carnage and culture

Tuesday, April 04, 2017

North Carolina rewrites title ending a year after painful defeat

Dana O'NeilESPN Senior Writer

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/

April 4, 2017

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams and players celebrate after the finals of the Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament against Gonzaga, Monday, April 3, 2017, in Glendale, Ariz. North Carolina won 71-65. (David J. Phillip/AP)

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nation-world/article142489914.html#storylink=cpy

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- They had been the best of friends and thick as thieves since they were middle schoolers, brothers by choice if not biology.

During the day, they would compete like crazy, racing to see who could get to the car first, practically knocking down walls to try to win the race to the top of the stairs. When the day ended, they would hole up in each other's bedrooms, spilling their dreams about playing college ball, imagining what their futures might look like.

But when Nate Britt came home to his suburban Maryland house last spring, he peeked into Kris Jenkins' bedroom and stopped. The place was redecorated, tricked out with new banners and posters, a piece of a net and pictures, so many pictures, of the buzzer-beater that made Jenkins famous, made Villanova the national champions -- and crushed the dream of his brother and his North Carolina teammates.

"I know it was hard, really hard on Nate,'' said Nate Britt Sr., who, along with his wife, Melody, became Jenkins' legal guardians in 2007. "You know, everyone wants to talk to the winner and celebrate him. It wasn't the same for Nate. He was so happy for Kris, but it hurt. He couldn't even go in his room.''

The Britt family will be doing some more redecorating this spring, the two brothers now having done the improbable -- each winning their own national championship.

North Carolina beat Gonzaga 71-65 on Monday night to claim the school's sixth championship but arguably the sweetest -- the victory erasing what had been the lowest of NCAA tournament lows. It was so bad that Roy Williams said, "The feeling of inadequacy in that locker room was the worst I'd ever had.''

The balm goes deeper than that to Tar Heels fans. For three years, the university has been plagued by the molasses-soaked wheels of NCAA justice, awaiting some sort of closure to an academic scandal that has tarnished North Carolina's once-burnished reputation.

Williams insists he has done nothing wrong and that his program should not be punished. Critics want nothing less than the Tar Heels' national championship banner. As for the fans? Well, when NCAA president Mark Emmert presented Williams with the championship trophy, they booed lustily enough to drown out his words.

"I wish it got no attention here, because this should be about the kids,'' Williams said. "I wish it got no attention. But I know it's out there. But the last three or four years have been very hard. I told you, people have questioned my integrity, and that means more to me than anything.''

This title will not end the speculation. It will hover until the NCAA makes a decision, but the joy the team felt and Williams witnessed went a long way to alleviating it all.

"At the end, when you're watching your kids jump around and the excitement, the thrill they have, there's no better feeling in the world as a coach,'' Williams said.

This game will not go down as one to celebrate nor as an instant classic. It was a foul-plagued, off-shooting mess of a rock fight that was not representative of either teams' success or abilities. There were just two more field goals made (46) than fouls whistled, and a decision to not review a loose-ball scramble with less than two minutes remaining is sure to stick hard in the craws of Gonzaga fans for a long time.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to the Tar Heels, there was nothing more gorgeous than Justin Jackson slamming down a breakaway dunk that sealed the victory.

"I threw the ball to Justin and almost immediately started crying,'' Joel Berry IIsaid. "Kennedy [Meeks] got a steal, and I got fouled. The ref came up to me and said, 'Coach wants to know if you want a timeout.' I said yes, because I'm about to lose it.''

Revenge and redemption often sound like clichéd storylines, a thread to carry one season to the next. Even Williams contends he doesn't buy it entirely for these Tar Heels: This national championship, after all, does nothing to avenge the ache for Marcus Paige and Brice Johnson, seniors last season whose collegiate careers ended in that gut-wrenching loss to Villanova.

But the Tar Heels themselves believed it. They started a group text and labeled it "Redemption." Theo Pinson turned an agonized picture of himself, head covered by a towel as he sat disconsolate in his locker room, into his screen saver. Once Britt could stomach walking into his brothers' room, he used Jenkins' largesse of celebratory paraphernalia as his own internal motivation.

