Daily Headlines | Wednesday October 27, 2021

Good Morning! 

The late English writer James Laver once suggested, “Nothing is more revealing of an age than its hypocrisies.” 

In our first story this morning, we begin with another astute observation: Why is it that so many who want to dictate what your children are taught in public school send their own children to private institutions? 

Leftists Have Long Said Parents Have No Say Regarding Their Children’s Public School Education 

From the American Conservative: 

Parents, fed up with their children’s use as pawns in the schemes of political actors with no real skin in the game, have started pushing back. Those parents’ pushback, at times, has gotten rowdy, commensurate with the enormity of the radicals’ senseless treatment of the children entrusted to their care. To get them back in line, local police and the federal leviathan are being mobilized to impose the will of national elites against the interests and over the objections of people on the ground. 

It’s 1975 again. 

History repeats itself in interesting ways. The most prominent critics of the busing regime—most notably Hicks and the (later legendary) state legislator William Bulger—were city-dwellers with children enrolled in Boston public schools. Those pushing forced busing, meanwhile—Garrity, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, outgoing Governor Frank Sargent, former state legislator and incoming Governor Michael Dukakis—hailed from suburbs that were disproportionately white, disproportionately wealthy, and almost entirely insulated from the repercussions of their own radical policies. McAuliffe, himself a keen supporter of educational progressivism, likewise made sure his own kids were safe from the consequences, sending all four to expensive private schools. 

I’m certainly no opponent of private schooling, but skin in the game matters. It’s worth asking why the champions of these radical reforms never seem willing to subject their own children to them. But they’re perfectly happy to test things out on your children. In 2021 as in 1975, American children of all races are needlessly disadvantaged by the interventions of the Ted Kennedys and Terry McAuliffes of the world. 

The difference is that 50 years ago you could just move out of the city, if you were willing to uproot yourself and your family. Now the new generation of limousine liberals are taking the fight from the cities to the suburbs, and anywhere else they have to. The further we retreat, the further they’ll advance. Eventually we’ll find ourselves with nowhere left to run. 

 2.   ‘Gender Fluid’ Teen Found Guilty of Sexual Assault in Loudoun County High School Restroom 

From The Daily Citizen: 

A “gender fluid” teen boy, who was accused of sexual assault in a girls restroom at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, was found guilty on all charges, reported ABC-7 news, which covers the Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia area. 

The news outlet said the judge “determined that there were facts sufficient that the defendant committed a forcible assault.” The incident occurred on May 28 at Stone Bridge High School.  

The perpetrator was also charged in a second incident of sexual assault after Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) transferred him to a different school, Broad Run High School. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) arrested the teen and said, “The investigation determined on the afternoon of October 6, the 15-year-old suspect forced the victim into an empty classroom where he held her against her will and inappropriately touched her.” 

3.  38-year-old mother poses as teenage girl online to catch pedophiles 

From the Washington Examiner: 

A 38-year-old Connecticut mother is posing online as a 15-year-old to expose pedophiles. 

Floris enters online chatrooms under her youthful guise, where she is promptly contacted by several older men who appear to have a sexual interest. The messages she receives from these men “range from the disgusting to the disgraceful to the outright abominable.” 

While going on FaceTime and Snapchat to communicate with the men, Powell uses several lighting and makeup tricks to appear some 20 years younger, even setting up a fake bedroom set in her home that appears to belong to a teenage girl. 

She works with several assistants, including Norwalk Police Department Detective Mark Suda, who pretends to be Powell’s uber driver when she meets in person with the online contacts. Once she has gathered enough evidence about a predator , she hands it over to the police.

4.   Kissing Disease in Teens May Lead to Multiple Sclerosis Later in Life 

From Fox News: 

Infectious mononucleosis – also known as “mono” or “the kissing disease” – in childhood or adolescence is associated with an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) as an adult, according to a new study. 

In order to reach these conclusions, researchers from Sweden and the United Kingdom used data from nearly 2.5 million Swedish people. 

The authors adjusted for sex, parental MS diagnosis, birth order and parental age at birth, and the group said second-degree fractional polynomials suggested that parental age at birth was linearly associated with risk of an MS diagnosis.  

5.   DC Police Officers the Latest to Reveal They Were Ordered to Abort Their Babies 

From CBN: 

This past week, two Washington, D.C. police officers—Assistant Police Chief Chanel Dickerson and 24-year veteran Karen Arikpo—revealed that early on in their careers they had been told to have an abortion or they would lose their jobs. Fearing for their careers, both women aborted their unborn babies. 

They expressed the pain caused by the police department’s past actions. Officer Arikpo lamented, “It’s so unfair…. And now I’ve never been able to have a kid. All these years, I’ve tried, and I’ve never been able to have a baby…. I did this for a job….” Assistant Police Chief Chanel Dickerson shared, “My choice to have a baby was personal, and it should’ve been mine alone and not for an employer ultimatum.”  Like Arikpo, Dickerson has never had other children. 

This shocking news—a city-sponsored police department issuing an ultimatum to two black women—abort your unborn child or see your career come to an end—has received little to no media attention. Perhaps because coerced abortion is a far from an abnormal occurrence for women in America. 

Twelve States Suing Administration to Keep Taxpayer Funds from Paying for Abortions 

From The Daily Citizen: 

Twelve state attorneys general, led by Ohio Attorney General (AG) Dave Yost, have filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The AGs are challenging the agency’s recent reversal of its 2019 “Protect Life Rule,” the net effect of which would be to allow taxpayer funds to pay for abortions, contrary to the federal law known as Title X. 

