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Yeah, the name ‘Ebru Umar’ sure says ‘Dutch’ to me….

A Dutch journalist has been detained for questioning in Turkey after allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ebru Umar, a columnist for the Dutch Metro newspaper was arrested on Saturday soon after posting a tweet saying police were at her door at around 11pm Turkish time.

She later tweeted that she was being taken to a police station in Kusadasi.

Freedom of speech is not a Muslim value.

Read it.

Tennessee Legislature votes to cut all state funds for office that promotes diversity at state’s flagship university, where students walked out of class to oppose the legislation.

I suspect that rigidly controlled double-blind tests will discern that the academic achievement of those who walked out of class doesn’t not differ significantly from that of those who stayed in class.

I have always thought that any real scholar is delighted when students walk out of class, and is barely restraining himself from saying to the half dozen or so students remaining, ‘Great! The dead wood has been flushed away. You remnant are obviously here to learn so let’s get to it!’

Read it.

It’s a Blue state, so chances are pretty good.

“Racizm in the air.” “Don’t breathe, God.” “White supremacy iz a disease.” “Fuck the Police.” “The devil iz a white man.”

Those are some of the spraypainted messages that have greeted students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison over the last six months. Recently, campus police arrested the student suspected of the vandalism. The 21-year-old has yet to be formally charged.

Police said they had trouble apprehending the black, male suspect — so they had nabbed him during his black visual culture class last week. A University of Wisconsin Police Department officer entered his classroom and asked him into the hallway, according to Chancellor Rebecca Blank.

I suspect that if you automatically arrested anyone who signed up for a course called ‘black visual culture’ the crime rate in the area would drop and the average IQ on campus would rise. But that’s just a surmise on my part.

The Guardian reveals – I’m shocked, shocked I tell you — that Shakespeare was a sexist racist bigot homophobe who probably voted Republican.

Only 17% of speeches in Shakespeare’s plays are by women

Shakespeare may have been widely championed as a visionary, but this description can’t be applied to his record on gender equality. On average men are given 81% of speeches, while 17% go to women and the rest are made up of unknowns or mixed groups, according to Open Source Shakespeare. Women tend to come off worst in his tragedies: Timon of Athens features just nine speeches by women, compared with 725 by men. And yet the population of Shakespeare’s England was roughly 53.5% male and 46.5% female. “It’s been rough on women actors with a passion for Shakespeare these 400 years,” says Tina Packer, the actor and artistic director at Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts.

Somehow I can’t help but feel that this sort of misses the point. But I feel that way a lot these days.

Kyrie

Watch it.

A fascinating detective story.

Read it.

A town in the US state of Colorado has been left without any police after the entire department quit in one day.

The resignation of police marshal Tim Bradley prompted the town’s three other volunteer officers to do the same – leaving nearby El Paso County and Teller County sheriff’s offices to look after the town of Green Mountain Falls.

Residents were apparently offered no explanation for the sudden departure of their police force, although Fox News reported an anonymous source as saying the police were unhappy with the newly elected mayor Jane Newberry. Their resignations happened just a day before she took office.

I don’t want to seem insensitive, but this strikes me as very American.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, waxes philosophical.

One of the many lovely benefits of the mass prosperity made possible by free-market innovationism is that it unleashes the better angels within us – angels that encourage us to turn some, and sometimes much, of our time and individual attentions toward helping others.  The mother of children dying of diarrhea or near starvation isn’t much interested in helping strangers.  In contrast, the mother of children healthy and well-fed has the luxury of being able to care about strangers.

But this praiseworthy human moral sentiment can, and often does, backfire.  Wealthy people – by which I mean people healthy, well-fed, well-clothed, well-shod, well-housed, and well-leisured and literate – are often deformed by their better angels into saviors.  Busybodies.  Officious do-gooders.  Arrogant meddlers.  Tyrants seeking as personal payoff not crass material gain but the perverted satisfaction of lording it over other people for what these tyrants sincerely believe to be the good of these other people.

In other words, Democrats.

Ho-Mi Korean Hand Tool.

Survival tube. I am not making this up.

Read it.

A steady push toward mechanization in Maine’s blueberry industry is reducing the number of migrant farmers who travel to the state to rake the crop, which is vitally important to the state’s economy, state officials and industry leaders said. Maine’s blueberry harvest attracted more than 5,000 migrant farmers 10 years ago and it’s down to about 1,500 today, said David Yarborough, a University of Maine professor of horticulture.

