Now San Francisco Has a 'Weight Stigma Czar'.  Lots of people struggle with some extra weight.  And most people admit that carrying that extra weight is unhealthy.  Extra poundage can cause stress no all of your body's systems, not least of all which can be your heart, lungs, and skeleton.  What's more, this is a national problem.  But in some quarters, some insist that obesity is normal, healthy, even attractive.  It's none of those things, but now we read that the city of San Francisco's Department of Public Health has brought in a consultant on "weight stigma & weight neutrality," and this consultant, one Vigie Tovar, is just what you'd expect.  [Tweet with video clip]

The Influence of Herd Mentality on Sexual and Gender Identity.  In a recent study (Gallup 2024) of sexual identity in the US, 30% of female respondents between 18 and 26 self-identified as LGBTQ.  In the Ivy League colleges, the numbers are even higher for both men and women.  At Brown University, a 2023 study showed that 40% of the students identified as such.  How did this come to be?  In fact, how did the idea of being born a different gender or being born gay come to be accepted by huge segments of the population?  How is it that 3 million Americans say they are transgender, and almost one million Americans say they identify as animals (furries)?

Enough Already with the F-Bombs.  I have a satellite TV system with a handful of movie channels featuring new movies made for cable, and every time I click on one in the middle of some story — no matter the format — cops and robbers, comedy — within ten seconds — I am not kidding! — an actor spits out [the F-word].  And as soon as I hear that word — I find it ugly and grating — I click to the next channel and — I am not kidding! — with ten seconds, an actor, even an actress, spews the same four-letter word.  Then I click immediately to the third channel and... same thing.  I no longer can watch such "entertainment."  The behavior also exposes, every time, the scriptwriter's unwitting admission that he suffers from a limited vocabulary in the rich English language.  American culture has become unbearably vulgar, which adjective commonly connotes dirty words that usually concern bodily functions below the waist.

The Editor says...
Yes, it does appear that nobody under 30 knows how to express himself or herself forcefully without using profanity, and this condition has spilled over into television programs.  Most of you would eject a stranger who came into your home cursing and swearing.  Why do so many people tolerate the same behavior from the TV set?  You have only yourself to blame if you don't unplug the television and leave it out by the curb for the next garbage truck or neighborhood scavenger.  Nothing requires you to own a television, and the TV industry long ago passed the point where their programming does more good than harm.  If thousands of people cut the cord and stop watching television, the TV execs will eventually get a clue and clean up their products.

The Next Inclusion Madness:  Neurodiversity.  Homosexuality has gone from a crime to being openly celebrated.  Adultery is no longer an offense punishable by death and would-be adulterers now can legally find partners on the Internet with scant worry about the consequences.  Poking fun at transexuals or cross dressers can be prosecuted as a hate crime, and human weaknesses such as obesity and drug use are openly tolerated.  Gambling and prostitution are no longer stigmatized.  Ridiculing an ugly person makes one guilty of "lookism."  The normalization of the once marginalized is ongoing, and the very idea of "normal" itself is under attack.  Mechanisms that sustained social cohesion — ostracizing, stigma, shunning, marginalization and exclusion — are now evils.  Where will it end?  Let me suggest that mental illness is the next candidate for inclusion so, the former "crazy person" will no longer be scorned and avoided as potentially threatening.

Delta Airlines and the coming apocalypse.  [Scroll down]  A leaked document reveals Delta is now having to tell potential recruits not to do incredibly gross and stupid things when they arrive for flight attendant interviews:  ["]As well as telling applicants that "proper undergarments must be worn but must not be visible[?!]," the document also reminds potential new-hire flight attendants that they should not use profanity during their interview and that chewing gum isn't permitted throughout the assessment day.["]  Other things Delta is unreasonably demanding is applicants have clean and trimmed fingernails, that they be clean and non-smelly, have no visible tattoos, can only wear scents if "applied lightly" and can wear fingernail polish only if every finger is the same color and they're not wildly colored.  Hair has to be "natural looking," and they're limited to a single nose piercing and no more than two earrings per ear, with no hoops, gauges, etc.  Despite these unconscionable limitations on diversity, inclusion and other woke stuff, Delta is apparently overloaded with applications as are the other airlines.

10 Lies Leftists Tell You.  Lie #6: Fat is beautiful.  All humans of any size are precious and children of God.  That being said, I've been a skinny, just right, and borderline obese child of God.  And nothing is just right when you're overweight and out of shape.  You're easily fatigued, your clothes don't fit you properly, and trust me: hardly anyone of the opposite sex is giving you a second look.  Although no one, including me, should hate himself for carrying extra poundage, it's imperative to work toward one's ideal weight, especially if you wish to live a long and active life.

Americans won't work.  Americans don't seem to want to work the small jobs any more, most likely because they are getting some kind of government money or their expenses are being taken care of by Mommy and Daddy Dearest.  Some don't believe they need to work their way up a success ladder but should instead start at the top.  How does this help the American labor market?  Well, these non-Americans work for less money so employers are more likely to hire them.  Try to hire an American teenager or older and they will want to know your health care benefits, days off, vacation time, and lunch breaks.  They will want flex-time.  Coming in late, to them, is no biggie.  Being on time is too white.  We are in a world of trouble when young Americans have no drive, no job pride, and little ambition.  Someone needs to staff businesses or the businesses will die.

The deliberate murder of virtue.  For decades, the American Left has been making a deliberate and successful attempt to kill virtue.  Much of what they do demonstrates a disregard for normal traditional American virtues such as decency, consideration, productivity, respect, decorum, honor, and moderation.  The truly virtuous would never dream of announcing their sexual preferences in public. [...] The Left have taken a careful and systematic approach to destroying American virtues such as hard work, modesty, humility, consideration of others, and planning for the future.  In their places, the Left decided that it was virtuous to be demanding, slothful, narcissistic, godless, and sexually profligate.  The Leftist virtue-killers think the government has its own money to give to them for doing nothing.  Taking what belongs to others and lazing about the house and streets with it is not virtuous.  It is theft; taxpayers pay for the progeny and sloth of these unvirtuous slackers.  If the Left can remove time-honored virtues such as productivity and merit, they create a national movement where they can be taken care of by others without consideration for those who really pay.  You get a nation of unvirtuous entitled slobs.

One Country, Two Different Cities.  I have lived in Chicago for over twenty years. [...] In my occasional use of the downtown library and my local branch, I often witness adults talking loudly with one another or over the phone, dozing or sleeping over the desks and chairs, blockading themselves inside the restroom stalls, and kids running around shouting and talking, with little awareness of the discomfort or disturbance to others.  Neither the librarians nor the security step up to intervene.  As a consequence of such violations, urban residents daily experience unnecessary stress and anxiety, public order is broken down, and the quality of life is compromised.  What happened to the order, etiquette, respect, and decency in public spaces in American cities?  Who should be held responsible?  Could the residents do something to change the situation?

Affluenza strikes again.
Angie Harmon's daughter, 18, freed without bail after allegedly breaking into bar, stealing hundreds of dollars worth of booze: report.  Avery Sehorn, daughter of actress Angie Harmon and NFL star Jason Sehorn, was freed from jail without bail after she was busted for breaking into a bar and stealing hundreds of dollars worth of booze, according to a report.  Sehorn, 18, and two 17-year-old boys, was arrested just days after graduating high school for allegedly sneaking through the back door of the World Night Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, and chugging liquor as they hid behind a bar.  After she was detained, she was released after making a "written promise to appear" at her June 18 hearing at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse rather than pay a bond, according to court documents reviewed by The Daily Mail.  There were no additional conditions for her release.

The Editor says...
In case you don't remember "affluenza," it was a legal defense that was put up (successfully!) to get a rich kid off the hook in 2013, with the argument that the kid's parents were so terribly wealthy that the kid never learned the difference between right and wrong.  And the jury bought it! [1] [2] [3] [4]

Addiction and the End of Personal Responsibility.  There is no more critical tenet of conservatism than the assumption of individual responsibility.  As Dennis Prager wrote in a summative essay thirty years ago for The Heritage Foundation, "just as I am rewarded for my good behavior, I am accountable for my bad behavior.  This belief was a result of ... individualism ... and of the Judeo-Christian ethic that also animated the founders of this country.  Essential to Judaism and Christianity is the notion that you are accountable for your behavior-to God, ultimately.  This has been under attack."  Nowhere is this perspective under attack more than in the use of addiction and mental illness — namely, to
  [#1]   excuse and undermine assumed responsibility,
  [#2]   eliminate punishment for illegal and anti-social behaviors and actions, and
  [#3]   require "therapeutic" compensatory behaviors on the part of alleged and real miscreants in the United States and elsewhere.

America the disgusting.  The concept of America was and is beautiful. [...] We no longer get educated because the DEI and feminist cabals are serving up rancid race-conscious courses that teach nothing but resentment and bad manners.  Students, from kindergarten on are taking these courses and they exit college with no livable skills, but plenty of hate for the wealthy, the white, and the traditional.  We have at least two generations of uneducated brats with no social skills and no practical skills.  But they are skilled in making demands and crying for safe spaces.  Some are in the highest places in our government.  It's as ugly as it gets. [...] In America today, there is a shortage of good manners, politeness, consideration, and a work ethic.  Two generations were taught they need not work, apply themselves in school, or restrain their tempers.  And the schools not only went along with the parents' shortcomings, but took them a step further and encouraged such miscreant behavior, taking it to the extreme of actually promoting sex changes.  That is ugly to the bone.

Maine DOC to Buy 'state-of-the-art' Laser Tattoo Removal Machine to Help Inmates Reintegrate into Society.  The Maine Department of Corrections (Maine DOC) is seeking a vendor to purchase a "state-of-the-art" laser tattoo removal machine, a purchase the agency argues will help inmates successfully reintegrate into society.  According to a Request for Proposals (RFP) posted by the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS) on April 29, the Maine DOC is soliciting bids from vendors "to procure "to procure a state-of-the-art laser tattoo removal equipment that meets stringent requirements for safety, efficacy, and versatility, designed to facilitate the rehabilitation and reintegration of inmates within a correctional facility setting."

Renaming 'public housing' doesn't alter its sordid history.  Politicians and activists have long tried to dress old, failed, sometimes contentious and often intrusive ideas in new clothing.  Gun control has become "gun safety."  Illegal aliens are "undocumented immigrants."  The politically charged term abortion has been softened for the palate to "women's reproductive health."  Often labels are changed due to negative connotations that have arisen from the original terminology.  Other times the new phrasing is an effort to obscure.  Of the latter, we're seeing it in California, where Democratic Assemblyman Alex Lee of Milpitas has introduced a bill with the title, "The Social Housing Act."  He wouldn't dare call it "The Public Housing Act."  Too much baggage associated with that terminology.  So the concept was renamed.

As the world continues to resist the office, whatever happened to doing as you were told?  "I mean, whatever happened to 'do as you're told'?"  I nearly choked on my toast at the words of business commentator David Buik on Monday morning.  Speaking to LBC's Nick Ferrari about the challenges faced by Lloyd's of London — which has been trying to lure employees back to the workplace on Fridays — the city veteran summed up my thoughts not just on the TWaTs (people who insist on only coming into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays), but the Brits refusing to return to pre-pandemic norms across every industry.  Lloyd's had said last year that it wanted to "get Monday back", but it was the fatalistic tone adopted by its leader, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, that was notable, when he said at the weekend:  "I'd love to recover a bit more of Friday, but I think it's a lost cause."  There was, of course, a time when bosses dictated working hours and indeed days, when employees stayed late if needed and did whatever work was required of them. [...] And it's not just in the workplace that you see this loss of authority, but in education.  In schools, absenteeism has suffered a sharp increase, with more than a quarter of all secondary pupils now defined as persistent absentees.

