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On a couple of occasions during this election season, I’ve written in detail about Hillary Clinton and the Whitewater/Castle Grande scandal. Although the events in question took place 25 years (or so) ago, they are relevant today because at the heart of that scandal, insofar as Hillary is concerned, was the theft and/or wrongful destruction of documents. Such conduct is also a central issue in Hillary’s current email scandal, although this matter also raises concerns that she compromised national security.

Now, the invaluable Judicial Watch has obtained and published an April 1998 memo by the Office of Independent Counsel, called “HRC Order of Proof.” It includes the names of 121 witnesses and a discussion of the evidence to be used at trial against the Whitewater/Castle Grande conspirators. The memo thus constitutes a road map to the Independent Counsel’s criminal case.

Ken Starr, the Independent Counsel, decided not to proceed against Hillary Clinton. He did so, it is said, because he believed his team could not win the complicated, largely circumstantial case against such a high-profile figure. It’s quite possible that, in addition, political calculation came into play.

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Thank God for Rahm Emmanuel and those strict gun control laws, or the place might have wound up like Texas.

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A new study from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth mapped student loan delinquency rates and found that areas of cities with higher concentrations of African-Americans and Latinos had the highest delinquency rates.
Read more at http://redalertpolitics.com/2016/02/22/federal-college-loan-program-hurts-minorities/#TfG6QD4ctkm0IGLq.99

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Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon whose presidential campaign is on life support, said in an interview that was published on Tuesday that President Obama does not identify with the black experience because he was “raised white.”

Oh, that’s gotta burn….

“He didn’t grow up like I grew up,” Mr. Carson told Politico. “So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.”

As has been mentioned many times before.

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Quick! Abandon the cities! Back to the Forest Primeval!

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The whitewashing of Muslim honor killings in America has seeped into academia. And the PC police have found a new scapegoat: Hindu Americans.

In January, the Journal of Family Violence published “An Exploratory Study of Honor Crimes in the United States” by Brittany E. Hayes, Joshua D. Freilich and Steven M. Chermak. It was an act of cowardice as well as a shoddy piece of research. It broke absolutely no new ground, either theoretically or statistically, and is so “politically correct” that it completely misses an entire forest for a tree.

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An odd piece to see in lefty Voice of the Crust The Guardian.

I have never defended the use or availability of capital punishment on the grounds of retribution and would echo his holiness’s own phraseology in saying that no matter how serious the crime, it is wrong if its purpose is merely an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Using it as a deterrent is, however, a very different matter for it saves innocent lives.

This position ignores the effect on others of ‘retribution’. If we call it by its street name, ‘payback’, it acknowledges that the taking of a life has created a social imbalance that is only rectified by the loss of the murderer’s life. People on the street understand this, even though they often cannot articulate it.

Pope Francis claims that the death penalty is “an offence against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the person” but what about the life and dignity of a victim who would not be a victim if the death penalty were in force?

That’s not what the Pope was talking about, and this author really needs some instruction on what Christianity is all about, not to mention what the Pope’s role is in the Roman Church. (Such ignorance is not surprising in a writer for the Guardian, whose exposure to Christianity is likely restricted to seeing things on TV.)

As a Christian, the Pope is committed to the view that any person, no matter how evil or how criminal, can be saved if brought to repentance. Killing a person, even a murderer, puts that repentance out of reach, and takes from them forever that opportunity for salvation. That is the Pope’s concern, and that is his only concern.

The state’s duty in these circumstances is an extension of the individual’s right to self-defence. If we believe our lives or those of others are at genuine risk then we can use whatever force is necessary to mount a credible defence including, in extremis, killing.

Irrelevant. Under no reading of the law are individuals, pursuing their ‘right to self-defence’, entitled to kill someone merely to avoid the possibility of that other person is, or might be, a murderer.

