Category Archives: Education

Posted on by

Common sense and lawfare tend to be two diametrically opposed things.

I used to think that political liberalism encompassed some divergence of views. After all, they can’t all think exactly the same on everything, right? But the more I read the more I see a mental monolith, and it’s a monolith that verges on stupidity.

The Trump administration is investigating Smith College for admitting trans women. Could Bryn Mawr be next?

Bryn Mawr College, like Smith, accepts all individuals who identify as women. The Trump administration says that violates federal discrimination laws, but has not yet gone after Bryn Mawr.

by Susan Snyder | Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo 2026 | 4:52 PM EDT

President Donald Trump’s administration this week opened an investigation into Smith College, one of the oldest women’s colleges in the country, for admitting transgender women.

Both Bryn Mawr College and Moore College of Art & Design — women’s colleges in the Philadelphia area — also admit trans women, opening up questions about whether they could be among the next targets, though Moore already is weighing whether to go coed.

“The college remains focused on our mission and commitment to academic excellence,” Bryn Mawr said in a statement. “We continue to operate in compliance with all federal laws and regulations.”

Full disclosure: I did some concrete work at Bryn Mawr College, in 2004, though it was between semesters, with few people on campus.

Further down:

The 1,370-student Bryn Mawr on its website notes that it accepts all individuals who identify as women, including cisgender and trans women. The school also accepts “intersex people who do not identify as male, individuals assigned female at birth who have not taken medical or legal steps to identify as male, and individuals assigned female at birth who do not identify within the gender binary.”

Bryn Mawr clarified its enrollment practices regarding transgender women in 2015, noting that the school would accept transgender women and “intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application.”

Does that mean Bryn Mawr would have to retain individuals who identified as women at the time of application, but who later decided that they were really men? 🙂

Personally, I do not see the legal issue, unless there are males who applied and were denied because they are male; such men might have a potential discrimination complaint.

I could see a potential privacy issue, as was the case with Brayden Fleming, the male volleyball player calling himself “Blaire” and pretending to be a woman to play on the San José State women’s volleyball team, and who could “pass” well enough that both his teammates and opposing teams did not know he is male. His road trip roommate didn’t realize that he was male. But if Smith and Bryn Mawr colleges were open, and informed other students that a particular student was actually male, giving the other students the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wished to share a locker room or restroom with the transgender student, it’s difficult to see a legal problem.

Then again, we know how that would work out: any student who decided that no, she did not want to share a bathroom or locker room with a male student would herself be accused of transphobia, and disciplined, possibly to the extent of expulsion. Any student who protested the inclusion of men males in women’s only spaces would face all sorts of problems in Bryn Mawr, because the far-left leadership have decided, against all rationality and all science that boys really can be girls, and that it’s hateful to dispute that cockamamie notion.

So, the colleges have created their own problems, but had they decided that only real women could be admitted, they’d have faced problems under the previous Administration. Common sense and lawfare tend to be two diametrically opposed things.

Posted on by

Well, of course they did!

A viral video on TikTok made its way to Twitter as well, one in which a student at Preparatory Charter High School in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia asked some of his classmates to read a sentence, and several struggled. One of the sentences was, “She wore a silhouette of clothes that were extraordinary but somewhat gauche,” an odd bit of wording to be sure, but one which any high school student should be able to get through. “Silhouette” might have fooled some people, the “h” being mostly silent, though providing a clue to pronunciation anyway, and “gauche” is an uncommon word, though I have used it thrice on Twitter. But many were also tripped up by “extraordinary,” a very common word.

The videos were entitled, “Can you read?”, and it was obvious that several of the students actually could not read, at least not at anything close to grade level. So naturally the school had to respond and defend itself. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philly charter school says student’s viral ‘Can You Read?’ video was ‘misleading and unfair’

One video of Preparatory Charter High School students was viewed more than 15 million times on TikTok.

by Maddie Hanna | Sunday, May 3, 2026 |6:27 PM EDT

A South Philadelphia charter school said Sunday that a student’s widely viewed videos showing classmates struggling to read certain words did not accurately reflect the school’s community.

Preparatory Charter High School, which enrolls students in grades 9 through 12, also said it was not seeking to expel the student who made the videos, contrary to posts circulating on social media.

Well, of course the school said that!

