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Ann Coulter: No biggie, just the end of civilization - Northwest Georgia News

STEPHENVILLE Tarleton State University recognized 12 distinguished educators last week with induction in the Crystal Apple Society.

In 2012 the College of Education, under the leadership of Dr. Jill Burk, established an award to honor educators who make a positive impact on students. Since then, Crystal Apple Society Award winners have been identified annually.

This years honorees are Bret and Monica Barrick, Dalta Ann Coulter, Jody Fain, Kevin Ferguson, Max Glauben, Dr. Russ Higham and Debby Hopkins-Higham, Dr. Beck Munsey, Diane Pokluda, Dr. Beth Riggs and Michel Wimberly.

These 12 outstanding educators are making a positive impact across our great state! Tarleton President James Hurley tweeted after the ceremony.

Bret Barrick

A Tarleton graduate, Barrick coached and taught in the Mineral Wells Independent School District and is now transportation director. In his nomination form retired Tarleton Associate Provost Dwayne Snider and student Connor Spencer lauded Barricks encouraging coaching style. Spencer said Barricks personable approach as a baseball coach helped ease his transfer to Mineral Wells High School as a junior, and observing his passion for the job encouraged Spencer to pursue coaching. Dr. Snider said Barricks recognition of players not just for being the best but for their willingness to work hard and improve is something all teachers should do.

Monica Barrick

Also nominated by Dr. Snider, Monica Barrick teaches mathematics at Mineral Wells High School and taught his niece. Dr. Snider praised Barricks patience and positive attitude as well as the effort she makes for each student, which helped his niece navigate transferring to a new high school as a senior and feel supported from the outset.

Dalta Ann Coulter

Coulter graduated from Tarleton with an education degree and taught for 34 years in Breckenridge, Moody, Killeen and Bruceville-Eddy schools. At BEISD she started Preschool Programs for Children with Disabilities and taught special education for 29 years before retiring in 2015. She was nominated by Jo Ann Kern, who noted that Coulter was not only a passionate advocate for her students with special needs but skillfully advised their parents on overcoming difficult challenges.

Jody Fain

Stephenville health science teacher Jody Fain was nominated by four of her students, who touted the positive impact her cheerful, caring nature and active communication had on them, even inspiring one to go to medical school.

Kevin Ferguson

Ferguson has taught sixth-grade science since 1992 at Gilbert Intermediate School in Stephenville, where he is lead teacher and department head. He has taught two generations of theKen Howellfamily, who nominated him. His passionate teaching style make him stand out as an educator, said the elder Howells, while both daughters agreed that although science was not necessarily their favorite subject, Ferguson made it fun.

Max Glauben

Glauben was nominated by the Tarleton Department of Psychological Sciences for his contributions to education and humanity. As a teenager Glauben survived the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, five concentration camps and a death march from the Flossenbrg concentration camp to Dachau. His parents and younger brother died. After he was freed and moved to the United States, he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and became a tireless advocate for establishing a Holocaust museum where survivors stories could be shared in the hopes that such atrocities would never happen again. What started in the Jewish Community Center in Dallas became the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, where a holographic image of Glauben relates his experiences. He spent much of his life traveling and educating on the dangers of discrimination and the importance of tolerance, and in 2018 he visited Tarleton to share his story. He died in 2022, and his son Phillip accepted the award on his behalf.

Debby Hopkins-Higham

Now retired from Tarleton, Hopkins-Higham was instrumental in the professional development partnership with Waco ISD and two separate campuses. Retired professor Dr. Ann Calahan, who nominated her, lauded Hopkins-Highams collaborative partnerships with area schools, administrators and teachers and her care for each students field placement throughout the educator preparation program.

Dr. Russ Higham

Dr. Higham, an educational leadership and policy Associate Professor at Tarleton-Waco, was nominated by the late Dr. Don Beach, who worked with him more than 20 years and praised his positivity, always knowing his students names and keeping up with them in their careers. We need educators like him because they show they care for students, and in doing so it helps students become more successful, Beach wrote in his nomination. Hes just a good life coach.

