'Start off with a good witness and end with a good witness'

the raunchy, R-rated sex scenes that used to be Hollywood's bread and butter are in a sharp decline

Just two more witnesses

'Students and legislators worldwide might benefit from a semester in Iran'

Gloria Vanderbilt has been in the headlines for most of her life: a heated battle between her parents over her custody during the Great Depression, the loss of a son that haunted her for years, owing millions to the IRS, and now, upon her death on June 17, 2019 at the age of 95. Vanderbilt was known for many things throughout her fascinating and storied existence. Indeed, she was an heiress... Source

Former President Donald Trump vowed Friday to end President Joe Biden’s rewrite of Title IX “on Day One” if he should win the presidential election in November. “We’re going to end it on Day One,” the former president promised during a Friday interview with the conservative Philadelphia-based radio show “Kayal and Company.” “Don’t forget,” he said, “that was done as an order from the president. That came down as an executive order. And we’re going to change it. On Day One, it’s going to be changed.” “Tell your people not to worry about it,” Trump added. “It’ll be signed on Day One. It’ll be terminated.” The Biden administration on April 19 released its rewrite of Title IX, originally enacted in 1972 to protect women and girls. The administration claimed that the highly controversial rewrite advances “Title IX’s promise of ensuring that no person experiences sex discrimination, including sex-based harassment or sexual violence, in federally funded education.” “For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools, free from sex discrimination,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said at the time. “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.” .@realDonaldTrump on the Biden admin’s Title IX rewrite allowing males to take opportunities from girls: “We’re gonna end it on day one.” pic.twitter.com/YM2dgZF11i— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 10, 2024 The Biden rewrite of the 50-year-old civil rights law redefines sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation, thereby allowing men in girls’ and women’s restrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, and educational programs. It also opens the door for men to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams and endangers education institutions that receive federal funding, but wish to protect women’s spaces. “The rule also erases other important protections, like due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct, free speech protections for students and teachers who don’t want to use ‘preferred pronouns,’ and parents’ right to know if their child is in the process of a gender identity ‘social transition’ at school,” explained The Heritage Foundation’s Sarah Parshall Perry. (The Heritage Foundation created The Daily Signal in 2014.) “Title IX was written in 1972 when “sex” meant male and female, and no amount of interpretive jiujitsu permits a Cabinet agency to rewrite the plain language of the law,” added Parents Defending Education President Nicki Neily after the rewrite was announced. “Efforts to do so have failed repeatedly in Congress for one simple reason: Such an expansion of law is deeply unpopular, with opposition to these changes spanning both political and racial lines. This betrayal of students will not soon be forgotten by American parents, and we look forward to suing the Administration over this policy soon.” ?It is grotesque that the White House has chosen to capitulate to extremists in his party, sacrificing the First Amendment on the altar of Title IX and disregarding clearly established Supreme Court precedent on the definition of sexual harassment. Extending Title IX to cover… https://t.co/lmqNQxYOX3— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) April 19, 2024 The post ‘Day One’: Trump Vows to ‘End’ Biden’s Title IX Rewrite of Protections for Girls appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The following is an updated version of a column originally published in December 2022. One of the bestselling books of the 1970s was “The Peter Principle,” a business management book by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. The book’s premise was that employees get promoted based on their performance in their previous jobs until they are ultimately elevated to a position in which they’re incompetent, since skills and success in one position don’t necessarily ensure success in the next. “In a hierarchy,” Peter explained, “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” If “The Peter Principle” were published today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would be a case study in the phenomenon, now called “failing upward.” In Jean-Pierre’s case, that’s reflected in her work for the short-lived Democratic presidential campaigns of John Edwards in 2004 and Martin O’Malley in 2016, and now as the chief spokeswoman for the Biden administration. On Monday, she will mark her second anniversary in that role. In recent weeks, however, with the 2024 election campaign shifting into high gear, there have been well-sourced reports that high-ranking figures in the Biden administration are not-so-subtly seeking to push Jean-Pierre out of the role—for which she was never qualified to begin with. Many of the same administration figures reportedly behind those efforts to oust her are, not surprisingly, denying the