The Supreme Court rejected a case regarding school policy in a district which allows transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice.
On Tuesday, the Supreme
Court denied cert to Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, a case concerning a
gender identity bathroom and locker room policy at a Pennsylvania high school.
In declining to take up the case, The Supreme Court let stand the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit’s decision, which dismissed the concerns of students who did not wish to share intimate spaces with members of the opposite sex.
As long as this policy
remains in place, the problems with the policy remain too. High school girls
like Alexis Lightcap will continue to have to share women’s spaces with
biological males.
“I don’t want a man in the bathroom with me. I’m already uncomfortable in my body, trying to grow up,” said Lightcap. “I have a thirteen-year-old sister who goes to this school. I don’t want her going into a bathroom where a male is allowed to just walk in there.”
“I wish that the school
had protected my privacy somehow. It felt like a specific group of people were
protected while the greater population was not,” Lightcap said.
Why? As she wrote in an op-ed at The Washington Post while she was a law professor at Columbia, “Separate
places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in
some situations required, by regard for individual privacy. Individual privacy,
a right of constitutional dimension, is appropriately harmonized with the
equality principle.”
Privacy and equality are
not mutually exclusive. In fact, upholding the former is essential to
preserving the latter—especially for women.
The #MeToo movement is a
prescient reminder that women still face unique social challenges. Taking away
women’s privacy from the male form and the male gaze directly by forcing them
to share spaces with males is a step backwards in the fight for equality.
This problem is not going
anywhere. As Ginsburg pointed out in her VMI opinion, “[p]hysical differences
between the sexes are enduring,” and quoting Ballard v. United States, “[t]he
two sexes are not fungible.”
The difference between
the sexes is here to stay; so too are the problems with gender identity
policies like the one at Boyertown.
Everyone deserves privacy
and safety in private facilities. However, one-size-fits-all policies like Boyertown’s
fail to take into account the very real needs of countless girls.
Better solutions exist.
In the absence of a Supreme Court decision, it is on school administrators to
find them.
Former President Barack Obama told a crowd in Brazil Thursday that U.S. gun laws “don’t make sense” because people can buy “any weapon, any time.”
Obama’s remarks came during an interview at VTEX DAY, a conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, after he was asked to describe his hardest day as president.
“The most difficult day that I’ve had was the day that there was a shooting in a school where 20 small children were shot,” he said.
“Some of you may be aware, our gun laws in the United States don’t make much sense. Anybody can buy any weapon, any time without much, if any, regulation. They buy it over the internet. They can buy machine guns.”
U.S. Federal firearms laws are stricter than Obama represented. Gun purchasers must be at least 18 for rifles and shotguns, and 21 for handguns, and pass a background check if they buy from a dealer, according to the National Rifle Association.
In addition, fully automatic machine guns cannot be sold to private citizens, as written in the National Firearms Act.
Obama’s comments about guns are timely for Brazil. In January, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro issued a temporary decree that expands access for people to buy and carry guns, according to the Daily Mail.
“Having to speak to parents who had lost a child just a day or two after it had happened, and not being able to assure them that…that would change, that we would fix this. I couldn’t bring their children back but I couldn’t even promise them that we would change the laws so this didn’t happen to somebody’s children.”
“That was the day that was emotionally most difficult for me,” he added.
Socialism is the zombie ideology of our era: It fails everywhere,
and yet it keeps rising back from the dead.
Despite embarrassing socialist failures in China, Russia, North Korea,
Cuba, and now Venezuela, the true believers march onward. Good intentions are
unassailable. The revolution must go on.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arguably has done more than any other
living American to market socialism to the next generation. And with Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., following closely in his wake, rest assured
we’ll be contending with socialism for years to come.
A recent Gallup survey shows that their message is resonating with more and more Americans.
While 51% say socialism would be bad for America, 43% say it would
be good. And notably, among the 18-34-year-old cohort, 58% favor socialism
while 37% disfavor it.
Those numbers hang like a dark cloud over America’s future, but
they don’t tell the whole story.
Interestingly, according to Gallup, Americans still favor the free
market over government in multiple areas, including technological innovation,
health care, and even basic things like wages, distribution of wealth, and the
economy overall. And the comparison isn’t even close.
By contrast, Americans favor government over free markets when it comes to protecting consumers’ online privacy and environmental protection.
This creates quite a mixed picture, even a contradictory one. As a
matter of simple math, there have to be millions of Americans who say they
favor some form of socialism, yet favor the free market in general when it
comes to certain aspects of their lives.
