the Revision Division

DANA WHITE on the Wussification of America.

White fondly recalled a time in America when kids lived a freer and less bubble-wrapped existence. “I used to not wear seat belts in the car,” the fight promoter relayed. “I used to sleep in the back window on long trips. I rode my bike without a helmet. I made it. I’m alive. This is ridiculous.”

The jovial White held court in a marathon session with journalists on Thursday afternoon after fighters in his promotion had spoken to the press for about an hour. White’s conversation stemmed in part from New York’s decision to block the UFC and other mixed-martial arts promotions from staging sanctioned contests and the legislation supported by five New York assemblymen to ban youth football for children under fourteen. With a couple of kids playing the sport, and his enjoyment watching their games despite freezing in the cold like every other parent, the skilled pitchman takes such assaults on a sport that he never played a bit personally.

“But to get rid of youth football?” White asked. “It’s ridiculous. It’s insane.”

Earlier: NY Pols Seek Youth Football Ban.

Also earlier: Long Island Middle School Bans Footballs, Other Recreational Items.

ALL CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND: New York school phasing out ‘gifted’ program because it has too few minority students.

NYDailyNews.com reports that Public School 139 Principal Mary McDonald recently decided that her school will phase out its gifted program for incoming kindergartners because it lacks “diversity.”

In other (non-politically correct) words, too many students in the gifted program are white, and that offends McDonald’s sensibilities and her quest for classroom populations that – as she put it in a letter to parents – “reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in.”

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Thirty-Six-Pound Cat Found In Arizona.

STEVE SAILER: Feminism: “Feelings / Nothing more than Feelings”.

From The Nation, an article about how black feminists scream at white feminists and then other white feminists pile on those vicious racist white feminists. And how “trans” feminists can get very, very upset at the Vagina Monologues-type feminists who actually have vaginas. . . .

Reading this more closely, I realize I may have gotten this backward. The protesters may be individuals who have vaginas but are objecting to the cultural stereotypes that encode vaginas as being — in some arbitrary socially constructed sense — female.

“Given the constant genital policing, you can’t expect trans folks to feel included by an event title focused on a policed, binary genital,” tweeted @DrJaneChi, an abortion and transgender health provider. (She mentioned “internal genitals” as an alternative.) When Plimpton insisted that she would continue to say “vagina,” her feed filled up with indignation. “So you’re really committed to doubling down on using a term that you’ve been told many times is exclusionary & harmful?” asked one self-described intersectional feminist blogger.

World War T trumps all others for ferocity and wackiness.

DON’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT: Man found guilty of selling legal products in a legal manner. Actual headline: “Jury Finds Terry Honeycutt Guilty Of 11 Of 14 Counts Of Selling Meth-Making Materials”. He sold iodine.

It seems that Honeycutt was the one who tipped himself off to the authorities:

In 2008, Honeycutt called authorities first before they began to watch him; he had a growing hunch that this iodine was being purchased for meth, and he wanted help in doing the right thing.

“Terry tried to make suggestions. Terry tried to ask for regulations,” said his defense attorney. “He was willing to completely quit selling it.”

Honeycutt, who is salaried with no ownership in the store, theoretically gained nothing from the profit — $270,000, to be exact — that came from Polar Pure sales. And on the day law enforcement raided his store, Honeycutt, who was elsewhere, drove back to Brainerd Road to help investigators with their searching and seizing.

Lesson: Worried that you’re dealing with unsavory customers? Don’t talk to cops.

WARREN MEYER: EPA Enhancing Its Power with Sue and Settle.

Like most government officials, regulators resent having any kind of check on their power.  Just like police look for ways to conduct searches without warrants, and even the President looks for ways to rule without Congress, the EPA wants to regulate unfettered by public comment process.

The EPA has found a clever and totally scary way around this.  In short, they collude with a friendly environmental group which sues the EPA seeking certain rules that the EPA believes to be too controversial to survive the regulatory process.  The EPA settles with the friendly group, and a consent decree is issued imposing the new rules, entirely bypassing any rules-making or public comment process.  The EPA then pretends that they were “forced” into these new rules, and as a kicker, the taxpayer funds the whole thing by making large payoffs to the environmental group who initiated the suit part of the settlement.  Larry Bell describes the process.