The account that posted the video, @whatthevek, did not respond to an interview request Sunday. The account last week also posted a “Can You Read Pt. 2″ video that was viewed more than 2 million times on TikTok, depicting students reading the sentence: “The colonel asked the choir to accommodate the governor’s schedule.”

The footage drew media attention, and widely circulated social media posts claimed that the student who made the videos was facing expulsion.

On Sunday, Prep Charter’s administration said in a statement that while federal privacy rules barred the school from discussing details of disciplinary action, “the student in question is not facing expulsion.”

The school said the video footage “does not accurately reflect our school community or the values we strive to uphold every day.”

“While some students may have agreed to be filmed, the way the footage was presented lacks important context and has led to a portrayal that is misleading and unfair,” the school said in the statement. “The video titled ‘Can You Read?’ does not represent the character, effort, or abilities of our students as a whole.”

It doesn’t? Here’s education reporter Maddie Hanna’s final paragraph:

On Pennsylvania state assessments in the 2024-25 school year, 46.5% of students scored proficient in English language arts, compared with nearly 50% statewide.

That’s actually worse than the US News and World Report rankings, which had students there scoring 56% at grade level proficiency in reading. The trouble is that the Preparatory Charter School of Mathematics, Science, Technology and Careers had only 21% grade level proficient in mathematics and 18% grade level proficient in science, yet the school has a graduation rate of 95%.

Perhaps someone smarter than me can tell me how that math works out? How does a high school which supposedly focuses on math and science graduate 95% of its students when roughly 80% of its students are not grade level proficient in math and science? What is a diploma from Prep Charter actually worth?

The interesting thing is that the unnamed @whatthevek was making a video on the school’s strongest performing area. What would have happened if he had been asking math of science questions?

He also posted a video entitled, “Are you Smarter than a 5th grader?”

Yes, I’m old, but I’m pretty sure that all of the 78 members of the Mt Sterling High School Class graduating Class of 1971 could actually read. They didn’t all take algebra or trig — I did — but no one would ever think of really asking them if they could read. And we had exactly one teacher who had his Master’s degree. Perhaps there’s something just plain wrong with public education today?

Posted on by

A victory for common sense It shouldn't have taken so long

For our good friends on the left, it is an unwritten rule: not only must they be ‘progressive,’ and ‘woke,’ but they must take the furthest left position possible on any issues in any way related to sex, or they will be enabling MAGA and the evil reich-wing conservatives. Thus, beyond all science and reason, they have forced themselves to take the cockamamie position that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

Vermont is one of our most liberal states, having elected the avowed socialist Bernie Sanders to Congress for decades, but, sha-zamm! it seems that the Constitution applies to them as well:

Vermont pays $566K in damages, legal fees to Christian school it banned from all sports competitions for years

A settlement agreement following mediation was finalized Tuesday after the school was barred from athletics and academic competitions for two years

By Jackson Thompson, Fox News | Tuesday, April 28, 2026 | 7:43 PM EDT

State education agencies in Vermont have paid over $566,000 in damages and legal fees to a Christian school that was banned from all sports and academic competitions for two years after its girls’ basketball team refused to compete against a trans athlete in 2023.

Let me be more explicit than the Fox News story was: the girls’ basketball team refused to compete against a team with a boy claiming he was a girl on it.

A settlement agreement following mediation was finalized on Tuesday that awarded the plaintiffs, including the Mid Vermont Christian School and its law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the $566,000.

When the school took the issue to the courts, the state and its agencies didn’t fold.

ADF Senior Counsel Dave Cortman told Fox News Digital that he was shocked at how firmly the education authorities in Vermont wouldn’t back down from their sweeping sanction on the small Christian school.

“It’s been surprising how much the state has dug in their heels,” he said. “The arguments they’ve made… even saying your beliefs are wrong…

“Their message was, ‘in order for you to follow your religious beliefs, boys are boys, girls are girls, that would actually violate their nondiscrimination policies.’ So the irony of it was, they were discriminating against religious schools.”

We have noted, dozens of times, the cases of Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided he is really a girl and competed on the Penn women’s swim team, and Brayden Fleming, the man male pretending to be a woman playing on the San José State University’s women’s volleyball team. It’s simple: males and females are biologically different, in ways that make a difference when it comes to athletics, but our good friends on the left can’t bring themselves to admit that and still hold on to their beliefs that people can just change their ‘gender’ based on their feelings.

