Photo: UW-LaCrosse Chancellor Joe Gow

UW-La Crosse parent says chancellor dismissed concerns about ‘orgasm’ emailer

By M.D. Kittle  /   March 23, 2017  WisconsinWatchdog.org
      
MADISON, Wis. – The mother of a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student claims the institution’s chancellor was willing to put student safety at risk to protect the career path of a dorm director who sent out a sexually explicit email to hundreds of university residents.

The incident received national attention in the fall of 2015, when Drake Hall Director Jude Legiste fired off an email to nearly 300 students instructing men on how to overcome the female “orgasm deficit.”

Titled, “You Gone Learn Today!!”, the message included “crude, salacious descriptions of how to achieve orgasm” through various methods, according to the Pioneer Press. What prompted Legiste to send the email or why he thought any student would want to read it remains unclear.

He later apologized in a follow-up email for failing to “create a community in which people feel safe and welcomed.” That mea culpa arrived after he sent a kind of clarification email insisting that some recipients viewed his tutorial as “helpful and an honest conversation on a topic that rarely gets discussed.” He acknowledged that others saw it as “offensive, creepy and that it was not my place to send it in the first place.”

Legiste, who described himself as an advocate of gender equity, suggested holding a hall forum, in the basement, or he said he would meet with students on an individual basis.  READ it HERE

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.    | March 24, 2017   Center for Family & Human Rights

NEW YORK, March 24 (C-Fam) The world witnessed the United States returning to the pro-life fold after years of abortion advocacy from the Obama administration yesterday during the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

After the gavel fell signaling the adoption of the annual agreement of the commission, known as Agreed Conclusions, the United States delegation delivered a poignant pro-life statement.

International consensus on UN policy on “sexual and reproductive health” is that “it does not create new international rights, including a right to abortion,” the U.S. said.

The turn rolled back gains for abortion supporters, such as explicit mentions of abortion without the full spectrum of caveats from previous UN agreements that cast abortion in a bad light.

This year, the agreement not only omitted abortion, but qualified all references to “sexual and reproductive health,” “sexual and reproductive health-care services” and “reproductive rights” by referring to UN previous agreements saying abortion is not a right, committing nations to help women avoid abortion, and precluding them from promoting it as a method of family planning.

The United States said it, “does not support abortion in reproductive health assistance” and emphasized that “the U.S. is the largest bilateral donor of maternal, newborn and child health assistance and family planning.” This was a response to critics of the recently restored Mexico City Policy defunding groups promoting or performing abortion.

The agreement dealt a hard blow to European and Nordic countries that promote “comprehensive sexuality education” that teaches children younger than 4 about “early childhood masturbation,” LGBT rights, and legal prostitution.

A last-ditch attempt by the EU to remove caveats to the term “sexual and reproductive health” failed.
READ the Rest

by George Neumayr,  March 20, 2017 American Spectator

After all the parsing at the Comey hearing, that remains the bottom line.

Straining at the tweet and swallowing the camel has become Washington’s favorite pursuit, and it was on tiresome display at Monday’s Congressional hearing with Jim Comey. Out of it came two clashing headlines: “Comey Denies Obama Ordered Wiretapping on Trump,” “The FBI is Investigating Trump’s Links to Russia.”

In other words, the core claim underlying Trump’s tweets is true: people acting on the authority of Obama opened an investigation into Trump’s campaign, then criminally leaked mention of it to friendly news outlets in an attempt to derail his election. When is Obama going to apologize for that?

Were the Republicans less feckless and docile to the media-determined parameters of any discussion, they would have kept the focus on the outrageousness of Obama investigating an opposing party’s candidate at the height of an election campaign. But their first instinct is always to distance themselves from Trump, not defend him.

So unlike Adam Schiff, who prosecuted the case for the Dems ruthlessly, the Republicans dithered, striking Comey with the flat of the blade. Instead of probing his vague answers, they complacently accepted them before trailing off into the next series of unilluminating questions.

“I have no information that supports those tweets,” Comey replied to one of Schiff’s leading questions. Why didn’t Republicans ask him to elaborate? Was he saying that the FBI didn’t investigate the computer server connected to Trump Tower (as reported by Circa News)? Was he saying that his investigation hasn’t intercepted a single one of Trump’s communications? He would have declined to answer these questions, but that refusal to answer would have cast doubt on the authority of his categorical denial. After all, if he can’t describe his investigation into the Trump campaign, how can anybody be sure that it excludes Trump’s communications?