WALKING WALLETS: Shopping with Their Ladies: The ‘Miserable Men’ of Instagram. Don’t let this happen to you.

LIQUID COURAGE IRRESPONSIBILITY: In Hookups, Alcohol Is College Students’ Best Friend. “A recent study published in the Journal of Sex Research sheds some light on these questions. A research team headed by Jennifer Walsh analyzed alcohol use in almost 500 casual and 1400 romantic sexual intercourse events that happened to 300 college women on a monthly basis over a period of 12 months. Alcohol use was not very common during romantic sex: 20% of romantic encounters involved some drinking and only 5% involved heavy drinking (defined as four or more drinks). Hookups, on the other hand, were a different story: Women drank during 53% of their hookups, and drank heavily during 38% of all hookups.”

“Sexual intercourse events that happened to . . . women”? Aren’t they responsible for what they do?

THE TSA IS A FRAUD? We’re Shocked, SHOCKED!

So the TSA finally has been officially outed by one of its former employees. Yes, the agency is a joke, and everyone working there knows it. The TSA has not prevented any terrorist attacks, nor are TSA agents “on the front lines of fighting terrorism” no matter what rhetoric we hear from Washington and members of Congress, as well as from the sycophants working for President Obama.

No, Rape-a-Scan was little more than a radiation-spewing device aimed at making the public believe that the TSA was Johnny-on-the-Spot when everyone from the executives at the company (officially called Rapiscan, but we know better than to dignify this outfit) to the TSA drone who was stuffing his hand into someone’s crotch in the name of “national security.”

Related: Former Newark Airport TSA screener says the job does little to keep fliers safe.

WELFARE FOR ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS: U.S. Taxpayers Fund $52K Study of 16 Schizophrenic LGBT Canadians.

GOOD TO KNOW: It Does Matter How You Spread Your Protein Intake – 30% Higher 24h Protein Synthesis with 30g+ Protein per Meal. “In other words: Don’t cram all your protein into one meal!”

INTRODUCING The Kronies.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Mass hack attack on Yahoo Mail accounts prompts password reset. “Attackers behind the cracking campaign used usernames and passwords that were probably collected from a compromised database belonging to an unidentified third party, according to Jay Rossiter, Yahoo senior vice president of platforms and personalization products, who wrote an advisory published Thursday. A large percentage of people use the same password to protect multiple Internet accounts, a practice that allows attackers holding credentials taken from one site to compromise accounts on other sites. There’s no evidence the passwords used in the attack came from Yahoo Systems.”

POLL: Uninsured Turn Against Obamacare.

GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE; Democrats Kill People. “What goes unmentioned about the so-called ‘gun culture’ is its pervasiveness, or lack thereof, throughout our society as a whole. Even a casual reader of local news headlines should not be shocked to learn that firearm-related homicides are more prevalent in some neighborhoods than others. However, what may be shocking is the near exclusivity of firearm-related homicides to a small subset of neighborhoods; neighborhoods that vote predominately for Democrat candidates.”

GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM: California Legalized Selling Food Made At Home And Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses.

ROBERT WEISSBERG: Self-Esteem Über Alles.

Even if we politely ignore SAT and IQ tests, most colleges already have elaborate outreach programs targeting talented minority students. It is inconceivable that an impoverished ghetto dweller with 650 on his SAT scores will slip through the cracks and instead head to the car wash. If anything, today’s colleges are overdoing it—admitting marginal black students, polishing them up with summer “bridge programs,” and supplying ample remedial academic help—even creating whole iffy academic programs such as Black Studies to manufacture diplomas.

So why the charade?

Let me suggest two explanations. Obviously, silence regarding these awkward deficiencies helps keep the peace. The poobahs, mucky-mucks, and potentates attending the White House summit know what happens to those who speak truth to power on racial differences in intelligence. Peter Brimelow aptly compared such frankness to loudly farting at a dinner party.

The second explanation largely applies to blacks plus a few whites—cognitive dissonance.

GO OUT WITH A BANG: States Consider Firing Squad as Alternative to Lethal Injection.

PATHETIC: The Irresponsible Father.

