Commentary and Opinion on Latest News from The Minnesota Sun

Commentary: Uncomfortable Facts About Why Fatal Police Shootings Aren’t Declining

April 19, 2024 RealClearWire

When Dexter Reed died in a shootout with Chicago police on March 21, the incident was quickly grafted onto a narrative that began in 2014 after a policeman killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. – namely, that the U.S. faces an epidemic of violence by unbridled cops who do not believe black lives matter. “Killing of Dexter Reed raises questions about Chicago police reform. ‘The message is, go in guns blazing,'” blared a headline in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Reed’s death joins a long list of police shootings that have received wide media coverage and political scrutiny – especially those involving African Americans. Over the years, many police departments embraced reforms, including the use of bodycams, to document incidents – an effort bolstered by a public eager to use smartphones to record the behavior of cops. In 2015, the Washington Post created a database logging every person shot dead by police in the U.S.

Commentary: The Trans Reckoning Is Not Yet Here — But It’s Coming Soon

April 19, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Over at Compact magazine on Tuesday, Nina Power wrote “The Trans Reckoning Is Here,” and, as evidence, she cited a report by a British pediatrician named Hilary Cass written for the National Health Service that upturned the faux-scientific basis on which that country has embarked on normalizing “gender-affirming care.”

Commentary: The Teachers’ Unions Are More Political than Ever

April 18, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

In the past, teachers’ unions concentrated on fighting to keep all teachers employed—competent or otherwise—laying off teachers by seniority when necessary and soaking taxpayers every chance they could. While those activities are still part of their mission, they have, over time, increasingly delved into the political/social realm, promoting Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, DEI, class warfare, gender-bending, etc. And their current level of engagement is staggering.

Americans for Fair Treatment, a national nonprofit organization that educates public employees about their rights in a unionized workplace, recently released a report detailing the National Education Association’s (NEA) financial filings from Sept. 1, 2022, through Aug. 31, 2023.

Commentary: The Coup d’Etat Against Candidate Trump

April 18, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

In 1967, I had the privilege of studying criminal law at Yale University. The teacher was a superpower in the field named Joe Goldstein.

After a short time, we got to a series of cases where a prosecutor had empaneled a grand jury and gotten an indictment against some poor soul — almost always poverty-stricken and often black — who had either no evidence against him (and he was almost always male). That poor soul usually was convicted. He went to prison and that was that.

Commentary: Impeachment ‘Whistleblower’ Was in the Loop of Biden-Ukraine Affairs That Trump Wanted Probed

April 18, 2024 RealClearWire

The ‘whistleblower’ who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal.

In 2019, then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella touched off a political firestorm when he anonymously accused Trump of linking military aid for Ukraine to a demand for an investigation into alleged Biden corruption in that country.

Commentary: Lawfare Didn’t Begin with Trump

April 17, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

The newest buzzword in politics is “Lawfare,” the effort to cripple political opponents through legal initiatives, preferably by bringing criminal cases. Today’s favorite target is former President Trump, who has been indicted in various state and federal jurisdictions for some ninety-one felonies.

Amazingly, Wikipedia’s current “Lawfare” entry goes into great detail concerning the term’s origins and current application – defining Lawfare as “the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual’s usage of their legal rights” without any mention whatsoever of its current use against Trump.

Julie Kelly Commentary: The Supreme Court Can Right an Egregious Wrong in Jan 6 Cases, But Will It?

April 17, 2024 Julie Kelly

In July 2023, Joshua Youngerman was arrested in California on five misdemeanors for his participation in the events of January 6. According to charging documents, Youngerman entered the Capitol at 2:37 p.m. — 20 minutes after the House went into recess amid the escalating chaos — through an open door as Capitol…

Commentary: Inflation Will Stick Around as Long as The Big Spenders Do

April 17, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

August came early to the nation’s capital with last week’s round of March inflation data. The late summer weather in Washington, D.C., is notoriously hot and sticky, two accurate descriptors of the latest price increases facing families and businesses alike. Inflation is stubbornly high, and the Biden administration’s spendthrift public policies are to blame.