"I was so happy for Kris, but it was really hard to swallow,'' Britt said. "That feeling followed me all the way here.''

On Aug. 22, the first day of classes at North Carolina, Williams sent his team out for their 12-minute run and later brought them to his house for a season kickoff meeting. He looked around at the players sitting there -- wildly talented, experienced and deep -- and told them they were good enough to win a national championship. "But you're going to have to pay the price,'' Williams concluded.

That had been the knock on the Tar Heels for much of this season -- that they had a tendency to go soft and disappear for spurts of games. It reared its head in the national semifinals against Oregon.

Monday night's game was different.

Nothing worked. Two teams so accustomed to being bigger than everyone else found themselves shocked to be staring at a mirror image. Real estate in the paint was impossible to find, and anything that resembled an offensive rhythm was wiped out by a whistle.

Jackson, the versatile, sweet shooter, connected on just 6 of 19 shots. Meeks, so dominant and brilliant against Oregon, drew to a stalemate with Gonzaga big man Przemek Karnowski, with Meeks scoring just seven points to Karnowski's nine.

The job to create offense fell to the guy who was playing through pain. Berry's sprained ankles were so sore and achy that Williams elected to fly his team to Phoenix a day early, hoping that any in-air swelling might calm down before the Tar Heels had to practice. The junior was clearly hobbled against Oregon, shooting just 2-of-14 as he struggled to get any lift on his jumper. While his teammates went for downtime naps, Berry went for more rehab, begging his athletic trainers to just find a way to get him through the end of the season.

"They were swollen up after the game on Saturday,'' Williams said. "We don't lie. We don't lie, and we don't flop on charges.''

Before the national title game, Berry walked by Williams during pregame shootaround and said he was still worried he couldn't get a good push. Williams told him to just use his legs.

Berry used his legs to the tune of 22 points and the most outstanding player award, putting on a performance of near Willis Reed proportions.

"It was just an unbelievable feeling. And this is what we worked for,'' Berry said. "And the ups and downs that we've had? It's all worth it. And I can't even describe my feeling right now, but I am just glad that I was able to do something with this team.

"And I think we just deserved it.''

Sitting in the first row of the stands behind the North Carolina bench, doubled over at the waist, stood a person who couldn't agree more. Since his own team lost to Wisconsin in the second round of the NCAA tournament, Jenkins has traded his Villanova gear for Tar Heels blue. He was in Memphis with North Carolina. And he has been in Phoenix all week.

As his brother followed the same giddy postgame routine that Jenkins enjoyed a year ago -- ascending the makeshift stage to get the trophy, dancing in a confetti bath, climbing a ladder and snipping the net -- Jenkins watched with a smile as wide as his cheeks would allow. A brand-new North Carolina hat perched on top of his head, Jenkins even accepted a big hug from Ramses, the Tar Heels mascot.

"I didn't cry when we won it,'' Jenkins said. "But I cried a little this time.''

Jenkins knew perhaps better than anyone how hard last year's loss was on Britt, how hard it was on all of the Tar Heels. The two brothers shared a two-hour heart-to-heart after the 2016 title game, with Britt speaking for all of his teammates about how devastated they all were by the finish.

There will be no more tears this year at the Britt household. The two boys who found a brotherhood through basketball and competed through their childhood will happily settle for a tie this time.

One national championship for Jenkins, one for Britt and two sweetly decorated bedrooms.

Redemption: North Carolina creates new ending to familiar championship path

BRIAN HAMILTON

https://www.si.com/college-basketball/

April 4, 2017

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams is interviewed as his team celebrate after the finals of the Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament against Gonzaga, Monday, April 3, 2017, in Glendale, Ariz. North Carolina won 71-65. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The pregame meal for the North Carolina basketball team takes place at the same time, every time: precisely four hours before that day’s scheduled tipoff. The spread itself is also identical no matter where the Tar Heels are or what time of day they are dining: green beans, broccoli, mashed potato, sweet potato, baked potato, chicken, salmon, steak, pasta with marinara sauce, a fruit cup and rolls on the table. And, likewise, after eating the same food at the same appointed time before all of the games they play, Theo Pinson and Joel Berry II fall into a routine of their own: They return to their hotel room and they take naps.

