Governor Ronald Reagan, in his 1967 inaugural address, famously remarked, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”
Reagan today might have expanded on his theme by declaring that civilization itself is both fragile and can lost by a generation that recklessly spends its inheritance while neither appreciating nor replenishing it—if not ridiculing those who sacrificed so much to provide it.
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Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas announced that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer Sunday.
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Naturally, the cataract of commentary on Thursday’s Stalinist guilty, guilty, guilty verdict against Donald Trump has divided itself into two distinct pools. One is gleeful. The other is alarmed. Rather than anatomize the differences between the two, I’d like to start by simply noting the size and fervor of the response. There are, I believe, two essential points to bear in mind.
The first is that the outpouring is only incidentally about Trump. You might find this a surprising statement since the news has been full of little besides Trump.
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Former President Donald Trump received thunderous applause from the crowd of an Ultimate Fighting Championship competition in Newark, New Jersey, as fans waited for the main event, which was Dustin Poirier’s match against Islam Makhachev for the UFC Lightweight Championship.
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The Greater Idaho movement might be the most tangible and effective political rebellion taking place today in America.
You’ll find no anarchists in its ranks, however. This movement is led by humble rural conservatives and has gained breathtaking traction through little more than grassroots activism and democratic participation.
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Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies.
Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.
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American tax dollars are funding an array of book projects covering topics like “trans reproduction” and the “neglected queer history” of homosexuality in post-colonial Ireland, federal records show.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) spends hundreds of thousands of tax dollars a year funding academics to write full-length books on a variety of subjects, according to grant records. While many of the books center on innocuous topics, like the history of criminal procedure in China or philosopher Immanuel Kant, others the NEH funded in 2023 and 2024 veer into left-wing topics.
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The state government of Oregon enacted a new restriction on a Christian youth ministry group, withholding crucial funding on the condition that the group specifically hire non-Christians or people who otherwise don’t agree with the group’s beliefs.
As reported by Fox News, the group, 71Five Ministries, is struggling with a large budget deficit following the Oregon Department of Education’s decision to revoke its funding due to its Christian beliefs. The ministry filed a lawsuit against the state in March, with the support of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), declaring the state’s decision to be a violation of their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Oral arguments in the case ended last week, and both sides are now waiting for the judge’s decision.
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For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”
In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.
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The State Department is funding an array of LGBT pride events across the globe ahead of June, some of which include events focused on children, federal grant records show.
Biden’s State Department is bankrolling a gay film festival, an LGBT community conference and other pride events in Australia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria in the lead-up to June, according to grant records. Some observe June as “Pride Month” to commemorate the Stonewall riots, a series of clashes between LGBT people and the police after law enforcement raided a gay bar.
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The past spring semester for universities across the United States was marked with “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” and pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protests largely at commencements – that is, if commencement wasn’t canceled completely due to demonstrators – but now, the protests appear to have reached a new phase, potentially foreshadowing what is to come for America this summer.
A pro-Palestinian encampment popped up in Clark Park in West Philadelphia this week, according to local outlet 6ABC, marking the first encampment on city property.
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In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country.
The holiday was Memorial Day, an annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead.
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Appealing to heaven is “provocative,” says The New York Times.
The Times reported Wednesday that—gasp—Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew an “Appeal to Heaven” flag last year at his vacation home in New Jersey.
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A study published Wednesday found that teens who use cannabis are 11 times more likely to be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, according to NBC News.
The study was led by researchers from the University of Toronto and examined teenage patients who used cannabis within the last year and those who did not, according to NBC News. When the study was further limited to teens who were sent to the emergency room or hospitalized, it showed a 27-fold increase in the likelihood of being diagnosed with psychotic illness.
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The Pope declared that a London-born teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 is qualified to become the first millennial saint.
Carlo Acutis posted about the teachings of the Catholic church online and reportedly became known as “God’s influencer.”
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In February, Harrison Butker kicked the longest field goal in Super Bowl history—a massive 57-yard three-pointer—to help carry the Kansas City Chiefs to a rollicking win over the San Francisco 49ers.
Recently, he’s made headlines again—this time, arguably, for far more profound reasons.
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There are 124 cities with a population over 200,000 in the U.S. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates for last year, over 90 percent of the U.S. population growth last year took place outside of its 124 largest cities. About a third of those cities lost population last year. The total growth in the population of cities with over 200,000 residents grew by .23 percent, less than half of what the U.S. grew last year.
Roughly a third of those that lost population were located in New York and California. The three largest cities in the U.S., New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all lost population again in 2023. Between the three cities, over 700,000 people have left since the 2020 census. New York is by far the biggest loser at 546,000. That is about 6.2 percent of its 2020 population.