Vandals destroy protected and delicate natural rock formations in Nevada national park.  Visitors to a popular rock site at Lake Mead National Park are being tracked by federal authorities after seriously damaging a formation at the Nevada hiking site.  Officials say the damage occurred last weekend on the north side of the lake, where petrified red dunes make it one of the most well-trafficked areas of the park.  A video taken by a witness to the event, shows two men working hard to shove large chunks of loose rock of the edge of an outcropping.

'Hiring Gen Z is a nightmare — they don't turn up to their first day of work'.  "A nightmare" is how James McNeil describes his experience working with members of Generation Z.  Many young workers are barely able to get through an interview, are unwilling to pick up the phone and have even ghosted their new companies completely on the first day of their jobs, according to exasperated employers.  McNeil, 38, had been in charge of a sales team of an organisation collecting music royalties from businesses and often he received job applications from 20-somethings to join the company.  "We'd book interviews [but] people wouldn't turn up, or they'd turn up late, or they'd turn up and were wildly unprepared," says McNeil, who now runs Ready2Lease, a car leasing firm.  "They didn't know anything about what they were doing, what they were there for."

Black lawyer wants to legalize crimes to eliminate them "because criminal behavior is just black culture".  A prominent black lawyer-activist suggested legalizing crime to totally eliminate it.  He said that blacks are all just criminals at heart and that crime is just "black culture."  In an appearance on MSNBC's Black History and Culture special titled "Black Men in America:  Road to 2024" on Feb. 4, civil rights attorney Ben Crump played pool with MSNBC contributor Charles Coleman Jr. and civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton as they discussed police brutality and the Biden administration's justice system.  "We can get rid of all the crime in America overnight, just like that," Crump told his fellow guests.  "And people ask 'how attorney Crump?' — change the definition of crime."  He added that if one gets to define what conduct is going to be made criminal, then one can predict who the criminals are going to be... They made the laws to criminalize our culture — black culture," he said.  [Tweet]

Our Library Stopped Late Fees, So I Stopped Returning Books.  Libraries all over the country are ending the longstanding library tradition of fining patrons for returning books late or not at all.  It's another self-destruction tactic subtler and less morally abominable than using their dedicated taxpayer funds to purchase pornography for children.  Our local government library ended late fees in the last year, so I quickly stopped returning books on time.  The lack of fees was especially helpful in recently allowing me to keep for an extra month the book Albion's Seed.  I couldn't manage to finish that magnificent tome in the usual three-week checkout period.  So I just kept ignoring the "overdue book" notifications the library frantically sent.  If there's no penalty, why should I care?  Common courtesy might be one reason.  Someone else appears to have placed a hold on our library's copy of Albion's Seed that I temporarily hoarded.  That's why I kept it overdue — because I couldn't renew it.  Sorry, stranger.  Our library doesn't penalize people for keeping books indefinitely, so I guess your hold means nothing now.

Biden Pushes Inmate Voting With Help From Interest Groups.  A federal agency is working with left-of-center nonprofits to increase voting among prisoners and former prison inmates under an executive order from President Joe Biden designed to increase election turnout.  The Federal Bureau of Prisons has partnered with and regularly consults on voting issues with the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Washington Lawyers' Committee.  Emery Nelson, spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department, confirmed the arrangement to The Daily Signal.

Racing to Death.  Today young men and women are more likely to die from drug overdoses, especially fentanyl, though tomorrow it may be some other trendy drug.  Though different from car racing, the underlying cause of death is the same:  the heedlessness and overconfidence of youth within a society that in nearly every media venue glamorizes speed, drugs, and sex.  If only the young would recognize the dangers of life and their own limits — in other words, if only they would become conservative and wise beyond their years — then little of this would happen.  But of course, they do not, and in 2022, there were 105,452 deaths from drug overdoses and 42,795 deaths from car crashes.  Altogether, there were 218,064 "unintentional deaths," so approximately 70,000 accidental non-auto deaths unrelated to drugs.  In addition, there were 49,449 suicides in 2022.  I suspect that most of those dying in these careless and destructive ways do not value their lives as they should.  The underlying cause is not just that the young are heedless — the young have always been so — but that they have become increasingly heedless, and dangerous to others, in recent years.

The Editor says...
It appears to me that the public schools are teaching nihilism, secular humanism, and recklessness, instead of teaching civics, ethics, good citizenship, history, and common sense.  Public school kids seem to have little regard for right and wrong, but they're very aware of what they can get away with at any moment of the day.  Teaching philosophy and Christianity, or at least the Golden Rule, would help.  But alas, the Communists have taken over the public schools, directly or indirectly, thanks to the Socialist Democrats; and the internet has taken the place of fatherly advice, so this is the fruit.  Young people today don't know how to act in church, in a restaurant, in a theater, or on the highway.  We expect them to behave and they won't.  The first thing you have to wonder about teenagers racing their cars (or their mothers' cars) in the street is where are their fathers?

Boycotting student loans: 1 in 10 borrowers [are] refusing payments, report says.  The pause on federal student loan payments ended in October 2023, but many of the 43 million borrowers who owe a collective $1.7 trillion are still struggling or outright refusing to submit payments.  In fact, the majority (60%) of student loan borrowers have missed payments since the pause ended, including 35% who have made some payments and 25% who haven't made any payments, according to a report from Intelligent.com.

In the Mouth of Marxist Madness.  [Scroll down]  Recent figures show that nearly a quarter of Scotland's adult population is being prescribed anti-depressants, while fifteen percent of Americans are being similarly prescribed some form of powerful selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors known to cause dangerous side-effects — including loss of sexual function, insomnia, brain fog, suicidal ideation, and self-harm.  In the U.S., fifty percent of the population over twelve has used illegal drugs.  Overdose deaths have tripled since 2000.  And fifty-five million American adults currently use marijuana.  Whether through alcohol, opioids, marijuana, or hallucinogens, Americans are walking around in a Soma-like haze.

The Stifling Effect Of Living In A Surveillance State Like The USA.  Years ago, my girlfriend and I went to see a movie.  What we saw, I've no idea, but I do know we had a terrible time, and it had nothing to do with what was on the screen and everything to do with what was going on in the theater.  People were yelling at the screen, talking to each other, and smoking.  My girlfriend mentioned the smoking, and I said that if that was the only problem we encountered, we'd be lucky, as I'd recently witnessed a bloody knife fight between two girls over a baby-daddy in a nearby theater.  I mention this because when you think your life may be in jeopardy, it's hard to enjoy entertainment, and enjoyment is the whole point of movies.  Movies require your buy-in for success, you must turn off reality and connect with the characters.  If you can't do that, you can't enjoy the movie.  If you're worried that someone's going to pull a gun or set the place on fire, you're going to be too busy scanning for danger to become engaged with what's on the screen.  You'd end up doing little more than wasting your time and money.

Woman Claims She Suffers From 'Time Blindness' That Keeps Her From Getting To Work On Time.  Tiktoker claims to suffer from "time blindness"(which isn't a real thing) and blasts employers who make employees come on time.  She wants to dismantle the system which says people should be on time.  [Video clip]

Virginity is a social construct says Planned Parenthood.  I shouldn't be surprised, since Planned Parenthood would be the last organization in the world to know anything about virginity.  But as a middle-aged guy my imagination isn't what it used to be, so I was a bit taken aback by this hot take from the organization:  [Tweet]  Having once been a teenager I can assure you that virginity is much more than a social construct, although admittedly different societies have different takes on what import it has in social life.

We Must Defend Self-Defense.  Their wicked plan is perfectly obvious — to criminalize normal people and normalize criminals.  Thieves, bums, losers, junkies, whores, and other trash — they are the heroes in this morally bankrupt morality play, and we normals are the villains.  The first step to fighting back is to see the truth, and the truth is right there.  You just have to be hard enough to accept it and to not allow them to leverage your empathy or compassion into tolerating having to be afraid as some sort of price you owe for the crime of not being a lowlife.  They want us, quiet, complacent, and obedient.  They want a society where we live in fear.

New UN-backed legal recommendations normalize sex with minors, outraged critics say.  A shocking report issued by international legal experts with the backing of the United Nations appears to open the floodgates to normalize sex with minors.  "Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law," the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists wrote in March with an assist from UNAIDS and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.  The report is titled "The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty."

Put Some Clothes On Your Daughter!  As the seasons change and the weather warms, American adults are yet again being subjected to the uncomfortable spectacle of teenage girls wearing outfits more befitting a runway show than a school, a store, or any other public setting.  Every winter I hope the trend loses steam or reverses, but every spring it returns worse than the previous year. [...] I make my arguments not as a male to a female, but as an adult to a child.  My gender is incidental to my arguments, and I would have no qualms with a female adult objecting to a male teenager dressing inappropriately.  I'm specifically targeting the current trend among teenage females not from any leftist chimera of implicit misogyny or ingrained patriarchy, but because the consequences of said behaviors are far more serious for the teenage female than for the teenage male.

America's Broken Windows.  Today, good manners and respect for others are out of fashion, if not obsolete.  Forget any "sirs," "madams," or "beg your pardons" from ever being uttered, but do expect to hear lurid vulgarity where you might once have least expected it.  Profanity and salty stories are nothing new, but their public proliferation is.  Just as with respectful fashions, courteous language is a sign of a sober mind possessing enough empathy to consider others within earshot.  Crass language and animalistic behavior are the hallmarks of unremitting egocentrism and perpetual adolescence.  In an era so drowning in debauchery that political leaders and schoolteachers believe it appropriate to introduce the youngest students to pornography and drag shows, though, it is easy to see how probity has been replaced with anything goes.  The obvious consequence is that self-reliant American adults have been replaced with a nation of children whom Daddy Government can choose to punish when bad and reward when well behaved.  That's how Marxists make slaves.

The Chair of the January 6 Select Committee Just Made [an Embarrassing] Admission.  Tucker Carlson is locked in shredding the nonsense surrounding the January 6 riot, which has been sold to the public as a violent insurrection.  The hyperbole knows no bounds as others have said that day was worse than Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attacks, once again showing that liberals have no sense of history.  Trump supporters killed Capitol Police officers; people took that seriously.  And it's all a lie.  It's also a lie that those arrested, indicted, and convicted are domestic terrorists.  I'm not referring to the ones who attacked police officers; they deserve whatever comes to them.  But folks like Jacob Chansley, the 'QAnon Shaman,' are decidedly not domestic threats.  Chansley was given a four-year jail sentence for walking around the Capitol Building escorted by Capitol Police officers.  Most rapists and other violent criminals don't get nearly as much jail time nowadays as liberals have embraced a soft-on-crime attitude, unless it's January 6, which the political class has used to declare all-out legal war on these political prisoners.

The Price of Eliminating Consequences.  Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a Portland, Oregon good Samaritan confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.  More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage — of the thieves!  They pouted.  They screamed.  They resisted.  How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished.  The criminals entertained no fear of any consequences for walking out with bags of things that were not theirs.  They had no care that mainstreaming their habits would undermine the entire fabric of society.  What is common to the pandemic of smash-and-grab, carjacking, fighting on airliners while in flight, and deadly Saturday night shoot-outs is this same apparent assurance there will be no consequences.  That expectation of exemption is why the Antifa thugs in Atlanta were so bold in their latest violent attacks on the police.

What's Next for Wokeism?  Twenty-five years ago, I told a friend that we would likely bear witness to the acceptance and even protection of several abhorrent social or political practices.  That came true, but it didn't stop there. [...] During the 1980s and 1990s, the social norms listed below were largely unacceptable; eventually the practices became mainstream through the strident promotion by activists and ineffective pushback by traditional institutions:
  •   Open homosexuality, coupled with the very public promotion of the lifestyle
  •   Gay Marriage
  •   Transgenderism
  •   Sex by consenting children with young adults
  •   Open Borders
  •   Anti-Capitalism
  •   The acceptance of recreational drug use as acceptable behavior
  •   Rampant crime and reduced punishment
  •   Society no longer requires work to live
  •   Single-parent constructs as equal to two-parent families
Take a moment to reread this list.  Nothing surprises us anymore.  History teaches us that radical social change usually ends badly, even for progressives.  All of the above continues to have a significant stigma for many Americans.  There is general agreement that promoting negative moral or societal values can and usually will have a deleterious effect on society.  With no national debate, the redefinition of our country has almost been achieved.  Today, our ability to be shocked must surpass a very high threshold.