Nothing about Monday afternoon at the Palomar Hotel was any different than any other game day. And it was yet another bit of sameness that overcame Pinson, a junior forward, once he snapped out of his snooze and prepared to board a 4:15 p.m. bus to a hulking stadium in the desert: North Carolina, for the second straight April, would play for a national championship. This is unreal that we get a second chance at this, Pinson told Berry II. Not a lot of people can say they can do that.

Only eight teams, in fact, had followed a title game appearance with another one just a year later. It’s unlikely any of them endured the sort of torment that befell the Tar Heels on April 4, 2016, when a buzzer-beating Villanova three-pointer dashed their aspirations in as painful a way as is conceivable.

North Carolina players insisted they tried not to think about it. They tried to separate themselves from it. But, especially during the three-week trip through the NCAA tournament bracket, they would be yanked back by everyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t let go so easily.

And so, on another Monday in April, this was the realization for the team that did everything the same, from the food to the naps to running out on a raised floor to play on the same final night of the season: The only way to escape it all was by doing one thing different.

“You just didn’t want to come up short,” Theo Pinson said.

The 71–65 victory over Gonzaga that brought North Carolina its national championship was a close game but not, in fact, a particularly good game. A barge-load of fouls and missed shots and missed calls dulled the sheen of two very good basketball teams convening to compete for a trophy.

But then the Tar Heels are a team that thrives on imperfection; they are collectively the best offensive rebounders in the country, for example, and offensive rebounds are necessarily preceded by missed shots. So this is a program in some ways built to endure in a game besieged by error. This is a program that has played through the specter of an NCAA investigation into academic fraud and, in the end, screamed and hugged and danced while confetti fell at University of Phoenix Stadium anyway. North Carolina is somewhat expert at a nice cleanup after the mess. “The feeling of inadequacy in the locker room last year is the worst feeling I've ever had,” coach Roy Williams said. “But, yes, this one's fantastic. And it's sweet.”

To the dismay of the many who expected better, there was nothing glorious about what transpired between the Tar Heels and the Bulldogs on Monday. The teams shot a combined 34.8% from the floor. They committed a combined 44 fouls and missed a combined 20 free throws. A great swell of howling about terrible officiating overwhelmed the action on the floor, but it’s just as necessary to note the generally sloppy level of play and the generally obvious proliferation of bad defense that merited the many foul calls. That the teams nevertheless were locked in a tie game with two minutes left saved everyone from racing to forget the affair the second it ended.

At halftime, facing a three-point deficit and with matters drifting toward rock-fight levels already, Williams stood before his team in the locker room and declared that they were locked, for better or increasingly worse, in a “man’s game.” And the coach who has refused to review the film of that 2016 championship game loss—“I probably never will watch the game,” Williams noted—then referenced one of the worst nights in the life of everyone in the room. The Tar Heels coach reminded his team that they led Villanova by five at the break. And that Villanova came out as the aggressors after intermission to seize control. And that, perhaps, North Carolina might do well to take a cue from this.

The 8–0 run that followed directly after halftime ensured nothing about the end result. But it did reconfirm that the Tar Heels were still themselves. They could still pick up after a mess. “We really kind of hit them in the mouth,” junior forward Justin Jackson said.

All along, North Carolina protested (perhaps too much) that redemption was not precisely the motivation behind their pursuit. And then it became the leitmotif of a championship anyway.

Berry II spent the entire Final Four delivering updates on not one but two sprained ankles—it was big news when he said he was able to walk comfortably Sunday morning despite tripping over a video game controller in his hotel room—and missed 12 of the 14 shots he took in the semifinal victory over Oregon. The junior then poured in 22 points and six assists on Monday and accounted for the only four three-point shots North Carolina made, earning Most Outstanding Player honors for the effort. As his teammates thrashed about searching for a rhythm, Berry II steadied them long enough to stand a chance at the end. “My trainers were coming up to me constantly: Are you okay? Are you okay?” Berry II said. “We need to come down and do rehab. Take this up to your room. Do that. Do that. And I just kept on telling myself: Look, just a couple more weeks. Just give it your all.”

