THE JEWS WHO DIDN’T LEAVE EGYPT:

This weekend, millions of people will sit around Seder tables and memorialize the exodus of the Jews from Egypt.

Guided by the Haggadah, or Passover text—one of the most popular Jewish books ever written—Seder participants are led along in a series of prayers, texts, and activities. We talk and talk and talk about the miracle of liberation; we parse the details of its unfolding, enumerating the many miracles involved; we go over whether we are supposed to commemorate the blessing of freedom only in this life or also in the next one; we assert in words and song the gratitude we feel for being the lucky descendants of those who escaped from slavery.

One thing we do not generally discuss, however, are the Jews who didn’t leave.

Read the whole thing.

BASKIN-ROBBINS’ SHOCKING NEW RE-BRANDING CAMPAIGN:

In a shocking move, mega-ice cream seller Baskin-Robbins has re-branded itself for 2022 — and neglected to include any obnoxious, in-your-face woke themes in its new marketing! No parade of rainbow creatures, no pant-suited feminist mascots, no underdogs bravely standing up to America’s racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, xenophobic system. There’s nary a victim nor a woke hero to be seen. It’s almost eerie.

Almost as inexcusably, the re-launched branding is relentlessly positive. The new campaign — the first in 20 years for the 77-year-old company — is called “Seize the Yay.” It focuses on celebrating the myriad joys of ordinary life. In a press release, Baskin-Robbins explains:

Made your bed? That’s a reason to celebrate. Put on pants with actual buttons? There’s another! Legendary ice cream brand, Baskin-Robbins is celebrating the happiness ice cream brings to every moment with a refresh of the iconic brand’s logo, packaging, employee uniforms and tagline encouraging customers to “Seize the Yay” – appreciating every moment, no matter how big or small.

The absolute gall of these people! Don’t they realize that somewhere, a transgender first-grader isn’t being celebrated zealously enough by xir 6-year-old peers? That black people were enslaved and mistreated? That there are billions of poor people in the world who have yet to be welcomed into the United States and given free smartphones, medical care, food, education, and housing? That white supremacists lurk around every corner, COVID still exists, mean tweets might be a thing again, and there’s a buzzsaw of a war on the other side of the world that we aren’t yet tossing our kids into??? How dare Baskin-Robbins be so innocently cheerful!

“Made your bed?” What is this crazy vast right-wing conspiracy dog-whistle callback to Jordan Peterson?!

Related: At long last, the woke spell is being broken.

ED MORRISSEY: He is risen, indeed: A happy and blessed Easter to our readers!

TAKING THE LIBERTY OF BRAGGING A LITTLE: Here’s a picture of the new Sen. Fred Thompson Courthouse in the Middle District of Tennessee. My architect brother Laurance did the design consulting with architect Michael Graves and was the Advisor of Design and Construction for GSA and the Administrative Office of the US Courts.

In short, he made it all happen, and I couldn’t be more proud.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Instant Read Meat Thermometer for Cooking. #CommissionEarned

IT’S COME TO THIS: Trans doctor who helps teens transition says it’s now ‘gone too far.’

FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MALE-IDENTIFYING PERSON: A Professor Was Punished For Refusing To Use Preferred Pronouns. He Sued And Just Settled For $400K.

BUT OF COURSE: President Biden Made More Money in 2021 Than in 2020 and Gave 50% Less to Charity, But Paid Less Taxes.

WELL, JEN PSAKI HAS ALWAYS BEEN TERRIBLE: Psaki bombs in attempt to explain classless attack on FNC’s Doocy.

STANDING UP FOR SCIENCE: Lawsuit seeks to overturn renewed Philadelphia mask mandate.

IS JESUS’ RESURRECTION HISTORICALLY DOCUMENTED? Scott Powell of the Discovery Institute — the author of “Rediscovering America,” which is doing quite well on Amazon these days — makes a sterling case in the affirmative.

Check it out on HillFaith this Easter morning, along with an offer of a free copy of “More Than A Carpenter,” Josh and Sean McDowell’s evidentiary classic that has been read by millions of people around the world. And have a happy Easter, He is risen!

PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “A big and very active sunspot complex emerged over the sun’s northeastern limb yesterday. It has already produced an X1-class solar flare. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast on April 17th at 03:34 UT.”

At least this means we’re probably safe from another Maunder Minimum.

WEIRD THAT THE FBI HASN’T INFILTRATED THESE FOLKS AND CHARGED THEM WITH SOMETHING: Andy Ngo shares videos of protesters in G.R. Mich. outside Kid Rock concert, attempting to enter hotel & threatening drivers.

GOT WOKE, GOING BROKE: Seattle’s transit system struggles as riders refuse to pay. “By one measurement, as many as a staggering 70% of all passengers are free riders. But even that is only an estimate as there is almost no fare enforcement. Sound Transit did away with fare enforcement officers after a study revealed people of color were disproportionately getting fined. Instead, the system now relies on fare ambassadors. There are only a handful for the whole light rail system, so riders will rarely encounter them. They currently engage only 2% of all riders. When fare ambassadors do board a train, they ask passengers if they have paid their fare. Most have not. But instead of removing fare evaders from the train, fare ambassadors ask a series of questions starting with a request for identification. About 76% of the free-riding passengers refuse to produce valid ID, which makes it impossible to issue a warning. Sound Transit allows two warnings before even the first fine is issued. But with so few people providing identification, fines are infrequently given and even more rarely paid.”

TO BE FAIR, THAT WAS THEIR GOAL ALL ALONG: White House Report Card: Biden has put America in reverse.

This week’s White House Report Card finds that President Joe Biden, in just over a year, has changed the direction of the nation, shifting it into reverse.

Ignoring his Republican critics, Democrats are now wincing at crushing inflation and high interest rates that are erasing wage gains, putting homeownership and retirement further away for many, and making it harder for some to fill kitchen cupboards.

And even Democrats are rapping his no-border immigration policies that have seen the president let in over 1.5 million illegal migrants. Just this week, his administration resumed flying illegal immigrants into communities under the cover of darkness.

Polls show his policies are unpopular. The Quinnipiac University National Poll put his approval rating at 33% this week. And the scandal involving son Hunter Biden is starting to splatter on the president’s shoes.

As it should.

TWITTER AND THE WAR OF OLIGARCHS:

Those fretting about the world’s wealthiest man gaining control over their favorite site have scarcely objected to the fact that the media outlets, think tanks, NGOs, and universities they work for comprise a patronage network bankrolled by a handful of other billionaires like eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Musk has done a service by exposing the function Twitter performs for this alliance of oligarchs and the professional classes, which Michael Lind terms “Progressivism, Inc.”

Plus:

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich elaborated this position more fully at The Guardian. Musk’s free-speech agenda, he argued, would fulfill “the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue, and modern-day robber baron on earth.” This is because relaxation of controls over expression would allow the internet to be “dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science, or the common good.”

What Reich left unstated is to whom Musk and the like are accountable under the current censorious dispensation. The implicit answer is “experts” like himself, who have managed to claw back a certain amount of power over the internet in the past half-decade by prevailing upon major digital platforms to censor and ban. Reich is partly telling the truth when he states, “This is not about freedom. It’s about power.”

“We are fighting over which billionaire is more beneficial to our common life.”

Musk’s promise to end Twitter’s heavy-handed speech regime directly threatens the power of Reich’s own class of educated professionals, which depends on being able to silence dissenters and suppress narratives that conflict with their own.

Which is ultimately what the chattering class’s meltdown is all about:

As Glenn Greenwald tweeted, Thursday “was a flagship day in corporate media. It was the day they were forced to explicitly state what has long been clear: they not only favor censorship but desperately crave and depend on it. Even if Musk doesn’t buy Twitter, never forget what [Thursday] revealed.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: ANCEL FX2000 Enhanced Four-System Diagnostic Scanner. #CommissionEarned

WE DID NOT GET INTO OUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT OVERNIGHT: The Lawyers’ War on Law.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Under Federal Scrutiny, NYU Law School Faces Uproar Over Anti-Semitism.

New York University School of Law may be legally obligated to punish some of its star students after nearly a dozen student groups signed a statement that defended terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and bemoaned the “Zionist grip on the media.”

