The Foundry.

The Southern Poverty Law Center routinely brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” placing them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, but most lawsuits aiming to hold the SPLC accountable for this alleged defamation have failed. Judges often dismiss defamation lawsuits against the SPLC, saying the defamed “hate groups” fail to meet the “actual malice” standard.

Yet on March 31, District Judge Keith Watkins denied the SPLC’s motion to dismiss a defamation claim from the Dustin Inman Society and its founder, D.A. King. The Dustin Inman Society is a pro-immigration enforcement group that the SPLC brands an “anti-immigrant hate group.” Watkins published his opinion explaining the ruling on April 24. His ruling allows the case to move into the discovery phase of litigation, where King can demand SPLC documents to prove his case (and the SPLC can demand documents from King, as well).

Watkins’ ruling represents the first time that an SPLC-accused “hate group” has succeeded in making it to discovery in a defamation lawsuit directly challenging the SPLC on its “hate group” accusation. Many organizations, including the Center for Immigration Studies, the Proud Boys, Liberty Counsel, and D. James Kennedy Ministries, have failed to reach this point, even though D. James Kennedy Ministries appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

Lifehacker.

Historically, carrying a gun with which to shoot the shooter seems to work out pretty well.

Read it.

Vienna is grappling with a knife crime problem. In the wake of four stabbing attacks over the weekend in the Austrian capital, one of which took the life of an Iranian, FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp has called for a security summit.

On Sunday night, May 8th, in the fourth knife attack in just 48 hours, a 15-year old Syrian national—together with another unidentified assailant—stabbed a 19-year old man who was with his 20-year old girlfriend at the time.

As the couple walked to a bus stop, two young males came towards them, and seemed to follow them. Soon after, the pair started to whistle after the victim and his girlfriend.

When the man confronted them, they started to kick and hit him. Allegedly, the Syrian national then threatened to kill the victim, while brandishing a knife. The suspects fled when a bus pulled up.

It was only after the victim and his girlfriend got on the bus that they noticed a puncture wound in the young man’s back. Emergency services were promptly called and soon arrived on the scene and took him to the hospital where he is now recovering.

Police meanwhile conducted a search for the two suspects, but could only find and arrest the 15-year-old Syrian, who was still in possession of the knife. A manhunt for the second suspect is ongoing.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

The Spectator.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a spate of media stories and dumped opposition against conservative justices on the Supreme Court, intended to paint a picture of vaguely illicit and unethical behavior while proving no illegality. ProPublica has released a number of articles regarding Clarence Thomas’s relationship with billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow. Politico trumpeted Neil Gorsuch’s sale of a Colorado property to the head of a top law firm whose lawyers regularly argue in front of the court.

The purpose of these stories is not to start a conversation among Democrats in Congress about ethical reform on the Court. Nor is it simply about “court packing” (expanding the Supreme Court to a thirteen-justice progressive majority).

No, the Democrats and their allies in the media are still not over Hillary Clinton’s failed coronation in 2016 and the resulting legal majority that now sits on the Supreme Court after President Trump appointed three justices. So they’ve turned to aggressive tactics: a full-frontal assault to delegitimize the Court and the six justices that form its majority.

The American Mind.

It might not matter whom Republicans run for president in 2024.

America’s propaganda press traffics in disinformation. Its Big Tech oligarchs censor news and information helpful to conservatives, while elevating biased news and information that helps the Left. And its election systems have been overrun by privately funded groups that run Democratic “get out the vote” campaigns to traffic ballots into ballot boxes. We catalogued this particularly complex problem in Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

Instead of election day, we now have an “election season”—during which, over a period of months, we flood homes across the country with tens of millions of mail-in ballots, regardless of whether secretaries of state or local registrars have any idea if those ballots are being sent to the correct addresses. This in a country where 11% of residents move every year. We then wait for sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires and run by ideological statisticians to round up those ballots in entirely selective ways.

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

Rep. James Comer called a press conference this morning to release the House Oversight Committee’s second bank records memorandum on the Biden family business. The committee press release is posted online here. The 36-page bank records memo released today is posted here. I have posted video of the press conference below.