In the past 12 months, consumer prices rose 3.5 percent, the second month of accelerating annual inflation. In March alone, prices rose 0.4 percent. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually terrible. If that monthly inflation rate holds steady, prices will double in less than 16 years.

Commentary: Speaker Mike Johnson’s ‘Personal Conservatism’ Betrays the Conservative Movement

April 16, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

The election of Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana to Speaker of the House has thrown into stark relief the difference between what one might call “personal conservatives” and those of us who consider ourselves to be part of the conservative movement, or movement conservatives.

There’s no doubt that Speaker Johnson lives his life according to a set of conservative principles: He’s a church-going man known for his personal rectitude; he married his wife in a “covenant marriage;” as a lawyer he advocated a constitutional “textualist” approach to his cases; he spent many years actively involved in advancing the Right-to-Life; he opposes same sex marriages, and in 2015 he took one of his daughters to a purity ball.

Newt Gingrich Commentary: The American People vs. Judicial Corruption

April 15, 2024 Admin

As Americans pay their taxes today, an historic event will begin in New York City. In a moment worthy of “On the Waterfront,” the great movie about corruption and brutality in New York, the New York system will attempt to judicially destroy the chosen champion of more than 80 million Americans.

Commentary: The Battle Begins as Trump’s Trial Tests American Justice

April 15, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Monday, April 15, 2024, is not only Tax Day in the United States. It is also the day that this country will take another fateful step towards banana republic-like tyranny. For it is the day that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg—or, to give him his full title, “Soros-funded District Attorney Alvin Bragg”—will begin his 34-count felony trial against Donald Trump.

Exactly what is the presumptive Republican nominee for president charged with by the Biden Department of Justice? Paying Stormy Daniels—or to give her the invariable epithet, “porn star Stormy Daniels” (think “swift-footed Achilles,” “gray-eyed Athena”)—to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter in 2006 (which Trump has consistently denied).

Commentary: Making a Case for Cursive

April 15, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Recently, I asked my fifth graders if they enjoyed writing in cursive. Students at the all-boys Catholic school where I work start training in cursive penmanship in third grade, so my students had been practicing it for the better part of three years. I expected them to say that it is boring, that they do not like it, but they all said that they preferred cursive to printing. One boy explained that it allows him to develop his ideas more easily. Another one liked the way the strokes of the pencil obey the natural movement of his hand and shoulder. Most surprising of all: They all find writing in cursive fun.

Cursive penmanship is a dying art. History professor and former president of Harvard Drew Gilpin Faust wrote an essay in 2022 lamenting that Generation Z never learned cursive. She acknowledges that “the decline in cursive seems inevitable. Writing is, after all, a technology, and most technologies are sooner or later surpassed and replaced.”

Commentary: Faith’s Proven Role in Overcoming Mental Illness

April 14, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

by Carrie Sheffield “There is an important body of conservative thought that is now nearly or completely absent on the faculties of many eminent universities,” former Harvard University President Derek Bok wrote in Harvard Magazine following Hamas’ terrorist attacks Oct. 7 in Israel and the ensuing campus chaos. He recommends “some immediate progress by trying…

Commentary: As Fentanyl Streams over Wide-Open Border, Students Lead Effort to Combat Campus Overdoses

April 14, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Ten years ago, I had never heard the word “fentanyl.” Now, every sorority and fraternity on my college campus is equipped with Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, a lifesaving medication used to treat opioid overdoses.

The fentanyl crisis is acutely felt on college campuses. Oftentimes, college students will take a pill that they thought was Xanax or Ritalin and end up dead.

Commentary: Female Liberation Can Be Found in Marriage

April 14, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

What does a fulfilling, self-focused life look like, according to liberated feminism?

Spa nights alone in a fancy apartment, perhaps. A boss babe CEO who enjoys hooking up on the weekends. Plastic surgery and perhaps a cute pet to post on Instagram.

Commentary: House Should Plan to Drain the Swamp in January 2025

April 13, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

The sad reality is that the Republicans in the House after a narrow victory in the 2022 Congressional midterms do not have enough of a majority to be able to accomplish many big things.

