At the end of every episode of Comedy Central’s The Weekly Show podcast, host Jon Stewart answers listener-submitted questions about various news topics. This Thursday, Stewart responded to a question about who is to blame for the government shutdown by answering “the Founders” and, more profanely, “fuck James Madison.” Stewart’s answer also made no sense, “Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I'm gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it's very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn't a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I'm not saying a lot.”     Stewart wants Democrats to have a say in policy, but it is that “overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense” he just finished ranting about that is allowing them to shut down the government to try to force health care concessions out of Republicans despite their own minority status. A less “complex” system would mean Democrats have no power at all. As it was, Stewart continued, “I'm not saying, like, they don't still get the shitty little offices and don't get to use the, you know, the Senate steam room, except when Schumer's in there towelless. But some consideration that those 75 million people should have a scintilla of representation in the federal budget. So, that—” After Gillian Spear chimed in to add that “seems reasonable,” Stewart rolled on, “Thank you, Gillian. Thank you. So yeah, once again, fuck you, James Madison. Boom!” That led to more crosstalk between Stewart and the show’s producers. Lauren Walker added, “You're always saying that.” Stewart added, “Every episode should end with that,” while Brittany Mehmedovic claimed that is “our new slogan.” Repeating himself, Stewart exclaimed, “Thanks so much for watching. Thanks so much for listening. Fuck you, James Madison. Boom!” That was not the end of the show, but it was the end of that question. Meanwhile, as Stewart curses the Founders, it is hard to think of another system where the minority party has as much power as the one they created. That is what Stewart said he wanted. Whether he will hold that position in the future when Washington’s balance of power changes remains to be seen.

October 11 marked the end of another Banned Books Week, the American Library Association's annual campaign celebrating works it claims have been unjustly kept from the reading public.While the event has skewed liberal since its 1982 founding, this year’s theme seems to make a direct appeal to those worried about the Trump era's incipient fascism.A book does not need to induce the behavior it depicts to have an ideological impact; it just has to imply a world in which such behavior is either normal or inevitable.“Censorship Is So 1984 — Read for Your Rights” rebukes recent successful conservative campaigns to rid local school libraries of books deemed to promote racial, gender, and Marxist ideology or to expose children to inappropriately explicit material.Censor censureOn its website, the ALA dismisses these campaigns as either disingenuous, hysterical, or malicious.“The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.”The recent Kanopy documentary "Banned Together" exemplifies this perspective, portraying book challenges as the work of fearmongering politicians like Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) or “dark money” groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty.Not for teacherOpponents of these "bans" do have a point. At times overprotective adults can underestimate the capacity of high-school students to handle challenging subject matter. I recall reading Kafka, Camus, and Sherman Alexie as a senior without becoming either a nihilist or an activist.But there is a deeper question at the heart of this debate: What rights do parents have when it comes to their children's education?Teachers, progressives argue, are certified experts entrusted with the crucial duty to help students navigate complex issues and protect them from abusive home environments. Who are the parents — relative amateurs when it comes to the formation of young minds — to meddle?Yet given the recent injection of what used to be considered radical ideas about race, sex, and religion into curricula, skepticism at this expertise is understandable. Educators may laugh off the idea of "liberal indoctrination," but any parent who has been called "racist" or had his faith "deconstructed" by his newly minted college student may disagree.'Sold' outThe ALA may be technically correct that the books it defends don't meet the strictly legal definition of "obscenity," but something is nonetheless rotten in the state of Denmark (if the reader will permit me a Eurocentric "Hamlet" reference).Consider the ALA’s "Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024." Without exception, each has been flagged by concerned parents as "sexually explicit." It's telling that the ALA diminishes these characterizations as mere "claims." Unlike "pornography," the label "sexually explicit" generally implies no judgment; it's merely descriptive.So perhaps something more than prudishness is motivating parents. To what end do these books employ explicit depictions of sex? In Patricia McCormick's "Sold," the first-person account of a 13-year-old Tibetan girl sold into sex slavery, detailed scenes of rape and abuse are used to convey the horrors of sex trafficking.In its defense of "Sold," the ALA clearly sides with McCormick, who says "To ban this book is a disservice to the women who shared their stories with me so the world could know about their plight. And to ban this book is disrespectful to the young readers who want to know about the world as it is."Conveniently overlooked here is the obvious truth that we regularly educate our children about "the world as it is" while still leaving out age-inappropriate details.Gender fear"Tricks" by Ellen Hopkins is another unsparingly graphic account of the sex trade, detailing the stories of five American teens who fall into prostitution. "Crank," Hopkins' other novel on the list, charts a teenager's descent into drug addiction.Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is a slice of high school life that includes a ninth-grader taking LSD, a tumultuous love affair between two teenage boys, a middle-schooler's suicide, and a teen pregnancy that ends in abortion."Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" by Jesse Andrews addresses cancer and mortality through the profanity-laden, sex-obsessed voice of its adolescent male protagonist. John Green's "Looking for Alaska" is a coming-of-age novel with a heavy emphasis on drug use and sexual experimentation.Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" is a multigenerational saga that pivots on a father's brutal rape of his daughter and her subsequent descent into insanity.The memoirs "All Boys Aren't Blue" by George M. Johnson and "Flamer" by Mike Curato each recount an adolescent's discovery and eventual embrace of his same-sex attraction, while Maia Kobabe's graphic novel "Gender Queer" charts the author's journey toward a "nonbinary" identity and the use of "e, em, eir" pronouns.RELATED: Librarian group fights woke 'banned books' narrative Getty Images/AnadoluGroomer doomersLikening those who advocate putting such books in the hands of minors to "groomers" only obscures the real issue. A book does not need to induce the behavior it depicts to have an ideological impact; it just has to imply a world in which such behavior is either normal or inevitable.The "reality" these books represent is in fact the relatively recent consensus of a small liberal elite, imposed on our society from the top down. It confidently asserts that racism is an intractable quality of "whiteness," premarital sex and drug abuse are normal parts of growing up, homosexual relationships are in no way less preferable than heterosexual pairings, and one's "gender" is open to interpretation.This consensus casually dispenses with the de facto Christian values that have guided America — with varying degrees of success — since its founding.Slaves to fashionMost of the "banned" book defenders act not out of malice but rather from an unthinking adherence to fashionable opinion. As G.K. Chesterton observed, compulsory secular education inevitably produces an inoffensive, pluralistic system that offends no one and invests enormous moral authority in teachers:And if his own private opinions happen to be of the rather crude sort that are commonly contemporary with and connected with the new sciences or pseudo-sciences, he can teach any of them under cover of those sciences.In other words, educators possess enough authority to smuggle personal beliefs into the classroom. The Ten Commandments and school prayer are impermissible in our secular age, but theories of gender and race are treated as objective truth. Indeed, many insist it would be irresponsible not to teach them.A glance at what doesn’t appear on the Banned Books list reveals the imbalance. Are activists urging students to read banned right-wing literature? To restore the Bible to school libraries? To study "The Turner Diaries" — a genuinely vile book — in the name for of intellectual freedom? Of course not.Meanwhile, the publishing industry’s broken business model incentivizes controversy. Slapping a "Banned Book" sticker on a new release is can lead to a major boost in sales.School for scandalThat might be harmless if confined to a Barnes & Noble display. But it occurs in the context of public education, where foundational classics have been quietly displaced by shallower contemporary novels. Teachers boast about removing Homer, Shakespeare, and other “dead white men” from curricula. "Huckleberry Finn" languishes while legislators debate striking him from schools altogether.A student’s reading years are limited. Prioritizing great works that shape moral and intellectual formation is essential. Yet in an age of collapsing institutional trust, progressive educators flaunt their credentials and demand the state’s blessing to teach whatever they see fit.Despite left-wing rhetoric, there is no great epidemic of book-burning in America. Aside from the occasional Pentecostal preacher torching "Harry Potter" for headlines, such incidents are rare. Conservatives, generally, are classicists who want their children reading Homer and Shakespeare. Yet even modest debates over age-appropriate material draw accusations of illiteracy and bigotry.And that's by design. Banned Books Week is little more than a marketing campaign — an annual ritual of ginning up demand for “forbidden” books and laundering blatant activist propaganda into the merely "controversial." Conservatives who approach this debate on the ALA's terms only add fuel to the fire, as it were. When it comes to the left's persecution narrative, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Since former DOJ special counsel Jack Smith's alleged surveillance scheme surfaced earlier this month, House Republicans are leading the charge to bring justice. Republican Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, a member of the Republican Study Committee, urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a criminal investigation into Smith for his apparent involvement with Operation Arctic Frost, according to a letter obtained by Blaze News. During former President Joe Biden's administration, the FBI obtained private cellphone information from nine Republican lawmakers, an internal document indicated, in what appears to be an ideologically motivated instance of government weaponization. 