Congressman Devin Nunes, the chairman of the committee, couldn’t match Schiff in partisan zeal and rigor, as evident in his giving Schiff fifteen minutes of opening remarks while restricting himself to five minutes of them. In his sheepish remarks, he defensively treated the media’s outrage at Trump’s tweet as if it were the first and most important matter that he needed to address. READ it HERE

by Glenn Greenwald  March 16 2017, The Intercept

From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party’s base since Trump’s victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election — a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented.

The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies — just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected — that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.  READ it HERE. 

Don’t Let Culture Define Religious Liberty

by Joseph Sunde • March 17, 2017  Acton Institute Powerblog

When a fashion designer recently called for an industry boycott of Melania Trump due to her political beliefs, plenty of progressives called it brave and principled. Yet when Christian wedding photographers express their own disagreements or beliefs, acting on one’s conscience somehow becomes a “sticky issue.”

That’s how one student describes it in a series of interviews at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In their discussions, the Alliance Defending Freedom found total consensus among students that creative professionals should have the freedom to conduct business according to their beliefs. That consensus quickly began to break down when the “creative professional” in question was an evangelical Christian (vs. a Muslim singer or an anti-Trump fashion designer.)  READ MORE

by Samuel Gregg, published at Public Discourse March 15, 2017   

Samuel Gregg  (shown above) is Research Director at the Acton Institute.

What does natural law say about the power of judges in constitutional systems of government?

When President Donald Trump announced his first nominee to the Supreme Court, many observers quickly noted that Neil Gorsuch wrote his doctoral thesis under the supervision of the Oxford legal philosopher John Finnis. Some immediately asked whether Gorsuch’s approach to constitutional interpretation might be shaped by the “New Natural Law Theory” (NNLT) pioneered by Finnis and others.

The columnist George Will, for instance, expressed the hope that Gorsuch might “effect a philosophic correction” to what Will regards as a lacuna in Justice Antonin Scalia’s theory of originalism. In his 1997 book A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, Scalia wrote, “there is no such philosophizing in our Constitution, which, unlike the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, is a practical and pragmatic charter of government.”

Will takes a different view. Natural rights, he claimed, may be “independent of the Constitution” insofar as they “are grounded in [human] nature.” But natural rights are also, Will stated, what the Constitution exists to protect. Will concluded by suggesting that the fact the Gorsuch studied under the author of Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980)—the book which some believe single-handedly revitalized natural law theory in jurisprudence and philosophy more generally—might foreshadow more attention to natural rights in Supreme Court deliberations.

No one can predict with certainty Gorsuch’s take on any question on which he might be called to deliberate if he receives Senate confirmation. But before too much ink is spilled speculating on whether natural law in general or NNLT in particular will influence Gorsuch’s thought, it is worth reflecting on two important prior questions. How does natural law theory view constitutionalism? And what does this mean for the exercise of judicial power?  READ it HERE.

by Daniel Nussbaum Breitbart News, March 17, 2017

Tim Allen opened up briefly about what it means to be a conservative in Hollywood in 2017 during an interview with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night, explaining that one must be “real careful” in talking about President Donald Trump or else risk being beaten up.

“You’ve gotta be real careful around here. You get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody believes,” the 63-year-old Last Man Standing star told Kimmel when asked about his attendance at Trump’s inauguration in January.

“This is like ’30s Germany. I don’t know what happened,” he added. “If you’re not part of the group, ‘you know what we believe is right,’ I go, ‘Well, I might have a problem with that.'”

Allen told Kimmel he had never been to anything like Trump’s inauguration before.

“This government does stuff big,” he said. “Just so many people, and when they show up, you know, the ex-president gets in a helicopter and there’s jets and marines taking him this way and there’s parades, but it looks like a Cadillac parade, everything was just rows of Cadillacs.”

Read it HERE.

March 16 2017 - Washington DC

Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc 6th Disctrict) today voted to advance the American Health Care Act (AHCA) out of the House Budget Committee, which will allow the bill to continue the process towards a vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Grothman voted for the bill with the understanding that changes will be made to the AHCA before it comes to the House floor. House rules prevent amendments from being added to the bill in the Budget Committee.