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American federalism is alive and well after all. On April 19, the Biden Education Department announced its disastrous new Title IX rule that guts due process and imposes gender ideology in educational institutions. Within days, however, officials from eight states publicly instructed their schools to ignore it. Then, within a week, 16 states sued the administration alongside nonprofit groups such as Parents Defending Education and several Louisiana school districts. Since then, the number of states suing has climbed to 26—more than half the states in the nation. Their court filings say the rule violates not only the United States Constitution and the federal Administrative Procedures Act but also Title IX itself. Game on!
While feminists weaponized Title IX to their hearts’ content in the Obama years, alleging a phony campus rape crisis to rationalize their kangaroo courts and to silence those questioning their power, the world is a different place under Biden. Feminists have met their match in American parents and and in red states—especially their education officials.
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On August 31, 2023, Yale’s 23rd president, Peter Salovey, announced he would be stepping down. Since this announcement, much has transpired in the world of American higher education: the resignation of Harvard and UPenn presidents, the creation of campus encampments nationwide, and the cancelation of commencements at Columbia and USC. These developments point to an American higher education system that is malfunctioning. The breakdown we are witnessing at Yale’s peer institutions will continue until leaders are chosen for their courage to apply wisdom to divisive issues.
America’s Founders understood the importance of higher education. Of all his great accomplishments, only three made it onto Thomas Jefferson’s headstone: Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia. Jefferson knew that America’s ability to be great and good – UVA’s motto – depended on the presence of high-functioning universities. America’s first polymath, Ben Franklin, famously said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Framers like Franklin and Jefferson understood the value of academic pursuits, and their example lit a spark that motivated generations of Americans to pursue higher education.
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Three years after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available to adults – at which point the CDC already knew they couldn’t stop transmission – courts are finally starting to put their foot down on the most basic legal question: Are mandates at least applied fairly, if not scientifically?
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not only knocked down the University of Colorado medical school’s original and revised 2021 mandates for discriminating against employees seeking religious exemptions, but knocked the trial judge for “abuse of discretion” by reversing the burden of proof to moot the case.
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Former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy purchased an activist stake in BuzzFeed, according to a May Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Ramaswamy purchased a 7.7% stake consisting of 2.7 million shares between March 14 and May 21 at costs ranging from $1.47 to $2.51 per share, according to the filing. The businessman asserted in the filing that he feels the company’s shares are “undervalued and represent an attractive investment opportunity.”
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On Sunday, a Catholic monk in the United States claimed that he is now “transgender.”
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Three days after a federal judge dismissed a challenge to a California law that lets inmates with intact male genitalia and hormone levels choose women’s prisons based on gender identity, prosecutors laid out their evidence for rape charges against an incarcerated male transferred under that law, whom the judge also allowed to intervene in defense of SB 132.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston “clearly didn’t know about this rape case coming through the state court system” going back to March, Executive Director Sharon Byrne of the Women’s Liberation Front, which sponsored the lawsuit by female inmates Janine Chandler, Krystal Gonzalez, Tomiekia Johnson and Nadia Romero, told Just the News on Monday.
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Apple’s recent ad for a new, thinner iPad featured a hydraulic press smashing everything the new gadget could supposedly replace: paints, musical instruments, a clay bust, arcade cabinets, record players, books.
The new iPad promises a future in which humanity has forgotten the whisper of the brush over the canvas, the vibration of a guitar string, the joy of finding a note tucked into an old used book, and the easy camaraderie of children cheering each other on as they take turns at a challenging arcade game. The craftsmanship that went into these objects is now obsolete. You don’t have to go anywhere, touch anything.
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CVS Health Corporation settled with nurse practitioner Robyn Strader after she sued the company after it stopped providing religious accommodations regarding “pregnancy prevention services.”
Strader said she had been granted a religious exemption for six years permitting her to not prescribe contraceptives, and filed the lawsuit in January 2023 after having been fired following the policy change in 2021, according to the press release. First Liberty Institute, which represented Strader, announced Monday that CVS had agreed to a settlement of which the terms “were not made public.”
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A vote on enshrining abortion rights into the Nevada Constitution might appear on the ballot in November.\
The group Reproductive Freedom for All announced on Monday it had collected more than 200,00
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Homeowners across the U.S. are seeing skyrocketing insurance rates, increased deductibles, excluded protections, and canceled policies.
Insurers say that they’re having to adjust to changing conditions to remain profitable. Among the problems they blame is inflation, rising construction costs, and costs associated with regulatory compliance. But many insurers are also blaming climate change for driving extreme weather events and increasing losses, and much of the media coverage is zooming in on this narrative.
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A new conservative, America First movement is building–and leading the formation of this new governing philosophy are Hispanics yearning for the American Dream they came here to realize. They are shaping and leading a new conservative majority that builds on their shared values of faith, family, freedom, and work.
