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DeSantis’ latest attempt to win back the suburbs It seems he’s had a change of heart: A NEW BILL was introduced in Florida this week that would give Gov. Ron Desantis more power over state schools, and allow the Republican politician to ban gender studies and critical race theory, along with diversity and inclusion initiatives, at Florida colleges, CNN reports. The legislation, which follows through with DeSantis’ promise to ban universities from spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, was filed by Rep. Alex Andrade from Pensacola on Tuesday. If passed, Florida state colleges would be barred from offering major and minor programs in intersectionality, critical race theory, and gender studies. Core classes would also be prohibited from touching on these teachings or presenting history of the U.S. as “contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence,” the bill reads.
Laws don’t work well when many people openly defy them. Prohibition in the US is a good example of that. In Iran, it took massive protests against the hijab laws to dismantle the morality police. But what may cement this new tolerance of women showing their hair in public is the simple, casual defiance by many women in their day to day lives: [S]ince the death last year of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of the country’s morality police, women and girls have been at the center of a nationwide uprising, demanding an end not only to hijab requirements but to the Islamic Republic itself. Women are suddenly flaunting their hair: left long and flowing in the malls; tied in a bun on the streets; styled into bobs on public transportation; and pulled into ponytails at schools and on university campuses, according to interviews with women in Iran as well as photographs and videos online. While these acts of defiance are rarer in more conservative areas, they are increasingly being seen in towns and cities.
According to Rep. Scott Perry the speech and debate clause in the constitution protects members of congress who are plotting a coup with the president of the United States. One judge doesn’t think so. It remains to be seen if others do: The chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., secretly rejected Rep. Scott Perry’s bid to shield more than 2,000 messages relevant to Justice Department investigators probing efforts by Donald Trump to subvert the 2020 election, according to newly unsealed court filings. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed her extraordinary Dec. 28 decision on Friday evening, determining that the “powerful public interest” in seeing the previously secret opinion outweighed the need for continued secrecy. Perry, a Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, had urged Howell to block the Justice Department from accessing 2,219 documents stored on his phone, which was seized and imaged by the FBI last August as part of the 2020 election investigation.
Unexpectedly, the election for leader of the SNP has become a true hinge moment in the entire history of the Scottish nation. Sure of their control of the party, the devolutionists in the SNP have openly come out with the proposal that Independence is merely an “aspiration” – Humza Yousaf’s exact word. Stewart McDonald and […]
The post History Turns appeared first on Craig Murray.
A baby Pangolin A Chinese pangolin has been born in the Prague zoo, the first birth of the critically endangered animal in captivity in Europe, and is doing well after initial troubles, the park said on Thursday. For the first few days after the baby female was born on Feb. 2, park keepers were worried because it was losing weight. The reason was found to be that the mother, Run Hou Tang, didn’t have enough milk. Following consultations with experts from Taiwan, a program of artificial feeding with milk from a cat was introduced and the mother was stimulated to produce more of her own. That turned things around, with the zoo now expressing cautious optimism about the pup, which still has no name but has been nicknamed “Little Cone” because it resembles a spruce cone. “We have only overcome the first hurdle and others are still waiting for us,” zoo director Miroslav Bobek said. The baby’s birth weight was just 135 grams (4.76 ounces). Adults can reach up to 15 pounds. The Chinese pangolin is native to southern China and southeastern Asia and is one of the four pangolin species living in Asia, while another four can be found in Africa.
And Marjorie Taylor Greene is on it Here’s something to read while you savor your Friday afternoon cocktail. You’d better be prepared to have another: Earlier this month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, addressed the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, whose purview runs from this small resort city up along the Washington state border. Before she spoke, a local pastor and onetime Idaho state representative named Tim Remington, wearing an American flag-themed tie, revved up the crowd: “If we put God back in Idaho, then God will always protect Idaho.” Greene’s remarks lasted nearly an hour, touching on a range of topics dear to her far-right fans: claims about the 2020 election being “stolen,” sympathy for those arrested for taking part in attacking the U.S. Capitol and her opposition to vaccine mandates.
There’s a lot of back and forth going on over a new study that people say suggests masks are useless to stop the spread of an aerosol based virus. The NY Times, which has been a bastion of COVID mitigation skepticism, featured an op-ed by Brett Stephens that’s as misleading as what you can find on Breitbart any given day. Here’s Dr Tom Friedan: Masks have been an effective tool throughout the Covid pandemic, despite erroneous claims to the contrary. The widely cited Cochrane review on masks was poorly done and even more poorly communicated. Regrettably, researchers analyzed the wrong datasets, in the wrong way, and overstated their conclusions—leading to sweeping and inaccurate characterizations. Many nuances around mask type, setting, behavior, and policy are explained in this helpful piece by @dr_kkjetelina. http://bit.ly/3ErwuNN 3/ The CDC did an excellent review citing extensive evidence that masks are effective, from multiple studies.
Catalyzing $1.7 trillion in private investments Venture capitalist @NickHanauer (of TED talk infamy and Pitchfork Economics) draws attention to the transformational nature of the Biden administration’s infrastructure plans. Readers of a certain age may recall a time before interstate highways and the impact of that national project. “Buckle up, America. I’m just back from dozens of meetings at the Whitehouse and Capitol Hill. The amount of investment headed for the American economy is beyond anything we have every [sic] experienced,” Hanauer tweeted. Hanauer adds, “In two years, the Biden administration made up for most of the last 50 years of policy malpractice. Between CHIPS, IRA, and INFRASTRUCTURE, and the anti monopoly EO’s, we are going to get done what we should have been doing all along.” Hanauer retweets Jay Turner who follows environmental politics and policy at Wellesley College. Turner follows investments in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will inject $374 billion into the clean technology sector over the next decade,” CleanTechinca reports.
How many doubling-downs is it? It’s not enough that the AR-15 is the weapon of choice for mass shooters, no. Republicans in Congress think that’s cause for celebration. In fact, Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia (what a guy!) handed out AR-15 lapel pins to Republican colleagues “during National Gun Violence Survivors Week,” writes Steve Benen at MaddowBlog: H.R.1095 has as of now three Republican co-sponsors. Pistol-packin’ Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Troll-in-Residence Clyde, and International Man of Mystery, Rep. George Santos of New York, all think The United States of Freakin’ America is incomplete without an official mass-murder weapon. They’re trolling, Benen is sure, as that seems to be why they think voters sent them to Congress on your nickel and mine. “If your instinct is to be disgusted by politicians who’d respond to mass shootings by celebrating the weapon used in too many of the slayings then the Republicans championing this bill are no doubt delighted,” Benen writes: So why not ignore it?