Cookie Thief Makes Off With $420 Worth of Thin Mints From Chicago Girl Scout Troop.  A Chicago Girl Scout Troop on the northwest side of Chicago was the victim of a cookie theft over the weekend, after dozens of boxes of Thin Mints were reported stolen in broad daylight while the troop was working to sort through orders.  According to officials, on Saturday afternoon, scouts aged 5 to 11 and parents from Troop 25778 were unloading and sorting cookies on pallets near 6160 W. Higgins Road.  As the troop began to organize orders, an individual approached and grabbed boxes without paying, reports say.  "We put the cookies on the sidewalk out in front, and then we started sorting," said Troop Leader Cyndee Timmerman.  "I saw a guy with four cases in his hand and I asked him who he was with?  He couldn't tell me who he was with."  According to officials, 84 boxes of Thin Mints were stolen off a pallet along the sidewalk where the sorting was taking place.

Global Health and the Art of Really Big Lies.  In a former role I had a boss who lied a lot.  The lies were pure fantasy, but massive in scope and delivered with sincerity.  They were very successful.  This success was based on the reluctance of most people to consider that someone in a position of authority in a humanitarian organization would completely ignore any semblance of reality.  People assumed the claims must be true, as fabricating information to that extent in those circumstances seemed to defy logic.  The principle of Really Big Lies is based on their being so divorced from reality that the listener will assume their own perception must be flawed, rather than the claims of the person speaking to them.  Only an insane or ridiculous person would make such outlandish claims, and a credible institution would not employ such a person.  Therefore, given that the institution was apparently credible, the statements must also be credible, and the listener's prior perception of reality therefore flawed.  Lesser lies, by contrast, are likely to be perceived as sufficiently close to known reality to be provably wrong.  Inventing truth can be more effective than bending it.

Laziness is fashionable now.
Lazy Voters Enable Democratic Fraud.  There is a new category of voters these days that is proving to be the deciding factor for the Democrats.  This group is the lazy voter group, the ones who are predisposed to using those new at home food prep services.  That describes all the thousands of people who are suddenly either too busy or too unskilled to actually grocery shop and cook for themselves and thus have "ready-to-assemble" meals shipped to them. [...] No doubt the food is excellent and it represents a good value, but the entire concept of "just assemble and heat" food services taps into the unmotivated, self-entitled mentality of a disturbingly sizable chunk of voters.  A current TV ad for one of them shows a man putting his food into his snazzy countertop oven and hitting a few preprogrammed buttons, excitedly saying, "And this is the really fun part:  I'm not doing anything."  Another ad shows the wife of a couple exclaiming, "We don't have to cook anymore!" after tasting the food.

NYC bill preventing landlords from performing criminal background checks gains traction.  A new law being seriously considered by lawmakers in New York City could strip landlords of the ability to perform criminal background checks on prospective tenants.  The legislation, known as the "Fair Chance for Housing Act", is set to go before the New York City Council's Committee on Civil Rights on December 8th and is being backed by at least 30 of the council's 51 members, New York Post reported.  In addition to being supported by a significant number of lawmakers, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has suggested he is open to working with lawmakers on the proposal.  "No one should be denied housing because they were once engaged with the criminal justice system, plain and simple," a spokesperson for the mayor's office told Fox Business in a statement.

The Editor says...
Common sense would tell you that prior criminal activity is a likely indicator of future criminal activity.  Naturally, a landlord is entitled to know about a prospective tenant's criminal background.  Unfortunately, the world of common sense is long gone, and the world of constant victimhood has taken its place.

Washington D.C. to Legalize Public Urination.  When your whole city's a toilet, why not embrace it?  ["]The D.C. Council is expected to take the first of two votes Tuesday on a massive rewrite of its criminal code.  If passed, the bill would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies.["]  Assume that there'll be a lot more burglaries, carjackings and robberies.  Not to mention public urination.

NYC thief pick-pocketed dead victim who was pinned under truck.  A soulless thief pick-pocketed a dead man crushed by a truck in Manhattan — as ghoulish onlookers cheered her on, video obtained by The [New York] Post shows.  The woman was recorded apparently pick-pocketing the body of a pedestrian who had been crushed under a tractor-trailer in Midtown — and the sickening crime has left police unable to identify him or notify his family of his death, sources said.  The gruesome crash occurred as the victim, who police said was believed to be in his 50s, was crossing Eighth Avenue at West 44th Street around 11:30 a.m. Thursday.  Video shows the thief, wearing white pants and a black jacket, shimmying under the truck toward the dead man and smoothly reaching for his wallet.  Giddy onlookers — seemingly unbothered by the sight of the dead man — egged her on.

Human Composting Is Now Legal in California, Leading the Way to 'Soylent Green'.  It comes to mind, because this 1973 futuristic movie was set in 2022.  Let that sink in.  It also comes to mind because thanks to Biden's economic agenda (or lack thereof), much of the dystopian ethos of that world is being baked into our everyday lives.  The World Economic Forum keeps pushing new forms of insect protein on us, and it was only a matter of time before cannibalism was happily presented as an idea whose time had come.  For the sake of the environment, even our death traditions are being restructured to fit the paradigm of you will own nothing and you will be happy with it.  It's wasteful to plant a headstone to memorialize your loved one, not to mention selfish.

A Leaking Ship of Fools.  A spinoff of the sex confusion is our failure to differentiate between childhood and adulthood.  It's not just that we're forcing sexual behavior onto increasingly younger children, but we are tolerating more and more childish behavior from adults.  Not long ago I was in my bank, and standing several customers in front of me was a woman wearing fuzzy-bear slippers, all wrapped up in a blanket.  When did slovenliness become socially acceptable?  Rudeness in traffic, fit-throwing in fast food restaurants, a Senate candidate dressed always in sweats — has no one ever told such people to grow up?

And Now, the Left Moves to Normalize Pedophilia.  Many people have observed for years now that the total exclusion of morality from the public square, and the refusal to declare that any behavior was wrong in itself, would lead to the normalization of all manner of abhorrent behavior.  Such warnings seem almost quaint now, with drag queens in primary schools and toddlers being encouraged to undergo radical body mutilation.  In this insane environment, it is no surprise whatsoever that the Left is now pushing to make pedophilia as normal as a walk in the park.  The assault on traditional values is total and unyielding.  No quarter will be given.  The Post Millennial reported recently that "a professional counselor who works with incarcerated sex offenders defended pedophiles as a 'marginalized' minority in a recent YouTube upload, sparking criticism as clips from the video went viral on social media." Miranda Galbreath, who is a licensed sex therapist, posted a video which is, at least for now, unavailable.  It was entitled "Let's talk about minor-attracted persons."  In it, Galbreath advocates for the use of the term "minor attracted people" and claims that the term "pedophile" is a "judgmental, hurtful insult."  She says that pedophiles are "the most vilified population of folks."

Sex offender arrested after allegedly offering parents $100k to 'buy' their daughter, and he's done it before.  A registered sex offender in Florida was apparently looking to pick up his next victim like he would a loaf of bread by offering a parent $100,000 to purchase their young daughter while strolling through a Winn Dixie grocery store last week.  The same man reportedly offered to plunk down double the money in 2018 in exchange for another woman's 8-year-old child, according to a Fox 35 report at the time.  Police reported that they began the thorough investigation into the alleged actions of Austrian native Hellmuth Kolb after "the parent's clear concern that someone was insistent on attempting to purchase their daughter in a grocery store."

New York scrubs the word 'inmate' from state laws.  New York has amended several state laws to remove the word "inmate" and replace it with "incarcerated person" to refer to people serving prison time.  The changes, signed into law Monday by Gov. Kathy Hochul, are intended to reduce the stigma of being in jail.  Prison reform advocates have said the term "inmate" has a dehumanizing effect.  Prisoners say it can feel degrading when jail guards refer to them as inmates, especially in front of their families during in-person visits.

Shooting Up on the Subway.  The brave new world of New York has consigned the dreaded stigma — singular cause of all of man's torments — to the judgemental ash tip of history.  Curiously, some stigmas are good stigmas.  Smoking a cigarette within four blocks of a warm-blooded being is tantamount to chewing a glass vial labelled, 'Wuhan Institute of Virology.'  So too is suggesting masks discourage a virus as barbed wire discourages a mosquito.  Breaking either taboo conjures the phosphoric ire of green-haired Millennials with steel dangling from their nostrils.

LGBT activists demand resources for monkeypox, don't want officials to stigmatize gay communities.  The Biden administration and local leaders are walking a fine line as they play catchup with the surging monkeypox, scrambling to get vaccines and tests to an LBGTQ community that is losing patience while combatting the idea this is a sexually transmitted disease for gay men.  Mounting cases and difficulty in accessing vaccines have led to frustration among advocates who fear the government isn't doing enough to stem monkeypox, which has little history in countries outside of Africa and features a painful rash.  Comparisons to the early response to HIV/AIDS, which was marked by stigma and early failures, are hard to ignore.

Obesity Should Be Cured, Not Celebrated.  Cameron English, Director of Bio-Sciences of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), wrote in the ACSH daily e-newsletter that "as 'fat acceptance' gains cultural traction, a growing coalition of health care providers and advice websites downplays the dangers of obesity to appease social justice activists."  America's public health establishment has made a lot of critical mistakes in recent years, English tells us.  One of its worst is its willingness to appease social justice activists who are committed to denying the dangers of obesity. [...] The fat acceptance gurus are rapidly deconstructing the evidence-based conclusion that obesity is an unhealthy and largely preventable condition.

Woke researchers call for term 'morbidly' obese to be banned because it's offensive.  Calling the fattest category of people 'morbidly' obese is offensive, woke researchers said today [6/8/2022].  And they urged doctors and scientists to stop referring to unsuccessful attempts to lose weight as 'failures'.  Terms used moving forward should include 'ineffective' or 'insufficient' weight loss, or even 'secondary weight regain'.  No specific suggestions were given to replace the phrase 'morbid', however severe is often used instead.  Critics today slammed the recommendation, published in a leading obesity journal, saying it was 'odd' given morbid obesity is a clinical term.  But industry experts agreed that 'less stigmatising' language was crucial in the battle against the bulge, saying 'words truly do matter'.

City to junkies:  Don't be ashamed to get high.  The city Health Department is urging junkies not to feel embarrassed that they get high off fentanyl, and even offering a step-by-step tutorial on how to use one of the deadliest and most addictive drugs on the planet.  In its "Let's Talk Fentanyl" ad campaign the agency tells users they should feel empowered when they safely consume the drug — which became the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45 in 2020, according to one analysis.  "Don't be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely," a woman identified as Florence from Manhattan says in one of the ads that has appeared citywide on trains and buses.

What the pro-life movement gets wrong — and the truth about Roe v Wade.  There are many things that the pro-life movement does exceptional[ly] well in providing resources that are alternatives to abortion but what I have learned these past 26 years that I've been an op-ed columnist is that the movement does not recognize that its opposition has changed.  Those posters of dismantled baby parts and lurid stories of born alive babies being murdered affects only voters who still have hearts.  Now more women are wearing their "I'm proud of my abortion" t-shirts.  Since the SCOTUS leak forecasting the end of Roe V. Wade, the true radical pro-abortion advocates have emerged and they are frightening.  I'm not sure if calling some of them insane is accurate but I'm leaning at dubbing them just plain 'evil'.

