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Biden’s Education Department Wants to Roll Back Effort to Catalog Teacher Sex Crimes

The Department of Education wants to roll back a Trump-era effort to collect data on teacher-on-student sex crimes.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights will not ask school districts questions regarding teacher-on-student sexual assault allegations as part of its 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection, proposed Thursday. The change is designed to “reduce burden and duplication of data,” an Education Department spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. But critics say eliminating the question is the Biden administration’s attempt to appease teachers’ unions.

“This is the ultimate act of bowing to the teachers’ unions,” Kimberly Richey, who served as acting assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights in the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon. “Through this proposal, the Biden administration is actively helping schools cover up these incidents, which we were intentionally shining a light on.”

The Education Department will still ask districts to report documented cases of rape and sexual assault. But it will not ask school officials to report allegations that resulted in the resignation or retirement of the accused. Former secretary of education Betsy DeVos added those optional questions to the 2020-2021 data collection, which was delayed one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The department also won’t ask districts to report pending cases or cases in which a school staffer was reassigned to another district school prior to the conclusion of an investigation.

Reporting alleged sex crimes in addition to documented cases provides a fuller picture of sexual violence in schools, as the accused may retire, resign, or seek employment elsewhere before a district can reach a conclusion in the case.

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LAPD Used Fake Social Media Accounts to Spy on Users

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers used fake online personas to monitor social media users, and at one point considered employing tools that critics say would lead to law enforcement profiling innocent people, according to recently revealed government documents.

The documents, released by the Brennan Center for Justice following an open records request with the LAPD, have raised concerns among critics that law enforcement’s online surveillance operations harm freedom of expression and encourage profiling.

“Social media surveillance can facilitate surveillance of protest activity and police presence at protests, which can chill both online and offline speech,” the organization said. “Further, the highly contextual nature of social media also makes it ripe for misinterpretation.”

The Brennan Center released an initial set of documents in September, showing that LAPD officers use fake social media accounts to monitor online activity. The FBI and other federal intelligence agencies are restricted from using such tactics under a Reagan-era executive order that require agents to reveal their identities when participating in private organizations.

“Social media situational awareness is gained by the passive and active searching for information impacting operations, including information found in discussion forums, posts, videos, and blogs,” a 2015 LAPD social media user guide says, adding. “In this capacity, social media use can be covert and/or clandestine.”

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NY Times ‘Experts’ Says Face Masks Could Become Permanent

The New York Times has published an article citing “experts” who say mask wearing is now “normalized” and could remain in place permanently even when the pandemic ends.

Titled ‘When Can the Covid Masks Finally Come Off?’, the article explores when it’s likely the restrictions will come to an end, but then concludes that mask wearing may never end.

The piece cites scientists who say the general public “should be prepared to put masks back on in the event of future surges” and that older adults should continue to wear them anyway.

“Do we all wear masks the rest of our lives?” asked Dr. Stephen Luby, an infectious disease expert and epidemiologist at Stanford University.

“Before the pandemic there was a stigma associated with wearing masks in this country, but I think it’s become normalized in a lot of places,” noted Dr. Linsey Marr.

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Conflict of Interest? WashPost Owner Jeff Bezos Gives Obama Foundation $100 Million

It looks like The Washington Post may run into a conflict of interest problem the next time it fawns over former President Barack Obama’s allegedly “chiseled pectorals.”

The Obama Foundation released a statement saying that leftist Post owner and mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos was donating a whopping $100 million “in honor of Congressman John Lewis” (D-GA), who recently passed away. The Foundation called the donation “the largest individual contribution received to date.” The purpose of the grant includes “help[ing] expand the scope of programming that reaches emerging leaders in the United States and around the world.”

But this could present an issue for the newspaper Bezos owns, which has a sordid record of cheerleading for Obama. The most glaring example of the outlet’s bias was in December of 2008, when The Post was giddy for how “[t]he sun glinted off [Obama’s] chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”

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Is Fentanyl-Tainted Marijuana ‘Something Real’ or ‘Just an Urban Legend’?

Taken at face value, recent reports of fentanyl-tainted marijuana in Connecticut highlight the hazards inherent in the black market created by drug prohibition. Consumers who buy illegal drugs rarely know for sure exactly what they are getting, and the retail-level dealers who sell those drugs to them may be equally in the dark. But even in a market where such uncertainty prevails, opioid overdoses among drug users who claim to have consumed nothing but cannabis—like earlier, better documented reports of fentanyl mixed with cocaine—raise puzzling questions about what is going on.