How can that be?
As it turns out, Americans define “socialism” in quite different
ways. Traditionally, socialism has meant government ownership of the means of
production—businesses, factories, etc. But today, only 17% of Americans hold
that definition, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, 23% equate socialism with
vague notions of social equality. Another 23% have no opinion on the matter.
So, the public meaning of “socialism” today is indeterminate,
meaning that public opinion toward “socialism” doesn’t tell us very much about
people’s policy preferences.
But even if it did tell us a lot, public opinion isn’t the surest
predictor of what will pass in Washington. After all, big-government policies
have often passed in spite of public disapproval.
Obamacare is case-in-point here. At the height of the Obamacare
debate in 2010, 59% of Americans disapproved of the bill while just 39% approved. That didn’t stop Obamacare
from passing with a supermajority in the Senate.
We should also recall that big-government policies have often come
in moments of great national crisis. These moments are often exempt from the
dominant themes in public opinion.
Polling trends may be stable in a free-market direction, but when
a moment of crisis comes, the public often tolerates—and even demands—immediate
action from the government.
That usually translates into an expansion of government.
This happened in both the Great Depression and the Great Recession
following the 2007 financial crisis. A host of new programs were created that
had little to do with immediate economic recovery—yet they became entrenched
parts of the federal government and remain with us to this day.
What’s more, Americans have come to assume these programs are
legitimate functions of the federal government. The status quo trains us in
what is acceptable, so once a policy becomes enshrined in law, it’s very hard
to get rid of. That makes staving off such policies in the first place all the
more urgent.
Today’s fight over socialism is in large part a branding war. The
left constantly rebrands itself. In the mid-20th century, progressives decided
to adopt the word “liberal,” since “progressive” had fallen into disrepute. The
same thing eventually happened to the word “liberal,” so now, they’re back to
the word “progressive.”
We see this with socialism, too. America’s avowed socialists know
the word “socialism” is radioactive in America, so they’ve championed their
policies in terms of “fairness” and “equality” while allowing socialist
ideology to color those terms.
Such is the strategy with Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, a proposal
that would allow the government to take over American health care, putting us
in league with Canada and the U.K. The bill polls surprisingly well with the
public (56% approve) until respondents learn that the
bill would abolish private insurance. Then, support plummets to 37%.
That’s why the fight for truth in policymaking is so important—and
why the left’s branding tricks are so pernicious.
Americans still have a gut instinct in favor of freedom and the
free market, as shown in the details of the Gallup survey. Conservatives should
use that to their advantage by dismantling the left’s branding charade.
The truth of each policy proposal must be placed into the light of
day—because once such bills pass, America will “find
out what’s in it.” Once that happens, yesterday’s
fringe view could become the new normal.
Brian Kolfage and “We Build the Wall” raised over $20 million in private donations from over 260,000 individuals to build a border wall on the US southern border with Mexico. The GoFundMe page was launched after Democrat and Republican lawmakers refused to work with President Trump to secure the border.
** Please donate to this incredible organization here.
On Saturday “We Build the Wall” released two videos.
In the first video “Foreman Mike” discussed the latest progress on the Sunland Park project. “We Build the Wall” is closing up on their first half mile of wall. They project is approximately 2,300 feet and they have 350 more feet to go to finish the project.
The construction team has used over 600 concrete trucks so far. They are also pouring concrete for a 25 foot speedway behind the all for Border Patrol agents.
Border Patrol officials say the current project when complete will cut off 19 different foot trails on Mount Cristo Rey on the border. The cartels are bringing $100,000 to $200,000 in drugs each day through the open border in this area.
Mike added this on the effectiveness of the current project, “When I got here 17 days ago there were 450 people a night crossing. When equipment started arriving it went to 300. When manpower started working we went down to 200. When we started placing the bollards it went from 70 to 30 to 0.We’ve had no crossings in the last 8 days.”
Then Mike added this on the very security situation, “We have military clad specialists from the cartels probing our line. The only thing stopping them is our specialists in the hills counteracting with them. We expect to be completed late, late, late this evening or early tomorrow with the first segment of the wall. “
When asked about the security needed to deal with the drug cartels, Mike replied, “It’s extremely dangerous. They got within 15 feet of the escavators last night. They’re coming down and trying to probe against the new wall… We have approximately 15 guards on post, armed security individuals.”