I thought this quote from a man whose daughter was seriously injured while skydiving, perfectly captures all that is wrong with the American father in our feminized society.

The girl’s parents agreed to let her perform the jump, but her father now says the skydiving company shouldn’t have allowed it.

“I don’t think she should have been allowed at 16 to go up there and perform that type of jump, no matter what I say or she says, she shouldn’t have been allowed,” Joe Wethington said at the news conference. “I find it very hard to believe that the rules and regulations in Oklahoma are that lax. I think there is a flaw there somewhere, and I don’t think it’s through the state of Oklahoma. I think it’s the company. I’m not sure.”

MAKES SENSE: National Pro-Life Groups Join Girl Scout Boycott.

John Pisciotta, head of Pro-Life Waco, has received support for the boycott from a number of national pro-life groups and leaders, including the American Life League, the Pro-Life Action League, the Radiance Foundation, LifeNews, Operation Rescue, blogger Jill Stanek, the National Black Pro-Life Union, the Issues4Life Foundation, and Life Coalition International. . . .

Pisciotta’s group launched a Girl Scout cookie boycott in Waco in 2004 as well after the Bluebonnet Girl Scout Council began co-sponsoring the Nobody’s Fool summer sex education program offered by Planned Parenthood for Waco-area teens and pre-teens.

With this sponsorship by Planned Parenthood, Pro-Life Waco states the Bluebonnet Council placed the national Girl Scout logo on the program flyer and advertisements. In addition, Girl Scout employees served as volunteers for the Nobody’s Fool program.

In 2003, Pro-Life Waco’s website recounts that the Nobody’s Fool program began distributing to girls in grades 7-9 the book It’s Perfectly Normal, which contains topics about homosexuality, masturbation, contraception, and abortion.

In May of 2003, Pro-Life Waco stated the Bluebonnet Girl Scout Council honored the CEO of Planned Parenthood Waco as a “Woman of Distinction,” an act that is echoed in the Girl Scouts’ recent declaration of late-term abortion star Texas Sen. Wendy Davis as one of the organization’s “Incredible Women of the Year.”

JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR: 43 California ACA Navigators Have Criminal Convictions, Including for Forgery and Welfare Fraud.

TODD STARNES: Chick-fil-A gives free food to motorists stranded in Southern snowstorm.

“This company is based on taking care of people and loving people before you’re worried about money or profit,” Audrey told me. “We were just trying to follow the model that we’ve all worked under for so long and the model that we’ve come to love. There was really nothing else we could have done but try to help people any way we could.” . . .

But Chick-fil-A’s generosity didn’t stop there.

“We opened up our dining room to anyone who wanted to sleep on a bench or a booth,” Audrey told me.

And this morning, the weary staff members fired up their ovens and began preparing chicken biscuits. The only thing that is closed – is Chick-fil-A’s cash register.

7 WAYS TO GIVE YOUR MAN A HOT, STEAMY ABORTION: Cosmo Promotes Four Couples Who Chose Abortion: “It Was the Humane Thing”. “Perhaps this is Cosmos’ sordid way of taking responsibility for its content the rest of the year. When your fare is dedicated to telling women how much and how good their sex should be – with a  ‘Holiday Sextacular‘ piece, hyping strip clubs to women, and labeling waiting until a second date for sex as ‘100% outdated’ – you should prepare them for possible consequences, and the feminist-left’s approved solutions to them.”

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Murders and rapes going unreported in no-go zones for police as minority communities launch own justice systems.

Parts of the UK are becoming no-go areas for police because minority communities are operating their own justice systems, according to the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. . . .

‘There are some communities born under other skies who will not involve the police at all. I am reluctant to name the communities in question, but there are communities from other cultures who would prefer to police themselves.

‘There are cities in the Midlands where the police never go because they are never called. They never hear of any trouble because the community deals with that on its own.

‘It’s not that the police are afraid to go into these areas or don’t want to go into those areas,’ he said. ‘But if the police don’t get calls for help then, of course, they won’t know what’s going on.’

Honour killings, domestic violence, sexual abuse of children and female genital mutilations are some of the offences that are believed to be unreported in some cities.