I suppose that the decisions of the public schools isn’t surprising given that 199 public schools in Vermont allow staff to hide student trans status from parents, though I will admit that I cannot see how a student, especially a boy trying to become a girl, could conceal such from his parents, unless they are blind, deaf, and dumb.

Well, the leftist leaders of Vermont’s public education system might not be blind or deaf, but they certainly are dumb.

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, girl! Yet another public school teacher accused of trying to become sexually involved with a student

There was no one more disappointed than I was when The Philadelphia Inquirer and then-Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams started going after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for covering up sexual abuses by Catholic priests, or the horrible statistics when the John Jay Report, The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950-2002 was released. Priests should be above the sexual abuse, and sometimes outright rape, that was documented.

Alas! it seems that (supposedly) celibate priests have not been the only ones engaging in the sexual abuse of minors. The arrest of Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 exposed a whole other world of adult men trying to diddle teenaged girls, and if the left have been trying everything they could to tie it to President Trump — something the Biden Administration could not do when it had possession of the Epstein evidence for four years, despite all of their attempts to disqualify and jail Mr Trump before the 2024 elections — it’s clear that plenty of other miscreants had been enjoying themselves on “Epstein Island.”

Nevertheless, those were the wealthy and powerful, those who thought they could do no wrong. But what we have been seeing more and more these days is not the wealthy and powerful, but ordinary, working-class citizens, heavily tilted towards public school teachers.

KY substitute teacher, assistant coach charged with sexually abusing student

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | March 30, 2026 | 5:50 PM EDT

Bardstown police arrested a Bardstown High School substitute teacher on Monday and charged her with sexually abusing a student, police and school officials said.

Mary “Hanna” Mattingly, 31, was charged with first-degree sexual abuse and procuring or promoting use of a minor by electronic means, police said.

No, of course the Lexington Herald-Leader did not publish Miss Mattingly’s photograph, despite the fact it was available as a public record and has been available online from several other sources. The First Street Journal does publish those mugshots, and I use them whenever I can find them.

Bardstown City Schools’ Superintendent Ryan Clark confirmed Mattingly was also an assistant high school girls’ soccer coach.

Mattingly was listed in that role on the Kentucky High School Athletic Association website for the last two seasons.

Clark said in a statement that an anonymous letter was received Thursday “alleging inappropriate conduct by a female substitute teacher and a Bardstown High School juvenile.“

“Bardstown City Schools immediately initiated an investigation, removed the individual from her job duties, placed her on administrative leave, and alerted the authorities,” the school district’s statement said.

Several stories noted that Miss Mattingly (allegedly) communicated with the student on more than one occasion, a record of persistence. WBRD reported, “It had been going on for several months,” Bardstown Police Detective Eric Williamson said Wednesday. “Social media was the main avenue for the communication.”

But what none of the stories I could find told us whether the student she contacted was male or female. That is a frequent enough occurrence for me to conclude that the credentialed media do not want anyone to infer that homosexuality is in any way connected to sexual abuse, even though the John Jay Report noted that 81% of the victims of sexual abuse by an all-male clergy were boys. We have previously noted how The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to conceal the fact that a teenaged murderer was transgendered, and you’ll find several more such stories on this site.

I take no inference in the specific case of Miss Mattingly, though I’d note from her photo that she’s pretty enough to have attracted plenty of attention from adult men. Bardstown had a Census Bureau estimated population of 14,104 on July 1, 2024, and isn’t a particularly poor place as small towns in the Bluegrass State go.

Miss Mattingly is listed as being 31 years old, and that means she is certainly old enough to have known better than to mess with a student. There have been enough stories in the media concerning adults in general, and adult teachers specifically, going after minor students, that no one with an IQ above room temperature could have been unaware that attempting a sexual relationship with a minor, with a public school student, was tremendously dangerous. And no teacher of any experience could be unaware that students talk; this stuff can’t be kept secret for long.

Miss Mattingly is, of course, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!

Color me shocked that The Philadelphia Inquirer published the photo of an accused criminal. Technically, it isn’t a mugshot, so perhaps it’s allowed under a very narror interpretation of the newspaper’s stated mugshot policy. but I couldn’t find the newspaper’s Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — blurb, so I screen captured the image from the article itself. Since the photo caption states it was from a New Jersey state Supreme Court video, there isn’t a copyright issue.