Isaiah Hicks might have been the only person to have it worse, and he had no physical malady to blame besides bad aim. Of the 6’9” senior’s first 15 shots in the Final Four, 14 did not connect. “I felt like I was always trying,” Hicks said. “I feel like, when you try, a good thing is eventually going to happen.”

Hicks kept trying, but he was a liability deep into the second half Monday. Then he became an indelible part of program lore. With essentially every member of the team’s massive frontlines in foul trouble, Hicks surged to score eight of his 13 points and grab six of his nine rebounds in the second half. Improbably, he would hit the most consequential shot of the game: After a missed Berry II jumper and a controversial jump ball that allowed North Carolina to maintain possession—the Tar Heels’ Kennedy Meeks had his hand on the out-of-bounds line during a tie-up on the floor, but an official standing in the vicinity missed it—Hicks received the ball near the free-throw line and barreled his way to a bank shot runner with 25.4 seconds left that provided North Carolina a 68–65 lead.

No sequence encapsulated the night or the Tar Heels’ route to victory better: a missed shot, an offensive rebound, a blown call, and then deliverance from a player who couldn’t deliver much of anything for most of the weekend. No wonder Williams walked behind Hicks as the team gathered to watch the “One Shining Moment” montage and then dropped the remains of the scissored net around the senior forward’s neck, or that Hicks toted the championship trophy around the locker room as the celebration carried on. “My boy has been struggling like a dog,” Williams said, “but tonight he looked like a greyhound there a couple of times at the end.”

Nothing was certain, truly, until Meeks blocked a shot and Berry II heaved a pass to a streaking Jackson for a run-out dunk with 7.3 seconds left. The team’s lithe leading scorer swung around the rim for a moment, then let go to punctuate the evening by clenching his fists and letting loose a cathartic roar. Jackson considered a leap to the NBA after his sophomore season but returned for a couple reasons: The pros wanted him to demonstrate a more consistent touch, and he felt North Carolina was equipped to return to the Final Four. He insisted the loss to Villanova did not specifically factor in that decision. He declared he stopped thinking about the game five months ago, discussing it only when asked to.

Even late Monday night, Jackson maintained this wasn’t a redemptive moment. Totally different team, he said. But there was the ACC Player of the Year, running down the floor and throwing down the dunk to seal a championship that so agonizingly eluded him one year earlier. And even with those seven-plus seconds left on the clock—and goodness knows North Carolina players should understand the value of time left on a clock in a championship game—Jackson began to cry. “I couldn’t control it,” he said. “It made it a little sweeter, going through what we did last year.”

On the day of the national semifinal game against Oregon, Jackson reread the story of David and Goliath. A North Carolina player drawing inspiration from an underdog seems a bit absurd. But overcoming great challenges wasn’t what Jackson got from the tale. For him, it was a reminder about being steadfast and the great things that can follow as a result.

North Carolina’s mascot, Ramses, stood on the raised floor at University of Phoenix Stadium and surveyed the giddy fans a few feet away. He caught sight of one in particular and pointed at him. Kris Jenkins smiled, flashed a thumbs-up and then waited as Ramses descended to the floor and came in for a hug.

It was Jenkins, of course, who released the shot that splashed through last April, creating an epic NCAA tournament moment for Villanova and a waking nightmare for the Tar Heels. On Monday night, he sat in the front row behind the North Carolina bench. He was there to support his brother, Tar Heels guard Nate Britt; the Britt family took legal guardianship of Jenkins during his high school years. And now he wore a shirt with BRITT and the number 0 on the back, literally embracing the same players whose dreams he ground to dust a year earlier (“He knew how much it hurt,” Britt said). Jenkins smiled because, as it turned out, he only delayed their moment of triumph instead of destroying it. “This has nothing to do with me,” Jenkins said. “This is all about them and what they accomplished as a team.”

