Category: Culture

GOP Rep Demands State Department Rescue Chinese and American Christians Detained in Thailand

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A Republican congressman is calling on the State Department to intervene on behalf of Chinese and American Christians detained by Thai police currently facing imprisonment in China, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Thai police arrested 63 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, also known as the Mayflower Church, for overstaying their visas during an early morning raid in Pattaya, Thailand, on Thursday. They are now preparing to deport the Chinese congregants, along with two women from Texas who’d been visiting church members, back to China, where they face imprisonment and likely torture, ChinaAid, a Christian human rights group, told the DCNF.

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MNPS and Left-Wing New York-Based Group Politicize Nashville Shootings, Hold Separate Anti-Gun Rallies of High School Students on Monday at State Capitol and Local Schools

Michael Patrick Leahy

Metro Nashville Public Schools and March For Our Lives (MFOL), the anti-gun, New York City-based political action advocacy organization, are politicizing the March 27 Covenant Presbyterian School shootings by encouraging Nashville and Middle Tennessee high school students to participate in two separate anti-gun rallies on Monday.

As The Tennessee Star reported on March 27, three children and three adults were killed by 28-year-old former student Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as transgender, when she forced her way into the school.

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Commentary: Red Flag Laws Are Not Designed for Anything But Gun Control

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Following practically every mass public shooting, the gun control advocates call for “reasonable” responses to “gun violence”. One of the present favorite alleged solutions of the those who seek to ban guns in society is the incrementalism that includes the opportunity to leverage a tragedy by calling for “Red Flag” laws.

A “Red Flag” law is nothing more than a gun confiscation order. That is its failure as a solution to violence. But, that is the very reason why gun abolitionists proffer it at every opportunity.

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Michigan State University Releases Diversity Report Promoting Anti-Semites and Communists

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Michigan State University released its 2022-2023 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion report in late March, intended, they say, to update stakeholders on the implementation of more than 200 DEI “action items” previously laid out by the university.

Among the 270 DEI items the university hopes to implement was an initiative to require all undergraduate academic programs to “report on improvements made to its curricula to infuse DEI components” into coursework. Additionally, MSU is moving to “[include] DEI in the reappointment, promotion and tenure process.”

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Winsome Sears Confronts Bill Maher Over School Drag Queens, Transitions

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Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears told HBO host Bill Maher to “read more” about drag queens in schools and childhood gender transitions on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night.

“Nobody’s talking about the opposite side of the equation, because we’re not finding that these children want to detransition and they can’t, they’re adults now,” Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears said. “And unfortunately, the breasts were cut off, their parts were cut off.”

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Professor Suggests University of South Florida Students Support Leftist Students Charged with Assault, Battery in Department-Wide Email

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In an email obtained by Campus Reform in early March, a professor at the University of South Florida (USF) suggested ways for her students to show support for students arrested during a protest organized by the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

The protest was held in response to Governor DeSantis’ efforts to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory initiatives at public universities in Florida. The four individuals arrested during the protest were each charged with either “assault or battery of law enforcement,” student newspaper The Oracle reported.

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Commentary: Asian Voters Have Democrats Worried after Midterm Shift Toward Republicans

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The marked shifts of Black and Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party is something Americans for Limited Government Foundation (ALGF) has covered in depth, but new data shows Asian Americans are also abandoning the left.

The New York Times recently published analysis of voter turnout in the 2022 gubernatorial election in New York and showed New York City neighborhoods with a heavy Asian population shifted toward the GOP by 23 points compared to 2018. The Times analysis showed, it was the “largest electoral shift in Asian neighborhoods in the period from 2006 to 2022.” 

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Columbus School District Bought Controversial Gender Books for its Libraries

The Center Square

The Columbus Public School District purchased many controversial books on gender in 2022, including “Gender Queer,” a novel at the center of a national debate on what is being presented in public school libraries to children.

The Center Square submitted a public records request for the books the district purchased in 2022, and the list included: “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Beyond The Gender Binary,” “Gender Queer,” “New Queer Conscience”, “My Rainbow,” “Sparkle Boy” and “They, She, He, Easy As ABC.”

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Commentary: The Bitter Fruit of Madness that has Poisoned a Generation

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After the horrific massacre in Nashville, the Democratic Party is hellbent on feeding the malignant narcissism of the “trans community,” in which they see a reliable, perpetually aggrieved voter base and a tool with which to terrorize society.