accuracy of the reports. The New York Post quoted a source as saying the high-ranking administration figures “‘were trying to find Karine a graceful exit’ because of the ugly optics of removing her against her will,” especially because she thinks she’s doing a good job. (One face-saving exit strategy was to offer her the presidency of EMILY’s List, an abortion rights group.) But as a textbook example of an affirmative-action hire, Jean-Pierre appears not to be going anywhere. An administration so thoroughly wedded to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion is, in this case, now finding it difficult to divorce itself from DEI. (More on that below.) The most glaring evidence that Jean-Pierre, 49, has been promoted to her level of incompetence as White House press secretary is her near-total dependence on a binder full of administration talking points, which she often reads from directly at her daily news briefings to the White House press corps. It’s so bad that Fox News commentator Jesse Watters has taken to referring to her derisively as “Binder,” and it’s so, well, cringeworthy that other critics deliberately mispronounce “Karine” as “Cringe.” Just as an aside, recall how 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was ridiculed mercilessly in the liberal media for saying during the second presidential debate that he had “binders full of women.” That was his awkward way of referring to files of résumés of women he would consider for staffing his administration were he to win the election. Many of the talking heads’ “binder” jokes snarkily suggested that the squeaky-clean Romney was engaged in some form of BDSM with those women. It’s standard operating procedure for a press secretary to have notes for ready reference. It’s quite another thing to stare down at them and read those notes all but verbatim. As far as we know, none of the talking heads who ridiculed Romney has ever mentioned—much less made fun of—Jean-Pierre’s near-complete dependence on her press-briefing binders. Nor have they satirized her oft-repeated deflection—“I don’t have anything for you”—when she doesn’t have answers to questions for which she’s unprepared. Nor have the liberal media (or the late-night TV comics) noted, much less lampooned, how Jean-Pierre has mispronounced or mangled words and phrases in the course of her press briefings. On Dec. 13, 2022, Jean-Pierre touted “bicarmel” support in Congress for the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. “Bicarmel, bipartisan support was had for this piece of legislation,” she said. But this was no one-off slip of the tongue: She used the term “bicarmel” three times to describe it in the course of the half-hour press briefing. It should have been “bicameral,” of course; meaning, support in both chambers of Congress. The official White House transcript of the briefing was dishonestly corrected in all three instances to “bicameral” with no indication that it was not an accurate reflection of what was actually said. On Nov. 28, 2022, in congratulating three Americans who had won Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics, and economics, she mispronounced “Nobel” five times in 40 seconds as “noble.” Two months to the day earlier, on Sept. 28, Jean-Pierre said that as part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ then-pending trip to South Korea, the veep would visit the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. Jean-Pierre helpfully noted that it had been “nearly 70 years since the Korean ‘armtis’”—not to be confused with the Korean armistice. Three weeks before that, on Sept. 6, Jean-Pierre conflated a Russian natural gas pipeline with an upscale American department store chain. She accused Russia of causing an energy crisis in Europe by shutting down its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which she referred to as the “Nordstrom 1” pipeline. One can only imagine how former President Donald Trump’s press secretaries, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and later Kayleigh McEnany, would have been pilloried by the liberal White House press corps had they made those sorts of repeated verbal gaffes. One reason Jean-Pierre still has the high-visibility press secretary’s job, to which she was elevated on May 13, 2022, despite all of the gaffes, is because President Joe Biden is legendary for his own innumerable flubs and miscues. “White House communications staff has had to correct President Joe Biden’s public remarks at least 148 times since the beginning of 2024, a review of official White House transcripts shows,” the Daily Caller reported April 29. Biden couldn’t very well hold Jean-Pierre to a higher standard, could he? But the real reason Jean-Pierre remains in her post today is because of the identity politics to which the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have sworn undying allegiance. She is immune from criticism—and from reassignment to a less high-profile post—only because she checks all of the boxes of identity-politics “intersectionality” as the first black, first LGBTQ, and first immigrant White House press secretary. In the Biden administration, Jean-Pierre demonstrates daily that meritocracy is an afterthought—if it’s thought of at all. The moral of this story: Live by DEI, die by it. The post Biden Spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre: Incompetent but Protected From Firing by DEI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Many Americans could affirm what Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said: “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Unfortunately, moms and dads increasingly deemphasize marriage and parenting, instead choosing to focus on paid work. This Mother’s Day, we should reject the culture and affirm the importance of motherhood itself. The starkest evidence of deemphasis comes in the form of a survey of parents by Pew Research Center. Respondents were asked whether specific goals for their children—financial independence, jobs or careers they enjoy, a college degree, marriage, and children—were extremely important, very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not at all important. Fully 88% said financial independence and careers they enjoy are in the top two categories, while only about 20% said marriage and children are in the top two categories. Almost 46% of parents said that marriage and children aren’t too important or are not at all important. Children seem to be picking up on these priorities. Many are delaying marriage, or they never get married. According to the Census Bureau, the median age of marriage has gone from 20 to 28 for women and 23 to 30 for men in just a few generations. As of 2021, a record high 25% of 40-year-olds never had been married, up from just 6% in 1980. The reasons are complex, but undoubtedly our culture’s emphasis of work over family is part of the picture. This is counterproductive. Paid work is important, no doubt, but such a lopsided emphasis on work over family will lead to malformed children. As Scripture, the ancients, and modern social science all attest, four things basically make us happy: community or friends, purpose or vocation (which is wider than paid work), faith, and family. Valuing career to the detriment of the other categories is a recipe for disappointment. An earlier Pew poll seems to bear this out since adult Americans, asked about what provides them a sense of meeting, chose family 2-to-1 over career (69% to 34%). For conservatives, extolling career over family is a downright disaster. The overemphasis on work doesn’t just produce malformation and destruction in personal lives. It also weakens America by producing birth rates that are too low to maintain the population, affecting everything from the economy to the military. Of course, conservatives also push back on marriage as self-fulfillment, harkening back to a more sturdy and time-tested definition of marriage reflected in the traditional vows that emphasize duty rather than self-fulfillment. Such marriages seem to be the sturdiest and happiest. So, what can moms and dads do to turn this around? In your own family, make sure you celebrate motherhood this Sunday on Mother’s Day. We are only alive because of our moms’ sacrificial and heroic birth experiences.  Do you put as much emphasis on finding a good mate—and what to look for—as you do on what college you want your child to attend or what career they will pursue? Parents, achievement at school or sports is great, but make sure you also extoll the deep meaning you get from having a family of your own. After all, if 70% of adults say they get most meaning from their families, why are only 20% of parents saying that it’s the most important goal for their children?  If you think you have the right mix in communicating what’s important, try asking your children what they think you think is the most important goal. You might be surprised by the answer. The post This Mother’s Day, Celebrate Motherhood appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Welcome to 2024, the year where each week brings a new batch of fresh insanity, especially on Israel. While Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee in the upcoming presidential election, sits in the dock and unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens flood across our borders, elites are turning on Jews and demonizing Israel, apparently forgetting that the Jewish state is merely responding to the worst pogrom since the Holocaust. A brief refresher, since the world apparently needs reminding: On Oct. 7, 2023, members of the terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip and began slaughtering innocent civilians. They killed 1,139 and took another 200 or so hostage. More than 30 of the victims were U.S. citizens. The Hamas terrorists attacked a music festival, targeting young women. They raped these women to death and paraded their naked bodies. They killed babies. They called their parents to brag about slaughtering Jews. Iran, which funds Hamas, reportedly had a role in the terrorist attacks. Other proxies of Iran’s Islamist regime have also taken action against Israel and the U.S. in the wake of Oct. 7, and Iran directly attacked Israel last month. Israel responded to Oct. 7 by formally acknowledging the war that Hamas had already declared through its vile invasion. The Jewish state made known its intention to wipe out Hamas’ military capabilities in order to prevent another pogrom. Hamas, for its part, declared the terrorist attack a victory and promised it would carry out similar terrorist attacks. While Hamas has freed some hostages in cease-fire deals, it remains a threat to Israel. This week, Israel closed in on some of the last Hamas holdouts in the adjacent Gaza Strip, which is governed by the terrorist organization. The Jewish state’s prosecution of the war has not been perfect, but Israel Defense Forces worked hard to minimize civilian casualties, warning about strikes before they take place and