US Soccer Federation Turns Tail

Following Megan Rapinoe’s taking a knee during our national anthem in a 2016 international match, the US Soccer Federation formally required all of its players to stand during our national anthem.

All persons representing a Federation national team shall stand respectfully during the playing of national anthems at any event in which the Federation is represented.

Last Saturday, the Federation, through its National Council, bent the knee to the Left and repealed that requirement, formally allowing its players to disrespect our anthem and flag and to openly insult the generations of our veterans who have fought for, and been maimed or killed fighting for, the right of these players, among others, to be so blatantly disrespectful and overtly insulting.

USSF President Cindy Parlow Cone:

This is about the athletes’ and our staff’s right to peacefully protest racial inequalities and police brutality. So I urge our membership to please support our staff and our athletes on this policy.

No. Cone is insulting our intelligence with that foolishness. If these athletes were serious about protesting racial inequalities and police brutality, they’d go into the neighborhoods and approach the businesses, with their time, their money, and their bodies and actually act against these things. They don’t; they’re not serious.

And US soccer is too woke to be taken seriously.

Common Ground on Abortions

That’s the claimed hope of the Progressive-Democrat HHS Secretary nominee Xavier Becerra—that he can find “common ground” on his late-term abortion goals.

Indeed, there’s this bit of disingenuousity from Becerra:

I understand that we may not always agree on where to go, but I think we can find some common ground on these issues because everyone wants to make sure that if you have an opportunity, you’re gonna have a healthy life[.]

Except for the aborted baby. That life gets no opportunity for health; that life is simply…terminated.

There is no common ground on abortion, late-term or otherwise: either there’s baby killing going on, or there’s not.

The only common ground at all related to abortion is the ground in which all those babies are buried.

Couple Problems

…with the New Jersey Middlesex Borough schools assistant superintendent response to a parent’s objections to the district’s refusal to reopen its schools for in-person, and socializing, teaching and learning.

Following repeated virtual learning complaints from a New Jersey parent, a school official fired back with an email shaming that mom.
“We know that parents and students are not following the same CDC guidelines that you continue to share with us that detail the importance of social distancing and mask wearing,” assistant superintendent of Middlesex Borough schools Paul Rafalowski wrote, according to a Feb 11 email obtained by NJ Advance Media. “Case in point, we were provided a number of photos that illustrate the precise reason our school community remains in Phase 1 (virtual).”

A fair enough beef, were the response accurate.

However.

The first problem is that school district’s management is not acting in accordance with the science. That science strongly indicates that it’s safe for the kids to be in school—safer, in fact, than keeping them home and asocial—and safe for the teachers and school staff, who are not at risk of the kids spreading the Wuhan Virus to teachers and staff (not to each other).

The second problem was pointed out by one of the parents responding to the assistant superintendent’s shameful response. Middlesex Borough parent Roger Sanchez regarding the photos that Rafalowski published along with his email:

The point is a government body should never be allowed to document the lives of private citizens and their children.

YGTBSM

Another in the annals. This one, in Australia, illustrates another failure of those secondary schools that are trapped in the gaols of the Woke Left.

Australian National University have a new Gender-Inclusive Handbook out—fortunately not authoritative, only “advisory,”—giving “guidance” on the correct terms professors should use.

A couple examples:

  • not “mother,” but “gestational parent”
  • not “father,” but “non-birthing parent”
  • not “breastfeeding,” but “breast/chest feeding”
  • not “mother’s milk,” but “human/parent’s milk”

After all, according to a Lauren Dinour bit of…research…

heterosexual and woman-focused lactation language…can misgender, isolate, and harm transmasculine parents and non-heteronormative families.

Right.

I have a question. What if the father identifies as the mother?

OK, two questions. Why is the handbook only in English? There are five Asian and Middle eastern languages spoken in Australia, and over 250 indigenous Australian languages spoken there. I thought they were serious about inclusivity.

Too Far

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) has reintroduced his Terror Intelligence Improvement Act, his bill to allow Government to block suspected terrorists from obtaining firearms. This bill, far from improving anything, is a long step back from our rights under our Constitution. As Dana Loesch summarized it in her newsletter (behind a paywall after this month; subscribe now for a discount on her subscription price),

The bill would also provide more authority for law enforcement agencies to go after suspected terrorists, while safeguarding law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment and due process rights.

But, as Loesch goes on to point out, that’s internally contradictory. It’s simply not possible to restrict American citizens’ rights while protecting those same American citizens’ rights. A suspect is just that—a suspect, and so still innocent, regardless of suspicion.

Then, however, Loesch makes her own mistake.

If lawmakers want to stop suspected terrorists placed on a watch list from buying firearms they need to indict them.
I have no problem with this.

I do have a problem with that. All a prosecutor has done with an indictment is convince a secret group of men and women that he has probable enough cause to hale the indictee—possibly an infamous ham sandwich—into criminal court for trial.

The indictee still is innocent; he hasn’t been proven otherwise in that criminal court.

It’s true enough that we do restrict innocent men—we lock them up; we make them wear ankle bracelets; we make them pay a significant something of value to be released, under restrictive conditions, from jail pending trial; and so on.

But those restrictions are done in open court where the prosecutor must convince the judge that his proposed restrictions are warranted, and he must do so in the face of the defendant’s right to answer the proposed restrictions.

Simple indictment isn’t enough. If the suspected terrorist must be denied his 2nd Amendment rights (in the present context), let the prosecutor show in open court that his suspicion is well enough founded that his suspect should be locked up.

As a practical matter, too, that’s the only way to deny such a suspect firearms—outside of jail, there simply are too many means of access to firearms, legal or not.

Beyond that, there’s another, better, way to protect us from terrorists, whether those persons are armed or not. That is for Government to get out of the way of the first responders to any situation—us citizens who happen to be already on scene when the action goes down—carrying our own firearms.