Robert Stacy McCain, 'From John Lennon to Charles Murray'

At the American Spectator, "From John Lennon to Charles Murray: We All Want to Change the World."

"But when you talk about destruction. Don't you know that you can count me out..."

Harvard Confronts Academe's Ties to Slavery

At NYT, "Harvard Confronts the Deep Ties to Slavery in Academia."

Harvard Confronts the Deep Ties to Slavery in Academia.
by @jennyschuessler via @nytimes https://t.co/S71XPsrxt5

— Michiko Kakutani (@michikokakutani) March 6, 2017

#PresidentTrump to Unveil New Travel Ban Today (VIDEO)

At the Chicago Tribune, "President Trump's revised travel ban to apply to those seeking new visas."

Also, at ABC News, via Memeorandum, "President Trump expected to sign new travel ban executive order today."

And here's Mark Steyn:

Jesse Lee Peterson, The Antidote

This guy's way cool.

At Amazon, Jesse Lee Peterson, The Antidote: Healing America From the Poison of Hate, Blame and Victimhood.

Danielle Gersh's Warm-Up Weather Forecast

It's actually been quite pleasant this last few days, but should warm up to the mid-80s by midweek.

Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand

If you're studying Indian affairs and the fate of the frontier, it's inevitable you'll read about Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.

See Nathaniel Philbrick, at Amazon, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

(I'm continuing with Robert J. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890, which discusses Armstrong beginning in Chapter 4.)

Leaks, Unnamed Sources in Far-Left Media Campaign to Destroy #PresidentTrump

From Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post:

"Separating fact from fake news has never been more essential," writes columnist @mgoodwin_nypost https://t.co/zIegHBFQP0

— New York Post (@nypost) March 5, 2017

Here a Russian story, there a Russian story, everywhere a Russian story — all based on leaks from anonymous sources. You don’t have to be a spook to spot the plan: Destroy Donald Trump by putting him in a bear hug.

To judge by their scattershot approach, the conspirators are fishing for a bombshell. The fallback goal is to inflict death by a thousand cuts.

Already they’ve gotten one scalp and part of another. Gen. Mike Flynn is gone, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions is wounded. Each made a mistake that obscured a larger truth: Somebody in the government has been spying on Trump’s team and giving top secret information to anti-Trump media outlets.

Our president is many things, but dumb he’s not. He recognized the stakes, so yesterday he struck back in a way that dramatically upped the ante in the war over his presidency.

Trump’s early-morning tweets accusing President Barack Obama of having wiretapped him at Trump Tower startled the world. It is a sensational claim, but in light of the tsunami of leaks from intelligence agencies, the president is right to suspect that he’s the target of a dirty game.

To start with, the unprecedented alliance against him clearly includes remnants of the Obama administration, and probably the former president himself. The recent New York Times report that Obama and his team dropped intelligence findings like bread crumbs so they would get wide readership and to prevent the Trump administration from burying them reveals an attempt to undermine if not subvert a legally elected president.

The Times report conveys suspicions that Trump would deep-six the findings if he could while giving a free pass to Obama’s leakers who may have committed crimes. The Times knows who in the Obama camp was involved and what they did. The paper has an ethical obligation to report it.

Yet here’s the rub: What exactly was in those findings? All the public knows is that intelligence officials said they investigated whether the Trump campaign had ties to Russia, and we only know that because it was leaked by anonymous sources.

But that knowledge, while sounding suspicious, raises more questions than it answers.

For example, did investigators looking at Trump’s campaign find anything substantive? The Times has said no but keeps suggesting the probes continue. Publicly, the FBI won’t confirm or deny anything and even Congress is frustrated by the bureau’s behavior.

Yet the fact that there are leaks reveals something important: The investigation involved monitoring phone calls and maybe computers and maybe physical surveillance...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "#PresidentTrump Seeks Investigation Into Alleged Obama Administration Wiretapping."

#PresidentTrump Seeks Investigation Into Alleged Obama Administration Wiretapping

I haven't been blogging all this stuff, not because it's unimportant, but because I don't much care. Of course Obama bugged Trump Tower. It'd be nice to have evidence, but to me it's a no brainer.

In any case, here's NYT's headline, at Memeorandum, "Trump Seeks Inquiry Into Allegations That Obama Tapped His Phones." And at Althouse, "'FISA Is Not Law-Enforcement – It’s Not Interference with Justice Department Independence for White House to Ask for FISA Information'":

The invaluable legal analysis of Andrew M. McCarthy, checking the work of the NYT.

And see the roundup at Maggie's Farm, "The Political Warfare Continues."

BONUS: From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: If It Happened, Trump Wiretapping Makes Watergate ‘Look Like a Joke’."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."




Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Sweet Dreams."

Deportation 'Shockwaves' in Los Angeles

I read these stories shaking my head, wondering what these people were thinking. Personally, I have no idea of how or why someone could live "undocumented" in another country. But that's what happened to this dude, Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, who was on the ICE radar, surveilled, and arrested a couple of days back. (Avelica-Gonzalez has lived here for 21 years, has a family completely dependent on him, and is now totally screwed.)

At LAT, "Immigrant arrested by ICE after dropping daughter off at school, sending shockwaves through neighborhood."

And note this comment:

The arrest so shook the school, a public charter called Academia Avance, that administrators held an assembly Tuesday afternoon to discuss what happened and to ease fears. The school’s executive director, Ricardo Mireles, has since ordered his teachers to talk to students whose parents are here illegally about creating a family plan in case they are detained or deported.

