On Monday, the Associated Press got the ball rolling on Hillary Clinton’s coronation, declaring:

Striding into history, Hillary Clinton will become the first woman to top the presidential ticket of a major U.S. political party, capturing commitments Monday from the number of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

Other news outlets quickly followed suit. The New York Times declared, “Hillary Clinton Clinches the Nomination. Will Bernie Sanders Fight On?” Had Clinton actually clinched the nomination, one might wonder what Sanders had to fight for.

Clinton allegedly reached the 2,383 delegates (a combination of both superdelegates and delegates awarded according to the will of ordinary voters) after a “decisive weekend victory in Puerto Rico and a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates.” Clinton won 16 more delegates than Bernie Sanders in the Puerto Rico primary. Superdelegates only offer endorsements until they actually vote on July 25 — and between then and now they can change their minds, as Sanders is banking on.

Sanders hopes to convince the superdelegates to swing his way with the argument that he is the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in the presidential election, as polls consistently support. His mission is an immense challenge, as Clinton has 571 superdelegates currently backing her and Sanders has only 48 (93 more are undecided). In the regular delegate count — those awarded based on the results of the primaries and caucuses — Clinton has 1,812 and Sanders has 1,521.

On Tuesday, six states vote for the Democratic nominee, and hundreds of delegates are up for grabs. Many Sanders supporters are angry the media would already announce, in the words of the AP, “Clinton’s victory,” before the remaining six states (and later D.C.) have voted. California, the largest prize on Tuesday, has popped up in a Twitter hashtag: #CAVotesCount. The band Foster the People called all this “irresponsible journalism” and “voter suppression,” echoing common sentiment.

Of course, there is also worry that declaring Clinton the winner early may affect the results on Tuesday — discouraging Sanders voters from making their voice heard — called “misleading” by some and “voter suppression” by others. This is on top of the feeling among Sanders supporters and critics of the media that calling superdelegate support “unequivocal” (AP) or set in stone is also misleading, when in fact superdelegates can change their mind at any time and do not vote until the end of next month.

As unlikely as it may be that Sanders could convince the majority of superdelegates to switch support, and the questions such a thing would raise for longtime critics of the superdelegate system, how it is designed to overrule the will of ordinary voters, declaring something like “Clinton Clinches Democratic Presidential Nomination” (CNN) is a bit premature.

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On Wednesday, June 15, 2016, a 2-year-old boy was seized and dragged underwater by an alligator outside a Walt Disney Resort hotel in Orlando, Florida, disappearing for many hours. The toddler was later found dead.

The boy and his family were attending an outdoor movie at the resort when he wandered into a nearby lagoon and was attacked. His parents jumped in and tried to open the gator’s jaws, but it escaped.

This is clearly an horrific tragedy, and we pray for the parents of the deceased, but make no mistake: Disney, the city, the county, the state, and the nation must resist any calls by those on the left for a change in policy.

So-called “sensible safety measures” are anything but. Suggestions to move the outdoor movie night elsewhere, away from the lagoon? Misguided notions of building fences to protect movie night? Nonsense.

Alligators will always be able to attack movie night. That is alligator nature. When you really think about it, alligators need to change, not human social policy. This is an alligator problem — meaning, the problem is alligators and the choices they make. Alligators may need access to better mental health care, but they still have Constitutional rights. And besides, more people die from other causes than alligator attacks, so why bother trying to reduce this particular death toll?

Don’t believe the liberal media when they tell you about other movie nights that are “safe” from alligators because they “changed course.” Sure, alligators have immense difficulty ripping toddlers to bloody shreds when movie night is protected with a fence or at a location far from the lagoons, and there are therefore far fewer toddlers devoured by alligators at those places, but some alligators — the most vicious and determined alligators — will always find a way. They will scale that fence. They will march across that golf course, as recently captured on video. They will find movie night, and they will unleash terror.