I doubt that the machines are making $15 an hour.

Read it.

Construction workers on some sites are getting new, non-union help. SAM – short for semi-automated mason – is a robotic bricklayer being used to increase productivity as it works with human masons.

SAM and a human mason work together. SAM repetitively lays bricks, leaving the detailed finishing touches to the mason.
In this human-robot team, the robot is responsible for the more rote tasks: picking up bricks, applying mortar, and placing them in their designated location. A human handles the more nuanced activities, like setting up the worksite, laying bricks in tricky areas, such as corners, and handling aesthetic details, like cleaning up excess mortar.

Even in completing repetitive tasks, SAM still has to be fairly adaptable. It’s able to complete precise and level work while mounted on a scaffold that sways slightly in the wind. The robot can correct for the differences between theoretical building specifications and what’s actually on site, says Scott Peters, cofounder of Construction Robotics, a company based in Victor, New York, that designed SAM as its debut product.

Let me guess — it doesn’t get $15 an hour, or benefits. Nor does it take lunch breaks, vacation, or call in sick.

Read it.

Who’s Trump gonna call?

Read it.

An American University faculty member attempted to make life difficult for journalists covering a campus protest last night, but her plan went awry after she called the police.

The Washington Examiner’s Ashe Schow was at AU last night reporting on Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopolous’ visit to campus. Yiannopoulos is a deliberately controversial figure, and his presence on campus prompted a student protest.

A female faculty member—now dubbed Melissa Click 2.0–tried to interfere, telling Schow and her camera crew that they were required to accompany her inside. They had to follow “certain regulations that the university is guided by” because AU is providing “a safe space for everybody who works or studies on this campus,” she claimed.

After the faculty member realized Schow’s group was recording her, she became hostile. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Seriously, I’m calling the police.”

The police didn’t immediately respond to her call. Later, when the cops did appear, the faculty member expected them to escort the journalists off campus. Instead, they wanted to have a chat with the faculty member, according to Breitbart News.

“The police came over and she thought they were going to save her but actually they escorted HER away,” Schow wrote on Twitter.

‘Progressives’ think that the instruments of state oppression are now in their hands, but apparently the Revolutions hasn’t fully completed yet.

Richard Fernandez dishes out some inconvenient truth.

… the basic laws of institutional behavior remain, one of the most important is that organizations can only do what is in their repertoire. Bureaucracies are like jukeboxes.  They can’t play what’s not on the list.  One of the most striking examples of this is the scene in the 1970s movie, Five Easy Pieces. in which the character played by Jack Nicholson unsuccessfully tries to order breakfast items in a diner which are scattered in different parts of the menu.  He simply couldn’t get a “plain omelette. No potatoes. Tomatoes, instead”.

In the old days the phrase for this was “just following orders”.  Today the same constraints will apply to the EU’s response to  refugee/migrant crisis.  Even though logic dictates that the only long term policy alternative to absorbing the MENA population  is helping them make their countries “habitable” again by reforming its Human Terrain, this option is not on the menu.

The Eurocrats have looked in the handbook and there’s no entry under “crisis” for effecting the transformation the Allies did to Germany 70 years ago —  described by Dwight Eisenhower in his book Crusade in Europe. The new EU handbook says “Crusades” are strictly forbidden and are to be regarded as “cultural chauvinism” and “evil”.

That’s out so the EU will give you something else. Like the waitress in Five Easy Pieces,  it can provide items from a wide selection of welfare products, even if it’s not what anybody needs or wants.   Is ISIS blowing up Palmyra?  “We can provide you resettlement.”  Are they beheading the sheiks in Anbar?  “We can provide you with public housing.”  Is Saudi Arabia now invading Yemen and vice versa?  “We can point you to the nearest transgender bathroom.”

Read it.

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” says an ancient legal nostrum.

The reason for it is simple enough: If ignorance could excuse any crime, then ignorance might excuse every crime. Rather than impose on the legal system the obligation to prove a defendant’s knowledge of the law — with the defendant’s incentive running in the opposite direction, toward ignorance of the law — the legal system assigns to itself no obligation in this regard. Upon which defendants find that they have an enormous incentive to know what the law is and to comport themselves accordingly.

