Daily Northwestern Apologizes for Accuracy

Daily Northwestern Apologizes for Accuracy
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
November 13, 2019

If journalism has been dying a slow and painful death over the past couple decades, the student newspaper at Northwestern University just slammed the last nail into the coffin. Apparently the most egregious act The Daily Northwestern committed in recent days was to apologize for doing its job - and doing it well.

Former United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered a speech on the Northwestern campus in Evanston, IL on Tuesday, November 5 at the behest of the College Republicans. Met by both students interested in hearing what Sessions had to say as well as those whose presence was only an attempt to prevent the speech from occurring, the student-run campus newspaper certainly had plenty about which to report. 

Amazingly, Northwestern University reporter Daisy Conant did just that - she reported what she saw and heard that evening. Sessions did, in fact, speak, at Lutkin Hall - “The Real Meaning of the Trump Agenda,” the title of his prepared remarks. Conant noted the content of Sessions’ speech, the vulgarities spewed at Sessions by the protesters attempting to gain access to Lutkin Hall, which had security to prevent any out of hand and illegal behavior. Conant did her job rather well in covering the event, compete with quotes from several students who attended Sessions’ speech and subsequent question and answer session.

Medill School of Journalism freshman Margaret Fleming attended the event with an open mind. “It’s hard because the people who I hold the same political views with are the ones protesting,” said Fleming. She added that a speaking event held by the College Democrats earlier in the semester did not produce the same belligerence and bellicosity. That is typically the case, as conservatives support the First Amendment, while far too many liberals and progressives are on record in a number of recent polls calling for the First Amendment to be rewritten limiting free speech - a dangerous road to travel.

After an accurate article appeared in The Daily Northwestern, complete with photographs of the event both inside and outside of Lutkin Hall, is when the snowflake brigade became apoplectic and outraged - not by any inaccuracies in the article, but because the article and photos were accurate. Apparently the truth hurts. So much so, the student newspaper actually apologized.

Apologized for what? For doing its job? For writing accurate copy? For publishing pictures depicting the events as they actually happened during the Sessions visit? This genuinely seems like the tail wagging the dog.

“Nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe… we failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry,” wrote the editors of the paper in their apology delivered from their knees. That is not the responsibility of a newspaper - protecting its subjects, instead the job is to reveal the actions and the words of those subjects - informing the greater public of events to which they themselves were not personally privy. The apology editorial called the Sessions visit a “traumatic event.” Who was traumatized? And how?

A myriad protesters objected to their pictures being in the newspaper; calling it an invasion of their privacy. Theirs was a public protest, where there is no expectation of privacy whatsoever. The protesters must bear responsibility for their own actions. Other protesters objected to reporters using the Northwestern student directory to contact them and interview them about the event and their role in it. That is the job of a reporter.

“Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive. Photos have been taken down,” continued the apology editorial. The paper continued its genuflecting apology for using the student directory “to obtain phone numbers for students, texted them to ask if they’d be willing to be interviewed. We recognize being contacted like this is an invasion of privacy, and we’ve spoken to those reporters - along with our entire staff - and about the correct way to reach out to students for stories.” 

Take the word of a veteran newspaper reporter/journalist: the way those Northwestern students tackled their task of garnering comments for their article was spot on. Nothing wrong with their methods. Not one student was forced to consent to an interview, nor are they required to do so at any time. Once again, and this must be stressed, with their contact information in the student directory, students in no way should have any level of an expectation of privacy.

The apology issued by the editors of The Daily Northwestern should never have been written or published.  If anything, the editors should have doubled-down and defended its reporters.This weak-kneed admission of guilt or some sense of seeking absolution from the student body had no place in theirs, or any other newspaper. If this is the direction of the future of “journalism,” may G-d help the United States. Readers will never again be able to trust what they read for the reporters may be protecting someone’s delicate sensibilities.

If reporters and journalists are going to be censored in what they can and cannot write and print based upon a level of hurt feelings, or whether or not their language is incendiary to even one potential reader, the profession cannot survive. Additionally, a petition signed by roughly 650 students condemning The Daily Northwestern, “for choosing to put our students in jeopardy.” How exactly did a newspaper article and photos of a public event put anyone in jeopardy?

Northwestern is not the only campus with a student body possessing a collective weak stomach for attempts at truthful reporting. Harvard’s Student Government Association took umbrage with, and condemned its own student newspaper, for simply attempting to elicit a comment from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on a story. Unbelievable, a reporter actually doing his or her due diligence. The condemnation came just for the attempt to contact. No endorsement of ICE appeared in the newspaper.

Furthermore, half of millennials believe so-called “hate speech” should be criminalized and punishable. Let’s contemplate that chilling notion. Who will determine what hate speech is? If person A decides what person B says is hateful, should person B be hauled away and jailed with the possibility of losing one’s livelihood? And what happens the next day when person C decides what person A said is hateful. Will he or she end up sharing a cell with person B? Where does it end? The answer to hate speech is not less speech, but more speech.

In a most dangerous possibility, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), and one of the cast of thousands seeking the Democrat nomination for president, called “hate speech a threat to our democracy,” and has demanded that President Donald Trump be banned from Twitter and his account suspended. Regardless of who one supports for president in 2020 or any other year, that is a frightening notion coming from someone who wants to be president. People of all political persuasions must stand up and loudly shout NO to Harris. She attempted to cajole Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to join her on a recent debate stage in calling for Trump’s suspension from Twitter, but Warren refused to take the bait. Harris’ idea is the true threat to our democracy.

