2 Plus 2 EQUALS FIVE AT HARVARD THESE DAYS?

NEWS & POLITICS at PJMedia:

It Looks Like Harvard Identifies as a Garbage School Now

BY MATT MARGOLIS 11:25 AM ON JANUARY 11, 2023

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

Harvard University is a garbage school now.

There was a time when Harvard was committed to academic excellence, but those days are over.

If you know anyone who went to Harvard, there’s a good chance they brag about it in all sorts of ways. But really, is a Harvard education worth anything anymore, or is it only an elite school by reputation now?

Consider the evidence. According to a report from The College Fix, Harvard Medical School students are now being offered a course on providing healthcare to LGBTQIA+ infants.

Yes, I said infants. Med students who take the course “Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sex Development,” can expect to gain experience with “patients [who] identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual,” and according to the course description, “Clinical exposure and education will focus on serving gender and sexual minority people across the lifespan, from infants to older adults.”

Course directors Alex Keuroghlian and Alberto Puig are both employed at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Keuroghlian is also an LGBT activist and a psychiatrist at the Harvard-affiliated Fenway Health Center. According to the College Fix, Keuroghlian has written dubious research that purports to show that transgender drugs and surgeries can help people’s mental health. He has been an outspoken critic of government restrictions on so-called gender-affirming care.

However, a recent study found that so-called “gender-affirming care” for children has no medical benefits, and experts worldwide agree that there is no medical evidence for “gender identity.”

Several countries, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, and France, have all dialed back on pushing transgender “treatments” for children because they have begun to recognize the harm they do to kids. But the Biden administration has gone all in on pushing the transing of kids — including pushing for taxpayer dollars to fund these so-called “treatments.”

“Harvard medical students should be taught the basic scientific truth that a man cannot become a woman, or vice versa,” Nathanael Blake, an ethicist at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Fix via email. “Those experiencing psychological distress regarding their biological sex need to be treated with compassion, which does not mean subjecting them to dangerous chemical and surgical treatments to mold them into a facsimile of the opposite sex.”

Blake also disputes the notion that there is medical consensus in favor of transitioning, particularly for children.

“The research is plagued by a multitude of methodological problems, including small sample sizes, short timeframes, losing subjects during follow-up, and reliance on self-evaluation,” he said. “This is why nations such as Sweden and Britain have recently pulled back on chemically and surgically transitioning children.”

Last year, an insider at a major northeastern children’s hospital told PJ Media how the medical profession is ignoring the link between transgender treatments and suicide. According to this insider, at the beginning of their career in healthcare at a pediatric medical center, the Emergency Department would expect a handful of mental health crises a week, but by the time of their departure, “30 of our 60 beds would be constantly and consistently full with actively suicidal youths.”

“There was a common thread running between all these tragic cases,” the insider explained. “Right below the bright red alert denoting the patient was on suicide precautions would be another alert telling us healthcare workers to call the patient something other than the legal name listed in their medical chart and what pronouns we were allowed to use when referencing a patient.”

Anyone who went to Harvard ought to be embarrassed at what’s happened to this once stellar institution of higher learning.

“Perhaps then sleeping Americans will reawaken”.

January 11, 2023

America’s Animal Farm

By J.B. Shurk at American Thinker:

Ordinary people have extraordinary power.  Don’t believe me?  Watch what happens if tens of millions ever decide to close their bank accounts all at once.  Or critical sectors of the workforce decide to stay home for weeks.  Or a sizable percentage of the population refuses to obey arbitrary and capricious government orders.  When citizens become fed up enough to take matters into their own hands, those with government-bestowed titles learn quickly how little power those vaunted titles actually have.  

If you were to ask a collection of random people what governments do, you would hear a multitude of answers: they make and enforce laws, collect taxes, regulate industry, police citizens, and mobilize militaries.  In actuality, what governments do, first and foremost, is prevent citizens from ever understanding the above paragraph.  Their first order of business is to convince the vast majority of people not in positions of authority to obey the cumulative will of the small minority in charge of the government.  For most of human history, this magic act, in which so few control so many, has been accomplished through intimidation, violence, and other forms of coercion.

“Nothing is so certain as death and taxes,” the old proverb goes, but it might just as accurately be said of almost all governments throughout history that those in charge will extract from those under their thumb either death or taxes — and often both.  Force is the only language most governments know, although that force is often disguised as being performed for the people’s “own good.”  As it turns out, force is generally sufficient for corralling humans into their government-controlled pens, especially if there are carrots or other treats inside to keep them content, if not particularly happy.  When those pens have nothing attractive to offer and become overrun with filth, however, then those doing the corralling must resort to more and more force in order to make their captives obey.

