Biden will end Covid vaccine mandates for federal workers and international travelers on May 11  What took them so long?

DHS to lift Covid vaccine requirement for non-US travelers (CNN) What took them so long?

Texas AG to Probe Big Pharma on COVID-19 Vaccines

Fauci, Weingarten Denials ‘Slap in the Face’ to Parents

Woke Bar Loses Customers Defending Bud Light Transgender Ad Campaign

Kansas Becomes 1st State To Pass Law Defining Gender As A Person’s Sex At Birth

Colorado: 27 Democrats Vote Against Making Flashing Kids A Felony

Report: Vice Media Group Likely Heading Into Bankruptcy

‘We’re Not Doing That Here,’ Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Says of DEI Instruction

In A World First, California Bans New Diesel Truck Sales From 2036

Dem Rep Sold Stock in Collapsing Bank and Picked Up JPMorgan Shares Right Before Acquisition, Disclosures Show

Non-Law Enforcement Agencies Like IRS and EPA Spend Billions on Guns and Ammo, Watchdog Says

House Democrats Move to Force a Debt-Limit Increase as Default Date Looms (N.Y. Times) How dare you try to contain our spending!

Vermont allows out-of-staters to use assisted suicide law (Associated Press)

WATCH: Bud Light Tries To Win Back ‘Fratty’ Image With Country Music Ad

Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan resigns (The Oregonian) Democrats: Crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Bud Light sales continue to plummet after transgender marketing controversy (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Coca-Cola shareholders snub ‘woke’ suggestions

How Does Identity Politics Work if You Can Change Your Identity?

Brussels Backs Forced Buyouts of Dutch Farmers

E. Jean Carroll takes stand in Trump rape allegation case for a third day (CNN)

Trump’s Lawyers Go After E. Jean Carroll’s ‘Fabulous’ Life (Daily Beast)

Trump attorney seeks mistrial in E. Jean Carroll civil rape trial (MSNBC)

Twitter Users Slam CNN For Scheduling Donald Trump ‘Town Hall’ Meeting (Huffington Post)

Trump Lawyers: Let Him Discuss Hush Money Evidence

Trump’s Rape Trial Does Not Appear to Be Going as Well as His Lawyer Had Hoped (Vanity Fair)

Here’s how right-wing media shields Trump from his scandals (Washington Post)  Philip Bump is Jennifer Ruben’s understudy at the WaPo.

Texas governor goes out of his way to say Texas shooting victims were ‘illegal immigrants’ (MSNBC) ‘Out of his way’? There’s no evidence that this was ‘out of his way”; this is just a gratuitous smear.

Kansas teacher rips district for diversity training amid teacher shortage: ‘Repeated white shaming’ (Fox)

Republicans Fine With Supreme Court Justices Having No Formal Code Of Ethics (Huffington Post) As were Democrats, before the witch-hunt started.

Copenhagen mayor to California’s ‘Danish Capital’: Stop acting homophobic (L.A.Times)

Minnesota lawmaker Sen. Bahr is shirtless during Zoom meeting: Video  Cal is a Republican, of course; nobody would mention it if he were a Democrat.

2 Wisconsin Republicans want 14-year-olds to be allowed to serve alcohol in restaurants (Insider) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH…..

2024 Presidential Candidate Wants To ‘Shut Down The FBI,’ Replace It

MSNBC’s Ruhle Claims A Lot of Culture Wars Made Up By GOP

What Is a Woman? Many Philosophers Know, But Aren’t Allowed to Say

Who paid for Ron DeSantis’ trip overseas? No one will say. (Politico)

What the Supreme Court Does in the Shadows (The Atlantic)

Megyn Kelly Warns Tucker: Fox Trying to Destroy You

The Next Front in the GOP’s War on Women: No-Fault Divorce (Rolling Stone)

Tucker Carlson’s creepy behind-the-scenes comments (Media Matters for America)

The aggrieved Justice Alito points fingers but offers no proof (Washington P0st) Ruth Marcus needs to learn how to read. Alito pointed no fingers, precisely because he doesn’t have the proof to do so. He already said that.

‘Disgraceful’: GOP Senators Accuse Dems of Threatening to Yank Supreme Court Justices’ Security Funding

CNNer: GOP Has ‘Gun’ Pointed at ‘Head of the Global Economy’

MSNBC: ‘Really Disturbing’ for GOP to Play Thomas ‘High-Tech Lynching’ Video

Woman arrested for allegedly throwing wine at Rep. Matt Gaetz (CNBC) But, of course, only Republicans indulge in political violence.

