Basketball & Bathrooms
The NCAA announced yesterday that it is boycotting the state of North Carolina. Seven championship sporting events are being taken away from the state. Two soccer championship events scheduled for December are being relocated, as are golf, tennis, basketball, baseball and lacrosse events scheduled for 2017.
What is the cause of the NCAA's concern? Is there an outbreak of Zika in the Tar Heel state? No.
Incredibly, the NCAA Board of Governors decided to punish the people of North Carolina for having the common sense to insist men and boys stay out of women's and girls' bathrooms.
In a press release yesterday, the NCAA insisted this was being done "Based on the NCAA's commitment to fairness and inclusion." But this doesn't seem very fair to the people of North Carolina.
The press release continues, "The Board of Governors emphasized that NCAA championships and events must promote an inclusive atmosphere for all college athletes, coaches, administrators and fans. Current North Carolina state laws make it challenging to guarantee that host communities can help deliver on that commitment. . ."
So it seems that the NCAA is now mandating that all future collegiate championship events must be held in stadiums or venues with unisex bathroom and locker room facilities. Why is this fringe issue so important to the NCAA?
A spokeswoman for the North Carolina Republican Party blasted the decision, saying, "Under the NCAA's logic, colleges should make cheerleaders and football players share bathrooms, showers and hotel rooms."
My friends, this is just one more way the left is pushing a radical agenda on our children and society at large. Any community that dares to stand up for common sense and decency is castigated as bigoted and punished.
Criminals In Control
As more NFL players protest during the National Anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, I urge them to think about what their protests are accomplishing. As police officers come under attack, violent crime is soaring in America. Murder rates in America's major cities jumped dramatically last year as the Black Lives Matter movement started condemning police officers as racists and bigots.
And few cities have suffered more than Chicago.
Heather Mac Donald, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has done some of the best research on the issue of crime and policing. She had a column published recently in the Wall Street Journal that looks at Chicago's experience and what happens to a city when the criminals are in control. Below are some excerpts of Mac Donald's column.
"By Sept. 8, nearly 3,000 people had been shot in Chicago in 2016, an average of one shooting victim every two hours. Five hundred and sixteen people had been murdered. Gun homicides and non-fatal shootings were up 47% over the same period of 2015, which had seen a significant rise in crime over 2014.
". . . Chicago is the country's most-glaring example of what I have called the 'Ferguson effect.' Chicago officers have cut back drastically on proactive policing under the onslaught of criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement and its political and media enablers. [Emphasis added.]
"In October 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel told U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch during a crime meeting in Washington, D.C., that the Chicago police had gone 'fetal,' and were less likely to interdict criminal behavior. That pull-back worsened in 2016, with pedestrian stops dropping 82% from January through July 20, 2016, compared with the same period in 2015, according to the Chicago police department. . . Criminals are back in control and black lives are being lost at a rate not seen for two decades."