Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Beware the Ides of March! There's more to Chuck Schumer's surrender than people have realized.

Some of my good friends on the right are chortling with glee because Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said that he will not try to stop the continuing resolution passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to keep the government from shutting down as the Ides of March come upon us. But Mr Schumer has a good reason, that few have realized.

There is the alternative that Chuck Schumer really, really doesn’t want. The so-called nuclear option was used by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on November 21, 2013, because evil, reich-wing Republicans were filibustering the judicial nominations made by President Barack Hussein Obama, and judicial nominations except for the Supreme Court could now have cloture invoked by a simple majority vote.

Then, during President Trump’s first term, Senator Mitch McConnell turned the tables on the Dems, and, using the same procedure, removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations as well.

Well, here we are again: the Republicans control the Senate, and can change the rules with a simple majority vote that can’t be filibustered, and they could just end the filibuster rule altogether. Because of the narrow majority in the House, all bills passed have to satisfy virtually every Republican, including the hard-liners, and the Republicans in the Senate realize that the Dems will filibuster all that they can. Continue reading →

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Has the federal Department of Education actually improved educational outcomes?

The left are totally aghast that President Trump’s plans to shut down the federal Department of Education are beginning to be put into action. “Students will suffer harm,” CNN told us, after department’s civil rights office was ‘gutted.’ Education professionals in Charlotte are “sounding the alarm,” “Ten percent of the district’s funding comes from the feds, used to pay for basic educational needs, staffing and professional development,” and “‘We really don’t know who, which department, what positions, who’s controlling what really, it’s up in the air right now,’ said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board Vice Chair Dee Rankin.” readers were told, which raises the obvious questions: why are local schools being partially funded by the feds, and why should the feds be controlling anything? NBC News told us that “Experts say this week’s mass layoffs could lead to less research and support for children with special needs.”

But perhaps, just perhaps, it should be asked whether the Department of Education was actually improving education. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Lower Merion led racial equity efforts in the ′90s. But its achievement gap has only widened.

Continue reading →

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Cutting off their noses to spite Elon Musk’s face

My good friend William Teach quoted a global warming climate quack:

Fortunately, lawsuits are moving forward in states from Hawaii and Montana to New York and Vermont to hold corporate actors accountable, seeking millions or billions of dollars to pay for damages caused by climate change. These cases include a Feb. 24 lawsuit filed by farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for deleting vital climate data from their website.

It’s time for every corporate polluter to be held accountable in court. If federal officials are derelict in their duty to protect us, then governors, legislators, pressure groups and citizens must take up the slack. The planet won’t survive four more years of climate-denying policies.

And if those lawsuits are won? It means that ordinary Americans will be paying far higher prices, because corporations simply pass on all costs of doing business. They have to, or they quickly go broke. Continue reading →

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Can The Washington Post be saved? The newspaper industry has updated as much as possible, but it's still 18th century technology.

We have previously reported on how owner Jeff Bezos’ decision that The Washington Post not make any endorsement for President in 2024 cost the newspaper hundreds of thousand of subscriptions.

But now columnist Joe Concha of the New York Post says that Mr Bezos is doing what is necessary to save one of our nation’s newspapers of record:

Three cheers for Jeff Bezos, fighting to save The Washington Post from itself

By Joe Concha | Thursday, March 6, 2025 6:52 PM EST

Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs — but making his Washington Post staffers face reality may be his toughest-ever career challenge.

A long time ago in a media galaxy that now seems far, far away, the Post was one of the most respected newspapers in the country, capturing 68 Pulitzers in the process. Continue reading →

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Not everything has to be a federal government project!

Under our 47th President, the sensible people in charge are looking at all of the spending in which the federal government engages. With the FY2024 federal budget deficit at $1.83 trillion — that’s trillion, a thousand billion, or a million million dollars — and FY2025 possibly going to be more, the Trump Administration is taking a battle axe to spending where it can, because a battle axe is what is needed. Tiny little cuts by going over everything with a fine-toothed comb will never work, because there’s always some purportedly good reason to spend for someone’s pet project. The battle axe method is the right thing to do, and then, after that is done, we can check to see if anything truly essential was cut and needs to be restored.

