Tag: bankruptcy

Today’s blacklisted American: Biden’s Labor Board attempts to silence conservative news outlet for making bad Twitter joke

11:50 am

Ben Domenech and The Federalist, blacklisted
Ben Domenech and The Federalist, censored by the federal government’s
National Labor Relations Board

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is attempting to silence the conservative news site The Federalist for “unfair labor practice” because its publisher Ben Domenech sent out a bad Twitter joke in 2019 about unions, and two lawyers who had nothing to do with the company complained to the NLRB.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ordered Ben Domenech—publisher of the conservative website The Federalist…—to take down a June 2019 tweet in which he joked about sending employees who wanted to unionize to work in “the salt mines.” Domenech has refused, and the case is now making its way through the courts.

Domenech’s tweet came in response to news that employees of Vox Media Inc. walked off the job in support of unionization. No one at The Federalist had publicly expressed any interest in unionizing, and two of the website’s six employees filed affidavits attesting that they viewed the tweet as a joke. As far as I know, Domenech doesn’t own any salt mines.

The complainants, leftist lawyers Matt Bruenig (a former NLRB attorney) and Joel Fleming, have never worked for or been personally harmed by the Federalist and were clearly acting to silence their political opponents by taking advantage of NLRB’s overly broad regulations, which allow total strangers to file complaints against businesses they don’t like. The NLRB then moves to harass those businesses.
» Read more

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Pushback: University’s blacklisting of a student quickly ends when confronted by lawyers

1:08 pm


Boris Badenov: The school administrators at
Southern Illinois University

Today’s blacklist story came and went so quickly that no one in the press really ever had a chance to cover it. I however want to highlight it today because it tells us a great deal about today’s bankrupt academic culture, and its paper tiger nature if challenged.

On February 10, 2022, Jamie Ball, the director for Equal Opportunity, Access and Title IX Coordination at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, sent notices to Maggie DeJong, a student in the school’s Art Therapy Counseling Program, telling DeJong that she was forthwith forbidden to interact in any way with three other students.

Because DeJong attended classes and also worked at the same facility as these three students, the orders essentially blacklisted her from school through the end of the ’22 semester.

Ball provided no facts or reasons for the “no-contact” orders, other than saying that any contact between DeJong and these three students “would not be welcome or appropriate at this time.” Ball’s order also admitted that no harassment or violation of school policy had occurred. Her order was simply “to prevent interactions that could be perceived by either party as unwelcome, retaliatory, intimidating, or harassing.”

In other words, Ball was punishing DeJong for something that might happen, likely based on secret accusations made by those three students.

On February 23rd, less than two weeks later, lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) sent the school’s Chancellor, Randy Penbrook, a letter [pdf] outlining the illegality of this action, and demanding the no-contact orders be immediately rescinded.
» Read more

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Another update on the lie that was COVID

12:16 pm

How governments determined policy against COVID
How our governments continue to determine policy against COVID

One week ago I published a short essay listing a number of news stories that, as I wrote then, “illustrate starkly the foolishness and the over-reaction to COVID.”

It appears I might have to make this a weekly feature. In the last seven days I’ve collected a whole bunch of new articles, all of which provide further evidence of the lie that was COVID. Not only did our political and health leadership in government routinely lie to us, they often exhibited a remarkable ignorance about some basic science. Until there is reckoning that cleans house in these government agencies, Americans should never believe anything they say.

Most of the stories this past week document the overall failure of the COVID shots to do what these government officials promised: to prevent infection. To understand the significance of this fact, one must go back and review the claims made by government health officials when these shots were first developed. From the beginning these officials repeatedly claimed that the shots would prevent transmission of the virus, and protect people from any Wuhan flu infection if they got the jab. Just watch some of the videos here. Over and over again so-called experts claimed back in the spring of 2021 that the shots would “prevent transmission.”

NOT. » Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Vassar’s college newspaper retracts story because it quoted “too many whites”

1:30 pm

Vassar College: now run by clowns

The new dark age of silencing: The Miscellany News, the college newspaper at Vassar College, recently retracted an article not because it contained any errors of fact (which it did not) but because the article had simply interviewed too many white students in its reporting.

The article had been written to describe the controversy surrounding the school’s decision to have Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, speak at the school, and his decision to withdraw because of the uproar from students demanding he be blacklisted. From the newspaper’s retraction announcement:

We would like to use this statement to both emphasize our values of diversity and inclusion, and delve deeply into our editorial process and the resulting article in question, especially since we understand that many people in the Vassar community are unaware of the article’s removal. … In this article, we attempted to include a variety of quotes from students describing why there was protest to the announcement of him as speaker in the first place, and the students’ reaction to his withdrawal.

