“My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town).”

These are heavy words to see written by Stanford University Professor of Economics Donald J. Harris, the father of Senator Kamala Harris, a woman who is running for president of the United States on a platform that includes reparations for slavery.

Here is a detailed account by a witness of what happened to slaves owned by Harris’s family. But, is Harris personally responsible for the plight of slaves hundreds of years ago? Of course not. She is no more responsible for actions taken by those in her family’s past than any white person in America is responsible for actions taken by their ancestors.

Yet since she’s made atonement for past sins a current policy platform, perhaps she should lead by example and be the first among us to take responsibility; do what she’s asking much of the rest of the country to do and pay dearly for past transgressions.

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The annual presidential “State of the Nation” address to the Federal Assembly (upper chamber of the Russian parliament) is a big political show in Russia, which tells little about the state of the country but much about the mood in the ruling elite.

The address, delivered by President Vladimir Putin last week (2/20), revealed worries in the Kremlin about the spreading discontent and declining popularity of the leader who took charge nearly 20 years ago (Moscow Echo, 2/20).  His keen attention to particular social problems was supposed to restore the population’s confidence in the benevolence of the supreme ruler (Newsru.com, 2/22).

Putin made no clear attempt to present a coherent ideology purportedly underpinning his reign. Moreover, in his speech, the Russian president only briefly touched on foreign policy. It is, therefore, quite illuminating to note the international matters of major importance to Moscow that he specifically omitted.

And the one domestic issue that everyone except the ruling elite cares most about.

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He helped conceive a hoax so outlandish that only the most gullible, craven, or witless person could believe it.

The attack, as he called it, allegedly was executed by mysterious and politically motivated thugs with the intent to inflict harm. It exploited the political climate of the moment given that the chief goal of the ruse—and of the perpetrator himself—was to sow division in an already-fractured American populace for his own gratification.

Lawmakers, journalists, and celebrities acted as accomplices, allowing themselves to be duped and conferring immediate legitimacy to the event. As authorities began to expose the hoax, the mastermind lashed out, blasting his detractors and making incendiary accusations.

No, I am not talking here about Jussie Smollett, the “Empire” actor who concocted an elaborate story about how MAGA-hat wearing hoodlums attacked him in the middle of a frigid night on an underground street in downtown Chicago.  I am talking about…

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Democrats are fighting mad — at each other. For once, President Trump is not the prime target of their rage.

Amazon’s decision to scrap plans for an HQ2 campus in New York sent the circular firing squad into action. The blue-on-blue attacks pit the far left against the far, far left in yet another front of the party’s civil war.

In addition to sharp differences about a Green New Deal, taxes, socialism, Medicare-for-all and open borders, Dems are now split over how and whether government should work with the private sector to create jobs and boost the tax base.

But while the battle still rages and analysts study the entrails of Amazon’s decision-making, here’s a thought: What if both sides of the Dem battle are wrong? What if both sides are causing the epidemic of the blue-state blues?

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During the Lunar New Year holidays this month, political circles in Beijing were abuzz with this question: “Who, or what, are ‘black swans’ and ‘gray rhinos’?”

This followed a major speech given by President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping at the Central Party School (CPS) last month, in which the 65-year-old leader raised the highest alert for Party officials to “be on guard against black swans and keep watchful for gray rhinos” (jingti hei tian’e, fangfan hui xiniu / 警惕黑天鹅, 防范灰犀牛) (People’s Daily, January 22).

Noting that China’s national security and stability were under multiple threats from within and without, the “core leader” warned: “We must keep our highest alert about ‘black swan’ [i.e., unforeseen] incidents and take steps to prevent ‘gray rhino’ [i.e., known risks that are ignored] incidents.”

At first, the Beijing buzz was these threats are external, coming from an increasingly successful Trump administration in confronting China.  Now comes the realization that Xi means internal threats to his power and that of the Chinese Communist Party.

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