Wednesday roundup

In the course of an essay at The American Thinker entitled "How to Blast Away the Left's Attacks on Manliness," a sneak peak at the argument he fleshes out more fully in his new book This Will Make a Man Out of You: One Man's Search for Hemingway and Manliness in a Changing World, Richard Miniter makes an observation on a scene from cinematic history that I'd never quite looked at in the way he invites us to see it:

If being “manly” is akin to sexism and worse, men should then be something else, but the cabal of Hollywood, academia, and the mainstream media haven’t given men anything else to be. They are simply told not to be men. They are guilty from birth and so should just shut up.

This empty view actually can be traced back to Rebel Without a Cause, the 1955 classic movie starring James Dean. In the movie Dean keeps asking his father “what does it mean to be a man?” but his father doesn’t know. Dean is given no answers. He keeps slouching and looking at the ground and playing the lost young man brilliantly, but no one gives him any answers. Now, well over a half-century later, this is still where liberal Hollywood, academia, and the mainstream media have left the question. They are very concerned about women and women’s rights, but they are not inquisitive at all about what makes men -- and therefore with what they have been attacking.

Of course, we know that the logical - make that utterly illogical - conclusion to which leftist attacks on manliness bring us is the idea that people whose self-obsession has rendered them deeply troubled - that would be the "transgendered" and the even more exotic strains of "gender fluidity" that continue to appear in the fetid petri dish that is post-American culture - are perfectly normal and ought to be treated as such.

Which is how you get to situations like this:

The current law in the State of Texas requires schools to allow parents access to 100% of all their children’s records, academic, disciplinary, health, you name it. The only exception are instances where something has happened that has triggered the school to report suspected child abuse. This should be commonsense and self-evident as schools have zero role or responsibility for the parenting of children. Hell, public schools only make a cursory effort to educate them. But educators, being what they are, frequently think they are better equipped to raise a child than the parents. Such was the case in Fort Worth. This is an op-ed by Texas State Senator Konni Burton:

Unfortunately, this basic democratic opportunity was recently denied to the parents and taxpayers within Fort Worth ISD, and the repercussions could be extremely serious.

Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Dr. Kent Scribner recently announced new guidelines for faculty and staff on the handling of its transgender student population. These new guidelines require the recognition of the preferred gender identity of the student, the use of the pronoun he or she prefers, accommodations for the use of bathroom and locker room facilities and participation in the physical education of their preferred gender identity. These guidelines will affect all students, not just transgender students, and to act as if they do not need public and parental input is quite alarming.

Dr. Scribner and his executive team created the new transgender student guidelines through the use of “administrative regulations,” a rule-making process that does not require action by the publicly elected Board of Trustees. Without the need for a vote by the Board, there was no organized forum for an open debate on the merits of the new policies.

Fair minds can certainly argue whether the superintendent overstepped his authority by unilaterally enacting expansive new transgender policies; however, it cannot be argued that bypassing a public debate and avoiding parental input was a wise decision. Parents, not schools, are the primary decision-makers for their children; their opinion and input is absolutely invaluable and Fort Worth ISD was remiss in not tapping into the wealth of their perspective and experience. Involving parents should be the default position for any potentially controversial new policy of an independent school district, and unfortunately in this instance, it was not.

The new guidelines make it plain that parents are on a strictly “need-to-know” basis, and that “notifying a parent or guardian carries risks for the student in some cases.” Yet, within those same guidelines, Fort Worth ISD makes it clear that they can and will share this same private information with a third party without parental consent should they decide it’s in the student’s best interest. Frankly, I’m appalled by this language, and I hope the parents whose children attend Fort Worth ISD are as well.

Our schools are a place of learning; they are not replacements for the support and love of the family. I’ve heard it argued already that leaving parents in the dark is in the interest of safety, yet research shows transgender people are at an exponentially higher risk of suicide than the general population.

Essentially what the Forth Worth school superintendent did was say that parents would not have to be notified that their child suffering from a mental disorder, that would be “gender dysphoria,” and,indeed, encouraged schools NOT to inform parents. Never mind that this rule is a direct violation of state law. Never mind that it would prevent the parents from seeking treatment for the condition and possibly damage the child for life.

It takes a village, as they say.

Just because Squirrel-Hair won the presidency doesn't mean that his slavish devotees don't have anything more to answer for. In fact, it looks like the avalanche of "stuff to answer for" is just getting started:

President-elect Donald Trump strayed far from the talking points of his campaign during his wide-ranging interview Tuesday with New York Times journalists. Trump suggested he does not necessarily need to sever ties to his businesses while president. He said he has an open mind to acting on climate change. And he even offered some praise for the Clinton Foundation.

On the business ties, Trump was vague about when he will wind them down and how. He suggested he intends to transfer ownership to his kids, but then he also noted that the president is immune from federal conflict-of-interest laws. 

