Powerline's Scott Johnson first began posting this excerpt from Calvin Coolidge's Independence Day speech in 2004: it seems more prescient with each passing year

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THE ETERNAL MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE DAY

President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety. The following paragraph, however, is particularly relevant to the challenge that confronts us in the variants of the progressive dogma that pass themselves off today as the higher wisdom:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

The Supreme Court erred, and this is the result

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It’s actually an acceleration, not the beginning of the state’s and its social media branch’s attack on free speech. Already, Google, Facebook, et al, have demonetized conservative websites by refusing to run ads on any article discussing global warming, transgenderism, school unions, COVID responses, from lockdowns t masks to vaccines — the list is endless. Facebook’s just upping the ante, and, emboldened by the Supremes, the rest of the evil empire is sure to follow suit.

Facebook (Meta) Censors Thousands of Mainers After SCOTUS Green Lights Feds to Coerce Social Media

Facebook, the flagship social media site of Meta Platforms, Inc., deleted thousands of social media posts from users in Maine on Friday night.

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Facebook’s broad censorship campaign removed more than 3,000 posts made by social media users, including users living outside of Maine, who had linked to Maine Wire articles, including elected officials posting their own op-eds.

The mass takedown began just 24 hours after President Joe Biden gave a debate performance that was widely regarded as disastrous for his re-election campaign.

The Maine Wire’s Facebook page had primarily been sharing videos of the Commander-in-Chief debating former Republican President Donald Trump in the hours before the censorship campaign began.

However, the nature of the posts that were removed were broad and varied, and not all of them political or authored by Maine Wire reporters.

According to a review of hundreds of complaints sent to the Maine Wire about the censorship campaign, the posts Facebook targeted have no theme or commonality other than having links to TheMaineWire.com.

Facebook removed a May 2023 story about the Stand by to Fly practical shooting event in Hampden, which raised $75,000 for the Travis Mills Foundation.

Rep. Regan Paul (R-Winterport) shared screenshots showing that her more recent op-ed about offshore wind in Maine — a project that will directly impact her constituents — was removed from her personal page. In this instance, an elected officials own speech concerning a major political topic was removed from her personal page.

The censored stories also include dozens of investigative reports on illegal Chinese marijuana sites throughout Maine.

For example, Facebook deleted all links to an investigative report that showed Gov. Janet Mills’ brother, Paul Mills, helped Chinese drug traffickers transfer ownership of an illicit marijuana cultivation site in Corinna to a Chinese national living in Guangdong Province, China.

Facebook even took down a guest column about the New England Patriots.

Understand, The Maine Wire is not some fire-breathing, anarchist/commieAlex Jones January 6th denier, it’s a legitimate, solid news reporting publication: it broke the story of the Chinese pot farms that have invaded Maine, for instance, a story with national implications because the same pattern is occurring in other rural states. What it is, and the reason Facebook is going after it, is that it’s conservative – beginning and end.

Facebook has a long history of partnering with left-wing governments to censor politically motivated speech. In Germany, criticisms of the country’s immigration policies are regularly removed from the site. In Pakistan, the company will limit speech offensive to Muslims.

Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson issued the following comment in response to Facebook’s targeted censorship campaign:

“Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard person.”

I’d say that sums it up.

161 years ago today, Pickett's Charge was repulsed, Lee's soldiers slaughtered, and the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg concluded.

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Lee’s attempt to invade the north was thwarted and he was forced to retreat back to Virginia. The war would continue for another 19 months, but it was lost today.

If you’ve never toured the battlefield, read a good history on it, and then go see it — more fun than touring the Capitol, and less chance of being imprisoned for 10 years.

January contract, closed today

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58 Perkins Road has sold for $5.3 million. The owners tried for $6.195 million back in June ‘22, but that was not a good time to press the boundaries, and the listing was pulled. It returned in September of last year at $5.685 million, with the result as noted.

Interestingly, the listing info includes a number of digitally altered shots that switch the color scheme of certain rooms from Bloomingdales black to white. Are tastes changing again?

Those who can't ....

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It’s waacist! Dolly Parton scheme giving children free books attacked as ‘white saviourism’

Dolly Parton has been accused of “white saviourism” for giving millions of free books to poor children.

The reading scheme, called Imagination Library, was launched by the country and western star in the US more than three decades ago. It now operates in the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia, and has been lauded for helping to drive up literacy rates.

It gives disadvantaged pupils the same access to books as their middle-class peers by sending high-quality titles directly to the homes of under-fives.

But according to a recently published academic paper, the award-winning scheme is racist by reinforcing notions of “white privilege and heteronormativity” and not representing enough cultural diversity, disability, trans and bisexual gender identities and non-traditional family structures.

The academic paper, by speech and language pathologist Jennifer Stone, published by the University of North Carolina, asserts that Dolly Parton’s philanthropy is “potentially dangerous” and smacks of “white savourism”.

Through its focus on “reading to succeed” and “perfecting parenting”, Parton’s Imagination Library scheme is “oppressive”, says Stone. Such themes subjugate children and “privilege a White, middle-class, cis-gendered, heteronormative, able-bodied norm,” it adds.

Let the University of North Carolina describe this further:

Doctoral dissertation takes deep dive into Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

For her doctoral dissertation, “Reading Power With and Through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library: A Critical Content Analysis,” Jennifer Stone, MS, CCC-SLP, examined the 60 books provided by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (DPIL) to the children who entered kindergarten in 2022. Established in 1995, DPIL is a book gifting program that mails free books to children in participating areas from birth until age five.

Millions of children nationwide received the books. Today the program is publicly funded for all children in 21 states. Given the wide reach of the program—which is expected to continue expanding—Stone undertook this research because of her desire to understand how the discourses of race, gender, class, ability, and literacy are represented in books that are distributed to an entire community. Stone, who successfully defended her dissertation this semester and will receive her PhD in May, received the James J. Gallagher Dissertation Award from the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) in 2023.

She says that this common reading experience provides a community literacy environment, which she investigated through both deductive and inductive methods. Through a page-by-page analysis of the texts, she examined the frequency and types of mentions of race, gender, class, ability, and literacy. In addition, she explored how these elements were represented and the impact they might have on families who read the books.

She discovered that DPIL—which she says is evidence-oriented and interested in best practices—chooses books that do a good job of including frequent representations of racial diversity, with inclusive pictures and illustrations. However, there is less authentic representation of authors and illustrators, with mostly white illustrators and authors creating stories about children of color. All the books perpetuate gender norms and heteronormative relationships. Similarly, the distributed books lack diverse family structure relationships and focus on the middle class. Additionally, characters’ families in books rarely engage in the family reading practice the books are intended to promote.

This spring, Stone shared her findings with the leadership at the Dollywood Foundation, which runs the library. She noted that the books often conflate race and gender; the five families in the books who do not live in single-family homes are all families of color. Some of their apartments are depicted as places from which children needed to or wanted to escape. The books do not represent diversity of ability, since all the characters are portrayed as fit and able. Stone says that while her research was well received, she does not know if it will impact the book selection process.

… In her inductive analysis, Stone discovered three themes: reading to succeed; living the American dream; and perfecting parenting. She says that these reflect the idea that everybody can grow up and live the American dream if they follow the standard path. In Stone’s perception, the reading tips included on the flaps of the books distributed by the library place a heavy burden on parents as the responsible parties for ensuring their children are ready for kindergarten.

“I am concerned about putting pressure on parents,” she says. “I have a great deal of interest in supporting parents, listening to them, and understanding their lived experiences and wisdom and supporting them in resisting the pressures that I see society placing on them.” She believes that the United States needs to do a better job supporting parents and recognizing that systems must be in place to ensure families’ success.  She says that the DPIL collection of books has a theme of childism, seeing children as being less than other citizens in society, with the expectation that children’s job is to grow up and be part of society rather than being valued for who they are in each moment.

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Her entire university is terminally infected, and beyond recovery:

Stone says that the Gallagher Award was a huge honor particularly since it was decided on by her FPG colleagues. “The award felt like a vote of confidence in this work that I felt a little tender about,” she says. “The impetus of this research was my experience and concern about how I had contributed to systemic oppressions. The award felt like my colleagues saying, 'This is important work that matters to us and our communities.”

What's not to like?

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Courtesy of Twitchy:

What is 'Agenda 47'? It's the policy proposals the Trump campaign has put forth during his 2024 bid for the White House and it includes ending veteran homelessness, energy, homeschooling, and other things.

The Left hates it. 

And yet when they talk about it, they sound like they could be employed by the Trump campaign. 

WATCH:

RELATED:

He's filed suit, of course, and he'll probably be awarded a million bucks

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A student who filmed himself storming into a New York college administrator’s office and tearing down two pro-Israel banners is suing the school – and claiming the official “violently” attacked him.

Purchase College administrator Paul Nicholson allegedly attacked sophomore Cesar Paul who went into his office and tore down a pair of banners that said “We Stand with Israel” on Dec. 12, 2023 because they made classmates feel threatened and marginalized, the student said in the lawsuit.

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[T]he encounter … began with the sophomore walking into Nicholson’s office.

“Oh, you’re here to see me?” Nicholson asked.

“Yea, I am,” Paul responded.

“What can I do for you?” Nicholson said.

“I’m gonna take these down,” Paul said as he grabbed the banners.

“No, you’re not,” Nicholson responded. “Get the f–k out of here! Don’t touch my s–t! You don’t come in and steal my s–t!”

“What the f–k man!” Paul whined during the chaotic encounter. “Free Palestine, bro!”

“Get out of here!” Nicholson yelled, as the two fought for the banners in a rumble that spilled into the hallway.

Another student calmed Paul down, telling him to “chill” and that Nicholson isn’t racist.

“This is not how you do it,” the other student tells him. “Let it go, sit. Chill, bro.”

Both the administration and campus police sent around emails about the ordeal that framed it as an antisemitic incident, the suit said.

Paul was later suspended from the school for four months and put on probation through May 2025, it added.

The student claims the suspension and subsequent punishments were “not in due proportion to the nature and seriousness of the offense,” and only levelled against him in retaliation for Paul’s criticism of Israel and support of the Palestinian people.

“Paul did not physically harm, threaten, harass, intimidate, abuse, coerce or detain Nicholson at any moment, nor did he ever intend to do so,” the suit said. “His sole intent was to remove the banners that posed a threat to student safety.”

Oh, my bleedin’ heart.

Oh, bullshit: even hedge fund managers aren't this stupid

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Whitney Tilson, a longtime Wall Street investor and Democratic donor, has accused Joe Biden of “deceiving the American people” about his mental fitness for office — and is demanding that he “step down immediately” as the party’s 2024 presidential candidate.

The 57-year-old money man — who made a bundle during the financial crisis, only to shutter his hedge fund Kase Capital in 2017 — told The Post that Biden should allow a younger rival to take on Trump and save the US “from a four-year nightmare” following his CNN debate debacle last week.

“I feel like I have been deceived,” Tilson said. “Biden and the people around him have been deceiving the American people.

Anyone and everyone with brains knew that Joe was already growing senile back in 2019, and have watched as his dementia worsened at an increasing pace over the past four years. If this Tilson character couldn’t see that, it only shows how few brains it takes to make an enormous fortune on Wall Steet.