The Good, The Grad, And The Ugly

June 8, 2022

Some Good News

“Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Enough, Enough, Enough

Matthew McConaughey could really be on to something. The 52-year-old Academy Award-winning actor and father of three has grown up a lot since being arrested in the middle of the night for dancing naked and playing bongo drums in his Austin home. Now, he has a messaging idea definitely worth considering.

The “Dallas Buyers Club” actor was born in Uvalde, Texas. His mother taught kindergarten less than a mile from Robb Elementary School, the scene of the tragic shooting on May 24 that took the lives of 19 children and two teachers in this small South Texas city. McConaughey and his wife, Camila Alves, spent most of last week with the victims’ families in his hometown, and on Tuesday he made a surprise appearance on the White House briefing room’s podium.

An emotional McConaughey told the stories of the lives lost. “You know what every one of these parents wanted, what they asked us for?” McConaughey said. “That they want their children’s dreams to live on. They want to make their loss of life matter.” He passionately urged lawmakers to take action on gun control, but he shifted the narrative more toward gun responsibility. He said he was a gun owner who was introduced early to firearms, but he supports common-sense regulations that make for responsible gun ownership. Uvalde, he said, is the town where he “learned responsible gun ownership.” He’s all for the Second Amendment, just not its misuse.

“Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals,” McConaughey said. Gun responsibility is something most Americans “agree on more than we don’t.” It’s responsible to have a waiting period for purchasing AR-15 rifles, and for raising the minimum age for purchasing that type of weapon to 21. Universal background checks and red flag laws are common sense, responsible rules to have. “These regulations are not a step back, they’re a step forward for civil society and the Second Amendment,” he insisted. “This should be a nonpartisan issue. There is not a Democratic or Republican value in one single act of these shooters.” (AP News, WaPo ($))

Braz-Ill Will

Veteran British journalist Dom Phillips and his traveling companion Bruno Araújo Pereira, a Brazilian indigenous affairs expert, are missing in Brazil’s remote Javari Valley. The pair’s last known location in the São Rafael community was early Sunday morning; they were expected to meet with a local leader who never showed up.
Afterward, the men planned to take a two-hour trip to Atalaia do Norte, but they never arrived. Diplomats, rights groups, and news organizations pressured the Brazilian government to marshal an expansive search and rescue mission to scour one of the most remote regions of the rainforest. The area, home to thousands of indigenous people and about 16 uncontacted groups, is under government protection, but repeated incursions by land grabbers and illegal miners, hunters, and fishermen have produced bloody conflict.
Another indigenous affairs worker was murdered in the same area in 2019. President Jair Bolsonaro, frequent media-basher and enthusiastic supporter of development projects in the Amazon, appeared to blame the missing men, saying an “adventure” like that wasn’t recommended because “anything could happen.” (CNN, WaPo ($))

Ob La Di, Obrador, Life Goes On

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed Monday he’ll skip the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, dampening President Biden’s efforts to rally governments to work together to address surging migration in the hemisphere. López Obrador wanted the U.S. to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the gathering taking place on U.S. soil for the first time since 1994.
Other leaders, including from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador – three big drivers of migration to the U.S. – indicated they’ll stay away as well. López Obrador will send his foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, in his place. Critics say with so many no-shows, the event risks turning into an embarrassment for Biden, who’s struggled to reassert American leadership in a region where mistrust of the U.S. runs deep and China has made major inroads in the past two decades.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the White House’s decision to exclude certain countries, saying “We do not believe that dictators should be invited.” López Obrador will be meeting with Biden in Washington in July. (WaPo, $)

Additional World News

School’s Out Forever

Conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro was hired as the executive director of the Georgetown University Law School’s Center for the Constitution, but a week before he was to join the faculty, he tweeted messages that suggested there were better candidates for the open SCOTUS seat than Ketanji Brown-Jackson. Shapiro said we’d “get [a] lesser black woman” as a result of Biden’s nomination plans.
The racist remarks unleashed a firestorm of criticism and ignited fresh debates over campus free speech. Shapiro was placed on administrative leave in early February. After a four-month inquiry, it was determined Shapiro couldn’t be fired over the tweets because they were posted before he started his job. But investigators also found the tweets “had a significant negative impact on the Georgetown Law community.”
Then, even though he’d just been cleared to go back to work, Shapiro resigned on Monday. In his resignation letter, Shapiro said Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor’s handling of the matter “painted a target on my back” that made joining the faculty “untenable.” (Reuters)

The Fetterman For The Job

Soon after John Fetterman became Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s campaign arm launched its first televised attack ad against him. The 30-second spot appeared Friday, labeling Fetterman a far-left ally of Bernie Sanders who “sided with socialists, backed a government takeover of health care,” and “embraced parts of the Green New Deal that’d cost you 50,000 bucks a year.”
The narrator says things like “Left-wing radicals are rolling into Pennsylvania, pushing John Fetterman,” and “AOC is my Queen.” The ad cost almost $1.5 million and runs through June 16. One of Fetterman’s first two general election TV ads began running Tuesday on Fox News, something some Democrats would never do.
But Fetterman thinks the conservative channel is the perfect place to portray himself as a political outsider who’s pushed for policies that benefit the working class. Fetterman’s theme is anti-Washington — he talks about factories closing, prices rising, and small towns being left behind. “Those decisions were made for us, by people that don’t know us.” (Politico)

Additional USA News

The Good, The Grad, And The Ugly

You may remember Kyle Rittenhouse, the white Illinois teenager who drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin armed with an assault rifle and shot three people, killing two, during protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back by a white police officer. Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in 2021 in a deeply divisive case that ignited a national debate over vigilantism, gun rights, and the definition of self-defense.
Rittenhouse is now ready to attend college and guess where he wants to go to school – oh never mind, it’s too easy. Last Friday, Rittenhouse claimed on a conservative podcast that he was going to attend Texas A&M University. He was a little confused though, as he’s not going to be an Aggie – not yet at least. He tweeted Monday that he was set to enroll in the Blinn College District in Texas. Blinn is a community college with a 100% acceptance rate, and while it can be a stepping stone to Texas A&M, it’s not a guaranteed pathway. Rittenhouse said he was looking forward to moving to Texas and taking courses at Blinn College as a means to eventually transfer to Texas A&M.
Sounds like a plan, except Blinn says he’s not enrolled. On another occasion, Rittenhouse said he was attending Arizona State University, which wasn’t true. During his trial, he testified he was studying nursing at ASU, but a spokesperson said Rittenhouse “has not gone through the admissions process” and isn’t enrolled in its Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. (ABC News, news.yahoo.com, kxxv.com )