It’s all downhill now for Robert Mueller and the very costly report fashioned by his team of Trump-hating lawyers. They have been exposed as propagandists attempting to falsely implicate President Trump’s team in obstruction of justice by doctoring a transcript of a telephone call, omitting exculpatory words.
Because they were paid tens of millions of dollars by taxpayers to accurately assess the Russia hoax charges only to come up with nothing, obstruction was their fallback option to fuel impeachment talk among House Democrats and thereby obstruct the performance of the duties of the presidency by the elected incumbent, Donald John Trump. But now we can plainly see that they stacked the deck out of sheer animus to the president.
On Friday, following an order from Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is tasked with sentencing General Michael Flynn for his guilty plea in a dubious process crime the Mueller Team charged him with, the government filed “on the public docket ‘the transcript of the voicemail recording’ from President Trump’s attorney John Dowd to Michael Flynn.” That recording — in doctored form — had been part of the Mueller Report section on obstruction of justice. The first to notice the discrepancy between the report’s version and the actual transcript was Rosie Memos:
Once again #MuellerReport edited messages to make them appear more damaging, full transcript of this phone call reveals Dowd’s message was pretty typical for a lawyer and he clearly states he’s not interested in any confidential info. What else did they manipulate🙄 pic.twitter.com/7JHRzgmh3Y
Now that we know that the Mueller team was willing to cover up relevant facts in order to make it appear that something possibly illegal took place, there can be no more trusting of any parts of its report.
No wonder Robert Mueller doesn’t want to testify before Congress. Too bad. He can still get subpoenaed and compelled to answer questions under oath.
It’s all downhill now for Robert Mueller and the very costly report fashioned by his team of Trump-hating lawyers. They have been exposed as propagandists attempting to falsely implicate President Trump’s team in obstruction of justice by doctoring a transcript of a telephone call, omitting exculpatory words.
Because they were paid tens of millions of dollars by taxpayers to accurately assess the Russia hoax charges only to come up with nothing, obstruction was their fallback option to fuel impeachment talk among House Democrats and thereby obstruct the performance of the duties of the presidency by the elected incumbent, Donald John Trump. But now we can plainly see that they stacked the deck out of sheer animus to the president.
On Friday, following an order from Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is tasked with sentencing General Michael Flynn for his guilty plea in a dubious process crime the Mueller Team charged him with, the government filed “on the public docket ‘the transcript of the voicemail recording’ from President Trump’s attorney John Dowd to Michael Flynn.” That recording — in doctored form — had been part of the Mueller Report section on obstruction of justice. The first to notice the discrepancy between the report’s version and the actual transcript was Rosie Memos:
Once again #MuellerReport edited messages to make them appear more damaging, full transcript of this phone call reveals Dowd’s message was pretty typical for a lawyer and he clearly states he’s not interested in any confidential info. What else did they manipulate🙄 pic.twitter.com/7JHRzgmh3Y
Now that we know that the Mueller team was willing to cover up relevant facts in order to make it appear that something possibly illegal took place, there can be no more trusting of any parts of its report.
No wonder Robert Mueller doesn’t want to testify before Congress. Too bad. He can still get subpoenaed and compelled to answer questions under oath.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has produced a summary report showing key performance measurements of America’s economy during the eight years of Obama/Democrat malfeasance. It’s another trip through the looking glass where everything that should be up is down while everything that should be down is up, and in the case of student loans, food stamps and federal debt, up stratospherically. Here’s the snapshot from Gateway Pundit:
When your liberal friends and relatives go on a silly rip about how great Obama’s economy was, whip this out—and be sure to point out that these numbers aren’t from a Republican source, but rather are analyses from the politically independent Federal Reserve, performing one of their assigned federal functions. Gaze upon these graphs for a while and contemplate whether or not the Obama administration was embarked upon a Cloward-Piven strategy to bring this nation to such a precarious and perilous financial state as to justify a massive federal seizure of local programs and local governance, centralizing all power in Washington, DC, the Democrat dream.
We dodged a bullet by keeping Hillary Clinton from continuing this destructive social, financial and amoral race to the abyss. Many of us reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016 as the lesser of two evils. We shall vote for him in 2020 as the savior of this great nation that Obama couldn’t kill.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has produced a summary report showing key performance measurements of America’s economy during the eight years of Obama/Democrat malfeasance. It’s another trip through the looking glass where everything that should be up is down while everything that should be down is up, and in the case of student loans, food stamps and federal debt, up stratospherically. Here’s the snapshot from Gateway Pundit:
When your liberal friends and relatives go on a silly rip about how great Obama’s economy was, whip this out—and be sure to point out that these numbers aren’t from a Republican source, but rather are analyses from the politically independent Federal Reserve, performing one of their assigned federal functions. Gaze upon these graphs for a while and contemplate whether or not the Obama administration was embarked upon a Cloward-Piven strategy to bring this nation to such a precarious and perilous financial state as to justify a massive federal seizure of local programs and local governance, centralizing all power in Washington, DC, the Democrat dream.