The government’s duty in these circumstances is part and parcel of its essential function of ensuring that its citizens can associate with each other in mutually beneficial ways without being constantly afraid of arbitrary, even whimsical, violence on the part of those with whom they come in contact. Self-defense doesn’t have anything to do with it (unless we’re talking about invasion by foreigners). This is reflected in the libertarian mantra, ‘Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.’ How the government does this is, of course, subject to discussion.

Therefore the crux of the argument is: is it really a deterrent? In the five years immediately following the abolition of the death penalty in Britain the government still collected statistics based on the distinction between capital and non-capital murder precisely in order to assess the effect of abolition and the effect was startling. As Duncan Sandys, a senior Conservative MP, told parliament in December 1969, the capital murder rate had risen almost 125%. It is worth pausing just to absorb that. There was also a substantial rise in the number of times firearms were taken on robberies.

But of course the people who are against capital punishment have all sorts of studies of their own that show that capital punishment is not a deterrent. This ‘battle of the studies’ has been going on ever since sociology reared its ugly head. In any event, that’s not the Pope’s concern, nor is it in any way related to why he made his statement.

In the old days, ‘journalists’ were expected to be able to listen and understand what people are saying, and why, and to ask if they were confused. Today, it is merely sufficient to be confused.

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In a recent letter addressed to Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), Obamacare chief Andy Slavitt said the federal government will “recover its fair portion” of funds in the event a failed Obamacare state exchange reaches a settlement with contractors.

Given that the federal government funded the overwhelming majority of state exchange projects with $5.5 billion in taxpayer funds, “fair portion” should be close to 100 percent.

But don’t hold your breath.

To date, recovery of the billions in wasted state exchange funds has been near non-existent, despite failed exchanges in Oregon, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Nevada costing taxpayers $733 million.

In fact, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, these four states have returned ZERO dollars to the federal government, and state exchanges collectively have so far returned just $1 million.

But the waste doesn’t end there, as “working” state exchanges including Vermont, Minnesota, Maryland, and Massachusetts have each misused as much as hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds.

Further, an investigation led by House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) found that federal officials were unable to provide information on the long-term sustainability of remaining exchanges, and were unable to defend the four failed state exchanges.

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In the DOJ’s defense of the FBI’s request, they said that Apple’s refusal to comply “appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy.” That may be true, but the government is playing the same game. It looks like they are using the emotions around the San Bernardino incident to garner political support for a more strategic move against companies refusing to break encryption. They know this could set the precedent they need to strong arm industry players into either installing “backdoors” on encrypted devices or bending over whenever the FBI comes knocking.

So we have competing strategies at play: the enabling of security vs. the subversion of security. Which one were you taught in high school was the government’s side?

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In a New York magazine excerpt of her upcoming book, All the Single Ladies, Traister writes that the rise of the single-lady demographic represents “a radical upheaval, a national reckoning with massive social and political implications. Across classes, and races, we are seeing a wholesale revision of what female life might entail. We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.”

With results as you see them.

What do all these single women want? Well, according to Traister, it is most certainly not a “hubby state,” the term some conservatives have used to insinuate that women still desire dependency, just on Uncle Sam instead of a family patriarch. “The notion that what the powerful, growing population of unmarried American women needs from the government is a husband…  is of course problematic,” she writes. “It reduces all relationships women have to marital, sexual, hetero ones and suggests that they are, by nature, dependent beings.”

Traister is right to point out that when men rely on government social programs or tax incentives, we don’t say they’re seeking a “wifey state.” Also that men, especially married men, long benefited from government policies designed to sustain their dominance, be they direct (laws limiting the hours that women could work) or indirect (policies that propped up the mid-century nuclear family). But the problem comes when Traister tries to define what single women do want from government: laws ensuring “pay equity, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage, universal pre-K, lowered college costs, more affordable health care, and broadly accessible reproductive rights.”

With the exception of the last point, those are all either direct requests for state support or requests for state-mandated support from private actors. Sure, these policies aren’t designed solely to benefit women (unless you think of things like parenting as purely female), but there’s no mistaking this agenda for anything other than a call for More! and Bigger! government.

