Category: Commentary

Commentary: The Establishment Uses ‘Hate and Fear’ to Manipulate Voters

Virginia Star Staff

Hate and fear might as well be the GOP’s motto. And while there was a time when a liberal like me saying that would be accurately labeled hyperbolic, that time has passed. Show me what, aside from hate and fear, the modern Republican Party is all about.
Columnist Rex Huppke, writing for USA Today, July 16, 2023

Huppke’s comment is something we hear all the time. The campaign to dehumanize MAGA Republicans as hatemongers and fearmongers is a staple of the liberal media, is the playbook for Democrat politicians all the way up to President Biden, and is supported by almost the entire academic community. This dehumanization campaign isn’t restricted to Democrats. Establishment Republicans either equivocate, or explicitly join Democrats in demonizing MAGA Republicans.

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Commentary: Government Corruption Helps the Bidens and Hurts Trump

Virginia Star Staff

The media frequently invokes Trump’s appointment of officials to dismiss the possibility of bias. The media have invoked this defense for FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is responsible for the FBI’s raid of Trump’s home to obtain classified documents, and for David Weiss, the Delaware U.S. Attorney, who gave kid-glove treatment to the first son, Hunter Biden.

Invoking the provenance of Trump’s persecutors is meant to deflect and confuse. Regardless of who appointed these people to their current positions, these are career government workers, i.e., the managerial class. They have shown themselves to be particularly hostile to Trump and other Republicans, who might dare to interfere with business as usual.

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Commentary: Three Observations and Predictions About Affirmative Action in Universities Moving Forward

Virginia Star Staff

Following the recent Supreme Court decision overturning race-conscious admissions, certain sections of the media have adopted an alarmist tone, fueling doomsday predictions. Others are keen to celebrate the end of discriminatory practices that educational institutions have adopted for nearly 60 years.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The Biden Presidency Is Unsustainable

Virginia Star Staff

Imagine if Gavin Newsom was currently Vice President amid the final meltdown of the Biden family consortium.

Does anyone doubt that Biden would then either be forced to resign by Democratic politicos (for reasons in addition to his escalating dementia), or would be impeached and perhaps abdicate Nixon-style?

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Commentary: Thanks to Hacks and Henchmen, ‘Misinformation’ Is Now Code for Doing Government Dirty Work

Virginia Star Staff

Louisiana federal Judge Terry A. Doughty shocked Americans with his July 4th restraining order against Biden’s digital team which was supposed to be fighting “disinformation” but was in reality just banning views online it didn’t like.

Doughty’s opinion is a jaw dropping expose of how White House staff bullied Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to remove content about election fraud, COVID concerns and other matters of public interest in blatant violation of the First Amendment.  Governmental actors cannot demand that others do what they cannot under the Constitution, just as you can’t have proxies break the law for you. Yet that’s exactly what Biden officials did and that’s exactly what Judge Doughty stopped.

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Commentary: The Educational Establishment’s Radical New Ploys

Virginia Star Staff

Increased spending, common good bargaining, community schools and transitional kindergarten will not improve student learning.

A Gallup poll released earlier this month shows that just 28% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in K-12 public schools. The number for Republicans is particularly damning: Just 14% of GOPers view education in a positive light.

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Commentary: The Philosopher Who Is the Intellectual Root of CRT and Radical Gender Ideology

Virginia Star Staff

French philosopher and social critic Paul-Michel Foucault has long stood as an intellectual juggernaut in humanities programs all around the world. For better or worse, the contemporary understanding of critical theory—and critical race theory—as well as gender theory owes debts to Foucault’s ideas about power, knowledge, and language.

Even beyond the classroom, Foucault’s ideas have been used to dismantle and destabilize the traditional and orthodox conceptions of various issues, including sexuality, education, and society as a whole.

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Commentary: The Way to Teach Children to Value Tradition

Virginia Star Staff

Traditionalism will come to nothing if it is not shared with future generations. You might have children yourself and are in the throes of parenting. Or you might be looking toward a family one day and wondering how best to prepare. How does one go about teaching tradition to children? Where should new and future parents focus in order to give their young ones the same mindset they hold dear?

