Tag Archives: Hans Bader

Virginia Likely to Reinstate Parole for Murderers

Posted on October 17, 2021 by | 9 comments

by Hans Bader

Senator Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, predicts that Virginia’s senate will vote to bring back parole in 2022 — “across the board,” meaning for even the most serious crimes, such as murder. Restoring parole could increase the number of murders, rapes, and robberies in Virginia. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

A movement to reinstate parole in Virginia could hinge on the outcome of election results next month. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe has indicated willingness to support expanded parole …. While many Democrats support reinstating parole broadly in Virginia, Republicans generally oppose it. The Democrats hold a 55-45 seat edge in the House of Delegates. … The issue will be debated in next year’s General Assembly session.

“I will be introducing a bill that will reintroduce parole across the board,” said Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond. “I think it will pass [the] Senate Judiciary [Committee] and … the full body.” Democrats control the Senate 21-19. Senators are not up for election until 2023. But Morrissey said he predicts a possible roadblock to parole expansion in the House, where he thinks Republicans will make gains in the Nov. 2 election. … Virginia created parole in 1942 and abolished it in 1995, passing a “truth in sentencing” law among other criminal justice measures in an effort to reduce high crime rates…. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

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Harsh Rhetoric Does Not Justify FBI Intervention

Posted on October 8, 2021 by | 35 comments

Image credit: bravenewworldmedia.com

by Hans Bader

Speech doesn’t become a “threat” just because a government official calls it that. Yet the National School Boards Association got the Justice Department to open an investigation after labeling parents’ speech as “threats and acts of violence” when it occurred in controversies over “critical race theory” and “masking requirements” in the public schools.

As the Washington Examiner notes, “A few of the most outrageous examples of these ‘threats and acts of violence,’ according to the association, include a man filming himself while calling school administrators and another man labeling a school board as ‘Marxist.'” The NSBA’s letter lists as an example of such threats and violence, “A resident in Alabama, who proclaimed himself a ‘vaccine police,’ has called school administrators while filming himself on Facebook Live.” Continue reading →

35 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Individual liberties

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Closing School Rewards Bad Behavior

Posted on October 6, 2021 by | 18 comments

by Hans Bader

Sometimes teenagers make school-shooting threats to trigger school closures and avoid class. School authorities make such bogus reports more likely by closing school — rewarding the person by giving him he wants. Most threats recorded in the K-12 School Shooting Database are “not credible threats of violence,” note researchers.

Today, Arlington County encouraged threats and bogus reports by closing Washington-Liberty High School after receiving an anonymous call falsely “claiming that there was a shooter in the building.” Officials closed school before 9 a.m., moving the students like my daughter to a “secure location” — a public park where they could have been mowed down en masse by a shooter had he actually existed. But the school system waited until 10:03 a.m. to notify parents like me of the school closing.

The 10:03 AM email read: Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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Closing Schools Made Children Fatter, More Vulnerable to COVID

Posted on August 30, 2021 by | 37 comments

by Hans Bader

Many kids became fatter when schools closed to in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. “Overweight or obesity increased among 5- through 11-year-olds from 36.2% to 45.7% during the pandemic, an absolute increase of 8.7% and relative increase of 23.8%,” noted the Journal of the American Medical Association.

That’s making the effects of the pandemic much worse. “The evidence linking obesity to adverse COVID-19 outcomes is ‘overwhelmingly clear,’” say health experts. More than half of all people hospitalized for the coronavirus are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Children very rarely die of the coronavirus, but they can suffer a lot from it, especially if they are fat. Obese people are much more likely to require hospitalization when they contract the coronavirus.

“Pediatric COVID-19 cases are surging, pushing hospitals — and health care workers — to their breaking points,” reports Time Magazine. New Orleans is one of America’s fattest cities, and is located in one of America’s least vaccinated states. Predictably, Children’s Hospital of New Orleans (CHNO) is facing a surge in hospitalizations. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Public safety & health

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Yes, CRT Is Being Taught in Schools

Posted on July 21, 2021 by | 28 comments

Ibram Kendi

by Hans Bader

On July 15, a Reuters fact-check claimed that “many Americans embrace falsehoods about Critical Race Theory.” But it is Reuters that embraced a falsehood, not the American people.

Reuters denied that Critical Race Theory teaches that “discriminating against white people is the only way to achieve equality,” saying that was a “misconception” promoted by “conservative media outlets.”

It’s not a misconception. It’s the explicit position of the most famous exponent of critical race theory, Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi. The “key concept” in Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist is that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” writes Kendi in that book, a New York Times bestseller touted by many progressive journalists. Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Race and race relations

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Amazon Donates CRT Book to Arlington Schools

Posted on June 25, 2021 by | 23 comments

Ibram Kendi

by Hans Bader

Amazon donated hundreds of copies of a racist, error-filled book by a critical race theorist to Arlington County public schools. In doing so, the Seattle-based company helped poison young minds and taught high-school students falsehoods about America’s history and politics. It did this at the urging of a school official in Arlington.