Sounds great, but no — this is a rationalization made up after the fact. The real reason the ‘ancient legal nostrum’ came about is that it originated in a time where ‘the law’ was simply what every rational person would or wouldn’t do; the whole concept of ‘the common law’ is of a ‘law’ to which everyone is subject because it just made ‘common’ sense. Don’t kill or maim people, don’t rape, don’t burn down people’s houses, don’t steal their stuff — all of these were things that every sensible person would understand were ‘no-no’s. It was only later, when ‘law’ became a thing of legislatures rather than ordinary life that this self-serving statist ‘nostrum’ became popular. Indeed, that interpretation became so popular (especially with those charged with enforcing such ‘laws’) that people (including lawyers) are scarcely aware that there is any alternative.

Read it.

Except, of course, that it isn’t government money, it’s taxpayer money, i.e. our money.

Read it.

The social justice warriors aren’t going to like this one bit.

Quick! Send in the Grief Counselors!

Read it.

Read it.

Since 2006, the IRS has overseen an annual tax gap—the shortfall between taxes owed and collected—of about $385 billion, government analysts say. And according to an April report, the agency has not implemented 70 of 112 actions identified by the Government Accountability Office to close that loop.

In 2009, though, the IRS purchased a “cell-site simulator,” more commonly known as Stingray technology. And since November, the agency has been trying to buy another of the devices.

Like something from a spy movie, a Stingray device mimics a cellphone tower, tricking all mobile phones in an area into revealing their location and numbers. Authorities can deploy the powerful technology to tag and track an individual’s location in real time.

…

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says the IRS uses its Stingray to hunt down fraudsters and stop money laundering. The agency’s use of the devices remained a secret until an October report in the Guardian.

Hey, if we need more money, the government can just print more. The important part is stepping on these bothersome enemies of the state.

Bluebird of Bitterness tells the tale.

On Monday, a florist went to a barbershop for a haircut. But when he tried to pay the barber, the barber said, “I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.”

When the barber went to open his shop on Tuesday, he found a thank-you card and a dozen roses waiting for him at the door.

Later that day, a baker came in for a haircut, and when he tried to pay the barber, the barber again said, “I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.”

On Wednesday morning when the barber went to open his shop, he found a thank-you card and a dozen cupcakes waiting for him at the door.

Later that day, an English professor came in for a haircut, and when he tried to pay the barber, the barber again said, “I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.”

On Thursday morning when the barber went to open his shop, he found a thank-you card and a dozen books waiting for him.

Later that day, a congressman came in for a haircut, and when he tried to pay the barber, the barber again said, “I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.”

On Friday morning when the barber went to open his shop, there were a dozen congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.

Read it.

Humans have been using euphemisms ever since Adam first “knew” Eve. In politics especially, obfuscating and twisting the meaning of words has been going on forever. But today’s debates aren’t only littered with rhetorical distortions; in some ways, many of Democrats’ most potent arguments are built on corrupt language.

Read it.

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the “composted” body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

Hey, man, it’s like organic.

(Is it just me, or does he look like a Bernie Sanders supporter?)

Isis documents leak reveals profile of average militant as young, well-educated but with only ‘basic’ knowledge of Islamic law

Video Captures Palestinians Hailing Jerusalem Bomber

Isis increasing co-operation with Boko Haram – the ‘world’s most horrific terrorist group’

Boko Haram ‘strapping bombs to birds’ as Isis-affiliated group continues bloody insurgency in Africa

Islamic face veil to be banned in Latvia despite being worn by just three women in entire country

Terror victims win Supreme Court judgment against Iran

Family of Benghazi victim to receive $400G after CIA expands benefit program

Syria opposition figure says Assad has ‘buried’ cease-fire

The Arab Spring reported and misreported: foreign intervention in Libya and the last days of Gaddafi

Syria conflict: 500 wounded people in need of ‘life-saving medical treatment’ evacuated from besieged towns

Report: German Refugee Program Money Given to Hizballah Operatives. My, what a surprise.

‘Up to 500 dead’ in refugee boat sinking, survivors tell UN investigators

Kabul attack: Death toll from Taliban bombing rises to 64 as terrorist group threatens more attacks on ‘invaders’

Report: Terrorists plotting summer attack on European tourist beaches

Roman arch destroyed by ISIS in Syria was recreated using 3D technology

Mass graves discovered in former Isis-controlled Iraqi city of Ramadi. My, what a surprise.

NATO believes there is ‘justified concern’ Isis will carry out nuclear attack in Europe. They would if they could.