Former South Jersey teacher charged with sexual assault began grooming student when he was 12, prosecutor alleges

Ashley Fisler was charged last week with sexually assaulting a former student at Orchard Valley Middle School in Washington Township.

by Melanie Burney | April Fool’s Day, 2026 | 3:33 PM EDT

A former Washington Township middle school teacher began grooming a student for a sexual relationship when he was 12 and abused him for years, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

The allegations against Ashley Fisler, who was charged last week with sexually assaulting a former student at Orchard Valley Middle School, were detailed during a detention hearing to determine whether she should be released pending trial. Superior Court Judge William Ziegler said he would issue a decision Thursday.

Note that Miss Fisler has been charged but not yet convicted. The newspaper stated that “Pre-conviction mugshots are inherently unfair, depicting suspects as criminals before guilt or innocence has been established.”

Fisler, who is no longer working as a teacher, is charged with six counts of sexual assault of a minor and one count each of endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct of a public servant.

“This was more than just six isolated acts of sex abuse against a minor,” said Kylie Finley, an assistant Gloucester County prosecutor. “This was a pattern of six years of grooming, manipulation, and abuse by this defendant as a middle school teacher against one of her active and former students.”

Miss Fisler, now 36, left the school system in 2023.

Teachers are all college educated, with at least a bachelor’s degree, and are normally pressured to be working toward their master’s as well. They really can’t be unaware of the scandal by Mary Kay Letourneau, and the fact that Mrs Letourneau spent years behind bars for it. Public schools have orientation lessons for all teachers, and inappropriate relationships are surely discussed. The news of Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in 2019 was national news, and Miss Fisler couldn’t have missed it. You just can’t expect this s(tuff) to stay hidden forever.

Well, if the allegations are true, she’s in a heap o’ trouble.

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, boys! These guys might not do all that well in prison

One would think that, with the hullabaloo over the Epstein files, that educated people, teachers who must have college degrees, would know better than to try to entice minors, but apparently Jordan Cobb, formerly a teacher at the Magoffin County, Kentucky, public schools is actually dumber than a box of rocks.

From the Salyersville Independent:

Former teachers federally indicted

By Heather Oney | Monday, May 5, 2025

PIKEVILLE – Two former Magoffin County Schools teachers were federally indicted and arrested on online enticement charges.

On Thursday, April 24, Jordan Cobb, 32, of Coon Creek Rd, in Salyersville, and Jason W. Back, 42, of Painters Lick Rd, also in Salyersville, were both federal indicted and charged with online enticement and Cobb was charged with an additional cyberstalking charge, according to federal court records. There are sealed indictments in both of their cases that may possibly include more charges, however.

Cobb’s federal indictment accuses him of attempting “to knowingly persuade, induce, entice, or coerce an individual under the age of 18, using a means or facility of interstate commerce, to engage in sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, namely, Rape in the Third Degree,” in or about April and May 2023. It further states that between June 2 and June 13, 2024, Cobb allegedly, “with the intent to harass or intimidate another person under the age of 18 years old, used an interactive computer service or electronic communication service of interstate commerce, or any other facility of interstate or foreign commerce, to engage in a course of conduct that causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause emotional distress to that person.”

That was almost a year ago, and now Mr Cobb has been convicted and sentenced:

EKY middle school teacher sentenced to 11 years for enticing a former student

By Austin R. Ramsey | Groundhog Day, February 2, 2026 | 4:07 PM EST

A former Magoffin County middle school teacher was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to enticement of a minor.

Jordan Cobb, 32, of Salyersville, pleaded guilty in October to engaging in an inappropriate Snapchat conversation with a former student. He sent a series of sexually explicit messages, offered to provide the minor with marijuana and made plans to meet for sex, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Under federal guidelines, Mr Cobb must serve at least 9 years and 4 months before becoming eligible for parole.

I will admit it: I missed both of these stories when they were first published, and only spotted them on doing some research after a subsequent story in which Mr Cobb was sentenced in state court, to five years on basically the same charges. Sadly, it’s no additional time for this terrible teacher:

It said under the terms of Thursday’s plea agreement, Cobb agreed to a five-year sentence and will be ineligible for probation. The sentence will run concurrent with federal charges related to the same investigation.

Concurrent, huh? No wonder Mr Cobb agreed to the plea deal; it means no additional time behind bars for him.

So, what about the other pervert?

