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The Patriot Front marches

Twitter was full of stuff on this march held by the Patriot Front.

Much was made of the marchers being masked, masked to conceal their identities rather than any submission to COVID-19 masking requirements, and it looked so staged that many though it had to be a joke, a set-up by the Lincoln Project or some other silliness group. The group marched in quasi military order, and they were carrying American flags. To the left, carrying the flag is apparently a hate symbol. That the marchers were masked led to cries of outrage by the left, the same left which thought nothing about antifa marching masked throughout 2020’s summer of riots.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

And that’s the point: the Patriot Front exercised their constitutional rights of freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. Unlike the left’s Mostly Peaceful Protests™ of last year, the Patriot Front was peaceful. They assaulted no one, and they set no buildings on fire.

The masks? Given how the feds were using facial recognition software to identify and prosecute people who took part in the January 6th Capitol kerfuffle, and have held some of the charged without bail, despite not having charged them with any violent offences, who can blame them? Antifa have largely gotten away with violence, mayhem, looting and arson by going masked, so why shouldn’t the Patriot Front use the same tactic during a peaceful protest. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the patriot Front as a white supremacist group, and tries to get members fired from their jobs, so yeah, it’s important to the members.

You don’t have to agree with the group’s message to support their right to speak and assemble as they please.

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For The New York Times, some news is just not fit to print!

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

    On August 18, 1896, (Adolph Simon) Ochs acquired control of the financially faltering New York Times, again with borrowed money ($75,000). To set his paper apart from its more sensational competitors, Ochs adopted the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” (first used October 25, 1896) and insisted on reportage that lived up to that promise. Despite an early shortage of capital, he refused advertisements that he considered dishonest or in poor taste. In 1898, when sales were low and expenses unusually high, he probably saved The New York Times by cutting its price from three cents to one cent. He thereby attracted many readers who previously had bought the more sensational penny papers, especially the New York World and the Journal. By 1900 Ochs was able to purchase a controlling interest in The New York Times.

In its long and august history, the Times, through many editors and publishers, was our newspaper of record, printing many things that the government opposed, and winning its right to publish the so-called Pentagon Papers, despite the attempt by the Nixon Administration to prohibit such.

But now? The Times reported on the stabbing murder of Columbia University graduate student Davide Giri, but left out a lot of detail.

    Columbia University Student Dies in Stabbing Near Campus

    The graduate student, Davide Giri, was fatally stabbed near the Manhattan campus on Thursday night. A man has been arrested and charged with murder, the police said.

    By Troy Closson and Lola Fadulu | Friday, December 3, 2021

    A graduate student at Columbia University died and another man was wounded after the two were stabbed in Upper Manhattan on Thursday night, the police and college officials said.

    The student, Davide Giri, was traveling home from soccer practice just before 11 p.m. when he was stabbed in the abdomen about two blocks from his apartment building, the police and friends said. He was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

    The police arrested Vincent Pinkney, 25, of Manhattan, in the attacks and charged him on Friday with murder, attempted murder, assault, attempted assault and three counts of criminal possession of a weapon. He had been found in Central Park, and the police said that he had been menacing a third man with a knife.

    In a campuswide letter sent on Friday morning, Lee C. Bollinger, the university’s president, identified Mr. Giri, 30, as a student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and expressed sadness over his death.

There’s more at the original, telling us about the victim, and noting that a similar killing had occurred just a few blocks away, when Tessa Majors, a student at Bernard College, was killed during a robbery.

What you won’t find in the original are any details about the (alleged) assailant, Vincent Pinkney. For those, you have to go across the pond, to London’s Daily Mail:

    Gang member, 25, charged in fatal Manhattan stabbing spree that killed Columbia student and wounded Italian tourist has been arrested 11 times since 2012 and was on parole for gang attack

    • Alleged killer Vincent Pinkney, 25, has a lengthy rap sheet and 11 arrests on robbery, assault and other charges
    • He is accused of stabbing a Columbia grad student to death and wounding tourist in mad crime spree
    • Davide Giri, 30, a PhD candidate in computer science at Columbia University, was stabbed to death
    • Italian tourist, Robert Malastina, 27, was wounded in Central Park just 15 minutes after the murder
    • Pinkney was arrested after threatening another man, 29, who was walking in the park with his girlfriend
    • Police said Pinkney, who was out on parole, had 11 prior arrests dating back to 2012
    • The fatal stabbing took place just a block from where Bernard College student Tessa Majors was killed in 2019
    • NYC murders have shot up by 42 per cent since 2019, and overall crime this year is up by more than 3 per cent

    By Keith Griffith and Ronny Reyes | Published: 1:00 EST, 4 December 2021 | Updated: 01:29 EST, 4 December 2021

    The suspect accused of killing a Columbia University grad student and stabbing an Italian tourist in a demented Manhattan crime spree is a career criminal who was out on parole for a gang attack, it has been revealed.

