REAGAN IS WHAT THE RIGHT NEEDS TODAY: Donald Devine, the former University of Maryland Political Science Professor who became a campaign adviser to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and then served as his appointed Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 1981-1985, contends the Right desperately needs to rediscover the enduring principles and characteristically American optimism that made Reagan one of the greatest presidents ever.

Devine argues that, while things have certainly changed in key respects since the Reagan era, the Reagan prescription remains the most likely to command an enduring majority of the American electorate:

“Things certainly seem to have changed since Reagan. Republicans have become more defined by cultural matters than economic ones, although, in truth, limited government and a freer economy retain higher support.

“Still, the Trump presidency and Democratic Party wokeism clearly have changed the GOP into more of a working-class party. White voters without college degrees chose Republicans over Democrats in the 2022 elections by a 65 to 32 percent margin, and more Hispanics and Blacks have moved in the same direction, although less dramatically.

“On the other hand, Reagan actually won in 1980 by expanding the GOP base to Main St., European ethnics, and evangelical Democrats, and he added Hispanics in 1984. So, maybe things are not so different. Today’s problems have a similar ring too: stagflation, unsustainable spending, entitlements nearing bankruptcy, failed bureaucracy, racial and class division, a hostile world military threat, and the rest. Reagan increased the age for Social Security retirement, reduced federal employee retirement reimbursements from 44 to 20 percent of payroll, cutting entitlements, and reduced non-defense discretionary spending by 9.5 percent.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked for Devine at OPM from November 1982 until his departure. I left the Reagan administration a few months later after deciding to try my hand as a journalist. That’s what I’ve happily done ever since, but those years working for Reagan with Devine remain the most treasured of my career. Whatever small part I had in it, we Reaganauts made a huge difference for America.

CONGRATULATE F.I.R.E.: University of Utah scrubs ‘anti-racist code of conduct’ following demand letter.

SCHOOL CHOICE IS A BIPARTISAN HIT: It should come as no surprise, given the accelerating degradation of the U.S. public education system, but school choice commands widespread public support, according to the latest Issues & Insights/TIPP Poll.

When told of the recent passage by Florida officials of a comprehensive school choice program, respondents in both parties nationwide expressed strong support: “Overall, 58 percent of all Americans back the Sunshine State’s new law, while just 25 percent oppose it and 17 percent are ‘unsure.’ And a whopping 82 percent of parents with children under 18 support the law. Only 12 percent oppose it.”

So the question becomes when are both parties at the national level going to tell the NEA and other Education Indoctrination Complex (EIC) unions to take a hike and pass a comprehensive school choice program for every American child?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: RFK Jr. Is the Thorn We Need in Joe Biden’s Side for 2024. “His presence in the 2024 Democratic campaign puts every bit of COVID fiction that Joe Biden ran on in 2020 on political trial. RFK Jr. is running as a throwback to his ancestral Democratic heritage. Yeah, they were lefties, but they weren’t fascists. COVID Joe Biden is a fascist. Whether he says is or not, RFK the Younger is heavily implying it.”

DISNEY UPDATE: Student wrongfully accused of racism receives death threats after being targeted by Disney star.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: New Mexico still charging ‘Rust’ armorer in death of Halyna Hutchins after dropping charges against man who pulled the trigger, Alec Baldwin.

RFK JR: ‘Every Totalitarian Regime in the History of Mankind’ Has Sought ‘Total Control.’

LOL, LIZ WARREN:

https://twitter.com/xenophonrocks/status/1650355669227253762

UNEXPECTEDLY: Shock revelation: Afghanistan is back as terrorist central! “To be honest, it’s not even news that this happened. Everybody with half a brain knew that it was going to happen, so while the details are indeed important and worth diving into, the real news is that the Washington Post is reporting on an obvious failure of the Biden Administration.”

As Glenn wrote on Saturday about the New York Times doing some actual reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story: “I mean, the other possibility is a sudden appearance of journalistic integrity, but the way to bet is that the establishment wants an excuse to ease Biden out and replace him.”

IT’S A DISEASE, AND IT’S SPREADING: DEI has gone to the dogs as schools train Fido’s vet to be woke.

WANTED:  A LITTLE HELP WITH MY RESEARCH:  If you are a state university professor or administrator (or just someone with a little inside information), there is a chance you can help me out with some research.  I have long been interested in how accreditors pressure colleges, schools and universities into hiring faculty and/or admitting students based on race or sex.  I have plenty of evidence—much of it obtained over the years through freedom of information act requests—that this has been going on for a long time.  But every few years it’s important for me to get fresh evidence.  I often send out requests to all institutions in a given category.  But targeted requests can save me a bit of time and money.

Do you know of a college, school, or university that is being pressed by its accreditor to admit more students of a particular race, ethnicity or sex?  Or hire more faculty members of a particular race, ethnicity or sex?  If so, please let me know.  You can email me here.  I will keep your identity confidential.  I particularly would appreciate hearing about state institutions, because those are the ones I can submit freedom of information act requests to.

Campus wokeness is not going to disappear on its own.  It has to be attacked at its roots.  Woke accreditors are part of the system.  They are the “diversity” cartel enforcers.  All this needs to be documented.

Once the Supreme Court decides the Harvard and UNC cases (and regardless of the outcome), I plan to start trying to persuade Congress to intervene to prevent this kind of accreditor overreach.  This is obviously a long-term project, but everything needs to start somewhere.  Help me out if you can.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. BUT THAT’S ON PURPOSE. The criminal justice system doesn’t do enough to make us safe.