One thing seems clear: The official warnings prompted by those reports are more alarming than the evidence justifies.

The proliferation of illicitly produced fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute during the last decade or so has helped drive opioid-related deaths to record levels. Fentanyl is roughly 50 times as potent as heroin, and its unpredictable presence has increased drug variability, making lethal errors more likely.

According to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States saw a record number of drug-related deaths last year: more than 93,000. Three quarters of those deaths involved opioids. “Synthetic opioids other than methadone,” the category that includes fentanyl and its analogs, were involved in about 83 percent of those opioid-related deaths, up from 14 percent in 2010.

Fentanyl and heroin have similar psychoactive effects. And since fentanyl is cheaper to produce and easier to smuggle than heroin, it makes sense that drug traffickers would use the former to fortify or replace the latter. But the idea that dealers would mix marijuana and fentanyl, two drugs with notably different effects, is much less plausible. Until now it amounted to nothing more than scary rumors.

Last week, however, the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) announced that it has received 39 reports since July of “patients who have exhibited opioid overdose symptoms and required naloxone for revival” but who “denied any opioid use and claimed to have only smoked marijuana.” The most obvious explanation for those cases is that the patients falsely denied opioid use, which carries a stronger stigma than cannabis consumption. But the agency also reported that a lab test of a marijuana sample obtained in one of those cases detected fentanyl.

“This is the first lab-confirmed case of marijuana with fentanyl in Connecticut and possibly the first confirmed case in the United States,” DPH Commissioner Manisha Juthani said. Based on that finding, her department “strongly advises all public health, harm reduction, and others working with clients who use marijuana to educate them about the possible dangers of marijuana with fentanyl.” It says “they should assist their clients with obtaining the proper precautions if they will be using marijuana.” It also “recommends that anyone who is using substances obtained illicitly…know the signs of an opioid overdose, do not use alone, and have naloxone on hand.”

These warnings seem overwrought, given the meager basis for them. If the hazard Juthani describes were significant enough that it would be rational for cannabis consumers to “have naloxone on hand,” you would expect to see many more suspected cases in a state with more than half a million marijuana users. Assuming the single lab test result was accurate, it is not clear how fentanyl ended up in the marijuana sample. Did a dealer intentionally add the fentanyl, and if so why? Could the sample have been contaminated accidentally by the dealer, his customer, or the lab? Did the patient, contrary to his denial, deliberately dose his pot with fentanyl?

Forbes writer Chris Roberts posed those questions to Robert Lawlor, an intelligence officer who works for the New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), an interagency drug task force. “We have some of those same questions,” Lawlor said. “From a business standpoint, it doesn’t make sense to put fentanyl on marijuana. So why is this happening? What is the purpose of behind putting it in marijuana? Those are some of the questions that are still out there.”

Notably, HIDTA is not telling marijuana users they should be on the lookout for fentanyl in black-market cannabis. “Marijuana [mixed with] fentanyl has been sort of an urban legend for a couple years now,” Lawlor said. “To try and decide whether it’s something real or just an urban legend is important for public safety and public health.”

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BLM Activist Makes Ominous, Unfounded Claim About Waukesha Massacre: ‘Revolution’

Was the Waukesha, Wisconsin, Christmas parade massacre Sunday a terrorist attack touched off by the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case? There’s no direct evidence as of yet that it was, but one prominent Milwaukee-area Black Lives Matter activist thinks it was — and not only that, he believes it was a good thing.

According to the Daily Caller, in a video streamed on Facebook from the scene of the tragedy early Monday morning, Vaun Mayes said he heard from an anonymous source that it was retribution for the Rittenhouse verdict and that “it sounds possible that the revolution has started.”

Darrell E. Brooks Jr., a 39-year-old man from Milwaukee, was taken into custody by police after he allegedly plowed his red SUV into pedestrians and parade marchers on Sunday evening. Five were killed and at least 40 injured, according to Fox News.

It’s unclear what police believe Brooks’ motive was as of Tuesday morning. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Waukesha’s police chief said they had no evidence the massacre was an act of terrorism. Investigators believe he was party to a “domestic disturbance” before the incident, potentially involving a knife. However, Brooks is a career criminal with a 44-page criminal record and multiple charges open against him.

Nevertheless, the timing of the incident and the proximity of Waukesha to Kenosha, Wisconsin — where Rittenhouse was acquitted for killing two rioters and wounding a third during unrest last summer — led many to speculate about whether those were just coincidences.

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