    Vincent Pinkney, 25, was escorted into NPYD Central Booking on Friday night, as hundreds gathered on the South Lawn of Columbia in a vigil for Davide Giri, a PhD candidate in computer science.

    Giri, 30, died around 11pm on Thursday after police say he was stabbed in the stomach by Pinkney, who allegedly went on to wound an Italian tourist, Robert Malastina, 27, outside Central Park before ‘menacing’ another man, 29, with a large kitchen knife as the victim strolled the park with his girlfriend.

    Pinkney is a member of Bloods gang off-shoot, Everybody Killas, who has at least 11 prior arrests dating back to 2012 and was out on parole for a 2015 gang assault, police said.

    He was released from prison in June 2018 after serving a four-year sentence for a brutal attack in which he and three accomplices slashed, punched and kicked a victim in an assault that was caught on camera, according to the New York Post.

    On Friday night, Pinkney was transferred from the 26 Precinct to Central Booking, wearing a white Tyvek jumpsuit.

    The five-foot-five, 140-pound suspect was escorted in handcuffs by two burly NYPD detectives.

    Meanwhile, shocked Columbia students gathered on the school’s central quad for a candlelight vigil honoring Giri a sixth-year doctoral student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

That video of Mr Pinkney’s arrest tells you all that you need to know about why The New York Times found the details about the (alleged) killer not to be news which is fit to print. For the journolists[1]The 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 … Continue reading in the Times’ newsroom, the ones who forced out liberal columnist Bari Weiss because she just wasn’t #woke enough, the fact that a young, black gang member (allegedly) stabbed to death a white PhD candidate in computer science at an Ivy League college just does not fit Teh Narrative. The leftists who decry ‘mass incarceration’ just can’t deal with the fact that Mr Pinkney should not have been able to stab Mr Giri, because he should have still been behind bars on Thursday night.

I’ve said it before: the problem isn’t mass incarceration, but that not enough people have been incarcerated, for not enough time.

As far as Mr Pinkney is concerned, a 5’5″, 140 lb pipsqueak punk, who (allegedly) proved what a big man he is, he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison. If he had been treated more strictly by the state of New York for his past offenses, if he had been given longer sentences for past crimes and still been behind bars last Thursday night, he would still be looking forward to getting out of prison at some point in the future. Yeah, he was stupid Thursday night, almost surely is congenitally stupid, and it would not surprise me if we found out that he was drunk or stoned, but I come around to the fact that those who treated him so leniently in the past — remember: he has eleven previous arrests on his rap sheet — did him no favors.

References

References
↑1 The 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. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Being taught about white privilege, by The Philadelphia Inquirer

As a white guy who grew up poor, I will admit to not having accepted the concept of #WhitePrivilege. As a now-resident in eastern Kentucky, a poor area with a population roughly 98% white, it’s sometimes difficult to see a whole lot of white privilege around me. When I lived in Pennsylvania, in Carbon County, 95.4% non-Hispanic white, with most people having to leave the county for a decent job, white privilege sure didn’t seem like a thing to me.

But the good, #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading people of The Philadelphia Inquirer changed my mind. Columnist Helen Ubiñas pointed out, in December of 2020, that the vast majority of homicides reported in the newspaper were just a few paragraphs long, rarely even noting the victims’ names. The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; the city’s population is only 38.3% non-Hispanic black.

What do I see in the Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Two Philadelphia black women were recently murdered in the city, 32-year-old Jessica Covington and her unborn daughter, as well as that of 24-year-old Sykea Patton, shot in broad daylight in the 800 block of North Preston Street, while walking her sons home from school. The Inquirer, which does love to print more stories when seemingly innocent victims are murdered, had three stories which told readers about the killings of the two women, and the capture of a suspect in one case.