MAKE THE USSR GREAT AGAIN: China’s French Ambassador Doesn’t Think Old Soviet States Have a Claim to Sovereignty.

Of course he doesn’t. Admitting Ukraine and the other former (and unwilling) Soviet Socialist Republics could be sovereign would call into question Beijing’s brutal rule over Tibet, Xinjiang, and other non Han Chinese regions.

LIGHTNING DEAL: EverPlus Home Security Door Lock with 8 Screws. #CommissionEarned

PETER LAFFIN: How America’s literacy crisis will cripple our ability to combat China.

The past year alone has seen Chinese President Xi Jinping boldly advance Chinese international priorities, which suggests that he no longer fears the consequences of bucking the U.S.-led West. Among other things, he’s brokered a detente between ancient rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, entered the foray in Ukraine with deepening military ties to Russia, created distance between the U.S. and its European allies about Taiwan policy, and struck a unified pose with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who last week tweeted his intention for Brazil to work with China “to expand trade and balance world geopolitics” (emphasis mine).

Meanwhile, Americans appear uninterested in the implications of this international shift and consequently lack the urgency necessary to fend off the challenge. Headlines abound in the American press that must cause Xi to chuckle himself silly — especially reports that involve the ballooning failure of American education , particularly its inability to teach its students basic reading skills.

According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress , a jaw-dropping two-thirds of American fourth graders lack basic proficiency in reading. (To put this in perspective, imagine three American schoolchildren sitting beside one another in a classroom. Two of them can’t read.) In addition, a full 86% of 15-year-olds are unable to tell the difference between opinion and fact. [Emphasis added.]

We know how American public education declined to its dangerously sad condition but that emphasized part explains exactly why.

HARSH, BUT FAIR: “At this point, I would place Biskupic in the same category as Linda Greenhouse.”

SEE ALSO, MUNCHAUSEN BY PROXY: Study Shows Mothers of Boys With Gender Issues Are Mental. “The abstract of a scientific study undertaken in 1994 has been making the rounds on social media, and it is shocking on two levels. The first wave of shock (although not surprise) comes at you from what the study discovered: the mothers of gender dysphoric boys tend to suffer from a host of mental illnesses of their own. . . . The second shock from reading the study abstract is that it draws conclusions that no one is allowed to suggest, much less study, these days. You look over your shoulder as you read to make sure nobody sees you. The very first few words of the piece — ‘This pilot study compared mothers of boys with gender identity disorder (GID) with mothers of normal boys…’ — are enough these days to cost someone their job. At that point, you are struck by the full weight of the precise extent to which discourse and honest research into this subject has been smothered, and it’s breathtaking. “

YA THINK? When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked Gen. James McConville if the Pentagon’s new transgender-inspired policy of allowing biological males to shower with females would help or hurt recruitment, the latter responded “probably not.”

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth disagreed, telling Gaetz “women are more worried about being sexually harassed in the Army than they are about the kinds of things that you’re bringing up,” according to The Washington Free Beacon’s Claire Sprang.

ROBERT SPENCER: Working-class Houston Suburb Tries a Beautiful Way to Fight Crime, but With an Ugly Edge. “Alief, a working-class suburb of Houston that is 71% Hispanic and black, is planting 1,200 new trees, but the objective is not just to beautify the neighborhood. Rather, the idea is that trees will fight crime.”

ON SUNDAYS I TRY TO RUN A PROMO POST, MOSTLY FOR INDIE WRITERS. SOMETIMES I EVEN MANAGE TO DO IT ON SUNDAY AND NOT MONDAY OR… TUESDAY:  Book Promo and Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

UALR LAW IS HAVING A BAD YEAR: Stanford Comes to Fayetteville:

The bad news, however, is that the entitlement and intolerance exemplified by leftist students at Stanford found kin at Fayetteville. After the discussion ended, a former UA-Fayetteville law student in his mid-30s sought me out.

This adult verbally attacked me and called me a “waste of space”–explicitly due to my research, which I was invited to present. Fortunately, my trauma abated.

Progressive students at other schools have exhibited identical intolerance of conservatives, because the diversity and inclusion relevant to the left is solely pigment-and-plumbing based–not the one that matters: diversity of thought.

Sadly, higher education’s genuflection before the leftist idols of trigger warnings and safe spaces spawned a generation of addled adults adopting ad hominem attacks over appropriate argumentation. That this occurs at respected law schools demonstrates a remarkable failing of legal academia.

After all, lawyering is about the art of persuasion–not the bludgeon of bluster. These students, however, apparently haven’t been taught that lesson.

We’re beginning to see pushback on this, and that’s good.

NEWS I’D LIKE TO USE. FASTER PLEASE:  Scientists may have finally figured out why hair turns gray — and how to stop it.

OH, THERE’S MY SHOCKED FACE:  NYPD employee relations boss Lisa White drives workers away with ‘crazy stuff’: sources.

AS THEY SHOULD:  IN-DEPTH:  Transgender Teacher Spoke About Wanting to Shoot Students, Parents Accuse District of ‘Cover-Up’.

I FIND IT INTERESTING THAT THEY BURROW COMMUNIST WORDING WITHOUT A BLUSH: “Political correctness” and “disinformation” were used by communist countries to suppress truth telling.   And yet, they go ahead and use the words, and act like they’re doing nothing wrong:  Oracle Will No Longer Collaborate with the GDI After the Company Is Identified in Lawsuit for Targeting Conservative Media Advertisers (Like TGP’s).