Daily News Roundup

NOTABLE QUOTES

Byron York contributor to Townhall: Is there something missing from press coverage of the thousands of unaccompanied children who have illegally crossed the U.S. border from Mexico and are now in the custody of the Biden administration? Yes, there is something missing — pictures. Descriptions of the conditions in which the children are being held indicate a worsening situation.

Kurt Schlichter contributor to Townhall: You have to understand that you can’t obtain their forgiveness, though you shouldn’t want it in the first place. They already know you did nothing wrong. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Your life is a human sacrifice to Lib Moloch, the demon demigod of the left, and they wish to feast upon your soul. Saying “sorry” won’t save you. Keep your dignity and don’t try.

Richard Weaver author of the 1955 essay, “Propaganda:” It is of primary importance to distinguish propaganda from education. These two are confused in the minds of many people because both are concerned with communication. Education imparts information and also seeks to inculcate attitudes. Propaganda frequently contains information, and it is always interested in affecting attitudes. A good part of modern propaganda, furthermore, tries to parade as education. The critical difference appears only when one considers the object of each.

Annie Holmquist contributor to Intellectual Takeout: Teach your children to know and love truth. Your children will thank you, and so will your countrymen.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fl) : Florida’s civics curriculum will incorporate foundational concepts with the best materials, and it will expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like Critical Race Theory, and other unsubstantiated theories. There’s no room in our classrooms for things like Critical Race Theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.

Ann McElhinney co-producer of Gosnell describes her next project, My Son Hunter: The Family Comes First: This is an incredibly fascinating story. It’s Austin Powers meets King Lear with a dash of House of Cards.

PRESIDENT TRUMP

Frontpage Magazine: Prager Video: What the Left is Doing to the Western World is Evil
How Trump’s policies expose the true nature of the Left. In this new video, Dennis Prager joins the War Room with Steve Bannon to review the Left’s contempt for America, their lawless beliefs being pushed as “good” for Americans, and the demonizing of Trump for promoting rule of law and safety for Americans. Don’t miss it!
Read more/Watch the 13 minute interview at FrontPage Mag.

2020 ELECTION

Solomon: Months after Trump complaints, some courts are finding irregularities in 2020 elections
Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.
Read more at Just The News.

GOP

Pollak: Secret Republican Vote to Restore Earmarks Is a Betrayal of the Voters
The House Republican Conference vote on Wednesday to restore earmarks was a betrayal of the voters, and undermined one of the remaining legacies of the Tea Party. The vote was close, 102-84, but that is no consolation, especially as it was by secret ballot, preventing voters from holding their representatives accountable. If Republicans do not hold a revote, they can expect conservatives to stay home in 2022. They will have blown their chance to retake the House — and will deserve to lose. Earmarks are, or were, spending provisions that Senators and Representatives attach to bills that are likely to pass and be signed into law. The Congressional Research Service defines them as a benefit to “a specific entity or state, locality, or congressional district other than through a statutory or administrative formula or competitive award process.” They allow members of Congress to shower “pork” projects on their districts — or to reward favored donors and special interests.
Read more at Breitbart.

Gottfried: Fighting Woke Tyrants
The opposition has not fought back effectively. It has not been resourceful enough and has even failed to exercise those limited powers at its disposal to keep the enemy in check. […] The adversary is a lot stronger in our country and throughout the Western world than we might like to believe. It controls the media, education, churches, and state bureaucracies, for starters. The fact that woke bullies may not yet represent the views of most of our population does not mean that its control—as opposed to its bizarre ideology—should be a mystery. Willful minorities have dominated inert or docile majorities before. Early 20th-century political theorists Gaetano Mosca and Robert Michels devoted exhaustive studies to what became known as “the iron law of oligarchy.” They showed that even in parliamentary regimes (perhaps even particularly in such arrangements) well-organized minorities who understood how to take and wield power remained in command. American political analysts have built on these insights in a long succession of studies about “who rules.” […] I have no idea why so many Republican senators are running to confirm the very partisan leftist candidates whom Biden’s handlers have nominated to cabinet posts. Why have most Republican senators rushed to . . . […] Republican virtue-signalers who readily endorsed the last presidential race and attacked Donald Trump for contesting it are now complaining about Democratic efforts to . . .
Read more at American Greatness.