Samuel Sean Collington, photo shared by his mother with Channel 10, and from this tweet. Click to enlarge.

Now comes the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. On Thursday, the Inquirer published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.

The Inquirer even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.

Compared to the coverage the Inquirer gives concerning black victims, that’s some real white privilege there!

Oh, it’s not as though the Inquirer doesn’t publish stories about black victims, at least when it comes to black victims who are ‘innocents’. The murder of Samir Jefferson merited two stories, and four stories about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes.[2]I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be. A story is merited if the victim was a local high school basketball star, and cute little white girls killed get tremendous coverage: a search of the newspaper’s website for Rian Thal returned 4855 results! But for the vast majority of black victims, Inquirer coverage is a couple paragraphs, mostly in the late evening, and which have disappeared from the main page of the newspaper’s website by morning.

Did the newspaper’s editors think that no one would notice this? Or is it that the editors have so internalized their own biases that they didn’t realize it themselves?

White privilege? I doubt that this was how the editors wanted to educate others, and me, about what it means, but they sure have done the job well. They have taught me that, to the editors of the Inquirer, white lives matter, and black lives really don’t. Their actions have spoken much more loudly, and more clearly, than their words.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be.
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As people get tired of living in fear, fear must be stoked again, to enable greater government control

It seems that the plebeians have been getting a little bit too complacent, so, once again, fear has to be ramped up. From CNBC:

Are you terrified yet? Are you quaking in fear? Are you ready to surrender more of your rights, your freedoms, your liberty, to those who know better than you, those who only want to protect you, for your own good?

Dr Leong is in Singapore, and should have no influence on US policy, but, not to worry, we have our own Dr Anthony Fauci:

    “The profile of the mutations strongly suggest that it’s going to have an advantage in transmissibility and that it might evade immune protection that you would get,” U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Dr Fauci does have the President’s ear.

The CNBC article included this video, with Dr Syra Madad, an infectious disease expert and a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is part of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

And that’s the key: she may be an infectious disease expert, but she’s part of the Kennedy School of Government! She’s ‘urging’ everybody to mask up and get tested frequently, but when someone connected to a school of government ‘urges’ something, we all know that significant non-compliance will result in that asked to become something mandated.

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Hold them accountable!

Latif Williams, photo by, Philadelphia Police Department, via KYT-TV, Philadelphia.

As we noted just a few days ago, murder is not usually an entry-level crime. Killers usually have a string of leading in crimes, of increasing seriousness, before they finally blow someone’s brains out. And it seems that 17-year-old Latif Williams was having quite the run of criminal activity before he (allegedly) shot Temple University student Samuel Sean Collington to death during a botched carjacking attempt.

I will admit to having gotten it wrong when I stated, “Since juvenile records are normally sealed, we’ll probably never know if he was treated over-leniently by District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office.” But it seems that the rules are different when a black juvenile (allegedly) kills a white student, especially one who was well-known and well-liked by several people in the city government:

    Suspect in killing of Temple student Samuel Collington — who had been arrested and released after a July carjacking — surrenders to police

    Latif Williams was in custody earlier this year in connection with a gunpoint carjacking. He was released on house arrest, and charges were later withdrawn when a witness failed to show in court.

    By Anna Orso | Wednesday, December 1, 2021 | 9:12 PM ST

    The teenage suspect in the killing of Temple University student Samuel Collington during a botched carjacking over the weekend surrendered to police Wednesday, officials said in a statement without elaborating.

    Earlier, officials had identified Latif Williams, 17, of Olney, as the person they said shot the 21-year-old Collington on Sunday on the 2200 block of North Park Avenue, near the school’s North Philadelphia campus. The student had just returned after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his family in Prospect Park, Delaware County.

    Samuel Sean Collington, photo shared by his mother with Channel 10, and from this tweet. Click to enlarge.

    Officials on Wednesday identified Latif Williams, 17, of Olney, as the person they said fatally shot Collington, 21, of Prospect Park, Delaware County, on the 2200 block of North Park Avenue, near the school’s North Philadelphia campus, on Sunday. Investigators said they used video and forensic evidence found at the scene to link Williams to the killing, and law enforcement sources said he is under investigation in connection with several armed robberies in the area.