This isn’t “Christian nationalism.” Virtually every institution is sending a message that murderous violence toward Christians is acceptable, or at least less bad than exposing the “trans community” to obloquy. Law enforcement is obstructing the release of the manifesto. Merrick Garland won’t call it a hate crime, and neither will Joe Biden, who apparently thinks this is all a big joke.

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Holy Week Starts Off with Lots of Palms – but Palm Sunday’s Donkey Is Just as Important to the Story

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For the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations, the Sunday before Easter marks the beginning of the most important week of the year – “Holy Week,” when Christians reflect on central mysteries of their faith: Christ’s Last Supper, crucifixion and resurrection from the dead.

Palm Sunday commemorates the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish holiday of Passover. According to the Christian Gospels, people lined the streets to greet him, waving palm branches and shouting words of praise.

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Commentary: New Study Shows American Religious Divides

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America is a diverse country. In most cities, you can find people from nearly every ethnic or racial background imaginable. This is becoming the case in rural areas as well. But America is host to a considerable amount of religious diversity as well. And while race relations are often the subject of considerable discussion, understanding interreligious relations is a necessary part of understanding the country as a whole.

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White House to Host ‘Roundtable on Affirming Transgender Kids’

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The White House will host a “Roundtable on Affirming Transgender Kids” Friday as part of its observance of “Transgender Day of Visibility,” according to a fact sheet. The roundtable is part of a push from the administration to support transgenderism, including childhood medical transitions, in the wake of numerous red states restricting the procedures. The discussion will focus on the experiences of children who identify as transgender and their parents in states that have restricted child sex changes, according to the White House.

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Psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald: ‘Transgenderism Is a Mental Illness,’ Murders at Nashville School ‘Should Surprise No One’

Susan Berry, PhD

Dr. Mark McDonald wrote that the deaths this week at a Nashville Christian school at the hands of a transgender former student are a “logical end point of transgenderism,” since “the response to it reveals an embrace of the denial of reality and inversion of morality that can produce only more of the same atrocities.”

“Transgenderism is a mental illness,” the Los Angeles-based psychiatrist observed at his Dissident MD Substack column Thursday.

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LGBTQ Activists Cancel ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’ Blame Reaction to Nashville Shooting by Transgender as Causing a ‘Credible Threat to Life and Safety’

Susan Berry, PhD

The transgender activist coalition that was planning its “Trans Day of Vengeance” rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Saturday has canceled its event in the wake of the reaction to the killing of three children and three adults at a Christian school Monday by a transgender shooter.

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Atheists Sic IRS on Wisconsin Priest for Warning His Flock Not to Vote for Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Candidate

M.D. Kittle

Pastor Brian Dulli sent a clear message to the congregants of his suburban Madison St. Patrick’s Catholic Church: Voting for a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate who stands for the killing of the unborn is perilous to your faith and soul. 

Now, a leftwing group is threatening to get President Joe Biden’s IRS involved and go after the Diocese of Madison for “electioneering.” 

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Minister Rips Biden Administration for Refusal to Condemn Nashville Shooting as ‘Hate Crime’ Against Christians

Susan Berry, PhD

A Presbyterian minister condemned the Biden administration’s refusal to denounce the Nashville school shooting as a “religious hate crime against Christians.”

Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition, said in a statement Thursday that President Joe Biden and his administration’s failure to declare the shooting at the Covenant Christian school a hate crime against Christians “is deeply troubling and concerning.”

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Connecticut Archdiocese of Hartford Investigates Possible Eucharistic Miracle

Susan Berry, PhD

The Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, issued a statement Tuesday about its ongoing investigation into a possible Eucharistic miracle that was reported at St. Thomas Church in Thomaston earlier in March.

Rev. Joseph Crowley, pastor of St. Thomas, announced on March 5 after the distribution of Holy Communion that a lay eucharistic minister had witnessed a possible miracle when the vessel holding the hosts showed more hosts had appeared.

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Commentary: The Post-Normal World After COVID

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Like most polls, Gallup polls are usually paid advertisements for whomever commissions them and therefore deserving of as little attention. However, the indefatigable Sharyl Attkisson recently reported on the results of one such survey and that did draw my attention. Evidently, 47 percent of Americans say life will never go back to pre-pandemic normal. I was somewhat stunned! How could 53 percent be thinking we could go back? 