This is not the fault of anyone in leadership, but instead is just the reality of what is at this time a one-vote majority with wildly divergent priorities amongst the GOP members in the House.

Commentary: DEI Cronyism and Woke Grifters

April 12, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows.

Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking.

Commentary: Migrants Feel the Pain of Biden’s Virtue

April 12, 2024 RealClearWire

President Biden in front of a border gate (composite image)

For women and children, the road to hell is paved with Democrats’ good intentions.

The party’s beliefs about the right thing to do regarding the border are the main contributors to an explosion of rape, human trafficking, prostitution, and child labor.

Commentary: Biden Losing Support from Swing Voters Due to Southern Border Crisis

April 11, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

A striking new NPR / Marist poll reveals swing voters who supported Joe Biden by wide margins in 2020 are retracting their votes, and the unsustainable crisis on the southern border is at the heart of this collapse in support.

The tide has turned on immigration politics in four short years, and a majority of Americans now see the border crisis as an issue that needs to be solved swiftly. The NPR poll reveals a majority of Americans have adopted a harsh deportation mindset, with the nation saying 51 percent to 48 percent that all illegals should be deported. This is a radical change in sentiment from just a few years ago, and speaks to voters’ growing distrust of an Open Borders agenda that imports cheap foreign labor at the expense of American citizens.

Commentary: FBI Refuses to Acknowledge Link Between Islam and Terrorism in Idaho Case

April 11, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

In a case that has gotten almost no establishment media attention the FBI has arrested Alexander Scott Mercurio, 18, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for attempting to provide material support and resources to ISIS in connection with a plot to conduct a suicide attack on a church.

After the arrest the Department of Justice issued a news release saying in part:

Commentary: Clinton Allies Attack ‘Good Guy with a Gun’

April 10, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

A left-wing group led by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign Chairman claims a “good guy with a gun” is a bad thing. Tell that to the good guy with a gun in Fort Worth who saved his own life, and maybe his children’s lives as well, from shooter JaDerek Gray, who opened fire on him in a road rage incident on I-35 West.

Gray was driving his motorcycle between lanes, which is illegal in Texas. The hero, driving an SUV next to Gray, couldn’t see him and tried to change lanes. Gray, furious, passed the SUV and parked his motorcycle in the middle of the highway, stopping traffic, witnesses said. Gray then pulled a gun and pointed it at the hero, who was in his vehicle with his children.

Commentary: High Gold Price Points to Sustained Inflation

April 10, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

The economy looms large in the minds of most people and not simply because it is an election year. It affects us directly. We spend a lot of our waking hours at work, and our jobs are often connected to the welfare of families and children. With everything being more expensive, getting a toe hold on mere middle-class status is harder now than it was for older generations. Many people are slipping down a rung or three.

In addition to long-term trends like the decline of manufacturing and the cut-throat financialization of corporate America, unique recent events loom large. COVID lockdowns, soon followed by the government money giveaway—PPP loans, augmented unemployment benefits, rent relief, and other stimulus plans—disrupted our routines and affected the entire economy. While these measures likely prevented a deep recession, the shutdowns ruined a lot of businesses, and the various stimulus funds ended up unleashing inflation.

Commentary: Free Traders Are Wrong – It’s Time to Try Trade a New Way

April 9, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

A recent Daily Mail poll showed 54 percent of voters support Trump’s proposal to put 10 percent tariffs on most imports, from China or not. This is sacrilege to American free traders.

The free-trade globalization crowd – who saw the 80s up to early 2000s as their heyday– believe in a world that does not exist the way they say it does on paper. Do you think Germany allows Ford Mustang’s into their country tariff free? EU charges Ford a 10 percent tariff, four times what we charge their automakers.

Commentary: Is ‘The Great Illusion’ in Ruins?

April 9, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

Commentary: Job Program for Americans-No Jobs for Illegal Aliens, Period

April 8, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

I am weary of hearing the trope that we need more illegal aliens because “Americans won’t work those jobs.” My bet is that most Americans share this sentiment as well.

Amidst a myriad of concerns about illegal immigration, one prominent worry among Americans is the potential adverse effects on the U.S. workforce. There is apprehension that undocumented migrants could potentially displace native-born workers, leading to job loss and further exacerbating the nation’s tax burden. The media and the left love to dismiss such considerations as fearful, xenophobic, and bigoted, arguing instead that alien workers fill a vital gap in the American workforce. But these concerns, nevertheless, are valid.

Commentary: The Inspiring Front Lines of the Modern Homeschool Revolution

April 8, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

When she was a young girl, Sandra Day O’Connor began her education at home. Her early years of schooling on an Arizona ranch were sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, learning to read, and taking long nature walks.

I read this, and this scene of serenity, this future Supreme Court Justice, beginning her education at home, formed an image in my mind of what might be possible.

Commentary: Navigating the Vibe Shift of a Cultural Reckoning

April 8, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

We have been hearing a lot about a “vibe shift” in American culture recently. The phrase has been around for a while. It gained new currency after the commentator Santiago Pliego wrote an essay about the phenomenon, and Tucker Carlson had him on his show to talk about it.

I recommend both. For one thing, they offer notes of cheerfulness (I almost said “optimism,” but optimism is Dr. Pangloss’s failing) in the midst of our sea of gloominess and despondency. According to Pliego, Americans are awakening from their “dogmatic slumbers,” where the dogmas in question are the rancid pieties of the so-called “progressive” establishment. Have you checked your privilege today, Comrade? How are your pronouns holding up? What have you done to combat “whiteness,” “toxic masculinity,” and “climate change?”

Commentary: At This Point, Disney Deserves to Die

April 7, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

That Disney has been dying a slow death for a long time should be clear to anyone even remotely familiar with the entertainment industry. Last summer, the company lost $900 million at the box office, and its streaming platform, Disney+, lost 1.3 million subscribers in just the last quarter of 2023.

Numbers like these should be easy red flags to stockholders and investors — as should the growing amount of blowback condemning woke content in TV shows and blockbuster films.

Commentary: The Case for Marrying Young — From Someone Who Did

April 7, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

“Young people are the future” is a quip every Gen Zer has heard. Unfortunately, the “future” has lost its interest in the future. Young people are increasingly turning their backs on marriage and children, a choice that is hurting their mental and spiritual health, their physical wellbeing, and, ultimately, their happiness and sense of fulfillment with life.

As I approach graduation from college, I also approach my second wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, my husband’s and my young marriage is far from the norm in today’s society, and these new norms are hurting America’s young people.

Commentary: Under The Hood, the Jobs Report Is Not Strong

April 6, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Looking under the hood of today’s jobs report shows it isn’t the home run that Democrats and the media claim.

Approximately half of the 303,000 jobs created last month came in the unproductive government or quasi-government healthcare sectors. These are not the types of jobs that drive growth and improve Americans’ living standards.

Commentary: VDARE’s Fight Against Letitia James Is Our Fight, Too

April 6, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

For all its gesticulations about “free speech,” the conservative mainstream often plays a supporting role in America’s censorship regime. It’s a two-step dance: The Right styles itself as the sworn defender of free speech and the mortal enemy of censorship while simultaneously downplaying or outright ignoring brazen censorship of speech that ventures a bit too far outside the Overton window. By claiming to defend all free speech in principle but only defending some in practice, the Right concedes, by omission, that certain ideas fall outside the bounds of free expression — and that it’s perfectly appropriate (or, at least, not particularly objectionable) to bring the full force of regime power to bear against any individual so unwise as to express them.

Commentary: Third Largest Teachers’ Union Faces Demise of Its Own Making

April 6, 2024 RealClearWire

In a frantic attempt to preserve its monopoly over the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, attorneys for the union currently representing the district’s 24,000-plus teachers and support staff are relying on a strategy that has the potential to backfire and leave its members without workplace representation altogether.

On March 18, United Teachers of Dade (UTD), using an argument that would invalidate its own petition, asked a hearing officer with Florida’s Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) to reject a competing union’s bid to participate in a forthcoming election to determine the bargaining representative for the South Florida educators.

Commentary: The Unattainable American Dream

April 5, 2024 RealClearWire

Get married, have children, buy a house, and live comfortably on a single income. Not very long ago, that path was the reality, the norm, for the great American middle class.