    Williams was in custody in August after he was charged in a gunpoint carjacking. According to court records, a man told police that late on July 31, he was giving Williams and a second male a ride to a restaurant when Williams pointed a gun at his head and told him to get out of the car. . . .

    Williams was arrested Aug. 14 and charged with aggravated assault, robbery, and related counts. His bail was initially set at $200,000 and he was detained. At a bail hearing less than a week later, Municipal Court Judge Joffie C. Pittman III allowed Williams’ release on unsecured bail, meaning he would need to pay bail only if he violated the terms of his release. Pittman ordered him released on house arrest.

So, Judge Pittman released an accused carjacker, who (allegedly) threatened his victim with a gun, with unsecured bail, which is to say: no bail at all. Mr Williams was released to house arrest, but there is no indication in the Inquirer story that young Mr Williams was placed under electronic monitoring.

    In September, prosecutors dropped the charges before a preliminary hearing at which they would have had to show that there was probable cause to believe Williams had committed a crime.

Note that the prosecution dropped this case well after Judge Pittman released Mr Williams with no bail. The prosecution was dropped because a “key witness” failed to appear. Does the District Attorney’s office make any effort to look up these witnesses before court dates, to get them to appear? We are not told in this story.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Killadelphia’ D.A. Turned Loose Teen Carjacker Who Murdered Marxist Student

It seems as though, when young Mr Williams was already in custody, law enforcement failed! First we had an idiot judge who basically turned loose a suspect charged with armed robbery and aggravated assault with no bail. Then, when a preliminary hearing was scheduled, the District Attorney’s office failed to ensure that their key witness would be present.

The result? If Mr Williams is indeed the killer, the actions, or inactions, of Judge Pittman and Larry Krasner, directly led to the murder of Mr Collington. If Mr Williams is proven to be the murderer, is there any reason why Judge Pittman and District Attorney Krasner shouldn’t become young Mr Williams’ cellmates? Is there any reason that the “key witness” who failed to appear, whose refusal to provide the evidence needed to keep Mr Williams locked up, shouldn’t be held legally responsible for the murder of Mr Collington?

We need to hold law enforcement officials and judges accountable for the consequences of their decisions! Because nobody stood up and did the right thing, Mr Collington is stone cold graveyard dead.

It’s simple: hold idiotic judges like Mr Pittman, and soft-hearted, soft-headed prosecutors like Mr Krasner, responsible for the consequences of their decisions, and other judges and prosecutors will quickly fall into line.

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Were they not paying attention? It seems that black lives really don't matter to Temple University students

936 West Somerset Avenue, from Google Maps streetview. Click to enlarge.

I will admit it: it has been a long time, over ten years, since I last drove down Broad Street in Philadelphia. At least during that last time, long stretches of Broad Street were the combat zone in the City of Brotherly Love. Now, the Google Maps steetview shows a North Broad Street that has, itself, been fixed up some, but when I look at some of the side streets, like West Somerset Avenue, or 9th Street, things don’t look so hot.

But, though I hate the idiotic term #WhitePrivilege, boy, do some of these Temple University students exhibit it! With 510 homicides in Philadelphia as of 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, November 30th, the vast majority of which were black victims murdered by black killers, what really, really bothers the Temple students is that a white student was shot to death.

    Temple’s campus is on edge after a student was shot to death: ‘Students are afraid’

    Philadelphia’s growing gun violence and more than 500 homicides, which came painfully close to home for Temple students in the last couple weeks, have put the campus on edge.

    by Susan Snyder and Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, December 1, 2021

    It was an emergency meeting, held one day after the killing of a Temple student outside his apartment in an apparent robbery and carjacking attempt.

    Some student government members who would normally show up in person tuned in to Monday’s meeting by Zoom instead. They didn’t feel comfortable walking at night after Samuel Collington was shot in the middle of the day within a block of campus, said student government president Bradley Smutek.

    “Students are afraid. Parents are afraid. Parents are afraid for students’ safety,” Smutek said.

    Latif Williams, photo by, Philadelphia Police Department, via KYT-TV, Philadelphia.