'Weaponizing the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to spy on political opponents is what we expect from authoritarian regimes.'Brecheen's call for an investigation is also in accordance with President Donald Trump's executive order entitled "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government," which Trump signed the same day he was inaugurated. Since the scandal broke, the FBI has opened an internal investigation, firing several agents who were involved in the operation. As of this writing, the Department of Justice has not yet opened a criminal investigation, leading Brecheen and his co-signatories to be the first federal group to call for a criminal investigation into the operation.RELATED: 'WORSE THAN WATERGATE': Republicans demand answers after documents reveal FBI spied on 9 GOP lawmakers Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Image“The Biden administration used Operation Arctic Frost to target its political opponents by authorizing covert surveillance on elected members of the Republican Party," Brecheen told Blaze News. "We cannot let the Biden administration and special counsel Jack Smith get away with this direct violation of the Constitution.”Many prominent lawmakers, including Brecheen, have characterized the scandal as a modern-day Watergate, according to the letter obtained exclusively by Blaze News. Brecheen also warned that if high-profile politicians can have their privacy violated for ideological purposes, ordinary Americans could too.'The Bureau could easily be directed against individual citizens.'"The revelation that the Biden Administration directed the FBI to surveil duly elected American lawmakers is indeed a scandal of magnitude our country has not seen since Watergate," the letter reads. "Let us be clear: weaponizing the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to spy on political opponents is what we expect from authoritarian regimes such as North Korea or Iran, not the United States."RELATED: Corrupt Stacey Abrams groups once led by Sen. Raphael Warnock go extinct after admission of guilt Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images"The ramifications of this unprecedented scandal, however, stretch far beyond the lawmakers who were surveilled," the letter reads. "By empowering federal agents to secretly monitor the private phone calls of sitting United States Senators, Jack Smith set the sinister precedent that the same form of covert surveillance can and will be deployed against law-abiding American citizens.""If the FBI could be so readily weaponized against powerful figures in our government, then it is not difficult to conclude that the Bureau could easily be directed against individual citizens."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Virginia attorney general candidates Jay Jones and Jason Miyares faced off in a debate at the University of Richmond Thursday night ahead of the November 4 election. While the debate covered topics ranging from crime and immigration to energy costs and civil rights, the conversation always returned to the topic on everyone's mind: Jay Jones' vile text messages. Jones, a Democrat former Virginia House delegate, fought to defend himself over a series of text messages he sent a few years ago in which he seemingly advocated for political violence against then-Speaker Todd Gilbert (R) and death upon his children. 'If you were truly sorry, you would not be running for this office, because you disqualified yourself.'Jones addressed the controversy at the outset and accepted "accountability" multiple time over the course of the debate. "I am ashamed, I am embarrassed, and I am sorry. I am sorry to Speaker Gilbert. I'm sorry to his family. I'm sorry to my family. And I'm sorry to every single Virginian. I cannot take back what I said. But you have my word that I will always be accountable for my mistakes. And you also have my word that I will spend every waking moment fighting for you."RELATED: Nancy Pelosi has unbelievable response to Democrat candidate who issued death wish against Republican Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesJones used the words "accountable" and "accountability" more than 30 times during the hour-long debate. However, many instances were aimed at holding Donald Trump and Republicans "accountable" for their policies.For example, after repeatedly refusing to directly answer why voters should trust Jones after his incendiary text messages in which he "doubled down," as Miyares pointed out, on wanting the innocent children of a political opponent die, Jones insisted, "I've taken accountability for my mistakes, and I know that people in Virginia right now demand and deserve leaders who accept when they make mistakes and can acknowledge that and have been held accountable. This job right now demands someone who will hold Donald Trump accountable." In response, Miyares said, "He's running for the wrong office. ... I have to make this observation: He keeps saying that he is sorry. Jay, if you're really sorry, you wouldn't be running."In another heated moment, Miyares said, "If you were truly sorry, you would not be running for this office, because you disqualified yourself."Jones said he had a comprehensive public safety plan to get guns out of the commonwealth and protect Virginians.In response, Miyares pointed out several instances in which Jones prioritized lenient punishment for criminals over the protection of victims of violent crime, some of them children. Miyares continued, "And I find it a little bit stunning that today you say one of the pillars of your public safety platform is protecting children. Were you protecting [Jennifer Gilbert's] children when you said you wanted to see them die in their mother's arms?"In his closing statement, Miyares pointedly asked, "Are we going to pass the test of decency?" The full debate can be seen below: Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The 1977 concept album draws on author Isaac Asimov’s science fiction Robot stories. The post Alan Parsons Project’s ‘I Robot’ Gets Super Deluxe Edition appeared first on Best Classic Bands.

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