“It’s unfortunate that we have to have minors now deal with reality,” he said. “You need to be ready. ‘Have you talked to your parents? Do you have power of attorney?’ ”

It's "unfortunate" that illegal immigrant children now have to "deal with reality"?

That is fucked up.

These people, these communities, are in for a whole lotta hurt.

And it's very hard to feel sorry for them.

Paul Chaat Smith, Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong

I'm just coming across Paul Chaat Smith, whose writing looks more worthy than a lot of other authors I've blogged.

At Amazon, Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong.

And previously, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee.

Shop Lightning Deals

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

Also, GoPro HERO5 Black.

Here, Honeywell HT-900 TurboForce Air Circulator Fan, Black.

And, AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable - 6 Feet (1.8 Meters) - White.

Glad Tall Kitchen Drawstring Trash Bags, 13 Gallon, 90 Count, (Packaging May Vary).

Here, 2 Pounds Unroasted Coffee Beans, Premium Select from RhoadsRoast Coffees (Brazil Cerrado Arabica - Natural 17/18 Screen Coffee Beans, 2 Pounds Unroasted Green Beans).

Kelloggs Frosted Whole Grain Mini Wheats, 70-Ounce.

More, Franklin Sports Field Master Series Fast-Pitch Softball Glove, Right-Hand Throw.

BONUS: Paul Chaat Smith, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee.

How Much Did the Louisiana Purchase Really Cost?

I'm not the biggest Slate reader, but this piece keeps with my theme on Native Americans. And it's pretty interesting, in any case. Click through for the great animated graphic timeline on payments to Indian tribes for their lands under the purchase, which is claimed to be in the billions of dollars by 2012.

Read at the link:

The true story of the Louisiana Purchase is one of shameful plunder of native lands: https://t.co/EcbSMdAACk pic.twitter.com/jhv0qzuKzT

— Slate (@Slate) March 5, 2017

My President

Seen on Twitter a little while ago.

Now, if you really want to piss off PC leftists, say, "My President is White."

Heh.

RETWEET if @realDonaldTrump is YOUR president! #TeamTrump pic.twitter.com/5sT0KV9ekD

— Eric Spracklen (@EricSpracklen) March 5, 2017

Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools

Following up from yesterday, "Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses." (The book's at Amazon here.)

Be sure to read James Traub's excellent review of the Thernstroms, at the Los Angeles Times, "The academic gap in starkest black and white":

The single most devastating statistic in American life is this: The average black high school senior reads at the level of the average white eighth-grader. This, more than anything else, explains why race remains such an overwhelmingly salient fact in American life. It explains why affirmative action is, or at least appears to be, necessary. It explains to a very large degree why blacks continue to lag so far behind whites in income and socioeconomic status.

And, as Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom demonstrate with remorseless lucidity in "No Excuses," their latest exploration of the causes and consequences of persistent black failure, the gap cannot be explained away by racism, testing bias, inequitable resources or even by poverty itself. The gap is not only an incontrovertible fact but a fact rooted in black experience and behavior. The Thernstroms do not believe that school is the cause of black failure, but they insist that, given the right innovations, school can be the solution to black failure. Readers may find it hard to believe that a problem so deeply rooted can be cured with such a straightforward and inexpensive application of reform.

The Thernstroms have been accused in the past of relishing, rather than ruing, the bad news they deliver on, say, affirmative action or welfare. In their previous book, "America in Black and White," they seemed to take great pleasure in putting liberal noses out of joint. But they deserve at least equal credit for venturing fearlessly where more cautious scholars fear to tread and taking the considerable flak that comes with it. "No Excuses" is also not likely to be welcomed in the hallways of our great foundations or in graduate schools of education.

The essential piece of bad news the Thernstroms deliver here is that none of the conventional explanations for the academic gap hold much water, and thus neither do the conventional solutions. They challenge the view, most fervently advanced by Jonathan Kozol in "Savage Inequalities," that schools with large minority populations are systematically denied resources. This is one of those common-sense perceptions that turns out on close examination, they say, to be false...

Keep reading.

And see also Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, And Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.

More later!

Katie Hopkins Visit to Sweden Exposes the Muslim's War on Swedish Women (VIDEO)

Watch, at Blazing Cat Fur, "Swedish Women Living in Fear From Both Immigrants and Extreme Feminist Militants."

'Shut Up, White Women!'

From Robert Stacy McCain, at Medium, "Feminism 2017: ‘Shut Up, White Women’ - Welcome to Your Post-Hillary Gulag of ‘Intersectionality’."

I just published “Feminism 2017: ‘Shut Up, White Women’” https://t.co/X4XsGm17ZB

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) March 3, 2017

Lightning Deals and More

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

And see especially, Silhouette CAMEO 3 Craft Bundle (#1 Best Seller in Craft Shears).

Here, Amazon Echo - White.

Also, Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870, and Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico.

More, Rose Marie Beebe, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary.

Daniel Castro, Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism.

And David Roberts, Once They Moved Like The Wind : Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars.

Plus, Buddy Levy, Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs.

BONUS: Kim MacQuarrie, The Last Days of the Incas.

Former CIA Miltary Analyst Tara Maller (VIDEO)

Ms. Tara has a Ph.D. from MIT.

On with Shepard Smith today, at Fox News.

Robert Leckie, None Died in Vain

The cover blurb says this book gives James McPherson's "Battle Cry" a run for its money.

At Amazon, Robert Leckie, None Died in Vain: The Saga of the American Civil War.