• SI's best photos from North Carolina's win over Gonzaga

North Carolina reached another Monday night in early April and changed the ending. Whether that qualifies as redemption is a matter of semantics. There is no denying that it is different, however, and that is all this team desired. They wanted something different for themselves, not whoever they were the year before.

Those Tar Heels, as a matter of fact, were due for deletion. Since last April, the screenshot of Pinson’s phone is a photo of him sitting in the locker room of Houston’s Reliant Stadium with his head bowed. “Now I can change the screensaver on my phone,” he said after the game. He and everyone else on the roster had been reminded by players who won championships at North Carolina that there was a spot at the table waiting for them. Just pull up a chair, they said.

They didn’t manage it a year ago. But amid the chaotic and delirious scene in the desert, Pinson found Sean May, the team’s director of player development and a member of North Carolina’s 2005 title-winning squad. Clean my chair off and have it ready for me, Pinson joked to May.

When Pinson returned to the locker room following a news conference late Monday, there was nowhere for him to sit. He looked to his right. After a moment, May stood up and brought over the folding chair he had been occupying. That seat was ready at last.

Monday, April 03, 2017

Londonistan: 423 New Mosques; 500 Closed Churches

by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

April 2, 2017

A study in devotion: The tiny mosque on the Brune Street Estate, Spitalfields, holds only 100 people, so the local Bangladeshi community throng the street for Friday midday prayers.

"London is more Islamic than many Muslim countries put together", according to Maulana Syed Raza Rizvi, one of the Islamic preachers who now lead "Londonistan", as the journalist Melanie Phillips has called the English capital. No, Rizvi is not a right-wing extremist. Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate for Literature, was less generous; he called the UK "a cesspit for Islamists".

"Terrorists can not stand London multiculturalism", London's mayor Sadiq Khan said after the recent deadly terror attack at Westminster. The opposite is true: British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Above all, Londonistan, with its new 423 mosques, is built on the sad ruins of English Christianity.

The Hyatt United Church was bought by the Egyptian community to be converted to a mosque. St Peter's Church has been converted into the Madina Mosque. The Brick Lane Mosque was built on a former Methodist church. Not only buildings are converted, but also people. The number of converts to Islam has doubled; often they embrace radical Islam, as with Khalid Masood, the terrorist who struck Westminster.

The Daily Mail published photographs of a church and a mosque a few meters from each other in the heart of London. At the Church of San Giorgio, designed to accommodate 1,230 worshipers, only 12 people gathered to celebrate Mass. At the Church of Santa Maria, there were 20.

The nearby Brune Street Estate mosque has a different problem: overcrowding. Its small room and can contain only 100. On Friday, the faithful must pour into the street to pray. Given the current trends, Christianity in England is becoming a relic, while Islam will be the religion of the future.

In Birmingham, the second-largest British city, where many jihadists live and orchestrate their attacks, an Islamic minaret dominates the sky. There are petitions to allow British mosques to call the Islamic faithful to prayer on loudspeakers three times a day.

By 2020, estimates are that the number of Muslims attending prayers will reach at least 683,000, while the number of Christians attending weekly Mass will drop to 679,000. "The new cultural landscape of English cities has arrived; the homogenised, Christian landscape of state religion is in retreat", said Ceri Peach of Oxford University. While nearly half of British Muslims are under the age of 25, a quarter of Christians are over 65. "In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers," said Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society.

Since 2001, 500 London churches of all denominations have been turned into private homes. During the same period, British mosques have been proliferating. Between 2012 and 2014, the proportion of Britons who identify themselves as Anglicans fell from 21% to 17%, a decrease of 1.7 million people, while, according to a survey conducted by the respected NatCen Social Research Institute, the number of Muslims has grown by almost a million. Churchgoers are declining at a rate that within a generation, their number will be three times lower than that of Muslims who go regularly to mosque on Friday.

Demographically, Britain has been acquiring an increasingly an Islamic face, in places such as Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets. In 2015, an analysis of the most common name in England showed it was Mohammed, including spelling variations such as Muhammad and Mohammad.