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Commentary: Listening for Alien Civilizations Is ‘Eavesdropping,’ ‘Surveillance,’ These Indigenous Scholars Say

Virginia Star Staff

As a young teen I couldn’t get enough of Carl Sagan’s book “Cosmos,” and the movie based on his novel of the same name, Contact, remains one of my favorite scifi offerings.

Sagan, and by extension Contact protagonist Ellie Arroway, became the sort of individual I came trust to handle what will be the greatest discovery in human history: proof that humans are not alone in the universe.

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Commentary: Biden’s Corruption Implicates the Entire Political Establishment

Virginia Star Staff

The basic contours of the Biden family’s corruption scandal have been known for years, but the details have been suppressed. What the public knows, it knows despite the efforts of the media, the Democrats, and the “intelligence community” to bend, twist, and bury the truth. For instance, it is no secret that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son’s business partners. In fact, Biden bragged about it. But in the conventional narrative, Biden was doing this not out of personal interest, but as part of an institutional effort to root out corruption. This is the kind of obtuse, self-serving nonsense that passes for “journalism” today.

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Commentary: The Left Hates Sound of Freedom Because They Hate Children

Virginia Star Staff

An appropriate reaction for anyone who has seen the film Sound of Freedom is one of sheer horror, shock and anger toward a child trafficking industry that subjugates over a million children globally to sexual abuse – and unimaginable trauma for both the victims and their families.

Another appropriate reaction to this powerful film would be an appreciation for director Alejandro Monteverde and actor Jim Caviezel’s masterful ability to bring to national attention this brutal epidemic that must be eradicated.

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Commentary: This Year’s National Defense Bill Equips the U.S. to Deter the New Axis of Evil

Virginia Star Staff

With the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) having passed the Senate, our nation is taking a necessary step to secure our freedom at home and abroad. For 63 consecutive years, Congress has passed the NDAA to keep America strong and her enemies on their back foot. In this year’s bill, I was able to secure many victories for the Volunteer State that will boost our military and research installations and give our servicemembers the tools they need to keep our homeland safe.

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Commentary: White House Backtracks on Hunter’s Business Deals

RealClearWire

The language is undeniably different, and yet White House officials said four different times Wednesday that “nothing has changed” concerning President Biden’s longstanding denial that he was ever involved in the foreign business dealings of his son Hunter.

House Republicans, meanwhile, contend that the deviation in wording now employed at the White House reflects a strategy to distance the president from Hunter Biden ahead of potentially damaging new testimony.

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Commentary: Conservatives Fight Secretive Biden Voting Order

RealClearWire

GOP lawmakers and other conservative critics are working to expose and fight a secretive executive order by President Biden to expand voter participation in elections, which they suspect has become a powerful government-wide complement to private left-wing election financing that could tip the 2024 campaign illegally and unfairly in Democrats’ favor.

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Commentary: Republicans Need a New Approach to Foreign Policy

Virginia Star Staff

A recent Fareed Zakaria Washington Post op-ed nicely summarized our new reality:

There is a debate within the Republican Party. Some senior figures, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and former vice president Mike Pence, are vigorously making the case for an active and engaged America. But the party’s base seems to be with the isolationists, as can be seen in the tilting stances of the weather-vane speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). From Donald Trump to his copycat, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the party’s most powerful media ideologist, Tucker Carlson, conservatives are increasingly contemptuous of America’s support for Ukraine and its strong alliance with Europe. Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) told the New York Times that although some Republicans remain staunchly interventionist, “That’s not where the voters are.”

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Commentary: ‘True Believer’ Joint Chiefs Chairman Will Hurt the Military

Virginia Star Staff

The military’s entry into the culture wars remains an important development. Until recently, the military was officially apolitical, in keeping with the constitutional requirements for a civilian commander-in-chief. In the 1990s, the military became more aligned with the Republican Party, and many commentators expressed legitimate concerns about this development. The pendulum swung-back after George W. Bush’s disastrous performance in Iraq, and things mostly balanced out by the time Obama took the reins.

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Commentary: Defense Survey Reveals Age, Gender, Party Divides

RealClearWire

Although Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has dominated worldwide headlines for more than a year and refocused the attention of U.S. policymakers on NATO and Eastern Europe, Americans are much more worried about China’s emerging power.

In an open question asked by RealClear Opinion Research, 53% of registered voters named the People’s Republic of China as “the greatest threat to the United States.” Russia was cited by 29% of respondents, while 4% named North Korea – the same percentage who answered that America’s biggest threat was the United States itself.