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James Bond loves his Sony smartphones; Jurassic World is outfitted entirely with Mercedes vehicles. All facts we wish we didn’t know about our favourite movies but which, unfortunately, have crept depressingly into our consciousness thanks to the thriving practice of product placement.

And here I always thought that James Bond using a Sony phone was just another instance of government employees being stuck with using products from the lowest bidder.

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I am not making this up.

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A school in Guernsey has provoked outrage after asking pupils to write a letter pretending they are converting to Islam.

Pupils aged 12 and 13 at Les Beauchamps High School were asked to pen the creative writing exercise as part of a religious education lesson. They were asked to write a letter to their parents explaining that they had converted to Islam and hope that their family would respect their decision.

The homework briefing stated: “Complete the letter you started or started planning in class to your family on how you are converting to Islam. Include: How you’re feeling, how becoming a Muslim has changed your life, how much you love your family and hope they can accept your choice.

More to the point would be having them pretend to be a Muslim converting to some other religion and then have them describe how they would avoid being beheaded. That would be challenging.

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Despite the taboo around “hearing voices”, more than 80 per cent of the people questioned said they heard an inner voice while reading to themselves and only 11 per cent said they did not.

Several respondents said they only heard it sometimes, depending on other factors including their interest in the text, and some perceived their own voice while others detected a range of characters, friends and family members, in emails for example.

I know I do, especially if I’ve heard the author speak; his (or her) voice automatically comes up.

(Neil Gaiman, I’m looking at YOU.)

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Cynicism may be the default reception to cinematic fan theories; yet, occasionally, they’re the only remedy to soothe away certain pains. And there is no prickling discomfort greater for the hardcore Indiana Jones fan than the bitter aftertaste of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s infamous “Nuke the Fridge” scene.

Yes, the film may have been released back in 2008 but, for some, the nightmare stubbornly clings on. The moment of cinema’s great hero, Dr. Indiana Jones, surviving a nuclear blast unscathed by locking himself up inside a lead-lined fridge.

Could there ever be any justification for it? A new fan theory prays there is; and that Jones’ miraculous survival is, in fact, thanks to immortality gained during the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Reddit user That_secret-chord has theorised thus: “Indiana Jones drinking from the Holy Grail helped him survive unlikely scenarios, most notably the infamous fridge scene.”

So now you know. We now return you to your previously scheduled boring life.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

My, what a surprise!

Speaking at a White House reception for the National Governors Association yesterday, President Obama mentioned the series of shootings that killed six people in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on Saturday. “Earlier this year, I took some steps that will make it harder for dangerous people, like this individual, to buy a gun,” he claimed. At this point there is no reason to believe that’s true.

Obama’s “executive actions” on gun control included a “clarification” of which gun sellers are “engaged in the business of selling firearms” and therefore must conduct background checks. But even if we assume that more gun buyers will undergo background checks as a result of that initiative (which is by no means assured), it is almost certainly irrelevant to the the case at hand.

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In northern Iraq the threat posed by ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) has led to over 10,000 Kurdish women joining militias and training for combat. Most of these women are Sunni Moslems but in late 2015 Yazidi women who had been captured and raped by ISIL succeeded in getting support for a battalion of Yazidi women who had been sex slaves of ISIL and, obviously, escaped. Over 2,000 Yazidi slaves (most of them women) have escaped from ISIL so far. But the Yazidi women could not escape the experience.