“The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” - Thomas Jefferson

“The philosophy of the classroom today, will be the government of tomorrow.” - Abraham Lincoln.

With the horrifying levels of indoctrination on college campuses, the safe spaces, the free speech zones, and the abject political correctness that, for one, will eventually destroy women’s sports as it is known today, a level headed individual not afraid to speak out for fear of retribution or a lost job is vital as this nation goes to the polls to elect a president in less than a year.

Couple the above and Lincoln’s genius with that of Ronald Reagan. “Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Political Correctness Murders 14 in CA

Political Correctness Murders 14 in CA

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

December 04, 2015

Thanks to a pusillanimous weasel fearing to be labeled a “racial profiler,” 14 innocent American men and women are dead in San Bernardino, CA – slaughtered by two Muslim extremists committing jihad in the worst terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001.

The deceased, lest they be forgotten in the din of media coverage of the two Muslim extremist terrorists, are the following:

Robert Adams, age 40, survived by wife Summer and a 20 month old daughter;

Isaac Amanios, 60, survived by wife Hiwet and three children; he fled his native Eritrea to escape the violence and give his family a better life;

Benneta Bethadal, 46, survived by husband Arlen Verdehyou and three children; she escaped Islamic extremism of Iran at age 18;

Harry Bowman, 46, survived by two daughters;

Sierra Clayborn, 27;

Juan Espinoza, 50, survived by wife Sandra and two children;

Aurora Godoy, 26 – the youngest victim, survived by husband James and a 22 month old son;

Shannon Johnson, 45, shielded co-worker Denise Peraza – wounded, but survived;

Daniel Kaufman, 42;

Damian Meins, 58, survived by two children;

Tin Nguyen, 31, survived by her mother, who, with Tin, fled Vietnam when Tin was eight years old;

Nicholas Thalasinos, 52, survived by wife Jennifer;

Yvette Velasco, 27, survived by her parents and three sisters;

Michael Wetzel, 37, survived by wife Renee and six children.

While this is the 215^th mass shooting of the year and 59^th since October, make no mistake this is not an issue of gun control, but an issue of terrorism and the invasion into the United States by Muslim extremist terrorists. The cache of weapons found in the home of Sayed Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 27, was akin to an arsenal large enough to take down numerous installations around San Bernardino and beyond. The attack on his workplace holiday party may have simply been the appetizer for a more sinister entrée where greater carnage would have been the result.

The four guns owned by Farook – two long guns and two handguns, were acquired legally. It is the dozen pipe bombs found in the Redlands residence that should be of concern. Pipe bombs the likes of which were found in an al-Qaeda magazine – a publication easily accessible in the public domain.

It is the fact that Malik, born in Pakistan, and had pledged allegiance to ISIS on social media that went untracked and unchallenged that should be of concern. Yet, in typical Barack Obama fashion of fecklessness, he couldn’t see the forest for the trees as he immediately called for increased gun control laws while the shooting was still a fluid situation. His head continually buried in the sand, Obama equates San Bernardino with gun control, an issue he relishes, instead of the more hand wringing issue of terrorism rendering Obama more than just a little uncomfortable.

Once again it is imperative to remind Mr. Obama that an increase in gun legislation will only impact the lives of honest, law-abiding gun owners. Criminals, whether terrorists or the garden variety gangs and thugs, have not, do not, and will not abide by gun laws – that’s what makes them criminals in the first place. And more and more gun laws restricting law-abiding gun owners are simply restricting their Second Amendment rights.

The same is true for these so-called gun-free zones. Whether public schools, college campuses, work places, or any other locale announcing itself as a gun-free zone is an open invitation to criminal behavior, and also a restriction of the Second Amendment. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was a gun-free zone that saw the slaughter of 20 children and six adults could have been prevented had there been an armed officer on campus.

Democrat frontrunner for President Hillary Clinton issued the outlandish statement that gun manufacturers be held responsible for such mass shootings. Using that feeble attempt at logic, car manufacturers should be held responsible for fatalities in a multi-car pile-up. Sound absurd? Of course it is.

What needs to be limited is not accessibility to guns, but the political correctness that played a role in the murder of the 14 innocents in San Bernardino. Political correctness has run so far amuck that people are afraid of appearances – afraid to say something after seeing something – the very see something, say something mantra even preached by Obama himself – unless Muslim extremists are involved. Political correctness is literally scaring people to death – people are frightened to the core to speak up, say what needs to be said, for fear of being labeled a bigot, a racist, a racial profiler or worse – perhaps at the cost of their job or position within a community.

It is political correctness that had liberals, left-wing media, and anti-Christians blame an entire religion on one lunatic’s shooting rampage at a Colorado Planned Parenthood. Yet, those same people and institutions won’t even utter the words Muslim extremist or Islamic extremist or jihad or jihadists even when the evidence is as plain as vanilla ice cream.

Evidence such as the aforementioned pledge made by Malik to ISIS. This is the same Malik who had a Pakistani passport, met Farook on-line, married him in Saudi Arabia, and by all reports was the impetus in the radicalization of her husband, who heretofore had no criminal record. Malik garnered entry into the United States via a visa issued to those to be betrothed to an American. Farook then traveled to Pakistan and Mecca during the summer of 2014. Coupled with the cache of weaponry found in the couple’s residence and all roads lead to the Muslim couple being terrorists.