The rejection of this coercive paradigm formed the intellectual backbone of American independence.  Aside from some notable Greek city-states and a few mostly forgotten tribes, America’s Enlightenment experiment in self-determination set itself apart from all other past forms of governance precisely because its guiding principles sought to level the playing field between the governing and governed and replace the confines of the government’s animal pen with a shared freedom to roam.  “We the people,” the U.S. Constitution begins, before articulating common ideals uniting all Americans, including a determination to “secure the blessings of liberty” for “ourselves and our posterity.”  The people, as the architects of the American system of government, alone control the limits of their liberty and perpetually hold the keys to any artificial pen constricting their free will.

Now, depending upon your level of cynicism, this revolutionary articulation of human self-government either never truly succeeded or has achieved periods of relative success while enduring its share of failures, as all human institutions invariably do.  Putting America’s scorecard to the side, however, by far its most powerful contribution to human liberty has been the passing down from one generation to the next both a shared understanding of what freedom means and a shared commitment to pursuing American freedom doggedly, however incomplete. 

America’s civic bonds have prevailed through challenging times by sustaining a common determination to preserve individual rights and to protect those rights from the treacherous dilutions of government decree.  The inviolable sanctity of the individual — the acknowledgment that each human has special worth that cannot be indiscriminately erased for some utopian and misguided “greater good” — provides the foundations for American equality.  

In America, no person’s life, liberty, or property can be said to be more important than any other’s.  This has been the shared truth, even when Americans have failed to live up to the standard, keeping the people in charge of their own pen and government force in check, if not at bay.  Although President Truman will always be remembered for embracing the notion that “the buck stops here,” ultimately, the buck stops at all times with the American people.  They are, as William Ernest Henley would attest, alone the masters of their fates and the captains of their souls.  That’s the American way.

It is not the American way, however, for citizens to live higgledy-piggledy under the ambiguous reign of one government dictate to the next.  It is not American for an unelected bureaucracy to create rules out of thin air and enforce them upon the people through agency prerogative and regulation.  It is not American for presidents to legislate through executive order.

It is not American for congresses to conduct show trials against American citizens or to demand that tech companies censor points of view.  It is not American for courts to scribble over the Constitution whenever expedient.  It is not American for the Department of (in)Justice to persecute citizens for their political beliefs or for the FBI to act as a lethal enforcer against the regime’s political enemies.  

It is not American for there to be so many criminal statutes that no American could possibly know them all, let alone confidently act without fear of sanction.  It is not American for there to be so many government agencies and divisions that no American could capably draw a diagram listing their roles and functions.  

It is not American for the government to champion its secular religion over the moral tenets of Americans’ spiritual faiths.  It is not American for the government to ignore the will of its citizens and subvert immigration law by leaving its borders unprotected and wide open.  It is not American for an amorphous Intelligence Community to spy on American citizens with neither warrant nor probable cause.  It is not American for the news media to be so co-opted by the State that they almost universally support the government’s talking points — no matter how ludicrous and unsupported — while taking aim at dissenting citizens’ debate. 

It is not normal for a “government of the people” to regularly denigrate its citizens as racists, extremists, deplorables, terrorists, misogynists, bigots, and rubes.  It is not normal for any government claiming to be “for the people” to declare half the nation “enemies of the State.”

These are the acts of a government committed to using intimidation, violence, and other forms of coercion in order to get its way.  In short, they are everything the American system revolted against when American independence rejected top-down force for equality, individual liberty, unassailable rights, and freedom of thought beyond the reach of the government’s say.

That so many Americans still fail to see how distorted their acting government has become from what their Constitution affords is proof that those who corral humans into pens for a living have done their jobs exceptionally well.  Like too many generations before them, Americans have allowed themselves to be rounded up with a little prodding, some tasty carrots, and reassuring words along the way.  Too many look at the barbed wire surrounding them and assume that life must always be endured behind the government’s enclosure.  Obedience in exchange for the government’s promises of safety, welfare, and happiness has created a narcotic bliss.

What happens, though, if enough Americans decide they are not safe, comfortable, or happy?  What happens when the American government runs out of carrots, and those in cages realize they are surrounded by nothing but filth and decay?  Perhaps then ordinary people will realize what extraordinary power they actually possess.  Perhaps then sleeping Americans will reawaken.  Perhaps the descendants of those who once turned the world upside-down will remember how to reject government tyranny and demand a return to the American way.

….”what we know and what we don’t know, about the Biden and Trump investigations”.

DAILY MEMO

What to do about Biden’s classified documents?

by Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent | 

 January 11, 2023 08:27 AM

WHAT TO DO ABOUT BIDEN’S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS? On Monday evening came one of those stories that seem almost too convenient to be true. CBS News reported that Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a U.S. attorney to investigate classified documents found in an office used by President Joe Biden after he left the vice presidency.

