Minority leader in twilight
A day after calling on Senate Republicans to give Supreme Court nominee Merrick B. Garland a hearing before the end of the year, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called on the majority party to follow the “Biden rule.”
In 1992, a presidential election year, then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., who was serving as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, took to the Senate floor to make an impassioned speech about how Democrats should block any potential Supreme Court nominee by then-President George H.W. Bush.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over,” he said.
In recent years, he has been one of several Democrats to make such statements during Republican presidencies.
Now the shoe’s on the other foot, and the vice president’s party thinks differently. But fumble-tongued Reid apparently was confused about what the “Biden rule” is.
Asked by a reporter outside the U.S. Capitol what Democrats should do about it, he said they should “follow it.”
Reid is retiring at the end of this year. Both parties may be breathing a sigh of relief.
‘Gray Lady’ down
The New York Times made its choice for president in 2016 more clear last week when it edited a news story on Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., after publication, changing it from a positive to negative tone and drawing the wrath of even the “gray lady’s” own public editor.
The original story, titled “Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years via Legislative Side Doors,” went from “glowing,” according to Margaret Sullivan, to “disparaging.” The headline was even changed to “Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories.”
Two paragraphs also were added to the story without an explanation to readers, but they noticed.
“The changes didn’t go unnoticed,” Sullivan wrote. “Hundreds of Times readers expressed their disappointment or anger in emails to me as well as on Twitter and Facebook. Many saw these changes as evidence that The Times strongly favors Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy.”
The Times already had endorsed Clinton, but, of course, the news pages are expected to be free of bias.
“The changes to this story were so substantive,” Sullivan wrote, “that a reader who saw the piece when it first went up might come away with a very different sense of Mr. Sanders’s legislative accomplishments than one who saw it hours later.”
Indoctrination training
Today’s first-grade field trip: a Black Lives Matter march.
That’s what happened with classes at Central Park School for Children in Durham, N.C., last week. The public school, which describes itself as a “child-centered, progressive charter school,” gave its teachers the option to take their classes to the march, but it did not give parents a choice, according to the Daily Caller.
The school is largely white, according to the news site, but is run by radical leftists. In this case, the school apparently wanted its impressionable students to be subject to a particular worldview that, to date, has existed more to divide than unite.
Among those who signed up her group of 6-year-olds was Staf Bernal-Martinez, who describes herself as a “radical queer progressive educator” and a “white-passing Xicana.”
Perhaps the school was just trying to live up to its principles, “that children are naturally full of life, power and confidence; that the best available research should guide our methods; and that children develop best in a community where curiosity, challenges and learning are valued.” Indeed, the youngsters were likely to have observed some people with “power and confidence,” but they may have some “curiosity” about what they learned.
Not easy being green
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day last week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared that the Celtic cross is a modern symbol of hate and somehow tied to the Donald Trump campaign.
In a St. Patrick’s Day tweet, the ADL, quoting itself from a Gawker story, said, “The Celtic Cross is one of the most ‘commonly used white supremacist symbols.'” With the tweet, the organization included a photo of a woman with a Celtic cross tattoo and a bumper sticker on her laptop computer supporting Trump.
Unfortunately, unless one knew the Gawker story existed, those seeing the tweet may believe just what was written – that all Celtic crosses are used by a hate group.
In the original Gawker story, the ADL’s Mark Pitcavage notes that traditionally the Celtic cross “is an ancient and revered Christian symbol.” However, he said one particular version – known as Odin’s cross – “has become one of the most popular white supremacist symbols around.”
But that’s not the message readers got from the organization’s tweet, which probably only served to confuse St. Patrick’s Day revelers about a perfectly acceptable symbol.