There is a lot of information to digest here and I haven’t done so. The 50-minute press conference provides a useful summary of what it’s all about and what is to come. Mark Tapscott asks a question seeking to place this matter in historical context at about 40:00. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything quite like it before.

Read it.

The Bureau of Land Management was formed out of the General Land Office, which sold and distributed public land to settlers, and the Grazing Service, which settled the range wars on the side of the farmers. Its mission under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) is “the management of the public lands and their various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people”.

Unfortunately BLM became a bastion of environmentalists opposed to any kind of development and, under Biden, even outright eco-terrorists, like Tracy Stone-Manning, his BLM director.

Tracy Stone-Manning had been the spokeswoman for the eco-terrorist group EarthFirst and had sent a threatening letter to the Forest Service warning that the terrorists had rigged a forest with traps and concluding with, “You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt.”

ZMan turns over a rock.

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Agribusiness) is waging jihad against his fellow Republicans in the House over H.R. 2, an immigration bill that has been working through the House since January. He has specifically targeted the E-Verify provision, that would require employers to use the system, which has been in place for decades, to verify that their employees are legally allowed to work in the country. He has been on Twitter railing against the E-Verify system.

There are two schools of thought as to why Massie has picked out this provision of the bill as his reason for opposing it. One is the old “Republicans donors like cheap labor” argument, which is mostly true. Massie gets a lot of money from agribusiness, which relies on illegal aliens to work in meat packing plants, commercial farming enterprises and food processing facilities. What you never find in a food processing plant these days is anyone speaking English.

The other explanation for Massie’s berserk opposition to this provision is that he is a libertarian who spasmodically opposes government programs. He has been dressing up his arguments in libertarian jibber-jabber. He claims that Joe Biden will use the system to prevent normal Americans from working. According to Massie, this program will require you to get permission from Joe Biden in order to work, which is a weird claim, but consistent with libertarianism.

In fairness, both explanations could be true. In order to get into the House of Senate, you have to be willing to take bribes from the donor class. The reason both parties support the current chaos is because both parties have the same paymasters. Those paymasters think borders are bad for business, so they oppose anything that would result in an orderly border policy. Hiring libertarian goofballs to be the messenger on this makes it look principled, rather than cynical.

Real Clear Wire.

Please keep this in mind amid all the hyper-ventilating over potential default. Janet Yellen, the walking, talking-est contrarian indicator on earth claims default would be “catastropic,” while the always and everywhere expert reverent Catherine Rampell tells readers “If you’re not afraid yet [about default], you should be.” Wise minds will be calm. This is such a non-story.

For one, As evidenced by the floating, occasionally very weak dollar over the decades, the U.S. has defaulted numerous times. And that’s not a partisan point. Left-of-center economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff are clear in their book This Time Is Different that when FDR revalued the dollar from 1/20^th of a gold ounce to 1/35^th, the U.S. defaulted.

All of which brings us to the present. In contemplating the present, it’s useful to think about another book written by left-of-center reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III. Baker and Glasser’s book was very fair, and among other things the authors noted about President Reagan was that much as he wanted a smaller, much more limited government, the act of achieving “it proved harder than Reagan’s team had imagined – every program they wanted to cut had a constituency, it seemed, often including fellow Republicans.” Translated, while some politicians want limited government, they all have at least one program that’s near and dear to them. Since they all do, government will always and everywhere grow as votes are traded back and forth so that everyone gets what they want.

Read it.

Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said fewer than five babies have been born this way, but no further details have been released to protect the families’ identities. The news was first reported by the Guardian newspaper.

The U.K. was the first country in the world to adopt legislation in 2015 specifically regulating such methods, which help prevent women with faulty mitochondria — the energy source in a cell — from passing on to their babies defects that can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems and intellectual disabilities. About one in 200 children in Britain is born with a mitochondrial disorder.

