News Vérité

I was just entering high school when Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy squared off in the first-ever televised presidential campaign debate. My parents were diehard Demofiends, so they proclaimed Kennedy the heir to the throne and couldn’t care less what he said. As for the official scorecard, Kennedy won if you watched the debate on TV, and Nixon won if you listened on the radio. Verdict: Nixon needed a better make-up artist and some medicine to keep him from sweating. Smiling more would’ve helped, too. The point I’m concerned about is the dynamic that developed between the two from that moment on. As matters turned out historically, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had its — dirty — hands in bringing down both of these gentlemen. I only bring this up because JD Vance had the gall to proclaim this past week, while on a visit to the Nixon Presidential Library, that our 37th president was brought down by the Deep State. You can fill in the blank and pencil in “CIA.” You could probably add “FBI” as well. Specifically, Vance said during his visit: “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,

When I use the term “reverse racism,” the implication is that all racism is whites against minorities, especially against Blacks. I find that rather indicative of where we’re at as a society — blame whitey for everything. I bring this up because of a recent incident involving Caitlin Clark, a white professional basketball player, being slugged in the throat by a black player during a televised WNBA game. At the time, no foul was called on the offending player, Alyssa Thomas. Later, however, Thomas was suspended one game after a video review of her inexplicable action (inexplicable except for reverse, or Black, racism). Also, if you look up the legal definition of assault, Thomas easily qualifies. Her action was certainly not a basketball move gone awry or overboard. It appeared to be absolutely deliberate. Since entering the league in 2024, Clark has been subject to numerous similar, but perhaps not nearly as egregious, incidents. Recall how, before joining the WNBA, Clark broke the lifetime college basketball scoring record held by a man, Pete Maravich, who went on to become an NBA legend himself. Did her success spell resentment among other players? When Clark entered the WNBA — perhaps as the

The phrase, “separation of church and state,” has always been treated by liberals and their cohorts in the media as a sort of Constitutional gospel, but the phrase never appears in the U.S. Constitution. What the Constitution says in the First Amendment is that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…. ” In other words, there can be no national religion and people are free to choose whatever religion they like. The phrase about “separation of church and state” is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president. It does not appear in the Constitution. Instead, Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association describes the First Amendment as building a “wall of separation between Church & State.” That Jeffersonian phrase is essential to what President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission determined in finalizing its report, which was presented to Trump today. The report talks about building “bridges, not walls, between the City of God and the City of Man.” It concludes that a wall indeed has been built because of authoritarian abuse of the Jefferson-derived phrase. The report contains 12 recommendations, one