ll miss out on a top-two run-off election in April and become the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose reelection.

The mayor has only herself to blame.  Voters were pleading for her to get tough on criminals.  Instead, she spent time and taxpayer dollars making cringeworthy videos on Chinese Communist Party-owned TikTok.

She ignored her employers and now she’s out of a job.

Later the article says:

In the lead up to the election, 44 percent of voters said crime and public safety were their top issues.  The second-place issue, jobs, came in at 13 percent, far behind safety.  Two-thirds of voters said they personally don’t feel safe and half of voters said they were going to cast their ballot for a candidate who would get tough on criminals.  No surprises Mayor Lightfoot lost given those numbers.  A brief history shows why.

While I don't yet know if this is a trend, but if it is, it is bad news for Democrats and the "Defund the Police" movement.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff