Columnist.
Lots of folks around the Midwest are looking for another place to buy their butter beans after a major grocery store chain gave the Girl Scouts and the Salvation Army the heave-ho. Schnucks, based in St. Louis, announced a new policy banning all solicitors — and that includes little girls selling Thin Mints and Tagalongs. "Our primary obligation is servicing our customers by providing the most pleasant and convenient shopping environment," company spokesman Paul Simon said in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Because of this we have decided to end the solicitation of our customers or distribution of written or other materials at our stores." For the record, Schnucks is a privately owned company and the owners have a right to run their business however they see fit. But they might want to reconsider calling themselves the "friendliest store in town."
Nothing screams tolerance and diversity like a university workshop designed to target white people. The State University of New York in Binghamton has a bit of explaining to do after it held a workshop titled, "#StopWhitePeople2K16." The workshop was an official part of the residential assistant training program at the taxpayer-funded university. The Binghamton Review, the university's conservative newspaper, exposed this nonsense and they deserve a round of applause for their efforts. It's not exactly clear how they intend to stop all of us white folks, but the course smacks of blatant bigotry disguised as cultural awareness. Get a load of the course description: "The premise of this session is to help others take the next step in understanding diversity, privilege, and the society we function within." I developed a micro-aggression just reading that nonsense.
A law enforcement officer said he was asked to leave a Red Cross shelter in Lafayette, Louisiana, after he prayed with several flood victims. Clay Higgins, a reserve city marshal and a local legend, dropped by after work to minister to evacuees at the Heymann Performing Arts Center on Aug. 19. "I was not proselytizing," he told me. "I was just there to thank volunteers and offer prayers and encouragement." Higgins, who is also running for Congress, was dressed in uniform and was holding a Bible. At some point during the visit a volunteer approached Higgins and mentioned there was a problem.
An Air Force major, who was accused of civil rights violations for having a Bible on his work desk, has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to military officials at the 310th Space Wing in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Maj. Steve Lewis, a supervisor at the Reserve National Security Space Institute, agreed to voluntarily remove the Bible pending a military review. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation had filed a complaint against Maj. Lewis accusing him of "harboring and encouraging a truly abhorrent example of First Amendment civil rights violations." But a public affairs spokesman told me late Tuesday that Maj. Lewis was well within his rights to have an open Bible on his office desk. "We have concluded that no abuse of liberties has occurred," Lt. Col. David Fruck told me.
At first Micah Brienen thought his sister-in-law's text message was a joke. "I was immediately shocked by it," Mr. Brienen, of Bonita Springs, Florida, told me. "I thought it was a fake." But the text message was not a fake — it was the real deal. It was a Pledge of Allegiance waiver from his niece's public school in Tallahassee: "I understand my rights as a parent and I request that my child, noted above, be excused from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This request includes standing and placing his/her right hand over his/her heart."
But you won't hear about it from the mainstream media.
There are two indisputable facts surrounding Target's decision to allow men to use the same bathrooms and changing rooms as women and little girls. First, Target's stock has taken pounding since April. Second quarter earnings fell to $680 million, according to Market Watch. And revenue fell 7.2 percent. Second, more than 1.4 million consumers have joined American Family Association's nationwide boycott of the nation's second-largest discount retailer. The debate is whether there is a correlation between those two facts. Target CEO Brian Cornwell told Fortune magazine in May that the transgender bathroom policy has nothing to do with their financial wellbeing.
The University of Mississippi has officially dumped "Dixie" so it can be more inclusive. I fear old times there will soon be forgotten, folks. The athletic department released a statement Friday announcing that the beloved southern song will no longer be played at home football games, ending yet another long-held tradition. "The newly expanded and renovated Vaught-Hemingway Stadium will further highlight our best traditions and create new ones that give the Ole Miss Rebels the best home field advantage in college football," the statement reads. "Dixie" was first played by the Ole Miss band around 1948, Mississippi Today reports.
If the progressive academic radicals at Princeton University have their way, the New Jersey school will soon be "man-free." Dude. The Ivy League university wants to eradicate the word "man" from its vocabulary. It's all part of an effort to get folks to start using "gender inclusive language." Our friends at The College Fix first exposed this gender-neutral load of hooey in a fine story written by Jeremy Beaman. Staffers at the Ivy League school have been advised to no longer say "man." Instead, they should use words like "individual," "person," or "people." Remember George Washington and Benjamin Franklin? Don't call them our forefathers. Princeton says we should refer to them as our ancestors.
Let's say your tenth-grader forgets his lunch. So you receive a telephone call at work. "Mom, I left my baloney sandwich on the kitchen counter," he tells you. "Can you bring it to me, pretty please?" So, what would you do? I'd be willing to bet a Moonpie that many parents would drop everything and rush to the school to personally deliver their little snowflake's brown bag lunch. But that sort of coddling is not allowed at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a matter of fact, it's outright banned. Catholic High School prides itself on teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and problem-solving.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is demanding an Air Force major be "aggressively punished" for having an open Bible on his desk at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO. "It [the Bible] is very obviously a statement of Christian preference, Christian primacy," MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told me. "Had that been the Book of Satan or the Koran there would be blood in the freaking streets." He accused Maj. Steve Lewis, a supervisor at the Reserve National Security Space Institute, of "harboring and encouraging a truly abhorrent example of First Amendment civil rights violations." Mr. Weinstein is a fussy little fellow, isn't he?
The firefighters in Poughkeepsie, New York, are patriots — especially the guys in the Arlington Fire District. They love America and they love to fly an American flag on their fire trucks. There's nothing quite like watching the Star-Spangled Banner wave from the back of a truck tearing down Burnett Boulevard. But on Monday, the Arlington Fire District's Board of Fire Commissioners ordered the men to remove Old Glory. The commissioners, in a 3-2 decision, said the flags would distract motorists and posed a liability, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported. Joseph Tarquinio, the head of the local firefighters union, was disgusted by the order.
Teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina, have been advised to stop calling the children "boys and girls," according to a training presentation on transgender issues. Instead, the progressives who control Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools want teachers to identify the youngsters as either "students" or "scholars." So what if a teacher has a student who is dumb as a rock? Would the child still be called a scholar? The transgender guidelines, which will go into effect later this month, range from the absurd to downright outrageous. For example, boys who identify as girls would be permitted to participate on overnight all-girl field trips. That's a rule sure to be a hit among the 13-year-olds.
It was a weekend of violent unrest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A rampaging mob burned businesses and battled with police. The rioting started after a black police officer shot and killed a black suspect. The bad guy had a gun, and when he refused to drop his weapon the officer opened fire. The mob took to the streets, causing all sorts of mayhem. A number of buildings were set ablaze, including a gas station. Five police officers were hurt, one hit by a brick. White people were also purportedly targeted. A number of websites, including Fox Nation, posted a video showing some protesters trying to hunt down white motorists. "They beating up all the white people," one eyewitness said on the video. We cannot confirm if any were in fact injured.
The mainstream media and Democrats have gone bat-crap crazy over Donald Trump. This time they're accusing Mr. Trump of threatening to assassinate Mrs. Bill Clinton. I mean it's full-blown, head-spinning, Linda Blair-projectile vomiting kind of crazy, folks. So first I want you to hear what Donald Trump actually said about the Second Amendment. "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment," Trump started. "By the way, and if she gets to pick — if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know." Before Mr. Trump could say, "God bless America — thanks for coming," the mainstream media had interrupted regular programming with the emergency broadcast system.
High school football coach Joe Kennedy was fired for praying and now he wants his job back. Kennedy, a former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Bremerton School District in Washington State, claiming he was let go because of his religious beliefs. The school district has yet to respond to the lawsuit. "They fired him for praying," said Michael Berry, the coach's attorney. Berry is with First Liberty Institute, one of the nation's largest law firms handling religious liberty cases. "If a school can do this to someone like Coach Kennedy, they can do it to anybody," Berry told me. The coach is not asking for a single penny in his lawsuit — he just wants his job back.
There's been quite a bit of scuttlebutt lately over whether the Democrats are going to try and steal the presidential election. Donald Trump is all but certain that's exactly what's going to happen. "I'm telling you, Nov. 8, we'd better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged," he told Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity. "And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it's going to be taken away from us." Would Democrats do something so nefarious? Would they really try to rig a presidential election? Anybody want to wager how Bernie Sanders might answer that question? Left-wingers have dismissed Trump's concerns as fear-mongering.
The "Don't Tread on Me" Flag just got trod upon — by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC is investigating whether the Revolutionary War-era Gadsden Flag could be considered a racist symbol in the workplace. In recent years, the yellow flag with its coiled snake has also become a symbol of the Tea Party. "Whatever historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts," the EEOC report states. The distinguished writer Eugene Volokh first exposed this absurd story in the pages of The Washington Post. Here's the back story: In 2014, a black government worker filed a complaint alleging he had been discriminated against by a coworker who wore a ball cap that bore an insignia of the Gadsden Flag.
Politically correct tyranny is afoot at the University of Houston. I was recently made aware of a student at the university who was suspended for 50 days by the student government association and ordered to attend diversity training over a reference she made about the Black Lives Matter crowd. "#ForgetBlackLivesMatter; more like AllLivesMatter," wrote Rohini Sethi, the vice president of the school's student government association. Ms. Sethi wrote those words last month just a few hours after five Dallas police officers were assassinated. Her belief that every life matters set off a firestorm of controversy among students — including the Black Student Union.
After back-to-back weeks of bickering and bloviating, I'm about all politicked out. So the other day, I sent a message to our good readers that I was searching for stories to share that would inspire, not inflame. Soon, my in box was flooded with great stories from across the fruited plain. But one in particular stood out. So pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, settle back into your Cracker Barrel rocking chair, and prepare to have your bones blessed. Our story took place on July 18th aboard Delta Airlines Flight 15 from Frankfurt, Germany.