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Kirk Cameron Welcomes Critics at His Library Events as ‘Opportunity’ to Change Their Mind

Just the News

Actor and author Kirk Cameron told Just the News that he welcomes his critics at the library events he’s holding for his national book tour as an “opportunity” to potentially change their mind.

“I hope that they all come to the events,” Cameron said following his “Brave Story Hour” book tour event at the Cleveland Park Library in Washington D.C. on Wednesday. “I will give you the red carpet treatment because we’re here not to cancel people, we’re here to love people. I don’t see people who oppose love, joy, peace, patience and kindness as enemies so much as an opportunity to maybe hear something that could change your mind.

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Los Angeles, Cook Counties Post Biggest Population Losses in U.S. in 2022

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The number of people who used to live in Los Angeles County and Cook County in Illinois continues to plummet.

Los Angeles County posted the largest population decline of all counties in the United States in 2022, falling by 90,704 and continuing a downward trend. It lost nearly twice that amount (180,394) in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 estimates released Thursday.

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Americans Continue to Flee Crime-Ridden Blue Cities for the Burbs and Red States, New Census Data Shows

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Americans once again fled large cities for suburbs and Republican-led states in massive numbers from June 2021 to June 2022, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of U.S. Census data.

More than 800,000 people in total left the country’s large metropolitan areas, compared to 1.2 million the year before, in an ongoing trend sparked by the pandemic, according to the WSJ. Ten of the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas saw population loss, and most of the top cities that saw population gains were located in red states.

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AG Merrick Garland Refuses to Investigate Nashville Shooting as Hate Crime

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On Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to commit to using federal resources to investigate Monday’s shooting in Nashville as a hate crime, despite the perpetrator’s clear motivations against the Christian victims.

The Daily Caller reports that the Nashville Police Department discovered “writings” in Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s home after the shooting, which suggested a “calculated and planned” attack. Addressing these reports, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) noted during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that the 28-year-old Hale “could have had collaborators.”

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State Troopers Foil Riot of Left-Wing Mob at Tennessee Capitol

Peter D'Abrosca

A riot at the Tennessee State Capitol was stopped by state troopers Thursday as State Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) and at least two other far-left Democrat state representatives encouraged a crowd of more than a thousand protesters to breach the Tennessee House of Representatives chamber floor during a gun control demonstration.

Tennessee State Troopers foiled the breach, as protesters attempted to enter the chamber from the gallery above and the ground floor.

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Biden’s World Bank Pick Calls for ‘Trillions’ in Climate Spending

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Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard that President Joe Biden has nominated to head the World Bank, told Axios Wednesday that both the bank and the private sector needed to spend “trillions” to combat both climate change and poverty.

Banga has been aggressively campaigning for the job, meeting with officials from 37 different governments in the past three weeks, Axios reported. The World Bank faces competing pressure from wealthy and developing countries over whether to focus on combatting climate change or poverty mitigation, but Banga said he does not view the two goals as inherently opposed to one another.

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Governor Bill Lee Reveals Two Adults Killed in The Covenant School Shooting Were Longtime Friends of First Lady Maria Lee

Kaitlin Housler

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee addressed the state on Tuesday in a video posted to social media just one day after six victims, including three children, were gunned down by 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale at The Covenant School in Nashville.

The governor revealed that two of the victims – Cynthia Peak, age 61, and Katherine Koonce, age 60 – were longtime family friends of First Lady Maria Lee.

In a video posted to social media Tuesday evening, Bill Lee said, “All of Tennessee was hurt yesterday, but some parents woke up without children. Children woke up without parents, without teachers. And spouses woke up without their loved ones.”

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Katie Hobbs’ Press Secretary Resigns After Tweet Threatening Violence Against Those Critical of Promoting Transgenderism

Rachel Alexander

Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs’ press secretary Josselyn Berry resigned Tuesday evening after outrage over a now-deleted tweet threatening to use violence against those who disagree with promoting transgenderism. Coming less than 12 hours after a transgender fatally shot students and staff at a Christian elementary school she used to attend in Tennessee, the Arizona Freedom Caucus led the call for her to resign.

