What You’re Not Hearing about the Mini Police States in Public Schools

/4 Comments/in , , /by

School has changed a lot over the last few decades. Once a place of learning, run by teachers and principals, where children were free to play outside during recess and walk home unescorted, public schools now increasingly resemble little prisons. Metal detectors guard the entrances, supervision never relaxes, and armed policemen are a regular presence. In many cases, these intimidating figures are taking the place of the disciplinary roles traditionally fulfilled by parents and teachers.

Reason Magazine reports the now common practice of using police to enforce standards of behavior in schools. Instead of verbal chiding, being made to sit in a corner, or other forms of discipline, children are now more likely to be subject to expulsion or even arrest for petty offenses that would have once merited no more than a stern talking to.

The article includes stories of police handcuffing a student for grabbing his milk allotment out of turn and charging a 17-year-old involved in a consensual relationship with a classmate with sexual assault and child pornography charges that could land him in prison for 40 years. While these cases are no doubt outliers, they indicate a larger institutional problem of inappropriate police intervention in schools.

There are several reasons for this. Part of the problem is the restrictive state laws that govern what teachers can and cannot do or say to students. Fear of litigious parents means that many teachers will do anything they can to avoid actual disciplinary measures, and the police provide a convenient form of outsourcing.

Another issue is the fact that children are crammed together in an increasingly high-pressure education environment based on zip code, with few options for those who are unable to keep up with the lessons or who simply feel out of place among classmates who are not really their peers. A lack of choice, of feeling trapped, leads to acting out and bad behavior, which teachers feel unable to control. Part of the problem is certainly also the parents who wish to use school as a substitute for actually raising their kids and teaching them how to behave.

But perhaps the biggest reason why police have invaded schools is fear. Today, schools are regarded as mass shootings waiting to happen. Numerous high profile incidents of school violence have instilled terror into the population, so much so that they are willing to take any measures, including criminalizing much harmless behavior, to feel a little bit safer. But what no one seems to have realized is that, if schools are so dangerous to begin with, it’s madness to force children to spend so much of their young lives confined within their walls.

Compulsory education laws, combined with a lack of school choice, make children prisoners in a place where, we are told, they are about as likely to take a bullet in the head as learn algebra. Why would we inflict that on people? Surely it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

If schools are violent, let’s get kids out of them, instead of surrounding them with law enforcement authorities trained to arrest and imprison, rather than aid and educate. This is not to mention the fact that police resources could be much better spent elsewhere, rather than having highly trained officers waste time persecuting children over cafeteria line etiquette or arresting teenagers in love.

Why should parents be forced to subject their children to such treatment? Why should kids whose only purpose at that stage of life is to learn and have fun be intimidated and threatened with criminal charges? Anyone should be able to opt out of such a system, or at the very least, transfer to school with less draconian methods of enforcement.

Anyone who has spent time around children can observe their wonder at life, the joy they feel at learning about the world around them, the hope and promise of life stretching out before them. It’s heartbreaking to me to see all that enthusiasm snuffed out as they are told, “Watch your step, or you’ll end up in a cold, grey cell.” There will be time to be beaten down by the power of the state later in life. Can’t we permit them just a few years of exploration and enjoyment before placing a boot on their small necks?

If schools are going to be nothing more than little prisons, complete with armed guards, I say, set the children free. (For more from the author of “What You’re Not Hearing about the Mini Police States in Public Schools” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Pro-Life Feminist Group Had ‘Completely Positive’ Experience at Women’s March

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Women’s March on Washington removed New Wave Feminists from their list of partners less than a week before the historic march took place last Saturday.

The Dallas-based non-profit was the first of three groups to have their partnership status revoked, simply because they were pro-life.

Many pro-life women responded on social media, saying they no longer felt welcome at the march, even though they had previously planned to attend.

But not Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa. Despite the public snub from the Women’s March, the founder and president of New Wave Feminists was determined to participate.

“If they think that pro-life feminists don’t exist, then we have to show up to say, ‘we’re everywhere,’” she told The Stream.

“Completely Positive”

Still, she was nervous. With the controversy over pro-life participation still hot, she worried there might be violence — and she would be an easy target with her “pro-life feminist” sign. “Please be careful,” her husband said.

So Herndon-De La Rosa didn’t initially hold up her sign when she arrived for the march, hoping to connect with other members of her group rather than advertise her controversial position alone. But when she couldn’t find her fellow pro-lifers, she held the sign up anyway.

Within three minutes, she was approached by a marcher.

“So glad you girls are here,” the woman said. “Thank you for coming out here and being bold and being feminists.”

Similar comments came throughout the day. Some women admitted that even though they were pro-choice, they appreciated pro-life participation.