UK prisons chief backs conservative Muslim sect who call non-Muslim women ‘repulsive’

British jets could bomb Isis fighters in Libya, UK Government says

Isis and Italy’s mafia ‘working together’ to smuggle cannabis through North Africa into Europe

Syrian girl campaigns against child marriage from her refugee camp in Jordan

Kabul bombing: At least 28 people killed and more than 300 injured in Taliban suicide attack on security agency

Muslim prison chaplains ‘encouraging murder of non-believers’. My, what a surprise.

Jerusalem bus bombing wounds more than 20; police call it terror

South Sudan attackers kill more than 140 at Ethiopia border, official says

Once seen as White House triumph, new nation of South Sudan descends into war, misery

Palestinians Praise Jerusalem Bus Bombing Targeting Israelis. Of course they do.

Underground Hamas Tunnels Continue to Threaten Israeli Civilians

Two Turkish youths detained after accosting US soldier at air base

ISIS revenue down 30 percent as its territory shrinks, report claims

In Wake Of Increasing Anti-Semitic Attacks, More Jews Flee France

Anti-Isis coalition ‘preparing to launch final assault on Raqqa stronghold’, US official says

Syria conflict: Turkish ultra-nationalist suspected of killing Russian pilot may have ties to his country’s ‘deep state’

South Sudan attackers kill more than 140 at Ethiopia border, official says

Chaos in Libya: The Rising ISIS Threat to Europe

Turkish border forces ‘fire live rounds at Syrian refugees’ fleeing Isis fighting

Peshmerga troops running on empty in fight against ISIS

At least 12 killed in joint US-Afghan raid targeting suspected Al Qaeda member

Gavin McInnes does stupid stuff so you don’t have to.

I went to a Bernie Sanders rally dressed as a liberal douche and it went exactly as expected. It was in Washington Square Park next to NYU and there were about 27,000 students, hipsters, and Ben & Jerry’s boomers there with pamphlets and buttons and kooky sunglasses. As with the Trump rallies, the audience skewed male, but unlike the Trump rallies, there did not appear to be one person there who was not retarded. “Fuck Hillary,” a towering hipster told me. “She started Bengali.”

And that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Berni’s ‘base’.

Millionaires pay pretty damn close to 50% right now. I know I do. The top 20% earners in America pay 80% of the income tax. You can try to squeeze more out of them, but when you tax something, you get less of it. Besides, as Bill Whittle has pointed out, the government is presently spending $10B a day. You could take 100% of Bill Gates’ AND Warren Buffet’s money and you’d cover just over a week of government spending. Now you’re out Gates and Buffet and all the jobs they create. You’ve also discouraged anyone else from following in their footsteps. Way to go, Bernie Bros.

Read it.

One of the most sinister developments of our time is the Left’s use of both criminal investigation and mob harassment to suppress dissent. An outrageous instance of this trend is the effort by 20 Democratic state Attorneys General to investigate ExxonMobil and others for criminal “fraud,” i.e., carrying out research that doesn’t support the hysterical exaggerations of the Climatistas.

One of the leaders of this attempt to suppress scientific debate is California’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris. She has initiated a purported investigation into “whether Exxon Mobil Corp. repeatedly lied to the public and its shareholders about the risk to its business from climate change — and whether such actions could amount to securities fraud and violations of environmental laws.”

Kamala Harris is running for the Senate. As part of her campaign, she has sought press coverage of her attacks on “dark money,” i.e., money the Democrats don’t control. Harris has demanded that conservative 501(c)(3) organizations file their federal IRS Form 990s, including Schedule B, which identifies donors, with her office. Her obvious intent was either to publicize the names of donors, which are confidential under federal law, so that they could be threatened by liberals, or else to shut them up herself through bogus investigations.

Americans For Prosperity brought an action in federal court, seeking an injunction barring Harris from seeking Schedule B to its Form 990. Today, following a full trial on the merits, Federal Judge Manuel Real granted AFP’s motion and issued a permanent injunction against the Attorney General.

Read it.

In recent years, people moving to Texas from other states — rather than from other countries — have played a key role in the state’s population growth, according to a new analysis by the Office of the State Demographer. From 2005 to 2013, an estimated 5.9 million people moved to Texas, and 4.8 million of those came from one of the other 49 states.

Read it.

Why do so many people continue to pursue doctorates?