Any thinking person knows that if you can only reduce alligator movie night attacks, rather than eliminate them entirely, there is no justification for meaningful action. Regulations, because they do not work perfectly, do not work at all. There is simply nothing Disney or the government could do to actually stop alligator attacks on movie night. Putting obstacles in alligators’ paths will only reduce casualties. Nothing should be done, because nothing can be done.

One cannot stress this enough: NO POLICY CHANGE.

Well, perhaps one. In reality, as counterintuitive as this may sound to thoughtless liberals, the solution to movie night attacks is more alligators. Not irresponsible alligators, obviously, but responsible citizen-alligators. No laws will keep our children safe from the irresponsible, criminal alligators, so our only choice is trained, domesticated alligators to fight off the bad alligators.

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Archbishop Christian Lépine of Montréal, Canada, declared in June 2016 that Catholic priests, workers, and volunteers in his diocese are no longer allowed to be alone with children.

Lépine wrote that the Church had “an obligation to ensure the safety and integrity of the people to whom we bring the Gospel message and offer our pastoral care” and that “any form of abuse committed by persons exercising a pastoral duty not only constitutes a counter-witness to the Gospel but also a cause of serious injury.” He further condemned the “horrific reality of abuse of minors” that has “shocked and shaken” the Church.

The Guardian reports that “in February, the church agreed a $30m settlement after around 150 people claimed they had been abused by the Clerics of St Viateur, who ran a school for deaf children in Montréal between 1940 and 1982.”

But critics say the measure is not nearly enough. “The single most effective step would be to publicly disclose and discipline every cleric who committed or concealed child sex crimes. That immediately protects children,” David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) told The Guardian. “We’ve literally seen hundreds of policies, procedures, protocols and pledges like this that sound good on paper but are virtually never enforced. So we are extremely skeptical.”

Catholic priests and workers have a long history of committing and covering up child molestation, in nations across the world.

Father Thomas Doyle writes in “A Very Short History of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church”:

In spite of claims to the contrary, the canonical history of the Catholic Church clearly reflects a consistent pattern of awareness that celibate clergy regularly violated their obligations in a variety of ways. The fact of clergy abuse with members of the same sex, with young people and with women is fully documented. At certain periods of church history clergy sexual abuse was publicly known and publicly acknowledged by church leaders. From the late 19th century into the early 21st century the church’s leadership has adopted a position of secrecy and silence. They have denied the predictability of clergy sexual abuse in one form or another and have claimed that this is a phenomenon new to the post-Vatican II era. The recently published reports of the Bishops’ National Review Board and John Jay College Survey have confirmed the fact of known clergy sexual abuse since the 1950s and the church leadership’s consistent mishandling of individual cases.

The bishops have, at various times, claimed that they were unaware of the serious nature of clergy sexual abuse and unaware of the impact on victims. This claim is easily offset by the historical evidence. Through the centuries the church has repeatedly condemned clergy sexual abuse, particularly same-sex abuse. The very texts of many of the laws and official statements show that this form of sexual activity was considered harmful to the victims, to society and to the Catholic community. Church leaders may not have been aware of the scientific nature of the different sexual disorders nor the clinical descriptions of the emotional and psychological impact on victims, but they cannot claim ignorance of the fact that such behavior was destructive in effect and criminal in nature.

The John Jay College Survey estimated that from 1950 to 2002 hundreds of thousands of children were raped by Catholic leaders in the United States alone.

The high rates of pedophilia are thought to be attributed to the sexual repression of priests, who often enter seminary in early teen years and never experience sexual contact. Lack of sexual maturity and strict rules of celibacy in the Church may drive priests to eye and rape the most vulnerable in their community. It may also have much to do with a cycle of abuse — priests being raped when they were children and taking out the accompanying shame and post-traumatic stress on the next generation.

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Statistics on food stamp recipients in Kansas City are not easy to come by, as most data sets focus on a broader scope, for instance looking at all of Missouri or Kansas.

However, it is known that in 2009, 21% of Jackson County residents were on food stamps. Jackson County had a population of about 705,700 in 2009, meaning about 148,200 Kansas Citians used them that year. This included 40% of Jackson County children, 11% of white residents, and 48% of black residents. At the time, there were about 161,400 blacks in Jackson County and 451,000 whites, meaning roughly 77,500 blacks and 50,000 whites used food stamps.