For a woman with faulty mitochondria, scientists take the genetic material from her egg or embryo. They then transfer that into a donor egg or embryo that still has its healthy mitochondria but has had the rest of its key DNA removed. The fertilized embryo is then transferred into the womb of the mother. The genetic material from the donated egg comprises less than 1% of the child’s genetics.

Steve Sailer.

Why have alarming nuts been allowed to colonize New York’s mission-critical subway system? Why do we no longer have what we once did: adequate facilities in the countryside for agitated urbanites to decompress far from the madding crowd?

The massive deinstitutionalization of the 1960s–1980s is now widely considered a blunder, but why did it seem like a good idea at the time? We need to consider why progressive reformers in the English-speaking world turned as fervently against lunatic asylums in the 1970s as their forebears had become enthusiastic for them in the middle of the 19th century.

Read it.

Dog whistles work because they are inaudible to humans. Accusing a politician, therefore, of using “dog-whistle politics” – couching a (usually controversial) message to their core supporters in terms the general public do not notice – is formally self-refuting for doing so implies that it can be understood not just by the target audience, but also by the opposition. If that is so, however, the “dog whistle” is just a whistle. For the metaphor truly to work, the message needs to be so far removed from the understanding and concerns of the wider public that it sails straight over their heads, as when film-makers insert jokes aimed at adults into cartoons aimed at children.

Accusing Donald Trump of dog-whistle politics for his use of the phrase “America First”, previously associated with isolationism and the Ku Klux Klan, is therefore inapt. The history of that period is too well-known, and racism too central to the concerns of the left for them not to notice. But there is an area with which liberals, generally, have little experience and with whose language they are unfamiliar, and that makes it ripe territory for dog-whistling: religion.

The observation that Republicans are more likely to be religious than Democrats has been made so often that it has acquired its own name – the “God Gap”. In 2008, 28% of the latter claimed to have no religious affiliation, compared to 12% of the former. By 2021, the difference had widened to 45%-19%. Among those who do claim to be members of a religion, the figures are even more striking. About 80% of evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump twice.

Read it.

Mohammed is becoming increasingly popular as a name for newborn baby boys in Germany. Sweden and the U.K. are already well ahead in this regard, where Mohammed may even be #1. If not, it will be soon.

Anyone who looks askance at this trend is immediately demonized as a racist and a xenophobe. But really, why would anyone want to celebrate the ascendancy of Islamic names for babies in Bremen or Dresden? What sort of place will Germany be in twenty years, when the majority of youngsters are Muslims with an ethnic heritage in the Middle East or Africa? Why is this considered a good thing?

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

I haven’t actually seen the verdict form, but it is not obvious why the jury would believe Carroll as to Trump’s “abusing and forcibly touching” her, but disbelieve her claim that he raped her. Perhaps the latter was simply a bridge too far in a crowded department store.

Carroll’s entire 27-year-old story was implausible, in my opinion. But a verdict in her favor was almost a foregone conclusion, given that Trump did not appear to testify on his own behalf. His deposition was taken during the case’s discovery phase, and some or all of it was played for the jury. I can only assume that Trump expected he would lose whether he testified or not, so he was better served, politically, to shun the proceeding and implicitly decline to accept its authority.

Will the verdict have any political impact? Some, I think. A jury finding is relatively credible, compared with merely being smeared by the press. And in many eyes, Trump’s checkered history will make plausible the jury’s finding that he sexually “abused” Carroll. The lawsuit was, in fact, a put-up job, encouraged and financed by anti-Trump activists. Nevertheless, the jury at least partially believed Jean Carroll, and that fact adds, not insignificantly, to the baggage that Trump carries as he seeks his party’s presidential nomination.

Read it.

What will President Biden do if his son is indicted by the federal prosecutor in Delaware?

That’s one of three questions looming over U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ fateful choice.

The second is whether the indictment will go after a larger, coordinated family scheme of influence peddling or confine itself to smaller, tightly-confined issues like lying to get a gun permit and not registering as a foreign lobbyist.

The third is whether Attorney General Merrick Garland will approve Weiss’ proposed charges.