Other women approached Herndon-De La Rosa’s group, which eventually congregated on the steps of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, to confide that they too were pro-life.

“It was completely positive,” Herndon-De La Rosa said of her experience at the march, “which absolutely shocked me.”

“Awakened a Sleeping Giant”

Herndon-De La Rosa believes the controversy over pro-life participation in the women’s march “awakened a sleeping giant.” Many women previously felt afraid to admit they were pro-life, she suggested, because they’d been told that you couldn’t be pro-life and be a feminist.

For Herndon-De La Rosa, the pro-life movement and feminism “totally correlate.”

“What the feminist movement needs is a life affirming component,” she said. “And what the pro-life movement needs is a pro-women component, a feminist component.”

A New Wave of Pro-Life Activism

While many assume that New Wave Feminists indicates a new wave of feminism, that name actually represents a new wave in the pro-life movement, Herndon-De La Rosa said.

She believes the mainstream pro-life movement often portrays women in crisis pregnancies as victims. She would rather send a message of empowerment.

“I was 16 and pregnant. I thought I couldn’t do it. You can,” she said, adding that community support is crucial — which is why New Wave Feminists helps women find such communities in their areas.

For Herndon-De La Rosa, “the real face” of pro-life activism isn’t the person protesting in front of abortion clinics, though those are the people the media focuses on.

“The pro-life movement is [made up of] the ones who are giving up their nights and weekends, or the extra bedroom in their home for women,” she said. “Nobody understands that those are the people that are really serving women well.”

Herndon-De La Rosa plans to promote such service with a new project — an app called Help Assist Her. The app will pinpoint a woman’s location and reveal all the women’s health organizations in the area. The app includes both government funded and charity organizations that provide women’s health services, but not abortions.

Help Assist Her will be rolled out by state, starting in New York. People can follow its progress by visiting HelpAssistHer.com and signing up for the newsletter.

Herndon-De La Rosa says that Planned Parenthood has positioned itself as a primary provider of women’s health services, despite being the number one provider of abortions. She believes the most effective way to defeat Planned Parenthood is to promote other organizations that provide health services for women, but are pro-life.

“It’s very hard for people who don’t know where to get the life affirming resources to find them,” she said. “We want to offer alternatives so women don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood.”

The Marching Continues

Soon after returning from the Women’s March, Herndon-De La Rosa got up before dawn to fly back to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life, taking place Friday. This year, her eight-year-old daughter will participate too.

As New Wave Feminists posted on Facebook, “Once we start marching we don’t stop!” (For more from the author of “Pro-Life Feminist Group Had ‘Completely Positive’ Experience at Women’s March” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Abortion Survivor Tells Her Story in New Book

/0 Comments/in , /by

You Carried Me: A Daughter’s Memoir is an extraordinary tale of survival and transformation. At 14, Melissa (Cross) Ohden discovered that when she first left the womb people were disappointed to see her alive. Her cries were evidence that the late term saline abortion — where a doctor poisons the amniotic fluid in order to chemically burn the child inside and out — had failed.

Melissa first dealt with this shocking past by turning to “the unholy trinity” of bulimia, alcohol and sex. Today, though, her strength comes from faith in the true Trinity and she is a wife and mother who has made hers a public face for the preborn.

In the book, Ohden chronicles the search for her roots, a journey which brought her eye to eye with the people of her past, people who like her were wounded by the reality of abortion.

Search and Discovery

What her adoptive parents had long kept hidden came to light when Melissa’s older sister faced a crisis pregnancy of her own. In an effort to save their grandchild, they told their troubled daughter about her sister’s circumstances. That decision to embrace the truth helped to save the life of Ohden’s preborn nephew and set Ohden on a path that would help to save many more.

Nevertheless, it first prompted a deep struggle as the teen went from believing that her biological family had made a loving decision to realizing, instead, that she carried the genes of those who wished her dead. Yet, when Ohden found her birthmother years later, she found another victim — a teenager pressed into an abortion that she never wanted and long unaware that her baby had survived.

This almost unbelievable drama is told with raw honesty and detailed documentation. The story twists but ultimately turns in the direction of grace and reconciliation. Now, Ohden heads up the Abortion Survivors Network through which she has connected with over 200 people who can tell a similar tale. These survivors stand as signposts to the always present humanity of the preborn.

Going Public

The decision to go public with her story was not an easy one, though. Surprisingly, the catalyst was a trip to an abortion clinic — as a customer.

“You should be here, not there.” Melissa Ohden heard those words from a pro-life sidewalk counselor at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Ignorant of the other services provided at this heavily fortified compound, she had come as a married woman to refill her birth control prescription, not to get an abortion. But she had just surprised even herself by telling the man with the rosary in his hand that she was an abortion survivor, and then Ohden’s heart told her that, yes, she should be with them.