Former Stripper Running For Congress Says She Aborted Her Baby To Give It A Better Life.  Alexandra Hunt, 29, is running for the Democratic nomination for the Philadelphia-area congressional district and has been attempting to leverage her sordid past in order to gain an edge over her competition in the race.  As a young adult, Hunt chose to become a sex worker while she studied at the University of Richmond where she earned a degree in psychology and now has her eyes set on Congress.  She also wants everyone to know that she never regretted her abortion.

Six Outrageous Videos Posted By The "Libs Of TikTok".  [#6] This is the most disturbing video on our list, by far, and I am leading with it to make sure everyone reading the article has the exposure to the utter wretchedness of feminism, leftism, and postmodernism.  To summarize, a deranged lunatic is planning on murdering her unborn baby and feels great enough about it to both dance AND brag about it on social media.  [Video clip]

Pennsylvania Bill Would Restrict Employers' Examination of Applicants' Criminal Records.  Pennsylvania State Representative Darisha Parker (D-Philadelphia) this week introduced a measure to restrict employers' consideration of job applicants' criminal records.  In a statement on her bill, Parker cited data from the U.S. Department of Justice indicating that nearly a third of Americans have a criminal record, almost as many as having earned college degrees.  She said incurring such a record has proved a major burden for many Pennsylvanians seeking jobs as well as housing and public benefits.  Her legislation would bar employers from asking job seekers about or weighing those applicants' juvenile or summary offenses as well as any cases that resulted in no convictions.  Expunged and pardoned cases would also be off-limits for consideration.

'Professional' thief with 96 prior arrests busted again at NYC Target.  A self-described "professional booster" with 96 arrests on her record was nabbed again this week for allegedly stealing from an Upper East Side Target — and then released at her arraignment on Thursday, The [New York] Post has learned.  Michelle Mckelley, 42, allegedly boasted about her "hustle" at the store on Third Avenue near East 70th Street, telling cops, "I haven't got caught in a long time," after her latest bust Wednesday, prosecutors said in Manhattan Criminal Court.  "I'm a professional booster.  Y'all are stopping my hustle," the serial shoplifter allegedly told officers.

In the 21st century, we've entered a brave new era of child sacrifice.  In ancient times, pagans sacrificed children to propitiate angry, erratic, and inscrutable gods, hoping that giving up their most precious possessions would save the entire community.  Leftists are still doing that, not just with abortion, but with their COVID policies and the madness of their decriminalizing crime. [...] I suspect most American Thinker readers recognize that abortion is a death cult.  After all, Americans have killed some 61,000,000 babies since 1973, when the Supreme Court first found that imaginary right to abortion hidden deep within the Constitution.  In the beginning, though, women were embarrassed about what they were doing.  It was shameful.  Now, though, things are different.  Women shout their abortion.  They've made goddesses of themselves and willingly sacrifice babies to satisfy their own emotional needs.  In addition, the cult of climate change says that humans are killing Mother Gaia, another goddess who must be propitiated.

Fit to Be Fat.  A curious example of the power of social trends on thought is that two years into the Covid pandemic, nobody of any influence has yet bothered to launch a campaign to persuade Americans to do the one obvious non-pharmaceutical intervention that would make Americans healthier whether the virus stays or goes:  lose some weight.  Instead, 2022 has seen new gains in the long, grinding campaign to make the fat another of those privileged classes whose self-image cannot be affronted.  For example, Nike, with its $3.6 billion ad budget, tweeted out under the title "Styles for Self Love" a picture of a 250-pound black woman dressed head to toe in Nike garb and looking mighty pleased with herself.  Similarly, Self magazine devoted its "Future of Fitness" issue to Maoist-style self-criticism, with articles like "The Relentless Reality of Anti-Fatness in Fitness."  (Well, yeah, that's kind of the point of all that exercising:  to not be fat.)  Not surprisingly, that article was also illustrated with a photo of another smug 250-pound black woman.  Yet, it's not a secret that heaviness is a major risk factor for both Covid and a host of other ailments.

NFL threatens clubs with penalties if they ask recruits about drugs, mothers' prostitution.  A new NFL rule threatens teams with financial penalties and the loss of a draft pick if they ask prospective recruits about personal issues such as their marijuana habits, sexual orientation and whether their mothers have ever been prostitutes.  In a Wednesday [1/5/2022] letter to the league's 32 teams that ESPN obtained, the NFL said clubs will forfeit a draft pick between the first and fourth rounds and receive a minimum $150,000 fine if coaches ask "disrespectful, inappropriate or unprofessional" questions during an interview.  Team representatives also will face individual fines and suspensions over their conduct with draft prospects.  "All clubs should ensure that prospective draft picks are afforded a respectful and professional NFL environment — one that is consistent with state and federal law and our shared commitment to respect, diversity and inclusion," the memo states.

US body positivity campaign group creates cards for patients asking doctors NOT to weigh them.  An online body positivity group have created cards for patients who do not want to be weighed by their doctors unless absolutely necessary.  The 'Don't Weigh Me Cards', created by More-Love.org, ask doctors not to weigh patients every time they come in for an appointment because it 'stresses them out' and it 'perpetuates weight stigma'.  The group was founded in 2016 by Ginny Jones, a US-based life coach who specialises in eating disorder recovery and provides free online resources for parents about weight, food, and mental health.

Colorado Is Changing The Term 'Sex Offender' Because It Offends Sex Offenders.  The way sex offenders are labeled is changing in Colorado.  The board that sets state standards voted today to change the term "sex offenders" to reflect so-called "person-first" language.  The Sex Offender Management Board, which is made up of everyone from public defenders to prosecutors, sets standards and guidelines for treatment providers so the new terminology will only be used in that context.  It doesn't change the term sex offender in law or the criminal justice system but some worry it's a step in that direction.  [Video clip]

NYPD orders cops to stand down, allow junkies to shoot up in streets after decriminalization measure passes.  NYPD officials have ordered patrol and beat officers to stop rolling up suspects who are seen shooting drugs on the streets after legislation in the state legislature passed decriminalizing the purchase and sale of hypodermic needles commonly used to inject heroin and other hard drugs.  "Effective immediately, members of the service should not take any enforcement action against any individual who possesses a hypodermic needle, even when it contains residue of a controlled substance," says a directive to New York Police Department commanders issued last Friday and obtained by the New York Post.  The order to NYPD officers referenced Senate Bill 2523 which outlines the decriminalization.

States Where A Third Of People Are Obese Rise To 16, Nearly Doubling In Two Years.  America's underlying pandemic is getting worse.  New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) out Wednesday shows the number of states with high obesity rates nearly doubled in the course of two years, with at least 35 percent of residents in 16 states consisting of adults with obesity in 2020.  The number of states is up from a dozen in 2019, and nine in 2018.  States added last year include Delaware, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, each now home to a population where more than a third of people are obese.  States that had already reached that benchmark by 2019 include Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

The curious case of the missing resignations.  One of the strangest things about the Afghanistan debacle is that in spite of extraordinarily harsh criticism worldwide, nobody has resigned, and nobody has been fired.  Many assume that this is so because the failure is President Biden's, but in thinking this, they are simply wrong.  Consciousness of failure is only one of many reasons for resignations from high government positions.

Wisconsin Sheriff Will No Longer Call Prisoners Inmates But Rather 'Residents' To Humanize Rapists And Murderers.  The Dane County Sheriff's Office is eliminating the term "inmate" from its official vocabulary.  Sheriff Kalvin Barrett announced the move Monday [8/16/2021], explaining the change is designed to "maintain the dignity and respect for all who are involved in our criminal justice system," WMTV-TV reported.  [Video clip]

Texas Teenagers Charged After Discovering Suicide Victim, Stealing Jewelry, and Then Posting Images on Social Media.  We often discuss novel criminal charges or cases.  The latest such case involves the arrest of two teenage girls in Texas after they removed a gold necklace off the chest of a dead man found in a drainage ditch.  The charge is "theft from a human corpse."  The unidentified man is believed to have hung himself in the ditch near a local gas station.  KSAT-TV reported that the girls spotted the body and removed the chain.  They then posted images on social media.  Those images of the scene before the arrival of the police proved key to the charges.  One, according to FOX San Antonio, showed the 17-year-old taking a gold necklace off the dead man's chest.

Family has baby shower for pregnant 12-year-old, her accused rapist, Oklahoma cops say.  The family of a 12-year-old girl impregnated by a man twice her age "permitted" the relationship and even celebrated her pregnancy with a baby shower, according to Oklahoma police.  Police arrested 24-year-old Juan Miranda-Jara on a charge of first degree rape of a minor earlier this month, according to the Tulsa Police Department[.]  Shortly after the young girl showed up to an area hospital pregnant, police said they were told she had possibly been raped.  Investigators took Miranda-Jara into questioning and, as the girl was in labor, he admitted that the child was his, police say, and that he had been "in a relationship" with the girl since October 2020.  But a question lingered, police said:  "Where were the parents?"  Apparently, they were present and well-aware of what was happening, according to police.

'What not to say to a cop' video goes viral.  One hopes the cops keep posting these videos, given that society has lost its sense of shame and activists and their lies frequently gain the upper hand in the press.  Once a sense of shame is restored, these videos won't be necessary.

Fat Acceptance Is a Dangerous Idea.  COVID-19 has put renewed focus on obesity.  As the New York Post recently reported, countries with high obesity rates such as the UK have nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 deaths, compared with countries that have less obesity such as Vietnam.  Medically, obese people are more likely to contract COVID-19, suffer greater morbidity, and are more likely to transmit the virus than non-obese people.  But that's only part of the story.  COVID-19 has also increased national obesity thanks to lockdowns and forced disruptions of normal life.  Pre-COVID in 2019, more than 40 percent of adults were obese in the United States according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System.  A 2018 National Center for Health Statistics report found the average weight of American men in 2015-2016 was 197.9 pounds and women 170.6, up from 172.2 pounds and 144.2, respectively, in the years 1976-1980.  Some joke it's the United States' gross national product.  And COVID-19 has made things worse.

Southern Baptist Seminary President Lambastes United Methodist Church Over Drag Queen Leader.  On Wednesday [4/28/2021], a Baptist preacher condemned a Methodist church.  Amid an episode of his The Briefing podcast, Al Mohler — a pastor and president of Louisville, Kentucky's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary — had strong words for Hope United Methodist Church.  At issue: the Illinois congregation's support of Isaac Simmons.  As noted by The Daily Wire, Hope United has placed Isaac in a position of church leadership.  They've also promoted him as a candidate for ordination.  A couple of notables:  Isaac is openly gay.  Isaac is a drag queen.

Believe It or Not, a New Level of Corruption and Depravity for New York City.  The district attorney of Manhattan in NYC has announced that his office will no longer prosecute any unlicensed "massage" parlor workers (about 900 cases), nor loitering for the purposes of prostitution (about 5,000 cases).  Abigail Swenstein, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society's Exploitation Intervention Project, which works with sex workers, said that while the policy doesn't preclude the New York Police Department making arrests, she hopes officers will choose not to, knowing that prosecutors would not bring charges.  Laws against these behaviors are still on the books but will not be prosecuted.  The citizenry has not repealed these laws, but the ever wise and dictatorial district attorney will spit in the face of the citizenry (and God) by deeming these activities unworthy of punishment.  This writer could find reference to only one person, New York Assemblyman Mike Reilly, a Republican, who said Manhattan's new prostitution policy sets a dangerous precedent.  "It flies in the face of law and order," he timidly said.  To me, the fact that there is not an outcry of opposition is as grievous as the decision itself.

So Long First Amendment:  Man Who Mocked Food Bank Participants Arrested.  Back on February 18th, a Maricopa County Church was holding a food drive/bank for families in need of food during the ongoing COVID pandemic.  During that event, a man now identified as 46 year old Ryan Bryson drove by in a white work truck, allegedly shouting obscenities and telling the participants to "get a job."  Later, AZFamily.com contacted Bryson to get a statement to which he stated that he stands by what he said.  "Those people need to go to work.  They should be ashamed of themselves."  [Video clip] [...] Now comes news that Bryson has been arrested on charges of disorderly conduct following his run-in at the food bank.  According to AZFamily.com, Deputies "received numerous complaints about Bryson's behavior, describing it as disruptive to the establishment and food distribution process."  Again, what Bryson did was extraordinarily inappropriate and makes him a giant jerk, however, I don't believe I have seen nor heard of any accusation that rises to the level of deserving of arrest.