In prioritizing urgency over thoroughness, we made misguided and insensitive oversights with whom we were representing in the article and failed to provide in-depth reporting of the issue at large. The majority of our quotations came from white students and therefore we reduced the positions of students of color to a singular, tokenized perspective. After this was brought to our attention, the paper decided to remove the article online in an attempt to prevent further harm among the communities we misrepresented. [emphasis mine]

» Read more

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Surprise! NASA’s ’23 budget request asks for more money!

11:13 am

In releasing its budget request this week to Congress for the 2023 fiscal year, NASA did what it routinely does each year, ask for more money, this time asking for an 8% increase from what Congress appropriated last year.

NASA’s FY2023 budget request is $25.974 billion versus the FY2022 appropriation of $24.041 billion. NASA had requested $24.802 billion in large part to pay for the Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface, but Congress wasn’t willing to allocate that much. While supportive of Artemis and NASA’s many other science, aeronautics and technology programs, there is a limit as to how much Congress is willing to invest.

NASA is requesting not just another boost in FY2023, but in the “out years” thereafter, rising to $28 billion in FY2027, though much of that purchasing power likely will be lost to inflation.

…In essence, the agency wants more money for everything it is doing.

The budget request also asks again for Congress to terminate the SOFIA airborne telescope, which NASA contends is not producing enough science to justify its $80 million annual cost. Congress has repeatedly refused to do so in past years. As should be expected, Congress will likely not cancel SOFIA again, as it likes to spend money we don’t have.

The goal of the increased funding for Artemis is also to continue the SLS program for many years to come. Expect Congress to also fund this in the coming few years, though the long term future of SLS remains in doubt, especially if SpaceX’s Starship begins flying. Artemis won’t be cancelled by our spendthrift Congress, but Congress will likely decide to shift that spending to Starship and other private rockets rather than SLS as those private rockets come on line.

All in all, expect Congress to give NASA more cash, but not as much as the agency requests.

8 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: TV reporter fired for covering protest objectively

12:16 pm

Johathan Choe, blacklisted for being a good reporter
Johathan Choe, blacklisted for being a good reporter

The new dark age of silencing: A television reporter for the ABC affiliate in Seattle, KOMO, Jonathan Choe, was fired after he had covered, as accurately as possible, a peaceful Proud Boys demonstration in Seattle, including a photo montage of the event.

Choe, a reporter of 20 years, created a photo montage with sound from the march to end his day. In the clips, he included music from the rally that included a song called “We’ll Have Our Home Again.” Although Choe was unfamiliar with the tune, it is allegedly played frequently at Proud Boys rallies and similar gatherings.

“I wanted to simply capture a moment in time, with authentic visuals and sounds. It was clearly misinterpreted by some on-line,” Choe wrote.

Because of the uproar, Choe said his news director told him to take down all his social media related to the Proud Boys rally. He did so, but was fired the following day, he said.

By his own response to his firing Choe reveals that he himself buys into the racist, anti-American propaganda of today’s left, focusing much of his commentary on his race (he is Asian-American) and noting that though he has been a successfully journalist “for more than 20 years,” he has somehow “faced years of discrimination for my race and ethnicity.” The willful blindness of these statements is astonishing. How could Choe get a great job for a major television affiliate reporting the news if he was living in such a terrible bigoted nation (which by the way has recently twice elected a black man as president)?

No matter. He tried to do his job well and fairly, and a Twitter mob immediately descended upon him. His boss then cowered in fear, forcing Choe to first censor his work, and then firing him because the only thing that will satisfy a lynch mob is a lynching.

Of course, the lynching is not enough. » Read more

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FAA again delays decision on environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility

1:32 pm

Surprise, surprise! According to an FAA email sent out today, the agency has once again, for the fifth time, delayed its decision on the environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship launch site.

From the email:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is updating the release date for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) on the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard (Permitting Dashboard) and project website. The FAA plans to issue the Final PEA on April 29th. The planned April 29, 2022 release date will allow the FAA to review the Final PEA, including responses to comments, and complete consultation and coordination with agencies at the local, State, and Federal level. All consultations must be complete before the FAA can issue the Final PEA.

This date is now listed on the FAA’s SpaceX-Starship webpage. Nor is the decision a surprise. Expect the FAA to continue this charade month-to-month until after the November election, when the Biden administration will then feel free to block SpaceX’s effort in Boca Chica completely.