THE ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, APOSTOLIC, OPEN-BORDERS CHURCH. “Got that? The ‘first duty’ of government is not, to provide for national defense against armed invasion, nor protect its citizens from crime, not even to provide a social welfare safety net. No, it’s to facilitate the entry of any foreigner who wants to enter the country. This is actually more of the opposite of what a government should do; if it’s going to allow foreigners entry at all, then the government should be charged with strictly vetting them.”

Still waiting for the Vatican to tear down its walls.

USEFUL: Top 5 Signs That A Woman Is Using You. “There are two ways to smoke out a nascent golddigger: 1. Absolutely demand she meet you for drinks at your favorite cheap dive bar. If she balks or, worse, if she goes but sulks all night while trying to bounce you to a pricier venue, you’ll have evidence that she’s a user of losers. 2. Suggest an outrageously expensive date idea. If she jumps at the chance after having spent weeks evading your efforts to meet up with her, she plays tools for fools.”

WHAT REALLY MATTERS: Despite 47% graduation rate, Buffalo schools spend millions on teacher cosmetic surgery.

Why does this happen? Why doesn’t the district simply say they can’t afford this anymore, especially because it doesn’t contribute ANYTHING to student learning?

Two reasons: First, it’s in the collective bargaining agreement, which carries the weight of law. But secondly, the spineless school board doesn’t have the guts to impose a new contract, which the district has been negotiating for nearly 10 years.

Related: Atlanta schools silent about big spending on hotels, airlines and restaurants in fiscal 2012-13.

ADVENTURES IN EUPHEMISM: Assisted Suicide Word Engineering Propaganda. “Aid in dying.”

CLAYTON CRAMER: John Boehner Working Hard To Create The Permanent Democratic Majority.

The permanent legal status “but not citizenship” will last right until the Democrats regain control of Congress.  And that won’t take long, as large numbers of Americans (including many Democrats who are out of work) decide that there is no point in voting, because the only choice is between a party that brings in low wage workers to take away your job, and a party that brings them in to take away your job and give them voting rights. . . .

There is a real opportunity for Republicans to deliver a devastating blow to the Democrats.  Run ads through this election campaign emphasizing that the poorest working Americans have the most to lose from amnesty for illegals — that Obama represents corporations trying to get everyone crushed down to minimum wage.  But too many Republicans like Boehner represent those same big corporations that control the Democratic Party.

STEVE SAILER: NYT: “When ‘Long-Form’ Is Bad Form”.

On January 25, 2002, J. Clifford Baxter, the former chief strategy officer of Enron, shot himself in the head. This was widely viewed not as condemning but as confirming the journalists, such as Bethany McLean of Fortune, who had broken the Enron story.

Today, if the Enron executive had been wearing women’s clothes when he killed himself, there would be a full-fledged agonizing reappraisal of the journalistic inquiry into Enron. How dare anyone report that Enron was run by “conmen” when the appropriate noun is “conwomen!” Why is the press worrying about details of accounting when proper pronoun usage is all that really matters?

THOMAS SOWELL on the use of rhetoric over proper statistics.

All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians’ warning that correlation is not causation. For example the New York Times crusaded for government-provided prenatal care, citing the fact that black mothers had prenatal care less often than white mothers — and that there were higher rates of infant mortality among blacks.

But was correlation causation? American women of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry also had less prenatal care than whites — and lower rates of infant mortality than either blacks or whites.

When statistics showed that black applicants for conventional mortgage loans were turned down at twice the rate for white applicants, the media went ballistic crying racial discrimination. But whites were turned down almost twice as often as Asian Americans — and no one thinks that is racial discrimination.

It’s almost as if there’s sort of a blind spot when it comes to race.

WHY ARE WOMEN More Liberal Than Men?

The liberalism of women is as much a consequence of their reliance on government serving as husband substitute as of their inherently greater sensitivity to perceived inequality or rifts in community cohesion. This theory gains traction by the evidence that married women become less liberal, ostensibly because their provider needs are being met by a real husband and the government has assumed the role of a malevolent outsider ransacking their intact family for tax money to be distributed to other women and their children.

All’s fair in souls and shivs, but this may be only part of the story of women’s infantile harm-based liberalism.