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Commentary: Trump’s Coyness on Debate Participation All Part of His Grand Strategy

Virginia Star Staff
Donald Trump

The first Republican primary debate of the 2024 presidential nominating cycle is set for one month from yesterday – on August 23, 2023. On that day, presumably, all major candidates for the GOP presidential nomination will assemble in Wisconsin to present their campaign pitches to the American public.

There isn’t an incumbent president in this year’s extravaganza, so it’s only natural that several hopefuls have expressed interest in a campaign. Deference is usually afforded a party president during his reelection run (as Democrats have announced there will be no debates on their side with senile Joe Biden currently in office), yet this year is different.

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Commentary: Tax Relief Is Coming to Millions of Red-State Residents in Ohio, Connecticut, and More

Virginia Star Staff

July marked the beginning of Fiscal Year 2024 for 46 of the 50 states. It also closes the books on most state legislative sessions in what was an incredible 2023 for hard-working taxpayers.

In recent years, we’ve seen significant income tax relief in the states. Notably, 10 states – Kentucky, West Virginia, Montana, Utah, Arkansas, North Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, Connecticut, and Ohio – have cut personal income taxes (PIT) in 2023. With the new addition of West Virginia, North Dakota, and Connecticut, 22 states have cut personal income taxes since 2021, with several of these states cutting taxes multiple times during that period.

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Commentary: Montana Leaves Marxist-Led American Library Association

Virginia Star Staff

Local libraries have become a fierce battleground in the cultural revolution sweeping America.

“Drag Queen Story Hour” and the promotion of pornographic materials in children and teens sections have prompted parents around the nation to push back—and some families to withdraw entirely.

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Commentary: ‘Free Speech Protection Act’ Takes Center Stage in The Fight for the Soul of America

Virginia Star Staff
Tennessee Star - Constitution Series

“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” 

That is what federal judge Terry Doughty wrote in his decision ordering a number of Biden administration officials and agencies from communicating censorship requests to social media companies.

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Commentary: Why Is Big Media Pushing to Label ‘Sound of Freedom’ Film a ‘QAnon’ Hoax?

Virginia Star Staff

For good reasons the box office hit movie Sound of Freedom has brought in over $100 million as it tells the true story of undercover federal agent Timothy Ballard and his suspenseful mission to rescue children being sex trafficked in Colombia.

Central to the movie’s plot is the story of a bright-eyed, 11-year-old girl named Rocío, whose childhood innocence is quickly morphed into a nightmare of sexual exploitation when she is recruited into a child sex trafficking ring.

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Commentary: Climate Alarmists Are Finally Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud in Their Agenda

Virginia Star Staff

The Los Angeles Times published an op/ed Friday in which it perhaps unintentionally poses the central proposition of the mythical energy transition: “whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.”

The op/ed is appropriately titled, “Would an Occasional Blackout Help Solve Climate Change?” It is a headline that tacitly admits a truth about the transition that boosters of renewable energy have been careful not to publicize: That the notion that generation sources with extremely low energy density like wind and solar cannot hope to be viable alternatives to generation with extremely high energy density like natural gas, nuclear and coal. It is a notion that defies the laws of thermodynamics and physics, and those are laws, not suggestions that can be discarded as a matter of convenience or, as in this case, in pursuit of a hyper-political agenda.

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Commentary: Fox News’ ‘Conservative Stance’ Belies Hidden Liberal Agenda

Virginia Star Staff

The longshoreman turned homespun philosopher Eric Hoffer is semi-forgotten today. But his book The True Believer (1951) is full of pertinent aperçus. One that has recurred to me often of late is the observation that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

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Commentary: The Solution to Pandemic Learning Loss Is Less Schooling, Not More

Virginia Star Staff

The latest data dump from the Nation’s Report Card reveals declining academic performance among US students. As with previous releases showing the same trend, especially over the past three years, the solution proposed by many education reformers and advocates is to double-down on the amount of schooling and school-like activities students get.

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Commentary: The Man Behind the Movie ‘Oppenheimer’

RealClearWire

This weekend, thousands of Americans will go to movie theaters across the country to watch Christopher Nolan’s newest film, “Oppenheimer.” A star-studded cast of talented actors, including Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt, will bring to the big screen the life of Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant theoretical physicist often called “the father of the atomic bomb.”