17 comments

Pushback: Lawsuit by teacher fired for his opinions to be heard by VA Supreme Court

11:49 am

Peter Vlaming, fired for his opinions
Peter Vlaming

Peter Vlaming was a successful French teacher in the West Point School District in Virgina in 2018, until he was fired for refusing to use male pronouns demanded by a female student.

In 2018, one of Peter’s female students decided to identify as male.

Peter went out of his way to accommodate this student. He said he would use the student’s preferred male-sounding name and avoid using pronouns.

But Peter simply could not use male pronouns for a female student because it would contradict his core beliefs. This was about more than just pronouns; it was about what pronouns mean. In speech, after all, pronouns identify us as either male or female.

Peter couldn’t in good conscience use male pronouns to identify a female student. At the same time, he made it clear that he wanted to work with the student by avoiding pronouns that may cause offense.

But that wasn’t good enough for the school district. It didn’t care about how Peter treated the student. It was on a crusade for conformity. It wanted to force Peter to speak words he disagreed with by using pronouns for the student—even when that student was not present. [emphasis in original]

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Forbes terminates journalist for documenting Fauci’s salary

12:51 pm

Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good journalism
Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good
journalism

The new dark age of silencing: Adam Andrzejewski, a long time journalist for Forbes magazine, was fired when the magazine was pressured by NIH to stop him from documenting accurately the large income that Anthony Fauci and his wife derived from their government jobs.

As Andrzejewski concludes in outlining his blackballing by Forbes:

Two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers [from NIH] didn’t send an email to the Forbes’ chief on a Sunday morning because they wanted to correct the record about Fauci’s travel reimbursements. They sent that email to subliminally send a message: We don’t like Andrzejewski’s oversight work, and we want you to do something about it.

Unfortunately, Forbes folded quickly. Within 24 hours of the NIH email to Randall Lane, my regular Forbes editor called and announced new rules. Forbes barred me from writing about Fauci and mandated pre-approval for all future topics.

Then, Forbes went silent and terminated my column roughly 10 days later on January 28.

On the day Forbes cancelled me, the editors bent the knee. A new piece on Fauci published: “Fauci’s Portrait Will Soon Hang In The Smithsonian.”

The shameful part of this story was the way a news organization took the side of government agents, rather than their own journalist. The press is not supposed to be a state-run organization, but a free press intent on uncovering government malfeasance. The people who run Forbes apparently don’t understand this, and are quite willing to become panting toadies to the federal government.

Andrzejewski however understands his role as a journalist far better. In 2011 he founded Open The Books, a non-profit focused on documenting government spending precisely, at all levels from the smallest school district to the largest agency in the federal government. To do this the organization has filed almost 50,000 Freedom of Information requests. As he noted at the link above,
» Read more

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Biden administration demands that all NASA grantees hire minorities/women

10:44 am

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Biden administration has proposed a new rule for anyone receiving financial grants from NASA, requiring those grantees to solicit bids for any subcontracting work from minorities and/or women.

The Grants Policy and Compliance Branch (GPC) in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Office of the Chief Financial Officer is soliciting public comment on the Agency’s proposed implementation of a new term and condition that requires recipients of NASA financial assistance to obtain a quotation from small and/or minority businesses, women’s business enterprises or labor surplus area firms when the acquisition of goods or services exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold.

…NASA’s expectation is that this action will result in an increase in contracting opportunities for small and/or minority businesses, women’s business enterprises and labor surplus area firms that contract with NASA financial assistance recipients.

The rule is not yet in effect. NASA is simply seeking public comment. However, the intent of this “equity” regulation is the same as all critical race theory implementations, to favor minorities and women and discriminate against whites and men. And if you don’t believe me, read this further explanation for this new rule at the link:

On January 25, 2021, President Biden issued E.O. 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” outlining a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality. Given that advancing equity requires a systematic approach to embedding fairness in the decision-making process, the E.O. instructs agencies to recognize and work to redress inequities in their policies and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity.

Since everyone has the same equal opportunity to compete for bids, this new Biden rule, which is designed to tilt the scale and discriminate in favor of “people of color and others who have been historically underserved”, it is actually creating barriers to equal opportunity. It is also a bald-faced violation of every civil rights law passed since 1964, which required that no one should be discriminated against because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sex, be they white, black, red, yellow, green, or orange.

But then, this is our Democratic Party, led by Joe Biden. It has eagerly returned to its slave/segregation roots, where it sees race as a person’s only important attribute, with some races deserving favored treatment and other races to be oppressed. Until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s Democrats favored whites and oppressed minorities. Now the party favors minorities and oppresses whites.

Nothing has really changed however. The Democratic Party, led by Joe Biden, remains the party of racism and bigotry.