That was her last visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic. Since then, she has shared her story with thousands and on January 27th, she will appear before tens of thousands more on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. at the March for Life.

Ohden’s is a song that should be heard by more than just the pro-life choir. Indeed, in many ways, she could have blended easily into the crowd at the recent Women’s March on Washington. Ohden put a Masters in Social Work into practice at a state agency assisting victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence and knew the struggles of a working mom. In the pages of her book, Ohden also notes her early admiration for Hillary Clinton and quotes approvingly from the likes of liberal favorites Joseph Campbell, Alice Walker and Arianna Huffington. The first time she shared her story publicly it was under the auspices of Feminists for Life.

Today, however, the left increasingly defends the boundaries of feminism with the litmus test of abortion rights. Ohden may not get past those gatekeepers. (Her Capitol Hill testimony against Planned Parenthood probably guarantees it.) She recently lamented that the media regularly “silences stories like mine.”

The NPR interviews may never come, but her story is a powerful one, powerfully told. It reads like a detective novel but its truth will elicit tears of sadness and joy. You Carried Me deserves to be carried wide and far. (For more from the author of “Abortion Survivor Tells Her Story in New Book” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Why the March for Life Can Be a Remedy for ‘Fake News’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Washington, D.C., has had a few days to recover from the inauguration and the vile leftist Women’s March on Washington. But the nation’s capital is already gearing up for its next large, national demonstration with oceans of protestors taking peacefully to the streets … and you probably won’t hear a thing about it on the evening news.

This Friday, mainstream media outlets will have an opportunity to cover a potentially larger event of even greater significance: The March for Life. The event, held every year on or around the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, features hundreds of thousands of people from across the country marching against abortion. It also enjoys notoriously low media coverage outside of conservative circles and outlets.

This is of course in stark contrast to media coverage of Richard Spencer’s fringe neo-Nazi, alt-“Right” gathering a few months ago, where networks, online outlets, and newspapers went absolutely gaga covering a handful of racists sitting in a multi-purpose room as if they heralded the dawn of a new era. Same with the Women’s March on Washington, which, from a firsthand perspective, appeared to be little more than a chance to wear a pink hat and show off the set of genitals you drew on some poster board. But I digress …

Of course, America’s distrust of the mainstream media is at an all-time high, the reputations built in decades past by figures like Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite have been largely undone by years of grossly lopsided coverage — election cycles rife with blatant bias and salacious, unverifiable stories about Russian prostitutes doing unspeakable acts with the now-president.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis diagnoses the press’ problem as such:

This country desperately needs a source of information that is deemed credible by people across the political spectrum. It needs a free press that is capable of and willing to hold everyone in power accountable, regardless of their party or their ideology and regardless of their personal feelings toward whomever happens to be in charge. We need a press that believes in the rule of law rather than rule by men. And we need a media establishment that cares more about getting facts right than about anything else.

“Judging by the type of coverage we’ve seen since the election, that institution does not currently exist in this country,” he concludes.

And while the obscene, the salacious, and the unverified get wall-to-wall coverage and lionizing headlines, don’t expect anywhere near the same this Friday. Very few groups in America are as familiar with the consequences of the “fake news” phenomenon as the pro-life movement.

When news related to the unborn isn’t being covered up by mainstream outlets it’s being grossly misrepresented. Take for example The New York Times’ recent coverage of the March for Life, which excluded nearly every reference to the march’s actual name, referring to it only as an “anti-abortion” event (save for the March for Life president’s title).

And even then, the NYT story’s hook wasn’t about the consistently record-breaking crowds, or the actual message, but that Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway would be speaking at an “anti-abortion” event. No, really.

This sort of thing is common practice. On Monday, an annual Marist poll, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and released in anticipation of March for Life, found that a whopping 74 percent of Americans favor significant restrictions on abortions, with a mere 16 percent believing that it should be allowed without any restriction. While this leaves Hillary Clinton and her extremist abortion lobby cronies in some rather thin company, don’t expect to see this covered outside the usual sources of pro-life news and information.

More than likely, if there’s any coverage of the march by the mainstream media, expect little more than a 30-second clip about some sort of abortion protest on the National Mall that’s heavy on footage of the pro-abortion counter-protestors who, after all, are just out there fighting a bunch of fundamentalists in the name of “women’s rights.”

Perhaps this year ought to be the one to change that — to attend the march and speak to attendees in earnest. To try to truly understand where they’re coming from. To give them as much air time and ink as will be given the pro-abortion protesters annually found at the end of the parade route.