L.A. restaurant closes after high-tech "dine and dash" scheme.  Though many restaurants remain closed during the pandemic, for those that remain open, dining and dashing remains a problem — and even forced one Los Angeles restaurant owner to close up shop, CBS Los Angeles reports.  According to the Los Angeles Times, a growing number of the city's restaurants have struggled as scammers take advantage of internet ordering to use fraudulent credit cards or request refunds, claiming they never received part or all of an order.

Columbia professor:  I do heroin regularly for 'work-life balance'.  Carl Hart is a Columbia University professor of psychology and neuroscience.  He chairs the psych department and has a fondness for heroin — not only as a subject of scholarly pursuit but also as a substance for personal use.  At 54, the married father of three has snorted small amounts of heroin for as many as 10 days in a row and enjoyed it mightily — even if, as he recalls in his new book "Drug Use for Grown-ups:  Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear" (Penguin Press), he's experienced mild withdrawal symptoms "12 to 16 hours after the last dose."  But, as Hart sees it, the discomfort is a worthwhile trade-off.

Pair charged with shooting woman who shushed them in movie theater.  Two suspects sought in the shooting of a movie-goer who shushed them in an Atlanta theater have been arrested, police said.  Camyrn King, 20, and Yvonne Crawford, 22, were arrested in Indiana by the US Marshals Service for allegedly shooting a woman in the shoulder after she asked them to quiet down inside an AMC theater in Atlanta in January, police said Wednesday [2/17/2021].  The two women, who were charged with aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, will be extradited back to Atlanta, department officials said.

Dozens Of Kids On Bikes Take Over I-91 In Connecticut.  On Saturday, July, 18th, this video was captured by a passer-by on Interstate 91 in New Haven, near Exit 9.  Nearly 100 kids took up two lanes of the highway as cars swerved to not strike any of the riders, many of which were pulling wheelies.  [Video clip]

De Blasio 'proud' of daughter Chiara's arrest during George Floyd protests.  Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday [6/1/2020] commented on his daughter's arrest during a Manhattan protest over the police-involved killing of George Floyd, saying that it was a "surprise" to him, but that he's "proud" of her.  De Blasio, speaking during his daily City Hall press briefing, said his 25-year-old daughter, Chiara, did not inform him or first lady Chirlane McCray "of her intention to get arrested" — and he first found out through a press inquiry to his office.

St. Patrick's Cathedral desecrated with protest graffiti.  Protesters desecrated St. Patrick's Cathedral with graffiti Saturday [5/30/2020], staining stairs and spewing hatred on two walls.

'Inordinate amount' of urine, feces left behind at NJ parks: officials.  As New Jersey state parks reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, parks police have reported an unsettling "inordinate amount of urine and feces being left behind" State Police Superintendent Pat Callahan announced the "disheartening" information during Gov. Phil Murphy's coronavirus briefing Monday [5/11/2020].  There is a "zero tolerance" policy for anyone who is caught in such a situation, Callahan said.  "The whole idea behind parks is to give citizens time to enjoy fresh air and have time outside," he added.  "We understand restrooms are closed, but people should be planning accordingly and should not be urinating in bottles and leaving them behind," Callahan said.

The Editor says...
Why are the restrooms closed?

Viral Video of Girl Cheerfully Getting Abortion at Planned Parenthood Draws Horror.  A widely viewed TikTok video that has drawn horrified responses shows a girl laughing and apparently having fun as she reveals her pregnancy and heads to Planned Parenthood for what appears to be her second abortion attempt.  The video shows the girl exposing her somewhat swollen abdomen and laughing in the car, apparently on her way to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.  It continues with footage of her smiling as she actually undergoes the abortion, and a close-up of the ultrasound image as her baby is aborted.

Think Before You Ink.  A 30 or 40 year tattoo on a 50 or 60 year old man lounging around the pool was enough for me to decide that tattoos were not for me.  However, I have found it very interesting to see tattoos became more popular and accepted over the last 20 years or so.  Tattoos went from the subculture in my youth to popular culture today where it is now estimated that among those age 26-40, 40% have at least one tattoo and 36% of those 18-25 also have inked at least once.

They've Lost Their Minds in San Francisco.  San Francisco, a city described in song for its natural beauty, is descending into an abyss of homelessness, the use of sidewalks as toilets and a place you might not want to visit, much less live.  The latest, but surely not the last demonstration of insanity, is San Francisco's Board of Supervisors' adoption of new "person first" language guidelines meant to "change the public's perception of criminals."  The words "convicted felon," "offender," "convict," "addict" and "juvenile delinquent" are now out.  These individuals will henceforth be referred to as a "justice-involved person."  Someone previously called a "criminal" will now be referred to as "a returning resident," or "a formerly incarcerated person." [...] The English language once conveyed meaning.  Properly written and spoken, it suggested one was educated and capable of conversing in polite company.  Today, it is often used to cover up true intentions.

San Francisco's New PC Terms For Criminals Met With Mockery.  Amid the city's interconnected and rapidlly escalating crime and homelessness crises, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has determined that one of the ways it can help inspire the city's expanding criminal population to good behavior is to simply play some games with language.  In a non-binding resolution passed last month and which has gained the support of the district attorney, the city presents the grim statistic that now one-fifth, one out of every five, residents of the city has a criminal record.  In response to this alarming criminal reality, the board has introduced its new "person first" terminology, in which old terms the city fears might encourage "negative predispositions" and "unfounded assumptions" have been swapped out for more positive and "stigma"-free language.

San Francisco, where felons are 'justice-involved' and there's no shame in crime.  San Francisco's Board of Supervisors just adopted a resolution recommending that felons not be called felons but rather "formerly incarcerated person" or former "justice-involved" person or "returning resident" — or any other number of soft and fuzzy names that won't hurt the feelings of the, umm, felons.  File this under Ridiculous.  "We don't want people to be forever labeled for the worst things that they have done," Supervisor Matt Haney said to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Editor says...
One of the traditional deterrents to crime is the lifetime stigma attached to convicted felons.  An increase in criminal activity will naturally accompany the erosion of that disgrace.  The politicians in California are going out of their way to make criminals feel better about themselves.  They don't need encouragement!

Why you'll no longer find 'convicted felons' in San Francisco.  "Convicted felons" may be getting a makeover in San Francisco.  Under a new resolution by the city's Board of Supervisors — which voted to use "person-first" language in the criminal justice system — they'll be referred to as "justice-involved persons," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  The guidelines nix other terms too, such as "prisoner," "convict" and "inmate," along with any words that "obstruct and separate people from society and make the institutionalization of racism and supremacy appear normal."  As part of the guidelines, a drug addict or substance abuser will become a "person with a history of substance abuse."  And a "juvenile delinquent" will instead be referred to as a "young person with justice system involvement."

Immorality Embraced by So-Called Christian Love.  Situation ethics — introduced in 1966 by Joseph F. Fletcher — came into vogue as a way to excuse pre-marital fornication by Christians, and anything that could be considered Christian judgmentalism was muted by the liberal churches.  In the name of love, increasing numbers of churches became tolerant of sin.  In the contemporary church world, tolerance of sin is no longer considered kind enough or loving enough.  Now, as seen by Joel Osteen's recent appearance at an LGBTQ event, celebration of sin is the step beyond tolerance.  A "woman's right to choose" is openly embraced by many members of the National Council of Churches.  Likewise, homosexuality among the clergy is acceptable.

New York state lawmakers introduce bill to decriminalize sex work.  A group of Democratic lawmakers in New York state introduced a bill Monday [6/10/2019] that seeks to decriminalize sex work and make it legal to engage in the consensual sale of sex.  The bill, which follows similar legislative efforts in other states, including Massachusetts and Maine, would go further by vacating prior convictions of people engaged in activity that would no longer be considered criminal.  Supporters stressed that the legislation would not alter current laws on sex trafficking or the exploitation of minors.  At a news conference in New York, legislators and advocates with Decrim NY, the coalition pushing for the bill, said that legal attempts to crack down on sex work have historically failed and that an overburdened criminal justice system shouldn't be used to prosecute consenting adults.

We All Need To Admit That America Has A Tattoo Problem.  If America can be divided into those who don't have tattoos and those who do, the two groups seem to be rapidly approaching equilibrium.  About one in five Americans have tattoos, and among 18-29 year-olds the latest figures peg those with ink at 40 percent.  Speaking of percentages, the Air Force is so hard up for recruits that it recently eliminated its "25 percent rule."  Like all military regulations, the 25 percent rule is painfully exact, but loosely stated, it meant that you weren't eligible to serve, much less join a bomber crew ferrying around nuclear weapons, unless you were capable of exercising good enough judgment not to cover more than a quarter of your body in tattoos.

Dallas prosecutor encourages shoplifting.  The liberal district attorney in Dallas, John Creuzot, is refusing to prosecute shoplifters who steal less than $750, if what they stole was "necessities" like food or diapers, and they haven't tried to resell what they stole.  This refusal to prosecute will spawn an increase in shoplifting.  That will drive up prices for necessities like food, at the expense of law-abiding people.  Criminal penalties deter crime, as studies have found, and serious penalties deter better than trivial ones.  So the Dallas DA's refusal to prosecute shoplifters will embolden more people to steal.

Dressing Down Parents at Houston's Madison High School.  Earlier this month, the principal of James Madison High School, in Houston, Carlotta Outley Brown, sent out a directive to parents.  Any parent wearing revealing and/or slovenly attire would be banned from entering the school, and in some cases, prohibited from so much as setting foot on school premises.  Items banned from the building include shower caps, hair rollers, bonnets, satin caps (a.k.a.  "Do-rags," or "durags," in the parlance of Solange and the New York Times), house shoes, undershirts (for men), and pajamas, or anything that could be construed as such, a topic on which the directive casts a wide net:  "[A]ttire that could possibly be pajamas, underwear, or home setting wear, such as flannel pajamas," it reads.

New billboard welcomes drivers to Illinois 'where you can get a safe, legal abortion'.  A billboard promoting abortion greets travelers as they drive into the state of Illinois from Missouri. [...] The Hope Clinic for Women said the message is an effort to fight back against Missouri's recent proposal to tighten its already strict abortion laws, Yahoo Lifestyle reported.  "There will be an avenue for access to abortion no matter what happens legislatively, and we just need to be more creative of getting our message out there to let our most vulnerable communities know that they still have choices," Alison Dreith, the clinic's communication manager, told Yahoo.

Dear Gillette:  Morbid Obesity Is Not Beautiful And Only 0.6% Of American Adults Identify As Transgender.  As if Gillette's "Toxic Masculinity" ad campaign wasn't ridiculous enough, the company has managed to do it again.  Their new ad for Venus razors features a morbidly obese model at the beach, wearing a bikini.  This massive young woman's arms are raised as if to show us how proud of her body she is and how empowered she feels.

Teachers Unions Want Legal Teacher-Student Sex.  No one expects teachers unions to advance the best interests of kids.  Albert Shanker was president of the United Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.  As Shanker put it, "When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."  Even so, it is appalling to learn that two major teachers unions want to keep it legal for teachers to have sex with their students in Rhode Island.