INADVERTENT ENDORSEMENT: New York Times Slashes Pro-Life Movie: ‘Its Ideological Ferocity Is Almost Comical’.

For snobby liberal film critics, few match A.O. Scott of The New York Times. I remember giggling at this puff on PBS for a George Clooney message movie: “I liked ‘Syriana.’ I thought it was very hard to follow in a way that I found very engaging and bracing. I felt like the arguments it was making and the connections it was making were very interesting.”

So it’s no shock that Scott would slam the new pro-life movie “Gimme Shelter” on Friday as “a crude, earnest parable that uses some of the techniques of indie filmmaking to deliver a culturally conservative message.” Then he slammed it as ideologically ferocious.

Usually, the vitriol is directly proportional to the perceived threat. It looks like it might be a good movie, then.

JOHN NOLTE: Poll: Americans Don’t Care About Obama/Media Pet 2014 Issues.

When Quinnipiac asked voters “What do you think should be the top priority for President Obama and Congress in 2014?” — income inequality earned 1%, class inequality earned 1%, gun issues earned 1%, and immigration earned only 2%.

More bad news for a media desperate to further their Global Warming hoax through the dark art of portraying everyday weather as The Worst Ever, is that only 2% of the public see the environment as a priority.

Issues the American people unsurprisingly do list as top priorities are the economy (15%), jobs/unemployment (16%), and healthcare (18%). And it is in all three of those areas where Obama’s standing with the American people is in the dumpster. On the economy and healthcare, the president is upside down on approval 39-56% and 36-59% , respectively.

ANTHONY WATTS: Greenpeace disappears a founder, much like ‘The Commissar Vanishes’ in Soviet Russia.

Why would Greenpeace do such a thing, erasing a founding member?

It is likely because Dr. Patrick Moore has become a climate skeptic, and appeared in a skeptic film in 2007. . . .

And perhaps most infuriating to the greens, he advocates for improving the third world with the introduction of Golden Rice, which the GMO activists in Greenpeace see as an evil thing.

JOHN DERBYSHIRE: Anti-Gay White Russia (Boycott!), Anti-Gay Nigeria (Legacy Of Colonialism). “Among black populations, not a sparrow falls but the white man wills it.  So liberals apparently believe.”

CLAYTON CRAMER: Why You Should Never Carry In A State That Does Not Allow It.

He did not have a gun with him, and it was a good thing. One of the automated license plate readers in Maryland grabbed his Florida plate, matched it up with Florida’s concealed weapon permit files, and then the excitement started: . . .

Retreating to the space between the SUV and the unmarked car, the officer orders John to hook his thumbs behind his back and spread his feet. “You own a gun,” the officer says. “Where is it?”

“At home in my safe,” John answers.

“Don’t move,” says the officer.

Now he’s at the passenger’s window. “Your husband owns a gun,” he says. “Where is it?”

First Kally says, “I don’t know.” Retelling it later she says, “And that’s all I should have said.” Instead, attempting to be helpful, she added, “Maybe in the glove [box]. Maybe in the console. I’m scared of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I might shoot right through my foot.”

The officer came back to John. “You’re a liar. You’re lying to me. Your family says you have it. Where is the gun? Tell me where it is and we can resolve this right now.” . . .

And yes, the police state of Maryland thoroughly searched the car, separated John and his wife for 90 minutes of interrogation — and then wrote them a speeding ticket. (They say that they weren’t speeding, because they were being following by a police car, and knew it.) Maryland, being a liberal controlled state, is fascist. I can’t imagine ever driving through it. And I sure would not do it with a gun on me.

Another lesson: Don’t talk to cops.

ROBERT OSCAR LOPEZ: “Pederasty is a serious problem in the gay male community, because it is so pervasive that one could say that is integral to mainstream gay culture.”

We hear a lot about homophobia and bullying, but some researchers find that anti-bullying programs actually cause more bullying. Listening to my inner gay intuition, I’d like to suggest a reason for the latter findings.Where there are more anti-bullying programs, boys are being aroused too early by the prospects of gay sex. In some cases, as in the Minnesota anti-bullying bill, such programs actually structure and encourage contact between self-questioning boys and adult gay men. The result in the Caleb Laieski case was that gay “mentors” who were supposed to protect boys from bullying were actually sodomizing them, in effect outing them. Then they were not helping the outed boys deal with the fallout.