They don’t know what else to do, and money is easy to come by, thanks to Uncle Sam.

Getting a Ph.D. has always been a long haul. Despite calls for reform, the time spent in graduate programs hasn’t declined significantly in the past decade. In 2014, students spent eight years on average in graduate school programs to earn a Ph.D. in the social sciences, for example. It takes nine years to get one in the humanities, seven for science fields and engineering, and 12 for education, according to NSF. In other words, Ph.D.s are typically nearing or in their 30s by the time they begin their careers. Many of their friends have probably already banked a decade’s worth of retirement money in a 401K account; some may have already put a down payment on a small town house.

But … but … but … that would mean actually going out and getting a job!

Why hasn’t all this information helped winnow down the ranks of aspiring professors—why hasn’t it proved to be an effective Ph.D. prophylactic? Are people risking so much in the hopes of getting a cushy job with a six-figure salary and no teaching requirements? Is it because academia is a cult that makes otherwise sane people believe that there is no life outside of the university? Are graduate programs failing to inform their students about the realities of the job market? There are no answers to those questions in the charts and graphs from the NSF.

Read it.

Tubman, who will replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, is most known to Americans for leading hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But she also played a crucial and pioneering role in the Civil War.

In addition to being the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military expedition, Tubman—whom John Brown called “General Tubman”—was a Union army spy and recruiter.

Read it.

The 17^th annual White Privilege Conference in Philadelphia devolved into a precious snowflake whinefest when attendees noted that the conference was too white. No, I’m not kidding. To make things more absurd, a speaker, who was Caucasian, spoke over his allotted time, an offense that was nothing more than an exercise in white supremacy.

Read it.

After years of complaining that America’s paper money featured only dead white guys, a lot of folks on the Left are in a snit that Harriet Tubman is going to replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the twenty-dollar bill. You can practically hear them: “We didn’t mean a gun-toting, Bible-believing Republican black woman! We meant Angela Davis!

Of course, if anyone in the Obama administration knew any history, I’m sure they would have picked Rosa Parks (or Rosa Luxemburg). But they don’t. Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

A 44-year-old woman accused of fabricating a rape claim was recently ordered to serve two years of probation and complete 100 hours of community service.  Prosecutors say data pulled from her Fitbit wristband provided them with crucial evidence contradicting her claims.

Oops.

Read it.

Last summer, F-35 program officer Lt. Gen. Bogdan said the F-35’s logistics system was “the brains and blood of operating this weapons system.” Despite many fixes, the aircraft’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) is so flawed that government auditors believe the computer system may not be deployable. These problems may also delay the Air Force’s declaration of Initial Operational Capability.  And now, in a surprising twist, General Bogdan is saying ALIS is not really critical after all, insisting the F-35 can fly without it for 30 days.

F-35 supporters enjoy telling people how the plane is a “flying computer,” as if that alone makes it worth the hundreds of billions of dollars spent so far. Lockheed Martin goes one step farther, calling it a “supercomputer” in its own promotional materials. ALIS is the ground-based computer system meant to diagnose mechanical problems, order and track replacement parts, and guide maintenance crews through repairs. It also allows pilots to plan missions and later review their performance. At least, it’s supposed to do all of those things. So far, the software has been so flawed that maintenance crews have had to resort to time-consuming workarounds. In one instance, maintainers even had to manually burn data onto CDs and drive off base to send the massive files across a civilian WiFi network.

The plane is absolutely dependent on computer technology and millions of lines of software code to operate. So the fact that ALIS is years behind schedule and plagued with bugs is particularly disturbing. The Government Accountability Office has now released a report] confirming POGO’s earlier reporting]: flaws in ALIS can ground the entire fleet.

More evidence that the F-35 is a flying piece of shit.

Read it.

On March 22, for example, the Nafir al Aqsa (Mobilizing for Al-Aqsa) Campaign “to equip the mujahidin of Beit al Maqdis [Jerusalem],” posted (and suspended in the past day) a solicitation for funding under the Twitter handle @Nafeer_aqsa100. It cites a hadith – a saying attributed to Islam’s prophet Muhammad – that giving money to those waging jihad is as good as doing it yourself.

Read it.

Hamed Abdel-Samad is an Egyptian-German author and an apostate from Islam who lives under a death fatwa for his criticism of his former faith. Rembrandt Clancy has translated and subtitled an interview with Mr. Abdel-Samad that aired yesterday in Germany. The translator includes an introduction, and also a transcript of the video.