We dodged a bullet by keeping Hillary Clinton from continuing this destructive social, financial and amoral race to the abyss. Many of us reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016 as the lesser of two evils. We shall vote for him in 2020 as the savior of this great nation that Obama couldn’t kill.
At least six Los Angeles Police Department officers from the same downtown precinct are showing signs of typhoid fever, and a "typhus-like" illness after working in or near the city’s growing homeless encampment.
Former Vice President Joe Biden lectured the City Club in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1973 about what he thought was “good for the Negro,” according to a new book from a prominent left-wing journalist.
The racially insensitive comments from Biden, a white man from Delaware who was at the time newly elected to the U.S. Senate, resurfaced, thanks to a new book from leftist journalist Ryan Grim of the Intercept. The book, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to AOC, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, has already landed a few other major blows, including on former President Barack Obama, regarding his “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal legacy, but this revelation about Biden’s torrid history with race–as told from the left–is particularly damning for the current Democrat 2020 presidential primary front runner.
In a section explaining how Biden attempted to win back for Democrats white working class voters in the 1970s, Grim writes about the now former vice president’s controversial messaging–something that may come back to haunt him in 2020.
“Joe Biden, elected to the Senate in 1972, was a leading voice in the attempt to win back white working-class voters by showing them how tough Democrats could be against affirmative [action], school integration, and other priorities of the civil rights movement,” Grim writes. He added:
I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, “We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race. I don’t buy that,” Biden told a Delaware weekly newspaper in 1975. “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather.I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation. And I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”
In the next paragraph, Grim cites Biden’s speech in 1973 to the City Club in Cleveland, where the then-newly elected senator opined about what he thought is “good for the Negro.”
“In 1973, during a speech at the City Club in Cleveland, Biden told an audience that the Nixon-era resurgence of Republicans in the South was a good thing,” Grim writes:
“I think the two-party system,” he said, “although my Democratic colleagues won’t like my saying this, is good for the South and good for the Negro, good for the black in the South. Other than the fact that [southern Senators] still call me boy, I think they’ve changed their mind a little bit.”
Here’s current Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, speaking in the 1970s about how “the two-party system is good for the South and good for the Negro.” Don’t @ me with “out of context,” cuz I’ve got 401 pages of context here: https://t.co/zq9LpYCyv0pic.twitter.com/0N1OmWZVkb
Biden’s campaign spokesman, TJ Ducklo, has not replied to a request for comment from Breitbart News when asked if Biden still believes, as he expressed per Grim’s book, is “good for the Negro” and has not answered when asked about others raising the point that former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had to resign for saying something similar.
Dave Johnson, a leftist activist who, according to his Twitter profile, supports Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and is a senior fellow at the left-wing group Campaign for America’s Future, notes that Lott had to resign for making similar comments to what was just unearthed in Grim’s book:
“The nub of the controversy was his comment that “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” if Mr Thurmond, who ran a campaign to keep blacks out of white schools and neighbourhoods, had won the presidency in 1948.” /2https://t.co/oAKgK3bR4m
“Joe will be able to perpetuate the image of Uncle Joe, and he is pleasant. He is qualified,” Lott said of Biden, asserting he is the only Democrat who stands a chance against President Donald Trump.
Ducklo, on Biden’s behalf, has not answered when asked if the former vice president has any thoughts on Lott’s favorable comments about him.
The unearthing in Grim’s book of Biden’s 1973 speech about what’s “good for the Negro” also comes in the wake of comments he made this week falsely attacking Breitbart News.
“Now the Breitbarts, the hard right and the rest of these folks out there, they’re legitimizing by their actions the kinds of things that are happening,” Biden said. “You saw what happened in the synagogue, anyway I won’t go into it all, but the bottom line is this: I think the worst thing that happened to the United States of America of late is this division, villianizing and talking down other people.”
