Conservatism News and Discussions

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House Democrats Accuse GOP of Concealing Evidence in Hunter Biden Probe
by Benjamin S. Weiss
July 28, 2023

Introduction:

WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — A top Democrat on the GOP-led House committee investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings accused his Republican colleagues Friday of concealing key evidence that pokes holes in the ongoing investigation into President Biden’s son.

In a scathing letter to House Oversight Committee chair Jim Comer, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin accused Republicans of withholding the transcript of the panel’s July 17 interview with a former FBI agent who was assigned to the agency’s investigation of Hunter Biden.

The interview, Raskin said, poured cold water on claims from Republican lawmakers that the Justice Department interfered U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ investigation into Biden’s business dealings. The special agent’s interview also provided additional context to testimony provided to the oversight committee July 19 by two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers.

That inconvenient evidence has intentionally been left under wraps for the last two weeks, the Maryland Democrat — who is the oversight committee’s ranking member — claimed.

“This failure to release a transcript is the latest in your troubling pattern of concealing key evidence in order to advance a false and distorted narrative about your ‘investigation of Joe Biden’ that has not only failed to develop any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden but has, in fact, uncovered substantial evidence to the contrary,” Raskin told Comer.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/house-d ... en-probe/

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'I'm not wanted': Florida universities hit by brain drain as academics flee

With the start of the 2023-24 academic year only six weeks away, senior officials at New College of Florida (NCF) made a startling announcement in mid-July: 36 of the small honors college’s approximately 100 full-time teaching positions were vacant. The provost, Bradley Thiessen, described the number of faculty openings as “ridiculously high”, and the disclosure was the latest evidence of a brain drain afflicting colleges and universities throughout the Sunshine state.

Governor Ron DeSantis opened 2023 with the appointment of six political allies to the college’s 13-member board of trustees who vowed to drastically alter the supposedly “woke”-friendly learning environment on its Sarasota campus. At its first meeting in late January, the revamped panel voted to fire the college president, Patricia Okker, without cause and appoint a former Republican state legislator and education commissioner in her place.

Over the ensuing weeks, board members have dismissed the college’s head librarian and director of diversity programs and denied tenure to five professors who had been recommended for approval.

In a statement given to 10 Tampa Bay about faculty vacancies that was issued earlier this month, NCF officials said that six of the openings were caused by staff resignations and one-quarter of the faculty member departures “followed the changes in the New College board of trustees”. One of those resignations was submitted by Liz Leininger, an associate professor of neurobiology who says she started looking for an exit strategy as soon as she learned about the DeSantis appointments in the first week of 202

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... g-desantis

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Florida school board reverses decision nixing access to children's book about a male penguin couple
Source: AP

By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Updated 6:19 AM CDT, August 8, 2023

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Months after access to a popular children’s book about a male penguin couple hatching a chick was restricted at school libraries because of Florida’s “ Don’t Say Gay law,” a central Florida school district says it has reversed that decision.

The School Board of Lake County and Florida education officials last week asked a federal judge to toss out a First Amendment lawsuit brought by students and the authors of “And Tango Makes Three” in June. Their complaint challenged the restrictions and Florida’s new law prohibiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels.

The lawsuit is moot since age restrictions on “And Tango Makes Three” have been lifted following a Florida Department of Education memo that said the new law only applied to classroom instruction and not school libraries, according to motions filed Friday by Florida education officials and school board members of the district located outside Orlando.

The “Don’t Say Gay” law has been at the center of a fight between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running to be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee and has made the culture wars a driving force of his campaign. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers took over control of the district after Disney publicly opposed the law.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-florid ... 1cee8ad7fb

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From a Kansas newsroom to a soccer pitch, why the right hates America and democracy
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commen ... 30813.html


Like Marion County, Kansas.

Marion County — population 11,823 — is a rural, 75% Republican crossroads for the Chisolm cattle trail and the Santa Fe Railroad, and now the Keystone Pipeline sitting on the edge of the Great Plains. Since 1869, a pillar of the community has been the weekly Marion County Record, which in between the lines of the obituaries and the chain restaurant openings has a cherished history of holding its public officials to account. It was this most important function for American democracy by the small-town newspaper that boiled over the top this weekend, amid a murky backstory: a tip about a politically connected restaurateur, amid rumors the new police chief was under investigation for sexual misconduct.

On Friday, the five members of the Marion Police Department executed a shocking raid on the newspaper’s office — seizing its computers, cell phones, notebooks and other reporting materials. The raiding officers even fanned out to the home of the Meyer family, which has owned the Record for decades. Co-owner Joan Meyer — age 98, mother to current publisher, Eric Meyer — was stunned and in tears as the cops seized her computer and the router for her Alexa device, a lifeline, while sifting through her son’s banking records and leaving a jumble of yanked electric cords behind.

“These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done,” Joan Meyer, who had worked in journalism since 1953 — those heady democracy days after World War II — told a reporter. She was too upset by the raid — which seemed a violation of existing law, not to mention First Amendment principles — to sleep or even eat. On Saturday afternoon, the nonagenarian Meyer — who’d been in good health — abruptly died, the latest casualty in a cold Civil War already ripping America apart.

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Houston school district to turn libraries into disciplinary centers

The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year.

Houston independent school district announced earlier this summer that librarian and media-specialist positions in 28 schools will be eliminated as part of superintendent Mike Miles’s “new education system” initiative.

Teachers at these schools will soon have the option to send misbehaving students to these discipline centers, or “team centers’” – designated areas where they will continue to learn remotely.

News of the library removals comes after the state announced it would be taking over the district, effective in the 2023-24 school year, due to poor academic performance. Miles was appointed by the the Texas Education Agency in June.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... aries-book