FYI – Headlines You Might Have Missed This Week

It’s impossible for Phineas and I to write about everything we want to cover, considering work and personal responsibilities. Here’s a round-up of some headlines from this week you may have missed.

—– NYT: Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months – Really? Only for the last four months? I would have guessed for the last 60 years or so ….

—– Twitchy: Snort: Senators reportedly in ‘shock’ over Hagel’s ineptitude, bumbling – Not a good day for Chuck Hagel yesterday.

—–Charlotte Observer: Gov. McCrory should butt out – The Charlotte Observer’s full scale war on new GOP Governor (and former Mayor of Charlotte) Pat McCrory continues. Their columnists, some of their regular writers, and their editorial page have been hammering him since before he even took office, because he has the nerve to challenge the status quo and ruffle delicate liberal feathers at a time when the state unemployment rate is in the top five worst in the country. This territory is new for The Observer, considering our history of Democrat Governors the Observer has routinely failed to critically scrutinize until AFTER they’ve left office. Republican Governors, rare indeed in this state, are apparently an exception to the paper’s unwritten rule. ‘Natch.

—– AP: Alabama standoff continues as official says child held hostage in bunker cries for parents – Please keep this little boy and his family in your prayers.

—– USA Today: Geraldo Rivera ‘contemplating’ Senate run
– Sigh. Say it ain’t so.

—– NBC: Boy Scouts close to ending ban on gay members, leaders – This news is meeting with mixed reviews. Liberal types are hailing the Boy Scouts as “turning a corner” on “equality” when in actuality a lot of this has to do more so with donations drying up from people and corporations being bullied by the Liberal Gay Gestapo ™ rather than a “principled” move, and the Boy Scouts were running out of options. Also, could the timing be worse for this announcement, considering back in October the revelations of the so-called “Perversion Files” the Boy Scouts kept for decades on allegations of sexual abuse against young boys by Scout Leaders – information they kept from law enforcement and parents? Time Magazine reported at the time:

A law firm that represented a former Boy Scout who had been the victim of child sexual abuse on Thursday released a large online volume containing more than 1,200 files on Scoutmasters and other volunteers accused of pedophilia or sexual abuse. The files span some 20 years, from 1965 to 1985, and are part of a record compiled by the Boy Scouts of America with the intention of keeping abusers out of scouting and away from vulnerable youth. The full record is believed to date back as far as the mid-1920s and may involve as many as 100,000 children.

If even 25% of the allegations are incidents that actually happened, is there any wonder why the Scouts had this policy in place for as long as they did? Most gays are not abusers, but it would appear that abusers were targeting young boys in the Boy Scouts in alarming numbers. I report, leaving political correctness by the roadside, and you decide.

Oh, and speaking of child sexual abuse, how many parents are comfortable having their kids go to LA Unified School District schools these days? The outrageous dereliction of duty there on the part of school administrators is staggering.

—– The immigration reform battle heats up. Senators Rubio, McCain, David Vitter, and even the President himself are in the spotlight this week as the warring factions gear up for a prolonged fight. Déjà vu and all that.

—– Gabby Giffords was the star of the show at this week’s gun violence hearings. She paints a sympathetic picture considering the horrific attempt on her life that has forever changed her, but as I’ve said before, this is a debate that deserves careful and thoughtful consideration and debate of all options, not emotion-based proposed policy “solutions” that will do more harm than good.

—– Last but not least, Mark Steyn on the Beyonce inauguration lip sync “controversy”:

Whether Beyoncé was lip-syncing to the band or the band were lip-syncing to Beyoncé is like one of those red pill / blue pill choices from “The Matrix.” Was President Obama lip-syncing to the Founders, rooting his inaugural address in the earliest expressions of American identity? (“The patriots of 1776 … gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.”) Or maybe the Founders were lip-syncing to him as he appropriated the vision of the first generation of Americans and yoked it (“preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”) to a statist pitch they would have found utterly repugnant.

Zing.

Please feel free to use this as an open thread. TGIF!!