This rapid shift of Hispanics to the conservative movement has shaken the Left to its core, who for years pinned their political hopes on demographic destiny and the idea that the Hispanic community would be a permanent fixture of their base.
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Anti-Israel/pro-Hamas campus protests have engulfed hundreds of college campuses. But the more coastal, blue-state, and supposedly elite the campus was, the more furious the violence that sometimes followed these demonstrations.
Even rowdier and more vicious street analogs shut down key bridges, freeways, and religious services. Protestors often defaced hallowed American monuments, national cemeteries, and iconic buildings. Visa-holders were among the worst perpetrators, adding ingratitude to their criminality.
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For President Biden and congressional Democrats, the fierce party division over the campus protests and the war in Gaza is full of warning signs during the 2024 election year. The unrest is unlikely to stop when universities break for the summer; protesters are pledging to disrupt the August Democratic National Convention planned to be held in Chicago.
Most House Democrats have been reticent on the antisemitic protests and encampments roiling college graduations this month, while a handful have vocally defended or even celebrated the student protests as displays of protected free speech.
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These days, it’s almost common knowledge that homeschooled students have a better academic education, do better in college and careers, and are regarded as “smarter” than students from public schools. Homeschooling families typically gravitate toward this educational lifestyle to avoid the public school environment, to prioritize their faith and family values, to adjust to a more flexible and forgiving lifestyle, and to offer their children a better childhood than that found in public schools. Yes to all! These are wonderful reasons to choose homeschooling and should be widely shared and celebrated.
When my parents chose to homeschool me and my siblings, though, they had no idea how deep the effects would be. Academics is only one aspect of homeschooling. The family-centric, homeschool lifestyle offered us benefits that continue to shape my adult life and the life of my own family. Everyone should know the often completely hidden perks that homeschooling provides children long after they finish their high school coursework.
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The University of California graduate students union plans to “maximize chaos and confusion” on campuses in opposition to administrators’ responses to pro-Palestinian protesters in recent weeks, a UAW 4811 leader said.
On Wednesday, the union voted to authorize a strike on UC campuses, it announced on X. UAW 4811 represents 48,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers and researchers.
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Provisional estimates show drug overdose deaths declined about 3.1% nationwide, but multiple states reported increases of more than 20%.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s provisional estimated overdose deaths in 2023 declined about 3.1% to 107,543. That’s down from 111,029 in 2022. Two out of every three deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a cheap and potent opioid smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.
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In today’s political discourse, conversations about saving our nation and its future are increasingly common. Key issues such as border security, increasing crime, economic stability, and rising inflation dominate headlines.
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Two reporters from the Daily Caller News Foundation outlined their findings from a series of reports on the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Wednesday.
DCNF investigative reporter Megan Brock and DCNF culture reporter Kate Anderson obtained footage from WPATH’s September 2022 Global Education Institute (GEI) and over 100 pages of documents, which included some members of the group questioning the organization’s “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8” (SOC 8). Brock and Anderson discussed the findings on “The Charlie Kirk Show” after guest host Andrew Kolvet played a clip from the footage obtained by the DCNF.
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California State University (CSU) put Sonoma State University (SSU) President Mike Lee on leave after he sent a campus memo signaling an agreement with pro-Palestinian protesters that did not receive the “appropriate approvals,” according to a Wednesday CSU press release.
Lee issued an “encampment update” Tuesday evening, establishing an “Advisory Council of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)” and detailing his intention for the university to boycott and divest from Israel. CSU Chancellor Mildred García subsequently announced Lee was placed on “administrative leave” due to his “insubordination and consequences it has brought upon the system.”
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In previous years, people might have missed the irony. But not now—not after the meteoric rise of women’s basketball.
When the WNBA champs visited the White House last week, reporters didn’t cover it out of obligation. They covered it because it was a real story. And President Joe Biden’s betrayal of girls sports only made it more of one.
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With “Teacher Appreciation Week” now behind us, it’s crucial that we pay close heed to the well-being of the students, and the news is not good. Gen Z-ers and the newest crop—Generation Alpha—are struggling, and schools are the focal point of the problem.
A new report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students between the ages of 12 and 18 and found that just 48 percent of those enrolled in middle or high school felt motivated to go to school. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. On a similar note, a new EdChoice survey reveals that 64 percent of teens said that school is boring, and 30 percent feel that it is a waste of time.
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George Mason University has at least 87 staffers working on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to an analysis by The College Fix. To put that in perspective, there are 59 full-time history and art history professors employed at the school.
Of the 87 DEI posts, it’s a mix of employees and students with full-time or part-time positions working to advance DEI in some capacity, and most of those positions appear to be paid and full-time, the analysis found.
