Illinois Review

Doomsday Never Seems to Get Here

From 1947 to today, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of the “doomsday clock”—a holdover from the atomic age and Cold War—has predicted doom by moving the hands of a prop clock closer to or further away from midnight. Midnight represents a global doom disaster in progress.

In a breathless press release on January 23, which included a cameo from former California governor and climate activist Jerry Brown, the group announced that due to “climate change,” the world is 20 seconds closer to midnight, standing at 100 seconds (1 minute 40 seconds) before midnight.

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Di Leo: "Numbers Don't Lie" - A Timeless Truism, However Inconvenient

By John F. Di Leo - 

At this writing, early Wednesday morning, the Democratic Party has still not released the full results of Monday evening’s Iowa caucus.

The Democratic Party tells us this is because of a technological failure - that some new app failed in tabulating the votes.

Hogwash.

Rossi: Nancy Pelosi Shamed All Democrats

Randy Rossi - 

Just when you think our political divide can’t get worse, it does. Every patriotic American who loves their country should have been thrilled with President Trump’s positive State of the Union speech that celebrated a great 3 years for all Americans under his leadership. Our economy is on fire, the stock market is at all time highs, unemployment is at a 51 year low and unemployment for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians is at the lowest in U.S. history. The average American has seen a $5,000 income increase over three years and 7 million new jobs have been created because of Trump’s tax cuts as companies are reinvesting in American workers. Every American should be thrilled with that good news!

Beckman: Don't cry for Hillary

By Hank Beckman - 

She’s back.

Every so often Hillary Clinton is out of the news for a few weeks and you start to think that she really might be gone this time.

But then you turn on the TV and there she is again.

She’s like the Tracy Flick character in the 1999 movie “Election,” a relentless high school kid running for class president, convinced she is a child of destiny and willing to do anything to fulfill that destiny.

Clinton has somehow talked Sundance/Hulu into a four-part documentary series on her life titled, what else, “Hillary.”

Our Roads: Waste Not, Want Not

The United States would be less in want of public infrastructure improvements if we stopped wasting so much money studying them and got busy actually building them.

CNN reports that “the fabric of America is crumbling,” quoting an American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report giving a D+ grade to the country’s roads, bridges, airports, schools, and other public works. Melodramatic? The World Economic Forum now ranks the U.S. 13th in the world in maintaining adequate infrastructure, even below the United Arab Emirates and Singapore.

That concern prompted President Trump to prioritize such investments in his inaugural address: “We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation,” he said.

ASCE estimates a $4.6 trillion need for maintenance and improvements over the next decade. Congress and the President agreed to spend almost half that on a new federal plan – in addition to state, local, and private projects. Almost 80 percent of public infrastructure projects are funded by state and local governments, so $2 trillion more federal dollars would have an overwhelming impact.

Critics often point out that of almost $80 billion in federal, state, and local fuel tax revenues (originally dedicated to roads and bridges), over 20 percent is now syphoned off for mass transit, landscaping, noise barriers, bike trails, and other uses. States also collect $38 billion in vehicle taxes, but spend 34 percent of it on non-highway uses. But that is not all the money being spent on purposes other than infrastructure. Indeed, we spend more on studies than on construction.

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The Savagery Of The Tribe

W.H. Auden (Photo by Lisa Larsen/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images)

The story of the pastor in the Uber was so important for me to hear, especially because I’ve been thinking all week about a couple of heavy things about the storm gathering around us.

I am on my way to Rome, where I will be speaking at next week’s National Conservatism conference. The topic will be the theme of my forthcoming book: the coming totalitarianism, and the lessons that we must learn today from the experiences of those who resisted Soviet bloc communism. Here at the end of an extraordinary week on that front, I am especially eager to meet people at this conference – especially the British writer Douglas Murray, whose work has been so enlightening (I quote from his most recent book,The Madness of Crowds in the manuscript of my own book.)

Why do I say this was an extraordinary week? Well, let’s go to Murray, who asks, “Will no one resist the new totalitarianism?” He writes about the fate of Alastair Stewart, a veteran, and much beloved, English broadcaster who was recently sacked after four decades of service. Stewart’s firing offense was quoting Shakespeare at a hostile Twitter follower, who took it as racist.

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Shehab: Extremist Group’s Fundraising Conference Headlined by Local Politicians

By Hesham Shehab -

When Sadia Gul Covert was elected in 2018 and sworn into the office of Dupage County Commissioner, she took her oath on the “Quran, Torah, and the Bible,” in what seemed at the time like a symbol of unity and moderation.

But Covert’s decision to cast her lot with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) raises questions about the extent of her moderation.

Covert will be a speaker at the CAIR-Chicago 2020 Banquet fundraiser in February, among other Islamist speakers.

(CAIR) was connected to the terrorist organization Hamas during the trial terror-finance against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).

According to the Justice Department report published in 2009, “HLF became the chief fundraising arm for the Palestine Committee in the U.S. created by the Muslim Brotherhood to support Hamas.”

Democrats' student debt lies

No one can deny that the United States is facing a student debt crisis.