Yet, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, Obama still blinded by his own wishful thinking, said “it’s possible it’s terrorism; it’s possible it’s work place violence.” This is the same Obama who said ISIS was contained the day prior to the Muslim extremist terror assault in Paris. Clearly one cannot contain ISIS/ISIL, al-Qaeda, or any other name one wishes to assign these terror operations. It is this level of obtuseness from the White House that encourages Obama’s minions to perpetuate this notion of blame America first; don’t say anything negative about Islam because that foments the violent behavior from the terrorists. The longer this behavior continues, the less shocking it is when these attacks occur, whether overseas, or now and in the future, at home. These savages must be ended, eliminated, eradicated – killed – yes, killed. We are at war with radical Islam and they want to kill us. In war you kill your enemy and the enemy is radical Islam.

The enemy is no longer knocking at the gates. The enemy has breached our perimeter and they must be stopped. Stopped by curtailing immigration from countries voting against the United States more than 50 percent of the time. Stopped by curtailing visa for students, guests, and tourists from those same countries. Profile if necessary, and apparently it is. Priority one of this government should be to keep America and Americans safe. Without a safe homeland America can no longer be the beacon of hope and freedom for those “yearning to breathe free.”

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

First Amendment under Fire on Campus

First Amendment under Fire on Campus

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

November 12, 2015

The cost of college is so expensive even speech is no longer free. More and more students on college campuses across the United States are actually willingly seeking a limitation or even a curtailment of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Let’s take a look at what the clearly uneducated masses are willing to surrender under the guise of eliminating not just hate speech, but hurt speech.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (United States Constitution)

Students from the East Coast bastion of Ivy League liberalism at Yale University to the Left Coast bastion of California liberalism at Claremont McKenna College to the heartland and the University of Missouri and points in between are making ludicrous demands of their so-called institutions of higher learning and the alleged adults in the room are folding like a bad poker hand.

Discourse on campus used to be welcomed. Students were free to speak their minds, debate, argue, even shout a little without fear of retribution, censorship, or even expulsion or the risk of being fired if a campus employee.

One of my fond experiences at the liberal University of Maryland was to sit outside my dorm room and discuss history, politics, the issues of the day, as well as the upcoming presidential election until the wee hours with my next door neighbor. Me – white, he – black; me – Jewish, he – a Christian; me – conservative, he – not so much. We agreed on little, but we respected one another because we could have an intelligent conversation, and yes even argue, but come away shaking hands and even have lunch the next day. Disagreement does not equal disrespect.

But my experience on the College Park, MD campus was not all wine and roses. I encountered first hand anti-Semitism, but I did not demand the firing of the university president. It was certainly unpleasant to be sure, and even a bit traumatic, but it didn’t destroy me like a newspaper in the rain.

Today’s college students, by and large, and most certainly the liberal, progressive, socialist, secular students are incapable of tolerance. To them, if you do not kow-tow to their far left beliefs, you should be sent to reeducation camp, banished from the campus, and be labeled an intolerant hater. It is perfectly alright for them to be the hater because they have right on their side, he writes dripping with sarcasm. Today’s students demand safe zones, whatever the hell those are. To me a safe zone should be the entirety of the campus – safe for all to reside, study, work, play, and yes, debate and argue about issues knowing that some feelings may get hurt.

There is no constitutional protection against hurt feelings – that’s called the freedom of speech. The answer to bad or hate speech is not squelching speech, but inviting more speech. This generation of crybabies on campus wants no speech contrary to their own. Anything of a hurtful or disagreeable nature calls for protests and petitions for firing university presidents. Just wait until they are expectorated from that cocoon they call home on campus and enter the cold, hard reality of the ugly world.

Make no mistake; I am not calling for the end of protests and petitions. I live for a good protest and have written more than my fair share of petitions from junior high through graduate school. While peaceful protests are protected by the First Amendment, so too is stupidity. Stupid speech or disagreeable speech or even hurtful speech is also protected by the First Amendment. The notion of free speech zones on a campus that should be a wealth of ideas and discussion smacks of Orwell’s 1984. The entirety of the campus should be a free speech zone.

The idea that a so-called instructor of journalism at the University of Missouri would attempt to deny a student photographer his First Amendment right to conduct his duties is reprehensible. But that is exactly what Melissa Click, Ph. D. (U-Mass.) did to Tim Tai in her attempt to suppress the press. Tai behaved professionally in his constitutionally protected attempts to complete his photo-journalism assignment, while Click behaved like a rabid dog screaming for Tai to leave the site of a protest on the Columbia, MO campus. At one point, Click called for “muscle” to eliminate the problem.

According to the New York Times Click has stepped down from her post as an assistant professor at the School of Journalism. This marks the third resignation this week from Missouri. University President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin have already tendered their resignations under pressure by a mob of students citing insufficient response to alleged racism on campus. Those resignations will solve little and if there is a spate of racism on campus, which must be addressed, it is the hearts and minds of the perpetrators that require changing, not the heads of the university.

The possible racism is the impetus of the protests, a hunger strike by graduate student Jonathan Butler, as well as a potential strike by roughly 30 football players of this weekend’s game against BYU.

Wolfe and Loftin folded like a pair of cheap suits. They should have called the bluff of those football players. Not all the players were part of this plan and the team could have suited up enough players to field a team. If Missouri had to forfeit, costing the university one million dollars, that money should come from the striking players’ scholarships. Those players should be suspended for the duration of the season and tryouts should be held for walk-ons for the remaining three games. Shame on Wolfe and Loftin for caving to mob demands. If anyone should be out of job it should be head football coach Gary Pinkel for not reining in his players. The inmates are now running the asylum.