Trump administration freezes $12 million meant to help Philly plant thousands of trees

Continue reading →

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Will Bunch blows his top again!

I predicted, just two days ago, that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s liberal columnists would be “outraged” by Radnor High School’s decision to remove three “graphic novels” — a fancy term for comic books — dealing with homosexuality and transgenderism from the school library as “age inappropriate” for high schoolers. I have previously said:

Somehow, the hard left have persuaded themselves that they must take the furthest left position possible on anything even remotely regarding to sex, or they’d be enabling us evil reich-wing conservatives and Donald Trump supporters.

Thus far, I haven’t found any OpEd pieces of columns condemning Radnor High School’s action, but it’s no surprise to me that the furthest left columnist, Will Bunch, is absolutely apoplectic that Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is expressing a sensible position on ‘transgenderism’. Mr Bunch skeeted — a skeet is the slang word for a tweet on Bluesky — this morning:

I always thought Newsom would be a terrible 2028 candidate for the Dems but this clinches it — he is utterly dead to me.

I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but my entire adult life (I was a college senior when Reagan was elected in ’80, now I get senior discounts) the Dems have cowered in fear and tried to be what they think the public wants, instead of offering moral leadership. GN is just the worst case

Continue reading →

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A win for normality and common sense at Radnor High School

Radnor is a suburb of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, straddling Delaware and Montgomery Counties, about 13 miles west of the city and part of the “Main Line” suburbs. Both were carried by then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, by slightly over 60% of the vote, but slightly lower margins than the Democrats won in 2020. I expect the opinion columnists at The Philadelphia Inquirer to be outraged by this:

Radnor bans three books in response to a parent’s challenge, including ‘Gender Queer’

An ad hoc committee convened by Radnor’s superintendent reviewed three books, and determined by a 5-1 vote that the challenged books “are not age-appropriate for students.”

by Maddie Hanna | Tuesday, March 4, 2025 | 2:01 PM EST

Radnor High School has removed three books from its library, including Gender Queer and another LGBTQ-themed book, after a parent alleged they contained child pornography. Continue reading →

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World War III Watch: Comment rescue: Patterico’s Pontifications

The tactic was well used by the late Senator Joe McCarthy, to let everyone know that if you disagreed with him, you were a Communist.

I participated in the Weekend Open Thread on Patterico’s Pontifications, knowing in advance that if my comments were published, I’d be running into a buzz saw of opposition. The host, Los Angeles County prosecutor Patrick Frey, a conservative who has mostly withdrawn from the blog, leaving it up to a much nicer and better-looking Dana than me, is nevertheless a dedicated #NeverTrumper, as are the majority of commenters, a majority of whom also wholeheartedly support helping Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders. The commenters there are mostly well-educated, and many are lawyers, but it’s clear that many — certainly not all — view opposition to the kind of aid provided by former President Joe Biden is wholly unappreciated. Continue reading →

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The Washington Post conflates current house painting fashion with race

The Washington Post published an article on neighborhood gentrification on Sunday, and a lot of readers, to judge by the comments, saw it as completely racist. Perhaps, just perhaps, not everything is about race.

The house color that tells you when a neighborhood is gentrifying

A Washington Post color analysis of D.C. found shades of gray permeate neighborhoods where the White population has increased and the Black population has decreased.

By Marissa J. Lang and John D. Harden | Sunday, March 2, 2025 | 6:00 AM EST

If you live in an American city, chances are you have seen this house: Its exterior is gray with monochromatic accents. Maybe there’s a pop of color — a red, blue or yellow door. The landscaping is restrained, all clean lines and neat minimalism. Sleek metal address numbers appear crisp in a modern sans-serif font. Continue reading →