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Republicans are finding their spines. It’s good to see.

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San Antonio’s left-leaning city council, backed by mayor Ron Nirenberg, recently banned Chick-fil-A from becoming a concessionaire at the city-operated international airport. City officials reportedly cited Chick-fil-A’s political positions as justification for its boycott of the company: “With this decision, the City Council reaffirmed the work our city has done to become a champion of equality and inclusion,” said councilman Roberto Treviño. “San Antonio is a city full of compassion, and we do not have room in our public facilities for a business with a legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior.”

…

The charge that Chick-fil-A is “anti-LGBTQ” is based on its owners’ private contributions (made through the WinShape Foundation) and statements in support of traditional marriage. The city does not claim that the company’s employment practices or business policies are illegal; Chick-fil-A’s personnel policies conform to federal employment law, and the company has issued a statement of respect for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, in an internal document called “Chick-fil-A: Who We Are.” Nonetheless, LGBT activists have targeted Chick-fil-A for years. In 2012, when LGBT groups organized a national campaign to boycott the chain for its owners’ opposition to same-sex marriage, a backlash by the company’s devoted customers—led by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee—resulted in record-breaking sales. The public has demonstrated that it does not object to the owners’ allegedly objectionable positions. Yet the activists persist.

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Since when is it the government’s job (i.e. the taxpayers’ job) to fund programs to make handicapped people feel good about themselves? How much do ‘participation trophies’ cost, anyway?

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that ‘truancy’ was still a thing.

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Civil forfeiture is the law enforcement tool which allows property or currency to be seized and permanently forfeited, even in situations where the owner is neither charged with, nor convicted of, a crime.

Prior to the 1980s, civil forfeiture was a niche law enforcement tool relegated chiefly to admiralty and customs law. But Congress, followed later by nearly every state, ramped up the practice to target the assets and ill-gotten gains of drug kingpins, criminal organizations, and money launderers.

And to encourage law enforcement agencies to use this powerful new tool, Congress empowered federal agencies to retain the proceeds of successful forfeitures, and authorized them to share the funds with state and local agencies that participate in forfeiture cases through what is known as the “equitable sharing” program.

In other words, lawmakers empowered agencies to seize their way to bigger budgets. It should come as no surprise that forfeiture exploded in the United States.

‘Civil asset forfeiture’ is the biggest end-run around the Constitution in the country today. This legislation is badly needed.

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I should like to point out that this problem is the direct result of the bogus government-mandated monopoly on certain information under the guise of ‘intellectual property’. Once you decide that people providing you with information can dictate what you can do with it, they’re going to make sure they charge you out the wazoo to do ANYTHING with it.

This started with the oh-no-you-don’t-own-that-software-you-just-bought-you-just-have-a-license-to-use-it trick in the early days of consumer computation and, when that worked, they pushed the envelope for all that it was worth, to the point that people can now patent human genes merely because they happened to be the first to figure out how they work.

The Chinese realized early on that this was a scam and they’ve been ignoring it (to their profit) ever since. Smuggling (the fashionable tar-term is ‘piracy’, the historical tar-term is  ‘black market’) exists profitably when I can provide you with something illegally for less than the government will allow you to purchase it legally. The end-game here is Prohibition and the ‘war on drugs’. This is why Columbian narcos had warehouses of dollar bills being eaten by rats because they didn’t have anywhere else to put them.

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The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office issued the following statement: “After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollet’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition & appropriate resolution.”

Apparently they did this without checking with the Chicago PD. Smooth move.

This is Kim Foxx:

Ace of Spades: All Charges Against Jussie Smollet Dropped. Sentenced to Community Service Only. KIM FOXX, ALREADY ACCUSED OF DOING FAVORS FOR JUSSIE, DOES ONE MORE FAVOR.

UPDATE: Police Chief ‘Furious’ At Smollett Case Dismissal

UPDATE: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: Letting Smollett Off the Hook Sends a Message That There Is No Accountability in the System; Calls it a “Whitewash;” Says “How Dare He” as Smollett Continues Attacking Police

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Republicans ought to do this every time Democrats come up in some pie-in-the-sky powered-by-unicorn-farts idea.

Schedule it for a vote and make them own it. Then hammer them with it in the next election.

Trump is having a beneficial impact on Congressional Republicans; it has given them a taste for winning, which is a heady brew.

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Which doesn’t mean that American cities will give it up.

Nobody ever got voted out of office for chasing a political fashion trend.

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This is stupid political pandering. I had thought better of Rubio.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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It isn’t all that meaningful to debate whether the inverted yield curve in the U.S. that occurred Friday will lead to a recession a year from now. Nothing is written in stone. Whether one comes to pass or not doesn’t validate nor negate the signal one way or the other.

Women and minorities hardest hit, etc. etc.

UPDATE: Here Comes The Selling: CTAs, Dealer Gamma Flip Short Today

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That’s … very interesting.

Look, prior to his capture by the North Vietnamese he was the military equivalent of Beto O’Rourke. If his father and grandfather hadn’t been Admirals he would have been passed over for promotion before he made Commander and had to go to work for a living. His main claim to fame as a Navy officer was how hard he could party and what sort of Black Sheep Squadron hijinks he could get up to.

