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Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via LewRockwell.com,

In an April 15 Boston Globe article entitled “A Message to All Professional Thinkers: We Either Hang Together or We Hang Separately,” historian Niall Ferguson described the now-routine “outing” of conservative professors at American Universities by the hard-Left Marxists who control most of them.  The usual procedure is to first lie about something the conservative (or libertarian) supposedly said to whip a “Twitter mob” into a hateful frenzy.  The local media then pick up on it and pile on.  Spineless faculty “colleagues” either cower in fear or join the mob by signing a petition to curry favor with the administration (to increase their chances of another 1 percent pay raise).  If the conservative or libertarian professor is not tenured, he or she is fired.  Otherwise, he or she is marginalized, harassed, discriminated against, and “encouraged” to leave voluntarily to avoid such a miserable existence.  No human resources bureaucrats are ever concerned about “hostile work environments” when it comes to academic conservatives or libertarians; only the Left is to be protected from hostility and “insensitive” speech.

The KGB-style faculty and administrators who enforce this pervasive censorship are what Ferguson calls a “Red Army of Mediocrities.”  They are mediocrities because very few of them are real scholars but uneducated political rabble rousers who simply stayed in school their entire adult lives, armed with terminal degrees in such phony and fraudulent academic “disciplines” as “Feminist Theology” or “Global Studies.”  They are, says Ferguson, descendants of “the illiberal, egalitarian ideology that once suppressed free speech in Eastern Europe.”The Real Lincoln: A Ne…Thomas J. DilorenzoBest Price: $1.99Buy New $7.68(as of 11:05 EDT – Details)

It’s far worse than Ferguson describes in his short op-ed, for anti-conservative and anti-libertarian discrimination in hiring has been rampant for decades.  Yours truly recalls attending a Liberty Fund conference about thirty years ago where one of the other participants, Professor Henry Manne, remarked that “we have lost the universities.”  That was thirty years ago, and he was referring to the nearly complete Leftist takeover already, at that time, of the American university system and its assault on academic freedom and free speech.  The Leftist assault on free speech has festered exponentially since then with speech codes, safe spaces, requirements to report to the authorities “unsafe speech,” the organization of riots to “protest” conservative campus speakers, and other Stasi/KGB-style tactics.

There are a few exceptions here and there, such as Grove City College and Hillsdale College, neither of which has ever accepted government funding, and a few academic programs funded by wealthy alumni, but they are a drop in the academic ocean.  Even then, the conservative academics funded by such alumni donors are usually thought of by the majority Leftist faculty as imposters in need of extermination and expulsion.

Such programs may comprise less than one percent of a university’s faculty budget, with the rest funded by government, yet the Leftist faculty complain endlessly about the supposedly illegitimate “bias” caused not by the 99% government funding but by the minute private funding.  Political funding of 99% of a university’s budget could not possibly create a pro-government bias in research and teaching, they insist; only private, voluntary donations can do that.  This goes for hundreds of incorrectly labeled “private” colleges and universities which, though calling themselves “private,” receive millions or billions in government funding annually.  “He who takes the king’s shilling becomes the king’s man” is as true as ever.

Niall Ferguson ends his op-ed with a call for a “Nonconformist Academic Treaty” among university faculty and administrators who still defend freedom of speech.  The communistic academic censors must be confronted with “massive retaliation,” just as the Soviet Union was threatened with such by NATO during the Cold War, he says.  This is what he means when he says that “we” must hang together or hang separately.

Such a “treaty” would likely garner very few signatures because of the fact that, with few exceptions, American academe is a socialist institution.  Almost every last college and university is partly or totally funded by government, and with government  funding comes government control of the means of production, the very definition of socialism.  Almost all university professors are therefore essentially government bureaucrats and, like all bureaucrats, they understand that the way to survive is to never, ever, break the rules or rock the boat, no matter how rotten the rules may be.  They understand that if they do, the Red Army of Mediocrities will take its revenge, fire them if possible, or at least never again give them a merit pay raise.  They may also end up being assigned an 8 A.M. class on the main campus along with an evening class at one of the far-away branch campuses on the same day as an added touch of petty revenge.

