Society's ChildS


Snakes in Suits

Sick! Former RNC aide sentenced to 12 years for 'requesting videos of babies'

judges gavel
© Getty
A former senior ad designer for the Republican National Committee who called the sexual abuse of babies his "absolute favorite" has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for receipt of child pornography.

Ruben Verastigui of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty to charges of having 162 videos and more than 50 images of child pornography on his phone in July 2021. On Thursday, a federal judge sentenced Verastigui to 151 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release. He will be required to register as a sex offender for at least 15 years.

Verastigui, 29, was active in an online group with at least 18 members dedicated to trading child pornography and discussing child sexual abuse, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Verastigui shared child pornography videos with another member of the group and made numerous comments about sexually abusing children.

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Fire

France prepares for gas rationing

gas hob
© Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images
France is surveying its largest consumers of natural gas to assess which of them would have to suspend normal operations if deliveries of the fuel from Russia are cut. The plan was outlined in a decree published on Friday by the government gazette JORF.

The document says the French gas network operator GRTgaz will collect data from the nation's largest consumers so that the government could decide which of them could be put on pause with the least economic damage. Only entities with annual consumption of at least 5 gigawatt hours are being considered for the chopping block.

The survey, which gas consumers must participate in under the threat of being fined, is meant for a scenario in which the supply of Russian gas to France is disrupted. If shortages over the summer leave the country unprepared for the cold season, rationing may be necessary next winter.

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Eye 1

New Jersey model curriculum: 'Gender identity' lessons for 1st and 2nd graders

trans flag waver
© AP Photo/Steven Senne
A model New Jersey state curriculum provided to parents in the Westfield school district and released by State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-39) suggests that students should begin learning about gender identity as early as the first or second grade.

Transgender activists believe that gender identity is different from biological sex, and that individuals may switch genders. While there is growing tolerance for that idea among adults, including in Supreme Court decisions, many Americans believe it should not be introduced to young children, for whom discussions of sex, gender, and sexuality are inappropriate.

Comment: It seems every time anyone reacts to released school curriculum material, leftist school boards deny that this is in fact the curriculum their children will be, or are being, taught. They'll often say that the released material isn't final and only being considered. They say that CRT is not being taught in schools, despite evidence that it is. What it comes down to is that school boards and teachers don't want parents to know what the nature of the radical ideology they're teaching their kids and deny everything if they're exposed.

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Pistol

Mass shooting suspect served less time with California law

mass shooting scene california
© AP Photo/Rich PedroncelliAuthorities search area of the scene of a mass shooting with multiple deaths in Sacramento, Calif. Sunday, April 3, 2022.
A suspect arrested in connection with last weekend's mass shooting outside bars near the California state Capitol served less than half his 10-year sentence because of voter-approved changes to state law that lessened the punishment for his felony convictions and provided a chance for earlier release.

Smiley Allen Martin was freed in February after serving time for punching a girlfriend, dragging her from her home by her hair and whipping her with a belt, according to court and prison records. Those count as nonviolent offenses under California law, which considers only about two dozen crimes to be violent felonies — things like murder, rape, arson and kidnapping.

Martin, 27, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of a machine gun. He is among the 12 people wounded during Sunday's shooting, which killed six others. Police say the violence was a shootout between rival gangs in which at least five people fired weapons, including Martin's brother, Dandrae Martin, who also was arrested.

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Vader

Flashback Have 20 Years of NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?

NATO map
© NATO
Since 1997, the world's perhaps most powerful corporation and lobbyist has created more insecurity than security.

Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Cohen notes that 20 years ago, in 1997, President Bill Clinton made the decision to expand NATO eastward. That same year, in order to placate post-Soviet Russia, then weak and heralded in Washington as America's "strategic friend and partner," the Russian-NATO Founding Act was adopted. It promised that expansion would entail no "permanent stationing of substantial combat forces." Cohen takes the occasion of this anniversary year to ask whether NATO's eastward expansion has created more insecurity than provide the security it promised. He divides the question into several subjects, which he and Batchelor discuss.

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NPC

Joe Rogan reveals that woke 'anti-racist' ideology was pushed on his 9-year-old child in California school

joe rogan
In Tuesday's episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, the show's host and namesake revealed the "anti-racist" ideology that his child's school in California pushed following the death of George Floyd in May of 2020.

"When the whole George Floyd thing happened, one of the school's that my kids were going to back in California released this email, saying that it's not enough to not be racist, you now must be anti-racist. And my kid's nine at the time. What does that, what does that mean?" Rogan asked.