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Commentary: The Storied Past and Clouded Future of Pro Golf

RealClearWire

Riding the train from London to Liverpool, I’m filled with anticipation. Tomorrow is the first round of golf’s British Open – or, as they make a point of calling it here – just “The Open Championship.” It’s the final so-called “major” tournament of the year, the last chance for the 156 players teeing off to etch their name in golf history. With the exception of Tiger Woods, every player who has dominated the game of golf since I started paying attention will be teeing off.

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Commentary: Bidenomics Is Behind Jerome Powell’s Woke Turn

Virginia Star Staff

In February 2021, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress, “We are not climate policymakers here who can decide the way climate change will be addressed by the United States. We’re a regulatory agency that regulates a part of the economy.” When Powell said that, less than a month into the Biden administration, inflation was 1.6%.

Just eight months later, in remarks on November 22, 2021, President Biden said Powell – then up for renomination and facing stiff opposition from congressional progressives – “made clear to me: A top priority will be to accelerate the Fed’s effort to address and mitigate the risks – the risk that climate change poses to our financial system and our economy.” At that time inflation was 6.8%, on its way up to a 40-year high of 9.1%.

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Commentary: Loan Forgiveness Hurts Taxpayers

Virginia Star Staff

A few weeks ago, I argued the Biden Administration would use the new SAVE plan to enact student loan forgiveness with or without the approval of the Supreme Court. Since then, the administration has announced details which highlight the SAVE plan offers even more generous forgiveness terms.

This talk about student loans has brought about a question for Ask an Economist this week. Garrett from Ohio says,“One of the most prominent arguments against student loan forgiveness is that the borrowers are forcing the greater population to pay off their debts for them.

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Commentary: The Way AI Fits into Broadly Rising Anti-Humanism

RealClearWire

The future of humanity is becoming ever less human. The astounding capabilities of ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence have triggered fears about the coming age of machines leaving little place for human creativity or employment. Even the architects of this brave new world are sounding the alarm. Sam Altman, chairman and CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, recently warned that artificial intelligence poses an “existential risk” to humanity and warned Congress that artificial intelligence “can go quite wrong.”  

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Commentary: Presidential Dr. Fauci Still on a Roll

Virginia Star Staff

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who allegedly retired in January, still receives a limo driver and security team of U.S. Marshals, documents obtained by Fox News through a FOIA request reveal. “The only retired official I know of that gets this kind of treatment is a former president,” said Sen. Rand Paul. “I have no idea why this bureaucrat still has a limo driver security detail.”

Maybe it’s because, as Joe Biden once quipped, Dr. Fauci is the real president. Now comes word that many of his actions as NIAID boss were illegitimate.

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Commentary: There is a Good Reason Why Democrats are so Frightened of ‘Moms for Liberty’

Virginia Star Staff

For most Americans, “Mom” evokes images of kindness, courage, sympathy and love. Likewise, “liberty” calls up concepts like individual rights, freedom of expression, equality and justice. Yet, the perversity of the current political environment is such that a parental rights group whose name combines these two words has been demonized by Democrats, the corporate media and the reactionary left. Just recently, a New Hampshire Democrat denounced the group as “Assholes with casseroles,” the Hill ran a story titled, “Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center added them to its Hate Map.

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Commentary: FBI Chief Replies with Less-than-Inspiring ‘Not to My Knowledge’ When Asked About Tricky FISA Warrants, Criminal Investigations

Virginia Star Staff

“Not to my knowledge.”

That was FBI Director Christopher Wray’s response to questioning from U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) at the House Judiciary Committee on July 13 about whether the Justice Department and FBI utilize parallel construction — where law enforcement agencies are handed information obtained from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants or via warrantless surveillance by intelligence agencies, not unlike the FISA surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016 that became the Russiagate counterintelligence and eventually criminal investigation — and then act on it.

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Commentary: Hong Kong – at China’s Direction – Offers $1 Million Bounties for Dissidents Abroad

RealClearWire

The government of Hong Kong is offering a bounty of up to $1 million to anyone who can help find eight activists who fled to other countries and continue to fight against its authoritarian government.