Under Title X, approximately $250 million per year is handed out to clinics that provide “family planning services” such as birth control and basic health care to low-income women. However, Section 1008 of Title X specifically requires that “none of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” 

The HHS’ 2019 Protect Life Rule finalized requirements that ensured clear physical and financial separation between a Title X program  and any activities that fall outside the program’s scope. That physical and financial separation was intended to ensure compliance with the law’s requirement that Title X funding not support programs where abortion is a method of family planning. 

The 2019 rule also prevented family planning providers from referring patients for abortions. 

How Evangelicals Are Transforming American Prisons 

From Public Discourse: 

Evangelicals do not monopolize prison ministry, but they certainly dominate it. As The Atlantic reported in 2015, “Even though Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination in the United States, Catholic prison chaplains and volunteers are far outnumbered by their Protestant brethren.“ That’s largely because evangelicals simply have the most determined ministry for prisons. As a University of Scranton professor of criminal justice professor put it, “They’re the ones who have the most intense faith and the most intense belief that you have to go into prisons and help people.” 

Yet evangelicals are curiously often denied credit for their extensive, quite progressive, and hugely successful efforts in America’s prisons. Participation in voluntary religious communities sponsored by evangelicals bolsters the lives of inmates with social capital otherwise totally inaccessible to them. Small-group prayer in prison, for example, has been shown to be highly prosocial and transformative in practice. 

In fact, decades of criminological research document the salutary benefits of religious programming for prisoners and prisons. Such programs reduce social isolation and shame among prisoners, offering emotional and network pathways that support re-biographing and fresh starts. Even modest interventions like attending volunteer-led Bible studies in prison have been found to be associated with significant recidivism reduction following release from prison. For example, a new study finds that a one-week faith-based curriculum can reduce post-traumatic stress disorder as well as enhance prosocial and virtuous behavior among jail inmates. This is just one example from a significant body of research literature confirming the positive and prosocial effects of religion on crime reduction and restorative justice approaches. 

Perhaps the most important key to the success of evangelicals’ rehabilitation efforts is their embrace of the “wounded healer” model of ministry. Since the 1950s, criminologists have recognized the particular effectiveness of previously convicted citizens helping offenders reform. Faith-based and addiction-focused programs have been especially active in using peer-based rehabilitative programming. Former addicts are often viewed by those in recovery as the most effective drug treatment counselors—not because they have academic credentials in addiction therapy, but because they possess direct experience overcoming the challenges of addiction. 

A Crusade to End Grading in High Schools 

From the Washington Post: 

The majority of American high schools, even the best money could buy, he believed, were delivering a misguided education. They treated students as passive receptacles and downplayed the importance of attributes such as collaboration and the many types of learning taking place outside classrooms. They reduced the high school experience of students with college aspirations to a formulaic pursuit of success in a narrow set of advanced courses that blocked many from exploring their passions. 

Looney wanted to create a new secondary-school model, not just at Hawken and other privileged private schools, but also for the public school system that educated the vast majority of the nation’s students. “The industrial production model of putting kids on an assembly line when they’re 4 and moving them through at the same pace, asking them to do functionally the same work, is toxic,” he told us at his Hawken office in May. 

He envisioned schools where students learned math, history and science not as isolated subjects in classroom-bound courses but while working together to address real-world issues like soil conservation, homelessness and illegal immigration. Such learning would make schooling more meaningful for students and thus more engaging, Looney believed. It would let students demonstrate more talents to colleges, holding out the prospect of a wider, more diverse range of students entering higher education’s top ranks. 

9.   Men are just as emotional as women, study says 

From Study Finds: 

The stereotype that women are more reactionary and prone to emotional outbursts than men has persisted for a long, long time. According to researchers from the University of Michigan however, this common belief is just a myth. As far as why the stereotype has such longevity, study authors explain it all comes down to how people interpret the emotions women and men display. 

The team says that when a man becomes emotional while watching sports, others usually see this person as “passionate.” However, if a woman becomes emotional for any number of reasons, the team says people generally consider that woman “irrational” or “hysterical.” 

Researchers add that people interpret strong emotions like enthusiasm, nervousness, or strength very differently depending whether they come from a man or woman. 

Their study tracked a group of 142 men and women over a period of 75 days, recording each person’s daily emotions. The team separated women into four sub-groups: one naturally cycling while the other three used different forms of oral contraceptives. 

They noted and recorded emotional fluctuations via three different avenues and then compared them across genders. Ultimately, researchers recorded little to no emotional differences between the male participants and any of the four female groups. This indicates, study authors say, that the average man’s emotions change and fluctuate just as much as the average woman. However, it is likely that those fluctuations are the result of different factors for a man versus a woman. 

10.Best boss ever? Spanx CEO gives all employees first-class plane tickets and $10,000 

From Yahoo! News: 

It was a scene full of ecstatic smiles, dropped jaws and delirious hugs last week when Spanx founder and CEO Sara Blakely surprised her employees with first-class plane tickets to anywhere in the world and $10,000 in spending money after the company was valued at $1.2 billion in a deal with private equity firm Blackstone. 

The self-made founder of the billion-dollar shapewear company shared a video on Instagram of her telling employees about the gift and showing their reaction. 

“Behind the scenes @spanx telling the employees (some live and some on zoom) about the sale and partnership with Blackstone,” Blakely wrote. “It was an emotional announcement filled with happy tears acknowledging how far we’ve come. 

“And then the tears really started to flow when I surprised everybody with 2 first class @delta plane tickets to anywhere in the world and $10,000 cash to spend on the trip. I really want every employee to celebrate this moment in their own way and create a memory that will last them a lifetime!