Now the outed boys are going to be targeted for mockery and derision even more by peers who know what happened. Added to this stress is that the boy has to deal with the callousness of the adult male who caused most of the problem.

So the indirect and unintended consequences of anti-bullying programs actually have much more power than the direct and intended results. Boys are drawn early into gay sex by the educational program itself, and they aren’t ready for it. . . .

When I say teenage boys aren’t ready for any of this, I mean they really aren’t ready. Let us note some of the recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Justice. There has been a spike in HIV infections among boys aged 13-19, and recent data showing that active gay boys in that age range are in emotionally abusive and physically abusive relationships over 40% of the time.  Here we are talking about boys who have come out of the closet, kids who have been told that openness will lead them to a magical happy place. Their straight peers and still-closeted gay peers aren’t exposed to nearly as much emotional strain or physical risk. . . .

When grown men who are thirty and older chase after teenage girls, we tend to call them predators, even if the girls have passed the age of eighteen and are “just legal.”

But for some reason, old men chasing after pubescent boys is not viewed with as much outrage, for several reasons. People tend to blame the pubescent boy because they assume that by the teenage years, if he had sex with a man, it’s because he is gay. This assumption causes most teenage boys who have found themselves in the situation to remain silent about their possible feelings that they were tricked or exploited by the older man. A certain number of them will wish they could go back on what happened, but new laws against “ex-gay therapy” are inscribing into law the notion that it’s not only unwise, but unlawful, to go back on sexual acts that they may been unfairly coaxed into.

GOOD ONE: Dianne Feinstein: NSA Would Never Abuse Its Powers Because It’s ‘Professional’.

Of course, Ed Snowden was also “vetted” and “professional.” And Feinstein seems to think he may have been working for the Russians, which seems to suggest that any of the other “vetted” and “professional” NSA employees might be abusing their position as well. And, I mean, I’m sure the NSA analysts who listened in on phone sex calls between Americans and then shared them around the office were also “vetted” and “professional.”

In fact, I’d think pretty much the entirety of human history concerning intelligence efforts suggests that abuse is almost always carried out by people who are “vetted” and “professional.” And that’s exactly what has most people so concerned about these programs and what the NSA is doing. No matter how well-meaning, well-trained or well-vetted people are, the temptation and ability for abuse is way too strong.

JANET BLOOMFIELD: The problem with Wendy Davis is not that she’s a terrible mother, a gold-digging, possibly violent, drug taking tramp who used her husband as an ATM machine – the problem is that she’s a liar.

She didn’t raise her children. She gave birth to them. Her motherhood was purely biological. Husband 2.0 raised those kids. Why not celebrate that? Look, ladies, you too can form a partnership with a man in which he cares for the children while you scrabble up the ladder! . . .

If Wendy pranced on the national stage proud of her accomplishments, and was completely open and honest about how she achieved them, I would still think she was an awful person, but I would give her points for being honest.

Instead, she has obfuscated, omitted and outright lied.

That tells me Wendy is ashamed of her past. She knows it’s something to hide. She knows the truth about herself is kind of ugly and awful and mean.

And if Wendy thinks she’s awful, then why the hell shouldn’t everyone else?

NUCLEAR OPTION: Lawmakers Consider Preventing ALL Marriage In Oklahoma.

STEVE SAILER: World War T.

Grantland.com, Bill Simmons’s boutique SWPL sports-journalism website within ESPN, is now being widely denounced for “transphobia” after running a terrific piece of long-form investigative reporting by a young freelancer named Caleb Hannan: “Dr. V’s Magical Putter: The remarkable story behind a mysterious inventor who built a ‘scientifically superior’ golf club.”