“If the media wants to continue to be seen as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, ignore the march as usual. But if journalists are serious about improving their perceived objectivity and serving the American people at large, they should show up this Friday and give the tremendous pro-life crowds the news cycle they warrant,” reads a Monday morning statement from Terry Schilling, executive director of American Principles Project.

“This is a defining year for the pro-life movement. With a Republican House, Senate, and President, pro-life legislative goals are about to become pro-life legislative realities. The story is significant.”

To their credit, a few outlets in the wake of the presidential election have made concerted efforts to expand their horizons to include more voices, either by hiring new talent or realigning internally. While it may be comforting to see some outlets confront their extreme leftist imbalance in their newsrooms – which sometimes look more like North Korean election results – they should know they’re more than welcome on the Mall this Friday. (For more from the author of “Why the March for Life Can Be a Remedy for ‘Fake News'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Scientists, Women, the Press Think Trump Is Coming for Them

/0 Comments/in , /by

A week or so before the election, there was a rumor bumping around the Internet which said Trump, if he were to become President, would immediately begin rounding up LGBT folk and placing them into camps. I replied to one of these exceptionally nervous people on Twitter, “It won’t be so bad. I hear Thursdays will be lasagna nights.” That earned me a blocking. (I have since deleted my account so that I don’t cause any more hurt feelings.)

Over this past weekend, a mob of angry females tromped through the streets of Washington DC. Boy, were they upset. Fuming. Nary a happy face. Trouble was, no one was able to discover why these citizens were displeased. Perhaps the nation is suffering a critical shortage of blue hair dye? Can somebody look that up?

One woman not reduced to incoherent ravings about her cat (that’s what I thought I heard), said Donald Trump was going to come after women and break them up like “puzzle pieces.” Jack the Ripper, look out! It’s Donald Trump, puzzle breaker.

The eminent New York Times writer Ross Douthat isn’t shivering over internment camps or feminist puzzle breaking, but he did wring his hands over the possibility that Donald Trump “will escalate from tweets to Erdoganian crackdowns, that truly independent journalism will be marginalized while the White House breeds a lap dog press.”

It doesn’t do to criticize Times writers, of course, but is it even theoretically possible for the press to more resemble a fluffy white pampered poodle, blind with devotion, madly licking its master, and barring its wee yellow teeth and yipping at intruders than it did during Mr Obama’s tenure?

Fear of an all-powerful Trumpenführer has not been confined to dyspeptics, dye-jobs, and diarists. The officially brightest among us — scientists themselves! — have convinced themselves Trump is going to confiscate their data. Headline at Forbes: “Fearing White House Purge Of Climate Science, Scientists Frantically Copying Data.” The author, James Conca, said:

It’s not like the new administration is going to start burning books or flushing files down the toilet, but website access will disappear, reports will be put in deep storage, and datasets will become more difficult to access, or will degrade in quality, as funding is cut from the agencies maintaining them.

Conca says this data is needed because the United States has been under attack from the Polar Vortex, a beast which he intimates was caused by global warming (which he mistakenly refer to as “climate change”).

Conca is calling these deletions, which have not happened, a “purging of science” which will result in the nation “sliding further into the abyss where truth and lies have equal weight and science is just another ideology to ignore when it’s inconvenient.”

Engadget asks whether the data panic is “irrational.” “Possibly”, they admit, but then they claim the new administration “has been picking climate change deniers for positions in relevant agencies, and has threatened to stop ‘politicized science.’” (Incidentally, no Trump hire has ever denied the climate has changed.)

How Trump will reach into the computers of all those scientists and vacuum up their precious bits hasn’t been specified. Maybe he will hire the Russians who hacked and stole the election from its rightful winner to do the job? Scientists will come in to their offices after a weekend to discover their hard drives have been purged of the proof the sky will soon fall and replaced with JPEGs of Rosie O’Donnell laughing.

Scary stuff! No wonder Harvard is sponsoring an “Archive-a-thon” to begin the backups before Trump comes after them. The announcement doesn’t say, but it’s a good guess the Archive-a-thon will take place in a Safe Space complete with puppies and coloring books to calm the nerves of these great brains. Don’t scoff. It’s got to the point where there is serious talk of scientists having a march on Washington.

Since there is so much angst out there, it is well to review its cause. Progressives assured us, in turn, that Ronald Reagan was Hitler, that George Bush père et fils were Hitler, that Barack Obama opponents John McCain and Mitt Romney were each Hitler, really that every Republican since Goldwater was Hitler, and so none of us would have been surprised to learn that Donald Trump was Hitler, too.

But it was worse! The Left insisted Trump was literally Hitler. Which brings to mind Mr Trump’s inauguration speech in which he spoke of “an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge” — including, as we have just seen, knowledge of the word literally.