Soros Henchman Attacks NY Post for Exposing Billionaire’s Ties to Radical DAs

One Year Later: Dobbs Leak Led to Attacks on Justices, Pro-Lifers, Catholics

Black waiter forced to serve N-word spewing diners decked in Confederate flags: report (Raw Story) And of you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one. (Prediction: Just Another Hoax.)

Ex-officer Thao Convicted of Aiding George Floyd’s Killing

Black turnout dropped sharply in 2022 midterms, Census survey finds (Washington Post)

How Biden’s Plan to Penalize Responsible Homebuyers Could Ravage Retirement Savings by $31,000

Secretive Su: Biden Admin Won’t Release Records of ‘Transparent’ Labor Secretary Nominee Julie Su

Fallen Journalists Memorial Approved for D.C.’s National Mall

HHS: Two Hospitals That Denied Abortions Broke Law

Nets Skip Deadbeat Hunter Biden’s Court Appearance Over Child Support

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott promises to keep busing migrants to Democratic cities (NBC News)

Mark Morgan Calls Out Hypocrisy of Corporate Media’s Silence Over New Photos of ‘Kids in Cages’

Biden won’t move on debt ceiling terms even as he seeks to restart talks (Politico) So, for Biden, ‘talks’ means ‘do it my way’. Good to know.

Blinken Denies Role in Hunter Biden Laptop Russian Disinfo Letter

Biden “Punishes Responsibility” As New Mortgage Equity Program Begins

Washington Post Fact Checker Hurls ‘Bottomless Pinocchio’ at Biden on Deficit Reduction

All the President’s Islamists

Feds rethink warrantless search stats and – oh look, a huge drop in numbers

Muslim NJ mayor demands answers after being turned away from White House Eid celebration

GOP Senators: Hunter Emails Show Blinken Lied to Congress

DHS Expects Biden Admin to Deploy Military to Border After Title 42 Repeal: Internal Memo

Biden sends 1,500 troops to Mexico border for migrant surge (Associated Press)

WATCH: Karine Jean-Pierre Claims Border Crisis Is ‘90%’ Solved as Biden Deploys Troops

White House Announces Illegal Immigration Has Decreased 90 Percent Since They Redefined It  (Babylon Bee)

With Vice News Closing, White House Will Have To Lie To Public Directly  (Babylon Bee)

Congress Must Defund Nonprofits Aiding Biden’s Open-Border Operations

‘Difficult To Describe With Words’: CNN Reporter Stunned By Number of Illegal Immigrants In Texas City

Environmentalists Want the FTC Green Guides to Slam the Door on the ‘Chemical’ Recycling of Plastic Waste (Inside Climate Narrative News)

Oliver Stone’s new movie makes the case nuclear power is the obvious solution to climate change (CNBC)

Joe Biden Is Losing Young Climate Voters

Green Energy Industry Admits It Needs Cheap Chinese Goods To Survive

Bureau Can’t Dodge Differences in Temperature Data

Wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand coal mine

Austrian Authorities Side With Climate Protesters Over Disrupted Citizens

Environmentalists sue FAA over Starship fallout, claiming regulator is lost in space

The American Mind.

Typically, Americans can agree on what happened in our mass shootings. Our disagreements have centered on how to stop them. Owing to our biased media’s failure to imagine any other cause or solution, the debate usually boils down to a myopic focus on gun laws. But Nashville was different. The revelation that Hale was a biological woman who requested that people refer to her with he/him pronouns (and the later confirmation that she identified as a trans man) offered a twist. Years prior Hale had been a student at the Covenant School where she launched her attack, a detail that suggested her violence might have been a form of revenge.

These details ensured that the meaning of the massacre was contested. In the conflict over “trans rights,” we are witnessing the beginning of a war. I’m not talking about a metaphorical war or another cold war. It is now plain that wherever you stand in the debate over gender identity, literal acts of violence are unfolding across the nation. Sometimes the bullet is the instrument of destruction. Sometimes it’s the blade. Sometimes the bloodshed is self-inflicted. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s even elective. But the bloodshed isn’t allegorical. Both sides insist that lives are at stake, and they aren’t wrong.