Missouri is not the only campus where chaos is reigning supreme. In California at Claremont McKenna College Dean of Students Mary Spellman resigned following student protests demanding more programming for black, gay, disabled, and low-income students. No explanation as to why Spellman felt she had to fall on some imaginary sword, when meeting with students could have solved their problems. Yet another sign of weakness, which actually solves nothing. Spellman is out of a job and the students’ demands have not been met or even heard. Now a new dean of students must be named, given time to settle in, adjust to the culture of the campus or to the job if not new to the campus before even tackling the concerns of the students, which could be long into the spring 2016 semester.

Additionally, on the CMC campus junior class President Kris Brackmann unnecessarily resigned having appeared in a photo with others who were clad in Mexican-themed Halloween costumes – replete with sombreros, ponchos, and moustaches. Is Brackmann, who did not don the so-called offensive costume, responsible for the choices of her friends? In her resignation, Brackmann wrote that she hopes to foster a “safe environment for everyone.” Who was made unsafe by those costumes? Who was threatened? Are people so innately weak and thin-skinned that the mere sight of a cultural Halloween costume is the cause of consternation? If so, those students have bigger problems. The real world will chew them up and spit them out like rubbery calamari.

Halloween costumes are also the source of animus and over-emphasized hysteria at Yale. The university produced costume guidelines for the students on campus. Since when does a university enforce a costume dress code? Are the campus denizens not adults?

Enter Nicholas and Erika Christakis. The couple lives on the New Haven campus presiding over an undergraduate college via resident life. Erika is also a lecturer in early childhood education, which is ironic, as she composed an e-mail that students are adults, should have the freedom of costume choice and the university’s guidelines were unnecessary.

Students were apoplectic, calling for the resignations of the Christakises because of the e-mail Erika dispatched. Have students surrendered their ability to think for themselves? Apparently they actually want the university to thrust a costume dress code upon them for fear of possibly offending someone with a potentially insensitive costume choice for the evening. And for this perceived slight, Nicholas and Erika Christakis should stand in the unemployment line?

Not only should Yale students not have the power to choose their own Halloween costumes, but the concept of free speech on campus is too much for them to handle as well. A conference to be held on the subject of free speech was disrupted by liberals or fascists – either way, students opposed to the First Amendment. Not only did those rambunctious students stop the free speech event, their unruliness included spitting on the participants and attendees.

Also under fire is Carol Swain, Ph. D. (U-North Carolina) a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University and a conservative Christian. A petition, composed by a student never having studied under Swain, and signed by more than 1,500 people, has at its core, a virtual non-issue. Swain posts materials to “Christian Conservatives” on-line. The petition, in part, says “…it is generally unprofessional to attach your job title to a channel promoting your personally held beliefs.”

This, clearly, is much ado about nothing, as professionals appearing on public programming have their name and title posted. Apparently the petitioners seeking, initially Swain’s dismissal, now “merely” her suspension, have an axe to grind because she is a conservative and a Christian. Swain, who is black, is also accused of hating minorities. Those seeking Swain’s ouster have an agenda that in no way supports diversity of speech or thought. Nor do they support diversity in terms of gender or race as the pecking order apparently does not include Swain being black and female when Christian and conservative trump the former. Hypocrisy coupled with political correctness is a dangerous combination.

So politically correct have the university campuses become, that any speech can be designated hurt speech – the new nonsense. G-d forbid nothing objectionable should pass through ears and into the empty heads of the precious flowers marching through campus in lockstep demanding the firing of anyone who dare utter something with which they disagree.

In 1783 George Washington wrote, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” The knives are sharpening, America.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Feds Give Bio-Boy Access to Girls' Showers

Feds Give Bio-Boy Access to Girls’ Showers

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

November 4, 2015

Friends, if ever there was a time for collective, universal moral outrage at the federal government and the Obama administration, the time is most definitely now.

Under the guise of equal rights, the federal government – the Obama administration – has declared war on school girls in every public school in these United States. The Obama administration has stripped female public school attendees of their privacy, of their rights, of their dignity, and of their safety.

The federal government has once again overreached in its authoritarian and zealous decision to grant one singular transgender student in Illinois the right to use all female facilities – bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers simply because he, yes, he – this student is a biological male – G-d gave him a penis – felt singled out when given more than adequate accommodations by his school. Accommodations also allow the bio-boy to participate on girls’ sports teams.

There is no Constitutional right to not be uncomfortable. Yet the ACLU, suing on behalf of the bio-boy, and the Obama administration determined that a separate and private set of facilities provided to him was unacceptable. To force the entire female student body to accept this decision is not just lunacy, but a form of child abuse.

This decision, handed down by the Federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and specifically by Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, obviously had Obama’s blessing. It affects, for now, Township High School District 211 in Palatine, IL, a village in Cook County, northwest of Chicago with a population of roughly 70,000.

The unprecedented calamitous decision affects not only this particular school district because it flings open a Pandora’s Box that will render female students unsafe and unprotected. With such a decision, what is to prevent hundreds or thousands of public school male students to suddenly decide they “identify” as female, for the sole purpose of invading the privacy of girls’ locker rooms and showers gawking where they do not belong? Further, what protection does this one student have off campus should the boyfriends of his female classmates take out their anger in a physically brutal manner?

This is the further degradation of the public school system in the United States; the continued breakdown of the federal government’s lack of knowledge and understanding of the Constitution and the 10^th Amendment; as well as the complete destruction of the moral fiber established by those who adhere to Judeo-Christian values.

In the ever coarsening of American society, Nero is fiddling and the nation as a whole is most certainly burning. In Washington, a football coach is relieved of his duties for praying at midfield following games. In California, motor-voter legislation, signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, now endows illegals with the right to vote. These illegals already have the right to obtain drivers’ licenses; now the linkage to voter registration grants them access to the ballot box. Additionally there are hundreds of sanctuary cities across the national landscape flaunting their protections of millions of illegals without penalty from the federal government.