The Middle East is one of those regions where female virginity is a big deal, sometimes a matter of life and death for women who lose it before marriage and then sometimes get murdered to salvage family honor. Getting captured and raped during war is not as bad but it does still stigmatize the victims. One way honor can be restored is via revenge. Taking up weapons and killing the culprit makes the woman less of a victim and more admirable. The Yazidis, who usually live among Kurds, are largely regard as Kurds but ones who have developed very different religious and social customs. Most Moslems consider the Yazidis heretics or pagans. The Kurds came to the aid of the Yazidi in 2014 when ISIL sought to kill or enslave all Yazidi in northern Iraq. The Kurds also helped arm and train Yazidi men to form more militias. By late 2015 this led to the appearance of the “Sun Ladies” (former sex slaves now armed, trained and seeking revenge) and now there are enough of them to form a separate battalion. ISIL is still holding at least 3,000 Yazidis captive and one objective of all these Yazidi militias (and Kurds in general) is to free the slaves.

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University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Beverly Kopper sent out a campus-wide email condemning a “disturbing racist post” by two students that was “hurtful and destructive to our campus community.” Kopper believed the two had posted online a photo of themselves in blackface. In fact, if she’d spoken to them before she sent out her email, she would have found they had taken a photo of themselves getting a facial and were wearing exfoliation masks.

Oops. But that’s the Social Justice Warrior for you — to boldly find offense where no offense has been before.

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You can’t make this stuff up: a German bank that caters only to “refugees”, where ordinary, hard-working native Germans are not allowed. That has to be a hoax, right? Wrong!

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Earlier today, I wrote about the scheduled hearing in a case brought by several left-wing organizations to block three states from taking measures to make sure non-citizens can’t vote in the upcoming presidential elections. The states received permission from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to proceed. The leftist outfits seek to enjoin the EAC’s order.

The Justice Department is, in effect, the lawyer for the EAC. However, it has chosen to tank the case. It “consents” to the motion to enjoin the Commission’s order.

They thought they had a sweet deal: Have a bunch of the Usual Suspect leftist anybody-can-vote groups to challenge a ruling that States can actually ask for ID, and then have the DOJ, supposedly defending the ruling, take a dive. But it didn’t work out that way.

Judge Leon also seemed taken aback that the Justice Department is not opposing the plaintiffs’ motion to enjoin the government. Leon called it “unprecedented” for DOJ to agree to a preliminary injunction blocking a federal official’s decision. “I’ve never heard of it in all my years as a lawyer,” the judge stated.

The same statement applies, I think, to any number of actions and positions taken by the Obama Justice Department under both Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Stalin once said that it doesn’t matter who gets to vote so much as who counts the votes; the Obama DOJ corollary to this appears to be that it doesn’t matter what the law says so much as who gets to enforce (or not enforce) the law.

With DOJ taking the plaintiffs’ side, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach took the lead in defending the proof of citizenship requirement imposed by his state. He also raised the conflict of interest argument (discussed in my earlier post) that stems from allegations that the Justice Department ghost wrote the original ECA decision, which went in favor of the leftist civil rights plaintiffs.

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

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Oh, if it were only that easy….

My, what a surprise!

In a late Friday afternoon news dump before the President’s day holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced that it would pay out $7.7 billion to Obamacare insurers through the reinsurance program – including $1.7 billion in illegal payments. In all, the administration has unlawfully funneled $3.5 billion into this program.

For 2015 Obamacare reinsurance, the administration will pay out $6 billion raised from a fee on private health insurance and an additional $1.7 billion that under federal law belongs to the Treasury department. Indeed, the decision by the Obama administration directly violates section 1341 of Obamacare which explicitly states “money shall be deposited into the general fund of the Treasury of the United States and may not be used for the [reinsurance] program established under this section.”

The Obamacare reinsurance program was one of three programs (together with risk corridors and risk adjustment) created to hide the true costs of coverage on the exchange and prop up insurers by redistributing funds from different groups to Obamacare exchanges. In the case of reinsurance, this took the form of a $44 assessment on each individual with private health insurance.

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The Chinese military is able to detect U.S. F-22 stealth fighter jets, according to a Chinesemilitary expert in an interview for a CCTV program.

Several fighters from East China Sea Fleet patrolled around the Air Defense IdentificationZone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea after receiving orders that unidentified trackingoccurred near the ADIZ on the morning of Feb. 10, according to a report on PLA Daily onFeb. 11.