"These kids are not even remotely racist. Like, they have all sorts of different kinds of friends. They — I've never heard them discuss it once. It's just 'I like this person and she's nice to me and we like to play together and we both like the same things' and let's — so to tell a nine year old that you have to be anti-racist, well, then they go looking for racism, they're gonna go looking to confront it," he added.

Comment: More from the Daily Wire:
Rogan often takes shots at woke ideology, including going as far as predicting that the woke mob will, if left unchallenged, eventually make it so that "straight white men" are "not allowed to talk" or "go outside."

Rogan made the remarks during a portion of an episode during which he and a guest were speaking about how difficult it would be to create a raunchy comedy movie in today's politically correct environment.

Rogan and the guest had the following interaction:
GUEST: I was listening to a podcast the other day that I love that sorts of like a mental health podcast. And this lady was telling the host who's like a straight white guy. He was like, I'm learning about privilege. And he was saying even my self-deprecating humor is a little bit offensive because it's my privilege to do self-deprecating humor because as a straight white male people assume I'm joking, but other people couldn't make such jokes because of whatever history and they were literally discussing earnestly how straight white men shouldn't really try to be funny.

ROGAN: Was that guy a castrato?

GUEST: It felt a little castrato-y. I mean, it was just a really bizarre conversation.

ROGAN: You can never be woke enough, that's the problem, it keeps going, it keeps going further and further and further down the line. And if you get to the point where you capitulate where you agree to all these demands, it will eventually get to straight white men are not allowed to talk. Because it's your privilege to express yourself when other people of color have been silenced throughout history. It will be you're not allowed to go outside because so many people were imprisoned for so many years. I mean, I'm not joking, it really will get there. It's that crazy. You know, we just got to be nice to each other, man. And there's a lot of people that are taking advantage of this weirdness in our culture, and then that becomes their thing. Their thing is calling people out for their privilege, calling people out for their position. You know, it's so f***ing crazy times.
And Rogan isn't the only celebrity telling of the experience their kids have had with woke ideology. From the Daily Wire:
Megyn Kelly slammed the transgender push on her third grade son at his former private school, calling it abuse, and said "it's like they are trying to recruit" at schools, "it's as if it's recruiting ground."

During Sirius XM's "The Megyn Kelly Show" podcast on Tuesday, the host talked to guest and Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan about how her son's former New York City private school had pushed transgender issues on her son and the other kids in his class, asking them, "are you sure you are really a boy," "you could possibly be a girl," and here's "how you'd become a girl." She said her child was told about taking "puberty blockers" and said he had never had "any of these issues." It starts at the 40:35 minute mark here.

"They were saying this to his entire third grade class," Kelly explained. "Third grade class. You could take puberty blockers and then when you get to be 18 you can have an operation to have your penis chopped off and build a vagina. And you'll be a woman."


"I mean this literally happened to my son's class of 8 and 9 year olds and hence we are no longer at that school," she added. "Which is one of the best schools in the nation ... but it's not. No, it isn't if they are abusing your child everyday ... But if they're punching your child in the face behind the scenes you would see how abusive it was. Well, that's what they were effectively doing. These are rhetorical punches in the face and they were everyday and they were everywhere."

Klavan said, "the first thing is that child is your charge" and not the school's. That happens at the 43:16 minute mark.

"They didn't create them," Andrew replied. "They don't care for them. They are not responsible for them, you are."

He also explained how the school is "violating a basic first principle of your rights" and that their job is to teach kids to read.

The former Fox News host replied with what she said is the school's argument for pushing gender ideology on kids — comments like, "Well, you know, your child's going to kill himself if you don't get more affirmative," and, "Unlike you, we care about him, unlike you, we care about your child's mental health and his well being." That comes at the 46:16 minute mark.

"That's really what they do to parents now when it comes to this transgender stuff and their justification for not looping parents in if a child under these enormous pressures starts to submit just to get people off their back and like, 'Okay yeah maybe I'm a girl,'" the host shared.

"I mean truly it's like they are trying to recruit," she added. "It's as if it's a recruiting ground."
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Info

Chicago Thinker's Christopher Phillips smokes Brian Stelter on CNN's journalistic ethics during 'disinformation' conference

christopher phillips brian stelter
During the "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy" conference hosted by the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics (IOP), Chicago Thinker staff writer Christopher Phillips blindsided CNN's Brian Stelter with a question about the network's journalistic ethics and its history of spreading disinformation. Phillip's takedown comes one day after the Atlantic's Anne Applebaum infamously dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal as "totally irrelevant" in response to a question posed by his Thinker colleague, Daniel Schmidt.