This is the same federal government threatening to revoke federal funding from Township High School 211 should it not comply with its decision within 30 days. Call the fed’s bluff Superintendent Daniel Cates. It’s time Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner (R) steps up, calls for emergency funding for the Township High School 211 school district covering the remainder of the 2015-16 school year. Will the federal government effectively shut down an entire public school district due to the demands of one student who was already given ample accommodations? But we all know this was not about accommodations. The student creating this firestorm simply sought to make a political statement. That statement should be squelched, not honored or placated. The school district bent over backwards to accommodate the student; he should have accepted yes for an answer.

Between now and the inauguration of the 2016-17 school year, move to turn the school into a charter school and seek private/corporate funding. (If I had the money I would sponsor it myself, move to Illinois and run the school in a manner that respects majority rule and minority rights. Why does the comfort of one student supersede that of the majority?)

There is no end in sight as the federal government continues to raze the moral foundation upon which this once great nation was built. But what’s equally disturbing is the lessening outrage amongst the rank and file. Far too many Americans throw their hands in the air conceding defeat and surrendering because “there’s nothing we can do.” As government grows larger and tightens the noose around the necks of we the people, it is time for a moral revolution in America.

Every parent in this school district should pull their children from this school immediately. It’s time the disaffected students and parents speak back – en masse. I challenge one parent or female student from this school to contact me that supports this deleterious decision by the Obama administration. Just one parent who will say he or she is OK with a biological male sharing a shower with his or her daughter; just one female student who is OK showering with a bio-boy.

It’s time to stop the madness and take back our country. Get off the sidelines and into the game – a game we the people can ill afford to lose. The future of our civilization hangs in the balance. May G-d Bless and save the Union.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Principal Whitewashes School Election

Principal Whitewashes School Election

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

October 22, 2015

For the students at Everett Middle School in San Francisco dictatorship and political correctness is a first-hand experience and a way of life thanks to their principal Lena Van Haren.

The dictatorial Van Haren unilaterally withheld the student government election results because, according to her, not enough minority students were elected. “It’s not okay for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white,” said Van Haren.

Incredulously, Van Haren actually acknowledges this politically correct nonsense is acceptable and appropriate to inculcate unsuspecting children and brainwash them into believing that their own thought processes and free will decisions are unacceptable.

Certainly the parents do not agree with Van Haren as they have expressed their outrage at the principal’s withholding the election results for more than a week. “The easy thing would have been to announce the results and move on. I intentionally did not choose the easy way because this is so important,” said Van Haren.

What is so important, Ms. Van Haren? Shunning the voices of the students who voted on their own without scandal or fraud? Dismissing the free will decisions made by thinking students neither under duress or intimidation? Why is it wrong for black and Latino students to vote for white students, Ms. Van Haren? What is your agenda? To keep students divided among racial and ethnic lines? This is typical of the liberal and progressive agenda to foster further use of hyphenated names – African-American, Asian-American, Latino-American, etc.

What this exercise should teach the students is that the hard work implemented by the candidates for the student government was ignored by the principal – one person – simply because she – one person – did not approve of the results. The students are learning the evils of political correctness and the lack of rule of law as their student government elections can be compared to that of elections in Cuba, Iran, and Russia – not the United States.

Van Haren wrote a letter to the parents outlining how to have a more representative government – in other words, how to skew results to elect more minorities that the principal approves of because she does not believe in the republican democracy upon which this country was founded. Van Haren clearly believes in diversity instead of the free will of the student body – the voice of one over the voices of the many.

“I feel it is disrespectful to all the people who were running. The whole school voted for these people, so it is not like people rigged the game, but in a way – now it is kind of being rigged,” said Sebastian Kaplan, a seventh-grade student who spoke with KRON-TV. Even a middle school student understands what his principal did was unprincipled.

Apparently the color of the skin is more important to Van Haren than the content of the character of her students. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. would be more than just a little disappointed.

It is ironic that the Everett school district called this electoral debacle a “learning opportunity.” Ironic because it is the principal Lena Van Haren who needs the education in the American electoral system. The fact that she diminished this example of political correctness by noting this was a middle school election and not one for president is demonstrative of her ignorance of the importance of teaching the children what is right, not what is right in her progressive world of election fixing at any level. Van Haren owes her students and their parents both an apology and a return to classical education, something American public schools have seem to have long since abandoned.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Another 9-11: Vigilance or Venality

Another 9-11: Vigilance or Venality?

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

September 9, 2015

Another September 11 is upon us and while the memories fade farther into the sunset, the United States finds itself in a more perilous predicament than on that fateful sunny Tuesday morning in 2001. On that date radical Muslim terrorists flew planes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, and into a field in Shanksville, PA headed for Washington, DC murdering nearly 3,000 innocent people.

Since that date there have been thousands of terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists, punctuated by those in London, Madrid, Bali, and Benghazi, yet more and more people in the government of the United States can’t bring themselves to utter the words Islamic extremists, radical Muslims, or any other form of accurate verbiage describing the myriad acts perpetrated by a people hell bent on the destruction of Israel, the United States, and Western Civilization.

Since that date al-Qaeda continues to flex its muscles, as have Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, and if those terror organizations aren’t enough of a threat, ISIS or ISIL is demonstrative of new and improved ways to torture, murder, and destroy. This is the same ISIS Barack Obama ignorantly and lightly dismissed as a “JV team.” Well, Mr. Obama, that so-called JV team is committing mayhem and chaos on a major league scale with headless Christian, Jewish, and even Muslim bodies strewn across the countryside of far too many locales.