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Update on the lie that was COVID

4:12 pm

How governments determined policy against COVID
How our governments determined policy against COVID during
the past two years.

Now that the crisis of the day has shifted to the Ukraine War, bringing with it new demands by our so-called rulers to once again panic in order to begin a world war, it pays to look back at the last fake panic, what I like to call the lie that was COVID.

Below are a only few examples of the never-ending new stories daily that illustrate starkly the foolishness and the over-reaction to COVID. Take some time to read them all.

First, was COVID the deadly disease that could kill you, as claimed by our academic and political leaders? In a word, no. The two stories below simply show its harmlessness to children, something that was obvious almost from the beginning of the panic.

In the past two years anyone with any interest in the truth could have easily found and read similar stories. The threat was routinely exaggerated, sometimes to the point of faking data. These two stories are merely the tip of the iceberg. If I wanted I could add twenty, thirty, fifty more and still not list them all.

Both of these stories however illustrate the evil of the next two:

The New York petty tyrant in the first story is not alone. Democratic Party politicians nationwide, from President Joe Biden down to local school boards, have repeatedly shown themselves obsessed with putting masks on little kids, sometimes even by physical and vicious force.

As for the second story, note that it occurred two days ago in Chicago, the first day that Chicago schools had shifted to a “mask-optional” policy. Yet the teacher smacked a mask of the toddler, who ended up coming home crying. His father’s reaction:
» Read more

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Roscosmos to only accept future payments in rubles

3:10 pm

Shooting yourself in the foot: Dmitry Rogozin today announced that Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos — which controls its entire aerospace industry — will from now on only accept future payments in rubles for foreign companies and countries.

First, because of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine, Roscosmos no longer has much business outside of Russia. There are only a very tiny handful of foreign companies or countries left having contracts with Roscosmos, so this new rule won’t affect many.

Second, this order will guarantee that the last few will flee, and that there will be not any new foreign contracts to follow. The ruble these days is worthless. No one will want to buy rubles to pay Russia. And if they do, it will be a fake paper transaction created only seconds before payment, merely to meet the rule. Why should anyone bother, even China?

12 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Conservatives and the religious blackballed at Disney

12:44 pm

Disney: Hostile to free speech

Persecution is now cool! Even as the corporate management at the Disney company is publicly aligning itself with the gay political agenda, a group of conservative and religious Disney employees have published a letter outlining how this so-called “inclusive” company has made its workplace very hostile to them, forcing many to leave and requiring the letter writers to stay anonymous to protect their jobs.

One of the employees, who works in the Imagineering department designing attractions in Disney theme parks, told The Daily Wire that he’s had three close colleagues leave his division in just the last nine months because of the increasingly hostile work environment. “No matter what department or what segment, we’ve been watching the [diversity, equity, and inclusion] takeover of Disney accelerate to breakneck speeds, and God help you if you get caught standing in front of the train.” [emphasis mine]

The full letter is available here on Google docs. Assuming Google will censor it at some point, the link above has also republished it in full at the bottom of the article. This quote from the letter is especially revealing about the intolerant work atmosphere created by the “woke” Disney employees:
» Read more

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ISS: Breaking up is hard to do

11:00 am

According to this detailed article by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, it will be be very difficult if not impossible for Russia to detach its half from ISS and go its own way.

The article outlines both the technical and legal reasons, and concludes as follows:

In reality, during the coming years, we are more likely to see food riots in Moscow than we are to see a new Russian Space Station or a deep space scientific exploration mission. Some of this will be due to financial concerns, and some of it will come because of a loss of access to technology from the West.

Already, Russia’s main builder of tanks, Uralvagonzavod, appears to have stopped production due to a lack of components. Roscosmos’s big four companies—RKK Energia, RSC Progress, the Khrunichev Center, and NPO Energomash—will likely not be able to keep up production for long for the same reason as the tank factory.

While everything Berger notes is true, I think he underestimates the willingness of rogue nations, as Russia presently is, to break treaties. Also, the agreements Russia has signed expire in 2024, and Russia needs the next few years to launch more modules to have any chance of making its half workable. Whether it can do it is presently doubtful, but not impossible.

This partnership is ending, whether by choice or reality. Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.

2 comments

Local state legislators introduce bill to disband Camden spaceport authority

9:14 am

Two Georgia state legislators yesterday introduced a bill to disband the Camden spaceport authority, following a county special election that rejected the spaceport by a vote of 72% to 28%.

Whether the bill becomes law or not will likely not make much difference to the spaceport. It is dead, and the law will merely decide whether it dies quickly, or slowly.