Biden’s comments about Breitbart News are factually inaccurate. Breitbart News is a proudly pro-Jewish, pro-Israel website that fights, exposes, and condemns white supremacy and antisemitism. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), the 2000 Democrat vice presidential nominee, who also once was a Democrat presidential candidate, has spoken highly about Breitbart News.
“I know the positive pro-Israel record, pro-Semitic record — if you can call it that — certainly fair record of Breitbart when it comes to Israel and Jews, and I appreciate it, and I think the majority of people appreciate it as well,” Lieberman said in an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Daily.
But the revelation by Grim of Biden’s comments also come as President Trump, seeing Biden as his likely rival, given the former vice president’s position in the polls, has highlighted how Biden’s work in the U.S. Senate severely harmed the black community, something Trump’s criminal justice reform efforts aim to alleviate.
This week, Trump tweeted about the matter–calling out Biden in particular:
Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you. I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, & helped fix the bad 1994 Bill!
….Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing. That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No!
Biden’s complicated history with race has hurt his standing in the black community. For instance, in this MSNBC report, a black voter says that Biden “has a terrible history with the black community”:
In early May, too, Morning Consult questioned if Biden’s early support in the black community will hold up, given his spotty record on civil rights and race issues. New York magazine went even further in a March 2019 article, questioning if Biden’s backers in the black community will still vote for him when they remember what he actually did to them policy-wise.
Whether Biden can retain that support, after voters learn more about his problematic past, could very well determine the outcome of the party’s primary race. To explore that question, let’s pick through the former vice-president’s hefty baggage on racial justice — and then, the case for thinking that Obama’s halo will prove to be brighter than the shadow of Biden’s record is dark.
Democrats have been trying to clean up Biden’s racial problems for years and understand they linger even now, decades after his various actions as a U.S. senator and as vice president, with some Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members pitching that Biden select a black woman, like Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), or failed 2018 Georgia gubernatorial Democrat candidate, Stacey Abrams, as his running mate early.
“The Congressional Black Caucus may have found an answer to its Joe Biden dilemma: Vice President Kamala Harris,” Politico’s John Bresnahan and Heather Caygle wrote in early May:
Some black lawmakers are agonizing over whether to back Biden or two members of the close-knit caucus — Sens. Harris and Cory Booker — who also are vying for the White House, according to interviews with a dozen CBC members. But with the former vice president jumping out to a huge, if early, lead in the polls, several CBC membersare warming to the idea of a Biden-Harris ticket to take on President Donald Trump.
They quote Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) as describing Biden-Harris as a “dream ticket.”
“That would be a dream ticket for me, a dream ticket!” Lacy Clay said. “If she is not the nominee, that would be a dream ticket for this country.”
What’s more, regarding earlier reports that Biden was considering Abrams as a running mate, Politico quoted an anonymous lawmaker saying that backfired:
Biden faced criticism after earlier reports he was eyeing former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as an early running mate. Abrams says she’s still considering seeking the top slot herself.
Announcing who he’d like as his vice presidential pick would be “premature and likely would backfire,” according to one CBC member who requested anonymity.
“The vice president’s team seems to be very sensitive to the notion that they have to go out and earn this,” the lawmaker added.
However, even having a black leader from the Democrat side of the aisle on the ticket might not be enough to undo the damage in the black community that Biden’s history may have–especially with Trump on the rise there.
“I can give an unqualified ‘yes’ on the idea that the president will be more popular on Election Day with blacks in 2020 than he was in 2016,” Horace Cooper of the conservative Project 21 Black Leadership Network told the Washington Examiner.
During Thursday’s “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News Channel, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) responded to Rep. Justin Amash’s (R-MI) tweet in response to FBI special counsel Robert Mueller saying charging President Donald Trump with a crime is “not an option,” seemingly leaving it open to Congress to take action.
Paul questioned the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation, saying it was done for partisan reasons.
“As a libertarian Republican, I think the whole investigation sort of has an un-libertarian feel,” Paul said. “You have [an] intelligence community that has so much power that many libertarians, we’ve always said, ‘Gosh, this much power could be abused.’”
He continued, “When I look at it, I see an abuse of power from Comey, from Clapper, from Brennan, from all of these guys who I think took this … great power we entrusted with them to spy on foreigners and they directed it against Americans for partisan reasons.”
only to come up with nothing, obstruction was their fallback option to fuel impeachment talk among House Democrats and thereby obstruct the performance of the duties of the presidency by the elected incumbent, Donald John Trump. But now we can plainly see that they stacked the deck out of sheer animus to the president.