And while terror is on the rise, the United States is under the thumb of a narcissistic so-called leader who has drawn down the size of military – a military that should be the largest on the planet to remind the world of Ronald Reagan’s call for “peace through strength.” Instead, there is the feckless call for “leading from behind,” a deleterious theory only putting the United States in greater jeopardy.

The United States lacks vigilance both abroad and on the domestic front. The bridge connecting the two is the lack of a strong policy regarding immigration – both legal and illegal. Sleeper cells are awakening in the United States, many of which are populated not just by illegal aliens slipping across the southern border, but countless thousands overstaying visas – visas legally obtained due to a pathetic system too afraid to tell people from enemy nations they are not permitted entry into this country.

For more on the insane situation that is the ongoing spate of illegal aliens, please read the following:

http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2015/07/san-francisco-is-no-treat.html

http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2015/02/fund-homeland-security-not-illegals.html

http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2014/12/illegal-still-means-breaking-law.html

http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-southern-border.html

(Once a flat or fair tax system is enacted to replace the mess that is the IRS, the money saved by eliminating those jobs can be used to hire more people to make more sound judgment regarding who should be allowed entry into the United States and be able to follow up on all visas prior to expiration.) A strict immigration policy must not only be enacted, but adhered to with harsh penalties. The United States may be a land of immigrants, and have an open door, but the United States must no longer be the doormat of the world.

A nation of political correctness in government, the public square, and the public schools is destroying itself from within faster than we can save it. More and more people are thinking it is acceptable to have fewer freedoms and more censorship in media and everyday language – especially in the halls of academia.

Places like at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, where Deepa Kumar, a professor of media studies, born in India, has said “the United States is more brutal than ISIS.” Kumar was the leading proponent against having former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the commencement speaker at Rutgers, who kow-towed to Kumar and her ilk. Apparently liberal tolerance stops with conservatives permitted to speak at a public university.

This will only weaken the United States. The answer to speech with which one disagrees, is not less speech, but more speech. The preservation of the First Amendment to the Constitution is imperative for the preservation of the American way of life. We are not China, Cuba, Iran, or Russia.

It is the left in the United States seeking to shrink the First Amendment, shrink the military, eliminate the Second Amendment, and pray the police, which they march in protest against, will protect us while they call for more police firings or even deaths. I should backtrack, I said the left would “pray the police…” – how silly, the left doesn’t pray – it is their lack of prayer that allowed for condoms in the schools, abortion on demand, but mention G-d anywhere, and there is holy hell to pay.

The recent Planned Parenthood expose detailing their selling of baby body parts is as barbaric as the terrorist activities overseas. For more on that issue, please see: http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2015/07/planned-parenthood-americas-isis.html.

The United States is aiding in its own downfall. Terrorists and illegals are using our own laws against us and the United States is a laughing stock with the so-called feminist movement crying over insignificant issues while a genuine war on women is being perpetrated overseas on a mass scale. While a handful of women want to parade around topless and call it an injustice that they can’t, a real war on women exists in Muslim countries where rape victims are stoned to death under the charge of adultery.

And the supposed “champion” of women’s issues, one Hillary Clinton is raking in millions for the Clinton Foundation from countries whose treatment of women is abysmal at best, but hypocrite Hillary talks out of both sides of her mouth – telling potential voters she is for women, yet delivering speeches and profiting from Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

This is the same Hillary Clinton who has endorsed and supports the Obama deal with Iran that will allow them unfettered access to the materials to build nuclear weaponry, with virtually no true inspection systems in place, and with cash in the pockets of the Iranian despotic regime to the tune of $150 billion. This is the worst foreign policy deal in the world since Munich in 1938. Obama has done his best impression of Neville Chamberlain. For more on the disastrous Iran deal, please see: http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2015/08/schumer-must-whip-up-minyan.html.

There is no unity opposing a deal so weak one must wonder if those supporting it have forgotten the severity of September 11, 2001. While Iran was not the perpetrator behind the devastation that shocked the world 14 years ago, it vows to execute damage infinitely worse once it becomes a nuclear power, the keys to which are being handed to them by the Obama administration. Without nuclear power Iran is already the chief state sponsor of terror funding terrorist activities in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

So venal are the supporters of this deal, they put party over country, and legacy over security. For all of its faults and foibles, the United States is still the greatest country in the world. People are forever attempting to make this country their home, not escape it. It is incumbent upon the decent citizens of the United States to strengthen our resolve to ensure the future of this nation is one where people are free to speak their minds without fear of retribution, where the rule of law is respected, where an American education actually benefits its recipients in the competitive real world of law, medicine, technology, communications, engineering, architecture, literature, and education itself.

We are at a crossroads in the United States. It is time to take back our country before it becomes another Sodom and Gomorrah. Let not the sacrifice of those who died making the United States what it once was be lost, and let not those 2,977 souls who perished on September 11, 2001 have died in vain.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living on Westfield, IN. On September 11, 2001 he was working for a newspaper in Northern Virginia and was 10 minutes from the Pentagon on that fateful day.

Domestic Jihadist Slaughters Marines

Domestic Jihadist Slaughters Marines
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
July 17, 2015

Yet another government policy has proven disastrous as gun free zones leave four brave United States Marines murdered, like sitting ducks in a locked cage at the hands of yet another Muslim extremist.

Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Sullivan, 40, saw two tours of duty in Iraq, earning himself two Purple Hearts. The Springfield, MA resident had been a Marine since 1997.