The report said that helicopters from a carrier-based helicopter brigade along with thecarrier patrolled around the area and missiles were set on fighters on duty at nearbymilitary airports which were prepared to take off for combat. However the report did notdisclose which country the objects belong to or other relevant information.

Some Western media guessed that the unidentified objects might be the U.S. F-22 stealthfighter jets. Chinese military expert Yin Zhuo told Asia Today that if the unidentified objects appearing near ADIZ over the East China Sea turned out to be F-22 from the U.S.,it would be a good opportunity for China’s military to practice its ability to find, identify and intercept stealth fighters.

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In order for humanity to one day colonize Mars, researchers must first find a sustainable crop to grow there. However, Mars isn’t the most hospitable place for plant life, which is why NASA scientists are currently in Lima, Peru attempting to grow potatoes in a simulated Martian environment.

The experiment, which began in January, is taking place at Lima’s International Potato Center (CIP), a nonprofit research center aimed at achieving food security, according to a press release put out by CIP in December. The researchers are growing 100 different varieties of potatoes and subjecting them to a slew of tests to see if any of them can hold up to Martian conditions.

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Good, good. Hipsters ought not to be encouraged to breed. Think of it as evolution in action.

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When public college foundations ask for donations, they tell a familiar story: state funding is tight, and donors can help support the community. Their dollars fund scholarships, buildings, academic programs. And almost always, the foundations’ money goes directly to the colleges they support.

But in Rhode Island, Governor Gina Raimondo has other ideas.

It started with a trip to Switzerland. Raimondo wanted to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the University of Rhode Island Foundation offered to cover up to $10,000 of her travel costs.

During the same week of her request, when Raimondo wanted a state innovation office, another public institution’s foundation, the Rhode Island College Foundation, agreed to create it. The office’s one employee — a chief innovation officer — will make $210,000 a year and serve on the governor’s cabinet.

“It’s kind of a step out of the box in terms of the traditional ways to support a college,” said Edwin R. Pacheco, the Rhode Island College Foundation’s associate vice president for college advancement and external affairs.

To quote a famous Doonesbury cartoon: ‘That pension fund was just sitting there.’

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In Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971, written with Mickey Rose), it is the phase in which the revolutionary Esposito achieves power in the fictional Latin American backwater of San Marcos. The power promptly goes to his Esposito’s head. Esposito starts issuing proclamations such as this one: “From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now… 16 years old!”

Bananas is a comedy that plays it for laughs. Barack Obama is about as funny as cancer. We probably entered into the Esposito phase of Obama’s presidency long ago, around the time Obama started rewriting unambiguous provisions of Obamacare on his own say-so.

Now we seem to be reaching peak Esposito.

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Geez, you’d think it was Detroit.

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It’s exhausting work, being offended all the time. But is activism actually ruining college kids’ mental health? A report on the emotional state of Brown University student-protesters—who suffer from suicidal thoughts, sleeplessness, panic attacks, and failing grades as a result of their advocacy—paints a weirdly alarming picture.

Self-inflicted problem. Think of it as evolution in action. If all of these yahoos were to spend the rest of their lives unemployed and financially crippled by student debt — well, I wouldn’t clap, but I wouldn’t weep, either. (Unfortunately, far too many of them will get government jobs and inflict themselves on us for the next half-century.)

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Ethanol backers struck first, filing a lawsuit January 8, claiming that the EPA erroneously set the numbers based on demand rather than supply and that the EPA overreached in its interpretation of the RFS.

Then last week, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers also claimed the EPA used flawed methodologies in setting the most recent numbers. “Despite the agency’s best efforts, certain aspects of the final RFS rule still run afoul of the Clean Air Act,” said Chet Thompson, president of the AFPM. “This rule further confirms that the RFS program is dysfunctional and that the only real solution is full repeal by Congress.”