Significant political calculations follow from those decisions.

Even if he is, nothing will come of it. The Crust take care of their own.

The Foundry.

The Internal Revenue Service  not only is involved in voter registration, it should get more involved, a coalition of over 50 liberal groups argues.

Meanwhile, the Obamacare exchange will attempt to drive up voter registration, while agencies within the Justice Department have acted to ensure that prisoners in federal custody may cast a ballot if eligible.

President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which requires federal agencies to get involved in boosting voter participation, is a little over 2 years old.

However, members of Congress, the press, and watchdog groups unsuccessfully have sought information on how Biden’s order is being implemented. The Justice Department has claimed presidential privilege to shield related documents from release.

The Daily Skeptic.

I had a meeting arranged with one of my undergraduate students for 10am last Friday. At around 9.30 I received an email from her saying that since she was “struggling with [her] mental health” she wouldn’t be able to physically come to the building. It would be “too much”. So could we please have the meeting via Zoom instead?

This kind of thing has become completely normal. Vast swathes of students have diagnoses of ADHD or the ubiquitous ‘anxiety and depression’; the rest, who don’t, still feel no compunction in disclosing their ‘struggles’ at the drop of a hat. Working around these issues is now simply a fact of life for academics. We confront them literally on a daily basis.

Read it.

Hadley Gamble, the CNBC anchor whose affair with NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell led to his ouster last month – and who was accused by Russia of being a “sex object” sent to distract Vladimir Putin – is leaving the network according to the NY Post.

Whose turn is it to be the ‘sex object’?

Read it.

Canvassers for a far-left Philadelphia mayoral candidate who has pledged to crackdown on gun violence in the city pulled guns on each other and one of them died, according to the police.

A 22-year-old man, who was canvassing Philadelphia’s East Germantown neighborhood on behalf of the progressive group OnePA, fatally shot a 46-year-old fellow canvasser on Monday, police said. Both men were knocking on doors in support of soft-on-crime Democratic mayoral candidate Helen Gym, among other left-wing candidates.

The victim and the killer “knew each other and began arguing after they ‘happened upon each other'” in the neighborhood, deputy police commissioner Frank Vanore told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Inspector Ernest Ransom said the argument led both men to draw guns on each other, with the younger canvasser shooting and killing the older man.

The shooter “said he was acting in self-defense,” Ransom told the Inquirer.

New York Times.

Executive summary:

1. Foreign food is superior to American food.
2. Ordinary Americans are ignorant rubes because they prefer ordinary American food.
3. American Cloud People have been brainwashed to prefer foreign food, so American Dirt People are doubly damned because they don’t follow the example of their betters.

Bottom line: Americans suck, because you don’t like the kind of food that we Crustians like.

Why Journalists Have More Freedom Than Professors (N.Y. Times) Ross Douthat does his house-conservative thing.

Texas mall shooter had swastika, SS tattoos, online posts show (Times of Israel) Well, just hang everyone with a swastika or SS tattoo. Problem solved! Can’t touch the people with a hammer-and-sickle, though, that would be Extweeeeeemist.

George Alvarez charged with running over 18 migrants in Brownsville, Texas (N.Y. Post) Since Brown Is The New White, I guess this makes him a white supremacist and almost certainly a Trump supporter.

White House bans The Post from Biden event as Hunter indictment looms (N.Y. Post)

White House bans New York Post from attending Biden event (Fox)

Why are White House staff afraid to let a Post reporter question Biden?

8 of Neera Tanden’s Worst Attacks on Biden, GOP, Dems

GOP Threatens Blinken With Contempt Over Afghanistan Docs

nvestigators Examine Ideology of Texas Gunman  As if that had anything to do with the fact that he was bat-shit crazy. They’re just looking to see if they can pin it on ‘right-wing ideology’.

New York Times on Coronation: Royal Family’s ‘Racist, Sexist, Classist, and Out of Touch’  Yup, that’s why so many love them.

Americans, Not Conservatives, Strike Back Against Wokeism

Texas congressman criticized for prayers comment after mall shooting (Washington Post) Mostly by Narrative media jackals.