But America has gone backward in this regard, and struggling citizens know it all too well. Experiencing the kinds of lives enjoyed by our parents and grandparents has become impossible for most Americans, leading to widespread disenchantment and a palpable loss of patriotism and confidence in America.

Commentary: Senate Must Let House Make Its Case in Impeachment Trial of Mayorkas

April 5, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

A grave injustice may be about to take place in the Senate–and only public pressure can prevent it.

I write of the upcoming impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached by the House on February 13 on two counts: that he failed to comply with the law and that he lied to Congress about the results of his failure to comply with the law.

Commentary: Aileen Cannon Is a Portrait of a Judge in the Fractured Double Reality of American Justice

April 4, 2024 RealClearWire

The residents of Fort Pierce, Florida, are not accustomed to seeing dark SUVs and flashing motorcycles speed down the town’s main thoroughfare bordering the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Part beach getaway, part working class community, the city is located about 60 miles north of the luxurious Palm Beach estate of the most famous – and frequent –criminal defendant in recent history: Donald J. Trump.

The former president has become a regular visitor to the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, more specifically, the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon who is presiding over the so-called classified documents trial.

Commentary: National Council of Teachers of English Hosts Seminar on How to Teach ‘Gender Queer’

April 4, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

The National Council of Teachers of English, a professional development organization, hosted remote training to instruct K-12 teachers on how to teach the controversial book “Gender Queer” in their “classrooms, libraries, and communities.”

The NCTE, which boasts 25,000 members around the United States, hosted a panel including “Gender Queer” author Maia Kobabe and an “LGBTQIA+ Advisory Committee” to discuss how to incorporate the pornographic book into school curriculum.

Commentary: New Details Emerge of Afghanistan Chaos

April 3, 2024 RealClearWire

New testimony from those who witnessed firsthand the confusion and chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal further contradicts President Biden’s assertion that the hurried and violent end to the longest war in American history was an “extraordinary success.”

In a transcribed interview before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, former Foreign Service officer Samuel Aronson said the very opposite in living, harrowing color. “Let me be clear,” he told lawmakers behind closed doors, “I cannot call this evacuation a success.”

Commentary: Biden’s Big Bet on Military Abortions Falls Flat

April 3, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, President Joe Biden has made it a top priority to use any and all administrative actions to promote and pay for abortions with taxpayer money.

No single related action garnered more attention than Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement that the Defense Department would use taxpayer funds to pay for abortion travel. Now, a new Pentagon report finds that the Biden administration’s abortion travel policy for service members and dependents was used only 12 times from June through December.

Julie Kelly Commentary: Ties Between Judge Merchan’s ‘Child’ and Adam Schiff Represent Major Conflict in Hush Money Trial

April 2, 2024 Julie Kelly

At the end of 2019, Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was leading the first impeachment effort against President Donald Trump.

Commentary: With ‘Friends’ Like Obrador, Enemies Like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong are Old News

April 2, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who prefers to be known as AMLO for short—issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats.

AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums.

Commentary: Supreme Court Takes on California’s Uber-Disclosure Laws Aiming to Crack Down on ‘Dark Money’ Ads

April 2, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

When you watch a political ad, often you’ll see a disclaimer of who the ad was paid for by, usually a political action committee, but what about the donors to the committee? Or the donor’s donors?

That’s the bridge that a San Francisco campaign finance law seeks to cross — now being challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court in No on E v. Chiu — and to prohibit an incredibly common practice in campaign finance, which are donations from anonymous sources.

Commentary: Big Tech Wants to Sneak Its AI Agenda Through State Legislatures

April 2, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Connecticut State Sen. James Moroney with Texas State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione

Most conservatives are aware Big Tech is an insidious force in American life. Tech giants censor free speech, promote wokeness, and fund far-left groups. A number of Republicans at the federal level want to curtail the massive power Big Tech wields in our country.

However, at the state level, many Republicans are lining up to serve the interests of the tech giants. Big Tech knows that there’s little appetite at the federal level to do its bidding. So corporations like Microsoft are now lobbying state legislators to enact the AI regulations they want. It’s a campaign few Americans know about, but it could dramatically impact their lives.

