SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

A WELL-DESERVED HONOR – FROM FOX:   A fallen Missouri police officer will be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor Society's Citizen Honors Award after he died protecting a friend's business from looters during police brutality protests last year.  Capt. David Dorn was named Thursday as a recipient of the 2021 Single Act of Heroism Award, recognizing his service after he was shot in June 2020 while responding to an alarm at a pawn shop.  Dorn, who was retired at the time, is one of two recipients, the society announced. The award is given to those who risked their lives for the benefit of others in a dire situation.  "To find out that Dave was awarded this great honor just floored me," Ann Dorn, his widow, told "Fox & Friends" on Saturday. "It’s a bittersweet moment."  Dorn said her husband died "doing what he loved."  "He would have been humbled and honored by this," she continued. "I can see him smiling right now, saying ‘No, I don’t deserve this.’ That would be his reaction, but, yes, he deserves this."  He certainly does.  And so do other brave officers, including several wounded in the last few days.  If we don't honor law enforcement people, male and female, we'll never get the best officers.  Time to send the "defund the police" crowd back to their "we love Lenin" meetings.

A VICTORY FOR THE DECENT GUYS – FROM JUST THE NEWS:   A public university violated a professor's constitutional rights by punishing him for refusing to use a transgender student's preferred pronouns, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.  In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Amul Thapar, a Supreme Court short-lister for former President Trump, the court compared the Ohio university's behavior to a "McCarthy era" law against "subversive" government employees.  Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether, a "devout Christian," sought an accommodation under which he would not have to address the student as a woman in classroom discussions, which often touched on gender identity as a cultural controversy.  Shawnee State University officials belatedly ordered Meriwether to stop addressing the student only by name and instead use female pronouns. They also shot down his offer to tell students in the syllabus that he was being forced to use preferred pronouns.  Provost Jeffrey Bauer "openly laughed" when Meriwether's union representative explained why his religious beliefs forbade him from using the student's preferred pronouns, the professor claimed. Bauer twice rejected the faculty grievance on Meriwether's behalf — first as provost and then as interim president of the university.  Oral argument didn't go well for Shawnee State last fall. Judge Thapar asked then if the university would force a Jewish professor to honor a student's request to be addressed as "My Fuhrer."  The tide is still against us, but our side is, one by one, winning some significant victories in the courts and in state legislatures.  If we are firm in our belief in the basic Constitutional rights of Americans, we can win.  The 2022 elections, now only 20 months away, loom large as an opportunity to correct some of the madness we see before us today.

March 27, 2021