The battle over trans identity is the first theater in what will be a much larger conflict over technology, the body, and the human essence. Whoever can secure the high ground in these early skirmishes will possess an enormous advantage in the fight for the future. Exploring the mutually exclusive accounts of the Nashville massacre offers a panorama of this bloody war. Although they agree on some basic facts, each account showcases a well-developed worldview and a network of deeply-held values.

New York Times.

As the government heads toward a possible default on its debt as soon as next month, officials are entertaining a legal theory that previous administrations ruled out.

…

Under the theory, the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees and others, even if Congress fails to lift the limit before the so-called X-date.

I’ve always thought that a federal debt limit was about as useless as a Balanced Budget Amendment. You can’t force people to make smart choices if they’re determined to make dumb choices, and that especially goes for politicians. The federal debt limit has never, not once, prevented the federal debt from growing by leaps and bounds–every time it comes close, the entire Ruling Class rises up to wring their hands about how Disaster Looms and we must Loosen the Belt. Republicans have attempted to use the debt limit to restrict government spending more times than I can count, and it never worked. Not once.

Tevi Troy.

Upon watching the first of five scheduled episodes, I can see the reason for the delay. I told my wife I planned to watch the show, so she gave the trailer a go. “I could only watch half of it,” she reported back. “It was so bad.” Nevertheless, I insisted that she try the show with me, given that I was obligated to watch it and give my perspective as a presidential historian. She watched the opening scene and stopped before the opening credits.

Those credits, however, reveal what’s going on here. We are all familiar with the normal disclaimer telling people that this was based on actual events, but names were changed to protect the innocent. This one helpfully explains that no names were changed, as everyone was found guilty.

The theme of White House Plumbers is that dangerous right-wing bumblers, enabled by Richard Nixon and his top aides, were a threat to American democracy. The plumbers did indeed blunder multiple times, and not just at the infamous Watergate break in.

Read Liddy’s books.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Apparently, every day is a battle for LGBTQ+ lawmakers. According to an Associated Press report, they “find themselves fighting just ‘to exist.’”

Literally! LITERALLY!

Read on and you’ll find these bills include Florida’s March 2022 Parental Rights in Education law which banned discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade classrooms. And, of course, they identify the legislation as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

The lawmakers – and the AP – are especially incensed over bills that “would classify providing gender-affirming care to minors as a form of child abuse.” Isn’t it?

Read it.

Until a few weeks ago, Judy Blume’s reputation as one of the world’s most admired and respected novelists seemed assured. She has sold over 82 million copies of her twenty-five books, has won countless awards and was named one of TIME’s most influential people earlier this year.

But those whom the gods wish to destroy are asked for their views on J.K. Rowling — and so when Blume was asked as much in an interview, she replied, “I love her… I am behind her 100 percent as I watch from afar… I haven’t been in touch with her during this tough time. Probably I should.”

This went badly, as might be imagined — “Fuck Judy Blume!” became the keyboard warrior’s cry of choice — and so Blume issued a retraction almost immediately, saying, “I stand with the trans community and vehemently disagree with anyone who does not fully support equality and acceptance for LGBTQIA+ people.” The statement concluded stirringly, “Anything to the contrary is total bullshit.”

NewsMax.

Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, is “destroying” Japan’s culture by pushing pro-LGBTQ+ legislation, a journalist from Okinawa said.

NewsBusters.

Bob Hoge with our friends at RedState had a hilarious piece Tuesday pulling together the latest saga and kid-in-a-grocery-store meltdown MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan pitched last week after he was roundly condemned and fact-checked for one insane claim after another about crime and, of course, racism.

At the heart of it, Hoge noted that Hasan has objected Twitter’s Community Notes feature, which allows users to fact-check false claims, seeing more play under Elon Musk’s ownership and he was “getting awfully sick of” it. This was particularly ironic since he recently released a book entitled Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

Read it.

Energy expert Anas Alhajji shared a video on Twitter that appears to show, according to his description, “An oil tanker, known for transporting Iranian oil, catching fire off the coast of Malaysia.”

ZMan jerks back the curtain.

One analysis of the Roman Empire says that it reached a point where the cost of maintaining the empire exceeded the benefits of empire. The investments required to maintain the complex social and political structures to maintain the empire continued to rise while the benefits slowly fell to zero. This is the general thesis presented by Joseph Tainter in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies. Complex solutions eventually reach a point of diminishing marginal returns.