urging evacuations of cities before invading. In any morally sane world, people should celebrate Israel’s pending victory in a clear war of self-defense. Instead, we are treated to a carnival of topsyturveydom. Biden’s Quid Pro Quo Moment On Wednesday, the day after he commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Joe Biden threatened to withdraw aid to Israel if the Jewish state started its military operation in the Gazan city of Rafah. Although Biden had occasionally called earlier for pauses in the fighting, this represented the first time he threatened to remove aid to Israel, and the threat came shortly after Congress had approved more military aid to both Ukraine and Israel. Biden had said of Israel after the Hamas terrorist massacre on Oct. 7: “We will not ever fail to have their back.” The day before Biden threatened to withdraw aid to Israel, his administration issued a sanctions waiver to enable arms sales to Qatar (where some Hamas leaders reside) and Lebanon, where Iran’s proxy Hezbollah, another terrorist group, enjoys broad sway over the military. House Republicans filed articles of impeachment Friday, citing House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of then-President Donald Trump. The House voted to impeach Trump over a phone call in which he appeared to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he would hold back military aid unless Zelenskyy investigated corruption related to Biden’s son, Hunter. Some Democrats, notably Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, have spoken out against Biden’s move against Israel. Hate in the Schools Meanwhile, antisemitism is rearing its ugly head, not just on college and university campuses, but in K-12 classrooms. House Republicans pressed the leaders of three major school districts on their responses to the growing harassment of Jews after Oct. 7. Students at Berkeley Unified School District in California reportedly heard other students say, “Kill the Jews.” Some asked Jewish students what “their number is,” referring to the numbers tattooed on Jews in death camps during the Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League argued that the school district failed to curtail the hostile environment. When pressed Wednesday on the issue, School Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel essentially just said, “Trust me, we’re dealing with it.” In doing so, she appeared to infantilize her K-12 students. “You can be confident that I am there in my schools every day, in the schools, in the classrooms, with the babies,” Ford Morthel said. The Berkeley school superintendent later defended a curriculum that taught students a positive spin on the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That slogan, the official motto of Hamas, calls for eradicating the Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, thus “freeing” the land now known as Israel from non-Palestinian influence. Berkeley’s curriculum stated: “For some Palestinians, ‘From the river to the sea’ is a call for freedom and peace.” 'I do think it was appropriate," Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of Berkeley Unified Public School District, says of a curriculum stating that "For some Palestinians, 'from the river to the sea' is a call for freedom and peace."? pic.twitter.com/diwVi9JELl— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) May 8, 2024 Rewarding Palestine After Oct. 7 On Friday, the representatives of 143 countries that belong to the United Nations voted to declare the Palestinian Authority “peace-loving” and to extend certain rights and privileges to the so-called state of Palestine in the U.N. The resolution expresses “deep regret and concern” that the U.S. voted against admitting the Palestinian Authority into the U.N. in April. As Brett Schaefer, a Heritage Foundation research fellow, explained, the Palestinian territories lack key characteristics of statehood and both the extremist organizations that rule the West Bank and Gaza reward and encourage terrorism against civilians. The U.N. resolution also opens an interesting can of worms because U.S. law forbids funding to U.N. bodies that give the Palestine Liberation Organization (the political party that controls the Palestinian Authority) the same standing as member states. Although only the Palestinian Authority represents “Palestine” in the U.N., this attempt to induct “Palestine” into the global body seems a reward for terrorism and an intentional rebuke to Israel’s attempt to defend itself from that terrorism. Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., shredded a copy of the U.N. Charter to demonstrate how the resolution undermines it. Today, I demonstrated to the General Assembly what they are doing to the UN Charter by ignoring it and shredded it on the stage. I told the ambassadors that today will go down in infamy and I want the world to remember when they shredded the UN Charter to advance a Nazi regime… pic.twitter.com/NulOtHsAdK— Ambassador Gilad Erdan ???? ???? (@giladerdan1) May 10, 2024 In what world does it make sense for the president of the United States, 143 countries in the United Nations, and American schoolchildren to take the side of proven terrorists against the country trying to defend itself against those terrorists? The post The Week in Israel News: The World’s Upside-Down Response to Oct. 7 Gets Even Worse appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Feel-Good Friday: The Kid Thought He Gave a Homeless Man a Dollar Edition