Changes Grothman would be happy to see made to the AHCA include:

- Implementing work requirements for able-bodied adults on Medicaid without dependents. Medicaid coverage is currently more generous than many of the plans offered by employers to working Wisconsinites. Grothman spoke out about this during today’s committee mark-up.

- Moving up the end date for Medicaid expansions. This will stop the preferential treatment of higher reimbursement rates for working age adults over the more vulnerable populations of children, the elderly and the disabled.

- Lowering the age that young adults can stay on their parents’ insurance plans from 26 to 23. This is the same as the TRICARE age limit for the adult children of our military families who are currently enrolled in college.

- Shifting the allocation of Medicaid block grants from fluctuating amounts that are based on per-capita rates to lump sum amounts. This will reduce spending while giving more control to the states to handle their own Medicaid programs.

“Since the start of this Congress, Republicans’ first and foremost priority has been to repeal and replace Obamacare. The American Health Care Act works towards providing relief for American families who have been saddled with skyrocketing health care costs,” said Grothman. “I believe many of my concerns will be addressed by the time the AHCA reaches the House floor, and I am sure it will be a viable solution to ensure affordable and accessible health care coverage for Americans.”

Read it HERE.

Jed Babbin, The American Spectator,  March 13, 2017

Tomorrow, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet face-to-face with President Trump for the first time, each to take the other’s measure. Mr. Trump has previously criticized Mrs. Merkel for her open-door immigration policy and, by implication in his criticism of NATO, for Germany’s paltry defense spending.

Mrs. Merkel, the European press says, is on the defensive against Mr. Trump’s nationalist-populist positions, including his criticisms of the European Union. A few weeks ago, she floated the idea of more defense spending, but it turns out that her 2018 budget raises defense spending to the lofty level of 1.23 percent of Germany’s Gross Domestic Product, well below the 2 percent that all NATO members committed to a decade ago. Free riders like Germany deserve a repeated dose of “Dutch uncle” counseling by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has a lot on his plate. General Joe Votel, commander of Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the Taliban has fought us to a standstill in Afghanistan. It remains a permanent war, a quagmire, resulting from Mr. Bush’s nation-building approach.

Mr. Trump sent about 200 Marines and their artillery to the fight to take Raqqa, Syria, from ISIS. As good as they are, they are far too small a force — even combined with our air forces and special operations guys in Syria — to determine the outcome of the war. And what comes after? Mr. Trump hasn’t said what our plan is for the future of Syria, assuming that ISIS can be defeated there. If ISIS is defeated in Syria, what does he propose to do about ISIS in Libya and elsewhere? How long and large a war is he in for?  READ it Here

by Julie Kelly March 13, 2017 National Review Online

The new EPA leader takes aim at the heart of climate-change orthodoxy. It’s hard to overstate the significance of the recent comment by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt that there is disagreement about whether carbon dioxide is the main cause of global warming. In an interview on CNBC on March 9, Pruitt said: Measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there is tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So, no, I would not agree that it [CO2] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we need to continue the review and the analysis.

This statement is truly extraordinary: A leading U.S. official is taking direct aim at the heart of the international climate-change crusade.. It represents a total reversal of the past eight years, when everyone from the president down to low-level bureaucrats warned that climate change was a bigger threat to mankind than terrorism — to the point where they forced us to endure costly, job-killing federal regulations to stop it. Now the head of our top environmental agency is questioning the whole thing.

Of all the conservative pit bulls in Trump’s Cabinet, Pruitt might be the biggest badass of them all. Right on cue, the climate tribe went ballistic, trotting out the usual platitudes about a 97 percent consensus, settled science, climate deniers, blah blah blah. Obama’s EPA chief Gina McCarthy slammed Pruitt without (of course) refuting his claim head-on: “When it comes to climate change, the evidence is robust and overwhelmingly clear that the cost of inaction is unacceptably high.” Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) — who weirdly asked Mike Pompeo about his position on climate change during his Senate confirmation hearing for the post of CIA director — subtweeted Pruitt’s comments and said: “This is absurd. Denying causes of global warming will hurt our nation and our planet in the long-run.”  READ it HERE