My Mistake, You Pay for It

That’s New York’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor Kathy Hochul’s solution to the illegal alien influx her State faces.

I’m fully aware that New Yorkers are concerned that over the past year, more than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our state, requiring a historic humanitarian response. Moments ago, I issued a letter to the Biden administration formally requesting that it take executive action to address New York’s migrant crisis.

The prior mayor of New York City, the core of the State’s illegal alien “crisis,” the Progressive-Democrat Bill de Blasio, declared the city to be a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Current Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, has openly, loudly, continued the city’s status, inviting the influx of illegal aliens to continue and expand. It’s true enough that Adams is lately whining that he and his city can’t take it anymore, but he’s holding fast to the sanctuary city status.

The larger problem is that New York City and New York State brought this situation on themselves with their carefully, deliberately, done open invitation to all those illegal aliens, whom the Leftist politicians ruling the city and State euphemistically—dishonestly, I say—call “migrants.”

And now, with awesome gall, they demand that the rest of us ordinary Americans pay the costs of their foolish mistake. No. The rulers of New York City and of New York State created the mess they’re in; no one should pay the costs of that mess but the residents of the city and the citizens of the State who elected those rulers. There must be no consideration of any other funding source unless and until those rulers openly repudiate that sanctuary status and just as openly act on the repudiation.

Firing a Teacher

A Cobb County Georgia elementary school teacher was terminated by the school’s school board for reading a book centered on gender identity to her fifth-grade students. The book feature[d] a nonbinary character and challenge[d] the concept that there are only two genders. Such books are barred from elementary school instruction under Georgia’s Divisive Concepts Law that prohibits teachers from using controversial topics in their instruction. The school district also argued that the teacher, with her reading, violated three district policies.

The firing came after an investigative three-person tribunal had sided with the teacher, recommending that she keep her job. Of course, the teacher and her lawyer are crying politics over the firing. The lawyer, Craig Goodmark:

The board came in, and in an act of what can only be construed an act of politics over policy fired [the teacher].

Oh, wait. Even with recommending her retention,

the tribunal decided that she violated just two of the three policies the district says she broke.

Well, that’s all right, then. Two violations are OK; we’ll think about three violations.

No, it seems to this poor, dumb Texan that it was the tribunal that’s playing politics.

Divisive Tolerance

Jim Webb, Navy Secretary Virginia Senator (R, then D), wrote of a monument in Arlington National Cemetery that the Left wants to tear down. It’s unpardonable sin is honoring Confederate soldiers who fell in our Civil War. It was commissioned by President William McKinley, who had fought \four years in that war as a Union soldier, and it was designed by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran and the first Jewish graduate of the Virginia Military Institute.

One face of the monument’s pedestal bears an inscription:

Not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank; not lured by ambition or goaded by necessity; but in simple obedience to duty as they understood it; these men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all, and died.

The opposite face bears this inscription, in part:

Victorix Causa Diis Placuit Sed Victis Catoni [The victorious cause pleased the gods, but vanquished Cato]

But no, down it must come, as the Left demands to erase important traces of our history, most especially those things we did in reconciliation of grievous divide.

Webb closed his piece with this:

If it is taken apart and removed, leaving behind a concrete slab, the burial marker of its creator, and a small circle of graves, it would send a different message, one of a deteriorating society willing to erase the generosity of its past, in favor of bitterness and misunderstanding conjured up by those who do not understand the history they seem bent on destroying.

It doesn’t matter to those oh-so-tolerant Leftists. They’d rather destroy than recover. To Hell with reconciliation and unity.

Harvard Admissions and Racism

David Phillips, Johns Hopkins University Vice Provost, wrote a letter to the editors of The Wall Street Journal, published in the outlet’s Friday Letters section. In it he responded to a WSJ week-prior op-ed opining on Harvard’s still-racially oriented admissions technique, now transferred to Harvard’s applicant essay.

In furtherance of his defense, he made this astonishing claim:

In crafting a question that invites students to discuss their background and life experiences, including the effect of a host of different factors such as race, religion, or community, we explicitly tell prospective students in our online application and checklist section that Hopkins will consider applicants only based on their experiences as individuals, not based on information about their race. This is in strict compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, to which we explicitly refer.

No, Phillips’ question is in strict disobedience of the Court’s decision. If Harvard were considering applicants not based on information about their race, Harvard’s application essay question would not ask prospects about their racial experience. This is just another cynical attempt to consider race by hiding it inside a host of different factors, just as Harvard did with the admission policies which the Court struck.

If Phillips truly believes his claim, it would be a demonstration of just how deeply steeped he is in his racism, given a deep-seated obliviousness. If he does not, his claim demonstrates breathtaking dishonesty.

Dishonest Press

The New York Times and the tabloid’s cronies in the journalism guild ran long and hard about Justice Clarence Thomas’ gift from Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones, a gift the NYT and its parrots claimed was an authentic Cowboys Superbowl ring. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News are among the Texas tabloids that repeated the rumor, and joined the NYT in masquerading their rumor as fact.

Never mind two trivial, if actual, facts.

The ring Jones gave Thomas was a $12 replica.

Thomas reported even that tiny gift in his 1994 ethics form, which he filed with the Court.

Mark Paoletta, longtime friend of Thomas who worked on his 1991 confirmation:

I expect the New York Times to issue a retraction on this falsehood, and an apology to Justice Thomas[.]

And

How could New York Times reporters get this so wrong?

Good luck with that apology. The NYT made no “mistake;” this was the outlet’s, and that of its fellow rumor mongers’, deliberate smear of a Supreme Court Justice whom they view as nothing more than an uppity black man who left the Liberals’ and their press’ plantation and runs his mouth too much. Thomas, shamefully, is their 21st century Dred Scott to the press’ Chief Justice Roger Taney.