Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA) was censured by the House of Representatives last Wednesday. The question now is, What’s next? Mechanically, what’s next is referring Schiff to the House Ethics Committee

for investigation over his “falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuse of sensitive information[.]”

The question, though, carries a related one on its back: So what? Censure and standing in the well of the House while the rebuke is read out to him by the Speaker are supposed to be shaming and an embarrassment for the Congressman being censured. But what happens if the censuree feels no shame, if his fellows celebrate his censure?

That puts a premium on actual and firm sanctions commensurate with the severity of the behavior that led to the Censure. That puts a premium on the Ethics Committee to take Schiff’s misbehaviors seriously.

I’m not sanguine that the Ethics Committee will do anything meaningful, especially after six members of the House Republican Caucus voted “Present,” not believing Schiff’s misbehavior important enough for an affirmative vote for Censure. I’m not surprised, though, at the uniform “No” vote from Schiff’s Party colleagues. Such misbehaviors are core inventory for the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL) insists that biological men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. He’s gone so far in his radical left ideology as to accuse those who disagree with him of hateful rhetoric for their disagreement.

Transgender youth are among the most at risk of homelessness, depression, and death by suicide. So, when these young people who are already struggling hear politicians amplify hateful rhetoric that denies their very existence, what message does it send?

Riley Gaines, a former top-drawer college swimmer even though she lost a critical race to a biological male competing as a transgendered woman, is one of those hateful Conservatives who disagrees with Durbin.

Senator Durbin, in your opening statement, you had mentioned this rhetoric. You had mentioned that, what message does it send to trans individuals? And my comeback to that is, what message does this send to women, to young girls, who are denied of these opportunities? … So easily, their rights to privacy and safety [are] thrown out of the window to protect a small population, protect one group as long as they’re happy.

Durbin’s cynical response:

Since reference was made to my earlier statement, I would just like to add something for the record: there is no evidence that transgender athletes are an issue in certain levels of sports. No transgender female athlete has ever won an Olympic medal in women’s sports, though the International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to compete since 2004[.]

I’ll leave aside the volume of evidence that Durbin is ignoring that those advantages exist, and that those advantages begin in the womb in the time frame when the embryos start to differentiate between male and female. Regarding Durbin’s other claim, there always are exceptional performances in the general population, and the Olympics, by their nature, strongly emphasize those exceptions. Olympic athletes are at the far right tail of the distribution.

In the general population, extending well out into that tail, male athletes retain those strong, critical advantages in size, speed, strength, stamina, and on and on, that they began to obtain ‘way back in their mothers’ wombs, over the female athletes against whom they’re “competing” in women’s sports. Those advantages hold no matter how the males identify, no matter what surgeries and hormonal treatments the males may have had, or for how long. In the end, allowing biological men to participate in women’s sports is exclusionary: women aren’t allowed to compete in their own sports; they’re only allowed to participate.

Durbin knows this. His virtue-signaling vote pandering sully the office of United States Senator, and they are an insult to women, and they are insulting to the intelligence of all of us.