The EPA is one of the reasons why Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

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Only five children go to this 12,000-square-foot school in Florida’s Palm Beach County. Here, on any given day, 12-year-old twins Logan and Garrett might solve math problems on their computers while their sisters, Sienna, 5, Reagan, 7, and Ava Rose, 10, have recess on the playground. Other times they all work together to memorize passages of Shakespeare or the names of the bones in the human body.

The kids live at the school as well—because it’s also their family’s home. Their mother, Karin Katherine Taylor, is also their teacher. She and her husband, a 59-year-old chief executive of an industrial-distribution firm, built the home six years ago with the intent of home schooling their children there.

If I had the money, and children, that’s what I’d do with it.

The family is part of a small subset of affluent homeowners who home-school their kids—but not for typical reasons of wanting to provide religious instruction or because they don’t like the public schools nearby. Instead, they say they can create their own optimal learning environments by buying or building homes in which almost every room is a classroom.

It was customer for the upper classes in Europe to have their children educated by tutors and governesses, the boys until it was time for them to go to ‘public’ school, the girls until they ‘came out’ and hit the marriage market. That may be coming back around on the guitar.

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An interesting question.

An interesting pattern developed early in the official involvement in global warming. If a person challenged the claim that humans were causing global warming (AGW), it was assumed they were on the political right. If you supported AGW, then you were on the left. This categorization is not related to the science, but to the political nature of the science involved. This occurred in two major parts. The original objective of those using global warming for their political agenda and the marginalizing of those who questioned the science by linking them to industries and their wealthy owners. The author believes the evidence shows that human CO2 is not causing AGW, that the hypothesis is not proved. This article is not written to pick political sides. Rather, it is an attempt to help understand the battles waged and the confusion this created for the public, the politicians, the media, and a majority of scientists.

Check it out.

Pour molten aluminum into an anthill, sell the result as art.

I am not making this up.

Read it. And watch the video.

I’ve been following political developments in Europe closely for the past ten years, and I’m sensing a qualitative difference just in the past few months. People are being prosecuted and convicted for “hate speech” in Denmark, which used to be immune to such nonsense. People are being arrested for criticizing immigration on Facebook.

And in the PowNed news video below, you’ll see a man being arrested at a PEGIDA protest in The Netherlands for wearing a silly pig hat.

Read it. And watch the video.

The following video from German television reports on the breakdown of law and order in several culturally enriched neighborhoods of Berlin. As in Thursday’s video about pickpockets, you’ll notice the reaction from business owners who are themselves earlier immigrants — they say the new arrivals are violent criminals who are ruining everything.

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The rise of Germany and the threat that Germany’s ever-expanding navy posed to Britain set the scene for the Thucydides Trap of the First World War. The nature of the danger was spelled out in 1907 in a note by a British Foreign Office official called Eyre Crowe. “Germany would clearly build as powerful a navy as she can afford,” Crowe wrote, and that navy would pose a fatal challenge to the British Empire whatever Germany’s protestations to the contrary. As Crowe noted, dry as sandpaper, “Ambitious designs…are not as a rule openly proclaimed, and even the profession of unlimited and universal political benevolence [is] not conclusive evidence” against “unpublished intentions.” Seven years later these two brotherly powers were duly fighting to the death.

The growth in tensions between the US and China has been uncannily similar. In Seattle, Mr Xi pooh-poohed the dead Greek but in the years before that speech, China had converted thousands of merchant ships for military use, developed a “carrier killer” missile specifically designed to sink American aircraft carriers, tested hypersonic glide vehicles said to be capable of striking the US with nuclear warheads, and stealthy submarines armed with ballistic missiles. In 2015, despite the general slowdown of the economy, China increased its military budget by 10 per cent, and one Chinese general warned that once the build-up was complete, “No enemy will dare to bully us.”

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According to the paper, students and faculty members held a wound-licking gathering at a cultural center on campus, where students described “feeling scared, hurt, and discriminated against.”

