Daily Archives: 5 February 2026

Jumping the Gun

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The headline is…optimistic.

China Loses a Foothold in Panama

The headline heads off an op-ed centered on the Panamanian Supreme Court ruling that the contracts giving management of, and so control over, the Panama Canal ports to CK Hutchison’s Panama Ports Co unconstitutional, and so illegitimate.

That’s a good, solid step in the right direction, but follow through is required.

CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd, which owns Panama Ports Co, which in turn is the owner of the port concessions at either end of the Panama Canal, has not withdrawn its subsidiary, nor has it withdrawn itself. Both are People’s Republic of China companies, and so both are obligated to the PRC government and to that government’s intelligence community.

The PRC does still control the canal, and it will until CK Hutchison and Panama Ports are both gone.

Cancel Culture of the Left

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon was scheduled to speak and interact with children and their parents via an appearance at McKinley Elementary School in Fairfield, CT. Within hours of DoEd’s announcement of the visit, the school canceled the visit. Fairfield Superintendent of Schools Michael Testani [ellipsis in the original]:

…we heard from many families who expressed concerns and shared that they were considering keeping their children home[.]

The editors of the Hearst Connecticut Media crowed:

The appearance was billed as part of the US Education Department’s “History Rocks Tour!” aspiring to visit all 50 states on America’s 250th anniversary.
History does rock. And on this day, Fairfield, Connecticut, was on the right side of history.

This would have been a excellent opportunity for the kids and their parents to have heard thoughts with which they’re not familiar (at least the kids are not) and to interact with, ask questions of, and express their own concerns to the leading government official overseeing so many facets of American education systems.

Instead, this is the school’s management team’s, backed by news opinionators, terror of folks of whom he disapproves saying things of which he disapproves.

The editors added this in their piece:

We don’t know precisely what concerns were expressed.

Nor do they know how many of those parents actually were concerned. Testani chose to not make that datum public, either.

That didn’t stop these worthies, though, from clutching their faux pearls and celebrating another “success” at avoiding hearing a differing opinion.