7 Reasons Conservatives Are Losing the Culture Wars.  [#3] Deemphasizing character:  A society that consumes "Game of Thrones," "Breaking Bad," and Eminem is going to be more degenerate than one consuming "The Lone Ranger," "Happy Days," and Bing Crosby.  Of course, we don't really call anyone "degenerate" these days, do we?  Ok, maybe child molesters and people who torture animals, but nearly everything else is live and let live.  We can see the negatives of the world as it used to be — where divorce or having a child out of wedlock was scandalous.  Even married couples weren't seen in the same bed on TV and even something that seems as innocuous as Elvis twisting his hips was outrageous.  But what about the positives?  Is the average person's behavior better or worse than it was then?  Are people more or less honest?

There is no shame left in America anymore.  [Scroll down]  Michael Cohen sitting before Congress and testifying, minus any real emotion, that he is a liar, a fraud and a craven opportunist.  The Jackson estate suing HBO rather than offering recompense, let alone apologies.  The president cursing during a speech at CPAC.  "The Bachelor"'s entire season hanging on whether a 27-year-old virgin will actually have sex with at least one of his finalists!  As a culture, we seem to have divested ourselves of shame — real shame, not the cheap and easy kind so easily doled out online, where anyone accused of "age-shaming" or "body-shaming" is expected to express, well, shame.  Otherwise, there is never any reason to apologize, to admit full-on wrongdoing, let alone express deep, palpable shame over one's behavior.  We've seen it in the stance of so many #MeToo monsters, who appear not just defiant but confused as to why they are castoffs, pariahs, or facing criminal court.

Bring Back Shame.  James B. Twitchell in his 1997 book For Shame:  The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture asserts that "we are living in shameless times," as compared to when he was growing up in the 1950s, when "public drunkenness, filing for bankruptcy ... drug addiction, hitting a woman, looting stores, using vulgar language in public, being on the public dole [and] getting a divorce" were considered shameful, and "most of these reflected concerns about limiting individual behavior within a group."  What once was considered a private matter now results in haphazard public defecations.  San Francisco currently boasts a "poop map" as the city reports a 140% rise in feces.  Taboos that used to entail modesty have disappeared.

At a funeral, please leave politics at the door.  There is a lack of courtesy and self-awareness on the parts of too many of the privileged who think that their politics are worthy of the time of the rest of us, no matter the setting. [...] Too many people who are privileged to make their livings on some kind of stage, political or otherwise, feel that their views, their words, their politics or their pique should be center stage, in every event, whether about them or not.  Too many think that every time is a time to speak for them.  But it's not.

A Perfect Storm Threatens America's Survival.  More than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017.  That's almost 200 a day.  Nearly half of all federal prisoners were involved in drug-related crime.  Meanwhile, Hollywood and the music industry make drug use look like good old-fashioned fun.  The media pretty much ignore the issue.

Lowered standards:
Army using drug waivers, bonuses to fill ranks.  Under the gun to increase the size of the force, the Army is issuing more waivers for past drug use or bad conduct by recruits, and pouring an extra $200 million into bonuses this year to attract and retain soldiers.

The Rise of the Abortion Cheerleaders.  The Shout Your Abortion website broadcasts this trendy creed, loud and strident and clear:  "Abortion is normal.  Our stories are ours to tell.  This is not a debate."  The group's website also provides the option to buy a T-shirt telling the world that you're proud of your abortion, or even purchase an "Abortion Is Freedom" button that might make Orwell cringe.

Black America Walking Off the Cliff.  The pre-welfare black society understood the necessity for respect and responsibility.  From slavery until LBJ's War on Poverty programs, intact black American families were the norm.  The church was the glue that sealed biblical bindings in the hearts and minds of the family.  Fathers governed their households, and young men were less likely to become criminals.  Fornicators and adulterers were unwelcomed parasites.  Premarital pregnancies were a rarity, as they were a cause for shame and reproach.  In 1950, eighty-five years after slavery, the two-parent black household was 78%.  By the mid-sixties, black lives started to matter much less under LBJ's Great Society.  Now, just fifty-three years after the War on Poverty began, the once stable two-parent black household has disintegrated to an abysmal 27%, and the black church is all but silent!  The roots of this catastrophe were sown the minute the black church started trusting in government instead of God.

Parents, to Avoid a 30-Year-Old Basement Squatter, Teach Your Kids the Value of Work!  Tragically, the Rotondos aren't alone, not by a long shot.  According to Psychology Today, "45 percent of young adults in New Jersey between the ages 18 and 34 now live with their parents."  They call it the "failure to launch epidemic," and if it's hitting almost half of families, even in a lefty state like New Jersey, "epidemic" is the perfect descriptive term. [...] Somehow, we've gone from kids sneaking off to join the Army at age 10 to 34-year-olds sneaking back into their parents' basement to play Call of Duty and binge-watch The Walking Dead.

Demanding hypocrisy from others is logically and morally twisted.  [Scroll down]  And yes, it's all true.  It happened last month at a Catholic school in Dearborn, Michigan.  The event was the school prom.  The dress code prohibited plunging necklines and cut-outs below the bustline.  The alternative offered was a "modesty poncho," to be handed out [by] teachers who noticed girls suggestively underclad.  And the protesters accused the school of "body shaming."

Project Freedom.  The vagaries of human nature guarantee that we'll always have ne'er-do-wells.  But in the 1960s, American elite culture multiplied them, by stripping the stigma from a wide swath of misbehavior, partly because elites hankered for their own fling with sex, drugs, and dropping out, and partly because they came to think that centuries of racial victimization made society, not the individual, responsible for dysfunctional black behavior.  Society, the new orthodoxy claimed, was to blame for the supposed lack of opportunity that discouraged black Americans from working and learning, for the rage and resentment that fueled disproportionate black criminality, and for the despair that heroin and crack served to dull.  Moreover, once out-of-wedlock sex lost its shame in the elite worldview, so did out-of-wedlock childbearing, widespread enough among black Americans a century ago to trouble W. E. B. Du Bois deeply, but astronomically higher after the cultural changes of the 1960s.  As public opinion normalized single-parent families, the elites' belief that America owed some cash reparation for 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow found an outlet in the hefty enrichment of a Depression-era program meant to aid widows and orphans, for which unwed mothers were also eligible.  No longer stigmatized, and financially enabled by fattened welfare benefits, illegitimate births in inner-city neighborhoods soon soared above 80 percent.

Has Giving Leftists What They Want Made America Better?  To a large degree, we have allowed leftists to remove "healthy shame" from our culture.  Leftists say the only thing anyone should be ashamed of is being conservative, Republican, Christian, or white.  Remember when it was shameful not to know the father of your baby?  Today, pregnant women boldly appear on national trashy TV shows, DNA-testing 27 guys to determine the father.  Leftists deem female promiscuity feminism at its best, women freely exploring their sexuality.  Leftists are angry at God for unfairly sticking women with the annoying possibility of getting pregnant.  Promiscuity carries health risks and emotional consequences.  Has the normalization of baby mommies and baby daddies strengthened our society?

Arrested spring breakers flash big smiles on bus headed to jail.  A group of underage partiers were arrested in Florida on Saturday afternoon for partaking in the spring break debauchery.  The Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office posted a picture on Twitter of the 14 spring breakers that were arrested for underage drinking — all before 2:40 pm on St. Patrick's Day.

Transgenderism Is an Intellectual Disease.  Like sex itself, having children out of wedlock used to be a matter of shame.  It is no longer so.  Marriage used to be understood as a partnership that people undertook for fundamentally practical reasons centered around survival.  Now it embodies a strange expectation:  "emotional fulfillment."  Like a bottomless soft drink, one's spouse is to keep one perpetually satisfied and refreshed.

San Francisco Requires Poop Maps To Help Pedestrians Avoid Human Waste.  For those who have maintained that San Francisco is full of ... whatever, there is now living proof.  How much poop is there on the streets of the City by the Bay?  Would you believe there is an online map to track human feces on the city's streets?  There is.  According to Fox News, one area of the city reported a 140% rise in feces.  As Jay Caruso of RedState noted, "Public urination is so widespread it has damaged subway elevators and escalators, building walls and power poles."  When did the gleaming jewel that was San Francisco become a repository for poop?  Mayor Willie Brown terminated ordinances; city district Attorney Terence Hallinan would not prosecute "victimless" crimes involving drugs and prostitution.

Salvation Army Bell Ringer Attacked for Saying Merry Christmas.  Liberal progressive Democrats in Northern California really hate it when you say Merry Christmas.  So much so that an atheist liberal thug attacked a Salvation Army bell ring.  His reason?  Because the bell ringer said Merry Christmas.  This is Northern California in a nutshell.  As bad as Southern California is with Los Angeles, we aren't nearly as bad, or as violent as the extremist leftists in Northern California cities like San Francisco, San Jose or Sacramento.  That's Pelosiville.

Moral Values and Customs vs.  Laws.  Yesteryear even the lowest of lowdown men would not curse or use foul language to or in the presence of women.  To see a man sitting on a crowded bus or trolley car while a woman is standing used to be unthinkable.  It was deemed common decency for a man to give up his seat for a woman or elderly person. Today young people use foul language in front of — and often to — adults and teachers.  It's not just foul language.  Many youngsters feel that it's acceptable to assault teachers.  Just recently, 45 Pennsylvania teachers resigned because of student violence.  Back in what my daughter calls prehistoric times, the use of foul language to an adult or teacher would have meant a smack across the face.  Of course, today a parent taking such corrective action risks being reported to a local child protective service and even being arrested.

Army lifts ban on cutters, mentally ill and drug abusers to meet recruiting goals.  Facing low recruitment levels, the U.S. Army quietly lifted its ban on allowing people with a history of mental illness, self-mutilation and drug abuse to serve in the military — despite warnings from the industry about the risks involved.  The new rules green-light recruits who have bipolar disorder, depression and issues with cutting — a process in which a person takes a knife or razor to his or her own skin — along with those who bite, hit or bruise themselves intentionally.  "I am shocked," Craig Bryan, executive director of the National Center for Veterans Studies at The University of Utah, told Fox News.  "This contradicts everything we have been working toward for the past 10-to-15 years."

Filling military quotas with the mentally ill.  The Army very quietly announced in August that it will lift a ban on waivers allowing people with a history of mental health issues, as well as alcohol and drug abuse, to join their ranks.  Even in normal times this should concern you greatly, let alone when the world appears to be preparing for war.

This idea has now failed.  But don't forget — they tried!
Army drops plans to give waivers to recruits with history of mental illness.  The Army's top officer said Wednesday that the service had "rescinded" a controversial memo permitting people with a history of severe mental illness to seek waivers allowing them to join up.  Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters the memo was "unauthorized" and its author did not have the authority to change the Army's recruitment policy.  "It was rescinded last night," Milley said of the memo, which was dated Sept. 7 of this year and initially reported by USA Today on Sunday [11/12/2017].  "There wasn't a change in policy," Milley added.  "There cannot be a change in policy by someone who doesn't have the authority to change policy.  I know it sounds circular."

Coming Soon:  Incest, State-Sponsored and Court-Approved.  Feeling ashamed is the great sin of today.  Guilt used to be a guiding thing — if you felt less esteemed in the eyes of your neighbors, you'd correct your depraved behavior.  But in an individualized world where institutional trust is at an all-time low, church attendance is falling, and technology constantly feeds you opinions that reinforce your own beliefs, there's no reason to heed those pesky warnings from your conscience.

The 6 Big Ways Liberals Are Destroying America's Culture.  [#6] "Non-Judgmentalism": We've heard so many liberals talk about how important it is to be non-judgmental that it has seeped into the culture at large.  When there's a choice between what's best for society and best for a particular individual who has done something wrong, we always default to protecting that individual.  How's that working out for us?  Since the stigma around getting a divorce, having a child out of wedlock or having an abortion has faded, are we better or worse off?  Are the kids who are aborted or who get raised by a single parent instead of a family better off?  Are the guys who are extremely hesitant to get married because they fear divorce better off?  Are we better off because people no longer wonder whether doing something horrible in public will hurt their good name or ruin their family's reputation?  The very fact that we are so unwilling to draw a line in the sand and say "That's right" or "That's wrong" has mired our culture in degeneracy.  Maybe if there were more people who feel bad when they do things that "wouldn't make their mothers proud," there would be a lot more decent human beings.