The Free Beacon reports that “Amazon spent $5,000 to distribute hundreds of copies” of “Ibram X. Kendi’s book ‘Stamped’ to Virginia public school students.”  The “key concept” Kendi teaches is that society needs to discriminate against whites to make up for past discrimination against blacks. Kendi says, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Kendi once wrote an op-ed suggesting that white people are aliens from outer space.

Amazon, which is building its East Coast headquarters in Arlington, donated the copies of Kendi’s book after “Amazon employees reached out to Arlington Public Schools as part of ‘NeighborGood,’ a program to donate $100,000 to schools and other institutions that ’empower black voices and serve black communities.’” Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Race and race relations

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Don’t Blame Pandemic for Rise in U.S. Violent Crime

Posted on June 23, 2021 by | 35 comments


by Hans Bader

Recent spikes in violent crime aren’t due to COVID-19 or the economy, as suggested recently in a Virginian-Pilot article exploring causes of a spike in violence in Hampton Roads.

Murders frequently fall during recessions and times of economic hardship. In the U.S. homicides fell during the 2007-2009 recession. In many other countries, murder rates actually went down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For example, the murder rate fell in London by 16% in 2020, even though England suffered more from the pandemic than America did. England suffered far more economic harm than America did, with England’s economy shrinking 9.9% during 2020, compared to 3.5% in America. As Nicole Gelinas notes in the New York Post, murders also fell in other major countries in 2020:

How about Italy, hit hard and early by the pandemic? There, murders fell by 14%, to 271 from 315.

France with its troubled banlieues? The country’s murders were down 2% in 2020, to 863. Continue reading →

35 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

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Gender and Race Quotas for School Discipline?

Posted on June 9, 2021 by | 31 comments

by Hans Bader

Does anyone seriously doubt that boys misbehave more than girls in school? Until recently, no one would have disputed that, as surveys of students show that boys get into fights at twice the rate girls do. In those same surveys, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, Blacks say they get into fights at more than twice the rate Whites do on school grounds.

But the nation’s Democratic attorney generals either don’t know about, or don’t believe, these surveys. Instead, they seem to believe that every racial or sexual group misbehaves at exactly the same rate. Every single Democratic state attorney general in America — all 24 of them, including Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring — recently cited the higher discipline rates of Blacks and boys, as causes for alarm, in a May 24 letter to the Education Secretary and U.S. Attorney General.

The letter urged the Biden administration to reinstate and expand the Obama administration’s school-discipline guidance, which encouraged schools to suspend Blacks and Whites at the same rate, to target not just statistical disparities based on race, but also disparities based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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Progressives’ Justice: Criminalize Small Business, Descriminalize Theft

Posted on June 3, 2021 by | 21 comments

Worth prosecuting anymore?

by Hans Bader

Progressive “reform” prosecutors want more criminal prosecutions of businesses for red-tape violations and so-called “wage theft,” and fewer felony prosecutions of criminals for stealing from businesses and homeowners (such as shoplifting, which some progressive prosecutors have essentially stopped prosecuting, resulting in an explosion of shoplifting).

Prosecuting “wage theft” was one of the campaign planks of Arlington, Va., Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a progressive Democrat who unseated a moderate Democrat incumbent in the 2019 primary election. In her campaign, she said she wanted to prioritize prosecuting “wage theft,” even while complaining that Arlington prosecuted felonies at a much higher rate than neighboring jurisdictions like Alexandria. She also called for more use of “restorative justice” as a response to crimes committed by people with social or economic disadvantages. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

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Great Moments in Virginia Jurisprudence

Posted on May 27, 2021 by | 16 comments

Arenda Wright Allen

by Hans Bader

Shouldn’t a judge at least know what’s in the Constitution, before getting a promotion? Left-wing trial judge Arenda Wright Allen confused the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution in her ruling striking down Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban, noted ABC News. Yet now she is being recommended for a promotion to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, by Virginia Senators Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D).

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that in “a letter Monday the senators recommended U.S. District Court judges Arenda Wright Allen and M. Hannah Lauck and Virginia Solicitor General Toby J. Heytens” for elevation to the Fourth Circuit.