You may wonder why World War T seems to have broken out first on the sports page. Yet there’s a reason why run-of-the-mill sportswriters have long been among the most dopily politically correct for years. Political correctness is a war on noticing, and it’s harder to not notice patterns when watching sports than almost anywhere else in life. If you turn on ESPN, you’ll notice that on average, blacks can outjump and outsprint whites, that straight men and lesbian women like sports far more than do gay men and straight women, and that men are much better than women at sports. Indeed, the rare transgender sportsman tends to make a farce out of the Plessy v. Ferguson world of women’s sports. Hence, mediocre sportswriters have often been among the most militant enemies of noticing.

Simmons, though, is perhaps the best sportswriter of the Internet era precisely because he’s a terrific pattern recognizer. He doesn’t go into locker rooms to ask what pitch the slugger hit. Instead he inhales information from numerous sources and checks the implications against the other sources. But that independence of mind also means that Simmons is always in some danger of being ratted out as a closet crimethinker.

Related: Bullying and Projection.

PATTERICO: Why Big Media Is Better Than Mere Bloggers. “They have the guts and judgment necessary to interrupt a Congresswoman discussing the NSA’s phone data program, so that the network can cover Real Breaking News about Justin Bieber.” No kidding. Video at the link.

MICHAEL MCSHANE: Some things you should know about education spending. “We don’t know how much a K-12 education costs. We know how much we spend on education, sure, but we don’t know how much it actually costs. This happens because schools (traditional public or charter) spend all of the money we give them. There is no incentive for them to get $7,500 per student per year and only spend $5,000 of it. Similarly there is no incentive for parents to try and find a school that teaches their child for less than what the public will pay for it; they’d just be leaving money on the table. As a result, school budgets expand to spend every penny, and what is essential to providing a quality education and what is not becomes a lot less clear.”

SUNSHINE MARY: Is feminism ever useful and justified?

Why does it sometimes seem like feminism has done something beneficial for women? Here is why that is so: feminists are rather clever at co-opting an issue that another group (usually a Christian group) has already been addressing. Once the other group has fought the hard battle and begun to see some success, then suddenly the feminists come swooping in. They do this not to solve the issue but rather so that they can take credit for what others have already done to help women and so that they can then indoctrinate those women into the feminist cause.

Interestingly, just yesterday, Judgy Bitch, a female men’s rights activist, wrote about a similar subject, in which she lists five things that she believes feminism has accomplished. She then quite logically asks why men have not been afforded any of these same benefits. However, I think Mrs. JB gives way too much credit to feminists, in that most of the good things she lists are not their handiwork.

ED WHELAN: Big Procedural Victory for Little Sisters of the Poor.

IF SO, BAD IDEA: Mark Steyn Out At NATIONAL REVIEW?

Steyn supposedly hasn’t been fired because of NR‘s cowardice over race and immigration, but just over NR‘s cowardice in general—he was reacting too bravely to a libel suit over global warming.

On his own site, Steyn writes [Trial, and Error, January 22, 2014]

“As readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team. The lesson of the last year is that you win a free-speech case not by adopting a don’t-rock-the-boat, keep-mum, narrow procedural posture but by fighting it in the open, in the bracing air and cleansing sunlight of truth and justice.”

Our experience at VDARE.com suggests that that’s not NR‘s style.

NO CONSEQUENCES: Woman spared jail after luring man to ‘humiliating’ torture.

Chantelle McCluney laid a honeytrap for the victim when she invited him round to her flat in Harpurhey, Manchester, for group sex. But during the liaison with McCluney and her boyfriend Craig Hogan, another of her lovers – Andrew Doyle – turned up to exact revenge on the victim over an earlier disagreement.

Manchester crown court heard how McCluney laughed as the victim was subjected to ‘inhuman’ and ‘humiliating’ torture. The man – who has not been named – was tied to a chair, kicked, punched, forced to drink bleach, burned with a flamethrower, dunked in a urine-filled mop bucket, robbed and forced to stand naked on a balcony. . . .

Despite admitting false imprisonment, McCluney, 23, was spared jail after the judge concluded she had been under the control and influence of Hogan and Doyle.

Ah yes, the “I’m a woman” defense.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Do We Systematically Underestimate the Energetic Costs of Push-Ups, Pull Ups, Squats & Co? Study Says Anaerobic Exercises Burn 2x More Energy Than Previously Thought.

SURPRISE! Husband of MTV Star Found Out His Child Was Aborted From a TV Commercial.