Just One Thing: Why staff, not cops, search students for weapons
Listeners have asked why school staff were searching a kid for weapons leading to the shootings at East High School rather than having trained law enforcement do it.
A contact of mine who is involved in these conversations said that the reason is that the staff usually has a better relationship with the students than the cops do. I get it. And even if a kid has been a trouble-maker I understand the idea of not starting his day with an interaction with law enforcement. But it sure would be nice if, first, a cop were nearby and, second, if a kid needs such an extreme safety plan that he has to be patted down every day, maybe he should be doing online school or almost anything other than showing up on campus.
On wonders why a bunch of adults followed man-child Tay Anderson into removing SROs from Denver schools in 2020, and whether Denver voters will punish them for it in elections later this year.
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One More Thing: The Denver School Board's ridiculous press conference
Yesterday, the Denver School Board gave a 15-minute press conference (after a Board meeting) where only the superintendent, Alex Marrero, and the president of the Board, Xóchitl Gaytán, would take questions.
Unedited footage here. A lot of dead air in the middle of the video: (26) Denver Public School Board meets after East High shooting - YouTube
Just prior to the press conference, they said at the end of their Board meeting that they would be suspending until June 30th the rule that bars School Resource Officers, and they then directed the superintendent to do a bunch of stuff.
At the presser, when a reporter tried to ask a question of Auon'tai "Tay" Anderson, the vice-president of the Board (who seemed to be sitting in a wheelchair; if so I'm sure that it's all part of a racist plot), the reporter was told that Tay wouldn't respond to questions. Amusing since the purpose of the presser was to discuss the results of the prior meeting which itself was necessitated by the so-called adults having followed the child-like social justice warrior Tay Anderson down the road of removing SROs. I mean, the debate is about a policy that Tay championed but he won't take questions?!?
Ms Gaytan made darned sure, right at the beginning, that everybody knew she's a naturalized citizen, an "indigenous Latina, Mexicana specifically." I mean, I probably don't ever care about that but I certainly don't care about it today when the issue at hand is about school safety and not about how many Hispanics are on the school board, "indigenous" or otherwise. The fact that she needed to make this point, to BEGIN the press conference with it, is why she must be removed from the Board at the earliest opportunity.
And then she said, twice, that they were "not flip-flopping" when of course they are. (And it's good that they are. The problem was the original decision.)
More on the Board's actions here: Denver board lifts ban on police on campus - Chalkbeat Colorado
Bigger picture: Denver schools are bringing back police. Other places already have. - Chalkbeat
The Denver School Board is full of leftist ideologues who, much like the teachers unions that support them, place the actual students rather low on their priority list well after their "social justice" goals. They did so even when it meant putting children at risk. Vote them all out.
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Today's Guests
State Senator Robert Rodriguez (D) represents Senate District 32, mostly south and southwest Denver but with small parts of Jefferson and Arapahoe Counties. He's the assistant majority leader in the State Senate. He's the primary sponsor of Senate Bill 60 which would somewhat limit the ability to sell concert (and presumably other) tickets in the secondary market, e.g. to be a "ticket scalper", and specifically you would not be able to use an automated process (a "bot" or algorithm) to buy tickets for resale.
Ticket sellers would be legally barred from using copyrighted (by others) images and logos and text on websites without permission of the owners of those images/logos/text or to use such things to make one ticket-selling website look like another one. For example, a scalper trying to make his site look like Ticketmaster.
Here's a interesting one: The law would require that the total cost of the ticket including all fees be shown to a prospective buyer before the ticket is selected for purchase. Also, the part of the price of the ticket that is due to service, or similar, fees must be displayed in as prominent a way as the actual price of the underlying ticket.
The proposed fines are VERY high: Between $10,000 and $20,000 for a first offense, and between one and two million dollars for a fourth offense.
Concert promoters would NOT be able to revoke a ticket just because it was sold in the secondary market even if buy a seller not approved by the operator or the original ticket seller.