After decades of creating and telling themselves horror stories, it was inevitable that the Left would begin believing them. It is thus not surprising that Trump’s election resulted in a full-blown moral panic. We’re in for four (or eight?) years of having everything that goes wrong blamed on Donald Trump. Might as well enjoy it. (For more from the author of “Scientists, Women, the Press Think Trump Is Coming for Them” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

When Pro-Abortion Sentiments Trump Science and Common Sense

/0 Comments/in , /by

There is a reason why many women contemplating abortion decide not to abort when they see an ultrasound of their baby. There is no denying the humanity of this tiny creature, which is anything but a clump of cells.

As the baby grows in the womb and is seen by ultrasound imaging, it’s common to hear parents exclaim, “Look at those little hands! Look at that adorable nose (it looks like Grandpa’s nose, doesn’t it?)! And look — it’s a girl! (Or, It’s a boy!)”

How amazing it is to see the ultrasound of your baby, especially when it’s your first child. Not surprisingly, both of our daughters, now in their late 30s, had the identical reaction when they saw the ultrasounds of their first babies: How could anyone abort their child?

It is for good reason that pro-abortion legislators fight against laws that would require abortion clinics to show an ultrasound of the baby prior to the decision to abort. They know it would be bad for business (plus, they argue, it adds to the inconvenience of the mother wanting to dispose of the contents of her womb).

It is hard to deny the personhood of the fetus when you see an ultrasound, which is why, during last year’s Super Bowl, Dorito’s incurred the wrath of NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League) when it aired an innocent, light-hearted, commercial featuring a very pregnant woman, her husband, and an ultrasound of their baby. According to NARAL, Dorito’s had committed the cardinal sin of “humanizing fetuses.” Oh, the very thought of it!

But there is something even worse than that Dorito’s ad. According to a bizarre article in The Atlantic, pro-life groups are being devious and deceptive when they use ultrasounds to convince women that their babies are human. How low will these pro-lifers go?

The Atlantic’s Ultrasound Deniers

The article, written by Moira Weigel and posted on Tuesday, was originally titled “How the Ultrasound Pushed the Idea That a Fetus Is a Person” with the subtitle, “The technology has been used to create sped-up videos that falsely depict a response to stimulus.” (Its current title is, “How Ultrasound Became Political.” The subtitle remains the same.)

Weigel’s article, which was marred by embarrassing errors (as pointed out by Alexandra DeSanctis on the National Review), not to mention being marred by bizarre claims, denied the reality (and significance) of fetal heartbeats as early as five or six weeks old, downplayed the evidence of ultrasounds and claimed that — gasp! — the pro-life movement was yet another example of patriarchal overreach. Yes, the science of “ultrasound made it possible for the male doctor to evaluate the fetus without female interference.” Those dastardly, duplicitous males! They are at it once again.

For good reason Sean Davis of the Federalist wrote that, “Moira Weigel took a sledgehammer to basic science and then did her best to vacuum its brains out before anyone could figure out what just happened.” The title of his article was as accurate as it was snarky: “Abortion Science: Heartbeats Are Imaginary, Unborn Babies Aren’t Alive, And Ultrasounds Are Just Tools Of The Patriarchy.”

Further underscoring the absurdity of Weigel’s article was this tweet from Denise Russell, which Davis reproduced: “Before ultrasounds, a woman had to wait until delivery to find out if she was getting a puppy, a goat, or a human.” How did we forget that?

Responding to the Republican-led effort to pass the “Heartbeat Bill,” which would prohibit doctors from aborting a baby if a heartbeat was detected (in the words of its sponsor, Congressman Steve King, “If a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected”), Weigel asks, “What is a fetal heartbeat? And why does it matter?”

Her answer to these questions can be summed up, respectively, in three words, “Nothing” and “It doesn’t.”

The Heartbeat of a Child

Forget the fact that doctors check the baby’s heartbeat during each pre-natal visit, since this is an indicator of health, or the fact that they carefully monitor the baby’s heartbeat during delivery to be sure the child is OK. And forget the fact that doctors look for a pulse to see if someone is still living or the fact that a person is declared dead when their heart stops beating for good.

No. When it comes to abortion, all those facts conveniently disappear, and the heartbeat of that tiny pre-born child is of no significance at all. Indeed, Weigel opines, “Doctors do not even call this rapidly dividing cell mass a ‘fetus’ until nine weeks into pregnancy.” (I must be getting old, but somehow, I don’t recall my wife, Nancy, saying to me decades ago, “Honey, I just got the test results back and I have a rapidly dividing cell mass inside of me!”)

But it is not just fetal heartbeats which have no meaning for Weigel. Ultrasounds also have no meaning for her since … well, since she’s doesn’t believe they should. (If you think I’m exaggerating, read her article.) She notes that posting pictures of ultrasounds on social media has “heightened the social reality of the unborn,” as if this was somehow a bad, misleading thing.