Most important cities have huge Muslim populations: Manchester (15.8%), Birmingham (21.8%) and Bradford (24.7%). In Birmingham, the police just dismantled a terrorist cell; there is also a greater probability that a child will be born into a Muslim family than into a Christian one. In Bradford and Leicester, half the children are Muslim. Muslims do not need to become the majority in the UK; they just need gradually to Islamize the most important cities. The change is already taking place. "Londonistan" is not a Muslim majority nightmare; it is a cultural, demographic and religious hybrid in which Christianity declines and Islam advances.

According to Innes Bowen, writing in The Spectator, only two of the 1,700 mosques in Britain today follow the modernist interpretation of Islam, compared with 56% in the United States. The Wahhabis control six percent of mosques in the UK, while the fundamentalist Deobandi control up to 45%. According to a survey from the Knowledge Center, a third of UK Muslims do not feel "part of British culture."

London is also full of sharia courts. There are officially 100. The advent of this parallel judicial system has been made possible thanks to the British Arbitration Act and the system of Alternative Dispute Resolution. These new courts are based on the rejection of the inviolability of human rights: the values of freedom and equality that are the basis of English Common Law.

British personalities keep opening the door to introduce sharia. One of Britain's leading judges, Sir James Munby, said that Christianity no longer influences the courts and these must be multicultural -- which means more Islamic. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chief Justice Lord Phillips also suggested that British law should "incorporate" elements of sharia law. The British cultural establishment is rapidly capitulating to Islamic fundamentalists in accepting their demands.

British universities are also advancing Islamic law. The official guidelines of the university, "External speakers in higher education institutions", published by Universities UK, provide that "orthodox religious groups" may separate men and women during events. At Queen Mary University of London, women had to use a separate entrance and were forced to sit in a room without being able to ask questions or raise their hands -- as in Riyadh or Tehran. The Islamic Society at the London School of Economics held a gala, in which women and men were separated by a seven-meter panel.

After the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, recommended self-censorship and "some restraint" in discussing Islam. The British ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Simon Collis, converted to Islam and completed the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. He now calls himself Haji Collis.

What will be next?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Today's Tune: Lord Huron - She Lit A Fire (Rollo & Grady Sessions)

Today's Tune: Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams - CARDINAL SESSIONS

Today's Tune: Lord Huron - Way out There

California’s Moral Atrocity

The state’s attorney general is going after, not people who confessed on camera to murders, but the investigative reporters who uncovered the crimes.

By Ian Tuttle — March 30, 2017

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Image result for xavier becerra attorney general planned parenthood

AG Who Charged Activists For Exposing Planned Parenthood Received Thousands In Donations From Planned Parenthood. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In a parade of horrors exposed by the Center for Medical Progress, one episode stands out. In the seventh video released by undercover journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, former StemExpress technician Holly O’Donnell describes an experience at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda Clinic in San Jose, Calif.:

“I want you to see something kinda cool. This is kinda neat,” [says O’Donnell’s coworker]. So I’m over here, and . . . the moment I see it, I’m just flabbergasted. This is the most gestated fetus and the closest thing to a baby I’ve seen. And she is, like, “Okay, I want to show you something.” So she has one of her instruments, and she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here, and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.

O’Donnell is then told to “harvest” the child’s brain: “[She] gave me the scissors and told me that I had to cut down the middle of the face.” O’Donnell did as asked.

It’s not often that someone confesses to murder on camera, but that is what O’Donnell did, assuming her account was accurate. The California Penal Code defines murder as the “unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought.” Not only did Planned Parenthood refuse to render care to a born-alive infant, as required by California law; it acted affirmatively to cause the child’s death.

Yet this revelation occasioned no interest. Major newspapers ignored it. Mainstream websites overlooked it. Nothing appeared on the nightly news. These were, apparently, not the crimes anyone was looking for.

Now, California attorney general Xavier Becerra has filed 15 felony charges against Daleiden and Merritt, the journalists who exposed the brutality and profiteering of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, on the grounds that ostensibly business-related conversations among strangers held in restaurants and at conferences were in fact “confidential,” and so recording them without every participant’s consent violated California eavesdropping laws. You can read all about this news at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN.