We may be seeing a similar issue with the Global America Empire. On the one hand, we have the massive amount of debt accumulation to maintain the global military presence required to maintain the empire. The official United States military budget exceeds the combined total of the other great powers. No one really knows what the actual cost of the military is, as so much of it is off budget. Of course, this allows many of the rulers to get rich in the process.

On the other hand. Enormous amounts of time and energy are invested in maintaining the rationale for the empire. Unlike the Roman empire, which was ruled by a small number of men, democratic empire must continue to provide energy to the spring of democracy, which is moral certainty. Rome conquered because it could, while America conquers because it has a moral duty. “Our democracy” requires an endless war against those who resist being crushed by “our democracy.”

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

A few years ago, when gender mania was still confined mostly to academia, a college student had a moment of fame when he told his school that he identified as a king, and his pronouns were “Your Royal Highness.” Such mockery is to be encouraged. The idea that a person can “identify” as something other than what he or she is, and demand that others accede to that “identity,” is complete bullshit and deserves nothing but ridicule.

Thus, I applaud Indiana Councilman Ryan Webb. Webb is, to all appearances, a white man. But don’t you dare misgender him! Or rather, her. Because Webb has “come out” as a woman of color….

Mexican national wanted in deadly Texas shooting of 5 neighbors ‘could be anywhere,’ sheriff says (Fox)

Texas Guv Denigrates Shooting Victims as ‘Illegal Immigrants’ (Daily Beast)

Evanston, IL Offers Racially Segregated High School Math Classes

Suspect on Run in Texas After Mass Murder Is Illegal Immigrant Deported 5 Times

Three-Times-Deported Mexican Who Shot 5 Neighbors Described By Media As “Texas Man”

Illegal Aliens Murdering Illegal Aliens

Illinois high school offers racially segregated math classes

Death Toll Rises As Ukraine Ramps Up Attacks On Russian Border Towns

COUNTER-TERRORISM: Iran Goes After Israel

AIR DEFENSE: Advanced AUDs

Waves of Russian Missiles Hit Ukraine

Russian Freight Train Derails In Sabotage Attack As Airstrikes Pummel Ukraine For 2nd Day

Never-before-seen Chinese military blimp caught on satellite images of remote desert base

Sen. Ron Johnson says Antony Blinken ‘lied boldface’ to Congress about Hunter Biden (N.Y. Post)

Rep. Gonzales: Border Worse as Title 42 End Nears

Sudan Shows Leaving Americans Behind Enemy Lines is the New Normal

Biden Attacks Media for ‘Lies of Conspiracy and Malice’  Media pick up a mirror and shine it right back at him.

Crowding-Out. The Fed May Be Killing The Private Sector To Save Government

Maybe Becoming President Takes More Than Just Being a Dick (Mother Jones)

Joe Rogan: Biden Dying Is Only Solution for Democrats  They might get lucky.

It’s Not Funny Because It’s True: Biden Jokes About Never Taking Questions And Doing Nothing

Peter Schiff: We Can’t Afford To Let Biden “Finish The Job”

Scarborough: World Leaders’ Complaint—America TOO Powerful Under Biden!  And if you believe that one, Joe’ll tell you another one.

BUST: How Paul Krugman Flip-Flopped from Prophesying ‘Biden Boom’ to Defending ‘Not So Bad Economy’

The 6 Mistakes of Biden’s Emergency Immigration Plan

Watch: Biden Awkwardly Wanders Away During Air Force Football Ceremony

WATCH: DHS Secretary Mayorkas Gives Bizarre Definition of a ‘Secure Border’

‘Disaster’: State Financial Officers Slam Biden Admin’s ‘Upside Down’ Mortgage Policy

States Revolt Against Biden’s Mortgage Redistribution

In Court, Hunter Biden Cries Poor to Reduce Child Support Payments

National Guard leaders petition Biden, Harris for dedicated Space Force branch  The virtue of a Space National Guard is that there is no possibly chance that you will be activated to do bullshit crowd control duties.

