Last Call For School Of Hard Right Knocks, Con't

Senate GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is fully on board with the white supremacy agenda in the nation's schools and for mob rule school boards by white parents.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday told Attorney General Merrick Garland that parents "absolutely should be telling" local schools what to teach amid a debate over mask and vaccine mandates, the role of racial equity education and transgender rights in schools that has become a flash point ahead of the 2022 midterms. 

"Parents absolutely should be telling their local schools what to teach. This is the very basis of representative government," McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, wrote in a letter. "They do this both in elections and -- as protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution -- while petitioning their government for redress of grievance. Telling elected officials they're wrong is democracy, not intimidation." 

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment. 

The letter from the Senate Minority Leader comes in response to a Justice Department effort to address the increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in public schools. Earlier this week, Garland directed the FBI and US attorneys' offices to meet with federal, state and local law enforcement leaders "to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend," the department said in a news release. 

"Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values," Garland wrote in a memo about the directive. "Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety." 

The National School Boards Association had asked the Biden administration for assistance in dealing with threats against educators for approving mask policies aimed at protecting against Covid-19 and threats over false "propaganda" about critical race theory being taught in classrooms even though that "remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class."

 

Not only does McConnell subscribe to the notion that the federal government has no business telling parents what their kids should learn, he goes on to say that protecting school board members from those same angry, racist parents who want to harm or even kill school board members is...intimidation of the parents!

It's the same nonsense we heard when McConnell was a kid 60 years ago. It was racist then, and it's racist now.

Taiwan In The Crosshairs

Chinese President Xi Jinping is making it increasingly clear that the "peaceful reunification" of Taiwan into mainland China is going to happen whether Taiwan wants it or not.

Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to achieve "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan, and did not directly mention the use of force after a week of tensions with the Chinese-claimed island that sparked international concern.

Taiwan responded to Xi by calling on Beijing to abandon its coercion, reiterating that only Taiwan's people could decide their future.

Democratically ruled Taiwan has come under increased military and political pressure from Beijing to accept its sovereignty, but Taipei has pledged to defend its freedom.

Speaking at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Xi said the Chinese people have a "glorious tradition" of opposing separatism.

"Taiwan independence separatism is the biggest obstacle to achieving the reunification of the motherland, and the most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation," he said on the anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the last imperial dynasty in 1911.

Peaceful "reunification" best meets the overall interests of the Taiwanese people, but China will protect its sovereignty and unity, he added.

"No one should underestimate the Chinese people's staunch determination, firm will, and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Xi said. "The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and will definitely be fulfilled."

He struck a slightly softer tone than in July, his last major speech mentioning Taiwan, in which he vowed to "smash" any attempts at formal independence. In 2019, he directly threatened to use force to bring the island under Beijing's control.

 

The difference now rather than in 2019 is now Xi and China are not above actually using economic and political as well as military force. 

China’s ambitious leader, Xi Jinping, now presides over what is arguably the country’s most potent military in history. Some argue that Mr. Xi, who has set the stage to rule for a third term starting in 2022, could feel compelled to conquer Taiwan to crown his era in power.

Mr. Xi said Saturday in Beijing that Taiwan independence “was a grave lurking threat to national rejuvenation.” China wanted peaceful unification, he said, but added: “Nobody should underestimate the staunch determination, firm will and powerful ability of the Chinese people to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Few believe a war is imminent or foreordained, in part because the economic and diplomatic aftershocks would be staggering for China. Yet even if the recent flights into Taiwan’s self-declared air identification zone are intended merely as political pressure, not a prelude to war, China’s financial, political and military ascendancy has made preserving the island’s security a gravely complex endeavor.

Until recently, the United States believed it could hold Chinese territorial ambitions in check, but the military superiority it long held may not be enough. When the Pentagon organized a war game in October 2020, an American “blue team” struggled against new Chinese weaponry in a simulated battle over Taiwan.

China now acts with increasing confidence, in part because many officials, including Mr. Xi, hold the view that American power has faltered. The United States’ failures with the Covid-19 pandemic and its political upheavals have reinforced such views.

Some advisers and former officers in China argue that the United States no longer has the will to send forces if a war were to break out over Taiwan. Under the right conditions, others suggest, the People’s Liberation Army could prevail if it did.

“Would the United States court death for Taiwan?” Teng Jianqun, a former Chinese navy captain, said in a recent interview on Chinese television.

 

Putin's Russia may excel at the long con, but China is the undisputed master of it. If they are moving now on Taiwan, and making it clear that reunifying is the goal to their own people, something's about to happen. The wheels are in motion, and once set, well...

2021 may be a far longer year than we thought.

The Road To Gilead, Texas Edition, Con't

It took less than 48 hours for Texas AG Ken Paxton to find Trump-appointed appeals court judges to reinstate Texas's ridiculous abortion ban after a federal judge blocked it on Thursday, and as of this morning, anyone can once again take out a $10,000 state-sponsored bounty on anyone else involved in an abortion in the state.

A federal appeals court late Friday reinstated the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, which bars the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granted a request filed Friday afternoon by the Texas attorney general to temporarily suspend a judge’s order blocking the law, which has halted most abortions in the state.

Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) had asked the appeals court to reverse the injunction by U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman, who sided with the Biden administration Wednesday night and characterized the abortion ban as an “unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.”

A three-judge panel of the conservative-leaning court gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Tuesday to respond to the appeal.

Paxton told the appeals court that the Justice Department has no legal authority to sue the state and said the appeals court must intervene immediately to lift the injunction. The lower-court judge overstepped, Paxton said, by halting a law that is enforced by private citizens, not state government officials.

“A court ‘cannot lawfully enjoin the world at large’ let alone hold Texas responsible for the filings of private citizens that Texas is powerless to prevent,” the filing states.

It asked the court to rule on that issue by Tuesday morning and to temporarily suspend Pitman’s injunction “as soon as possible.”

The brief order from the 5th Circuit, issued about five hours after the appeal was filed, did not rule on the merits of the state’s request. Any decision from the 5th Circuit could put the issue back before the Supreme Court, which declined to block the law when it took effect Sept. 1 but said it raises serious constitutional questions.

 

"You can't stop us because we're only allowing citizens to enforce the law and not the state!" is so stupidly, wildly dangerous that it constitutes codified mob rule. Texas could turn anything into a citizen-enforced bounty: law enforcement, border enforcement, school protection, voting observation, whatever.

In a state with open carry like Texas, it's a recipe for absolute vigilante law, only the state's willing to pay up taxpayer funds for letters of marque. It's state-sponsored terrorism of women.

Of course Trump Republicans love it.