"Today’s sentence puts an end to Whitehead’s various schemes."

Did he get what he deserved?

Education freedom is on the march. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday signed legislation making the Pelican State the 16th state in the nation to enact K-12 Education Savings Accounts and the 11th to offer education choice to every K-12 student, following Alabama earlier this year. The legislation creates the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise—LA GATOR—Scholarships, which families can use to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their kids. As with other ESA policies, parents can use the LA GATOR Scholarships to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, curricular materials, special-needs therapy, and more. “The LA Gator Program puts parents in the driver’s seat and gives every child the opportunity for a great education. When parents are committed to the value of their child’s education, government should never get in the way,” said Landry, a Republican. “School choice is now a reality in the state of Louisiana!” Most students will be eligible for scholarships worth about $5,200 annually, which is just over a third of the average per-pupil spending at Louisiana district schools. Students with special needs and children from low-income families can receive higher scholarship amounts. The scholarships will initially be limited to students who are switching from a district or charter school, are entering kindergarten, or who are from families earning no more than 250% of the federal poverty level. In the second year, families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty line will be eligible, and in the third year, the scholarships will be open to all K-12 students in Louisiana. More than a quarter of K-12 students nationwide are currently or soon will be eligible for a publicly funded education choice policy. Including privately funded tax-credit scholarship policies, more than 36% of students nationwide are eligible for a private education choice policy. The new scholarship policy is an example of how the school choice movement has moved in a more free-market and family-centric direction. Instead of relying on bureaucrats to provide top-down accountability, the new policy trusts parents to provide bottom-up accountability. The LA GATOR Scholarships will replace the state’s overregulated school voucher program, which produced the nation’s first negative results in a random-assignment study on the effects of a school choice policy on participating students’ academic performance. “Equalitarian” regulations intended to guarantee access and quality—such as open admissions requirements, price controls, and mandating the state test—backfired by chasing away high-performing private schools. Fortunately, Louisiana lawmakers have learned from their state’s own mistakes, as well as the success of states such as Arizona and Florida, which have shown that a free-market approach to education does a better job of providing a high degree of access and quality. The new scholarship policy eschews the harmful regulations of its predecessor. Louisiana’s embrace of universal school choice also shows the success of efforts by conservatives to channel parents’ frustrations over “woke” ideology in traditional public schools into public support for policies that empower parents to choose schools that align with their values. “Our people seek government that reflects their values,” said Landry during his Jan. 8 inauguration. “They demand that our children be afforded an education that reflects those wholesome principles, and not an indoctrination behind their mother’s back.” Louisiana Governor JEFF LANDRY: "Our people seek government that reflects their values. They demand that our children be afforded an education that reflects those wholesome principles, and not an indoctrination behind their mother’s back." pic.twitter.com/x1WiJdEdSQ— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) January 10, 2024 The same week that the Louisiana Legislature gave the green light to the LA GATOR Scholarships, it also approved legislation curbing the ability of “woke” teachers to indoctrinate students in radical gender ideology behind parents’ backs. Similar to Given Name Act policies in other states, Louisiana’s HB 121 would prohibit public school employees, including teachers, from referring to children by pronouns that are inconsistent with their sex, or any name other than the student’s legal name or common derivatives thereof. Too often, school officials have begun the process of “socially transitioning” confused children all while keeping their parents in the dark. Going forward, Louisiana schools will no longer be able to subvert and supersede parents by making decisions concerning their children’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being without their knowledge and consent. Another bill, HB 122, restricts discussion in government-run schools about sexual orientation and gender identity “in a manner that deviates from state content standards or curricula developed or approved by public school governing authorities.” The bill properly recognizes that public school teachers are not free agents, but rather public employees hired by the public to perform a particular job. Parents and the public at large expect teachers to carry out the job they were hired to do without exploiting their position to indoctrinate a captive audience of children in a radical ideology. Louisiana’s school choice win is also evidence that advocates’ short-term hyperpartisan strategy will pay bipartisan dividends in the long term. If Republicans gain an electoral advantage over Democrats by embracing school choice, eventually the Democrats will have to embrace school choice, too. We’re already seeing the signs in places like Louisiana. When the Louisiana House of Representatives on April 8 passed the bill to create the LA GATOR Scholarships, the vote was 71-32, including six Democrats. That might not sound like a lot, but that’s one-fifth of the Democratic caucus. Moreover, whereas bipartisan efforts to advance school choice legislation typically involve bills to create small, targeted, and overregulated policies like the one the LA GATOR Scholarships are replacing, these Democrats voted for a Republican-led effort to enact education choice for all. Louisiana Democrat Rep. Jason Hughes ON FIRE:"As I watch children in poverty, trapped in failing schools, who can hardly read, I'd be damned if I will continue to defend the status quo."The bill just passed the House 71 to 32.SIX Democrats voted for UNIVERSAL SCHOOL CHOICE. pic.twitter.com/hY2EU6ECrY— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) April 8, 2024 There’s still a long way to go. After all, most of the Louisiana House Democrats and all the state Senate Democrats voted against school choice. But as education choice policies become the norm and not just the exception, it will be increasingly difficult for members of any political party to stand in their way. The post Louisiana Expands Education Choice to All appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Soviet America?