This quote by one of the legislators who introduced the bill, however, should be carved in stone in every statehouse and in the Capitol in Washington:

“It’s hard to ignore how the people vote.”

Too many lawmakers nationwide have forgotten this fact.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Emmett Till opera canceled because lyrics were written by a white

1:26 pm

Emmett Till, censored by anti-white bigots
Emmett Till, a black murder victim banned again for associating
with whites.

The new dark age of silencing: More than 12,000 students at the City University of New York (CUNY) have signed a petition to have an opera about the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till cancelled because its lyricist, Clare Coss, happens to be white.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice student Mya Bishop created the Change.org petition in an attempt to halt the continuation of ‘Emmett Till, A New American Opera’ at the school’s Gerald W. Lynch Theatre. In the petition’s description, she wrote that the show is all about playwright Clare Coss’ ‘white guilt’ rather than the appalling killing of Till, 14, for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

This petition is unmitigated bigotry, trying to get the opera cancelled simply because Coss is white. What makes it even more indicative of our new dark age of ignorance is that the composer, Mary Watkins, is black. As she notes:
» Read more

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NASA: Europa Clipper’s cost rise; Mars sample return delayed

10:10 am

At a meeting this week NASA officials admitted that the cost of its Europa Clipper mission has risen by three quarters of a billion dollars, and that the sample return mission to bring back Perseverance’s core samples will be delayed, as well as now require two landers, not one.

NASA revealed significant changes to two of its flagship planetary science missions at today’s Space Science Week meeting at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The cost for Europa Clipper, which will gather data as it makes multiple swingbys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, has grown from $4.25 billion to $5 billion. Separately, NASA and ESA are replanning the Mars Sample Return mission. Two landers are needed instead of one to retrieve samples from the surface of Mars and boost them into orbit for their trip back to Earth. The launches will be in 2028 instead of 2026.

The sample return mission itself is also growing in complexity:

A Sample Fetch Rover will be sent to collect them and take them to a Mars Ascent Vehicle — a rocket — that will shoot them into Martian orbit where they will be transferred to an Earth Return Orbiter for the trip back to Earth.

Initially the plan was for the fetch rover and ascent vehicle to be launched together in 2026, and the Earth Return Orbiter in 2027. But Zurbuchen decided to convene an Independent Review Board in 2020 to get an impartial assessment of the plan by outside experts. The Board cautioned that 2026 was “not achieveable” with 2028 a more realistic date, and that the “program’s schedule and cost are not aligned with its scope.”

Consequently, NASA now has replanned the mission with two landers — one each for the fetch rover and ascent vehicle — instead of one. Both landers will launch in 2028. The Earth Return Orbiter will still launch in 2027. The samples will get back to Earth in 2033.

Prediction: The launch of this fleet of sample return spacecraft will be further delayed, and its overall cost will rise, by a lot. In fact, it is very possible that SpaceX’s Starship will have already returned samples from Mars before NASA’s mission gets off the ground.

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Musk says Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a tweet yesterday Elon Musk said that Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May, a delay of two months from his previous announcements.

“We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test,” Musk tweeted in response to CNBC.

While the delay could certainly be because the company needed to prepare enough Superheavy engines, I also suspect it is also because Musk now expects the FAA to not approve the environmental reassessment of Starship’s Boca Chica launch site by the end of March, as has been promised. I predict that sometime in the next few days the FAA will announce another one-month delay in that process, the fourth such delay by that federal agency.

In late-December, when the FAA announced the first delay, I predicted that the first orbital launch of Starship would not happen until the latter half of ’22. I now think that prediction was optimistic. I firmly believe the federal government, controlled by Democrats, will delay that launch until after the mid-term elections in November. It appears to me that the Biden administration wants to reject the environmental reassessment, which would block Starship flights from Boca Chica for years. It just doesn’t want to do it before November, because of the negative election consequences.

I truly hope my cynical and pessimistic analysis is utterly wrong. So far, however, my prediction has proven to be more right than wrong.

9 comments

Pushback: Judge rules university officials can be held personally responsible for firing a professor for his political opinions

12:36 pm

Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas
Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas

A major victory for free speech: A federal judge ruled on March 11th that officials at the University of North Texas can be held personally responsible for firing a professor because they did not like his political opinions.

In his 69-page order of March 11, Judge Sean Jordan, of the United States District Court for Eastern Texas, found that university officials should have known that math professor Nathaniel Hiers’ speech “touched on a matter of public concern and that discontinuing his employment because of his speech violated the First Amendment,” before they fired him for going public with his disagreement with the left-wing concept of “microaggressions.”