Ring: Conservative Victory Requires Overcoming Popular Fantasies
Tt will take more than a disastrous performance by Joe Biden for conservatives to win back control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2022, and retake the presidency in 2024. For conservatives to get their country back, they will have to build a coalition that brings together NeverTrumpers, libertarians, social conservatives, economic nationalists, millions of independents, and moderate Democrats. Defining an agenda that ought to appeal to all of these groups is actually the easier part. It just requires courage combined with tact. Reject, with Reaganesque grace rather than Trumpian bluster, all the nihilistic absurdities of left-wing Democrats. Reject them categorically. For example: . . . These pivotal issues involve a clear-eyed approach to the twin pillars of leftist thought: Fighting oppression and fighting climate change. They are both tools to cause further centralization of wealth and power, they are both massive exaggerations of facts, and both exploit primal emotions of envy, resentment, and fear. The challenge for conservatives is to unite to expose identity politics and extreme environmentalism as frauds, and replace them with common sense. This is a tough challenge. RINOs, opportunists, and well-meaning but thoroughly indoctrinated people of all ideologies will have to be painstakingly convinced. But it isn’t the biggest challenge conservatives face. That would be . . .
Read more at American Greatness.

SECOND AMENDMENT

Chan: The Meaning, History, & Purpose of the Second Amendment
“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The words that form the Second Amendment were chosen deliberately and purposefully. The founding fathers drew from Biblical principles, English and American history, and English common law to present an amendment protecting the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms. At its center lie two core principles upon which both the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence were founded: the law of self-government and the right of self-defense. The purpose of the Second Amendment was to promote peace, prosperity, and liberty, both by protecting one’s life and property from invaders and by lawfully resisting a tyrannical government. The Second Amendment is an appendage to the Constitution, which in turn relies on the Declaration of Independence for meaning and purpose. Both documents are only lawful to the extent to which they conform to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” as written in the Declaration. The Declaration articulates the law of self-government while the Constitution presents the application of self-government in various contexts, which includes the right to bear arms. Let us examine the text of the Second Amendment. A “well-regulated militia” is a . . . The unqualified phrase “shall not be infringed” is . . . The phrase “to keep and bear” points toward . . . The word “arms” in the Second Amendment is crucial and must be understood correctly. In 1775, . . . […] The historical foundations of the Second Amendment go further back in the past than events immediately prior to the drafting of the Bill of Rights. The legal recognition and protection of the individual’s right to bear arms in self-defense dates back to . . .
Read more at The Imaginative Conservative.

Roach: What’s Wrong With Background Checks?
There is also little reason to think this law would do anything more than create a trap for the unwary and an opportunity for entrapment. Most gun owners are scrupulously law-abiding, not least because they do not want to be put on the list of prohibited possessors. Even so, many otherwise law-abiding gun owners are likely not to comply with universal background checks for a variety of reasons: because of its offensiveness to the Second Amendment, because their lack of familiarity with this change to the law, or because of the obvious pointlessness of finding and paying an FFL to transfer a gun from one lawful owner to another. Like most gun control laws, reducing crime appears to be a secondary goal. […] A new gun control is another way for the ruling class to declare their virtue and their separation from the Neanderthals out in flyover country. Polling data shows that the Democrats are chiefly animated by raging hatred and inordinate fear of conservatives rather than traditional policy concerns. This is why so many of their current obsessions are performative and emotional, such as the overreaction to the January 6 protests. […] Universal background checks may seem logical and harmless, in light of existing background checks for federal firearms license purchases. They’re not. The freedom of gun owners . . .
Read more at American Greatness.

Gutowski: Colorado Judge Strikes Down Boulder’s AR-15 Ban
Colorado state judge Andrew Hartman ruled the city’s gun ban violated the state’s preemption law, which prevents localities from imposing gun regulations above and beyond state law. Judge Hartman’s ruling declares the ordinance invalid and immediately bars the city from enforcing the ban. “The Court has determined that only Colorado state (or federal) law can prohibit the possession, sale, and transfer of assault weapons and large capacity magazines,” Hartman wrote in the ruling.
Read more at Free Beacon.