Congress, you are going to have to show some actual understanding of conservative principles, consistency in applying them, and a sense of urgency about doing so.

Not sure what to make of S-H's appointment of Nikki Haley as UN ambassador (which she has accepted).  She has little foreign policy experience beyond South Carolina-related international trade issues. Maybe S-H is trying to send signals that he is broad-minded, since Haley supported Rubio during the primaries.

A German court rules that roving bands of "sharia police" that approach people on the street and tell them not to drink alcohol and listen to music are not illegal.

Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier at NRO look at the wastefulness, data-cooking and general intrusiveness of one of the most tyrannical bodies in the world: the EPA:

In one analysis by the Office of Management and Budget, of the 30 least cost-effective regulations throughout the government, the EPA had imposed no fewer than 17. For example, the agency’s restrictions on the disposal of land that contains certain wastes prevent 0.59 cancer cases per year — about three cases every five years — and avoid $20 million in property damage, at an annual cost of $194 to $219 million.

The authors also look at such EPA boondoggles as the Superfund and the Clean Power Plan, just to set the table for their reportage on the agency's latest bit of tyranny:

The most recent new EPA travesty is new rulemaking on methane emissions, which have elicited more than a dozen legal challenges. Driven more by politics than by science, they are based on dubious data and would bring the American energy revolution to a halt, devastating not only the economy but also the environment.

Last year, the EPA reported that since 2005, net methane emissions from natural-gas infrastructure had fallen 38 percent, while total methane emissions from natural gas had dropped 11 percent. This year, however, the EPA claims that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are one-third higher than previously thought and that overall methane emissions from natural gas have dropped only 0.68 percent since 2005. What can explain such a huge turnaround? Have America’s cows been put on a diet of hummus and baked beans?

The agency says it now has better data to determine methane emissions, but this claim is highly suspect, not only because of the administration’s political objective on this issue but because of the methodology. For one thing, the EPA’s latest figures are based on older sources developed in the 1990s, which has the effect of inflating the current measurements.

The EPA has chosen to ignore that the energy sector has taken numerous steps to reduce emissions. For example, fuels and oils that have been contaminated are now filtered by producers so they can be reused to yield maximum performance with fewer emissions. Birmingham’s Alabama Power has invested in technology that produces electricity more efficiently, lowering overall emissions. Since 2000, oil and gas companies nationwide have invested roughly $90 billion in technologies designed to reduce harmful pollutants.

The EPA is now using the cooked data to justify imposing much tighter limits on methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure. For instance, other studies have found that the annual price tag to comply with these regulations could hit $800 million, and National Economic Research Associates has concluded that, by 2020, the regulations could be three times more expensive than the EPA estimate.  

We'll pay for it, of course.

Speaking of the environment and energy policy, LITD very much likes this:

The route has been approved and it’s not going to move.

Energy Transfer Partners LP Chief Executive Officer Kelcy Warren said the company will not consider rerouting its Dakota Access oil pipeline despite concerns voiced by U.S. native groups, according to an Associated Press interview published on Friday.

President Barack Obama said earlier this month that the government was examining ways to reroute the pipeline.

Energy Transfer did not immediately respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Warren did tell the AP that he would like to meet with tribal leaders to ease their concerns about the project.

While all this was going on, the protests have continued to take one violent turn after another. When the largely imported protesters continued to block highways and damage construction equipment, officials took to using water cannons to disburse them and clear a path. That’s not normally a terribly worrisome tactic, but when you get soaked down in North Dakota in November and the temperature is hovering around 23 degrees, well… let’s just say it might make you reexamine your lifestyle choices a bit.

But that didn’t stop the protesters from fighting back. Things once again got out of hand, with violence erupting. This led to one woman nearly getting her arm blown off (literally) when an explosion took place behind the protesters’ blockade. (NY Daily News)

A New Yorker was hospitalized with a gruesome injury while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline on North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation, activists say.

The woman — identified by activists as 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky — could lose her left arm after a Monday explosion behind the protest blockade near Cannon Ball tore through her winter jacket and skin, exposing bone.

The Bronx woman was airlifted nearly 400 miles to the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis following the 4 a.m. incident, said Wilansky’s friend and fellow activist Vaimoana Niumeitolu.

The protesters are claiming that it was a concussion grenade launched by law enforcement which injured her, but the local sheriff claims that they weren’t using anything like that and that the protesters had been hurling “fuel canisters” at them. (Can we all say “Molotov Cocktail” here?) It’s a he said she said situation so far, but this isn’t the first time Ms. Wilansky has been on the front lines of protests. In June she was arrested while protesting a different pipeline in Vermont.

One has to wonder where she finds the time to travel to all of these far flung sites and battle the authorities and how it hasn’t impacted her day job thus far.

Give it up, you self-congratulatory little human-advancement-haters.