Governor Abbott Flames Biden's Mass Amnesty Policy

Would you volunteer to be deliberately infected with COVID-19, all in the name of science? For most of us, the answer is probably a resounding “no”, yet 36 healthy people agreed to do just that as part of the world’s first COVID human challenge study. Now, some new results are in, and they’ve revealed a previously unknown quirk of the immune system that allows some people to clear the virus before it has a chance to take hold.We know by now that people’s experiences with COVID-19 are massively varied. Some have very severe, life-threatening illness; some have mild symptoms but develop long COVID; some have no symptoms at all. Starting early in the pandemic, the UK COVID-19 Human Challenge study, led by Imperial College London, set out to capture exactly what happens in the body when the virus strikes.Thirty-six healthy adults with no prior exposure to COVID (and before vaccines were available) signed up to be deliberately infected with SARS-CoV-2 via the nose. Among this group, 16 people were monitored more closely to track the entire course of the infection at the single-cell level. Baseline tests of their immune function were carried out before the infection, and then continued afterwards along with sampling of their blood and nasal lining.Through single-cell sequencing, teams of analysts at UCL and the Wellcome Sanger Institute were able to generate data from over 600,000 individual cells from the participants. This rich dataset revealed immune responses that had never been observed with COVID-19 before.“This was an incredibly unique opportunity to see what immune responses look like when encountering a new pathogen – in adults with no prior history of COVID-19, in a setting where factors such as time of infection and comorbidities could be controlled,” said co-first author Dr Rik Lindeboom in a statement.Six out of the group of 16 people developed a COVID infection with mild symptoms and several positive antigen tests. Three others got what the scientists classified as a “transient infection”, with borderline positive PCR tests at various points during the study.But the remaining seven people stayed PCR-negative throughout, even after COVID-19 was literally shoved up their noses. Data analysis revealed that their innate immune systems had responded initially to the virus, leading the authors to term these “abortive infections” – they didn’t have a specific, antibody-led response as you might expect from someone vaccinated against COVID, for example, but their innate immune response was so good that it cleared the virus out before any symptoms had a chance to show.Digging a little deeper, the scientists identified a gene called HLA-DQA2 that was active in certain immune cells in the blood and nose in people with abortive infections. Previous research has indicated that the HLA-DQA2 protein may be associated with milder COVID-19 disease, so it’s possible this is a key factor in why some people have escaped the virus all this time.By contrast, the people who developed symptomatic COVID displayed a rapid immune response in the blood but not in the nasal tissues themselves, allowing the virus to establish itself there.“These findings shed new light on the crucial early events that either allow the virus to take hold or rapidly clear it before symptoms develop,” said senior author Dr Marko Nikolić. “We now have a much greater understanding of the full range of immune responses, which could provide a basis for developing potential treatments and vaccines that mimic these natural protective responses.”The results could also help us respond to the coronaviruses of the future, as senior author Dr Sarah Teichmann explained: “Future studies can compare with our reference dataset to understand how a normal immune response to a new pathogen compares to a vaccine-induced immune response.”“Lindeboom and colleagues’ study is a notable step forward in understanding the complexities of SARS-CoV-2 infection,” wrote Benjamin Israelow and Akiko Iwasaki, who were not part of the study team, in a News & Views piece to accompany the study. “By unravelling the mysteries of early immune responses, the study offers promising avenues for future research and therapeutic development in the ongoing fight against COVID-19.”The study is published in Nature. 

The whole inner Solar System was blasted with intense plasma back in May. Most of it came from a single extremely active sunspot called AR3664. This was responsible for a coronal mass ejection leading to spectacular auroral displays at lower latitudes than usual, and a solar flare that caused a significant radio blackout on Earth around May 14. But the best was yet to come.The flare that hit the Earth was an X8.79, at the time the strongest in seven years. On May 20, once the spot had rotated to the other side of the Sun, it released an even stronger one. Solar Orbiter, which was located on that side of the Sun measured an X12 flare – the strongest in the cycle and possibly the strongest in 20 years.“This makes it the strongest flare yet of the current solar cycle, and in the top ten flares since 1996,” European Space Agency (ESA) research fellow Laura Hayes said in a statement. It was serendipitous that Solar Orbiter was at the right place at the right time. The spacecraft orbits around the Sun every six months, and as part of its primary mission, it won’t deliver this alignment many more times.          “Solar Orbiter’s position, in combination with other missions watching the Sun from Earth’s side, gives us a 360-degree view of the Sun for an extended period of time. This will only happen three more times in the future of Solar Orbiter, so we are in a unique situation to observe active regions on the far side that will then rotate into Earth’s view,” explained Daniel Müller, Solar Orbiter Project Scientist at ESA.But it was not just Solar Orbiter on the path of the intense plasma release. The wave hit BepiColombo, the ESA and JAXA mission to Mercury, as well as the planet Mercury, despite the two not being very close to each other. Solar Orbiter was near Venus and both were showered with particles. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was on the path too, so we will be getting some really cool science there as well. And then, there was Mars.  “The reason why the X-class flare that happened on the other side of the Sun is really interesting is because it's associated with particles that were on the path of BepiColombo as well as Mars Express,” Dr Miho Janvier, solar and space physicist at ESA, told IFLScience.          Both BepiColombo and Mars Express saw increased numbers of memory errors. NASA mission Curiosity saw "snow" in its images, and Mars Odyssey lost the use of its camera for about an hour. MAVEN had a great time though: one of its objectives is studying the aurorae on Mars.AR3664 continues to be active; Solar Orbiter saw another flare from it on June 11. These observations show the importance of having a 360-degree view of the Sun. 

CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed former Obama speechwriters and current Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor to the Tuesday taping of The Late Show. During a discussion about the upcoming presidential debate, Lovett offered some potential zingers for President Joe Biden. However, they exclusively revolved around flatulence. Colbert questioned how the lack of an audience will impact the debate, “How do you think that’s going to — I love those rules because, remember, the first debate in 2020 was just a shout fest where he was just trying to drown him out by being a complete tool during the debate. Can you still do zingers when there’s no audience? Do jokes still work? Because usually there's a takeaway if he got the good one in and the audience responded. Without any audience, is it worth doing jokes?”     Lovett, who will also be a contestant on the upcoming season of Survivor, replied, “I think it's tougher. I think it’s tougher, I think you have to—they can't just be, kind of, punch lines because there’s not going to be anyone to laugh.” Colbert followed up by wondering, “Right, you’ve written jokes for politicians before. Do you have anything—any advice for Joe?” The question was clearly planted ahead of time as Lovett pulled out his notes and read, “We passed the largest climate bill in history. You remember climate change, like how you changed the climate in that courtroom when you stunk it up with your farts.” It was the beginning of a theme as Lovett also suggested, “We'll secure the border and keep families together, though no promises for you and your wife, Melania, with whom you seem to have a, kind of, hollow, loveless arrangement. She wasn't even with you in that courtroom when you stunk it up with your farts.” Finally, Lovett began, “I’m bringing down costs”—he is not—“You're promising to cut taxes for your rich friends, but Donald, if you have to cut their taxes so they'll want to hang out with you, are they really your friends? Did they even call you after the whole fart thing?” Colbert then jested, “Are you just going to—now, will you email those? Will you email those to the White House? Or are you hoping he watched just now?” Lovett quipped, “Those are the zingers for you. The zingers that could literally save America; I am sending them right to Joe.” Throughout the bit, Colbert gave the impression he wasn’t exactly worried Lovett’s jokes posed a threat to his own job security, but the truth is that much of Colbert’s and his contemporaries’ jokes during Trump’s trials were about farts and Trump supposedly falling asleep during the proceedings. Here is a transcript for the June 18-taped show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 6/19/2024 12:18 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: How do you think that’s going to — I love those rules because, remember, the first debate in 2020 was just a shout fest— TOMMY VIETOR: Yes. COLBERT: — where he was just trying to drown him out by being a complete tool during the debate. Can you still do zingers when there’s no audience? Do jokes still work? Because usually there's a takeaway if he got the good one in and the audience responded. Without any audience, is it worth doing jokes? JON LOVETT: I think it's tougher. I think it’s tougher, I think you have to—they can't just be, kind of, punch lines because there’s not going to be anyone to laugh. COLBERT: Right, you’ve written jokes for politicians before. Do you have anything — any advice for Joe? LOVETT: Sure. Okay. I may have a couple. I have some zingers, I have some potential zingers. COLBERT: Okay. Alright. Little, zing bots. VIETOR: Don't clap yet.  LOVETT: Let's get those expectations, little bit lower. Ready? COLBERT: Sure. LOVETT: We passed the largest climate bill in history. You remember climate change, like how you changed the climate in that courtroom when you stunk it up with your farts. COLBERT: What else do you have? LOVETT: Thanks for asking, Stephen. We'll secure the border and keep families together, though no promises for you and your wife, Melania, with whom you seem to have a, kind of, hollow, loveless arrangement. She wasn't even with you in that courtroom when you stunk it up with your farts. COLBERT: Okay, I’m sensing a pattern. LOVETT: So, and here's where I think we clinch the future basically. COLBERT: Let’s clinch it, let’s bring it home. Bring it home. LOVETT: I’m bringing down costs. You're promising to cut taxes for your rich friends, but Donald, if you have to cut their taxes so they'll want to hang out with you, are they really your friends? Did they even call you after the whole fart thing? COLBERT: Are you just going to— now, will you email those? Will you email those to the White House? Or are you hoping he watched just now? LOVETT: Those are the zingers for you. COLBERT: Oh LOVETT: The zingers that could literally save America; I am sending them right to Joe.

What happens when your personal convictions put you in direct violation of the law? That’s the question Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon in Texas, was forced to confront last year when he discovered some disturbing information about Texas Children’s Hospital, where he was serving his residency. Despite the institution’s pledge to cease providing transgender medical care to minors in the wake of Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton passing a law that deemed sex changes on minors and puberty-blockers “child abuse,” Haim found that medical staff was continuing to offer services in secret. He then stepped into the courageous shoes of a whistleblower, but part of being a whistleblower is providing proof, which in this case, is medical records. However, to share sensitive medical information is a violation of HIPAA. Haim ultimately decided the risk was worth it and gave conservative journalist Christopher Rufo medical records to prove that the hospital was continuing to provide transgender care to minors. Now, Dr. Haim has been indicted on four accounts for HIPAA violations. Today, he meets with Glenn Beck to share his story. “Thank you for what you’ve done,” says Glenn, praising Haim not only for his courage to speak up but also his willingness to go through his savings and retirement funds to pay for the attorneys — and ultimately for the protection of children. “[My wife and I] had a decision to make,” he tells Glenn. “Do we try to fight back, or do we submit to the ideology and try to make it all go away? We knew that we were going to have kids someday, and what kind of world would we be delivering them into if there’s not men and women in this world who are willing to sacrifice in order to deliver them to a better future?” “We’ve sacrificed a lot — everything we have, but what you gain back is so much greater,” he says, noting that his wife is currently pregnant with their first child. “You raise [children] to have the virtues to have a good and fulfilling life,” but “this government is criminalizing those virtues; the justice system is protecting criminals going after the innocent; the medical system is creating sickness and going after the healthy; the education system is miseducating people. It’s like every institution is doing the opposite of what it’s meant to do,” Haim laments. “People like us have to do something about it even if that means sacrificing.” We applaud Dr. Haim’s courage to stand up for the innocent and fight back against those who prey on the most vulnerable. To donate to Dr. Haim’s cause, visit givesendgo.com. — (@) Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.