    Police on Wednesday said they identified a suspect, 17-year-old Latif Williams, in connection with Collington’s killing. As Williams remained at large, Philadelphia’s growing gun violence crisis, with more than 500 homicides this year — including the Nov. 16 shooting death of an 18-year-old three blocks from the North Philadelphia campus — has hit painfully close for Temple students. It has put the campus on edge, and increased the university’s urgency to initiate safety measures to protect its young people.

    Temple president Jason Wingard in an email message to the campus Tuesday night promised over the next days and weeks to increase security, including working with the city Police Department to establish more patrols in nearby student residential areas and aiming to boost the 115-officer campus police force by 50%. The university also intends to upgrade lighting, cameras, and emergency phones and increase the availability of shuttle service and its walking escort program, he said.

There’s a lot more at the original, but look what’s been done here: the Philadelphia Police Department released a prior mugshot of the suspected gunman, a 17-year-old juvenile, when juvenile suspects are almost never named, and their mugshots almost never released. The article noted, further down, that the suspect “was involved in prior crimes,” which would be why the police already had a mugshot of him. Since juvenile records are normally sealed, we’ll probably never know if he was treated over-leniently by District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office.[1]Since Mr Krasner has already been in office for four years, unless young Mr Williams was younger than 13 at the time he (allegedly) committed his first offense, it would be Mr Krasner’s office … Continue reading

2700 block of North 9th St, near Temple campus.

There’s a photo accompanying the Philadelphia Inquirer article referenced above, obviously taken during warmer weather, showing us a nice, clean scene, full of (mostly) white students, what appears to be a black attendant beside a service truck, and a (seemingly) black campus police officer on a bicycle, protecting that heavily white campus[2]Temple’s student demographic breakdown: 53.6% white; 12.0% Asian; 12.2% black; 7.1% Hispanic. The 2021 tuition & fees of Temple University are $16,970 for Pennsylvania residents and … Continue reading, students who are now worried because an apparently innocent white student was murdered during what appears to be a robbery.

All of those times that I’ve said that black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer? It seems that those black lives don’t matter to Temple students, either, because they haven’t gotten upset about those 510 mostly black murder victims in the city, but are scared fecesless now that a white student was sent untimely to his eternal reward.

And the University? In a city in which the community hate the police, and many on the left have wanted to defund the Philadelphia Police Department, Temple is planning to increase the 115-officer campus police department by 50%! If there is a clearer example of “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged” than that, it hasn’t occurred to me!

The left, including many Temple University students, have been shouting #BlackLivesMatter! but, to me, actions speak far more truthfully than words, and to Temple University, black lives haven’t mattered very much.

References

References
↑1 Since Mr Krasner has already been in office for four years, unless young Mr Williams was younger than 13 at the time he (allegedly) committed his first offense, it would be Mr Krasner’s office which handled any prosecution of him.
↑2 Temple’s student demographic breakdown: 53.6% white; 12.0% Asian; 12.2% black; 7.1% Hispanic. The 2021 tuition & fees of Temple University are $16,970 for Pennsylvania residents and $29,882 for out-of-state students. The 2021 graduate school tuition & fees are $17,846 for Pennsylvania residents and $24,236 for others.
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A few news items about excess government power

Lexington Catholic High School will drop its mandatory mask mandate:

    Beginning January 10, 2022, Lexington Catholic High School will switch to a mask “optional” COVID policy for all students and staff, principal Matthew George told families in a letter this week.

    “Lexington Catholic will closely monitor the health and safety of everyone in our building and throughout our community. Optional masking may be suspended at any time if the need arises and return to mandatory masking,” George said.

    For the short term, Catholic Diocese of Lexington Bishop John Stowe has extended the mask mandate through January 7, 2022.

More at this link.

This story was published on Friday, November 26th, so with the new panic over the Omicron variant, who knows if the mask mandate will actually be lifted. Even if the principal decides that it should, Bishop John Stowe could, and my guess is probably would, override it. There is no statewide mask mandate in Kentucky, because the General Assembly greatly restricted the Governor’s ’emergency’ authority under KRS 39A.

    Judge in Ky. blocks federal contractor vaccine mandate, granting AG Cameron’s request

    By Austin Horn | Tuesday, November 30, 2021 | 3:42 PM EST | Updated: 5:31 PM EST

    A federal judge in Kentucky issued a preliminary injunction effectively blocking implementation of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal government contractors and subcontractors on Tuesday.