And she points to an American couple who “posted a video of their sonogram fast-forwarded so that their fetus appeared to be clapping in time as they sang, ‘When You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands.’” The implication is that because the video was sped up, giving the false impression that the baby was clapping to the beat, that the more basic impression was also false, namely that there was a little human being in that mother’s womb who was putting its two little hands together. Pretty good for a clump of cells and a mass of tissue!

Although Weigel cites those who claim that pregnant women who see their ultrasounds are less likely to abort, she disputes these claims, pointing to a “2014 study published by the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, which drew on the medical records of nearly 16,000 women seeking abortions” and “found that viewing an ultrasound had a negligible impact on whether they decided to proceed.”

Other studies I have read have come to very different conclusions (see here, for examples), and a pro-life ministry that offers ultrasounds to women considering abortion has also seen tremendous results. But I doubt that all the studies in the world would convince Weigel right now, since her objections seem to be based on ideology more than science. As observed by Alexandra DeSanctis, “The reason that progressives such as Weigel denounce ultrasound technology is … because they want to continue denying the humanity of the unborn child, a humanity that is undeniable whether or not the mother wants the child.”

Yes, “Pro-life activists and parents who want to keep their unborn children will acknowledge this humanity. We all know it. Abortionists know it. Mothers aborting their babies know it. Planned Parenthood executives know it. Perhaps many are able to dull their consciences and convince themselves that it’s “just a clump of cells.” But deep down, they must know. We all do. And that’s why the Left has to work so hard to deny it.”

And the harder the Left works to deny the humanity of the unborn child, the more it exposes its moral and scientific bankruptcy. In that regard, Weigel’s article does a great service to the pro-life cause, and for that, we should be glad. Truth is sweeping away the lies. (For more from the author of “When Pro-Abortion Sentiments Trump Science and Common Sense” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

AI System as Good as Experts at Recognising Skin Cancers, Say Researchers

/0 Comments/in , /by

Computers can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts, according to the latest research attempting to apply artificial intelligence to health.

The US-based researchers say the new system, which is based on image recognition, could be developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and providing a low-cost way to check whether skin lesions are cause for concern.

“We hope that this is a first step towards early detection,” said Andre Esteva, an electrical engineering PhD student from Stanford University and co-author of the research.

According to the World Health Organisation, skin cancer accounts for one in every three cancers diagnosed worldwide, with global incidence on the rise.

In the UK alone, 131,772 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer were recorded in 2014. In the same year there were 15,419 new cases of the deadliest skin cancer, melanoma, making it the fifth most common cancer, according to Cancer Research UK. (Read more from “AI System as Good as Experts at Recognising Skin Cancers, Say Researchers” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Nasty Women Writing a Horrifying History of Our Times

/0 Comments/in , , /by

I remember an important lesson my parents began teaching me as a young lady. It’s a lesson that has been lost to the liberal tyranny of the crass, and the proof was the Women’s March in Washington D.C. last Saturday.

It’s a simple lesson on its face, but very significant, with far-reaching effects. It was this: As a woman, you teach a man how to treat you.

(That is not meant in any way to disparage men, or to imply that they are too dense to figure things out for themselves.)

What they wanted me to understand was that I had to decide what sort of woman I would be, and that my own behavior would largely determine how I was treated by men. Dad also wanted me to know that if any boorish man treated me badly, and I tolerated it, then I was teaching him it was okay to be a pig, and at that point, I was my own worst enemy.

The point is, by and large, men want to do right by women, so it’s incumbent upon the ladies to inspire them. Men aspire to honor and nobility, and most will respond accordingly when a woman encourages that behavior. I still believe men are inclined to take their cue from the ladies. Unfortunately, a man who is prone to lesser standards won’t need much encouragement at all to sink even further, and when women themselves behave badly, and tolerate bad behavior from a man, then mud begets mud and more mud.

The Crass Women’s March

That brings me to the gargantuan display of crassness that came out of the Women’s March. The profanity and vulgarity exhibited there was disgusting and embarrassing. We’ve all read about or heard Madonna’s foul-mouthed rant, and the same for Ashley Judd’s filthy speech praising nastiness among women as some new badge of honor.

If all that wasn’t enough, the signage carried by non-celebrity women was every bit as crude as what Madonna and Judd spewed from the podium. Grown women walked around dressed in vagina costumes. They wore hats sporting cat ears — a reference to the crass synonym for female genitalia. They carried signs that read, “P**** Grabs Back!” and “The Future is Nasty!” I saw one photo of a mother pushing her two little daughters in a stroller and pinned to the stroller was a sign reading, “Stay Nasty!” (Yes, I do understand the reference to Trump calling Hillary a nasty woman.)