Senate GOP Seeks Damning Memo by Labor Nominee

Hunter Biden’s Hollywood Attorney Now Controls His Stake in Chinese Private Equity Firm

Two Years After Botched Withdrawal, The Biden Administration Has Yet to Properly Vet 88,000 Afghan Refugees

Biden’s Presidency Built Atop an Actual ‘Big Lie’

Texas AG Ken Paxton’s COVID-19 vaccine investigation could stick it to Big Pharma execs (N.Y. Post)

How Surging Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Introduced Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan to the Anti-Vaxx Movement

Why Are So Many COVID Authoritarians Suddenly Shifting Their Narratives?

Lightfoot Slams Weingarten’s Union for Not Reopening Schools Now that she’s lost the election, she doesn’t have any reason to suck up to the union.

Middle school student allegedly sent home for refusing to change shirt that said ‘There are only two genders’ (Fox)

The Anatomy of a Washington Post Smear Campaign

Kyrsten Sinema’s Party of One (New York Times)

Student sentenced to 10 days in jail for peaceful protest of anti-trans policies

A Hot Mess in the Georgia Republican Party (N.Y. Times) Spreading Narrative FUD.

The secret delegate battle that will decide the 2024 Republican nominee (Vox) Spreading Narrative FUD.

The first arrests from DeSantis’s election police take extensive toll (Washington Post)

Clash Erupts Over Work Requirements for Federal Aid

Washington Post Front Page Hypes ‘Far Right’ Freedom Caucus ‘Pledges Fiscal WAR’

Al Franken: Supreme Court is ‘Illegitimate’  But not as much of a bastard as Franken.

12-Year-Old Student Pulled From Class Over T-Shirt About Gender

Is Fox News holding Tucker Carlson hostage?

Sen. Schumer Letter to Dems: ‘MAGA’ Debt Plan ‘Far-Right Ransom Note’  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Indiana Republican Faces Liberal Outrage After He Jokes That He’s Now a Lesbian Trans Woman of Color

6 Scandal-Plagued Senate Democrats Attack Clarence Thomas Over Ethics 

NYC Mayor: Abbott Busing Migrants to ‘Black-Run’ Cities  I.e. Democrat cities.

Carbon capture technology “can never be an excuse” for business as usual, advocates say (CBS News)

NYC co-op owners, covering over 800K apartments, rebel against massive climate law costing millions (N.Y. Post)

The Conversation: “Can we justify … botanic gardens in an age of climate change … ?”

Lithium-ion batteries a growing fire hazard in NYC garbage trucks

EV’s Have 12.5 Percent Less Range Than EPA Estimates

The Spectator.

What does the man who has everything really want for dinner? A humble hamburger — at least, that’s what Succession seems to be telling us.

In the season four opener, Murdoch-esque media mogul Logan Roy slips away from his lavishly catered birthday party and decamps to a low-key diner, where he mulls the meaning of life in the company of monosyllabic bodyguard Colin. “What are people?” asks the tycoon, before concluding, depressingly, “Economic units.” This existential crisis with a side of fries is (spoiler alert) Logan’s on-screen Last Supper, and it reveals more about him and his ilk than a disdain for canapés.

Food is everywhere in Succession — yet rarely is anybody enjoying it much. From patricidal mozzarella salads to excruciating Thanksgiving suppers where the priority is roasting people, not turkeys, the dinner table is a battleground.

The New Neo.

For quite some time, the Democratic Party has been mostly the party of the rich and the poor rather than the middle. That’s an exaggeration perhaps, but it certainly seems to be a general trend. And this despite the fact that Democrats like to pretend they support the average working person and that it’s the GOP that’s the party of the very very rich. But those days are gone, although it helps the Democratic Party to pretend otherwise.

In a way, it makes sense that the very rich support Democrats and Biden, ever since the Democrats have become more and more allied with the welfare state. After all, the very very rich can afford it; it’s the squeezed middle who can’t. It also helps assuage any guilt the very very rich might have about the extent of their money – after all, they’re supporting the party that is so very generous to the very poor.

And after all, the right is inhabited by dangerous bigots and violent gun-toting morons as well as religious fanatics, or so the left likes to say. Sort of like “Deliverance” plus “Elmer Gantry” on steroids. And the right is headed by that vile, criminal, maniac Trump.

Washington Free Beacon.

Young Democrats are abnormally nervous, depressed, bisexual, and eager to defund the police, according to a new poll from the Harvard Kennedy School of Politics.

Politico.