Character Assassins.  If you haven't paid attention to K-12 for a few decades, the first thing you notice is that education officials relentlessly and openly undermine academics.  No direct instruction.  No memorization of facts.  No systematic mastery of any subject.  No concern for grammar[,] spelling, etc.  It's surprising if students know where Alaska is on a map or who won the Civil War. [...] If they are slouches — shallow, ignorant, and narcissistic — that seems to be what our social engineers want.  These days, our schools are engaged in an anti-gentleman crusade.  Don't try too hard.  Don't worry if the dog ate your homework.  It's normal to cut corners and leave work unfinished.  Lateness is okay.  Incomplete is as good as complete.  Wrong answers are acceptable if you explain your tactics.  Cheating is okay because everyone does it.

Life in the Time of Thoughtcrime.  The slow decay of a society's informal code is no small matter.  Incremental annoyances add up to a larger disturbance.  The leaving of a grocery cart in the middle of a parking lot, the deliberate dumping of refuse in the street, not holding doors open for others, not silencing or removing loud, crying children in indoor areas, talking loudly on the phone in public — each new offense chips away at the comity felt between citizens.

We All Need to Admit that America Has a Tattoo Problem.  If America can be divided into those who don't have tattoos and those who do, the two groups seem to be rapidly approaching equilibrium.  About one in five Americans have tattoos, and among 18-29 year-olds the latest figures peg those with ink at 40 percent.  Speaking of percentages, the Air Force is so hard up for recruits that it recently eliminated its "25 percent rule."  Like all military regulations, the 25 percent rule is painfully exact, but loosely stated, it meant that you weren't eligible to serve, much less join a bomber crew ferrying around nuclear weapons, unless you were capable of exercising good enough judgment not to cover more than a quarter of your body in tattoos.  Back in the good old days, the problem was getting tattoos after you joined the military.

Revolt of the California 'Freeloaders'.  When normal people talk about "freeloaders," they usually are referring to the assorted welfare dependents, scammers and, yes, public employees who game the system to do as little productive work as possible and receive as many taxpayer-supplied benefits as they can muster.  In California, freeloading is an art form, but the term is largely verboten.  We don't want to be accused of insensitivity or other retrograde attitudes, after all.

CA Bill Would Make Not Disclosing HIV+ Status to Partner Just a Misdemeanor.  People who are HIV positive have long been required to disclose this status before engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse.  Considering the life-threatening condition caused by HIV, it stands to reason that potential partners have a right to know, since the disease is easily passed through sexual contact.  However, in what is being described as a test of just how much feelings have changed on the disease, a group of lawmakers in California have presented a bill that will make it no longer a felony to engage in unprotected sex without disclosing the condition to their partner, instead making it a misdemeanor.  Because of "the stigma."

Hawaii lawmaker says homeless using war memorial as open latrine.  A Hawaii state lawmaker is looking to add more protection to a Korean and Vietnam War Memorial that had been desecrated by some of the homeless population.  State Rep. Bob McDermott, R-Ewa Beach, said Friday the memorial, which stretches 100 feet in its Honolulu location, that some homeless residents were using it as an open latrine, according to Hawaii News Now.  "The homeless are nesting there and defecating there because it provides a degree of concealment.  It's human waste — several piles along with clothing and needles and other trash.  It's just terrible," he said.

Former Cuomo lobbyist claims he doesn't have to repay $85G to company suing him because it was bribe, not loan.  Cor Development is suing its former lobbyist Todd Howe for the money.  But in legal papers filed Monday [10/17/2016], Howe's lawyers argued that the "purported loan was illegal, as it was part of an illegal conspiracy to deprive the public of its intangible right to honest services of an employee of the state of New York by soliciting and giving bribes and gratuities."  Cor officials told Syracuse newspapers, which first reported the legal maneuver, that Howe is lying and the debt is real.

100 Jersey City Drivers Blow Through Stop Sign in 90 Minutes, Video Shows.  When a stop sign wasn't enough to get drivers to slow down on a Jersey City street, one resident set up a camera and used a bit of online shaming to get officials to take notice.  Sean Popke, a former news photographer, decided to start recording the drivers blowing past the stop sign at the corner of Jersey Avenue and York Street in the family-filled neighborhood.  [Video clip]

Is Personal Responsibility Obsolete?: Part II.  Too many social problems are conceived of in terms of what "we" can do for "them."  After decades of massive expansions of the welfare state, the answer seems to range from "not very much" to "making matters worse."  Undaunted, people in a number of countries are coming up with new proposals that are variations on the theme of government-provided income — which amounts to relieving people from personal responsibility.  Yet even some conservatives and libertarians are coming up with proposals for more "efficient" versions of the welfare state — namely direct cash grants for life to virtually all adults, instead of the current hodgepodge of overlapping bureaucratic programs.  Charles Murray recognizes that "some people will idle away their lives" under his proposal.  "But that is already a problem," he says, and therefore is no valid objection to replacing the current welfare state with a less costly alternative.

Gallup: Millennials 'checked out' at work, 16% 'out to do damage to employer'.  The millennial generation has become a deadbeat at work, with a majority "checked out" and 16 percent are so disengaged that they are actually doing damage to their employer, according to a comprehensive Gallup survey of those born between 1980 and 1996.  "The millennial workforce is predominantly 'checked out,' not putting energy or passion into their jobs.  They are indifferent about work and show up just to put in their hours," said the survey of the 73-million strong group.

WH Drug Czar: 'Abuser and Addict' Terms Stigmatize Drug Users.  White House drug czar Michael Botticelli said Thursday [5/19/2016] that using "terms like abuser and addict" to describe people with drug addictions makes it less likely that they will get treatment.  "Funding isn't our only barrier to expanding treatment.  We also have an enormous hurdle to overcome, and that's shame and stigma," Botticelli said.

Obama To Decriminalize Criminals.  [Scroll down]  The president is also getting assistance in his quest to decriminalize criminals from the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center and their "Ban The Box" campaign.  They write that, "Most applications for public employment require the applicant to check a 'yes' or 'no' box indicating if they have ever been convicted of a crime.  Many people with former convictions are discouraged from applying when they come to this question on the application."  I don't know why.  There are already more criminals per capita working in the public sector already.  What's a few more.

Canadians are upset with Dwyane Wade for taking shots during Canadian national anthem.  Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade is feeling the heat after being seen shooting pregame baskets Saturday night [5/7/2016] as Canada's national anthem was being sung.

DOJ Decides It Won't Call People 'Felons' Or 'Convicts' Because Hurts Their Feelings.  An official with the Department of Justice said the agency will no longer call people "felons" or "convicts" after they are released from prison because it is too hard on them emotionally.  Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason wrote a piece in The Washington Post Wednesday saying "many of the formerly incarcerated men, women, and young people I talk with say that no punishment is harsher than being permanently branded a 'felon' or 'offender.'"

Why the Left Loathes Western Civilization.  The left hates standards — moral standards, artistic standards, cultural standards.  The West is built on all three, and it has excelled in all three.  Why does the left hate standards?  It hates standards because when there are standards, there is judgment.  And leftists don't want to be judged.

Arizona woman allegedly faked cancer diagnosis to have state pay for abortion.  An Arizona woman accused of faking a cancer diagnosis in order to get state Medicaid funding to cover a late-term abortion genuinely believed she was sick, her defense attorney said Thursday [4/7/2016].

Colorado Comes Down on Fake Service Dogs.  Service animal fraud is a growing problem in dog-friendly Colorado, says [Angela] Eaton, who has been training service dogs for 35 years.  State legislators agree; the Colorado House unanimously passed a bill on Monday that would make it a crime to misrepresent a pet as a service animal in the state.  But vague service dog guidelines and a growing acceptance of "emotional support dogs" have blurred the line between pet and working animal.

Donald Trump's foul mouth is just a cover for his ignorance.  We are a culture conditioned by cable television, which has made the language of sailors, mobsters and New York real estate developers available to any digitally literate 11-year-old.  Even the cable channels you don't pay for have taken to constant, blindingly obvious bleeping, in a wink and nod to their perception of modern usage.  This, after all, is the way "real life" sounds.  Let us hope not.  In real life, expletives are often used as a form of aggression or cruelty.  A co-worker who tells you to Trump yourself is usually being unpleasant.  A co-worker who does this every day is often creating a hostile or demeaning work environment.  Language suitable for decent company is a form of politeness, which is a species of respect, which is an expression of morality.

Robbing the dead:
Chase Bank Employees Accused of Stealing $400,000 From Elderly, Dead Customers.  The defendants used their position in banking to steal Social Security funds, according to Social Security Administration Special Agent in Charge Edward J. Ryan.  "[It's] an offense against all taxpayers who contribute to Social Security and spend a lifetime working to earn those benefits," he said.  Jonathan Francis, 27, and Dion Allison, 30, both worked as personal bankers at Chase's Restoration Plaza branch at 1380 Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy.  They are accused of using their authority to electronically access dormant accounts with high balances, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson's office.

Two JP Morgan Chase bankers in Brooklyn indicted for stealing 400K from accounts of elderly or deceased.  Dion Allison, 31, and Jonathan Francis, 27, were personal bankers at the JPMorgan Chase branch at Restoration Plaza in Bedford-Stuyvesant and systematically searched the bank's database for accounts with high balances that weren't used except for direct deposits from Social Security, said Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Adam Zion.  From August 2012 until October 2013, Allison and Francis allegedly found 15 accounts and issued ATM cards to co-conspirators Kery Phillips and Gregory Desrameaux, authorities said.  Eight of the accounts belonged to dead people — one of whom died in 1982.

The Editor says...
Yep, there's a bunch of classy fellows.  But the government was sending checks to dead people — for 33 years in one case — and that's just one bank in New York!

N.J. man allegedly steals from police Toys for Tots bin.  An Irvington man charged with shoplifting Friday [12/11/2015] stole items out of a Toys for Tots bin as he left Wayne Police Headquarters, Capt. Laurence W. Martin said.  Staroben Louis, 22, and Jaleel W. Bobbitt, 21, left Lord & Taylor in Willowbrook Mall without paying for several men's clothing items, Martin said.  Louis took merchandise valued at $430, while Bobbitt's haul was worth $198, Martin said.

Pastafarian woman gets to wear strainer on head in license photo.  A Massachusetts agency is letting a woman who belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wear a colander on her head in her driver's license photo after she cited her religious beliefs.

Mass. woman wins fight to wear colander in driver's license by citing 'pastafarian' religion.  Some states ban smiling in driver's license photos, but wearing a colander on one's head is apparently allowed.  A Massachusetts woman this week won the right to wear a colander on her head in her driver's license photo after citing religious reasons.  Lindsay Miller identifies as a "Pastafarian" and member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which some critics call a parody religion.

The Editor says...
Evidently this woman really hates organized religion, because she certainly went to a lot of trouble and expense to engage in this mockery.  But in the process of achieving this great victory, she may have unwittingly opened the door to thousands of women who insist on wearing burkas and niqabs, which would render their driver's licenses useless as photo identification.

Obama Wants You To Refer To Juvenile Delinquents As 'Justice-Involved Youth' Now.  It's time to update your politically-correct jargon, America, because the Obama administration is no longer referring to juvenile delinquents as "juvenile delinquents."  Instead, the new, preferred and totally different term for kids who commit crimes is "justice-involved youth."  Attorney General Loretta Lynch rolled out the term earlier this week in a press release obtained by the Media Research Center.  "The Department of Justice is committed to giving justice-involved youth the tools they need to become productive members of society," Lynch explained.