The statement, drafted by NYU Law School’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, has elicited harassment complaints from Jewish students who say that the letter—and some of the responses it sparked from students—constituted vicious anti-Semitic attacks.

“The Zionist grip on the media is omnipresent,” the statement read. “Palestinians are not obligated to engage in racialized ‘nonviolence’ theory and wait around for a United Nations action that will never come as their homes are taken from them.”

Several students who signed and organized the statement are attending the law school on scholarship as part of the Root-Tilden-Kern Program, widely considered the most prestigious public interest law scholarship in the country. The scholarship’s winners have gone on to hold federal office: They include Lamar Alexander, a U.S. senator and former secretary of education, and Jenny Yang, who served as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during former president Barack Obama’s second term.

Current scholars include Zaynab Said, who signed on behalf of NYU’s Black Allied Law Students Association; Maya Goldman, who signed on behalf of the Disablility Allied Law Students Association; Yosmin Badie, who sits on the board of NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine; and Allison Hrabar, who signed with the valediction, “from the river to the sea”—a call for the elimination of Israel.

NYU may have no choice but to punish these students because the university in 2020 agreed to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward anti-Semitism as part of a settlement with the Department of Education’s civil rights office, which was investigating a string of anti-Semitic incidents at the elite scool. The agreement obligates NYU to “take all necessary actions, including pursuant to its student discipline process,” to address anti-Semitism on campus. Should the Biden administration decide to enforce the terms of that agreement, inaction could jeopardize NYU’s federal funding under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Related: Pushing back against the Corbynization of the Democratic Party: Group launches ‘#EndJewHate’ national billboard campaign to denounce antisemitism. Including this hotbed of MAGA voters: Group floods San Francisco with digital billboards to #EndJewHate.

SHOCKER: Wealthy doctors and lawyers biggest beneficiaries of student loan forgiveness.

YALE LAW STUDENTS NEED THEIR SELF-REGARD PUNCTURED: Ted Cruz Lights up Yale Student After She Accuses Him of Racism.

DESANTIS 1, MOUSE Ø: In Florida, Disney Is Throwing in the Towel.

Disney, with the full weight of the showbiz culture behind it, thought it was playing with house money. What could go wrong by proclaiming yourself to be opposed to homophobia? Plenty, it turned out. American consumers are irritated with companies that take partisan political positions on controversial topics. It now appears obvious that Disney never should have injected itself into the debate in the first place. So its new tack is to avail itself of the opportunity of choosing tactful silence and hoping the whole thing blows over. The WSJ today: “Disney . . . declined to comment on criticism from lawmakers. Inside the company, some executives have expressed disappointment that Disney has become politicized, said people familiar with their thinking.”

As the kids say: LOL. A Florida lawmaker says in the piece that he believes Disney’s decision to denounce the parental-notification bill was made in California, which of course has a very different culture from Florida, but no matter how left-wing the state a Disney executive may be sitting in, he should understand that his customers come from a wide range of political convictions, and he should decline to wade into political controversies.

Earlier: Kurt Schlichter on The DeSantis Doctrine.

You gotta hand it to a guy who convinces Democrats to die on the hill of defending perverted groomers talking about sex with little school kids. It’s on-brand for their fellow travelers at The Lincoln Project, but you would think that Democrats actually want to win elections. But no – they want to make the schools safe for pedos, and they don’t care who knows it. But they’ll care plenty in November when parents around the country come out and vote for The Party of Not Hitting on Der Kinder.

Donald Trump has his record of achievement – economic success and peace abroad. But Ron DeSantis has the DeSantis Doctrine, sort of like the Monroe Doctrine, except instead of keeping shady foreigners out of our hemisphere, the DeSantis Doctrine keeps woke fascists out of our lives.

Exit quote: “He loves to crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and to hear the lamentation of their women-identifying persons. And those of us in the base love it.”

THIS SOUNDS YUMMY: Slow-Cooker Bloody Mary Chili. I might skip the three different kinds of beans though.

THOUGHTS:

@cdnpatriot2.0 Farmland #PassTheBIC #ComeDanceWithMe #elonmusk #makeitmakesense #elon #billgates #liberal #newworldorder #nwo ♬ original sound – Jolene

OPEN THREAD: Don’t bring me down.