    U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, who serves the Eastern District of Kentucky, issued the opinion and order Tuesday afternoon. It came in response to a challenge from Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who joined many other state attorneys general in challenging the mandate.

    “This is not a case about whether vaccines are effective. They are,” Van Tatenhove wrote. “Nor is this a case about whether the government, at some level, and in some circumstances, can require citizens to obtain vaccines. It can.”

There’s more at the original. Judge Tatenhove’s ruling was on very narrow grounds, that the vaccine orders were not properly issued:

    One key argument of the U.S. government that received some pushback was President Biden’s use of a procurement statute to justify the mandate for contractors and subcontractors. Van Tatenhove wrote that “even for a good cause” like limiting the spread of COVID-19, Biden could not go beyond his congressionally delegated authority in implementing the statute.

    “It strains credulity that Congress intended… a procurement statute to be the basis for promulgating a public health measure such as mandatory vaccination,” Van Tatenhove wrote. “If a vaccination mandate has a close enough nexus to economy and efficiency in federal procurement, then the statute could be used to enact virtually any measure at the president’s whim under the guise of economy and efficiency.”

Sadly, things are worse in the Keystone State:

    Pennsylvania’s school-mask mandate will stay in place for now, state Supreme Court says

    The court granted a request from Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to keep the mandate in place while it appeals a lower court ruling striking down the requirement.

    by Maddie Hanna | Tuesday, November 30, 2021

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Tuesday that the state’s school-mask mandate can remain in place at least for the next week while Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration appeals a lower-court ruling striking down the requirement.

    The order followed a request from Wolf’s administration to keep the mandate in place while it appeals the Commonwealth Court ruling that faulted the state Health Department for how it imposed the requirement.

    Siding with Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R., Centre) and other parents, the Commonwealth Court said Nov. 10 that acting Health Secretary Alison Beam had overstepped her authority in ordering masking at the start of the school year by failing to follow the state’s procedures for implementing new regulations. The court later set Dec. 4 as the day for the mandate to be lifted, an action sought by Corman.

    The state’s highest court said the mandate could stay in effect pending consideration of the appeal, which is scheduled for oral arguments Dec. 8. “Nothing in this order shall be construed as a position regarding the merits of this appeal,” the court said.

    Had the mandate expired Saturday, school districts would have faced the decision of whether to require masking. Some, including Philadelphia, have indicated no immediate plans to lift masking, though mandates have remained a fraught topic in a number of area communities.

    Wolf said earlier this month that he expected to lift the state mandate Jan. 17. That announcement came prior to the Commonwealth Court ruling.

One of us is absolutely certain that Governor Wolf would have found some reason not to lift the order on schedule. Let’s face it: Democratic politicians just love to order people around!

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Killadelphia Black lives don't seem to matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

How many times have I said it? The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

A couple of ‘innocents’ have been murdered recently, the killing of Jessica Covington meriting two separate stories, while that of Sykea Patton was mentioned in two stories as well. And now another seemingly innocent person has been gunned down:

    Samuel Sean Collington, photo shared by his mother with Channel 10, and from this tweet. Click to enlarge.

    Temple University student killed in shooting Sunday

    The student was 21 years old.

    by Cassie Owens and Jonathan Lai | Sunday, November 28, 2021

    Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student and fellow with the City Commissioner’s Office, died Sunday afternoon shortly after being shot in North Philadelphia.

    The 21-year-old Collington was shot twice in the chest, authorities say. He was pronounced dead around 2 p.m. at Temple University Hospital. Police are still searching for a suspect.

    According to 6abc reporter Bob Brooks, sources told him that a robber attacked the student after he finished parking his car, then killed him. The incident occurred just blocks from the university’s main campus.

There’s considerably more at the original.

I will admit it: I had missed the story in the Inquirer on Sunday, and this tweet of mine was in error; the story is dated on Sunday.

But the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reported that there have been 506 homicides in the city so far this year, after reporting an even 500 as of 11:59 PM EST on Thanksgiving day. That’s six people who have been sent early to their eternal rewards, and, unless I missed, the Inquirer didn’t mention four of them. Black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mr Collington qualifies, I suppose, as an ‘innocent,’ but also as someone already of note, as you can read in the referenced Inquirer story.