I saw one woman holding a sign on which was painted the full female reproductive system with the slogan, “This Machine Kills Fascists!” What that could possibly mean, I can’t fathom.

The photo that tore my heart was one of a little girl about 3 years old holding onto a big sign in front of her that read, “F*** Your Fascist Bulls***”. Her mother was standing behind her smiling. What kind of woman does that to her daughter??

It seems clear that nasty is the new liberal “feminist” mantra. These women have responded to the degrading talk of a man they despise by being every bit as degrading, except it’s worse because they’re doing it to themselves. And they foolishly believe it makes them powerful or something. It doesn’t. It makes them gross and vulgar.

They’ve decided that nasty is a compliment, and they’re determined to prove just how nasty they can be. On that note, they sure succeeded. They’ve made it perfectly clear that as women, they are merely parts to be objectified. They — not Donald Trump — they have reduced women to nothing but their sexual parts. They have taught every man watching that their womanhood is not a thing of dignity or beauty, but something nasty that revolves entirely around sex. A woman is not a person to be taken as a whole and cherished and protected, but sexual pieces to be dehumanized and profaned.

Their example won’t be forgotten. Nasty women will inspire nasty treatment. Guys will feel free to refer to the female anatomy in crude “locker room” terms, cause hey! The women are doing it themselves!

We expect the men to be decent and honorable when the women are so indecent and vile? How does that work?

Their Killer Motive, The Unimaginable Consequences

Underscoring all the nastiness, of course, was the premier motive of the whole march: Abortion on Demand and Without Apology! We shall kill the“unwanted” if we jolly well want to, and don’t you dare try to take away our “rights!”

This is the tone liberal women in America have set. Genitals on display; crassness, vulgarity, and nastiness, loud and proud; and an absolute, irrevocable license to kill. These are the maxims of women who decry the intolerable offense of a man who once simply took them at their word. (They still love Bill Clinton and Roman Polanski though. Never mind their rapist, lecherous tendencies.)

To sum it up: Venerable Fulton Sheen was right when he told us: “To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the history being written by the profane conduct from the Women’s March is too horrifying to contemplate. I ask you: what are we going to do about it? (For more from the author of “Nasty Women Writing a Horrifying History of Our Times” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Instead of Coddling, Universities Should Let Students Grow Up

/0 Comments/in , /by

One wonders just how far spineless college administrators will go when it comes to caving in to the demands of campus snowflakes.

For those unfamiliar with the term “snowflakes,” it is increasingly being used to characterize college students easily traumatized by criticism and politically incorrect phrases. They demand safe spaces and trigger warnings so as not to be upset by views that challenge their own.

Snowflakes feel as though they must be protected against words, events, and deeds that do not fully conform to their extremely limited, narrow-minded beliefs built on sheer delusion. This might explain their behavior in the wake of Donald Trump’s trouncing of Hillary Clinton.

Generosity demands that we forgive these precious snowflakes and hope that they grow up. The real problem is with people assumed to be grown-ups—college professors and administrators who tolerate and give aid and comfort to our aberrant youth.

Let’s look at tiny samples of it.

To help avoid microaggressions, the University of North Carolina administration posted a notice urging staff and faculty members to avoid phrases such as “husband/boyfriend,” which they claim is heteronormative, and “Christmas vacation,” which “minimizes non-Christian spiritual rituals.”

This winter, the Oregon State University administration will treat its students to a new class that promises to teach them about how blacks have historically resisted white supremacists.

Professor Dwaine Plaza, one of three instructors for the course, said the idea was inspired by Trump’s election, which he fears will take the country back to the 1960s.

The University of Maryland is hosting a series of postelection lectures on how a “commitment to white supremacy” gave Trump momentum and blaming “white America’s spiritual depravity” for his rise to power.

One of the topics will be “Make America White Again? The Racial Reasoning of American Nationalism.”

At Pomona College, posters giving instructions on “how to be a (better) white ally” and stating that all white people are racist were put in the dorm rooms of new students.

Ned Staebler, Wayne State University’s vice president for economic development, i.e., fundraising, declared that Trump is a Nazi and his supporters are comfortable with bigotry.

He said, “I’ll say flatly that many of the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump did so because of his bigotry.”

In response to a claim by Ben Carson—Trump’s pick to be secretary of housing and urban development—that people have the right to display Confederate flags on private property, University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler tweeted, “If only there was a ‘coon of the year’ award.”

Previously, Butler informed us that God is a “white racist” and Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, was a “blood sacrifice.”