CHINA:AMERICA’S MORTAL ENEMY

Koczela: Taming the Chinese Rare-Earth Tiger
Much is made of China’s dominance in the rare earth elements (REE). Currently, China controls over 90% of the refined or processed market for REEs. Most advanced technologies, including weapon systems, depend on REEs, and adequate substitutes do not exist. On the surface, China’s monopolistic control over refined REEs induces a severe case of the vapors among U.S. national security analysts. But how extensive and stable is China’s control of the REE market? If China’s market control is neither extensive nor stable, perhaps doing nothing or policies that target China’s Achilles heel would be the U.S.’s best course of action. A close look at the data seems necessary before any U.S. response is undertaken. Synonyms for REE include rare-earth metals (REM), rare-earth oxides (REO), and lanthanides. […] As seen in the graph, China’s production share rose sharply through the 1990s and reached a peak of 97.5% in 2005. From there, China’s share suffered a steady decline that dramatically deepened in 2017, until China accounted for 58.3% of global REE ores in 2020. The accelerated decline is largely due to the Trump administration’s push to increase U.S. REE mining, which grew from nothing to the world’s second largest producer, and the rapid growth in REE ores from Myanmar, which increased from nothing in 2017 to the world’s third largest producer. With the discovery of new deposits and mines reopening outside China, such as Burundi’s Gakara Rare Earth Project and South Africa’s Steenkampskraal mine, the outlook is poor for China to regain its overwhelming dominance in REE mining. In this regard, China is beginning to look like a paper tiger, suggesting that the best U.S. response would ensure the operation of normal market forces. However, mining is only half the story.
Read more at American Thinker.

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA REGIME: TRANSFORMING AMERICA

VDH: Who Is Our Military’s Enemy?
Leftist administrations see the military foremost as a tool for accelerating their own progressive domestic changes. The U.S. military has now turned its wrath inward on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The new secretary of defense relayed his “revulsion” for Carlson’s questioning the role of women in combat—a position that had been the military’s centuries-long orthodoxy until about seven years ago. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby even compared Carlson to the Communist Chinese military: “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military.” The now-cocky Department of Defense website further boasted, “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host.” So what was the biblically “smitten” Carlson’s crime? He objected to the military’s fixation on race and gender in high-profile appointments—and questioned whether standards were relaxed to permit women in combat units.
Carlson objected that the Capitol is currently domestically militarized. More troops are on guard against purported American “insurrectionists” than are currently serving in war zones in Afghanistan.
Read more at American Greatness.

Greenfield: There is No Biden Administration
Only an imminent 25th Amendment crisis and soldiers in the streets. […] Biden’s face is everywhere, but there’s no real sign that he’s actually running anything. Instead the Biden administration seems to be exactly the kind of mess that the 25th Amendment was designed to prevent in which a non-functional president is the figurehead for the cabinet members and the special interests who are actually calling all the shots. […] The big policy momentum though isn’t coming from the Biden administration, but from Pelosi. The Obama administration called the shots, not Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. The Biden administration is filled with Obama’s old people, but there’s no leader in the White House to push forward an agenda. That’s why the most powerful elected official in the country isn’t Joe Biden or Kamala Harris: Nancy Pelosi has become the closest thing to POTUS.
Read more at FrontPage Mag.

Fox News; Arizona sheriff: Border crisis is worse than the Obama years
Watch the 4 minute interview.

Citizen Free Press: HERE’S THE PROOF — Biden absolutely, positively told illegal migrants to ‘surge to the border’
Watch the 2 minute video at Citizen Free Press.