“A variety of different organizations and departments were present to listen, answer questions and show support” to the apparently weak and vulnerable students, who just a few days prior had disrupted Yiannopoulos’ event by smearing fake blood on their faces and chanting protest slogans.

One student at the event told the Targum that they “broke down crying” after the event, while another reported that he felt “scared to walk around campus the next day.” According to the report, “many others” said they felt “unsafe” at the event and on campus afterwards.

“It is upsetting that my mental health is not cared about by the University,” said one student at the event. “I do not know what else to do for us to be heard for us to be cared about. I deserve an apology, everyone in this room deserves an apology.”

God help these kids when they get out of their parents’ basements and into the Real World.

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When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise.

And yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly. When we say that war is “inconceivable,” is this a statement about what is possible in the world—or only about what our limited minds can conceive? In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. When war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world came to a crashing halt.

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

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Twitter is a private company, of course, and if it wants to outlaw strong language, it can. In fact, it’s well within its rights to have one set of rules for Robert Stacy McCain, and another set of rules for everyone else. It’s allowed to ban McCain for no reason other than its bosses don’t like him. If Twitter wants to take a side in the online culture war, it can. It can confiscate Milo Yiannopoulos’s blue checkmark. This is not about the First Amendment.

But if that’s what Twitter is doing, it’s certainly not being honest about it—and its many, many customers who value the ethos of free speech would certainly object. In constructing its Trust and Safety Council, the social media platform explicitly claimed it was trying to strike a balance between allowing free speech and prohibiting harassment and abuse. But its selections for this committee were entirely one-sided—there’s not a single uncompromising anti-censorship figure or group on the list. It looks like Twitter gave control of its harassment policy to a bunch of ideologues, and now their enemies are being excluded from the platform.

Banning McCain wasn’t even Twitter’s only questionable activity last night. It seems that Twitter also suppressed the pro-McCain hashtag subsequently created by his supporters, #FreeStacy. After it started trending, Twitter made it so that the hashtag wouldn’t autocomplete when people typed it. “The #FreeStacy tag would be in the US top 10 now, but Twitter has scrubbed it,” wrote Popehat’s Patrick on Twitter.

…

If Twitter wants to go full-on Ministry of Truth, it can. But its user have the right to raise hell about it—to call out the platform for punishing dissident alt-right figures while empowering their adversaries. I’m not convinced that’s what’s happening, but the exclusion of Robert Stacy McCain—a mere 10 days after the Trust and Safety council came into existence—is cause for concern.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, responds to a critic.

Commenting on a Facebook post of mine – a post in which I ridicule arrogant people who distrust individuals to make their own private choices – you say “What you want, and what’s good for you, are often not the same thing. We are all human, after all.”  True.  But it’s also true that what others want for you, and what’s good for you, are even more often not the same thing.  None of us is a god, after all.

Contrary to the presumptions of most behavioral economists and other nanny-staters, the fact that Jones and Smith are sometimes deficient when choosing for themselves in the market does not make them less deficient when choosing for others in the voting booth or in some government office complex.

That’s the practical case against the Nanny State.

One more point: even if I’m terrible at making choices in my own best interest, a fundamental truth is that I own me.  No one else owns me.  No one has a moral right to tell me what to do as regards my own well-being.  I, like any other self-respecting person, would much prefer even to ruin my life if I do so through my own choices than to be to be saddled, bridled, and steered, as if I were a mindless animal, by some pretentious do-gooder to his or her notion of utopia.

And that’s the moral case.

Well done both.

Read it.

Given the choice between Trump and Apple, I pick Apple.

Perhaps Tim Cook ought to run for President. He’s made more money for Apple than Trump has for Trump, and he doesn’t have a fake hairdo.

My, what a surprise!

The “Strange New Respect” Award is the invention of Tom Bethell, who noted decades ago how liberals would always start praising a conservative or Republican who showed signs of moderation, Bob Dole being a great example. “New respect”—a phrase you’d actually see in the media—was a euphemism for “moved to the left.”