Consumer Protection In Event Ticketing Sales | Colorado General Assembly
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Robert Florczak is a successful professional artist, author and musician. He's from California but lives in Germany and joins us from there. The question at hand: "Is modern art bad?" He has proposed that it is and, furthermore, that classical art is good.
http://www.robertflorczak.com/
Interesting interview here too: https://youtu.be/pS17nVErsrI?t=1039
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Rabbi Raphael Leban is the director of The Jewish Experience in Denver. He joins us for the latest in our occasional "Ross and the Rabbi" series.
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Other Stuff
The CEO of TikTok faced a Congressional committee yesterday and as they day went on it became more likely that Congress would move to ban the app.
Check out some of the short videos in here: 6 Highlights From TikTok CEO's Testimony on Capitol Hill (dailysignal.com)
As noted in the links just below, TikTok is enormously popular, especially with kids and young adults. It will not be an easy thing for the government, politically, to ban such a popular app, but as I noted before I think a ban is more likely after the hearing than it was before it. I don't have much of an opinion as to whether such a ban would be upheld in court, but to the extent that the ban is done based on national security threats, I do believe a ban could successfully defeat court challenges.
TikTokers on edge as Congress grills CEO (axios.com)
TikTok's popularity complicates possible U.S. ban (axios.com)
U.S. TikTok ban likely inevitable, regulatory expert says | Fox Business
Poll: Gen Z voters oppose TikTok ban, worry about China’s influence (nbcnews.com)
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More than a little worrisome: From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine
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Yesterday, I was listening to the most recent episode of Michael Morell's "Intelligence Matters" podcast which was a conversation with Dennis Ross, a true expert on the Middle East. One of the things that Ross said, and that Morell seemed to agree with, is that Iran has come to believe that neither the US nor Israel will do anything to stop their rush toward a nuclear weapon. That's in part because our retaliations against Iran for malign behavior have been much too restrained. Within hours of listening to that conversation, we get these stories:
From today: U.S. base in Syria targeted after airstrikes hit Iran-backed groups following deadly drone attack - CBS News
And from yesterday: US military carries out airstrikes in Syria after drone attack kills American contractor - ABC News (go.com)
I have no reason to believe that Americans are any better than the French when it comes to willingness to bankrupt the country and their children: Over a Million French Protesters March Against Macron’s Pension-Age Raise
Heck, we might not even be much better than this if we keep electing governments as stupid as our last couple of administrations when it comes to deficits and debt, and Fed chairs as bad as our last several have been: Zimbabwe Can't Paper Over Its Million-Percent Inflation Anymore
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Shortages of important but inexpensive medicines: Rising Rate of Drug Shortages Is Framed as a National Security Threat – DNyuz (Original at NYT)
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Don’t eat your Oreo wrong: https://www.wsj.com/articles/oreo-cookies-twist-creme-mit-scientists-ce6a3daa?st=pnn03zeozigbe8x&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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It's hard to describe just how insane I think all of this zero-carbon stuff is: Germany and Italy are rewriting Europe's electric car mandate with synthetic fuels | Fox News
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She doesn't want to be called a hero...but she is one: Pizza Delivery Driver Saves Biker From Fiery Levittown Crash: FD | Levittown, PA Patch
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Can this be real? German Brewery Claims Its Beer in Powder Form Could Change Industry Forever (odditycentral.com)
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Today's Videos
In case you missed it, my conversation with Shannon Bream, host of Fox News Sunday, yesterday.
CONVERSATION STARTS ABOUT 3 MINUTES INTO THE VIDEO
If the embed doesn't work, please just try clicking the link: (20+) Facebook Live | Facebook
TikTok CEO is absolutely GRILLED by Congress
Much of the criticism would apply equally to TikTok, but TikTok has the additional problem of being owned by a Chinese company.
Are you the "password child"?
'Password child' test goes viral after TikTok by Alex Griswold (nypost.com)
And a perfect way to end a somewhat stressful week