Read it.

Switzerland has suspended the citizenship applications for the family of two Muslim teenagers, after they refused to shake hands with their female teachers.

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Yesterday Austin native Jordan Brown, an openly gay pastor claimed that his local Whole Foods deliberately wrote a gay slur on a cake he ordered. According to his version of things, he did not see it until he got to the car.

Which is an absurd story. Here’s the cake, allegedly in the original package:

The whole point of the transparent top is so that the customer can verify that what he asked for is what was produced. To suggest that anybody would believe that a customer would pick up the cake, pay for it, and then get home without noticing this, just beggars belief.

When Brown contacted Whole Foods, the employee was extremely apologetic, but then claimed that the bakery employee in question did not write the slur. Furious, Brown decided to stage a dramatic performance on the Internet, and hold a news conference, claiming that the anti-gay slur was akin to being called the n-word. The Twitter caption of the infamous cake read: “This is not the cake I ordered, @WholeFoods, and I am offended on behalf of myself & the entire #LGBTQ community.” Brown has retained an attorney and is in the process of suing Whole Foods for discriminatory practices.

…

It didn’t take long for Internet commenters to raise doubts about this incident; many have pointed out that the icing on the top portion of the cake and the bottom where the slur is allegedly written have two different handwritings and colors. Another curious detail is that the worlds “Love Wins” are written at the top of the cake, instead of across the center like most lettering, leaving space in the middle for someone to add something later if they wished. There are no witnesses who can corroborate Brown’s story.

This is a black gay activist running a ‘discrimination’ hoax in hopes that a big corporation won’t want bad publicity and so will be willing to pay him off — the sort of scam on which Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have build their careers.

Unfortunately for him, he picked the wrong target.

Whole Foods emphatically denies this claim, releasing a statement that they produced the cake exactly as Brown wished. Later that day, Whole Foods declared their intent to pursue legal action against him. In a few short hours, Brown went from being a victim of institutional abuse to a possible perpetrator of a hoax for media attention. While there is no evidence of the latter yet, with no definitive proof of anything, this is likely going to turn into a round of he-said-he-said until someone can no longer afford the legal fees, and by then the news cycle will have moved on.

With any luck, he will find that the dogs he let out will turn and rend himself.

This sort of stunt is not at all new in the social justice world. A young black gay pastor in Austin may feel he’s not being noticed enough for his progressivism and adds persecution to gain his moment in the spotlight. After all, if you’re oppressed, and there are no cameras, did it really happen? The video showing Brown’s purchase of the cake shows that the label is on the top of the cake box, not on the side as Brown demonstrates in his own personal video. Labels are very easy to move. Even the wording on the tweet rings false. “I am offended for myself and the entire LGBT community” seems scripted and unemotional. I can say from personal experience that when you’re called a slur, you’re not thinking about your community in that moment. You’re thinking about yourself. Your day is ruined and you’re angry. You’re too rattled to have a press conference and lawsuit. And how was he able to mobilize an attorney and the press so quickly? Things moved a little bit too fast in Brown’s favor.

Read it.

Liberals of a certain stripe—those who talk up “soft power” and diplomacy and disdain militarism—oppose efforts by America to impose its will by force abroad. “There are no easy or magical solutions,” as Bernie Sanders says in the “War and Peace” section of his campaign website. Yet he and those of his persuasion are ceaselessly enthusiastic about imposing their will by force at home, through the endless expansion of government power and control.

Wages too low? Force employers to pay more.

Too many uninsured? Force Americans to buy coverage.

Not enough parental leave? Force companies to provide it.

Rich people speaking too freely about politics? Rewrite the First Amendment so you can stop them.

A horrific school shooting? Take guns away from people who didn’t do it.

People drinking too much soda? Ban big servings or tax the stuff.

Fantasy sports gambling getting too popular? Shut it down.

The list could run on for pages. Except for abortion, there seems to be nothing in America for which the progressive answer is not “more government”—their own magical solution to everything.

Andrew Grimson has an interesting take on the subject.

The monarchy is one of the greatest, though least observed, checks on arbitrary power. It occupies the space a dictator would need to occupy.

Because it is unthinkable in Britain to push the monarch aside, tyranny itself becomes unthinkable. In countries where for understandable reasons the monarchy was overthrown – France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Germany in 1918 – tyranny was not unthinkable.