University boards of trustees are mostly useless since they are easily bamboozled, lied to, or intimidated by academic administrators.  Many of them remain quiet, for to complain and not be asked back as a trustee may harm their social lives.  (At my own place of employment alumnus Tom Clancy, the famous author, once complained at a trustee meeting that the tuition was so high that the son of a mailman like himself could never afford it.  He was dropped from the board the next year).  There are no shareholders since universities are either government bureaucracies or “nonprofit” institutions, so there is no shareholder pressure either.  It is even confusing as to who the real “consumers” are since the students who sit in the classrooms are rarely the ones paying the extortionate tuition bills – at least until they graduate and are confronted with mountains of government-guaranteed student-loan debt.The Road to Serfdom: T…F. A. Hayek, Bruce Cal…Best Price: $2.31Buy New $2.99(as of 10:05 EDT – Details)

All of this creates a socialistic system of monopoly control of “higher” education that is now firmly in the hands of Leftist ideologues and a large army of uneducated, academic frauds and imposters who are sworn enemies of free speech, academic freedom, and freedom of inquiry.  As F.A. Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom in a chapter entitled “The End of Truth,” under collectivism of any form, “truth” is not determined by research, discussion, debate, and scientific inquiry, but by the platitudes and decrees handed down by the state.  In such a world “contempt for intellectual liberty” is “found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders.”  Under such a regime “intolerance, too, is openly extolled,” wrote Hayek in 1944.  This is a perfect description of American universities today.

This is the road American academe has been on for several generations now, and no “treaty” among conservative professors, most of whom are, like all government bureaucrats, just counting the days until retirement, is likely to salvage what is left of academic freedom.  Salvation will lie in the private institutions of the civil society, educational institutions like the Mises Insitute, the home-schooling movement, the Ron Paul Curriculum, and most importantly, the secession of the masses from the socialist indoctrination academies that American universities, like the “public” schools, have become.  Meanwhile, we need more Niall Fergusons to at least ring alarm bells over the necessity of mass resistance.

It’s unclear exactly when it happened (the BBG story doesn’t say), but Jacky, a Hong Kong Police Officer was working during one of the weekend demonstrations/riots that have become typical of the city in recent months. He had worked many prior demonstrations. But this time, he was beginning to feel threatened.

For hours, his unit had been engaged in what increasingly felt like a battle with protesters. Several rounds of non-lethal weapons fire, including pepper spray and rubber bullets, but the crowd wouldn’t disperse.

So he decided to engage in an option commonly viewed as a last resort. He pulled out a gun, and fired a live round into the air.

“It was the first time I felt that way – not that I would necessarily die, but that something was going to happen to me and my unit,” he said, speaking to a news outlet for the first time since the incident. “It’s the thing I had to do at that moment.”

Nobody was hurt, but for Jacky, the danger was only just beginning. Protesters accusing him of police brutality quickly doxxed him, and began posting death threats online. Two days after the shooting, BBG reports, the calls flooded in filled with violent threats about his family.

One online post offered a bounty: 500,000 HKD to kill Jacky.

“Do you feel heroic?” one person asked. Others simply cursed at him. He switched off his phone after a day, but then the emails came in droves. Some were death threats: One message online offered a HK$500,000 ($64,000) bounty to kill him.

Police acted swiftly to increase his protection. He was moved to a secure location with his family. He doesn’t regret firing the round, which he says he did to save his colleagues. But the response has been baffling. The repercussions facing his family, even his young daughter, have been surprising.

Jacky quickly moved out of the police quarters where he was staying and into a secure location. He didn’t leave the room for three weeks afterward, he said. But for him, what happened to his daughter was even worse: Shortly after he pulled her from school, her desk was painted black and vandalized. She hasn’t been able to return.

“I don’t regret having to save my colleagues, but regret that it ended up having an effect on my daughter,” Jacky said, adding that the psychological pain of the personal attacks after his information was leaked was far worse than battles with protesters involving Molotov cocktails, bricks and corrosive acid. “I don’t know how our society has come to this.”

According to BBG, both police and protesters have been victims of this kind of ‘doxxing’. At least 11 people have been arrested for doxxing officers, which can lead to charges of disclosing personal information without consent, incitement or access to a computer with dishonest or criminal intent, BBG says. Nobody has been arrested for doxxing protesters.

Beyond the physical violence, protesters and police alike have been victims of “doxxing,” when personal information is maliciously leaked online. In August, former Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying promoted a website offering cash bounties to identify demonstrators. The following month, a Weibo account of China’s state-owned CCTV accompanied its post about a doxxing website with a call to “unmask” protesters.

Making his financial situation even more precarious, Jacky has been on leave since the incident as HK police investigate (standard procedure any time a weapon is discharged). It’s likely the investigation will clear Jacky, but protesters are more worried about the police using these incidents as a convenient excuse to bring “the Great Firewall” to Hong Kong. Though at this point, it seems like warm relations between the police and large swaths of the people won’t ever be restored. According to Jacky, the situation between police and the public has gotten persistently worse. When protests started in June, he said he heard some demonstrators swearing at police.

“That night, I still thought our job as police was to facilitate these protests,” he said, noting that he was struck by how young some of the protesters were. “I was asking them to leave. ‘Why don’t you go home? Do your parents know where you are?'”

But they turned increasingly violent and anti-police as the weeks wore on. To deal with this, Jacky says he constantly reminds himself that the protesters aren’t really shouting at him, they’re shouting at the government.

Authored by Alex Bruesweitz via HumanEvents.com,

Horse trading is the oxygen of politics; it is how politicians are persuaded to care about things that otherwise would not make their radar. Not only does it happen all the time, but it is a core feature of our political system; representative government relies on this kind of political trading to ensure a plurality of interests and needs are satisfied.

Members of Congress routinely trade “policy for policy.” You sponsor my bill, and I’ll sponsor yours, you vote for a road in my district, and vice versa. Members even trade policy for personnel and hiring purposes: you support my bill, and I’ll let so-and-so’s hearing move forward, you appoint me to this, and I’ll recommend your protege for that. These deals can even cross the blood/brain barrier between states and the federal government.

It is not corruption. It’s the warp and woof of a democratic political system. But in routinely branding President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine as potential “corruption,” and pointing to the exchange of unrelated asks as proof of that corruption, our friends in the fourth estate are acting in willful ignorance and bad faith.

The President has taken a firm position that he did not hold out foreign aid to Ukraine as a condition for investigating Hunter Biden’s activities there. But, even if he did, bargaining isn’t corruption—it’s policymaking.

Rod Blagojevich.

GOVERNANCE WOULD HARDLY BE POSSIBLE

An esteemed panel of federal judges in Chicago made precisely this point a few years ago. You may recall the prosecution of former-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on various federal charges. And although the judges largely upheld his conviction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit commentary on the affair was crystal clear. At least one of the counts that the trial judge had sent to the jury was just politics, pure and simple, and could not have been a crime.

“[A] proposal to trade one public act for another, a form of logrolling, is fundamentally unlike the swap of an official act for a private payment.”

In 2008, then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected to serve as President of the United States. Appointment of his successor in the Senate, until an interim election was held, fell by operation of statute to Governor Blagojevich. In the words of Judge Frank Easterbrook, writing for the court, the Governor saw this as a “bonanza.” Among other things, Governor Blagojevich (through intermediaries) was alleged to have asked President-elect Obama for an appointment to the Cabinet (for himself) in exchange for him appointing Valerie Jarrett to the interim seat in the Senate. Alternatively, he was alleged to have asked the President-elect to “persuade a foundation to hire him at a substantial salary after his term as Governor ended, or find someone to donate $10 million and up to a new ‘social welfare’ organization that he would control.”

The President-elect declined on all counts, but the lawyerly point is this: the trial judge told the jurors that if it found the Governor had proposed any of these three deals, it could return a verdict of guilty.