With more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, tens of millions of Americans are forced to pay huge sums of money every month – this writer included – to private and government lenders, slowing down growth in other important areas of the economy, like the housing industry.

As usual, Democrats’ plans to fix this important problem is to throw even more money at it and give greater power to the very same government agents and politicians that messed the system up in the first place.

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Prince of Hypocrisy: Charles Racks Up Private Flight Miles, CO2 Emissions

Prince Charles is fond of lecturing commoners about how we need to sacrifice our lifestyles to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but he is dealing with a royal case of embarrassment after having been exposed hypocritically jaunting around the world in private jets and helicopters.

In July 2019, Charles said we have just 18 months to keep climate change “to survivable levels.” That would leave us with less than 12 months to save the planet. Considering such apocalyptic consequences and such little time to act, one might expect to see Charles doing everything possible to drastically reduce his own carbon footprint, but that most certainly has not been the case.

In an 11-day span in January, during which he met with child climate activist Greta Thunberg and lectured the rest of us about carbon dioxide emissions, Charles’ private aircraft logged 16,000 miles, many of which were racked up by empty aircraft dispatched for his personal convenience. Others were for short trips that could have been easily traveled by rail or automobile.

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Study Reveals the Absurd Conformity of Higher Education

A recently released study confirmed the suspicion that American higher education has become absurdly and ruthlessly monolithic in terms of political ideology.

The study, produced by Heterodox Academy Director of Research Sean Stevens and Brooklyn College Professor Mitchell Langbert, found that the ratio of college professor donations to Democrats as opposed to Republicans was 95:1.

Besides federal agency employees, few other industries outside working for the Democratic National Committee or the media are so strongly skewed toward Democrats and the left.

The authors of the study admit to some uncertainty on the numbers, but even if the disparity in donations isn’t quite so high, it’s still clearly extreme and highly problematic, as the researchers explain.

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Di Leo: Global Lessons from a Chinese Quarantine

By John F. Di Leo - 

The horror in today’s news is the Coronavirus, an apparently highly-contagious illness that originated in Wuhan province, in Mainland China.

We may eventually find out for certain how it started… whether it was caught from live animals in wet markets, as the Chinese government wants us to believe, or if it was the result of biological warfare research that unintentionally (or even intentionally?) escaped the lab, as many suspect. We hope that cures and vaccines will be found quickly, though such things are woefully unpredictable.

Lessons from a Choice Pioneer

Students and teachers from schools coast to coast had the opportunity not just to celebrate during National School Choice Week (January 26–February 1), but also to learn from a genuine civil rights and school choice pioneer: Virginia Walden Ford.

Several of the 51,300 sites participating in NSCW featured free screenings of the movie Miss Virginia, at which Ford appeared, signed books, and answered questions. The film vividly dramatizes the five-year and ultimately successful battle of Ford and DC Parents for School Choice to gain congressional approval of “opportunity scholarships” (aka vouchers), empowering families with private choice.

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Teen Sentenced for 'Crime' of asking ‘Trans Cop' if 'They' Were Man or Woman

A UK teenager with Asperger’s was fined roughly 800 dollars and placed under a three-month curfew for asking a transgender police officer “is it a boy or a girl?”

Nineteen-year-old Declan Armstrong offended police officer Connor Freel by asking Freel’s gender. The question reportedly left the officer feeling “upset and embarrassed.”

Freel’s counselor spoke about the situation saying:

“To have something shouted at him that had such personal connotations whilst he was on his own in the middle of a public place that was rather busy due to market day footfall did leave him vulnerable, distressed, and embarrassed.” 

While the teen denies asking the question he was convicted of violating the Welsh Public Order Act 1986 by “using abusive or insulting words with intent to cause harassment.”

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'Persecuted even after death': China bans Christians from holding religious funerals

Christians across China are prohibited from holding religious funerals for their deceased loved ones as the Communist Party continues to tighten its grip on the regulation of religion and religious activity.

Bitter Winter, a magazine documenting human rights and religious freedom abuses in China, reported that authorities throughout the country are enforcing policies that prohibit religious customs and rituals to be used during funerals.

In December, the government of Wenzhou city’s Pingyang county in the eastern province of Zhejiang adopted the Regulations on Centralized Funeral Arrangement.

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Rossi: Democrat’s Unconstitutional Impeachment Charade

By Randy Rossi - 

For those of us that took and passed our high school civics courses, it is absolutely amazing to watch Democrats in the House, Senate, and media attack our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the rule of law as they try to unconstitutionally impeach a duly elected president.

In America, our Constitution says that every American is innocent until proven guilty. Except President Trump who Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says will be impeached forever. No Nancy, if he is acquitted, he will be innocent forever! According to our Constitution, every American has the right to face their accuser. Except President Trump who Democrats would not allow to face the “Whistle Blower” who worked with Democrats to launch this impeachment “charade”. Every American has the right when accused to cross examine witnesses and call defensive witnesses. Except President Trump who House Democrats would not allow to cross examine witnesses or provide defensive witnesses. That is not only unconstitutional, it is unfair and reprehensible.