Quick Read

Emily Barger on NowThis

“Youth media” is more concerned with Democrats than with minorities on the Supreme Court.

By Justin Katz | February 4, 2022 |

Accuracy in Media gave me some space to express frustration with the dishonesty of a video from NowThis that attempts to cover for Joe Biden’s pledge to pick the next Supreme Court justice from a narrow demographic: NowThis is lying to its young audience when it claims that “conservatives are freaking out at the idea of a…

Justine Caldwell, House Education, 2/2/22

Representative Caldwell and Senator Mack are lying to their colleagues and to Rhode Island about sex ed.

By Justin Katz | February 4, 2022 |

About one hour and fifty-five minutes into Wednesday’s hearing of the Rhode Island House Education Committee, Democrat Representative Justine Caldwell (East and West Greenwich) jumped in with her cat from the comfort of her home to ask Democrat Senator Tiara Mack (Providence) a question about “pleasure-based sex education” legislation, of which Mack is obviously a…

Child on computer in parents' bed

Be careful about assuming causation.

By Justin Katz | February 3, 2022 |

That advice has been coming to mind a lot recently. For instance, defending his support for the child-grooming bill, Democrat Representative Brandon Potter (Cranston), asserts that about one-quarter of youth suicides are sexual minorities.  He doesn’t provide a source for his claim, but let’s stipulate that the statistic might be true.  It still doesn’t tell…

A drowning person's hand

We’re on a dangerous path with Whoopi Goldberg’s suspension.

By Justin Katz | February 3, 2022 |

She slipped up and exposed the direction of the narrative before all of the necessary special interests were pinned down.  Wokism, intersectionality, anti-racism, proclamations about “white supremacy”… in all of these variations on the theme, whiteness is bad, whiteness is everywhere, and racism only goes one way.  People of European descent are white; Jews are…

John Kerry on NowThis

Is Kerry on NowThis a sign of progressive decay?

By Justin Katz | February 2, 2022 |

The world’s got trouble!  With a capital T, and that rhymes with C, and that stands for “coal.” My obvious reference to a once-famous song from The Music Man is tuned to have just about as much appeal to a young audience as a characteristically droning video clip from John Kerry about the need for — you…

Painting of a forest monster.

Beware the embodiment of the Science “Egregore.”

By Justin Katz | February 1, 2022 |

Anchor Rising doesn’t often dabble in occult topics, but Max Borders brought the concept of Egregores to my attention, and it’s one of those ideas that is practical whether taken as a merely mythic representation or a factual supernatural force. Let’s note, first, that Borders’s essay is timely and worth reading for a variety of…

A medical mask on the sidewalk

We’re sure to see many studies about the lunacy of lockdowns.

By Justin Katz | February 1, 2022 |

Johns Hopkins is an early example: A new working paper from Johns Hopkins University’s “Studies in Applied Economics” institute claims that COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by a variety of governments worldwide had “little to no effect” on COVID-19 mortality. The study, conducted by three professors from around the world, also found that lockdowns “imposed enormous economic…

Two different scales

The healthcare bureaucracy really is dragging us to the point of pitchforks.

By Justin Katz | February 1, 2022 |

Don’t miss the fact that this was published in The Atlantic by a senior fellow at the progressive Brookings Institution, Shadi Hamid: The racial disparities in COVID outcomes are a matter of record, but to suggest that race causes these negative outcomes is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. This is how facts,…

Palette of moving boxes on a truck lift

Whatever Americans’ reasons for moving, they aren’t coming to Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | January 31, 2022 |

Writing for J&S Transportation, Travis Van Slooten tries to understand why Americans have moved during the pandemic. To start with, though, we should probably think about why they have not: A lot of attention has been focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected moving trends in the U.S. While some use terms like exodus when…

Luca Signorelli, The Preaching of the Antichrist

Don’t Ivy League professors understand the power of ideas implicitly?

By Justin Katz | January 31, 2022 |

Brown sociology professor Hilary LevyFriedman presents us with an interesting philosophical and sociological question: Like, seriously: “Not a single kid has died in a mass reading, yet they’re banning books instead of guns.” As far as I can tell, the quoted text is an uncited retweet of BlackKnight10k, whose deep insight has had a healthy…