Not so fast, said Judge Easterbrook.

Writing for a unanimous court, Judge Easterbrook noted that, indeed, the trial judge’s instructions to the jury supported a conviction “even if [the jury] found that his only request of Sen. Obama was for a position in the Cabinet.” But not all the Governor’s proposals were the same. According to the court, “[A] proposal to trade one public act for another, a form of logrolling, is fundamentally unlike the swap of an official act for a private payment.”

In other words, swapping one policy for another is a political commonplace. “Governance would hardly be possible without these accommodations,” the court went on to observe.

Rudy Giuliani.

INVESTIGATING CORRUPTION IS—AND SHOULD BE—POLICY

To be sure, some folks may disagree with the President’s foreign policy, but elections matter in a representative democracy, and President Trump was duly elected. Whether or not you agree with his politics, he has been elected to do a job: govern.

So let’s suppose—strictly for the sake of argument—that the President did withhold foreign aid to Ukraine in exchange for a commitment to investigate allegations of corruption. This is, quite literally, the exchange of one policy for another—horse-trading in every sense. Does the United States have no policy interest in making sure that the countries with which it interacts—and to which it sends aid money—do not engage in corrupt practices? Of course, it does. The case for “corruption” would require that President Trump withdraw aid in exchange for personal profit—not policy gains that are ultimately good for American foreign policy.

At its core, the case for impeachment is more than a sham: it’s a misinformation campaign in which Democrats and their media are willfully ignoring the way our policy process works to prevent our President from governing.

Update (1805ET): President Trump was quick to react:

Oh no, Beto just dropped out of race for President despite him saying he was “born for this.” I don’t think so!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2019

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Having plunged from over 10% to just 1% in the PredictIt betting, former Texas congressman (and failed Texas Senate seat contender) Beto O’Rourke is dropping out of the race to become the Democratic Party’s next Presidential candidate.

Quite a collapse since he entered the 2020 primary in the middle of March with the aura of a celebrity, cheered by rank-and-file Democrats, to being among the lowest polling of the many candidates – even after very strong fundraising efforts early on.

“My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg

The New York Times reports that Mr. O’Rourke made the decision to quit the race in the middle of this week, on the eve of a gathering Friday of Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa, according to people familiar with his thinking. He is not expected to run for any other office in 2020, despite persistent efforts by party leaders and political donors to coax him into another bid for the Senate.

A spokesman to Mr. O’Rourke reiterated that stance on Friday.

“Beto will not be a candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas in 2020,” said Rob Friedlander, an aide to Mr. O’Rourke.

His campaign has been under extreme financial strain, and Mr. O’Rourke’s advisers concluded that proceeding in the race might have meant making deep cuts to his staff in order to pay for advertising and other measures to compete in the early primary and caucus state.

What will the media do now that their once-favorite is gone?

But in a recent interview with Politico, Mr. O’Rourke said that if he did not prevail in the 2020 presidential primary he would not become a candidate again.

“I cannot fathom a scenario where I would run for public office again if I’m not the nominee,” Mr. O’Rourke said last month.

You promise!?

Read his full statement below:

Our campaign has been about seeing clearly, speaking honestly and acting decisively in the best interests of America.

Though it is difficult to accept, it is clear to me now that this campaign does not have the means to move forward successfully. My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee. Acknowledging this now is in the best interests of those in the campaign; it is in the best interests of this party as we seek to unify around a nominee; and it is in the best interests of the country.

I decided to run for President because I believed that I could help bring a divided country together in common cause to confront the greatest set of challenges we’ve ever faced. I also knew that the most fundamental of them is fear — the fear that Donald Trump wants us to feel about one another; the very real fear that too many in this country live under; and the fear we sometimes feel when it comes to doing the right thing, especially when it runs counter to what is politically convenient or popular.

I knew, and I still know, that we can reject and overcome these fears and choose to instead be defined by our ambitions and our ability to achieve them.

I knew that we would have to be unafraid in how we ran the campaign. We’d have to run with nothing to lose. And I knew that our success would depend not on PACs or corporations but upon the grassroots volunteers and supporters from everywhere, especially from those places that had been overlooked or taken for granted.