In much wealthier Johnson County, 3% of residents received food stamps (6% of children, 2% of whites, 14% of blacks).

For other areas that make up the Kansas City metro, statistics were somewhere between these extremes. In Wyandotte County, it was 16% of residents (27% of children, 10% of whites, 31% of blacks). Platte County, 7% (14% of children, 5% of whites, 25% of blacks). Clay County, 11% (20% of children, 9% of whites, 33% of blacks).

Because they are disproportionately poor (due to America’s ugly racial history and modern racial discrimination), blacks are disproportionately on welfare. According to the 2015 State of Black Kansas City Equality Index, published by UMKC for the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, the poverty rate for blacks in the greater metropolitan area is more than double that of whites (29.8% versus 12.6%). Black median income is just over half that of whites ($29,724 versus $54,044). The median net worth for whites is nearly eighteen times higher: $6,314 for blacks, $110,500 for whites. The unemployment rate for blacks is double the unemployment rate for whites.

Overall, the majority of welfare users in the U.S. are non-black. Blacks make up 39% of all recipients (and only 4% of blacks use cash assistance, 6-12% use housing assistance, and 11-19% use food stamps; see Loveless and Tin, Dynamics of Economic Well-Being).

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According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), from 2005-2010 about 13% of people over age 12 in the Kansas City metropolitan area (including counties in Kansas and Missouri) used illicit drugs each year.

That’s about 239,000 youths and adults in a city of 1.8 million. Drug use in Kansas City is about equal to Missouri as a whole and 1% lower than the nation as a whole. 9.6% of Kansas Citians used marijuana, 4.7% used pain pills.

The prevalence of certain drugs depends on where one lives. In recent years, cocaine was a large problem in black and brown communities in the inner city, while meth was a grave issue in the white suburbs — though neither drug is exclusive to a specific area. The National Drug Intelligence Center writes:

African American crack distributors frequently obtain powder cocaine for conversion from Mexican and Hispanic midlevel dealers located in the northeast section of Kansas City, Missouri, and from Mexican wholesale and midlevel dealers in Kansas City, Kansas. Mexican wholesale and midlevel dealers are typically supplied by sources in the El Paso and Phoenix areas.

Mexican wholesale and midlevel dealers typically distribute methamphetamine in outlying and suburban areas of the metropolitan area; most of the methamphetamine available and abused is Mexican ice methamphetamine. In addition, the Overland Park, Kansas, Police Department reports that CPD [controlled prescription drug] abuse has become so problematic that it is now considered the greatest drug threat in that jurisdiction. Oxycodone and hydrocodone are the most commonly abused controlled prescription narcotics, and officials from this police department reported in the third quarter of 2008 that they were investigating an increased number of CPD overdoses. CPD abuse is increasing, particularly among Caucasians between the ages of 16 and 24.

Since Colorado’s legalization of marijuana, that state has become a larger source for users in Kansas City. Kansas City is also a hub of activity in the heroin trade; the availability of heroin has been increasing since 2007. The first half of 2015 saw a 324% increase in heroin transported through the metro. A Kansas City Police Department sergeant said of heroin-related deaths, “We went from having one three to four years ago, that we knew of, to 14 last year [2014].” According to a report from the city website, the drug-related death rate for whites was 12 per 100,000 people, 11 per 100,000 for blacks, between 2009 and 2013.

In 2012, just over 10,000 Kansas Citians entered rehab for drugs and alcohol abuse. 65% of admissions were white, 28% black.

From 2006 to 2012, admittances for cocaine fell dramatically, heroin and marijuana remained steady, and meth increased. The inner city is more likely to see youth in rehab programs than outlying areas. The Mid-America Regional Council reports, “The number of adolescents admitted to residential care facilities in Jackson County make up almost half of the total number admitted, followed by Johnson County which makes up a quarter and Wyandotte County which makes up ten percent.”

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