President Trump made a remarkable effort, EVEN HISTORICAL, hosting and listening to a discussion with victims of school shootings, including students and teachers from Parkland, Florida, as well as victims from the Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings.

Alas, CNN’s “legal analyst,” Jeffrey Toobin, pooh-poohed the event POTUS had held where a large group of school-shootings survivors exchanged views amicably, politely and so much more constructively than on any of CNN’s putrid panels.

3:09 minutes into this segment, a bereaved dad, Andrew Pollack, spoke about daughter Meadow Pollack, shot by “some animal” free to roam. “We should’ve fixed the schools,” roared Pollack. “I’m pissed!” The grieving Mr. Pollack focused the debate considerably. “It is not about gun laws. That is another fight, another battle. Let’s fix the schools and then you guys can battle it out whatever you want. But we need our children safe.”

True. We’ve arrived at a point where guards and metal detectors at the entrance to public venues—schools, amusement parks, concert halls, ballgames—are in order. Like in Israel.

UPDATE (2/22): I clean forgot to mention Darrell Scott, yet another bereaved parent from 1999, who runs a program emphasizing the promotion of connectedness and comity. He pointed out that diversity enforcement increases division and anger.

Conversely, the competing CNN TownHall, also with students, parents, lawmakers—but of a different stripe and temperament—showcased incivility and divisions. Boorish parent Fred Guttenberg berated a patient and stoic Sen. Marco Rubio.

To judge from what the rather mediocre students said at the CNN townhall, their education transmits sentimentality over reason, attitude and mush over canon and curriculum. They’ve been forced-fed a pedagogic diet of pop psychology by female teachers who promote every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist. Their parents were not that different. The apple never falls far from the tree.

With no moderation, if only for maintaining manners, from activist journo Jake Tapper of CNN, the students of Stoneman Douglas High hurled insults at Sen. Rubio and NRA representative Dana Loesch, showing themselves to be simple-minded, yet arrogant, liberals.

Loudmouth Sheriff Israel, of Broward County, was on easy street, surrounded as he was by the social justice warrior students of Stoneman Douglas High. None of these inquiring minds asked the sheriff about his department’s abysmal failures in stopping Nikolas Cruz.

Democratic Parkland congressman Rep. Ted Deutch regaled the predictable crowd with windy, empty, grandstanding. He got louder as the evening progressed and he saw Rubio isolated and Loesch desperately trying to please.

RELATED:

“6 things Marco Rubio said at the CNN town hall that made news in the US gun debate.”

“Trump suggests arming teachers as a solution to increase school safety.”

“Nothing New About Parkland School Massacre. FBI Has Been Criminally Negligent In Almost All Of America’s Major Terrorist Attacks.”

President Trump has no right to be “venting about Chief of Staff John Kelly,” who is an excellent man. But I bet “Jarvanka” (the Jared-Ivanka organism), and their Goldman-Sachs wing of the White House, are urging that the president purge one of the last good men in his administration. Once Kelly goes, of the old MAGA Guard, only Stephen Miller will remain. Then you’ll know the Trump Revolution is truly over.

The media, which has morphed into a Trump Scandal Watch, are baying for the general’s blood. The many fine things Gen. Kelly has done—defend Robert E. Lee as a great American hero, condemn Frederica Wilson for her anti-Trump tackiness—have riled the media.

They would like to think there is no political life after Kelly’s transgression.

Ditto Fox News. On grounds too stupid, weak and wobbly to dignify, a Fox News “writer” (Stephen L. Miller) is calling for the good general to go. It’s encouraging to read the antagonistic comments of the readers. Against Fox News’ neoconservative lefty, the commenters echo my opinion.

UPDATE (2/10): Another reason the left wants the irreplaceable Gen. Kelly replaced:

“John Kelly says some immigrants didn’t sign up under DACA because they were ‘lazy.'”

It’s hard to know whether the retarded reporters of the Daily Mail quoted Henry Kissinger inaccurately, or whether Kissinger was confused, in his comments about North Korea. The who “played a dominant role in U.S. foreign policy in the late 1960s and 1970s, [and] won the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in negotiating an end to American involvement in Vietnam,” is in his 90s.

I suspect the former. In any event, Kissinger mumbled a lot, but said eventually that “he was against forcing a military confrontation, but at the same time was in favor of putting pressure on Pyongyang.”

Fox News’ “experts” on foreign policy usually constitute a birgade of bimbos such as the barf-making Marie Harf, a hand-me-down from Obama, and a stupid, stupid girl called Jessica Tarlov. (The missing link: Meghan McCain, who’s been poached by television more liberal than Fox News.)

So it’s nice to hear, occasionally, from someone who knows a little something—even if we libertarians are not mad about Kissinger. A learned Methuselah who’s seen a thing or two is so much more enlightening than the tele-tarts.

‘Then we’re living in a new world, in which technically competent countries with adequate command structures are possessing nuclear weapons in an area where there are considerable national disagreements.
‘This … would drive a rethinking of the entire U.S. nuclear deterrent posture’ Kissinger said, as the current strategy assumes only one potential nuclear threat.

MORE.

A Feature of Fox News’ Fathead Anchors:

If Judge Jeanine 'loves' having #AnnCoulter on why did the Judge talk over her guest constantly! Ms. Coulter kept going trying to have her say, but being shouted down constantly. It's a feature of #FoxNews' fathead anchors. https://t.co/QNT2vsl1R9

— Ilana Mercer (@IlanaMercer) February 4, 2018

So, our mummified media are no longer paused on the story of the train freighted with fat-cat politicians that crushed a truck, killing a young (working-class, no doubt) trucker and gravely injuring a passenger.

The dumpster of a story dumped on the public was of “lawmakers on the scene [who] sprung into action to help the injured, including by carrying one individual across the tracks to an ambulance.”

Wow. A presidential medal is in the offing. For sure.

Move on just as soon as you’ve had your fill of our magnificent legislators doing heroic deeds.

Footnote: A regular guy died. He was 28-year-old Christopher Foley, about whom the media care to report NOT A THING, only that he was helped mightily by the retreat-bound politicians:

Several members of Congress have medical training and assisted the injured. Rep. Roger Marshall’s office says the Kansas congressman and doctor helped individuals who needed medical attention, including performing CPR.
Pence tweeted that he was monitoring the situation and still planning to speak at the retreat.

Other than the death of a young, working-class man, the news to take away from the veritable orgy of journalistic idiocy is that politicians treat themselves and their families to a retreat—to recharge, you know—on the backs of taxpayers. They say it’s a working retreat.

Republicans are gathered at the storied Greenbrier Resort — home to a Cold War-era bunker once meant to house Congress in the event of a nuclear attack — to plot the party’s legislative agenda for 2018 and strategize for what could be a bruising midterm election.

MORE “HEROICS.”