Berry, who has a history of partisan offensive tweets, tweeted, “Us when we see transphobes,” captioning a photo of a woman with a determined look pointing two guns. The photo is from the movie “Gloria,” featuring the late actress Gena Rowlands. In the 1980 movie, the character Gloria shoots and kills gangsters. 

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Commentary: In the Mind of the Fervent Left, ‘Aiden’ Hale Was Driven by … Pronouns

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Audrey Hale attended the Covenant School in Nashville as a child before returning Monday morning as Aiden Hale to murder three 9-year-olds, the principal, a substitute teacher, and a custodian.

In some dark but loud corners of the internet, it’s not about the children, the teachers, or the janitor. It’s about them — they/thems to be precise. More significantly, this multiple-victim public shooting, like all multiple-victim public shootings, becomes about blaming them. Who are they? Not us, not our side, not our tribe.

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Hospitals See 25 Percent Increase in Youth Admissions for Attempted Suicide, Self-Harm: Report

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The number of children admitted to hospitals for suicidal behavior has soared, according to a new report by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

An analysis of over 4 million hospitalizations found that pediatric stays for mental health issues increased by more than 25 percent from 2009 to 2019 for children aged 3 to 17, according to the analysis. Hospitalizations for self-harm and suicide saw a 30 percentage point increase, from 31 percent in 2009 to 64 percent in 2019.

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Parental Rights in Education Bill Becomes Law After Dem Governor Declines to Veto

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Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear let a bill that allows parents to challenge sexually explicit school materials become law without his signature on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Josh Calloway, lets parents file complaints over school materials that depict sexual acts “in an obscene manner” or are “patently offensive to prevailing standards.” The legislation passed the state Senate in February and then the state House on March 15 before Beshear allowed the bill to become law.

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Catholic League: Nashville Shooting Should Be Investigated as a ‘Hate Crime Against Christians’

Susan Berry, PhD

The president of the Catholic League said Tuesday that the Nashville school shooting “needs to be investigated as a hate crime against Christians” based on the report by the police chief that the transgender shooter held “some resentment for having to go to that school.”

“The shooter, Audrey Hale, is a female who misidentified herself as a male,” wrote Bill Donohue, who heads the Catholic civil rights organization. “Her resentment against The Covenant School, a Christian school, is important given that Christianity teaches we are either male or female.”

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Metro Nashville Police Confirm: School Shooter Was Audrey Elizabeth Hale, Who ‘Identified as Transgender’

Peter D'Abrosca

The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Monday evening confirmed that the person who shot and killed six people on Monday morning at The Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville is 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who “identified as transgender.” Hale was killed on scene by police that morning.

“Our investigations tell us she was a former student, at the school,” said MNPD Chief John Drake in a press conference, adding that he did not know how long Hale attended the school.

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TikTok Not the Only China-Controlled App Thriving in America: Report

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The top four downloaded applications in the past 30 days in the U.S. Apple App Store and Google Play Store are owned by Chinese-tied companies, according to data from Apptopia analyzed by Axios.

While these Chinese-tied apps are thriving in the U.S., American apps are typically not permitted to operate in China due to the country’s strict censorship, according to Axios. China has over one billion internet users according to Statista, so the U.S. is missing out on a massive market while China has exclusive access to it.

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Six Army Bases to be Renamed from Original Confederate Names

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The dates have been revealed for when six United States Army bases will officially have their names changed due to a far-left campaign to rename any installations bearing Confederate names.

According to Axios, the six bases in question are: Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Pickett, Virginia; Fort Rucker, Alabama; Fort Lee, Virginia; Fort Benning, Georgia; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The name changes come after Joe Biden created a federal Naming Commission, for the sole purpose of changing names of federal facilities, monuments, parks, and other territories that were originally named for Confederate figures; the campaign has been widely criticized as an effort to erase American history in the name of political correctness and “woke” racial justice politics.

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Activist Hijacks School Shooting Press Conference, Demands Gun Control

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An unidentified activist took to microphones shortly after a Monday briefing by Nashville authorities to rant about gun control, asking the media if they were tired of covering shootings.

“Aren’t you guys tired of covering this? Aren’t you tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings?” the activist asked members of the press. “I’m from Highland Park… on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July.”