Commentary: Easter Is the Greatest Holiday of All Time

March 31, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Among world religions, only Christianity has a founder who professed to be the Messiah—the Son of God—who gave his life to save mankind.

The Easter weekend starts with Good Friday, the day God’s son Jesus was crucified to fulfill His plan to provide salvation from sin for those who believe in Christ. Easter Sunday is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, the third day from his crucifixion death, and the completion of God’s plan for all to know who Jesus was.

Commentary: The Resurrection of Jesus Is the Most Important Event in History

March 31, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

Christians around the world will commemorate the most important event in our faith’s history this Sunday, but the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t just important to those who believe a Nazarene who walked the earth 2,000 years ago is the Son of God. The secular world’s history also turns on this pivotal event, which inspired so much progress that we take for granted today.

Christianity turned the values of the Pagan Roman world upside-down. The Romans considered the early Christians subversives—many called them “atheists” because they didn’t worship any pagan gods—and put them to death for refusing to worship the emperor. After some emperors adopted the faith, Emperor Julian attempted to revive paganism, but lamented that the Christian ethic had transformed the empire.

Commentary: The Side of Homeschooling People Don’t Talk About Enough

March 31, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

As a veteran homeschooler, I am well aware of what a marathon this lifestyle can be. There’s no break when you live and work in the same place.

It’s time to take a deep breath and assess the situation. Burnout is a normal part of homeschooling. Everyone experiences it at one time or another, and it’s often associated with feelings of being distracted, overworked, and overwhelmed.

Commentary: The Myth of the Pagan Origins of Easter

March 31, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

You may not get any chocolate bunnies this Easter, but you’re bound to stumble across an article or meme suggesting that the story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is just a reincarnation of some pagan myth. Whether it’s Ishtar, Osiris, or Attis, these claims are tantalizing but devoid of scholarly content–much like the sugar rush of the chocolate bunny, with its deficit of actual nourishment.

Claims like these are at least as old as James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, published in 1890. However, they circulate routinely in new packaging. Unfortunately, the public tends to remain ignorant of the results of alternative scholarship. Sensationalism (like sex) sells. So does controversy. And when the sensation or the controversy revolves around beliefs that millions believe in whole-heartedly, sorting fact from fiction becomes increasingly difficult.

Commentary: Self-Servant Leadership

March 31, 2024 RealClearWire

“With all due respect, guys, I’m here for the families of Abbey Gate.”

Said the man in the cool blue suit at a congressional hearing last week in Washington.

Back straight, eyes serious, spool of white hair parted to one side, he looked authoritative. Here was the Ivy League grad finally freed from the oversized camouflage utilities once draped like a battle tunic over his squarish frame.

Commentary: The Biden EV Plan Needs American Mining

March 30, 2024 RealClearWire

The Biden administration has just supercharged the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. With its finalized tailpipe emissions rule, the administration expects that by 2032 70% of new U.S. car sales will be electric.

This lightning-fast transformation of the nation’s car fleet faces myriad challenges but perhaps none are greater than sourcing the minerals needed for millions of EVs and addressing the nation’s alarming reliance on Chinese-controlled mineral supply chains.

Commentary: In 2024, Digital Is Everything in Politics

March 30, 2024 RealClearWire

As the 2024 election heats up, now is the time for campaigns to invest wisely. Questions abound: Do you invest in cable news advertising? Door-to-door canvassing? Social media? Something else?

For answers, I look back to the past. In 2000, I oversaw the South Carolina Republican Party’s history-making effort to post real-time presidential primary results online. The election night vote-counting for the epic Bush vs. McCain battle played out on screens across the world – not just in the South Carolina GOP’s vote tabulation center. On that night, the ground shifted beneath our feet.

Commentary: Voters Be Beware That Google Interferes in U.S. Elections

March 29, 2024 Minnesota Sun Staff

A brand new investigation has found that Google interfered in American elections at least 41 times over the last 16 years.

Published on March 18, the Media Research Center Special Report traced election interference efforts by the world’s most popular search engine all the way back to the 2008 election of former President Barack Obama.