USA Today SMEARS Haley, Republicans for ‘Ruthless Assault’ on Kamala’s Competence

The GOP-Hungary connection shaping the ’24 campaign (Axios) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

‘It’s a Republican issue’: The View conservatives blame GOP lawmakers for mass shootings (Raw Story)There’s a Narrative media oxymoron for you: ‘View conservatives’.

Six months after midterm losses, election deniers mount new efforts (Washington Post) In the Narrative media, ‘election denier’ means ‘opponent of Democrat vote fraud’.

Why non-White people might advocate white supremacy (Washington P0st) Philip Bump tries to step out of the shadow of Jennifer Rubin by trying to be even more deranged.

‘2,000 Years Ago They Hated Him, Too’: Chris Pratt Says He Relies on Jesus To Deal With Haters

Indoctrination Nation (New York Magazine) The Law of Liberal Projection in action: Jonathan Chait accuses conservatives of doing what proglodytes are actually attempting to do.

Former CIA chief Michael Morell, who wrote ex-spy letter dismissing The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop reports, misled signers by saying he’d ‘clear’ it with agency (N.Y. Post)

Under the Radar, Right-Wing Push to Tighten Voting Laws Persists (N.Y. Times) It’s only ‘under the radar’ in the sense that the Narrative media refuse to report on it; but there’s an election coming up, so apparently the Times wants to crank up the FUD machine.

What Else Do Tucker Carlson’s Unredacted Texts Reveal? (Daily Beast) More to the point, what can we twist?

Need To Keep Masses Afraid Is Behind Elite Embrace Of Wokeism And Censorship  Michael Shellenberger.

MSNBC’s Dowd Says ‘They Banned Lawn Darts After Three Children Died’ But 4,000 Gun Deaths In Texas Haven’t Prompted Government Action (MEDIAite) There were more than 4,000 auto deaths in Texas, but they aren’t pushing for banning cars. (Since when is MSNBC a go-to source for anything other than comedy?)

Harlan Crow Sure Isn’t Paying for Your Kid’s School (Slate) Further attempts to keep smearing Clarence Thomas.

Timothy McVeigh’s Dreams Are Coming True (N.Y. Times) From Hitler to Emmet Till, muckrakers like Michelle Goldberg like to drag up old stuff and suggest it’s still a danger, as if nothing had happened since them. Needless to say, Goldberg has no clue what McVeigh’s dreams were, or would be. It’s all one big game of Let’s Pretend.

Scarborough Likens GOP On Guns To ‘Slaveholders And Segregationists’  And Scarborough is one of the most die-hard Let’s Pretend player on the air.

PBS on Cops Making Coronation Protester Arrests: More Like Moscow Than London

Newsom Launches ‘Hate’ Hotline for Californians To Report Attacks on Their ‘Actual or Perceived’ Identities

Harlan Crow refuses to hand over gift records to Senate Finance (Politico) The witch-hunt continues.

Axed Over Opposition to Trans Policies, California Teacher Wants To Take Her Case to Supreme Court

Trump late to right-wing attack on Missouri employer in passé Bud Light ‘controversy’ (Kansas City Star) Nothing to see here, move along,

Attorneys for Trump and E. Jean Carroll dispute character and evidence in closing arguments of civil rape trial (CNN) It’s not a ‘rape trial’, it’s a defamation trial. They like to say rape! rape! rape! because it makes Trump look bad. No surprises there.

Abraham Accords Led to Massive Boost in Israel’s Trade

Closing arguments in Jean Carroll’s civil case against Trump

Cheney launches New Hampshire TV ad slashing Trump (NBC News)

Judge Blocks Trump From Seeing Manhattan DA’s Evidence Without Supervision  Justice? What’s that?

Trump’s weird weapon: Bad news (Axios) If you can’t find something bad to say about Trump, make something up. It pays the same.

Read the new gag order muzzling Trump in his hush-money case (Insider) Telling the truth for once.