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S WAR ON AMERICA’S CHILDREN

Holmquist: How to Tell the Difference Between Real Education and Propaganda
The other day I ran across a passage from That Hideous Strength which seems oddly applicable to our time. A dystopian novel written by C. S. Lewis at the close of World War II, That Hideous Strength finds one of its main characters, Mark Studdock, working for N.I.C.E., an organization which pulls the strings in a controlling, totalitarian society. Studdock is assigned to write propaganda articles for N.I.C.E., an assignment which he objects to when he receives it from his boss, Miss Hardcastle. Studdock argues that it won’t work because newspapers “are read by educated people” too smart to be taken in by propaganda. The story continues: . . . Reading this, I couldn’t help but ponder how much of the American public thinks like Studdock. We are convinced that education is the panacea for all ills, and that if the masses could simply achieve one more grade level or degree, we wouldn’t have so many problems to sort through.
But what if that education is, as Miss Hardcastle implies in the passage above, the very thing blinding the eyes of the general public? Or perhaps we should say, what we call education.
Read more at Intellectual Takeout.

Rufo: Subversive Education
Last year, the Wake County Public School System, which serves the greater Raleigh, North Carolina area, held an equity-themed teachers’ conference with sessions on “whiteness,” “microaggressions,” “racial mapping,” and “disrupting texts,” encouraging educators to form “equity teams” in schools and push the new party line: “antiracism.” The February 2020 conference, attended by more than 200 North Carolina public school teachers, began with a “land acknowledgement,” a ritual recognition suggesting that white North Carolinians are colonizers on stolen Native American land. Next, the superintendent of Wake County Public Schools, Cathy Moore, introduced the day’s program . . . Freelance reporter A.P. Dillon obtained the documents from the sessions through a public records request and provided them to City Journal. At the first session “Whiteness in Ed Spaces,” school administrators provided two handouts on the “norms of whiteness.” These documents claimed that “(white) cultural values” include “denial,” “fear,” “blame,” “control,” “punishment,” “scarcity,” and “one-dimensional thinking.” According to notes from the session, the teachers argued that “whiteness perpetuates the system” of injustice and that the district’s “whitewashed curriculum” was “doing real harm to our students and educators.” The group encouraged white teachers to “challenge the dominant ideology” of whiteness and “disrupt” white culture in the classroom through a series of “transformational interventions.” Parents, according to the teachers, should be considered an impediment to social justice. When one teacher asked, “How do you deal with parent pushback?” the answer was clear: . . .
Read more at City-Journal.

VACCINES

Merino: How do mRNA vaccines work – and why do you need a second dose? 5 essential reads
MRNA vaccines are proving to be more effective than anyone had hoped, but as with any new medical advancement, people have a lot of questions. How do they work? Are they safe? Do I really need two shots? Why do they need to be kept so cold? And will this be the vaccine technology of the future? Below, we highlight five articles from The Conversation that will help answer your questions about mRNA vaccines. 1. A vaccine revolution “DNA and mRNA vaccines offer huge advantages over traditional types of vaccines, since they use only genetic code from a pathogen – rather than the entire virus or bacteria,” writes Deborah Fuller, a microbiologist at the University of Washington who has been working on gene-based vaccines for decades. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are proof that mRNA vaccines are ready for prime time – and far surpass their predecessors. “The hopes that gene-based vaccines could one day provide a vaccine for malaria or HIV, cure cancer, replace less effective traditional vaccines or be ready to stop the next pandemic before it gets started are no longer far-fetched,” explains Fuller. 2. How does an mRNA vaccine work?
Read more at The Conversation.

GROW A SPINE: STOP BENDING YOUR KNEE

Schlichter: How Many Times Must We Tell You to Never Apologize to These Scumbags?
That Mumford & Sons banjo guy is a pathetic weenie who the left hates and who we despise, and who now has to live forever as a groveling coward nobody likes. Yeah, he was in Mumford & Sons and managed to find a way to make people like him less. What did he do? He gave in. He submitted. He begged for forgiveness instead of telling the fussy rage mobs to kiss his smilin’ Schumer. Really people, this is getting exhausting. How many times do we have to say it? How many people have to plead for forgiveness and end up humiliated, broken, and – not incidentally – unforgiven before people understand that the only effective response to these monsters’ fake outrage is to flip them the middle 20 percent of the fingers of a Bulwark staffer’s primary erotic partner? Never never never give them an inch. It always ends badly. […] Never submit. Never explain. Never apologize. Charge into the ambush.
Read more at Townhall.