Former teacher pleads guilty in federal court

By Heather Oney | Friday, January 16, 2026

ASHLAND – A former Magoffin County Schools teacher pleaded guilty to a federal charge of online enticement on Monday.

In federal court on January 12, Jason W. Back, 43, of Salyersville, was rearraigned in the case before District Judge David L. Bunning, changing his plea to “guilty” in exchange for a plea agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office.

According to the plea agreement signed by Back, he admitted to knowingly persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing an individual under the age of 18 to engage in unlawful sexual activity; he used a means or facility of interstate commerce to do so (i.e. a cell phone and/or online messaging); and that he knew the individual was under the age of 18.

The plea agreement states that from between March 6 through 9, 2023, in Magoffin County, Back persuaded the minor to engage in sexual activity, specifying that he was a high school teacher when he engaged in a text message conversation with a 17-year-old student, sending a series of sexually explicit messages using his iPhone, including messages outline a plan to meet for unprotected sex on March 9, 2023. According to the plea agreement, the prosecution has evidence that shows Back picked up the minor and that the two had sexual intercourse in Back’s car.

The plea agreement also indicated that, through a pattern of messages sent by Back, who was in a position of authority or special trust as a teacher, enticed the minor to engage in sexual intercourse, which would constitute a charge of third-degree rape.

The age of consent in Kentucky is 16, but this was still criminal because Mr Back held a position of authority over the student.

Mr Back is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday, May 4th, but the crime requires a minimum sentence of ten years, and can be up to life in prison.

These guys must be absolutely nuts. Magoffin County is a poor county, with a median household income of just $33,080 in 2024, but public school teachers in that county had a median salary of $42,043, certainly better than most people in that southeastern Kentucky county earned. These two guys aren’t exactly Brad Pitt in the looks department, but one would think that they could have managed to find a decent young lady who was an actual adult.

Instead, now they get to spend a decade behind bars, where life might be . . . unpleasant . . . for them. At the moment, I’m unable to generate much sympathy for them.

Posted on by

Why are so many violent haters of Western civilization themselves children of wealth and privilege?

The Philadelphia Inquirer published photos of the homes of the two Bucks County, Pennsylvania, ‘men’ charged with throwing homemade bombs at a protest outside of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, in New York City. To the left is the newspaper’s photo of the Clymer Street home of 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi. It did not take too much effort to look up that house, and then check Zillow, the real estate website, to find that the six-bedroom, five-bathroom, 5,816 ft² home has an estimated value of $2,238,200. Built in 2018, Zillow guesstimates it has a rental value of $6,611 per month.[1]I did not link the Zillow information because I do not wish to specify the exact house, and possibly cause problems for Mr Kayumi’s parents, at least no more problems than they already have.

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 3,217 ft² home shown as being Emir Balat’s is Zillow listed with a guesstimated value of $668,000. Not quite in Mr Kayumi’s league, but still well-to-do enough in a well-to-do neighborhood.

It would seem that young Messrs Kayumi and Balat were not exactly children of poverty.

Two Bucks County men who said they were inspired by ISIS charged with having bombs at violent Gracie Mansion protest, police say

Emir Balat, 18, of Langhorne, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, of Newtown, were charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction and related crimes.

by Jesse Bunch, Ellie Rushing, and Maggie Prosser | Sunday, March 8, 2026 | 8:42 PM EDT | Updated: Monday, March 9, 2026 | 5:29 PM EDT

Two Bucks County men arrested for attempting to detonate homemade bombs at a protest outside Gracie Mansion in Manhattan over the weekend said they were inspired by ISIS, court documents show.

Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, were charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction, attempting to support a foreign terrorist organization, and related crimes by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, according to documents unsealed Monday afternoon.

Balat, of Langhorne, threw an improvised explosive device and a smoking projectile toward a group of people who gathered Saturday afternoon for a demonstration planned by far-right provocateur Jake Lang called “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City,” said New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Kayumi, of Newtown, helped Balat, she said, handing him a second explosive device that, like the first bomb, did not detonate, and no one was injured.

Did you catch that? The headline itself states that Messrs Balat and Kayumi were “inspired by ISIS,” but it is Jake long who is described as a “far-right provocateur.” Provocateur is defined as someone who provokes other people to take rash actions or break the law. Reporters Jesse Bunch, Ellie Rushing, and Maggie Prosser have, by the use of that description, placed blame on Jake Long for the crimes of the actual (alleged) criminals.