Liz Cheney launches anti-Trump ad on CNN ahead of former president’s town hall (Washington P0st)

Jury Rejects Rape Claim Against Trump but Awards Accuser $2M for Battery  Find a deep pocket–rare back and sue it!

Without Any Mandate, Texas WIll Generate 40% of Its Energy From Renewables in 2023

‘Mind-boggling’ methane emissions from Turkmenistan revealed (The Guardian)

Why Texas, a clean energy powerhouse, is about to hit the brakes (Washington Post)

Texas Senate approves tight permit restrictions on solar, wind (PV Magazine)

The Texas GOP’s War on Renewable Energy (Texas Monthly) Texas Monthly is one of the left-wing pubs that pop up in Travis County (California East) like mushrooms.

Broad doubts about Biden’s age and acuity spell Republican opportunity in 2024: POLL (ABC)

BBC: Climate Change Too Important To Be Left To Personal Choice

Climate Envoy John Kerry’s Jet-Set Spending Is Getting Plenty Of Cloud Cover

The speed of this Greenland glacier’s melt could signal even worse sea level rise (Washington Post) Could! Could!

Bill Gates’ TerraPower Opening Nuclear Power Plant

Democratic AGs Urge Federal Government to Crack Down on Gas Stoves

Battles Rage Over Biden’s Clean Energy Projects As The Size And Cost Jump

Germany Opens the Door to High Inflation, with an 80% Green Energy Bill Subsidy Proposal

How the EPA Turned into a Toxic Leftist Social Justice Slush Fund

Facebook Censoring The Inconvenient Truth About Antarctic Temperatures

Circus or Certainty Over Climate Protest Video?

The Far North Is Burning—and Turning Up the Heat on the Planet  Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

Canada extends copyright protection another 20 years to meet new trade obligation (Globre and Mail)

Exclusive: FBI Agents Accuse CIA of 9/11 Coverup (Spy Talk)

Trump on Bud Light controversy: ‘Money does talk — Anheuser-Busch now understands that’ (N.Y. Post)

Clay Travis’ free beer experiment shows people ‘don’t want to be seen’ with Bud Light (Fox)

California, other states with strong ‘Defund the Police’ movements ranked best to be a cop, new study claims (Fox) Hey, you get paid and you don’t have to do anything dangerous like enforce the law. What’s not to like?

Anheuser-Busch CEO Blames Bud Light Boycott On Social Media “Misinformation”

WashPost Poll: Most Americans Don’t Want Men in Women’s Sports

Scott Baio Leaving California Due to Homeless Crisis  Chachi loves freedom.

To Hold a Coronation, Britain Suppressed Free Speech. That’s Insane. (The New Republic) Unfortunately, TNR can’t distinguish between ‘free speech’ and ‘disrupting peaceful people’s lives’.

Ladies Boycott Anthropologie After Using a Male to Model Their Dresses

WaPo Poll Delivers Crushing Blow to Biden’s Argument for Reelection

Thanks, Biden: Average Price of New Car Hits $48K

Anthem Standoff Ends in Ejection, Fine for 2 MLB Pitchers

California Activists Reject Reparations Plan, Demand More Than $1.2M Per Person

Burning Down Barriers: Female Firefighter Conference Causes ‘Out of Control’ Forest Fire

‘Outraged’ Letter Carriers Demand Action to Stop Robberies

N.Y. County Poised to Block Relocation of Migrants

Rashida Tlaib Will Host Congressional Event To Mourn ‘Catastrophe’ of Israel’s Founding  Perhaps I ought to start a new regular summary post: Today in Democrat Hate.

Oklahoma Governor Stitt defends decision to ax PBS funding over ‘really problematic’ LGBTQ content (Fox)

Pandemic-era Eviction Bans Linger in California

Krugman Whines WashPost Isn’t Buying His Insane $1 Trillion Coin Idea

Jon Tester Swore He Wouldn’t Depend Upon Lobbyists as a Senator. Now Lobbyists Are Writing His Bills.