What???!!! Does that mean the current president improperly held classified documents like his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, is accused of doing? As if on cue, reporters at a number of news outlets jumped into action, determined to explain to readers that the cases are totally different. Worried that Republicans would “seize” on the news to suggest an equivalence between Biden and Trump, many in the media sought to portray the two investigations as entirely dissimilar affairs: Trump bad, Biden not bad.

But there are some distinct similarities, both in what we know and what we don’t know, about the Biden and Trump investigations. First, the most obvious: Both men apparently kept classified information at a place they used for business after leaving office. As commentators reminded us many, many times during the Trump investigation, that can be a very serious problem. Both men had the highest access to classified information, Biden as vice president and Trump as president. And both men left those high offices to set up working spaces in other places, Biden at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Here is a really important similarity. In neither case do we know what the classified documents were. All through the Trump investigation, with so much sensational and overwrought reporting — all through that time, the public never knew what the documents were that Trump allegedly mishandled. Were they truly the nation’s most important national security secrets? Or were they examples of the overclassification that plagues the federal government, when noncritical information is classified at a higher level than it deserves, if it should be classified at all? We don’t know the answer in the Trump case, and we don’t know the answer in the Biden case.

There are reports that the Biden documents include “U.S. intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom,” according to CNN. That could obviously be important, given, to cite just one reason, the Biden family’s business interests in Ukraine. With Trump, there were reports that the Mar-a-Lago documents included “highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China,” according to the Washington Post. Of course, the Post also reported the Trump materials included “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,” although no other news outlet seemed to have confirmed that big scoop. The bottom line on all of that, both the Biden and the Trump documents, is that the public doesn’t know. People have no way to assess the seriousness of the situation if they don’t know what the classified documents are.

All those unknowns did not stop the commenting class from going nuts about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents. With Biden, the commentary is much more restrained.

There are differences, or apparent differences, between the cases. The biggest is the number of documents involved, although that is not entirely clear. In the Trump case, we know that various searches, including the infamous Aug. 8, 2022, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, found around 300 classified documents. In the Biden case, Biden’s lawyers have been telling reporters that there were “roughly 10” documents involved, which the lawyers say they discovered when they were cleaning out Biden’s old office in early November 2022. (By the way, two years into the president’s term, why were they cleaning out his old office? And does that sort of thing normally require lawyers?) The New York Times said Biden’s lawyers characterized the total documents discovered as a “small number,” although it also noted, “Officials did not describe precisely how many documents were involved, what kind of information they included, or their level of classification.” At the moment, everyone is relying on Biden’s lawyers to characterize the situation, which is not at all clear.

Another difference is the way Biden and Trump have handled the situation. There’s no doubt Trump dragged things out, partially complied, and in general resisted the government’s efforts to collect documents in his possession. The special counsel investigating Trump, Jack Smith, is looking into whether Trump actually obstructed justice in the matter. On the other hand, Biden’s defenders say the president and his lawyers have done everything by the book, informing the National Archives and making sure all the correct procedures were followed once the documents were discovered. On the other hand, it is unclear why they took so long to do it.

Indeed, the timing of the Biden revelation looks … odd. The way the Biden team tells it, his personal lawyers were cleaning out his old office at the Penn Biden Center when they came upon the classified documents mixed in with other, nonclassified papers. The discovery occurred on Nov. 2, six days before the hotly contested midterm elections. Can you imagine the effect such news — Biden kept classified documents! — would have had on the general political atmosphere of that moment? That could have been why the Biden team kept it all quiet. The public did not learn about the story until two months later.

From the New York Times: “The White House statement said that it ‘is cooperating’ with the [Justice Department] but did not explain why Mr. Biden’s team waited more than two months to announce the discovery of the documents, which came a week before the midterm congressional elections when the news would have been an explosive last-minute development.”

There’s another issue, as well. While this was going on, Garland was selecting a special counsel to take over the Trump investigation on the grounds the Justice Department would have a conflict investigating Trump, who announced his 2024 candidacy on Nov. 15, 2022. Garland confirmed the appointment of Smith on Nov. 18. It is unclear what was going on in the Biden classified documents case at the same time.

So now the story is out, at least the earliest version of the story is out. No one seems to know why the federal officials involved — officials from the National Archives and Records Administration, who were so vigilant in pursuing Trump documents — did not have, for nearly seven years, even a suspicion that Biden might be holding classified records.

The one person who seems to know absolutely nothing about the situation is Joe Biden himself. Consulting some sort of prepared text during a news conference at the summit in Mexico City Tuesday, Biden said he was “surprised” to learn that he had kept classified documents. “When my lawyers were clearing out my office at the University of Pennsylvania, they set up an office for me — a secure office in the Capitol, when I — the four years after being vice president, I was a professor at Penn. They found some documents in a box — you know, a locked cabinet or at least a closet. And as soon as they did, they realized there were several classified documents in that box. And they did what they should have done: They immediately called the Archives.”