Becerra, a Democrat, recently decamped from the U.S. House to replace Kamala Harris, now California’s junior senator, as state attorney general. (Last spring, Harris’s investigators raided Daleiden’s apartment, seizing a laptop and multiple hard drives.) Both have 100 percent legislative ratings from prominent pro-abortion groups. Both have received financial support from Planned Parenthood. At the time she ordered the raid, Harris was helping Planned Parenthood’s chief legal counsel draft legislation to restrict reporting on “health-care providers.”

There is much that ought to be said about California’s transparently partisan abuse of the state’s prosecutorial power. (In recent years, undercover videos have prompted California’s Justice Department to investigate claims of animal cruelty on chicken farms. This, as opposed to homicide at abortion clinics, is enough to prompt the curiosity of California’s law-enforcement officials.) There is much, too, that ought to be said about the hypocrisy of the media types who are suddenly silent about this unconcealed assault on reporters’ freedoms, after spending the days since Donald Trump’s election propounding the importance of a vigorous press. (“Like firefighters who run into a fire, journalists run toward a story,” MSNBC’s Katy Tur boasted last month.)

But what links media hypocrisy with partisan hypocrisy, and what is at the heart of this shameful affair, is conscience twisted beyond recognition. The Center for Medical Progress revealed Planned Parenthood’s trade in fetal parts and its winking attitude toward the law. But it also revealed the sheer moral rot that consumes the abortion industry from top to bottom. Hidden from everyday view are those who, over appetizers and wine, talk about “crushing” babies to death, or joke about how an abortionist worth her salt will “hit the gym” because it requires “biceps” to dismember a baby! And there are others, such as Becerra and Harris, who may not handle the scissors, but who agree that snuffing out the life of a child on a table should be celebrated, and that those who would expose those activities should be locked up. This is the barbarism of “progressive” consensus.

On Wednesday morning, undeterred by the California Department of Justice, the Center for Medical Progress released a new video, in which an undercover Daleiden discusses abortion procedures with Dr. DeShawn Taylor, former medical director of Planned Parenthood Arizona, and the founder of her own abortion clinic in Phoenix. Taylor notes: “In Arizona, if the fetus comes out with any signs of life, we’re supposed to transport it. To the hospital.” Asked if there is any standard procedure for “verifying life,” she replies: “Well, the thing is, I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”

There is a famous line in Solzhenitsyn: “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” The lie has come into the world, but not through David Daleiden.

— Ian Tuttle is the Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow at the National Review Institute.

RELATED: California Shamelessly Persecutes Pro-Life Journalists

A HEALTH CARE PLAN SO SIMPLE, EVEN A REPUBLICAN CAN UNDERSTAND!

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
March 29, 2017

Image result for health care reform

It's always impossible to repeal laws that require Ann to pay for greedy people, because the greedy run out on the streets wailing that the Republicans are murdering them.

Obamacare is uniquely awful because the free stuff isn't paid for through income taxes: It's paid for through MY health insurance premiums. This is unfortunate because I wanted to buy health insurance.

Perhaps you're not aware -- SINCE YOU EXEMPTED YOURSELVES FROM OBAMACARE, CONGRESS -- but buying or selling health insurance is illegal in America.

Right now, there's no free market because insurance is insanely regulated not only by Obamacare, but also by the most corrupt organizations in America: state insurance commissions. (I'm talking to you, New York!)

Federal and state laws make it illegal to sell health insurance that doesn't cover a laughable array of supposedly vital services based on bureaucrats' medical opinions of which providers have the best lobbyists.

As a result, it's illegal to sell health insurance that covers any of the medical problems I'd like to insure against. Why can't the GOP keep Obamacare for the greedy -- but make it legal for Ann to buy health insurance?

This is how it works today:

ME: I'm perfectly healthy, but I'd like to buy health insurance for heart disease, broken bones, cancer, and everything else that a normal person would ever need, but no more.