Dr. Beck Munsey

Dr. Munsey, head of the counseling department at Tarleton, was nominated by Dr. Annette Albrecht, who heralded him as an exemplary educator. He has taught hundreds of counseling students who in turn have graduated and worked with thousands of young adults across Texas and beyond. Dr. Munsey brings real-life experiences into the classroom from his private practice and is considered a superb mentor for his excellent counseling traits and the ability to impart them to students. He was the first Tarleton faculty member to record best teaching practices in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging for use in professional development. His commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion won him accolades from the SAIGE Division of the American Counseling Association.

Diane Pokluda

Retired Crowley ISD teacher Diane Pokluda was nominated by Tarleton Professional Educators for her work as Region 9 and 11 specialist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators. Lauded as a rock star among professional educators, she and her husband, Steve, also a retired educator, share the benefits of ATPE membership in newsletters and special events on school district campuses. ATPE has supported the Tarleton Professional Educators student organization for over 12 years.

Dr. Beth Riggs

Dr. Riggs was nominated by Dr. Kathy Smith, head of the mathematics department, who praised Dr. Riggs skills as an educator who helps math majors complete their degrees in a timely manner. Dr. Riggs, a mathematics Associate Professor and the department associate head, has prepared Tarleton preservice teachers and provided professional development for in-service teachers across Texas.

Michel Wimberly

Student accolades fill the nomination form for Melissa Middle School percussion teacher Michel Wimberly:

Through his incredible teaching and musical gifts, Mr. Wimberly undoubtedly makes a lifelong impact on the students he serves, added Dr. Lesley Leach, who nominated him. We honor his dedication to his craft and his students.

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Tarleton State Honors Educators with Crystal Apple Awards - The Flash Today

Books

Jeffrey Toobin has written a brilliant, chilling book on the Oklahoma City bombing and the rise of Republican extremism

Sun 14 May 2023 02.00 EDT

Jeffrey Toobin has combined two great books in one. The first is an edge-of-your-seat thriller, describing Timothy McVeighs every movement on his way to committing one of the most horrific crimes in American history. The second traces how a huge part of the Republican establishment has come to embrace many of McVeighs most dangerous convictions.

Toobin is a lawyer who became a full-time writer and TV pundit 30 years ago. This is his ninth book and his most important, because it gives the clear and present danger of rightwing extremism the attention it deserves.

McVeigh was a brilliant marksman who fought in the first Iraq war but failed a tryout for the Green Berets after only two days. This, Toobin writes, was a shattering defeat he had no plan B.

McVeighs biggest ideological influence was a novel, The Turner Diaries, which envisaged a world in which the government had the power to confiscate private arms, Black people were allowed to attack whites with impunity and whites were punished for defending themselves. It also imagined the blowing up of the FBI building in Washington with a truck filled with thousands of pounds of fertilizer, blasting gelatin and sticks of dynamite.

That became McVeighs template for blowing up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, on 19 April 1995, with a rental truck. The death toll was 168, including 19 children. More than 500 were injured.

Toobin covered McVeighs trial for the New Yorker and ABC News. His interest was rekindled when he realized the conspirators arrested in a plot to kidnap the current Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, were much like McVeigh.

I know these people, he writes.

Then he discovered McVeighs lead lawyer had donated 635 boxes of documents to the University of Texas.

I knew that an archive of this extent had never before been publicly available in a major case.

In Homegrown, Toobin combines the fruits of those documents with interviews with more than 100 participants, among them Bill Clinton, president at the time, and Merrick Garland, now attorney general, then lead prosecutor of McVeigh. The result is one of the most detailed and exciting true crime stories I have ever read.

But in many ways the other book Toobin has written is even more important. It is the book that looks at the birth of the extreme language that now dominates Republican politics. McVeigh embraced white supremacy and violent action just as a Republican House speaker, Newt Gingrich, and a talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, were engaging in rhetorical violence at a pitch the country had rarely heard before on national broadcasts.

Gingrich instructed Republicans to describe Democrats as sick, pathetic, traitors, radical and corrupt, while describing himself as standing between us and Auschwitz. Limbaugh said the second violent American revolution was a quarter of an inch away. Toobin draws a straight line to the titles of books written by extremists today, from Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism (Sean Hannity) to Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (Ann Coulter).

To Toobin, the mistake Garland made was the same one he himself made when he covered McVeighs trial: both focused on the acts of a loner, instead of connecting the atrocity to the beginnings of the mainstreaming of rightwing extremism.

One of the most interesting parts of the book lies in Clintons prescience. Because the Oklahoma bombing came barely two years after the first bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic fundamentalists, the media and many others assumed foreigners were the culprits again. Clinton was certain that wasnt the case.

This was domestic, homegrown, the militias, he told his staff. I know these people. Ive been fighting them all my life.

Clintons earliest political memory was of the Arkansas governor Orval Faubus refusing to allow Black students into Little Rock Central high school. Clinton remembered those opposed to integration, the faces twisted with rage. He also believed hatred was especially virulent in the early 1990s, because of Gingrichs sneering contempt and Limbaughs roiling bombast.

McVeighs own linear connection to old hatreds was confirmed by his membership of the Ku Klux Klan.

McVeigh saw himself as the leader of an army of extremists but Toobin is convinced, by the evidence, there were only two significant co-conspirators. The disastrous change in our own time lies in the way the internet has enabled millions of such people to connect. One study for the Department of Homeland Security found social media was used in 90% of US extremist plots.

Toobin writes: More than any other reason the internet accounts for the difference between McVeighs lonely crusade and the thousands who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

The terrorism expert Juliette Kayyem said the internet gave white-supremacist terrorism what amounts to a dating app online. In Toobins words, when Donald Trump became president, the wolf pack had a new leader.

This is one of the most important markers of the decline of the Republican party. After Oklahoma City, no politicians defended the attack. But after January 6, many Republicans did just that. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia congressman, said the riot resembled a normal tourist visit. Since leaving the White House, Trump has turned to a new level of feral zealotry, embracing QAnon, the antisemitic conspiracy theory he reposts on his social media platform, and regularly expressing eagerness to pardon rioters as soon as he enters the White House again.

This week provided the most dramatic evidence yet of how completely the political-media establishment has been corrupted by organized hatred. CNN, a formerly respectable organization, decided the best thing it could do was to give a national forum to the hero of millions of white supremacists. That decision alone drove home the urgency of the message of Toobins brilliant book.

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Homegrown review: Timothy McVeigh and the rise of the Trumpist threat - The Guardian

Extremists have got to learn to take half a loaf. Just like the cheap labor-demanding GOP donors, pro-lifers need to be told: You cant get everything you want. If Republicans give you this, theyll lose their jobs, and the people wholl replace them want you dead.

Unlike a lot of people complaining about the anti-abortion zealots, I am an anti-abortion zealot. Thats why Im begging them to stop pushing wildly unpopular ideas.

These fanatics are going to get millions more babies killed when Democrats win supermajorities in both houses of Congress and immediately pass a federal law making abortion-on-demand the law of the land.

Theyre also going to get a lot more adults killed when those same Democratic supermajorities pass laws taking our guns, defunding the police and packing the court, among other great Democratic ideas.

Weve been rolling our eyes at pro-choicers forever, telling them to calm down, that overturning Roe would just return the issue to the states. Blue states would make abortion legal until the kid turns 14.

A few states, like Louisiana, would impose tough restrictions, but most states would come out in the middle allowing abortions in the first trimester, plus parental notification laws, and exceptions for rape and incest.

Instead, the moment Dobbs was released, pro-life nuts rushed to the mics, saying, This is gonna be great! Were going to ban abortion from the moment of conception and prosecute the mothers for murder!

The Democratic Party has been using abortion to scare suburban women in every election cycle for 50 years. Now, Republicans are finally giving them something to be scared about.

In Michigan, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Tudor Dixon, said she opposed abortion for 14-year-old girls whod been raped because giving birth to her rapists baby could be healing.

Does the name Todd Akin mean anything to you? Anything at all? Richard Mourdock?

Pennsylvania responded, Watch this! Doug Mastriano, Republican candidate for governor, called abortion the number one issue of his campaign and said he looked forward to signing a six-week abortion ban. In 2019, hed called for criminally prosecuting women who got abortions and doctors who performed them.

Mastriano lost by 15 points, taking the Republican Senate candidate down with him.

If we dont bind and gag these pro-life militants, in about two more election cycles, well have no Republicans in office anywhere. Good luck saving babies then!

Of course, its possible that there were other things voters didnt like about Dixon and Mastriano.

Ah, but we also have pure test cases. Since Dobbs, there have been a total of six statewide ballot initiatives exclusively about abortion. The pro-life side lost every single time. They lost in blue states, in purple states and in red states. They were not outspent. These were direct-to-the-people votes. The tiniest restriction on abortion failed even wholly theoretical restrictions! Every expansion of abortion rights won.

Army of Todd Akins: I dont care! Theyre wrong! Theyre evil! What about the babies??? [Please give me a standing ovation now.]

In Montana, a proposal merely to require doctors to give life-saving treatment to babies born alive after a botched abortion lost 53% to 47%. Trump won Montana by 20 points in 2016 and 15 points in 2020.

In Kansas, pro-lifers wrote a ballot initiative that would have amended the constitution to clarify that it said nothing at all about abortion. The initiative placed no new restrictions on abortion, but simply moved the issue from the courts to the legislature.

It failed by 18 points, 59-41, losing in every congressional district in the state. Trump won Kansas by 20 points in 2016 and 15 points in 2020.

Kentucky voted on a similar initiative, proposing to amend the state constitution to say: ... nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.

That initiative lost 52-48. In 2016, Trump won Kentucky by a whopping 30 points, and in 2020 by 25 points.

In three other states, Michigan, Vermont and California, voters put a right to abortion in their state constitutions.

Six ballot initiatives expressly on abortion, and the pro-life side lost em all.

Weve been waiting half a century to get Roe overruled so Americans could finally vote on the issue. Well, guess what? Theyve voted! In the privacy of the voting booth, the people have spoken, and what theyve said is: We dont want the stupid and incompetent having any more babies.

The fanatics cite three Republican governors who won reelection after signing six-week abortion bans as proof that a certain miracle governor in Florida hasnt just nuked his own presidential chances by approving such a law. All three governors signed their six-week bans when Roe was still the law of the land.

All three bans were tied up in litigation on Election Day.

But more important, in the entire country, only one incumbent governor lost in 2022 pro-life, pro-choice, it didnt matter. Thirty-six governors up for reelection; 35 won.

The only flipped governorship was in Nevada, where the winning Republican, Joe Lombardo, said he opposed a national abortion ban. Luckily, abortion was a complete nonissue because state law already allows abortion up to 24 weeks and can only be changed by a vote of the people. (Lombardo also said there was no fraud in the 2020 election, for any Republicans who care about winning.)

But even in the face of a brutal 6-0 losing record, there are still pro-lifers who will say, Im proud and Id do it again! (Did you see my write-up in Catholic Insights magazine?)

This is our DEFUND THE POLICE faction people whose ideological zealotry outruns their rationality.

Fine, be a showoff. Just understand, youre going to get a lot more babies killed. I hope thats worth your moral preening.

New York Times bestselling author and syndicated columnist Ann Coulter is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Michigan Law School. She is a regular contributor to conservative news sites Human Events and Breitbart. She is a native of New Canaan, Conn.

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Ann Coulter: The new baby-killers | Opinion | havasunews.com - Today's News-Herald

The news on Monday from the Marist College poll was terrible for Republican leaders.

They have painted themselves into a corner, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives. They are so split internally more on that in a minute that maybe only Democrats can save them. One of those Democrats is Rep. Jared Golden of Maines 2nd District.

Republicans have lost the culture war while winning the battle over abortion availability nationwide. They have put the lie to the idea that they are the party of liberty by banning books, by dictating what can be taught in schools and by a backdoor ploy to ban medication abortions.

They have achieved a half-century goal of stacking the Supreme Court, just as the court sinks in public esteem. And the bedrock conservative (as opposed to hard-right) party stance against spending no longer resonates loudly.

Back to the Marist poll. Heres what it showed. Support for medication abortions is 64% nationally and 55% among Republicans. Approval of the Supreme Court is 37%, disapproval 62%. Thats the lowest approval in five years. And 68% said justices terms should be limited.

Cut to the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold an edge of 222-213. The Washington Post last week analyzed the five House Republican families. After reading that analysis, I concluded the party cant unify for anything more important than naming an airport.

But hope springs eternal. As is the nature of the news business, outsized attention has gone to the most extreme elements in the House, so we read more about the so-called Freedom Caucus of hard-right Republicans and about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other hard-left Democrats.

But thats only, maybe, 30% of the total House. Call me an optimist, but I believe those who really want to pass meaningful legislation can find the votes among the remaining 70%.

Two Republican families are the Republican Governance Group of 42 socially moderate and fiscally conservative members thats how I described myself when I was enrolled Republican and the Problem Solvers of 29 Republicans and 29 Democrats. Problem Solvers are the only family that includes Democrats. Thats where Golden fits in. Hes one of the Problem Solvers.

First to abortion. Ann Coulter, a darling of the hard-right, told Republicans just after the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left. The election probably turned on the abortion issue.

Liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote The reason voters think Republicans support full abortion bans is that many of them do. The Wall Street Journal, think tank of the right, added: Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are, or they will face another disappointment in 2024.

The House Republicans response? They have introduced at least 20 bills to further restrict access to abortion. Maybe they dont listen to Ann Coulter. Or read the Wall Street Journal.

As to the Supreme Court, it hasnt been so clearly identified with one party since at least the 80s. Republicans under Donald Trump quickly installed three justices, giving the four conservatives and two hard-rightists a three-vote majority.

Then, the term Supreme Court ethics became an oxymoron when ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas (see the Countryman for April 15, Ethics in High Places) has accepted and not reported hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of trips and other goodies from a rich Republican donor.

Did the leaders wish too hard for a packed court?

Turns out, the nine in robes have no code of ethics, though they are subject to reporting laws for federal employees. And when Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, asked Chief Justice John Roberts to testify on court ethics, the chief said no. Less than a week after the Marist poll showed disapproval of the court at 62%. Can you say tone deaf?

So, if the Republicans have lost the culture war, if their prized Supreme Court is below water in the public eye and if their dislike of government spending has gone bye-bye, where do they turn?

Heres where the ideas of representatives like Golden come in. Republicans could try to fashion a coherent position on abortion Paul LePages incoherence on abortion did more to thwart his third-term bid than any other issue, except his personality one that would universalize access to abortion but recognize the governments protective interest in the safety of a late-term fetus.

They could join in drawing up an ethics code for justices, and maybe even create term limits on the court. They could become watchdogs over spending, not so much to prevent it as to ensure it is done carefully and wisely. After all, they always say they are out to get fraud and corruption.

Ah, but that may be too much work. Its easier to write bills that cant pass but do create reelection talking points.

Maybe even Jared Golden and the Problem Solvers cant save them.

Bob Neal feels our system needs two functioning parties. He feels it so strongly that he has been enrolled first as independent, then Republican and then Democrat over the past 25 years or so. Neal can be reached at [emailprotected].

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Bob Neal: The Countryman: Knitting a party back together - Lewiston Sun Journal