It’s rare to have an open congressional seat in Rhode Island. So when there is one, ambitious pols pounce on what could literally be a once-in-a-generation shot to go to Washington.

More than a dozen Democrats have declared their candidacy for Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District — a crowded field that has formed before outgoing Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, who has represented the district for over a decade, even officially resigns. He’s set to leave Congress in just a few weeks to become CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, a philanthropic organization in the state.

It’s a reliably blue district, all but guaranteeing the victor of the Democratic primary will prevail in the general election.

I think it’s safe to say that each and every one of them sees it as a chance to grow fat from a government paycheck while coercing the citizens of the U.S. into Wokery. (The pension you get for being a member of Congress, vested after five years, is also pretty sweet.)

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

I understand that running over it with an SUV is equally effective.

The American Mind.

Americans suspicious of our elites’ lust for foreign entanglements and of their sending billions down foreign policy ratholes probably have looked askance at recent news of fighting coming from the African country of Sudan. What does it all mean, and why should we care, beyond the fact that thousands of U.S. passport holders were left behind when the Biden Administration evacuated diplomats from our embassy in Khartoum?

The fighting in Sudan is essentially between two armies, both of them with a grim past and a history of corruption and human rights abuses. Each one seeks to dominate and replace the other while eventually controlling the state. The struggle is over power, money, personal ambition, and institutional rivalry tinged with ethnocentrism. The two sides have different geographic and ethnic origins.

The Guardian.

Sales of private jets are likely to reach their highest ever level this year, placing an increasing burden on the planet, while many of the owners escape aviation taxes, and there are few curbs on the greenhouse gases emitted, according to a report.

The report is by the Institute for Policy Studies, a hard-left think tank in D.C.

Note that the objections focus on plane owners escaping the government-imposed burdens of taxation and environmental regulation that the statists at The Guardian can’t tolerate.

The Foundry.

Education choice is on the march.

So far this year, four states have enacted education choice policies that will be available to all K-12 students. Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, and Utah have now joined Arizona and West Virginia in making every child eligible for education savings accounts (ESAs) or ESA-like policies that allow families to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children.

The education choice movement has already made more progress this year than ever before—and the year is far from over. Late last week, three state legislatures gave final approval to bills that would create new education choice policies or significantly expand existing ones.

Politico.

A legal doctrine long despised by conservatives for giving federal regulators wide-ranging power is making yet another march to the gallows at the Supreme Court.

The high court announced Monday that it is taking up a case squarely aimed at killing off the nearly-four-decade-old precedent that has come to be known as Chevron deference: the principle that courts should defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous provisions in congressional statutes and judges should refrain from crafting their own reading of the laws.

Overturning the doctrine would have major implications for the Biden administration’s climate agenda. It would complicate the administration’s efforts to tackle major issues such as climate change via regulation, including possibly derailing the Environmental Protection Agency’s push to mitigate carbon emissions from the electricity and transportation sectors — the two highest polluting industries in the United States.

UPDATE: Will the Supreme Court curb the power of federal regulatory agencies?

Read it.

The bones of the modern global economy might still be labor—albeit off-shored to people willing to do it under ruinous conditions—but the lifeblood of that economy is the massive population of workers demoralized by the uselessness of their day-to-day tasks and incentivised to defend (at least passively) existing economic arrangements: the flunkies and goons, duct-tapers, box-tickers, task-masters, and their wannabes.

Read it.

Markets work, even when you don’t want them to.

When government benefits pay more than working, you get fewer workers.

The Hill.

Texarkana Texas Police said officers were called to a shooting in a neighborhood near Spring Lake Park Saturday evening. A short time later, officers were called to the park for a baseball player that may have been shot.

Spring Lake Park is in a majority-black area of Texarkana, which has a black population of 29%, over twice that of the national average.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

The Antiplanner.

The bill also includes more funding for “affordable housing.” Some of that funding is supposed to come from a “fee” on new housing, thus making that housing (and all housing that competes with it) more expensive. But how is this a fee and not a tax?

Under Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), a constitutional amendment, the state can’t increase taxes without voter approval. But it can increase fees, so the legislature is redefining many taxes as fees so they can raise them without having to go to the voters.

Read it.

What will the 40 percent (and falling) of Scots separatists do now that their vehicle for independence is spluttering to a halt? Like a clapped-out old car, rust is creeping up its innards, parts of it are falling off, and an incompetent driver is at the wheel who seems to have neither a map nor a clear sense of direction.