Federal prosecutors say that after their arrests, Balat and Kayumi made multiple references to the Islamic State, a trans-national Jihadist network that has claimed responsibility for a range of global terrorist attacks.

Also see: Nina Bookout, “Gracie Mansion Bombers Pledged To ISIS And Wanted Maximum Carnage“

Balat wrote on a piece of paper that he “pledge[d] allegience [sic] to the Islamic State,” according to the charging document.

Balat told investigators he wanted to carry out an attack “even bigger” than the Boston Marathon bombing, which he noted had resulted in “only three deaths,” the document said.

After Balat was taken into custody, the document said, he told NYPD officers from the back of a police vehicle that “this isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet. … We take action!”

There’s a lot more at the original.

All of this leads me to think back to loony Luigi Mangioni, the (alleged) killer of Brian Thompson, the Chief Executive Officer of United Heaththcare. He, too, was a child of privilege, attending a tony, private, male-only high school, and then the University of Pennsylvania, an exclusive Ivy League college. Where the pro-‘Palestinian’ protesters at the not-so-exclusive University of Kentucky were able to protest peaceably and then leave, the sit-ins and break-ins and harassment of Jewish students seem to have primarily been on our Ivy League campuses. The children of privilege, benefitting from the fruits of their parents’ work and Western civilization in general are the ones who seem most to hate Western civilization. Why are so many violent haters of Western civilization themselves children of wealth and privilege? From the two ISIS-inspired Bucks County idiots, to loony Luigi, to the privileged and pampered denizens of Columbia and Penn and Hahvahd, the radicals are supporting people from cultures who would happily slit their throats.

Remember: many of the protests occurred before Donald Trump won re-election.

What kind of education are these students receiving that they somehow think that they can have their laptops and cell phones and $6.00 lattes from Starbucks when they support tearing down the capitalist Western civilization societies which provide such benefits, to do what, enjoy the squalor of the vast majority of the Muslims living in non-OPEC Middle Eastern nations or sub-Saharan Africa?

References

References
↑1 I did not link the Zillow information because I do not wish to specify the exact house, and possibly cause problems for Mr Kayumi’s parents, at least no more problems than they already have.
Posted on by

Now you know why I call it Journolism! ** Updated! 9:05 PM EST ** #FreedomOfThePress includes the right not to publish what you don't want to publish, but concealing uncomfortable facts hurts the media's reputation

In the wake of the roughly 300 layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been a lot of blame spread, both among the subscribers who quit for owner Jeff Bezos refusing to endorse Kamala Harris Emhoff in 2024, and the paper itself for it’s very liberal leanings. The Post managed to piss off both the conservatives who might have been willing to subscribe, and the liberals who cancelled their subscriptions. Mr Bezos, in trying to fix a long-ongoing problem, fouled up.

But let me be clear here: the Freedom of the Press includes the freedom not to publish something. That should be obvious: there are only so many pages a newspaper can print, though with digital publishing these days, those limits have expanded.

And now we see just what isn’t being published, when it doesn’t fit Teh Narrative. When the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in a small town in northeast British Columbia occurred, the Associated Press told us, at 8:59 AM EST, that the (alleged) killer was a “woman” and a “female suspect.” At 9:32 AM EST, CNN simply identified the killer as “they,” being careful to not use a pronoun to specify the killer’s sex. At 9:32 AM EST, The New York Times told us nothing about the shooter.

But, as early as 6:48 AM EST, Matt Van Swol was telling us on Twitter the news which was not politically correct, that the killer was a mentally ill boy who thought he was a girl. I checked the credentialed media, and found several instances of the media concealing the knowledge that the (alleged) killer was transgender.

The killer’s name is Jesse Van Rootselaar, though initially identified as Jesse Strang, 18 years old, and yes, he’s transgender.

I don’t get it. The credentialed media want to build trust in their accuracy, so why conceal information that they know will come out soon enough?

My spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And now you know why I spell it that way.

Well, eventually even The New York Times had to admit what had previously been revealed, that young Mr Van Rootselaar was the killer, and that the “suspect” was born as biologically male and chose to identify as a female about six years ago. That acknowledgement was time-stamped at 2:45 PM EST, just three minutes short of eight hours after Mr Van Swol’s tweet. The Times also revealed that the “suspect” had quit school four years earlier, which would have meant he wasn’t in school since age 14.