Staff Sergeant David Wyatt, 37, a native of Russellville, AR and resident of Chattanooga, TN attended the University of Montana. Wyatt is survived by his wife Lorri and two children.

Sergeant Carson Holmquist, 25, was from Grantsburg, WI and served two tours in Afghanistan. Holmquist is survived by his wife Jasmine and his two-year-old son Wyatt.

Lance Corporal Skip “Squire” Wells, 21, from Marietta, GA had studied history at Georgia Southern University.

May the memories of the fallen always be for a Blessing. Several others were wounded and being treated for their injuries.

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a radicalized Islamic jihadist, whose name should be forgotten as quickly as possible, is the piece of detritus responsible for the attack on both a Naval training facility and a Naval Reserve support center in Chattanooga.

This horrific slaughter leads to three important questions. Why are members of the United States military, trained in the use of firearms, left unarmed? Why is a Kuwaiti-born, naturalized American who spent one month in Jordan last year not on a terror watch list? And why is the same Kuwaiti-born, American who spent one month in Jordan last year, whose father was on a terror watch list, also not on the same list?

Why? Because the same politically correct mishegas that got Kate Steinle murdered on July 1 of this year, in the illegal sanctuary city of San Francisco also produced four dead Marines, but for a different politically correct excuse. In the case of Steinle it was about not policing illegal aliens for fear of being called a racist or bigot. In the case of the four slaughtered Marines it was about not profiling radicalized Muslims with a propensity toward jihad, especially during the waning days of Ramadan when messages were remitted around the world calling for causing great calamity on the so-called infidels, for fear of being called a racist or bigot. (http://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2015/07/san-francisco-is-no-treat.html)

With domestic Islamo-terrorism on the rise in this country, it is not only incumbent upon the government, but imperative for the government to do its job of protecting the citizens of the United States, and not protect, in the case of Steinle’s murder, illegal aliens, and in the case of the murders of Sullivan, Wyatt, Holmquist, and Wells, domestic jihadists. Put law abiding Americans first.

The first action Barack Obama should take is the repeal of a Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5210.56, signed into effect in February 1992 by Donald J. Atwood, Deputy Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush.

Servicemen and women must have the wherewithal to defend themselves and the community around them at all times. American members of the armed forces must never be left in a defenseless state to be the prey of enemies of the state regardless of faith, nation of origin, race, gender, or any other group the government determines ranks higher in the pecking order over American citizens.

In recent history, was the lesson not learned after the slaughter at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009? Was the lesson not learned after the slaughter at the Washington Navy Yard on September 16, 2013? Obama could have put the works in motion prior to jetting off to New York City for a DNC fundraiser on July 17 as well as to catch a Broadway show on Saturday afternoon, according to Townhall.com. Nor did Obama have the decency to lower the White House flag to half-staff in memory of the fallen Marines. This is yet another example of the callousness of Obama following a tragedy.

Bottom line, the mere words “gun free zone” are an invitation to psychopaths of all stripes – see also the far too numerous school shootings. The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution gives law abiding Americans the right to bear arms. If it’s good enough for criminals it sure as hell should be good enough for the law abiding to protect and defend their homes, their businesses, and most importantly, their families.

As for the growing domestic terrorism and jihad inflicted upon innocent, law abiding Americans, yes, profiling is necessary. A closer monitoring of the travel plans of all individuals holding an American passport is vital. If someone is traveling to an enemy state, it behooves the proper authorities to know why.

A cessation of all immigration and student visas from not just enemy states, but any nation voting against the United States more than 50 percent of the time in the United Nations should immediately be implemented. Some points are just simple common sense, which admittedly isn’t all that common these days.

Juan Williams, on Fox News opined that arming military recruiters at the recruitment centers would be akin to the Wild West. What’s wild are the domestic Islamist militant terrorists with guns a blazing mowing down innocent Americans in their quest to spread evil. In the real Wild West, bank robbers ran wild robbing unarmed banks. The solution? To this day, most banks have armed security.

For those opposing arming our trained military personnel, what’s next my wife inquired rhetorically; disarming police? Maintaining this clearly failed policy renders our military impotent and vulnerable. Vulnerable military – a term I thought I would never utter or write.

The political correctness and perpetual heads in the sand must stop before more and more innocent Americans are eviscerated. Pay attention, people, and speak up before the First Amendment becomes obsolete.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Sadly, following the initial posting of this column, US Naval Petty Officer Randall Smith, 26, a Navy logistics specialist, succumbed to his wounds. Smith, who played baseball at Defiance College, leaves behind his wife Angie and three daughters.

Dodgeball a Symptom of America in Decline

“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” – Patches O’ Houlihan (Dodgeball)

Dodgeball a Symptom of America in Decline

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

April 2, 2013

It didn’t take the banning of dodgeball by the Windham School Board in New Hampshire to come to the easy conclusion that doing so emphasizes the physical and mental decline of America. Dodgeball is merely a symptom of this decline.

A rite of passage for virtually every American child since elementary school, dodgeball is a microcosm of battle and necessary combination of the use of brains and brawn. It’s not just about the bigger, stronger children whaling on the smaller, weaker children. It’s about the smarter children having a strategy to hide in the back of the field while the braggarts man the front lines. Being small has its advantages – one can typically move faster and is a tougher target to hit. And it’s also a team sport, so it pays to have better athletes up front to catch the ball and knock out the better players on the other team.

Is there a part of the game where bullying may come into play? Sure there is; and make no mistake, as the victim of bullies in junior high and high school, there is nothing I abhor more than to see the bullying of any student by either another student, or worse, a parent or teacher.