…

The US is a disguised monarchy. The president promises to defend the people against the scoundrels in Washington, and having failed to do so, is replaced by someone else who promises to do the same thing.

…

In modern times, our monarchs have served the public by going above politics, and becoming instead a kind of hereditary umpire.

The Queen plays this role with exceptional and unwearying conscientiousness. She does not have to declare any Prime Minister out: the public elect MPs who do that for her.

But she stops the politicians, few if any of whom remain popular for long, from getting above themselves, and obliges even a convinced republican such as Jeremy Corbyn to play by the rules.

Read it.

I wouldn’t have noticed the difference if it weren’t for my affection for unusual pens, which brought me to my first good fountain pen. A lifetime writing with the ballpoint and minor variations on the concept (gel pens, rollerballs) left me unprepared for how completely different a fountain pen would feel. Its thin ink immediately leaves a mark on paper with even the slightest, pressure-free touch to the surface. My writing suddenly grew extra lines, appearing between what used to be separate pen strokes. My hand, trained by the ballpoint, expected that lessening the pressure from the pen was enough to stop writing, but I found I had to lift it clear off the paper entirely. Once I started to adjust to this change, however, it felt like a godsend; a less-firm press on the page also meant less strain on my hand.

Modern roller-ball and gel pens work the same way as fountain pens (I was raised with fountain pens and still use them on occasion); don’t know what this person is on about.

Read it.

Look beyond the de rigeur Voice of the Crust hipster-babble to the core of her argument.

Jaywalking was once a semi-derogatory term referring to country bumpkins, or ‘jays’, who inefficiently meandered around American cities; by the 1920s, the term was being used to transfer blame for accidents from motorists to pedestrians. Making jaywalking illegal gave the supremacy of mobility to those sitting behind combustion engines. Once upon a time, the public roads belonged to everyone. But since the ingenious invention of jaywalking we’ve battered pedestrianism in one of those silent culture wars where the only losers are ourselves.

Read it.

Researchers have demonstrated 3D printing of micron-scale optics with unprecedented performance and reproducibility. Their approach can be used to create almost any type of integrated optical element on a micron or smaller scale, which could help miniaturize instruments and devices used in applications from sensing to telecommunications.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all. Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all. Think of it as evolution in action.

Steve Sailer peeks behind the curtain.

With San Francisco being one of the epicenters of the environmental movement of the past half century, local homeowners are adept at using progressive verbiage for justifying keeping San Francisco in stasis. As a conservative, I rather admire the cleverness with which liberals have contrived to keep San Francisco physically looking much like it did in the past.

That’s why I always say that soi-disant ‘progressives’ ought to be called regressives instead.

Of course, most of the people denouncing other people for being white and wanting to live in San Francisco are white San Franciscans themselves.

Indeed, that’s the case almost everywhere.

Paradoxically, under its current antidevelopment ideology, San Francisco—like Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, and unlike almost all the rest of the country—is becoming more white. In 1990, young people in San Francisco were only 22 percent white, but by 2014 they were up to 33 percent white. And the future looks even whiter.

The dirty little secret of these hipster utopias.

In fact, this is a broad pattern. We see exactly the same incentives at work with elite colleges. While Arizona State and Florida International have added capacity for tens of thousands of additional undergraduates, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale have barely added any undergrads, even as demand soars. Stanford, for example, kept its class size virtually unchanged for over three decades despite having a 13-square-mile campus, the majority of it undeveloped open land.

To quote W. S. Gilbert, ‘When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.’

Read it.

Over the weekend, President Obama met at the White House with some rappers to get their ideas on the pressing criminal justice issues of the day. During the meeting, one of the deep thinkers had his ankle bracelet go off. It turns out that rapper Ricky Ross is on $2,000,000 bond for kidnapping and pistol whipping his house contractor.

Imagine the outcry if Reagan or Bush had invited such a person to the White House.

Raymond Ibrahim lays out some inconvenient truth.

In the ongoing struggle between Islam and the West, one civilization has the will to triumph, but not the way; the other has the way to triumph, but not the will.

Some who dread Islam do not seem to understand this. They think that Islam is an irresistible force to be reckoned with; they see Muslim migrants as hordes of violent men invading Europe; they call on Western men to make a stand, resist the onslaught, save their women and children.

When only one side in a war is actually fighting, guess who wins?