The two women slain on whom the Inquirer reported appear to be innocent victims, as is Mr Collington, but I have to ask: for the anti-racist news organization that publisher Elizabeth Hughes says the Inquirer is, and must be, why don’t we see such stories concerning the vast majority of the murder victims in the city? The vast majority of them are black males, and if #BlackLivesMatter, one would think that the Inquirer would cover them, would send out its reporters to find out and tell the stories. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Was the life of young Mr Kutt really that much more important than that of the mostly unnamed men and women spilling out their life’s blood on the city’s mean streets? Most of them weren’t 6’5″ forwards for Simon Gratz High School, a leader on the city’s 2019 6A title, but were their lives really worth nothing? Even in death, a young black gang banger’s life can have some lesson for those growing up and somehow idealizing, or fearing, the thug lifestyle. If only Editor Gabriel Escobar would actually send out a reporter or three to investigate.

Then again, perhaps the Editor knows too much already, and doesn’t want to send a reporter out into what could be a life-threatening situation. But, that too, would be a story that ought to be told.

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Update: 6:45 PM EST:

Yup, the Inquirer published a second story on Mr Collington’s murder!

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Starvation as a tool of diplomacy

Now we know why Kim Jong-un has lost weight!

Food Aid to North Korea Leads to Starvation | Opinion

Gordon G. Chang | Monday, November 29, 2021

A North Korean court on November 10 sentenced two cadres to life imprisonment for “anti-socialist and non-socialist acts”—in this case, “violating the closed border.” The officials, trying to alleviate a severe food shortage in North Hamgyong province, were buying rice from China.

The convictions come as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea heads into another famine, perhaps even worse than the four-year “Arduous March” of the mid-1990s. Then, perhaps as many as 3.5 million people died, representing more than 10 percent of the population.

North Korea’s people have just been told to not expect relief until 2025. “Some of the residents are saying that the situation right now is so serious that they don’t know if they can even survive the coming winter,” said a “source,” a resident in the border town of Sinuiju, to Radio Free Asia Korean Service on October 21. “They say that telling us to endure hardship until 2025 is the same as telling us to starve to death.”

Several paragraphs follow, telling readers about the policies which have led to serious food shortages, not the least of which was the Kim Jong-un regime’s decision in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; as the Hermit Kingdom closed down its borders and restricted trade, the things needed to increase food production went unsupplied.

Then we get to the money quotes:

Why not send in trucks with assistance? The essential problem is the diversion of food aid from intended recipients. “The Kim regime controls the distribution system and prioritizes a certain class of people—the elites who help run the system,” Tara O of the East Asia Research Center and the Hudson Institute tells Newsweek. “In the past, North Korea even exported food aid in the midst of famine, and it’s likely it used the foreign currency derived from the sales for other purposes, such as nuclear weapons development.”

As O, a former U.S. Air Force officer, says, “North Korea has faced chronic food shortages for decades, and it never addressed the root causes, which is its control system of central planning, skewed prioritization and isolation.” Food aid, she points out, “would be used to perpetuate the very system that brings about hunger.”

O is right. Donors unfortunately allow the regime to distribute their food, which leads to a multitude of ills, including the regime bragging that other nations are sending tribute to the Kim family. That’s why the regime continues to practice “mendicant diplomacy.”

Simply put, Gordon G. Chang, the author of The Coming Collapse of China and Losing South Korea, is telling anyone who will listen that it’s wiser, in the long run, not to send food to the starving people of the DPRK, to destroy the Kim dynasty, or at least radically change the system. The food will be provided mainly to Kim dynasty allies, and the common people won’t see much of it, so it’s wiser just to let them starve, to weaken the regime.

But, let’s be honest here: in World War II we were perfectly willing to kill civilians, through bullets and bombs, through firestorm attacks and, in the end, two atomic bombs. Starvation is slower, but again, honesty demands that we acknowledge that the destruction of Germany and Japan’s infrastructure and delivery systems did lead to some dying of hunger.

The Third Reich’s siege of Leningrad led to 1.1 million deaths, mostly of starvation, and if that was ‘just’ last century, much of Europe saw such tactics in medieval siege warfare. The starvation of the common people to force a military decision is not a new tactic.

But, are we really willing to do that to force regime change in North Korea? And if we were, how long would that take?