It is a totem of insincere liberalism, a coy way of attacking present-day conservatives. My corollary is that for liberals, the only good conservative is a dead conservative. Back in the 1960s, William F. Buckley was attacked as a fascist or worse, and dismissed as a retrograde force. Today, of course, liberals call him a “national treasure,” and bemoan that today’s conservatism isn’t more like Buckley. (This is Sam Tanenhaus’s favorite hobby horse.)

Ditto for Dwight Eisenhower, whom liberals regarded in his time as an unenlightened dummy, until some liberals decided he was okay after all—actually pretty good in fact—a discovery that coincided with the need to find every way possible way to trash Richard Nixon. Who, come to think about it, many liberals nowadays say as actually pretty good if it wasn’t for that whole Watergate thing.

Apparently Trump makes some of them wish to return to the days of George W. Bush. I am reminded of what Malcolm X said about Martin Luther King: ‘They talk to him because the alternative is to talk to me.’ So I guess Donald Trump is the Malcolm X of the Republican Party.

Which sort of make sense if you think about it….

Steven Hayward scratches his head.

The study, by UMass/Amherst economics professor Gerald Friedman, asserts that median income would soar by more than $22,000, 26 million jobs would be created and unemployment would fall to 3.8 percent. And that’s just from Sanders’s Medicare-for-All proposal alone. Imagine what going Full-Venezuela could do! The Sanders campaign pounced on this result, declaring it to be “outstanding work.”

A couple of observations before we enjoy the Democratic panic. First, I think we can safely assume that Prof. Gerald Friedman is no relation to Milton Friedman. I’m not even going to check it out. Second, every UMass/Amherst economics student who took courses from Friedman should demand a tuition refund immediately. Third, seriously Amherst? Would you hire a flat-earther for your geography department? Why would you hire one for your economics department?

A Digital, 3D Printed Sundial Whose Precise Holes Cast a Shadow Displaying the Current Time

Masterpan. Unfortunately it’s aluminum and so won’t work with an induction cooktop.

MiniBrew home beer maker. If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Gittler guitar. Simply amazing.

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All across Europe, the cover-up is unravelling. For ideological reasons, and to a lesser degree due to misguided economic theories, Western Europe’s elites have pretended that importing millions of Muslims from countries ranging from Morocco to Afghanistan raises no issues and creates no problems. That this is untrue has been obvious for a long time, starting with the Turkish “guest workers” who never leave. But recent events have ripped the lid off the pretense that has dominated European discourse about immigration for many years.

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An 18-year-old girl reportedly kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend has been safely rescued by police after her mother tracked her location using Find My iPhone. CNBC reports that the victim was found more than 150 miles away from home.

…

Police say that the victim was found bound and gagged in a car in a McDonald’s parking lot. They named the kidnapping suspect as 18-year-old Joseph Boller, whose bail has been set at $150,000.

Moral: Use iPhone. It’s for the children.

(Full disclosure: I own Apple stock. Ka-ching!)

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When I told friends I was eating nothing but fast food for a week, most immediately thought of the (in)famous Morgan Spurlock documentary “Super Size Me.”

No, I would respond. I’m eating healthy.

As fast-food chains increasingly try to appeal to health-conscious Americans, supposedly nutritious items are popping up on menus more and more.

Once one gets away from the left-wing poseurs and food-snobs who love every century but this one and every country but their own, one finds that the modern world isn’t so bad after all.

When I told friends I was eating nothing but fast food for a week, most immediately thought of the (in)famous Morgan Spurlock documentary “Super Size Me.”

No, I would respond. I’m eating healthy.

As fast-food chains increasingly try to appeal to health-conscious Americans, supposedly nutritious items are popping up on menus more and more.

Businesses respond to their customers. If people want ‘healthy’ food, they will buy healthy food, and businesses will try to provide it for them.

Read it.

Freedom of speech? We don’t need no stinkin’ freedom of speech….