We should be proud of what we fought for and what we were able to achieve.

Together we were able to help change what is possible when it comes to the policies that we care about and the country we want to serve. We released the first comprehensive plan to confront climate change of any of the presidential candidates; we took the boldest approach to gun safety in American history; we confronted institutional, systemic racism and called out Donald Trump for his white supremacy and the violence that he’s encouraged against communities that don’t look like, pray like or love like the majority in this country; and we were one of the first to reject all PAC money, corporate contributions, special interest donations and lobbyist help.

We proposed an economic program that focused on both equality and equity and would give every American the certainty that one job would be enough; and a healthcare plan that would guarantee that every one of us is well enough to live to our full potential.

We knew the only way our country would live up to its promise is if everyone could stand up to be counted. We released the most ambitious voter registration and voting rights plan, one that would bring 55 million new voters into our democracy, and remove barriers for those who’ve been silenced because of their race, ethnicity or the fact that they live with a disability.

We spoke with pride about El Paso and communities of immigrants. We elevated the plight and the promise of refugees and asylum seekers. And we proposed nothing short of rewriting this country’s immigration laws in our own image, to forever free from fear more than 11 million of our fellow Americans who should be able to contribute even more to our shared success.

And at this moment of truth for our country, we laid bare the cost and consequence of Donald Trump: the rise in hate crimes, the terror attack in El Paso, the perversion of the Constitution, the diminished standing of the United States around the world. But we also made clear the common responsibility to confront him, to hold him accountable and ensure that he does not serve another term in office. Committing ourselves to this task not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first before we are anything else.

I am grateful to each one of you, and to all the people who made up the heart and soul of this campaign. You were among the hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans who made a donation, signed up to volunteer or spread the word about this campaign and our opportunity to help decide the election of our lifetime.

You have been with me from the beginning, through it all. I know that you did it not for me personally, not for the Democratic Party, but for our country at this defining moment. Though today we are suspending this campaign, let us each continue our commitment to the country in whatever capacity we can.

Let us continue to fearlessly champion the issues and causes that brought us together. Whether it is ending the epidemic of gun violence or dismantling structural racism or successfully confronting climate change before it is too late, we will continue to organize and mobilize and act in the best interests of America.

We will work to ensure that the Democratic nominee is successful in defeating Donald Trump in 2020. I can tell you firsthand from having the chance to know the candidates, we will be well served by any one of them, and I’m going to be proud to support whoever that nominee is.

And proud to call them President in January 2021, because they will win.

We must support them in the race against Donald Trump and support them in their administration afterwards, do all that we can to help them heal a wounded country and bring us together in meeting the greatest set of challenges we have ever known.

I’m confident I will see you down the road, and I look forward to that day.

Thank you for making this campaign possible, and for continuing to believe that we can turn this moment of great peril into a moment of great promise for America and the world.

With you always, and forever grateful.

Beto

Maybe a little more Spanish-speaking, a little more gun-grabbing, a few more dentist appointment videos, and a little more swearing would have done the job… hey, you know what they say – 3rd time’s the charm (just ask Hillary)!

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Officials at Saudi Aramco believe that Iran used satellite maps from Google Maps to precisely attack the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in the middle of September, a U.S. Senator who visited the Kingdom after the attacks said, raising concerns that no energy infrastructure is safe.

Joe Manchin, Senator for West Virginia, visited Saudi Aramco facilities two weeks after the attacks. The U.S. Senator spoke to Aramco officials and shared part of his conversation during the North American Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Washington, as carried by the Washington Examiner.

On September 14, the Abqaiq facility and the Khurais oil field in Saudi Arabia were hit by attacks, which resulted in the temporary suspension of 5.7 million bpd of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production, or around 5 percent of global daily oil supply.

U.S. President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry all blamed Iran for the attack. Saudi Arabia has also pointed the finger at Iran.

Senator Manchin was shown a video of the missile attacks in Saudi Arabia, he said at the forum.

The Senator asked a Saudi Aramco official whether the oil giant is concerned about someone working at the facility getting the information or the coordinates of possible strikes to hostile actors.

“He looked at me and said, ‘If we thought that was a problem, we would be, but basically it’s all Google, Google Maps.’ He said, ‘It’s so accurate,’” the Senator said, as carried by Washington Examiner.

The revelation that clear images on Google Maps can help terrorists target oil and gas facilities had Senator Manchin worried about the state of the U.S. energy infrastructure, especially natural gas pipelines.

An attack on a single natural gas pipeline in the United States could lead to mass blackouts, Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), said last month, discussing America’s energy infrastructure in the aftermath of the attacks in Saudi Arabia.  

In an interview with the Financial Times, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he’s not ready to kneel down and accept Goldman Sachs’s first offer in its attempt to settle a civil case stemming from the bank’s involvement in the 1MDB scandal, one of the biggest financial frauds to rock the region in modern history.

As was rumored in earlier reports, Goldman offered Malaysia “less than $2 billion” to settle the suit. In a series of three bond offerings, Goldman raised $6.5 billion for 1MDB, a sovereign wealth fund that was supposed to finance major public works projects across Malaysia.

But the money never made it that far.

A group of senior government officials, including former Prime Minister Najib Razak, led by shadowy financier Jho Low, looted billions from 1MDB and hid it from the people of Malaysia. How much did they take? The DoJ put the number at $4 billion; Malaysia believes its closer to $6 billion.

Mahathir Mohamad

Mohamad said that Malaysia’s negotiators (led by AG Tommy Thomas) are still talking with Goldman.

“Goldman Sachs has offered something like less than $2bn,” Mahathir Mohamad told the Financial Times in an interview on Friday. “We are not satisfied with that amount so we are still talking to them…If they respond reasonably we might not insist on getting that $7.5bn.”

And he’s not stopping there. Mohamad said Malaysia has also reached out to DB and UBS over their involvement with 1MDB, as it strives to work with whatever banks it can to recoup any money stolen from 1MDB. DB has also found itself caught up in the criminal end of the scandal: Malaysia is investigating the recidivist German lender over whether it violated AML statutes while raising $1.2 billion for 1MDB back in 2014 (a deal that came after offerings underwritten by Goldman). UBS has been reprimanded by the Swiss government over transactions related to 1MDB that the bank helped facilitate.

Goldman earned more than $600 million in fees from the 1MDB deal, and Malaysia has made it clear that it wants every cent of that money returned.

But US prosecutors have already seized billions of dollars in assets pertaining to the case. On Thursday, reports emerged claiming that Low, now a fugitive believed to be hiding in China under the Communist Party’s protection, has settled a flurry of civil suits with the DoJ, agreeing to hand over more than $900 million. Mohamad said Malaysia isn’t in contact with Low, who admitted no guilt in his deal with the US. Malaysia doesn’t know where Low is: “He’s not staying in any one place.”

“The amount [Mr Low embezzled from 1MDB] is much bigger,” said Mr Mahathir. “If he had the full amount we would be very happy…We are still going after the rest of the money.”

“The DoJ has indicated that, if we can prove claim of ownership, then we will be able to get the money for ourselves.”

Goldman’s strong earnings over the past two quarters have helped ease investors’ worries about 1MDB, and the scandal has largely faded into the background since late last year, when revelations that senior Goldman execs, including Lloyd Blankfein, had personally intervened to greenlight the 1MDB deals despite numerous red flags from compliance. But we imagine that many insiders are waiting for the next shoe to drop. Right now, prosecutors have the leverage. Goldman just might get stuck paying the bulk of Malaysia’s ask.

Both Malaysia and the US have accused senior Goldman bankers of bribing corrupt Malaysian politicians to secure the bond deal business for the bank.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances and your prosperity.

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Appeals court overturns child pornography conviction because criminal is transgender

Right up front– to be absolutely clear, we have absolutely no issues whatsoever about the personal decisions that people make in their lives.

