Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Fetterman has announced that he will remain serving in his political role, despite a recently released report claiming that he is unfit to serve. 

Two autistic children are missing in Nova Scotia, Canada. There is a desperate search for the children, missing in a rural part of Canada’s Nova Scotia province. They have been missing for more than six days, with dozens of rescuers combing the dense woods in search of the siblings. Six-year-old Lily Sullivan and her brother […] The post Nova Scotia Is Hopelessly Woke, Missing Children Can’t Chang It appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Three of the five Memphis, Tennessee, police officers who were charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols in 2023 were acquitted of state charges on Wednesday. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, and Justin Smith were found not guilty of all charges by a jury that deliberated for two days, Fox 13 Memphis reported. The former police officers faced charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, two counts of official misconduct, and official oppression. While the former officers celebrated their acquittal on state charges, they still face sentencing after being convicted of obstruction of justice in a federal trial. The trial, which was carried out in front of an out-of-town jury from Hamilton County, Tennessee, took nine days. Prosecutors argued that Bean and Smith had a duty to intervene after their fellow officers, Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin, began kicking Nichols in the head while he was on the ground. Haley arrived on the scene after Martin first kicked Nichols and then kicked Nichols’ upper arm. According to prosecutors, Haley failed to step in and prevent escalating violence, adding that the former officer yelled, “Beat that man’s (expletive).” Haley’s defense attorney brought in a use-of-force expert during the trial who testified that Haley’s kick to Nichols’ arm was an attempt to get him into handcuffs, not to continue any violence. Nichols got into a confrontation with the Memphis Police officers after he was pulled over on January 7, 2023. Nichols attempted to flee after being pepper-sprayed and got close to his mother’s home before the officers soon caught up with him and took him to the ground. Video footage from a camera mounted on a nearby pole showed Nichols being kicked and punched while he was on the ground. The 29-year-old man died after being transported to a hospital. “It’s hard for us to imagine how someone could say that none of the defendants were guilty of any of the charges,” said Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy. “I think that any fair-minded person who watched the video would come to the conclusion that everybody there had some responsibility for Tyre Nichols’ death.” Some on the Left pointed to the beating death of Nichols to paint the police as racist, despite all five officers being black. Demonstrators marched in Memphis following Nichols’ death, demanding an end to “police terror” and claiming that police “uphold white supremacy.” Demonstrators march in Memphis following the death of Tyre Nichols (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) All five officers accused of beating Nichols to death were fired from the Memphis Police Department shortly after his death. Bean and Smith face 20 years in federal prison after being found guilty of witness tampering. Haley could serve a life sentence in federal prison after being found guilty of using excessive force, being deliberately indifferent to Nichols’ medical needs, witness tampering, and conspiracy to witness tamper, USA Today reported. Martin and Mills Jr. both took plea deals and testified during the federal trial, while Mills also testified during the state trial. Prosecutors recommended a 40-year prison sentence for Martin and a 15-year sentence for Mills, according to Fox 13.  Sentencing for all five officers in the federal trial is expected to take place soon since the state trial has concluded.

I want to define cancel culture because I think people are equating many different things that are not cancel culture. If you cancel or criticize someone, for example, that is not a legal ban on their behavior; that is social ostracization; sanction for behavior or opinion. Not legal sanction, not banning people, not trying to jail people, just people not wanting to hang out with you. Cancellation can range from people criticizing you to people wanting to not hang out with you, to people firing you, to people deciding no one can hire you. It’s a whole range of activity. There are basically three generalized perspectives on cancel culture. One: Any violation of any taboo ought to be treated with the harshest possible measure of cancellation, ruining people’s lives for any level of rhetorical transgression.  Two: No one should ever be canceled for any reason. So no criticism, no social ostracization, no calling out, nothing. You can say whatever you want and there will be no consequences. Three: the more moderate, complex and true perspective, which is that some behaviors or opinions are genuinely disgusting and should receive social sanction and other behavior should not. The level of forgiveness and social sanction ought to vary, because you might be talking about whether you want to have dinner with somebody or you might be talking about whether someone should be able to hold a job — which is much, much harsher — or you might be talking about whether or not you want somebody in your school. The problem with the first perspective is that it is censorious. It prevents useful conversations from happening. It’s unforgiving, it’s uncharitable. For roughly 20 years in this country we saw people being canceled, socially ostracized, losing jobs, losing career opportunities, or being destroyed for correct opinions such as “Men are not women” or for saying a word in Mandarin that sounded like the N-word. Social media mobs were activated in order to destroy people who violated any taboo. The lines were bright, and if you crossed the line, you were destroyed. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show This led to a reactionary response, which moved to perspective number two, that cancellation should never happen. No criticism, no social sanction, that criticism is never, ever the answer, which is where we are now. The problem with this perspective is that if there is never any social sanction or criticism or ostracization for bad behavior or terrible opinion, that’s moral relativism, in which the ugliest opinions and expressions are supposed to be given equal credibility with decent or even controversial but useful opinions. The real answer in a normal society would be number three: Sometimes people deserve the social consequences for what they do. Not always, but sometimes. And the social consequences can vary. They aren’t irrevocable. In certain circumstances, forgiveness could be possible. For example, in the normal world, you don’t have a duty as a business owner to hire or to have dinner with someone who shouts the N-word at children or who says that white people are colonizers and evil. But in that normal world, it would be a bad thing to do to post that person’s address online so people can go to their house and harass them. In the real world, you have every right to avoid buying a Bud Light because the company claimed that men can be women. Or you don’t want to engage with a company that says the police are systemically racist. But you also shouldn’t go to the home of the CEO and threaten to burn down his house. The informal standards of the social fabric used to work well because most issues remained personal. But social media has made everything worse because now there’s always a mob waiting to form. That’s all social media is: a mob waiting to form around an issue, just like white blood cells in your immune system waiting for something to attack. Mobs form to destroy people. And so we are all forced to decide on the spot whether we think a person is bad or good, hero or villain, deserving of shame or support. The biggest issue is that we have lost the boundaries of what is informal or acceptable debate. We’re descending into a world of either total cancellation for everyone with whom we disagree or total support for bad behavior in order to fight total cancellation. Here’s the point: these two perspectives are mutually reinforcing. The moral relativism of “There should be no social consequences or criticism for anything” leads people who don’t like the stuff that’s being said to call for more social consequences, which leads to more reactionary moral relativism, which leads to more social consequences, and back and forth until the end of time. We should totally oppose obviously inappropriate cancellation; we should allow forgiveness where appropriate. People should ask for forgiveness and we should give it to them. The bottom line is that if we are going to share a society together, a social fabric does require a more nuanced view of how we treat the things that we don’t like. And that nuanced view can’t just be “cancel everyone” or “cancel no one.” As our common moral standards degrade, our society is going to continue to fall apart through a sort of reactionary cycling between the “cancel everyone” side and the “cancel no one” side. Unless we find a better way to communicate.