However, that is not a reason to eliminate dodgeball from gym class. In dodgeball, like any other gym class activity, there is opportunity for redemption. Lose today, win tomorrow. Improve the throwing and catching skills. And, like any gym class activity, there are the lessons of winning with grace and losing with dignity – notions barely recognizable any longer.

In this day and age, virtually all competition has been sidelined in favor of putting salve on a damaged self-esteem. Note to those parents and teachers more concerned with their child’s or student’s self-esteem over the learning how to win and lose: you are damaging your children and setting them up for failure and a rude awakening once they hit the real world.

This is a competition-based world in which we live and the sooner children learn this, the better prepared they will be to face life’s competitions – making the team, getting into college, getting the job, joining various clubs, and yes, even finding that special someone who will become one’s future spouse.

Windham Superintendent Henry LaBranche referred to dodgeball as a “human-target game” in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader. Dodgeball is not a conspiracy, Mr. Superintendent, and while the intent is not to hit the opponent, the body is a “human-target” in baseball, football, hockey and many other contact sports. Are those sports to be banned as well?

It’s bad enough children are placed in virtual plastic bubbles to avoid them getting skinned knees and the like, but children are not eggs and their shells will not crack, unless parents and teachers continue to shelter them like fragile porcelain dolls. After all, dodgeball is played with the traditional squishy red bouncy ball we all remember also using for kickball, not a medicine ball.

Sadly, this treatment carries over to the classroom where more and more schools are doing away with awards, naming valedictorians, and instead presenting certificates of achievements simply for showing up. Again the nature of society is competitive and children who don’t learn this in the classroom as well on the field of play will merely get crushed when facing the harsh realities of the world around them.

The emasculation of boys leads to men who become obsequious, sniveling man-children afraid of their own shadows. Barack Obama said he doubts he would allow a son of his to play football because of the potential for injuries and concussion. Such fates exist in all competitive sports and considering the obesity crisis in the United States, children should be encouraged, not discouraged, from participating in team sports. Put down the video games and play ball!

Team sports also creates the next generation of leaders – be they in the boardrooms, ball fields, or battlefields.

Earlier I noted that dodgeball is a microcosm of battle. Having a winning strategy is what keeps one in the game as well as alive on the battlefield. The winners in dodgeball become those stellar strategists in the boardrooms and on the battlefields, while the whiners continue to become soft and unable to fight their own battles in life.

This softness is what leads to a sense of entitlement by this generation of students of the government as well as government allowing them to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26, but that’s another column for another day.

The coddling received as school children by being placed in cocoons by parents and teachers afraid they might break a nail will only stunt their growth as independent adults able to take personal responsibility for their own actions and their own lives instead of placing blame everywhere else.

This is not the fault of the children who at such ages don’t know any better, but the fault of parents afraid to see their precious child skin their knee, or teachers afraid to lose a job should a student get hurt, or administrators afraid of lawsuits should Johnny return home with a bruise from doing what Johnny does – play games with his friends.

Children must toughen up and adults must tough it out.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Selfish Mother Shuts Down Dances

Selfish Mother Shuts Down Dances
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
September 21, 2012

If there could be some mechanism for typing equivalent to speed dialing on the telephone, the phrase “political correctness run amok,” would be just the sort of phrase to be first on the new speed typing application.

In this specific case, that expression would apply to the insanity occurring in the Cranston, RI school district where a mother, along with the support of the ACLU of course, manage to shut down a district-wide, years tradition of father-daughter dances, along with all other cross gender parent-child activities.

To be fair, the mother and ACLU have a legally legitimate complaint, at least according to the laws of the ultra-liberal state of Rhode Island. “While federal Title IX legislation banning gender discrimination gives an exemption for ‘father-son’ and ‘mother-daughter’ events, Rhode Island law doesn’t.” (www.providencejournal.com)

But there is a bigger picture to be seen here. Where does the chicanery of political correctness end? Will there be protests and objections every time one person is unable to participate in an event or activity and a lawsuit to curtail that event or activity? Where does reasonableness come into play? What role does common sense play in this drama of the ridiculous?

Should team sports be cancelled if a complaining student is cut from the team? Should the prom be cancelled if a complaining student doesn’t have a date? Should the school choir be disbanded if a complaining student doesn’t have the vocal chops to participate?

It was bad enough when a Newton, MA middle school unofficially banned the wearing of “celebratory clothing” last year – such as t-shirts commemorating a student’s birthday or bar/bat mitzvah simply because not all students had been invited to a particular event. G-d forbid a child has to come in contact with a reminder of an event for which he or she was not invited. (“Keep Your Shirts On,” 12/24/11 www.sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com)

Legislation is designed to restrict behavior, such as the state law in Rhode Island prohibiting the mother-son and father-daughter programs, even after federal law exempts such outings from falling under the auspices of Title IX.

Could there have been another way of handling this situation? Sure. Did the mother not have a brother, father, uncle, good friend of the family to step in and accompany the daughter to the dance? If there is no adult male influence in the child’s life, that is a different problem for another column.

Upon hearing of this situation and law, state senate candidate Sean Gately (R) said he will work to change the law if elected. (www.providencejournal.com)

Not every child will be able to participate in every activity; but that child or parent should not be allowed to hold an entire school or district emotionally hostage to prevent their precious angel from feeling the pangs of disappointment. These children had better learn about disappointment, rejection, failure and losing now before it hits them like a ton of bricks and they are too far gone emotionally living in the world of Oz to recover and there are more Paducahs, Columbines or Auroras.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.