We couldn’t care less if someone chooses to identify as a seedless watermelon, and we support anyone’s right to be whoever they want to be.

But a person’s right to self-identify shouldn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights. And that’s where today’s identity politics really become completely ridiculous.

Here’s a great example–

In January 2016, an Australian male-to-female transgender person was caught with child pornography on her phone.

Now, possession of child pornography is a serious crime anywhere, especially in Australia where it carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

But the woman received an unbelievably light sentence– just two years of probation.

Shockingly, the woman appealed the punishment. And the appeals court ruled that even the two-year probation was too harsh because the woman was confused about her gender identity at the time of the crime.

Allow me to be blunt: this person was in possession of child pornography– images of boys as young as FIVE posing naked or engaging in intercourse.

But in Australia, being confused about your gender apparently justifies the exploitation of children.

Click here to read the judge’s opinion.

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College conference names biological male their female athlete of the week

An affiliate of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) called the Big Sky Conference named a biological male as their female athlete of the week.

The student is now called June Eastwood, and placed second in a recent women’s cross country race.

But the same student was dominating the mens’ cross country courses as little as two years ago as Jonathan Eastwood.

The NCAA has no minimum standard for the amount of testosterone in an athlete’s system when they compete in the women’s category. For the NCAA, anything goes: as long as the student says they are female, the athletic association allows them to compete as a woman.

You can be male today, and compete as a female tomorrow, and set every world record in the sport overnight..

This is just the latest in a string of incidents we have been highlighting where biological men are dominating women’s sports like weightlifting, cycling, and running.

Click here to read the full story.

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Another school suspends student for picture with a gun

A 17 year old high school girl posed with her Army veteran brother for a Snapchat picture.

In it, they held up guns, and flipped off the camera– a gesture meant towards the brother’s enemy in combat, she said.

This, of course, happened outside of school, on her own time. Nothing depicted was illegal.  The photo and caption made no reference to the teen’s school or violence in any way.

But school officials said they got complaints from students and parents who feared that the girl would do something violent. So the school suspended her for five days.

Click here to read the full story.

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Equifax used “admin” as username and password

Do you remember the giant Equifax data breach? In September 2017,  Equifax announced a that the personal information of 147 million people had been stolen by hackers.

It turns out that Equifax was completely hapless in its security; in fact the company’s head of cybersecurity was an ex-musician who had little IT training or experience.

Now we’ve found out from court documents (Equifax has been sued by EVERYONE) that the  company used the word “admin” as both the username and password for a portal which stored sensitive information.

Equifax also used an unencrypted, public-facing server to store sensitive personal information.

And when they did encrypt data, they left the key in the open so that it could be easily stolen.

Their security would be absurdly relaxed for a coffee shop, let alone a company that deals with the most sensitive possible personal and financial information of hundreds of millions of people.

Click here to see the court documents for yourself.

Economic issues have always been an important factor in American elections. After all, people who feel prosperous typically want things to continue just as they are, and electing a new leader might feel like rocking the boat.

So far, President Trump has shined when it comes to economic issues, according to most public opinion polling. And he’s taken steps to ensure the good times never end, like browbeating the Fed into changing course and bringing interest rates back down.

President Trump’s tax plan had a different impact depending on factors like whether you own property and where the property is located. But does the average American really feel that much different? To try and find out, BankRate.com did a  study and found that most people believe their financial situation hasn’t changed all that much.

As far as what issues matter most to voters in the upcoming election, most said health care and employment.

Still, when asked who they credit for the 10-year run of economic growth that followed the financial crisis, most respondents to the Bank Rate survey said Trump.

While most young people have struggled to build wealth in the aftermath of the crisis, BankRate found that, unsurprisingly, people who were already wealthy have fared better over the past 10 years.

 

In keeping with other evidence showing that millennials are still struggling with the aftermath of the recession, millennial respondents to the survey expressed the most concern about their financial position, when compared with Gen X and Boomers.

Perhaps the 2010s will fare better for them. Though with banks already bracing for another downturn, it’s possible that the coming years could be some of the most difficult in a decade.