“I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn there were any government records that were taken there to that office,” Biden said. “But I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were.” Message: I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.

Biden was entirely unclear about what his lawyers were doing, why, and when. The only thing he is clear on is that he knew absolutely nothing about what his lawyers had done. Absolutely nothing. Whatever Biden knew or didn’t know, hopefully, the public will soon learn more about what really went on.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.

Pelosi, Swalwell, Schiff, Omar WHAT CANCEROUS LEADERS IN CIVILIZED CULTURE!

JANUARY 11, 2023 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN 2022 ELECTION, ADAM SCHIFF, CONGRESS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ILHAN OMAR, KEVIN MCCARTHY

APPLYING PELOSI’S PRECEDENT

AP congressional reporter Farnoush Amiri report via Twitter (below) that Speaker Kevin McCarthy will follow through on his promise to remove Reps. Eric Swalwell (Intelligence), Adam Schiff (Intelligence), and Ilhan Omar (Foreign Affairs) from their committee assignments. Of the three, I think Schiff is the worst. He should be tarred and feathered and run out of town for abuse of his position as Intelligence Committee chairman to perpetuate the Russia hoax for grossly partisan purposes. He gives lying weasels a bad name.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfdGltZWxpbmVfbGlzdCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOlsibGlua3RyLmVlIiwidHIuZWUiLCJ0ZXJyYS5jb20uYnIiLCJ3d3cubGlua3RyLmVlIiwid3d3LnRyLmVlIiwid3d3LnRlcnJhLmNvbS5iciJdLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2ZvbGxvd2VyX2NvdW50X3N1bnNldCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOmZhbHNlLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdGltZWxpbmVfMTIwMzQiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoidHJlYXRtZW50IiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd190d2VldF9lZGl0X2JhY2tlbmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib24iLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3JlZnNyY19zZXNzaW9uIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9uIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19zaG93X2J1c2luZXNzX3ZlcmlmaWVkX2JhZGdlIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9uIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19jaGluX3BpbGxzXzE0NzQxIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6ImNvbG9yX2ljb25zIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd190d2VldF9yZXN1bHRfbWlncmF0aW9uXzEzOTc5Ijp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6InR3ZWV0X3Jlc3VsdCIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfbWl4ZWRfbWVkaWFfMTU4OTciOnsiYnVja2V0IjoidHJlYXRtZW50IiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19zZW5zaXRpdmVfbWVkaWFfaW50ZXJzdGl0aWFsXzEzOTYzIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6ImludGVyc3RpdGlhbCIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2R1cGxpY2F0ZV9zY3JpYmVzX3RvX3NldHRpbmdzIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9uIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd192aWRlb19obHNfZHluYW1pY19tYW5pZmVzdHNfMTUwODIiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoidHJ1ZV9iaXRyYXRlIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19zaG93X2JsdWVfdmVyaWZpZWRfYmFkZ2UiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib24iLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2xlZ2FjeV90aW1lbGluZV9zdW5zZXQiOnsiYnVja2V0IjpmYWxzZSwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19zaG93X2dvdl92ZXJpZmllZF9iYWRnZSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJvbiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0Zndfc2hvd19idXNpbmVzc19hZmZpbGlhdGVfYmFkZ2UiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib24iLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VkaXRfZnJvbnRlbmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib24iLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1612605345288830979&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2023%2F01%2Fapplying-the-pelosi-precedent.php&sessionId=8c290a29655c47cfafa62f90f825a4616cb7ada3&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=a3525f077c700%3A1667415560940&width=550px

Assuming McCarthy takes this action, he will cite the Pelosi precedent. See, for example, the comments of Majority Leader Steve Scalise in this ABC News story. When former Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed the appointment of two Republican appointees to the January 6 Committee, she pronounced that she wasn’t concerned about the precedent. “The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision,” Pelosi said.

Omar’s response to her anticipated ouster follows the form I personally experienced when she was a lowly candidate for the Minnesota state legislature in August 2016 and I asked about her marriage to her brother:

“McCarthy’s effort to repeatedly single me out for scorn and hatred — including threatening to strip me from my committee — does nothing to address the issues our constituents deal with. It does nothing to address inflation, healthcare, or solve the climate crisis,” she said in a statement in November.

“What it does is gin up fear and hate against Somali-Americans and anyone who shares my identity, and further divide us along racial and ethnic lines,” she said.

As we see, however, Omar has not been singled out by McCarthy. She is in good company, so to speak, crossing racial and ethnic lines.

Via Karl Salzman/Washington Free Beacon.