Wake Forest University faculty and administration seek to make the university a sanctuary campus. Campus security will refuse to follow federal laws and will stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from pursuing criminals if they come onto Wake Forest property.

This is nothing less than nullification of federal law. While liberals support nullification of federal immigration law, I wonder how they would respond to cities nullifying laws enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Snowflake indulgence has been fostered by the education establishment and, more recently, by federal law.

One of the most popular features of Obamacare is its provision that children can remain on their parents’ health care plan until they are 26 years old. That promotes prolonged adolescence, sparing the necessity for youngsters to get out on their own.

Some have criticized my lack of sympathy for snowflakes in the wake of their emotional trauma resulting from Trump’s defeat of Clinton.

Here’s my question to you: How much sympathy would you have for those 18- to 24-year-olds who are in the military if they conducted themselves—on aircraft carriers, in nuclear submarines, and in special forces—just as college snowflakes did in the wake of the Trump victory? (For more from the author of “Instead of Coddling, Universities Should Let Students Grow Up” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

I Was Trapped on a Train with Smug ‘Women’s March’ Feminists. This Is What I Overheard.

/0 Comments/in , , /by

After spending a busy inauguration week in D.C., I couldn’t have been more ready to board the train home to New York City. As I waited at Union Station, I felt the adrenaline leaving my system, and began to notice how completely drained I was.

The task that took the greatest toll on me, I realized, was covering the Women’s March on Washington Saturday. Beyond the normal fatigue that comes after writing, tweeting, and Facebook Live-ing for hours on end, the Women’s March left me feeling less satisfied and more desperate … and even angry.

After boarding I observed, to my dismay, that the train from D.C. to Penn Station was packed with Women’s March attendees — a horde of smug feminists, some still carrying signs and sporting their pink “pussy” hats. There was one exception: a college-age girl wearing a “Make America Gay Again” hat.

I tried to continue listening to music and scrolling through the news on my phone, but my attention kept straying to the conversations around me.

One teenage girl was reading an article aloud to her mother, sharing how “cute” and “awesome” it was that former Secretary of State John Kerry spent his “first day off” walking his dog through the Women’s March in D.C.

I overheard a man talking on the phone (rather loudly), giddily discussing all the speakers he saw at the march. He gushed over Gloria Steinem, who co-chaired the event. I tried not to giggle, recalling how the feminist icon bemoaned a male-dominated society in the speech she delivered Saturday:

“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in connections. We are at one with each other, we are looking at each other, not up. No more asking daddy.”

A middle-aged woman sitting across the aisle from me with her tween son sipped red wine while explaining to an older woman nearby how she had a “great time,” but regretted not being able to meet up with her “friends from Planned Parenthood.”

I witnessed others catching up on Instagram and Facebook posts, adding the occasional triumphant remark about “making history,” “speaking out,” “sending a message to Trump,” or “impeachment.”

“Oh my gosh,” I thought to myself. “These people really feel like they’ve turned the country on its head.”

After what felt like the longest three-and-a-half hours of my life, we had arrived. I exited the train and hopped on an elevator with four other women. An older woman, with short, spiked hair, turned around to ask everyone if we were coming from the march.

“YES!” two pink-hatted women responded immediately, beaming with satisfaction. I remained silent, but the woman who inquired gave us all a big thumbs-up.

My ride on the Mutual Affirmation Train was like attending the March on Washington all over again: Crowds of like-minded, mostly white urban women celebrating how “strong,” “educated,” and “virtuous” they all are. I felt like the undercover conservative, harboring secrets I was sure none of these individuals were interested in hearing.

In her speech Saturday, Gloria Steinem cited “violence against females in the world” as to why there are “fewer females than males” alive today. As the crowd roared, I thought to myself, “She had to have meant abortion, right? Does she hear what she’s saying? Do these protesters?” I’m certain that I was alone in my thinking.

I am just as offended by Trump’s derogatory “pussy” comment as anyone else. But an average bystander watching the Women’s March participants — reading their signs and t-shirts, seeing their costumes, and hearing their chants — would reasonably conclude that feminists aren’t offended by the profane; they’re utterly obsessed with it.

This weekend, I stepped into the alternative universe that is the Left’s reality. There, everyone agrees with everyone, and even when they lose, they win. Lack of self-reflection and critical thought is pervasive. It’s how I imagine an insane asylum feels.

Needless to say, I’m happy the march is over. I’ve never felt so keenly aware of how broken our culture is — with hundreds of thousands of militant women around the world boldly asserting their right to kill unborn children, threatening any man or women who dares to stand in their way. How confidently did they assume that no reasonable person would object to their noble cause. How wrong they were. (For more from the author of “I Was Trapped on a Train with Smug ‘Women’s March’ Feminists. This Is What I Overheard.” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.