CDR SALAMANDER:

If there is a characteristic of the last few years; abandonment.

Abandonment, either of duties, friends, families, or principals was once seen as a disgrace and blight on ones honor. Now? I don’t think so.

We abandoned thousands, really tens of thousands, of American citizens, family members, and allies in Afghanistan.

Recently we abandoned almost as many in Sudan.

After a news cycle or two, the press loses interest. Our politicians – or at least most of them – move on.

The fault is not so much our government or civil society, but really it is all of our’s fault.

We allow this abandonment – this disregard for ethics, this amoral failure of responsibility to protect and honor our word – to stand for unwritten agreements. Abandonment breaks the bonds stewardship that binds a society together.

We fail the fundamentals – and then wonder why we cannot execute anything more effectively. We shrug at dishonor, and then wonder where the quality of civil society went.

No one in power is challenged. No one is held accountable … unless it fits a certain agenda.

Our Navy can be no different. Every oath has a price, to some.

Every institution has been corrupted.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP:  Old:  Sexually explicit material in the workplace may constitute sexual harassment and violate Title VII.  New and groovy:  The removal of sexual explicit material from the school library may constitute sexual harassment and violate Title IX.

(Yes, the Biden Administration’s Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education said that.)

NOAM CHOMSKY: A Disgraceful Career. “The most devastating articles in the Anti-Chomsky Reader are not those that expose the ideological prejudices, factual misrepresentations, and distorted logic of his political writings but the two at the end of the book that tear up his reputation as one of the towering intellects of our time. Two essays about linguistics reveal Chomsky’s output in that field to be not the work of a rare, great mind but the product of a very familiar kind of academic hack. His reputation turns out not to have been earned by any significant contribution to human understanding but to be the product of a combination of self-promotion, abuse of detractors, and the fudging of his findings.”

MARK JUDGE: Jazz, God, and The Demon in Democracy.

WELL, THEY DID BRING FOOD: Private astronauts arrive at International Space Station, greeted warmly.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: New Guns for 2023.

REAL MONEY: EU regulators fine Meta a record-breaking $1.3B for data privacy violations.

MADE IN THE USA: The Classic Leather Everyday Belt. #CommissionEarned

I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: “Does The US Military’s New Combat Rifle Kinda Suck?”

WELL, DARN: AI therapists might not actually help your mental health.

IT CERTAINLY LOOKS THAT WAY [VIP]: Was Russia Just Invaded by Russian Troops? “When I read reports that a Russian volunteer force that fights alongside the Ukraine army had invaded Russia’s Belgorod region this morning, my first instinct was to dismiss it as a mostly meaningless stunt. I didn’t even bother mentioning it in this morning’s big update on Russia’s victory in the Battle of Bakhmut — maybe that was a mistake.”

MECHANICAL MIND READING: New study shows noninvasive brain imaging can distinguish among hand gestures.

HMM: Russian minister, 46, ‘who privately condemned Putin’s “fascist” invasion of Ukraine’ becomes latest figure to mysteriously die: Official married to Eurovision singer fell ill during flight from Cuba to Moscow.

SPACE: Crew of four lifts off on Axiom mission to International Space Station.

CROWD SIZE FOR BRITTNEY GRINER’S WNBA RETURN BAFFLES COACH: ‘How was it not a sellout?’

The Phoenix Mercury were on the road to start the 2023 WNBA season as the team took on the Los Angeles Sparks at the Crypto.com Arena in Brittney Griner’s official return to the floor.

Griner had 18 points, six rebounds, four blocks and two assists in Phoenix’s 94-71 loss. But it was a big moment for the former Baylor standout as she returned to the court for the first time since 2021. She missed all of last season as she was jailed in Russia on a drug conviction. She returned to the U.S. in December as part of a prisoner swap for arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Because it was her return, Mercury head coach Vanessa Nygaard was expecting a much fuller arena.

“I mean, it was great. But like honestly, c’mon now LA. We didn’t sell out the arena for BG?” Nygaard said. “Like, I expected more, you know, to be honest. Right, it was great, it was loud. But how was it not a sellout? How was it not a sellout?”

Nygaard would know the answer if she read America’s Newspaper of Record: WNBA Games Now Last Place On Earth Where You Can Safely Social Distance.

BUT THAT’S AFTER THE BIG GUY GOT HIS TEN PERCENT: Hunter Biden Cries Poverty During Child-Support Hearing.

STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM AND BIGOTRY: Non-Whites Only U. Minnesota Summer Research Program Challenged By Equal Protection Project.

AND THEY SHOULD: Kids As Young as 4 Years Old Can Begin to Learn Medical Emergency Training.

DEFUND THE FBI: FBI improperly used warrantless search powers more than 278,000 times in 2021, FISA court filing reveals. “U.S. citizens covered in that improper effort included people involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; George Floyd protesters during the summer of 2020; and donors to a failed congressional candidate, the filing said.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This wouldn’t happen if there were consequences. But there aren’t. By design.

SAUL ALINSKY SMILES: Florida GOP Chair makes the NAACP Chair an offer he will probably refuse.

Yesterday, we told you about the latest travel warning from the NAACP. The NAACP outrageously declared Florida unsafe for Black Americans. Today, Christian Ziegler, Chairman of the Florida Republican Party, made an offer the chairman of the NAACP surely cannot refuse (but he probably will).

You see, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NAACP, Leon Russell, is himself a Florida resident. Can you imagine living in a place so unsafe? Chairman Ziegler, always one to be helpful to his fellow Floridian, offered to pay the moving expenses of Mr. Russell if he wanted to flee the dreadful state. What a generous gesture.

Heh, indeed.™

MARK JUDGE:

Journalists are scum, and crystals and mediation are no way to deal with them. (I did find it ironic that uber-woke Roig-Franzia called combat Marine Allen a cocksucker and not the other way around). Incredibly, Jim VandeHei has no concept of how the media works today, how corrupt it has become—how journalists are a bunch of cocksuckers. It shows that it’s possible to be the co-founder of several media companies in D.C. and have no street smarts. VandeHei hasn’t even grasped the fundamentals: the media lies. They have the story written before they call you. When they get stuff wrong, they never correct, because they never intended to tell the truth in the first place. VandeHei doesn’t know this?

Well, when you rise high enough, you get enough ass-kissing that you start to think things are pretty good.

VANDALS: Fountain of Lies: Climate Crazies Dye Trevi Fountain Black.

FREDDIE DE BOER: Stanford Law Students Are Your Class Enemy. “I’ve come to think that the whole frame of the thing speaks to a real refusal of the American left to take its own ideas seriously. The debate fell along the typical lines. Liberals and lefties, as is their habit, rushed not only to defend the student protesters but to lionize them. What I find somewhat depressing is that this has become a habit, anointing representatives of the academic 1% as the footsoldiers of progressive change. The catechism of 21st-century progressivism insists that we are creatures of our immutable demographic traits, that our race and our class and our privilege define us and our influence on the world. If that’s true, how are we to assume that law students at Stanford Law School are anything other than the next generation’s shock troops of the bourgeoisie, whatever their professed politics? Where did all of that demographic determinism go?”

Plus: “I’m also sure a lot of them are going to wave the black flag right up until they get a cush $350K/year entry-level job at a major firm and then get busy helping cigarette manufacturers avoid lawsuits. And I’m also sure they’ll never feel bad about any of it.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Norris High School teacher arrested for alleged sexual relationship with student. “Lillie Bowman, an English teacher at the high school about 15 miles south of Lincoln, was arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse by a school employee, Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Houchin said in a news release.”

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY: Leaked Policy Exposes Fox News Stances on Woke Ideology.

Fox News employees are allowed to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological sex, and permitted to dress in alignment with their preferred gender. They must also be addressed by their preferred name and pronouns in the workplace.

These are just a few of the policies outlined in the company handbook, dated January 2021, a copy of which was shared with The Daily Signal. Fox also offers to help employees come up with a “Workplace Transition Plan” to ease their gender transition at work.

The revelations comes amid conservative consternation at Fox Digital’s use of activist language like “gender affirming care” in stories on its website, as well as the site’s consistent use of female pronouns for biological males like TikTok celebrity Dylan Mulvaney and swimmer Lia Thomas (formerly known as Will Thomas).

Fox also drew strong backlash for a June 2022 on-air segment praising a child’s gender transition as an “inspiration to others.” That segment briefly depicted California state Sen. Scott Weiner, a far-left Democrat who led the move to soften sex offender registry requirements for sodomy with minors, and highlighted the activist claim that a child might commit suicide if he or she is not permitted to transition.

Exit quote: “‘They want you to think it’s this place that supports traditionally conservative values,’ a former producer for ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ told The Daily Signal. ‘But in reality, they’re pushing this nonsense behind the scenes.’”