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“Popular University 4 Gaza” is a Telegram channel with over 8,000 subscribers and is run by members of NSJP, Palestinian Youth Movement and Writers Against the War on Gaza, according to a post on X, formerly Twitter. The channel’s admins distributed a document called the “De-Arrest Primer” on April 26 that provides tactics for resisting arrest, sometimes through violent means.
One tactic for obstructing arrests laid out in the document requires “pulling/pushing an officer off an arrestee and/or breaking their grip.” The document warns readers that the tactic can be “risky as it requires physical contact with an officer which could lead to assault on an officer charges.”
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Handy was convicted last year on two charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
Pro-life activist Lauren Handy was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison on Tuesday for organizing a blockade at an abortion clinic in 2020 in Washington, D.C.
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The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is the leading authority in the field of gender medicine. Its guidance is routinely used by top medical associations in the U.S. and abroad, while its standards of care inform insurance companies’ approach to coverage policies.
But behind closed doors, top WPATH doctors discussed, and at times seemed to challenge, the organization’s own published guidelines for sex change procedures and acknowledged pushing experimental medical interventions that can have devastating and irreversible complications, according to exclusive footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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When former Soviet KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov defected to the West from Russia, he set about exposing the strategies used within the KGB to spread propaganda and keep the Soviet people in line with the agenda of their political overlords. There were myriad tactics employed in this campaign of what today has been labeled mis- or dis-information.
One of the most effective tools for subjugation in the former Soviet Union was known as “demoralization,” which Bezmenov explained this way:
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Mere days after Columbia’s president testified the university was doing “everything it can” against antisemitism, extremist protestors took over the campus, threatening and attacking Jewish students, encouraging others to become “martyrs” like the Hamas terrorists who committed the Oct. 7 massacre, and calling for Oct. 7 to become “every day” for Jews worldwide. After Jewish community leaders called for Jewish students to leave Columbia, President Shafik moved all classes online.
Now, similar antisemitic extremism is spreading to other campuses, including Harvard, the University of Southern California, Yale, and Princeton. The police are getting involved. The protests are being praised by Iran’s Ayatollah and even Hamas.
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A judge has struck down a New York county’s ban on transgender athletes from participating in female sports, saying the county executive exceeded his authority by issuing the directive.
The ruling by state Supreme Court Judge Francis Ricigliano overturns an executive order signed by Nassau County Chief Executive Bruce Blakeman in February that requires any sports team seeking to use a county facility to provide information on “the biological sex at birth of the team members/participants.”
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A few days ago, in examining Harvard’s problems and the ghost of its deposed and disgraced former president Claudine Gay, this column wrote: “Education is supposed to be about reading, writing, and arithmetic—even at the college level. Once upon a time, and not that long ago, students at college read the classics to gain knowledge, learned to write stylish prose, and, for those scientifically minded, studied mathematics and became scientists.”
A critic wrote in—as readers are encouraged to do:
This is a window onto a big topic. It’s true that education is about the three Rs. But it is also true that there must be a purpose to learning those Rs. There’s actually nothing formally, and technically, wrong with “Educating students who will create . . . a more just and equitable world.” The real question is, What are justice & equity? They would like it to mean taking our stuff and giving it to other people, after keeping their share. But, to paraphrase the Grinch, Justice, perhaps, means a little bit more . . . . In any case, without a sense of purpose, or with a misdirected sense of purpose, the University will never right itself. And as this is the largest questing of Meaning, it is really a religious question that, having turned their backs on religion, they are utterly incapable of engaging, let alone answering.
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A valuable comic book collection, statues of the founding fathers, and historic buildings where great minds like Albert Einstein have taught – all reportedly have been targets of anti-Israel protesters in recent weeks.
Some have caused massive damage. Images show graffiti and debris covering campuses like the University of California at Los Angeles, California State Polytechnic University at Humboldt, and Portland State University (pictured) – attracting national news attention and public shock.
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It’s no secret that there’s a divide between urban and rural communities in America right now. Whether it’s the proclamation of “white rural rage” or stereotypes of uneducated country dwellers, rural communities are often misunderstood.
But just like urban life has its ups and downs, country living has its own advantages, values, traditions, and lifestyles we can learn from.
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Monday, a week ago, Holocaust Day was marked by solemn remembrances in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world. It was marked in the U.S., as has been customary, by a presidential address, where Biden said nothing that would garner more than perfunctory notice.
Turns out that that was by design. For Biden had already approved a decision that gives cheer to the shade of Hitler and all his modern wanna-be-s — embargoing any arms to Israel that would allow them to keep Hamas from surviving intact and reasserting its plan for death to Israel.
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by Roger Kimball Some time ago, I participated in a conference about “policing in an age of terror.” One big topic was the place of informed hunches in the armory of the police. Was it okay, or was it culpably racist, for the police to act on educated hunches…
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