Juvenile Delinquents Are Now 'Justice-Involved Youth'.  They used to be called juvenile delinquents.  But not any more.  The new term is "justice-involved youth," a non-disparaging, government-speak phrase that fits with the Obama administration's recent push to give people with criminal convictions a second chance to become productive citizens.  "The Department of Justice is committed to giving justice-involved youth the tools they need to become productive members of society," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a news release on Monday [11/2/2015].  Lynch said the Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are launching a $1.7-million initiative to help Public Housing Authorities and legal assistance groups "reduce barriers for justice-involved youth."

Obama Unleashes His Pro-Criminal Agenda.  The most radical left-wing American president in history is defining deviancy down by attempting to de-stigmatize criminality.  The Left views criminals — especially minorities — as victims of society, oppressed for mere nonconformism.  Because it needs their votes, the Left is pressing for the restoration of felons' voting rights.  Of course, a criminal record carries with it a degree of social stigma, as it should.  Removing or watering down that socially beneficial stigma reduces disincentives to commit crimes and hinders the marginalization of the antisocial.  Without stigma and social ostracism, society would eventually collapse.  This is fine by our malignantly narcissistic Marxist president who, seeing the law in capitalist America largely as an instrument of oppression, seeks to blunt and retrofit it.

Noe neighbor says don't call thieves 'criminals'.  In a recent thread on NextDoor, a group of neighbors living in the Noe Valley-Glen Park area debated whether labeling a person who commits petty theft as a "criminal" is offensive.  In the site's Crime and Safety area, where residents share strategies for fighting crime, Malkia Cyril asked her Noe Valley neighbors to stop using the label because it shows lack of empathy and understanding.  Cyril suggested that instead of calling the thief who took the bicycle from your garage a criminal, you should be more respectful and call him or her "the person who stole my bicycle."

Could America Elect a Mentally Ill President?  Political taboos, campaign dealbreakers and electoral glass ceilings are crumbling.  Members of Congress are openly gay and bisexual, there's a black man in the White House, and a woman may be next.  Voters have accepted all sorts of behavioral warts and missteps in their political candidates, too.  DUIs?  A mistake of their youth.  Draft dodgers?  There's a long list.  Womanizers?  A much longer list.  Illegal drugs?  In just a few short elections, we've gone from a president who "didn't inhale" to one who openly admits using cocaine in his youth.

#Lame.  The Twittericans who transformed the pound sign into the hashtag seek to transform people into sheep.  Interweb culture's obsession with "trending" topics, symbolized by the hashtag, indicates a moral compass set to the crowd's movements rather than a fixed notion of right and wrong.  If only enough women brag about their late-term "medical miscarriages" or publicize their preferred customer status at Planned Parenthood clinics, the thinking about non-thinking goes, infanticide morphs from a badge of horror into a badge of honor.  One almost longs for the days of a "right to privacy" in the wake of this gauche display of hubris.

New spa-like abortion clinic is part of a trend to 'destigmatize' the procedure.  With its natural wood floors and plush upholstery, Carafem aims to feel more like a spa than a medical clinic.  But the slick ads set to go up in Metro stations across the Washington region leave nothing to doubt:  "Abortion.  Yeah, we do that."  The clinic, opening this week in tony Friendship Heights, specializes in the abortion pill and will be unique for its advertising.  Its unabashed approach also reflects a new push to destigmatize the nation's most controversial medical procedure by talking about it openly and unapologetically.

New Honey Maid Commercial Celebrates Divorce as 'Wholesome'.  According to a Honey Maid commercial, divorce is now "wholesome."  "You know, I never thought I'd get divorced," says a dad, as pictures of a smiling, blended family flit across the screen.  "But the way I look at it, there are just more of us to love the kids now," he says.

Monica Lewinsky says she'll never change last name: 'I'm not ashamed'.  Monica Lewinsky of White House intern fame — and presidential mistress infamy — told a reporter that she would never change her last name, no matter how tarnished her reputation.

Eminem provokes outrage after dropping more than a dozen f-bombs at Veteran's Day concert.  Eminem bombarded an audience filled with veterans with the f-bomb on Tuesday night as he performed on the National Mall at The Concert for Valor.  The 42-year-old rapper, dressed in cap and hoodie, yelled into a microphone:  'Happy motherf****** Veterans Day' before launching into the show's closing set which ended with the anthemic Lose Yourself.  Responses to his tirade during the gig, which was streamed live on HBO, were mixed.

£100,000 Statue Celebrates Single Parent Families.  A £100,000 bronze statue representing in monumental form the modern British family was unveiled outside Birmingham's new central library this week and has been enthusiastically welcomed by some for featuring two single mothers, one heavily pregnant, and no father at all.

Pedophilia Deserves Civil Rights, Says New York Times' Op-Ed.  The nation's tough anti-pedophilia laws are unfair to pedophiles, according to an op-ed published by The New York Times' editors.  "One can live with pedophilia and not act on it," says Margo Kaplan, an entrepreneurial assistant law professor at Rutgers University, and a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

A Moral Universe Torn Apart.  "I am not ashamed," a young woman says into a camera.  "I am not ashamed."  The woman is Leyla Josephine of Glasgow, and she is a self-described feminist performance artist.  She is reading a poem titled "I Think She Was a She" — a poem lauded by The Huffington Post as "unapologetic. ... She ardently declares her power over her body as she reminds us that a woman exercising her right to choose is not uncommon — and should never be shamefully brushed under the rug."  What, exactly, is this poem?  It's Josephine recounting her abortion of her unborn daughter.  She notes, "I know she was a she and I think she would've looked exactly like me.  I would've told her stories about her grandfather, we could've fed the swans at Victoria Park."  Then, however, she reveals just what she's done:  "I would've supported her right to choose.  To choose a life for herself, a path for herself.  I would've died for that right like she died for mine.  I'm sorry, but you came at the wrong time."  You came at the wrong time.  Therefore, murder is justified.

The Editor says...
If a baby arrives "at the wrong time," that is entirely the mother's fault, not the baby's.

The Breakdown of Family and the Degradation of Society.  Carmen Solomon-Fears, Specialist in Social Policy, reported that the percentage of non-marital births has remained steady at 41 percent for the past six years, a dramatic increase from 1940 when such births were a low 3.8 percent.  What changed?  Societal attitudes about fertility, contraception, abortion, and marriage driven by the "sexual revolution" made it acceptable and legal to use abortion as a contraceptive, while men evaded the responsibility of marrying the women they've impregnated.  More than half of non-marital births are of couples who live in a cohabiting relationship.  The shame of producing offspring out of wedlock disappeared when churches started celebrating pregnant teens on Mother's Day and the federal government became the Daddy and gave generous welfare and medical care to single mothers.

Family Of Cop-Killer: If Officer Had Stayed In His Car, He Wouldn't Have Been Shot.  The family of a man who used a semi-automatic rifle to kill an Indianapolis police officer Saturday night says it isn't fair that the alleged shooter — Major Davis, Jr. — should "keep being dragged through the mud."  They also blamed the officer for not staying in his police car.

A Heartbreaking Unspoken Consequence of Obama.  [The Democrats'] dispiriting goal is to have as many Americans as possible controlled by and dependent on government, even for life itself, which is at the root of ObamaCare.  I mourn the loss of the independent, self-reliant mindset that made our parents great, and of the pride and dignity it generated within them.  Welfare (government assistance) was a last resort and for the truly needy.  Today, far too many Americans see no shame in living on government assistance or scamming the system.  The left's campaign, led by the Obama administration, to instill an entitlement mindset in many has proven successful.

Gallup Reveals the Obvious: Our Moral Collapse Continues.  [Scroll down]  The morally bankrupt media assists greatly in helping to paint the immoral as moral, often portraying good as evil and evil as good.  Thus, whatever stigma was attached to immoral activity wanes from year to year.  For example, out-of-wedlock births has been steadily increasing from a rate of about 5% of all births in the U.S. in 1960 to over 40% of all births today.  Likewise, U.S. marriage rates are at an all-time low.  Porn performers and prostitutes seek legal legitimacy and "moral" acceptance, while transvestites grace the cover of our "distinguished" news magazines.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

— Isaiah 5:20.            

Woman Films Her Own Abortion To Show World How 'Cool' It Is.  Emily Letts, a counselor at a New Jersey abortion clinic, decided to film her own abortion and post it on YouTube as a form of positive inspiration to women who are contemplating having the procedure but worry that they might feel guilty afterward.  Letts has no such guilt.  She recalls the procedure with fondness.  She even describes it as "birth-like," and said it made her feel good, just like giving birth would.

Probe finds 104 school staff-student flings since 2009.  More than 100 city teachers, administrators and other school staffers have been caught in the last five years engaging in sexual or "inappropriate" relationships with students, The [New York] Post has learned.  The special commissioner of investigation for city schools, Richard Condon, has fielded 593 complaints about such illicit relationships since April 2009.  His office substantiated 104 cases, it revealed Friday [4/11/2014].  "I'm absolutely stunned at that number," said Laura Timoney, a Community Education Council member whose 15-year-old daughter attends a city high school on Staten Island.  "It's shocking, but what do you do to stop this?"

Book thieves stole 70,144 books from the Brooklyn Public Library in 2012.  GED prep guides, nursing and other professional exam cliff notes were high on the list of frequently filched books — but so too were graphic novels, library officials said.

Custom Writing Service Says Students 'No Longer Have to Face the Burden of Academic Coursework'.  A Dallas-based company that writes research papers, essays and other classroom assignments — so students don't have to — says it is doing so well that it has expanded its staff from just a few writers to more than 100 in the past year.  The company bills itself as the one "students trust to write professional, in-depth and plagiarism-free essays that receive the highest grades for all levels of coursework... so they no longer have to face the burden of academic coursework."  It says the writing is done for an "affordable" fee; and it has foreign writers on staff for non-American students.

The Editor says...
This used to be called cheating, except in college, where it was called plagiarism.

Triumph of the Vulgarians.  [A]s Lee Siegel wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, vulgarity has become so common in the culture that there's nothing rebellious about it anymore.  Elvis's below-the-belt gyrations were taboo-breaking and suggestive.  Today, there's nothing suggestive about Miley Cyrus.  Nobody watching her twerk thinks, "I wonder what she's getting at?"  Indeed, if there's any larger message to her routine, it is simply to announce that the exception has now become the rule:  Vulgarity is expected, decency a surprise.

Having STDs Is Feminist Badge of Honor!  Well, no thanks.

Staffers with company tattoo get pay raise.  How far would you go to express your company pride and make some extra bucks while you're at it?  What about a tattoo?  Forty of Rapid Realty's employees in New York are wearing a tattoo of the company's logo in exchange for a 15 percent pay hike, according to published reports.  Company owner Anthony Lolli is making the offer to any employee, and there are no restrictions on where the logo is tattooed or its size.

The Editor says...
Is this a means of discouraging an employee from leaving a company and going to work for the competition?  How much would the company pay to have their logo branded on an employee's forehead?  How about if I get a cattle tag attached to my ear?

Many think "welfare" no longer belongs in Pa. agency's name.  The name Department of Public Welfare was no doubt seen as an improvement when the state came up with it nearly a century ago, merging two older offices — the Board of Charities and the Committee on Lunacy.  But now, 90 years later, Pennsylvania is one of just two states in the nation that still use the word welfare in the name of the massive agency that serves mainly the elderly, disabled, and children.

Suffering from 'tattoo regret'.  Plastic surgeons and dermatologists are seeing more and more people who want their tattoos removed, often because they worry that the tattoos could cause problems with employment.  According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), the number of people undergoing laser tattoo removal increased 43% from 2011 to 2012.

Labor Dep't. Spending $26M to Help Juvenile Delinquents Get Jobs, Pass Background Checks.  The U.S. Labor Department on Monday [4/1/2013] announced the availability of $26 million in grants to improve the job prospects — and expunge the court records — of young people who have spent time in juvenile detention centers.  The "Face Forward" grants will support job-training and skills-development to help people ages 16-24 overcome the stigma of a juvenile arrest record, which can be a lifelong barrier to advancement in the workforce.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart