Death Toll in Egypt Attack on Christians Rises to 29

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The death toll in the attack by gunmen on a bus transporting Christians to a monastery south of Cairo rose to 29, Egyptian authorities said Saturday.

The Egyptian Cabinet said in a news release that 13 victims of Friday’s attack remained hospitalized in Cairo and the southern province of Minya where the attack took place. Authorities had previously said 28 were killed.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the fourth to target Christians since December, but it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. The bloodshed came on the eve of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Read more from “Death Toll in Egypt Attack on Christians Rises to 29” HERE)

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Tillerson Apologizes to Britain After Intel Agencies Leak Manchester Bombing Details

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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson apologized to the United Kingdom Friday after details of the Manchester bombing were leaked to U.S. media outlets.

“We take full responsibility for that and we regret that that happened,” Tillerson said in a joint appearance with U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. He continued, “This special relationship that exists between our two countries will certainly withstand this particular unfortunate event.”

The U.K. temporarily suspended Manchester bombing intelligence sharing with the U.S. Thursday after photos of the crime scene appeared in The New York Times. British Prime Minister Theresa May considered the leak so serious that she said she would raise the matter with President Donald Trump to stress that information shared between the two allies must remain secret. (Read more from “Tillerson Apologizes to Britain After Intel Agencies Leak Manchester Bombing Details” HERE)

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Why the Left Loves Islam — and an Even Stranger Contradiction

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For all the craziness in the world, there isn’t much that can match the sheer lunacy of liberals standing for both homosexuality and Islam at the same time. Islamic law calls for death for gays. How can we explain why the left loves Islam they way they do?

The best I can come up with is that gays and Muslims share one thing in common: they’re both minorities in the Western world, and the left is all for standing up for minorities.

It’s a reason. I’m not saying it’s a good one. It’s filled with contradictions. A closer look at it, though, reveals an even worse paradox within liberalism.

Liberals and Power

The reasoning begins with the left’s standard opposition to established power, and to whoever or whatever group is seen as holding that power.

As Jeffrey Hart wrote in 1972, and National Review just recently re-published, the liberal educated class

views history as a series of recurring moral melodramas in which villains or oppressors are continually defeated by their victims. One after another, kings, religious establishments, slave-owners, malefactors of great wealth and tyrants of various kinds, have been brought to earth by those whom they have wronged. It is a secularized version of “the last shall be first.”

This way of looking at the world, says Hart,

“tends habitually to structure reality in terms of what [Kenneth R.] Minogue calls “suffering situations.” As a matter of settled moral habit this sensibility instantly structures events in the political realm in terms of suffering, in terms of oppressor and victim.

The oppressor is bad, the victim is good. Thus a professor blogging at the American Mathematical Society can say that all “cis white men” should quit their jobs or take a demotion just for being members of that group.

No Human Motivation Is All Bad

This isn’t all bad. There was, after all, a day when people of color had no voice, not even a vote. There was a day (I’m old enough to recall it myself) when most people thought a young woman had just four decent career options to choose from: secretary, nurse, teacher or waitress.

There was a day, in other words, when liberals arguably stood for true freedom and justice for those who lacked power in society. But the left lost track of the fact that the problem was never power, but abuse of power. No social system can work without some structure, which means some people must have more power than others. It’s unavoidable. It’s even good: a society without order will quickly collapse.

Power Isn’t All Bad — Unless You Ask a Liberal

And power can be used for others’ good. Jesus explained it in just three sentences:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25-28)

Blind to this, though, liberals see power as one leg of a triad, linked inseparably with oppression, the second leg. The third leg is whichever group is guilty of holding that power. Wherever one leg of that triad exists, the other two are there along with it. Thus if there’s a dominant culture, it has power, and it’s bad. In fact it’s pretty much all bad. Other people don’t have power and they’re not bad. It’s just that easy.

If that sounds too simple to be true, consider the claim that all whites are racist and no non-whites can be.

And that’s how Islam, being a minority group, is granted such favor from the left. It’s a minority group, therefore it’s an oppressed group, and thus it’s not bad — even though it was founded in blood, conquest and rape, and continues to mandate death to gays.

The Greater Contradiction on the Left

But the left has committed itself to an even greater contradiction along the way. Over the past few decades, liberals have gained positions of enormous power in education, media, publishing and the arts. Seeing themselves as champions of the weak against the power of straight “cis” white males, they’ve blinded themselves to the fact that they’ve become the Western world’s dominant culture, holders of tremendous power.

And now the left has become a group united in throwing its weight around in order to stop (what they see as) a powerful group throwing its weight around. If they were truly consistent with their own values, they’d be casting themselves out of their own positions of power.

I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Consistency isn’t the left’s strong point — which is why liberals can support Islam.

I said at the beginning I might be able to suggest a reason they do that. I didn’t promise it would be a good one. (For more from the author of “Why the Left Loves Islam — and an Even Stranger Contradiction” please click HERE)

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The Left Likely Coordinating Attacks on Those Investigating the Seth Rich Murder

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After conservative talk show host Sean Hannity began covering new developments in the Seth Rich murder case last week, the left ramped up its attacks on those looking into it.

Led by Media Matters, the left forced Hannity to stop covering the story by pressuring his advertisers. (Hannity said he was halting coverage out of respect to the grieving family.) Several, including USAA and cars.com, caved this week, saying they were pulling their ads from his shows.

Coordinated Comments

One way the left seems to intimidate those looking into the murder is by leaving coordinated comments after articles and posts. The same comments are left on multiple websites after articles. The wording is often exactly the same. They even have the name-calling down to a science.

The user accounts almost always have very generic usernames and rarely include a profile photo. They’re fond of first names plus a number. They often don’t even take the time to put in a photo of a cat or something else innocuous to provide a semblance of legitimacy.

For example, a generic account with no profile photo, “anne55,” spent a lot of time leaving multiple comments after my most recent article. He or she may be unemployed or paid to leave comments — anne55 insists a few too many times in the comments that she (or he) is not.

Another sign that the comments may be targeted is the ratio of comments to Facebook shares. At the time of writing, that article had 182 comments but only 892 Facebook shares. That’s a high number of comments for the readership indicated by the number of shares. In contrast, an article I wrote about Seth Rich last week had 2,900 Facebook shares but only six comments.

A third sign: the apparent coordination of comments placed on the most popular mainstream sites after articles with positive news for the amateur sleuths. Real Clear Politics reported, “Rep. Blake Farenthold: Federal Investigators Need to Investigate Seth Rich’s Computer.” “Dave781” (as usual, no profile photo) was one of the first to jump in and leave comments. He left many.

A fourth sign is that they say the same things. Dave71 repeated what appear to be the Democrats’ main talking point: that we need to focus on whether the Russians hacked the DNC’s emails and gave them to Wikileaks.

A fifth sign is the way the attacks ignore all the contradictory evidence, even when it comes from their own side. They don’t challenge those. They challenge only the conservative writers. The commenters mostly ignore articles about Bernie Sanders supporters who agree there needs to be a probe. In an article on ThinkProgress, only 15 comments were left after an article entitled “The complicated origin of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.”

The Clinton Troll Army

Is coordination possible? Of course it is. Everyone remembers Hillary Clinton’s troll army, a paid group of social media activists who tweeted and left comments during the presidential election.

They took on Bernie Sanders in the primary. They took on Donald Trump during the general election. My guess is that many of these activists have transitioned to the effort to suppress reporting on and investigation of incidents involving Seth Rich.

The vaguely named “KW,” whose username on Twitter is “KDub0812,” still uses an image as his or her Twitter background that was given to the troll army, a Hillary campaign graphic. This person responds to people tweeting about Seth Rich all day long with clichéd talking points.

Twitter Bots

This doesn’t happen just in the web’s comboxes. Twitter bots repeat the same tweet en masse. Three days ago, this article, “Fox News staffers ‘disgusted’ over Seth Rich conspiracy theory,” was tweeted out over and over again by many Twitter accounts within a short amount of time. Some stragglers must have gotten the memo late, tweeting it out less often yesterday and today.

One Twitter user took a scrolling video of the barrage of tweets.

One of the accounts that tweeted this out even calls itself “Media bot.”

The Talk Show Hosts’ Response

As a result of the attacks, talk show hosts across the country are banding together to fight back. While Hannity may have stopped talking about the murder “for now,” he tweeted that he is still looking into it. Despite their zealous efforts, the left has not completely shut the sleuthing down.

(For more from the author of “The Left Likely Coordinating Attacks on Those Investigating the Seth Rich Murder” please click HERE)

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Girl Gives Genius ‘War Crime’ Response on Teacher Feedback Form

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An 11- year-old girl accused her school of “war crimes” under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 in a hilarious response to a teacher feedback form.

Ava Bell, from Glasgow, took issue with her teacher’s use of “collective punishment,” which is when a group is punished for one person’s actions. The form asked students to provide ways in which her teacher could do better, so Bell wrote: “Not use collective punishment as it is not fair on the many people who did nothing and under the 1949 Genva Conventions it is a war crime.”

The Geneva Conventions are a set of humanitarian rules and treaties that apply in times of armed conflict. “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed,” according to Article 33 of the rules.

“My daughter actually submitted this feedback at school. Not sure if I should ground her or buy her ice cream,” Mason Cross, Ava’s father, shared a picture of her answer on Twitter.

“I thought it was really funny and absolutely typical of Ava, who I haven’t managed to best in an argument since she turned six,” Mason told the Daily Mail. (Read more from “Girl Gives Genius ‘War Crime’ Response on Teacher Feedback Form” please click HERE)

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Health Cops Now Calling for Regulation of Caffeine

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The health police are turning their sights to energy, calling for tobacco style regulations on caffeine and bans on energy drinks for young Americans.

Nutrition experts are calling on the federal government to heavily regulate the levels of caffeine permitted in energy drinks out of fear that the beverages are harming public health, particularly the youth.

Advocates are concerned there are no rules restricting energy drink manufacturers from marketing to those who face potentially fatal consequences from consuming the beverages, according to an op-ed in The Washington Post.

Pat Crawford and Wendi Gosliner, researchers with the University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute, want the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on energy drinks with restrictions similar to those placed on alcohol. They argue that the FDA must “ban the marketing of energy drinks to young people of all ages,” and launched a public education effort on the dangers of caffeine.

“Caffeine is a strong and potentially dangerous stimulant, particularly for children and adolescents,” Crawford and Gosliner said in the editorial. “Making matters worse, consumers do not know the risks of the high levels of caffeine in an energy drink. Unlike coffee, energy drinks are widely marketed to adolescents, putting them at risk of extreme caffeine overload with potentially devastating cardiovascular and neurological consequences.” (Read more from “Health Cops Now Calling for Regulation of Caffeine” HERE)

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Don’t Fall for This Bullcrap Vacation Story About Sean Hannity

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The latest bit of fake news smearing Sean Hannity comes from The Philadelphia Inquirer, which implied Hannity is taking an abrupt vacation after advertisers began pulling their ads from his Fox News program.

“Sean Hannity is taking a couple days off amid a growing advertiser boycott after pushing a conspiracy theory involving a slain Democratic National Committee staffer,” Rob Tornoe reported under the headline “Fox News host Sean Hannity takes abrupt vacation after losing more advertisers.” He compared Hannity’s vacation to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s retreat to Italy before the cancellation of “The O’Reilly Factor.” The implication is that Sean Hannity could be the next to leave Fox.

Erick Erickson, writing for The Resurgent, says this story is “Bulls—t.”

This story is patently false and I know so first hand. Why?

Because my radio show starts right after Sean’s show on WSB in Atlanta. On May 18th, my boss asked me to put on schedule for today and tomorrow to start my show at 3pm ET. Why? Because Hannity would be out for Memorial Day vacation with his family and they’d like me on locally instead of his guest hosts due to Atlanta traffic issues. Hannity’s television vacation days are always in conjunction with his radio vacation days.

Hannity’s vacation has been planned for weeks. It has nothing to do with the onslaught of leftist attacks on his show and his advertisers.

The Philadelphia Inquirer story was updated at 10:15 PM Thursday night and the headline was changed to “Fox News host Sean Hannity takes a vacation after losing more advertisers.” There is no editor’s note to explain the correction.

The left would love to expunge dissenting voices from TV, if it could. Sean Hannity won’t be the last to come under attack. (For more from the author of “Don’t Fall for This Bullcrap Vacation Story About Sean Hannity” please click HERE)

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Appeals Court Deals Blow to Trump Administration Travel Ban

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A federal appeals court dealt another blow to President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban targeting six-Muslim majority countries on Thursday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that blocks the Republican’s administration from temporarily suspending new visas for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th Circuit is the first appeals court to rule on the revised travel ban, which Trump’s administration had hoped would avoid the legal problems that the first version encountered. (Read more from “Appeals Court Deals Blow to Trump Administration Travel Ban” HERE)

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British Police Arrest New Suspect in Manchester Bombing, Tighten Security

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British police investigating the Manchester Arena bombing made a new arrest Friday while continuing to search addresses associated with the attacker who killed 22 people.

Seven other men are in custody in connection with Monday’s blast, all are being held on suspicion of offenses violating the Terrorism Act. Their ages ranged from 18 to 38.

A 16-year-old boy and a 34-year-old woman who had been arrested were released without charge, police said. (Read more from “British Police Arrest New Suspect in Manchester Bombing, Tighten Security” HERE)

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Are Gays and Lesbians Throwing One of Their Own Under the Bus?

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Gay and lesbian websites have jumped all over recent research supposedly showing that Dan Savage’s immensely popular “It Gets Better” anti-gay bullying campaign — strongly endorsed by everyone from Hollywood celebrities to then-President Obama and Vice President Biden — does more harm than good.

Two things stand out about this. First, gays, lesbians, and their allies have a history of battling science that doesn’t support their agenda. Their usual claim is that the research is “flawed.” (George Yancey wrote on this recently for The Stream.) For some reason they didn’t do that this time. Instead they’re practically throwing Savage under the bus.

Second, this research — unlike many other studies that gay activists have objected to — really is hopelessly flawed. Or at least there’s nothing in it to support the conclusion that “It Gets Better” is bad for young gays and lesbians.

Now, I’m no fan of Dan Savage. You’ll see why in a moment. But I find it odd that these gays and lesbians seem so willing to steamroll him. I can’t help wondering whether it’s because they know he’s wrong, and he’s embarrassing them besides.

The story has many twists. I’ll start with Dan Savage himself.

Dan Savage, The Anti-Bullying Bully Who Wants to Say “It Gets Better”

Savage is a gay sex columnist and (in his own words) “potty-mouthed political pundit” who founded “It Gets Better” to reduce anti-gay bullying. He’s a bully himself (potty mouth warning ), so it’s clear he’s okay with that sort of behavior, just as long as it isn’t directed against his people. The hypocrisy is absolutely staggering.

He launched “It Gets Better” in 2010 with one video he co-produced along with his “partner” Terry Miller. It grew into a website featuring thousands of like-minded videos. President Obama, Michelle Obama and Vice President Biden all contributed videos to the project, along with many celebrities.

Savage summarized “It Gets Better” in a 2011 interview with NPR: “A bullied gay teenager who ends his life is saying that he can’t picture a future with enough joy in it to compensate for the pain he’s in now.” That’s true enough, and well worth working on. There’s no need to say “gay” in there, though. It’s the same for any bullied teen.

He added,

Things didn’t just get better for me. All of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender adults I knew were leading rich and rewarding lives. … People pursue happiness in different ways — but we all had so much to be thankful for, and so much to look forward to. Our lives weren’t perfect; there was pain, heartbreak and struggle. But our lives were better. Our lives were joyful.

That’s doubtful. It might even be dreaming on his part. I don’t know all the people Dan Savage knows, but I do know that solid research reported last fall in The New Atlantis shows that LGBT people are, on average, more emotionally troubled than the rest of the population. Their distress can’t be explained just by their being an “embattled minority” or any such thing. There’s something inherently distressing about homosexuality. From a biblical and natural law perspective, that something is easy to identify: homosexuality runs contrary to the way God designed us.

Gay Media and the University of Arizona Research

So young LGBT people have a lot to cope with. Of course that includes bullying. Their coping mechanisms were the subject of the research in question here. Gay media jumped all over its purported finding on “It Gets Better.”

Queerty said, “But new research finds the project [“It Gets Better”] might actually be doing more harm than good.” (Link not included because of objectionable content on the page.) The Washington Blade’s headline read, “‘It Gets Better’ may be harmful: study.” NewNowNext came right out and called it “bad advice.”

What the Study Really Shows

But that’s not what the study says. It didn’t examine “It Gets Better” at all. It did look into the effects of “imagining a better future,” which is only distantly related to the whole “It Gets Better” idea. “Imagining a better future” was just one item on a questionnaire, lumped together with three others: “Spending more time by yourself to figure things out,” “Just trying to put it all out of your mind” and “Avoiding other people.”

Because it was combined with these other items, all of which have something to do with pulling away, withdrawing or escaping, “Imagining a better future” in this case had very little to do with the active hope promoted by the “It Gets Better” project. Most survey respondents probably thought of it in terms of daydreaming: imagining that they would somehow magically turn straight, for example, or imagining the U.S. had a gay president.

That sort of impossible imagining doesn’t help people who are hurting — which is no news, by the way: social scientists have known it for decades. It’s not, however, what “It Gets Better” promotes.

Granted, the study’s lead researcher, Russell Toomey of the University of Arizona, told NewNowNext, “Our findings question the ’It Gets Better’ narrative that’s been given to LGB youth.” Scientists speak that way all the time, and what they generally mean by it is that here’s something unknown there, a question that calls for further study. Nothing more: there are no conclusions to be drawn, just a question. The study was a small one, by the way, and limited to the San Francisco Bay area. The report’s authors noted that it wasn’t strong enough to draw sweeping new conclusions.

It’s a long leap from “questioning the narrative” to the conclusion, “it’s bad advice,” but that’s where these gay websites took it.

Do They Know It Doesn’t Get That Much Better?

Thus we have one of gay activism’s most heavily promoted projects coming under some slight question; it doesn’t even amount to criticism. Gay websites haven’t denounced it as they usually do. They’re promoting it instead. Why?

Two possible explanations come to mind. I can’t prove either one is true, so I have to frame them as questions.

First, have they decided Dan Savage has been wrong all along? Have they realized it really doesn’t get that much better? Bullying may decrease as gays and lesbians get older, with the world celebrating homosexuality more and more these days. But bullying isn’t their only problem. Homosexuality really is strongly associated with depression and other emotional stresses, not all of which can be blamed on other people’s anti-gay attitudes. So I wonder whether they’re losing hope, as they find they’re still not experiencing the “rich” and “joyful” life Savage promised them.

Maybe They’re Embarrassed

And then there’s Dan Savage’s potty mouth and his non-stop bullying. Have they perhaps noticed his extreme profanity and his blatant hypocrisy, along with his failed promises of life getting better? Are they embarrassed by Dan Savage? They certainly should be.

Throw him under the bus? I don’t know, but this might be the excuse some of them have been waiting for. (For more from the author of “Are Gays and Lesbians Throwing One of Their Own Under the Bus?” please click HERE)

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