From the Times at 3:19 PM EST:

“Police had attended that residence on a number of occasions over the last several years dealing with concerns of mental health with our suspect,” Dwayne McDonald, the deputy commissioner, said, referring to the home where the suspect’s mother and stepbrother were found dead. On one of those occasions, “firearms were seized.” The most recent police call to the residence was in the spring of last year.

So, the local police already knew that young Mr Van Rootselaar was just plain nuts. Isn’t being biologically one sex but believing you are the other one definition of just plain nuts?

Of course, the newspaper continued to use the feminine pronouns to refer to the killer, as did local officials, because for some stupid reason they think a guy calling himself a girl really is a girl; are the editors and writers at the Times just as nuts as Mr Van Rootselaar?

Yeah, I think that they are!

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Adrian Gonzales, mugshot by Uvalde County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office, and is a public record.

No, Adrian Gonzales, pictured to the right, is not your typical criminal. Rather, he was the police officer stationed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County, Texas, who channeled Scot Peterson, the coward of Broward, and chose not to confront the shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers during the shootings.

Trial begins for former Uvalde officer charged in Robb Elementary shooting response

Adrian Gonzales faces multiple counts of endangerment, abandonment of a child.

By Peter Charalambous, Josh Margolin, Jenny Wagnon Courts, and Jim Scholz | Monday, January 5, 2026 | 5:12 AM EST

Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.

Perhaps Mr Gonzalves is not in as big a heap o’ trouble as the headline suggests, given that Mr Peterson was acquitted.

Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.

Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.

The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.

Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.

I will state for the record that I have never been put in the position of having to charge into a situation with an armed killer. Yeah, we’d all like to think that we’d be brave enough to take action, but until you actually face the bullets, face the gunfire, knowing that there is a chance that you would be killed, you can’t actually know how you would react.

Our entire history is full of men who did bravely charge into the face of gunfire. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz said of the Marines who fought on Iwo Jima, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue,” and 6,821 Americans died in that battle, along with another 19,217 wounded. Out of 73,000 American troops — and the D-Day landings included British, Canadian, and French troops as well — who hit the beaches in Normandy on D-Day, 2,501 were killed, and more than 5,000 were wounded. These men, trained to run into the fire, their courage doubtlessly bolstered by the courage of the men beside them, did their duty. In our bloodiest war, the War Between the States, somewhere between 620,000 and possibly as high as 850,000 men went bravely toward their deaths, at a time in which the intense military training of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines during World War II was mostly non-existent.

American courage has not been in scarce supply, overall, but it was a scarce quantity at Uvalde. Many of the Americans who hit the beaches were draftees, many of the 58,200 Americans whose lives were wasted in Vietnam, were conscripts[1]Full disclosure: I was draft eligible in 1972, but by then American involvement in Vietnam was ending. With a high lottery number, and the great reduction of American involvement in that waste case … Continue reading, but every law enforcement officer who arrived on the scene in Uvalde was a volunteer, was a man who had personally committed himself to running toward the fire.

They were trained to do just that:

Two months before a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the school district’s then-police chief was required to attend a training about how to respond to an active shooter, which instructed in no uncertain terms that an “officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker.”

When Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District at the time of the May 2022 shooting, was confronted with precisely the situation his training should have prepared him for, he did the opposite of what the training instructed would have saved lives, according to a newly released trove of documents from the Uvalde school district.

“Time is the number one enemy during active shooter response,” a lesson plan for the training said. “The best hope that innocent victims have is that officers immediately move into action to isolate, distract, or neutralize the threat, even if that means one officer acting alone.”

Officers Arredondo and Gonzales were trained to run toward the fire, and did not. Now they are facing charges over their inactions that sad day. There’s some hesitancy on my part to write about men who chose not to do their duty, in a potentially lethal situation, because I have not personally been tested in such a way, and who knows? Perhaps I would have ducked and run for cover had I been there.

But I was not there, and have taken no training or commitment to run toward the fire. These trials may establish just what the actual commitment of those who do so commit really means.

References

References
↑1 Full disclosure: I was draft eligible in 1972, but by then American involvement in Vietnam was ending. With a high lottery number, and the great reduction of American involvement in that waste case of a war, I was not called, and did not volunteer.