While ie was a POW he behaved heroically, no one questions that. Sometimes people, when you step on them, prove that there’s a hard center to all that softness. But that doesn’t give you a pass for the rest of your life. And it’s the rest of his life that we’re talking about.

Once he got back, he resumed being a consummate jerk. He divorced his crippled first wife, who had kept the faith with him through his captivity, to marry a rich blonde. He ran as a solid conservative Republican in order to get elected to the Senate and then turned around and sold out his party whenever he got the notion. He was famous for being one of the chief RINOs in Washington, and for saying shit about people he didn’t like that Trump would never dream of.

Trump never said anything about McCain until after McCain had spent time bad-mouthing Trump. McCain was the source of the ‘dossier’ that sparked the Mueller investigation that has gone on for two years and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars for absolutely nothing except sending a bunch of small fry to jail for ‘process crimes’ that would never have occurred had it not been for the investigation.

Worst of all, John McCain, AFTER HAVING CAMPAIGNED ON GETTING RID OF OBAMACARE, cast the single vote that blocked Obamacare repeal BECAUSE HE WAS IN A SNIT ABOUT TRUMP. That failure has caused thousands of people millions of dollars in health care expense just because of personal pique. Whatever bad thing you can say about Trump, John McCain was just as bad, if not worse.

Sure, I’ll criticize John McCain. Call on me any time.

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My, what a pity.

We have far too many colleges in this country, and far too many college students. The current crisis is caused by taxpayers being made to guarantee student debt on the part of people who don’t have the brainpower to succeed in college.

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The poster child for cognitive dissonance.

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Democrats being Democrats. Light-colored Democrats who can pretend to be ‘black’ typically spend their time in ‘public service’ enriching themselves and their cronies, while destroying the areas over which they rule; thus Detroit.

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It’s official: whether it wanted to or not, the Fed’s doubling-down on dovishness this Wednesday is now seen by the market as a major policy error, perhaps the biggest in Fed history.

UPDATE: Bank Bloodbath Brings Down ‘Bull Market’ As Yield Curve Crashes

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“The Northeastern states are cutting their own throats, and their leaders are doing it with a green knife,” Kish said.

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Jeff Bezos is not stupid, and he learned the Microsoft Lesson quite well. Governments at all levels are ready and willing to screw business entities unless their wheels get greased, and that has been a constant for time out of mind.

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Real estate brokers in New York are worried that foreign second home buyers are feeling “under assault” and may buy elsewhere as a result of “class warfare” in the form of a new planned tax, according to a new Bloomberg article. The proposed tax in New York is going to apply to properties of over $5 million that are owned by non-residents of the city.

And well they might. New York, like London and San Francisco, is increasingly becoming a ‘shell city’, comprising two classes of people: Those rich enough to afford to live there, and those too poor to go elsewhere. The basis of city finance, of course, is the rich, without whose taxes the city would be broke. This does not seem to impede the efforts of tax eaters to persuade the rich to go elsewhere, or to stay away, by means of oppressive taxes and regulations. How soon before New York winds up like Detroit? Not long, I’m thinking.

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Michelle Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Tina Tchen, attempted to have the Jussie Smollett case transferred from the Chicago Police Department to the FBI, according to texts and emails released by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Dozens of people died after getting lost in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument because federal regulations prohibited officials from putting directional signs in place, a Utah county commissioner said.

This is insane.

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Say, anyone remember when Loretta Lynch claimed she was recusing herself from this case due to her speaking with Bill Clinton furtively on an airport tarmac?

Well actually she didn’t recuse herself — she said she would do as the FBI recommended. But she intended the media to sell that as a recusal, and the media so sold it.

Turns out, the DOJ did not defer to the FBI at all.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

The Deep State takes care of its own.

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You knew this was coming.

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This is what happens when you elect Democrats — they ‘tax your asses off’, in Walter Mondull’s famous phrase.

If this thing passes, watch affluent people flee Chicago for neighboring lower-tax states, like Indiana and Wisconsin, both of which are within easy commuting distance — the North Shore and South Shore commuter trains are already in place.

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The EPA will introduce its final proposal sometime this spring that strips a waiver California and other states have long used to set tougher vehicle emission standards than the federal government, forcing every state in the U.S. to comply with the same rules.

Since manufacturers aren’t willing to make two products, one for a restrictive state and one for less restrictive states, California’s tight regulations have basically set the standard for mileage requirements for the country. This is the same trick that AlGore used to give us those wimpy 1.6 gallon flush toilets.

The move to revoke California of its waiver comes as the Trump administration is also looking to freeze Obama-era efficiency rules meant to cut carbon emissions from the transportation industry. The EPA, along with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is finalizing a proposal to freeze vehicle efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, in lieu of raising them annually.

This could get entertaining. Proglodytes are finding out that centralizing power in Washington isn’t such a good idea after all.

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Five will get you ten that it never happens.

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This is what happens when the government handles health care.

I don’t think we want this.

Ace of Spades has the story.

Bias? What bias?