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Minnesota House Passes ‘Trans Refuge Bill’ That Would Reform Child Custody Laws

Just the News

The Minnesota House passed legislation, dubbed a “Trans Refuge bill” by proponents, that would prevent laws in other states from interfering with the medical gender transition of children in Minnesota, but critics argue the bill could cause parents to lose custody if they do not support their child’s life-altering sex change.

Minnesota’s first transgender lawmaker, Rep. Leigh Finke of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, introduced the bill, HF 146, which passed the House in a 68-62 vote Friday.

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Commentary: The Language of Politics and the Politics of Language

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On his blog A Pilgrim in Narnia, Brenton Dickieson tells us that C.S. Lewis in his Studies in Words defined “verbicide” as the “murder of words.” Dickieson adds that “Lewis has some similar concerns as George Orwell in his ‘Politics and the English Language.’ Words can be politicized or bent into the service of those who are peddling products or ideas.”

The 21st century has given us a multitude of these vampires, who—having sucked the original meanings out of certain nouns and verbs—then use the carcasses to sell certain ideologies or to confuse the rest of us. Here is a partial list of these zombie words.

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REVIEW: New Book ‘Rise to Greatness’ Explores How a Kid from Queens Became One of History’s Most Influential Supreme Court Justices

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Antonin Scalia was a budding textualist long before he transformed the Supreme Court, and the nation, with his unique legal approach, a new biography of his early life reveals.

In the 1950s, the future Supreme Court Justice spent his mornings on the New York subway, commuting with his rifle to Xavier High School, a hybrid Jesuit-run Catholic school and military academy in Manhattan. His teacher’s response one day to a student’s sarcastic comment about “Hamlet” became a moment Scalia would never forget — and would refer to for the rest of his life as the Shakespeare Principle: “Mistah, when you read Shakespeah, Shakespeah’s not on trial; you ah,” Father Thomas Matthews said.

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Disney World Florida to Host World’s Largest LGBT+ Conference

Just the News

Walt Disney World in Florida will host an LGBT+ conference this fall that organizers are calling the world’s largest  – as the resort and state GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis continue to spar over sexual-orientation and gender-identity issues.

Out & Equal, an activist group that promotes equality for LGBT+ people in the workplace, is hosting its 2023 Workplace Summit for three days in September, according to the organization’s website. The group says the summit “is the largest LGBTQ+ conference in the world, with more than 5,000 attendees every year.”

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Thousands of Pro-Life Activists Reject More Abortions in Connecticut

Susan Berry, PhD

Pro-life Connecticut activists gathered Wednesday in Hartford at the Capitol building for the second annual March for Life to celebrate life from conception to natural death and to demonstrate against more abortions that could come if two proposals are approved.

Despite the fact that Connecticut already has extremely liberal abortion laws, House Joint Resolution No. 8, introduced by State Rep. Keith Denning (D-Wilton), is a proposal for a constitutional amendment to protect the right to an abortion. The resolution would enshrine abortion in the state Constitution.

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Connecticut Black Democrat Keynotes March for Life, Celebrates ‘Many Black Pro-Life Women Across the World’

Susan Berry, PhD

Thousands of Connecticut residents attended the second annual March for Life Wednesday where they heard state Rep. Treneé McGee (D-West Haven) assert she is not an “anomaly,” since “one in three Democrats are pro-life and there are many black pro-life women across the world.”

McGee, who also addressed the tens of thousands of pro-life activists at the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. in January, urged her fellow Connecticut residents at the state Capitol in Hartford to help “create a culture of life.”

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Commentary: The Origin of American Exceptionalism

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Today, saying that America is exceptional has become a controversial statement. With the claim that America is a deeply racist and terrible country, American exceptionalism is lambasted as a myth.

But few today know the origins of American exceptionalism and its place as the main storyline of U.S. nationalism. And yet, it’s only by examining the history of this idea that we can have an informed opinion on the issue. So, what is the history of American exceptionalism?

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California School District Hires CRT Critic Consultant to Teach Staff, Parents, and Students

Susan Berry, PhD

The governing board of the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) in California has voted, 3-2, to approve a consulting contract with an anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) attorney who will educate teachers, parents, and students about the ideology and the “myth” of systemic racism.

The board approved a consulting agreement with Attorney Christopher Arend, 71, of Paso Robles.

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