I am not one of the eight, but all of us who fight for democracy in Hong Kong are in danger from a Chinese government that is chasing us for showing that it has broken its promises to keep Hong Kong a vibrant and free city-state.

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Commentary: Michelle Obama Could Really Be the Choice of the Democrat Establishment

Virginia Star Staff

The Democratic establishment is laying the groundwork to dump Joe Biden. When the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Axios, and the Atlantic desert a liberal president, you know the knives are out. Which raises two questions: when will they stick the shiv into Biden? And how do they plan to deal with the “Kamala problem”?

To all but her most ardent fans, it is obvious that having Kamala on the 2024 ticket would be a disaster for the Democrats. Her 2020 campaign collapsed before a single vote was cast. Biden made her his running mate, not because she was a good candidate, but solely because he had backed himself into a corner when he promised he would choose a black woman as his running mate.

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Commentary: Who’s Up, Who’s Down, and Who’s Out After Tucker Carlson’s Blow-Out Interviews in Iowa

Virginia Star Staff

Who won the Republican blow-out interview lalapalooza with Tucker Carlson in Iowa Friday night? Besides Tucker himself—who was on the Q side of this extended Q & A—the participants were South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Let me say straight off that the biggest beneficiary was probably Tucker himself. He is a master interviewer, outgoing and friendly in manner, informed about the issues, unrelenting in his questioning. Some of his hosts at the Family Leadership Summit, which with Blaze Media sponsored the event, were so impressed with his performance that they suggested to the audience that Tucker himself should run for president. It’s an idea that has been in circulation for a while and it got a notable “trending” uptick as the evening unfolded. Tucker himself has dismissed the idea in no uncertain terms, but it is worth noting how widespread his support is among the politically mature.

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Commentary: It’s Time to Acknowledge America’s Education Crisis

Virginia Star Staff

The recent Supreme Court ruling regarding college admissions has once again thrust America’s educational system into the spotlight. A major question that has come from this ruling is whether America’s children are being intellectually and academically prepared to even enter or succeed in these colleges and universities. The tragic answer is that America’s public education system is failing to equip our youth with the tools necessary to succeed in higher education and in their future professional lives. We are failing America’s most valuable asset—our children.

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Commentary: Limiting Short-Term Health Care Plans Will Hurt Americans

RealClearWire

Mike Pirner had emergency gall bladder surgery shortly after buying short-term medical insurance plan (STM), for $150/month. The costs associated with the procedure were $100,000 — Mike only had to pay his $2,500 deductible, which was also his out-of-pocket maximum. President Biden has proposed rules released Friday of the July 4th week that would limit these plans to three months, with one additional month possible. Currently, these plans can last up to three years. 

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Commentary: New HUD Regulation Violates Prohibition on Interfering in Local Zoning

Virginia Star Staff

A new proposed regulation by President Joe Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development would once again attempt to meddle in state and local governments’ affairs by conditioning federal funding including Community Development Block Grants on changes to local zoning laws.

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Commentary: Don’t Believe the Leftist Media Narrative About the State of the 2024 Race

Virginia Star Staff

To the surprise of no one, the leftist corporate media’s coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been abysmal. Predictably, their reporting is full of omissions, half truths, and wishful thinking. Once again, they only report their preferred narratives, in a desperate attempt to persuade stupid people and gullible news outlets into believing them, including Conservative Inc.

As usual the leftist coastal elites are attempting to shape their perceptions into reality.

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Commentary: One Illegal Vote Can Change the Outcome of an Election

Virginia Star Staff

Most people in the media don’t want you to believe that election crimes are committed. They say it is easier to find Bigfoot. But election crimes are not a myth, and The Heritage Foundation has been systematically documenting them for years. When those who deny the crimes occur are forced to confront the data, the response sometimes shifts to “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

After all, does it really matter if a single vote is improperly or criminally cast?

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Commentary: 10 Reasons Why Affirmative Action Died

Virginia Star Staff

The end of affirmative action was inevitable. The only surprise was that such intentions gone terribly wrong lasted so long.

First, supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goal posts for the program’s success. Was institutionalized reverse bias to last 20 years, 60 years, or ad infinitum? Parity became defined as an absolute equality of result. If “equity” was not obtained, then only institutionalized “racism” explained disparities. And only reverse racism was deemed the cure.

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