The university was claiming qualified immunity for school officials in the case, meaning that the school wanted its officials to be excluded from being held responsible for their actions merely because they were acting in their position as state employees. Jordan denied the claim of qualified immunity and also denied the school’s demand to have the case dismissed outright.

You can read the judge’s order here [pdf].

The background: Hiers, having found flyers in math department’s lounge warning faculty against triggering “microaggessions” in their conversations, responded as shown in the picture above, placing one flyer on the chalk rack of the blackboard and wrote his own opinion of it above.

Ralf Schmidt, the Math department’s head, immediately criticized Hiers for doing this, and within a week fired him without notice.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Man who found Hunter Biden’s laptop harassed, threatened, and driven to bankruptcy

12:24 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
A witch hunt: The mainstream media’s modern approach to discourse.

Persecution is now cool! The computer repair shop owner who found and made public Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the election has found himself harassed, threatened, and even driven to bankruptcy because of that entirely legal act.

The Delaware computer repair shop owner who alerted the FBI to Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop before ultimately taking it to Rudy Giuliani says he’s faced harassment from Big Tech, the IRS and other government agencies ever since, and now faces bankruptcy.

“I was getting a lot of death threats,” John Paul Mac Isaac said. “I had to have a Wilmington trooper parked in front of my shop all the time.

“There were multiple situations where people came in and you could tell they were not there to have a computer fixed. And if there were not other people in the shop, I don’t know what would have happened,” he told The Post. “I was having vegetables, eggs, dog s–t thrown at the shop every morning.”

The threats and violence got so severe in November 2020 that Isaac had to shutter his shop and flee Delaware and live in hiding for more than a year. When he later tried to file for unemployment Delaware bureaucrats kept closing his case without resolution so that he received no checks and had use some of the money in his 401K to pay his bills. The Delaware unemployment department only finally acted after he sent a letter to the state’s governor.
» Read more

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Pushback: Pilots sue CDC over Biden mask requirement on planes

12:02 pm

How the CDC determines its mask policies
How the CDC determines its mask policies

Don’t comply: Ten pilots from three different American airlines — American, Southwest, and JetBlue — have now sued the CDC over the Biden administrations mask mandate requiring everyone to wear masks on airplanes.

A group of commercial airline pilots filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an attempt to lift the federal transportation mask mandate.

In court paperwork, the 10 commercial airline pilots – who work for American JetBlue and Southwest – argued that the CDC issued an order “Requirement for Persons to Wear Masks While on Conveyances & at Transportation Hubs” on Feb. 1, 2020 “without providing public notice or soliciting comment.”

The pilots are asking the court to “vacate worldwide the FTMM (federal transportation mask mandate)” calling the move an “illegal and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority.”

Biden’s edict was first imposed on February 1, 2021, shortly after he took power. It has been extended several times since, the most recent extension keeping it in force through April 18, 2022. At no time, however, has any data been put forth by the CDC demonstrating that the required masks accomplish anything, while we already have decades of data showing that the masks are useless against viruses like the Wuhan flu.

This new lawsuit is the eighteenth filed against the mandate, though it is the first filed by those who work on the planes.

The pilots claim above that the CDC did not follow federal law when it imposed the mandate is almost certainly correct. » Read more

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Pushback: Professor sues University of Illinois officials for suspending him for doing his job

12:56 pm

University of Illinois: run by clowns
University of Illinois: run by clowns

Jason Kilborn, a tenured law professor at the University of Illinois who had been suspended and forced to undergo sensitivity training because several unnamed students objected to an exam question that referenced racial slurs and that Kilborn had been using in his tests for a decade, has now sued a number of officials at the university.

University of Illinois Chicago law Professor Jason Kilborn’s recently filed lawsuit accuses administrators of violating his Constitutional rights, as well as defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It seeks damages in excess of $100,000.

Kilborn has been described by students as “top notch.” As his lawsuit against the University of Illinois Chicago moves forward, Kilborn maintains campus leaders engaged in performative retribution against him.

The lawsuit can be read here.

The named officials in the lawsuit are Michael Amiridis, the university’s chancellor, Caryn A. Bills, its associate chancellor, Julie M. Spanbauer, the law schools dean, Donald Kamm, the director of the school’s Office for Access and Equity, and Ashley Davidson, the school’s Title Ix & Equity Compliance Specialist.

I had described Kilborn’s blacklisting back in November 2021, describing in detail how Kilborn’s exam question had been in use for ten years with no objection, and was designed to help his law students uncover facts that would help lawyers defend minorities against racial abuse. I also noted that:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Second-grade child punished for talking about Christianity

1:20 pm

Persecuting Christians is once again cool!
Persecuting Christians, even little children, is once again cool!