I’ll bet the police would have intervened if they’d tried to throw the guy out, though. You can depend on that.

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I’d be more impressed if Zuckerberg and Bezos announced plans to break up the U.S. Senate.

That might actually have a chance of coming off.

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Ticket punched.

Resume line added.

Time to move on.

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This is mostly about trains, but I suspect similar problems afflict roads and bridges.

Don’t expect our infrastructure to get better anytime soon. (Who knows? Now that Lake Erie has ‘human rights’, maybe roads will eventually be able to vote and politicians will give them some attention.)

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But that trick never works.

Steve Sailer reports.

It will be interesting to see whether the Democrat party’s adult supervision will survive much longer.

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Just in case you’re keeping track.

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Imagine forcing every kid to walk around holding an ad for Planned Parenthood. Well, in California, you don’t have to imagine it.

California state Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel is doing everything he can to seal the single largest free publicity deal in the history of abortion: a Planned Parenthood phone number on every student ID. Including kids at private and Christian schools.

He calls it the “Pupil and Student Health” bill, but critics of Gabriel’s AB 624 want people to know what it really is: an attack on the First Amendment.

I never had a student ID in high school. Our dress code (guys in coat and tie, girls in uniforms) was ID enough.

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Safest is never to set foot in them in the first place.

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The left achieved what it considers a major victory in New York when the minimum wage was raised to $15 an hour. In the aftermath of this victory, however, New York City has experienced its worst decline in restaurant employment since 9/11. So reports the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

Proglodytes don’t want Underclass people working and independent — they want Underclass people dependent on government benefits, so that they will keep voting for the people who will keep the benefits coming, i.e. Democrats.

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The proportion of foreign nationals attempting to cross the border illegally rather than reporting to legal ports of entry has risen in the past year, according to the data. Those crossing illegally made up 73 percent of all border crossings from October 2017 to January 2018 and then rose to 83 percent for the same period of time ending on Jan. 31, 2019, NBC News reported Friday.

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Pass the popcorn.

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Gee, when Trump says that, they call him the New Hitler.

I certainly hope that she survives the experience of finding out that she is not, in fact, the boss of anything.

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Two state policy groups, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Civic Federation, have come out in favor of ending an exclusion in the state’s income tax for pension income and federally taxable Social Security income. Doing so, the organizations argue, would raise $2.5 billion in revenue, equivalent to a 0.5 percent income tax rate hike and a 0.85 percent corporate tax rate increase.

The problem, of course, is that Illinois does not have a revenue problem. Spending on pensions grew 663 percent between 2000 and 2018, and is projected to continue to grow. This isn’t surprising, given that 60 percent of state pensioners retire in their 50s and pensioners’ direct employee contributions equal only about 6 percent of the benefits they receive. The state is like a teenager with its first credit card, except it never grows up and stops thinking of its credit limit as its bank account.

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“The Green New Deal is the only way to save the earth from utter extinction. If you keep standing in the way, troglodytes, we are doomed.”

“OK, Democrats, let’s vote on your nonbinding resolution.”

“Why are you sabotaging our legislation?!”

If you think this is an exaggeration of the illogical position of Democrats and their Green New Deal, I give you Sen. Ed Markey. D-Mass.

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The Supreme Court reigned in state power to seize property and levy fines for criminal offenses Wednesday, unanimously ruling that the Eighth Amendment ban on excessive fines applies to the states.

Civil libertarians expect the ruling will curtail asset forfeitures at the state and local levels, a much-criticized practice through which law enforcement seizes property connected to the commission of a crime. Critics say such seizures are often disproportionate to the criminal offense at issue.

This is a huge win. The ‘war on drugs’ had spawned the pretext of Civil Asset Forfeiture whereby those who were suspected of breaking the law but who could not be prosecuted for lack of evidence would be impoverished by having their assets stripped from them on very specious grounds. Local governments have been using this as a honeypot to pad out their budgets by effectively stealing from people who they temporarily had at their mercy but who were not under the protective umbrella of the politically powerful or well-connected.

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According to a statement, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) plans to terminate $929 million in federal grant funds yet to be paid for the California high-speed rail project initially planned to connect the L.A. Basin to the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition, the Department announced it is exploring every legal option to obtain the $2.5 billion in federal funds FRA previously granted California for the now-defunct project.

I think this is the first time Washington has asked for its money back from a state transportation boondoggle.

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The push for a border barrier marks President Donald Trump’s fourth declaration of a national emergency–about a third as many as his three immediate predecessors in their two terms.

The number of declared emergencies puts Trump on a par with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

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Good constitutional arguments can be made for and against President Trump’s evocation of emergency powers to address the crisis at our southern border.  But the notion that such a declaration would encourage a future Democratic president to do something similar borders on the comic.  Democrats don’t need encouragement.

Under President Barack Obama, the Constitution was violated more wantonly than a goat at a Taliban bachelor party, and the faithful cheered every violation.

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You know, as they do.

You would think that these people would learn a little restraint. But they never do,

UPDATE: Smollett’s Attorneys Speak Out, Say Reports Claiming The Actor Planned Own Attack Further Victimizes Him