For a short time, the Scottish National Party (SNP) led the most vibrant movement of its kind in the modern world, secure in its moral and civic purpose and outperforming all other campaigns for secession. Catalonian separatists are disheartened and disunited while the campaign for the Bavarian independence in Germany was only able to muster 1.7 percent of the vote in the last general election. The SNP’s authoritarian leadership, on the other hand, has managed to keep splits and factionalism to a minimum—until recently, at least.

The case for the independence of what was a sovereign state until the 18th century was pressed with unwearying fervour, larded with flattery of the Scots’ genius and contempt for the (English-dominated) Westminster government. For nearly two decades, the UK-wide parties—Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat—had been consigned to the futile sidelines of political power. Two-thirds of Scots voted to remain in the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the SNP’s pledge to rejoin upon winning independence was seen as a way of righting a terrible wrong.

I find it impossible to take seriously a ‘Scottish National Party’ whose leader is named Humza Yousaf. Sorry. Just can’t do it, any more than I can pretend that Dylan Mulvaney is a woman.

Read it.

Nike. Supreme. Ralph Lauren. Abercrombie and Fitch. Harvard and Yale. On the streets of Budapest, style-conscious teenagers have collapsed the distinction between the Ivy League and streetwear. Maybe Americans still balk at wearing the logo of schools they didn’t get into, but the market for collegiate apparel in Eastern Europe is not limited to alumni, students and ambitious high-schoolers. Even kids with no interest in (or chance of) going to Harvard are drawn by the power of its name.

Meanwhile, American higher education is being convulsed by a social-justice revolution that upends the basis of these schools’ claims to exclusivity. Will teachers, parents and students continue to endure the indignities of the college application process if coveted academic brands dilute their own product?

This question has been on my mind lately because, after a long hiatus, I’ve reacquainted myself with the college-admissions rat race. As a teacher at a Hungarian high school, most of my students opt for the far less stressful process of applying to European universities. This spares them the demands of SAT prep, recommendation letters and GPA fluffing.

Read it.

Liberals love to talk about threats to “our democracy,” which just means threats to Democrats winning elections. Voting is a threat to “our democracy” when it doesn’t go their way.

But there is a very real threat to our democracy making its way through state legislatures. It is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I wrote about it as far back as 2019. The “compact” is legislation, adopted state by state, that outsources voting in presidential elections.

States that subscribe to the compact agree that their presidential electoral votes will be cast, not for the candidate who won their state, but rather for the candidate who got the most votes nationwide. So if you live in a small or medium-sized state, you are essentially outsourcing your presidential votes to California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

The Left has launched a comprehensive war on modern agriculture. One aspect of that war consists of attacks on animal husbandry, which to some degree ties in with longstanding crank theories espoused by vegans and others. However, contemporary attacks on meat are mostly climate-based. As such, they are dangerous to your family’s health.

Steve Sailer.

From the New York Times news section, a classic NYT upside-down article with the big news buried until most subscribers have stopped reading….

Read it.

Consider Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, a women’s rights activist who holds rallies under the rubric Let Women Speak. She advertises a place and time, turns up with stewards in hi-viz jackets, and hands the mic to any woman with something to say. Some talk about men who identify as women using women’s toilets and changing rooms at workplaces and gyms, or muscling into women-only support groups for everything from addiction to the menopause.

One frequent speaker served a prison sentence locked up with a trans-identified man; another, a disabled woman, fears asking for a female carer only for a man who identifies as a woman to turn up. An increasingly common theme is schools colluding with gender-distressed children’s delusion that they can change sex.

In a sane world, what these women say wouldn’t attract criticism; indeed, it wouldn’t even need to be said. But often they are drowned out by transactivists shrieking threats and slogans of the sort Robert Jay Lifton, in his 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, called thought-terminating clichés: “brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases [that] become the start and finish of any ideological analysis”. “Trans women are women”. “Trans rights are human rights”. “Kill all terfs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists]”.

Read it.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com recently determined from official Federal Freedom of Information Act filings that we pay Beltway bureaucrats in the federal executive agencies outside of the Defense Department and the U.S. Post Office some $576 million per day.

That’s more than $210 billion per year for the 1.44 million employees of 125 rank-and-file general administrative, civil enforcement and federal law enforcement agencies.