They’re coming for you next: A second-grader at North Hill Elementary School in Des Moines, Washington, has been regularly harassed and punished by the teachers and administrators because she likes to talk about her Christian religion to her playmates.

The harassment has included searching her backpack each morning to confiscate any Christian materials before she entered school. The punishment included sending her to the principal’s office ten different times since January 1st for daring to mention the Bible and her Christian beliefs to others. From the press release of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which is threatening to sue the school and its district if this Soviet-type censorious behavior does not stop:
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Pushback: Teacher sues for being suspended for defying pronoun demands

12:27 pm

Owned by government
This is apparently what Kansas school administrators think

Don’t comply: Pamela Ricard, a teacher at Fort Riley Middle School in Kansas, has sued the local school board there for suspending her for three days for refusing to call a female student by the male pronouns demanded.

Ricard was suspended for three days and issued a formal reprimand in April 2021 for addressing a biologically female student by the suffix “Ms.” and the student’s legal last name, according to the Herzog Foundation. Ricard alleges that she received an email from the school’s counselor informing her that she must use the pronouns “he/him” to describe the biological female, though the student had never made a direct request.

At the time of Ricard’s three-day suspension, the complaint alleges that neither the district nor the middle school had a formal policy regarding student preferred name and pronoun usage and that Ricard was suspended under the “Bullying by Staff” policy. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words strongly suggest that this demand was not coming from the student, but from the counselor and school administration, and that there was a very good chance that this counselor and the administration were grooming the child sexually.

When the school then released a policy requiring teachers to to use the pronouns demanded, Ricard then requested a religious exemption, which apparently the school refused to give. From another report:
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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Multiple lawsuits against Collin College in Texas for firing any teacher who expresses an opinion

12:24 pm

Collin College: Run by clowns

The new dark age of silencing: Today’s blacklist story is interesting in that it proves the blacklist culture that is engulfing what was once a free America is not simply attacking those on the right. The level of intolerance has grown so pervasive that people are being blackballed for saying practically anything.

In this case, Collin College in Texas has now been sued by three different teachers because each had had the audacity to express a public opinion that the college administrations disagreed with. The list is quite intriguing because the teachers fired expressed opinions from the left side of the political aisle:

  • History teacher Michael Phillips was terminated because he advocated removal of a Confederate statue, as well as publicly criticized the school’s decision to quickly return to in-class learning in 2020.
  • History teacher Lora Burnett was terminated after she posted a very critical tweet about VP Mike Pence’s performance during a debate (“The moderator needs to talk over Mike Pence until he shuts his little demon mouth up.”) as well as publicly criticized the school’s Wuhan flu policy.
  • Education teacher Suzanne Jones was terminated after calling for the removal of that same Confederate statue, as well as also criticizing the school’s decision to return to in-class learning in 2020.

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NASA: committed to forcing everyone to use gender pronouns demanded by its employees

10:28 am

The on-going dark age: NASA yesterday released a statement announcing the completion of an email test project at the Goddard Space Flight Center that allowed employees to include their preferred gender pronouns in email display fields.

NASA’s short statement, quoted in full below, illustrates where the space agency’s real priorities lie.

Through an effort to create a more inclusive workplace, NASA recently completed an IT project at Goddard Space Flight Center that allowed approximately 125 employees to test the option of including their gender pronouns in NASA’s email display fields — which currently includes each employee’s name, center, and an organizational code. The learnings from this test will be used to inform the advancement of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

NASA is fully committed to supporting every employee’s right to be addressed by their correct name and pronouns. All NASA employees currently have the option and flexibility to include their gender pronouns in their customized email signature blocks. This option remains unchanged and is supported by NASA leadership so that employees can share their gender identities and show allyship to the LGBTQIA+ community.

To put this in honest language, NASA’s management is gearing up the legal process to give the power of one group of people (the “LGBTOIA+” community) to impose their beliefs on others, and to force others to promote those beliefs in writing, whether they agree with them or not.

What this has to to with NASA’s core mission, to explore space, I have no idea. But then I am rational and our government today is not.

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Today’s blacklisted American: FBI drops trumped up charges that caused January 6th protester to commit suicide

11:23 am

Matthew Perna, dead because he expressed his opinion
Matthew Perna, now dead because he simply expressed an opinion

They’re coming for you next: After demanding that conservative protester Matthew Perna be sentenced to many years of imprisonment for daring to peaceably walk through the Capitol building for less than ten minutes on January 6, 2020 — demands that caused Perna to commit suicide — the FBI has now quietly dropped those trumped up charges, without comment.