INSURANCE COMPANY: That will be $700 a month, the deductible is $35,000, no decent hospital will take it, and you have to pay for doctor's visits yourself. But your plan covers shrinks, infertility treatments, sex change operations, autism spectrum disorder treatment,drug rehab and 67 other things you will never need.

INSURANCE COMPANY UNDER ANN'S PLAN: That will be $50 a month, the deductible is $1,000, you can see any doctor you'd like, and you have full coverage for any important medical problems you could conceivably have in a million years.

Mine is a two-step plan (and you don't have to do the second step, so it's really a one-step plan).

STEP 1: Congress doesn't repeal Obamacare! Instead, Congress passes a law, pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, that says: "In America, it shall be legal to sell health insurance on the free market. This law supersedes all other laws, taxes, mandates, coverage requirements, regulations or prohibitions, state or federal.”

The end. Love, Ann.

There will be no whining single mothers storming Congress with their pre-printed placards. People who want to stay on Obamacare can. No one is taking away anything. They can still have health insurance with free pony rides. It just won't be paid for with Ann's premiums anymore, because Ann will now be allowed to buy health insurance on the free market.

Americans will be free to choose among a variety of health insurance plans offered by willing sellers, competing with one another to provide the best plans at the lowest price. A nationwide market in health insurance will drive down costs and improve access -- just like everything else we buy here in America!

Within a year, most Americans will be buying health insurance on the free market (and half of the rest will be illegal aliens). We'll have TV ads with cute little geckos hawking amazing plans and young couples bragging about their broad coverage and great prices from this or that insurance company.

The Obamacare plans will still have the "essential benefits" (free pony rides) that are so important to NPR's Mara Liasson, but the free market plans will have whatever plans consumers agree to buy and insurance companies agree to sell -- again, just like every other product we buy here in America.

Some free market plans will offer all the "essential benefits" mandated by Obamacare, but the difference will be: Instead of forcing me to pay a premium that covers Mara Liasson's special needs, she'll have to pay for that coverage herself.

I won't be compelled to buy health insurance that covers everyone else's gambling addiction, drug rehab, pregnancies, marital counseling, social workers, contact lenses and rotten kids -- simply to have insurance for what doctors call "serious medical problems.”

Then, we'll see how many people really need free health care.

Until the welfare program is decoupled from the insurance market, nothing will work. Otherwise, it's like forcing grocery stores to pay for everyone to have a house. A carton of milk would suddenly cost $10,000.

That's what Obamacare did to health insurance. Paul Ryan's solution was to cut taxes on businesses -- and make the milk watery. But he still wouldn't allow milk to be sold on the free market.

Democrats will be in the position of blocking American companies from selling a product that people want to buy. How will they explain that to voters?

Perhaps Democrats will come out and admit that they need to fund health insurance for the poor by forcing middle-class Americans to pay for it through their insurance premiums -- because otherwise, they'd have to raise taxes, and they want to keep their Wall Street buddies' income taxes low.

Good luck with that!

STEP 2: Next year, Congress formulates a better way of delivering health care to the welfare cases, which will be much easier since there will be a LOT fewer of them.

No actual money-making business is going to survive by taking the welfare cases -- the ones that will cover illegal aliens and Mara Liasson's talk therapy -- so the greedy will get government plans.

But by then, only a minority of Americans will be on the "free" plans. (Incidentally, this will be a huge money-saver -- if anyone cares about the federal budget.) Eighty percent of Americans will already have good health plans sold to them by insurance companies competing for their business.

With cheap plans available, a lot of the greedy will go ahead and buy a free market plan. Who wants to stand in line at the DMV to see a doctor when your neighbors have great health care plans for $50 a month?

We will have separated the truly unfortunate from the loudmouthed bullies who simply enjoy forcing other people to pay for their shrinks and aromatherapy.

And if the Democrats vote against a sane method of delivering health care to the welfare cases, who cares? We have lots of wasteful government programs -- take it out of Lockheed Martin's contract. But at least the government won't be depriving the rest of us of a crucial product just because we are middle class and the Democrats hate us.

There's your health care bill, GOP!

COPYRIGHT 2017 ANN COULTER