The conference event, "How Media Platforms Shape Consumer Realities," was moderated by the New York Times's Jim Rutenberg and featured Stelter, Stephen Hayes of the Dispatch, and Lauren Williams of Capital B.

Phillips opened by highlighting several of CNN's most notable fabrications:
[...] You've all spoken extensively about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation, but CNN is right up there with them. They pushed the Russian collusion hoax, they pushed the Jussie Smollet hoax. They smeared Justice Kavanaugh as a rapist and they also smeared Nick Sandmann as a white supremacist. And yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure "Russian disinformation."

Comment: More from Fox News:
Stelter continued avoiding Phillips' line of questioning by pivoting to CNN assisting Fox News in Ukraine following the deadly attack on the Fox News team last month, showing how news outlets "work together," which is something Stelter said, "we don't talk about it enough."

"And with regards to the regime, I think you mean President Biden? The last time I spoke with a Biden aide, we yelled at each other. So that's the reality of the news business, that people don't see, that people don't hear," Stelter said. "They imagine that it's a situation that simply is not. But I think your question, it speaks to the failure of journalism to show our work and show the reality of how our profession operates. We have a lot of work to do, I think."

...

Phillips later thanked Stelter for following up with him after the panel discussion, but tweeted, "I am STILL wondering: if CNN is truly unbiased, WHY is every mistake they make an overstep in favor of Democrats and against Republicans??"

Stelter failed to address the substance of the questions asked by the student during the panel, particularly the list of falsehoods CNN peddled in recent years.

CNN, among the other liberal networks, famously pushed the Russian collusion narrative for much of the Trump presidency, offered sympathetic coverage towards disgraced actor Jussie Smollett, who was convicted for orchestrating a hate crime hoax, and elevated unsubstantiated claims that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a gang rapist during his 2018 confirmation hearing.

The network was also forced to settle a defamation lawsuit against former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann, who the network portrayed as being a racially-motivated aggressor towards a Native American elder in a viral exchange.

Additionally, CNN famously spiked the New York Post's bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election.



NPC

Leaked video: Disney exec Karey Burke pushes targeting 'queerer' Gen Z audience

karey burke disney lgbt queer
© Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesKarey Burke in 2019
The Walt Disney Company needs to "get with it" and cater to a Generation Z that is substantially "queerer" than previous generations, a company executive said in a recent clip.

President of Disney General Entertainment Content Karey Burke emphasized the importance of Disney reaching the LGBT audience in a clip posted on Thursday, the latest as the corporation pushes back against Florida legislation prohibiting discussions of gender and sexuality in early education settings.

Comment: So Kary Burke is fine with ruining a legendary brand, to cater to just 7% of the overall population, and apparently at the advice of her (gay? queer?) son. Disney may well have signed its death warrant. Gen Z will not be able to keep such a behemoth afloat.


Megaphone

Amazon unsurprisingly objects to union's Staten Island victory, alleges interference

amazon union workers
© APSome 55% of workers who voted at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island opted to join the Amazon Labor Union, which has demanded higher pay and job security.
Amazon accused a new union at one of its New York warehouses of threatening workers unless they voted to organize, an assertion an attorney for the labor group called "really absurd."

The National Labor Relations Board is giving Amazon until April 22 to back up objections to last week's election, in which Staten Island workers voted to form the company's first American union. Amazon had requested extra time to provide evidence because its objections are "substantial," it said in a filing Wednesday.

A certified election result would give organized labor a foothold in the United States' second-largest private employer, with the potential to alter how Amazon manages its finely tuned operation.

Comment: Amazon denies allegations that it intends to censor words like 'union', 'slave labour' and 'pay rise' on its upcoming internal messaging service, although considering the endless scandals over the deplorable conditions that its workers must suffer, it wouldn't be surprising if it does.


Family

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to send buses of migrants to DC ahead of Title 42 surge

Greg Abbott
© APTexas Governor Greg Abbott
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state troopers on Wednesday to begin stopping and inspecting commercial vehicles coming across the U.S-Mexico border and said bus charters would be offered to take illegal migrants to Washington, D.C., in a dig at President Biden and Congress.

With only seven weeks to go until the Biden administration lifts the Title 42 immigration order, Abbott announced multiple measures to protect his state and combat the massive influx of migrants anticipated to cross the border this spring. He said on Wednesday:
"To help local officials - because communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden Administration - Texas is providing charter buses for these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off to Washington, D.C.

"We are sending them to the United States capital where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border."