Perna was looking at 51 months in federal prison for entering the Capitol for five to ten minutes, snapping selfies, and chanting “USA” in an apparently seditious way. He also tapped a window with a pole but didn’t break it or anything else. He didn’t hit a cop.

The FBI magnanimously decided to drop their charges against Perna on Wednesday.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Protesters force Obama’s Homeland Security head to withdraw as speaker at Vassar

12:18 pm

Vassar College: now run by clowns

Eating their own: Leftist protesters at Vassar College have forced Jeh Johnson, who was Secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, to back out of giving the college’s May 22nd commencement speech.

Johnson was replaced by an actor, illustrating once again the growing vapidness of modern academia. The accusations against Johnson also illustrate this bankruptcy by their empty slogans and shallow cliches:

The switch in commencement speaker has sparked heated online debate among students and alumni, with one camp opposed to what one student called Johnson’s “violence on marginalized peoples” and the other camp complaining of runaway “woke” politics.

The controversy deepened after a story that had quoted students referring to Johnson as guilty of “war crimes” — and which warned of “protest and disruption” should he speak — was deleted from Vassar’s student newspaper website, the Miscellany News. [emphasis mine]

The deleted article appears to be available here. This quote in particular from it demonstrates the empty-headed and intolerant thinking in today’s academia, aided by the intellectual dishonesty of an agenda-driven reporter:
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Today’s blacklisted American: Renowned cancer researcher fired for wearing Halloween costume 13 years ago

11:11 am

Cancer researcher Julie Overbaugh banned
Cancer researcher Julie Overbaugh blacklisted

The new dark age of silencing: A renowned cancer researcher, virologist Julie Overbaugh, was forced out of positions at both the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine because thirteen years previously she had worn a Michael Jackson Halloween costume at a Hutchinson party themed around the singer’s Thriller album.

The accusations at Washington University were especially absurd, though horribly typical of today’s blacklisting culture:

Though the incident didn’t occur at UW Medicine, its CEO and equity officer also waded into the faux controversy. UW Medicine CEO Dr. Paul Ramsey and Chief Equity Officer Paula Houston notified UW Medicine staff in an email that Overbaugh was punished for engaging in the “racist, dehumanizing, and abhorrent act” of “blackface.” During a separate formal review process for UW faculty, the email confirmed, Overbaugh resigned from her UW affiliate faculty member appointment.

Overbaugh released a short statement to me. “I did not know the association of this with blackface at the time, in 2009, but understand the offense that is associated with this now,” she said. “I have apologized for this both publicly and privately and beyond that have no other comments.”

Ramsey and Houston claim that the UW Medicine community was “harmed” by the 13-year-old photo that most staff didn’t know existed until reading about it in the Feb. 25 email. “We acknowledge that our community has been harmed by this incident and the fact that 13 years elapsed before action was taken,” they wrote. “We are convening a series of affinity group meetings in the next few weeks to provide spaces for mutual support, reflection, and response.”

Neither Ramsey nor Houston explained how the photo “harmed” anyone. Indeed, beyond one confirmed complaint, it’s unclear if anyone even cared about the old photo. [emphasis mine]

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Pushback: Christian HS student sues school for persecuting him because of his religion

12:27 pm

How Mater Academy treats its Christians
How Mater Academy treats the Christian children under its care.

They’re coming for you next: Nicholas Ortiz, then a 14-year-old Christian freshman at the high school level of Florida’s charter school Mater Academy, has sued the school for allowing both students and teachers to slander, harass, and discriminate against him for his religious beliefs, and then punishing him when he reported the abuse to school officials.

Ortiz said he regularly brings his bible to school to read, which he alleges has made him a target for “disparaging comments” from other students, as well as school staff and administrators.

The complaint also outlines what it calls false and defamatory statements that circulated among students claiming Ortiz was planning a school shooting. Screenshots of communications between students show them discussing the rumored shooting and details their plans to physically assault Ortiz as a result.

Due to the shooting allegations, Ortiz was given the maximum allowed punishment of a 10-day suspension.

“Nicholas repeatedly made the school aware of a pattern of pervasive bullying by his fellow students, bullying that was reinforced by the words and actions of the school,” the complaint added. “Yet, the school did not just sweep Nicholas’s bullying claims under the rug — failing to report them as required under the law — they retaliated against Nicholas for reporting the harassment.”

You can read his complaint here [pdf].

Though the whole behavior of the school and its students is intolerant and disgusting, this event — which probably began the persecution — is probably the most egregious:
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