In 2014, ABC’s Erin Dooley wrote about how Judge Allen attributed a phrase to the Constitution that it doesn’t contain: Continue reading →

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Posted in Courts and law

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GMU Cites “Diversity” to Justify Goals for Hiring Nonwhite Staff

Posted on April 28, 2021 by | 26 comments

GMU President Gregory Washington

by Hans Bader

The president of George Mason University wants to give minorities a big advantage in hiring until the faculty is as heavily minority as the school’s student body and the future, mostly non-white U.S. population. This is illegal, say lawyers and law professors. Indeed, GMU’s president, Gregory Washington, recognized that objection in an April 15 email to the university’s faculty, before saying it wouldn’t stop him from giving minorities a preference in hiring. Washington quoted a professor as saying:

I am concerned about what it really means to hire faculty and staff that ‘reflect the student population.’ The university’s job as an R1 institution is to hire the best faculty and administrators, period. The type of target hiring of minorities proposed through ARIE is both prejudicial and illegal. I would like to have this addressed.

In response, GMU’s president wrote, “If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate? Study after study has proven that the most diverse organizations, which recognize the importance of maintaining a diverse and inclusive environment, are the best performing organizations.” Continue reading →

26 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Race and race relations

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Virginia Pols Call for Passage of George Floyd Act

Posted on April 22, 2021 by | 15 comments

by Hans Bader

After the murder conviction of the policeman who killed George Floyd, Virginia’s progressive politicians are calling for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would allow police departments to be sued when police stops aren’t racially and sexually balanced.

Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03) said, “This verdict is a start, but it does not absolve Congress and the federal government of our responsibility to reform policing across the country, and it is a reminder of the need for the Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.”

Virginia’s senior Senator, Mark Warner, called on his Senate colleagues to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act: “George Floyd’s life mattered. Justice has been served…we owe it to Mr. Floyd, his family, and far too many others like him to take meaningful action to reform our policing system. We can start by passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.”

Joe Biden also backs this bill. But it has a downside: it could lead to more racial and sexual profiling, such as gender-based stops of female motorists, or racial or gender quotas for police stops. Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Federal

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Virginia’s Ideological Litmus Test for Teachers

Posted on March 29, 2021 by | 15 comments

by Hans Bader

Can a state punish its school teachers for not having a progressive ideology? That’s what Virginia’s Board of Education appears to be doing. Its newly adopted “performance standard” for teacher evaluations is based on whether a “teacher demonstrates a commitment to equity and provides instruction and classroom strategies that result in culturally inclusive and responsive learning environments and academic achievement for all students.”

This standard is full of buzzwords and ideologically-charged phrases that can be used to punish conservative teachers or reward bad teachers for mouthing politically-correct platitudes. Its adoption will make it even harder to get rid of bad teachers and attract good teachers.

A “commitment to equity” sounds nice until you learn that “equity” means something very different from equality and non-discrimination, in “Virginia’s Roadmap to Equity.” In that book, “equity” is about racial “outcomes,” and it is not about equal “opportunities” or achievement based on “ability.” It describes “culturally responsive educators” as those who fight “injustice,” not just “racism,” or effectively teaching minority children. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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$15,000 an Hour to Peddle Racist Stereotypes? Not Bad Money If You Can Get It.

Posted on March 25, 2021 by | 14 comments

Glenn Singleton

by Hans Bader

School systems now routinely subject students and staff to racist scapegoating under the guise of promoting “diversity” or “anti-racism.” Radio broadcaster Rob Schilling reports on one example in Virginia: the Albemarle County Public Schools’ hiring of diversity-trainer Glenn Singleton. Singleton’s firm is getting paid a whopping $15,000 to give a one-hour seminar. Singleton blames white teachers for poor performance by black students, even as he promotes offensive racial stereotypes, claiming that “white talk” is “verbal, impersonal, intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while minority talk is “emotional.”

As Schilling notes, progressive Albemarle County requires “all school division employees” to “participate in a compulsory one-hour race-intensive Zoom seminar” by Singleton on March 26. The schools are paying “$15,000 (plus additional technology expenses of approximately $1,000)” for this brief seminar. And that’s not the whole cost: “A schools’ spokesperson was unable to ascertain” the cost to pay hundreds of “employees not otherwise working at the time of the presentation.” Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12), Race and race relations

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Racial Preferences for Minorities in COVID Vaccinations?

Posted on February 28, 2021 by | 14 comments

By Hans Bader

Virginia is apparently giving preference to certain clusters of minority residents in access to the COVID-19 vaccine, as Judicial Watch notes:

In the next few weeks, the state will give preference to black and Latino residents 65 and over while much older white seniors, many in their 80s, cannot secure an appointment to get inoculated. The plan was announced a few days ago by Dr. Danny Avula, who was appointed by Governor Ralph Northam this year to be the state’s vaccine coordinator…. In recent weeks, [a news] article says, roughly 10,000 vaccines were channeled specifically toward trusted clinics in neighborhoods with older black residents… the reporter cites “some experts” that have raised concern over age-based vaccine prioritization because it fails to account for lower expectancies among black and Latino communities, though it does concede that 75% of Virginia’s deaths are among those over 70….

Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health, Race and race relations

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