The Squad Shamefully Tries to Inflame Another Summer of Riots

North Dakota governor signs bill restricting transgender pronouns, bathroom use (The Hill)

America’s Largest Transit Systems Reeling As Revenues Continue To Crater

NIMBY New York Suburbs Panic After NYC Mayor Plans Migrant Relocation I guess there are limits on Democrat affection for democracy.

Transgenderism “Confusing People About The Nature Of Reality” And Victimizing Children: Authors

Axios Ignores True Threat of AI Involvement in 2024 elections

Did Harvard’s Larry Tribe Really Just Advise Biden to Ignore Law on Debt Ceiling? Yes.

EXCLUSIVE: Republicans Demand Answers From NIH on Transgender Youth ‘Experiments’ Study That Left 2 Dead, Others Sterilized

Smirnoff Drag Queen Partner Flashes Bystanders at Texas Capitol

Legal Victory Gives Boost to ‘After School Satan Clubs’

YouGov Poll: CNN Most Polarizing News Source

California’s Retail Electricity Price Highest in the Continental U.S. & More than Double the Western U.S. Average Price  Time to leave.

EU Parliament Deliberately Supports Anti-Christian Propaganda

Vietnam to require registration of social media, even on global platforms  Communists will be Communists. (Democrats would like to be Communists, too.)

New York Is Forcing Schools to Change How They Teach Children to Read

Federal Zoning Bill Would Preempt Local Parking Mandates  Hey! What happened to ‘our democracy’?

Driver in Deadly Texas Car Ramming Identified Only as Hispanic Man  (Reuters) Until they can tag him somehow as right-wing.

After Mass Killings in Texas, Frustration but No Action on Guns (N.Y. Times) The focus, of course, is on the guns, as if they just travelled there and shot themslves.

Texas Gunman Had City of Dallas Tattoo, Odd Voicemail

Elon Musk Asks Of Jordan Neely Protesters: “Why Didn’t They Protest The Children Murdered At The Christian School?”

The View: Mental Health of Mass Shooters Doesn’t Matter, Denies Crisis

Family of Jordan Neely Criticize ‘Character Assassination’  Apparently ‘noticing’ that he had over 40 recent arrests and a current outstanding warrant is ‘character assassination’.

Navarro: Blacks/Hispanics Not ‘Immune’ from Being ‘White Supremacist’  The upside-down world of the Left.

WATCH: Protesters Block Subway Tracks Over Death of Jordan Neely

Report: Don Lemon Plotting Payback, Expose CNN Execs

The View: Subway Passengers Should’ve Just Given Their Money to Neely

CA Reparations Committee Approves Recommendations Costing Nearly 3X State’s Annual Budget  Prediction: The purported recipients won’t see a cent. Lawyers, however, will get many taxpayer dollars in their pockets, as will Democrat politicians.

Brownsville White Supremacist Has Some ‘Splainin to Do

Behind the Left’s Addiction to Racism

In Australia, scientists begin vaccinating koalas against chlamydia (NPR)

NIH Restarts EcoHealth Alliance Grant, Watchdog Outraged

Local And Private COVID Vaccine Mandates For Patients And Health Care Workers Being Reversed, Overturned Across US

Chelsea Clinton Promotes Mass Vaccination Program For Children – Laments Public Resistance

Never Forget What They Did… Never!

NIH Renews Controversial Grant To EcoHealth For Coronavirus Bat Study

Lessons from the COVID War

CBP, ICE to launch enforcement operation in El Paso as migrant numbers surge ahead of Title 42’s end (Fox) Oh, yeah,  election coming up, I guess we’d better pretend to do something.

El Paso mayor on surge of migrants in the city as COVID-era immigration order expires (PBS)

Border Patrol Union criticizes feds after ‘warning’ sent ahead of migrant ‘enforcement operation’ in Texas (Fox)

Juarez mayor speaks about more Texas troops coming to the border (KVIA)

Top Republican investigating Biden administration withdrawal from Afghanistan threatens to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress (CNN)

This Is Why Our National Debt Rises In Good Times And Explodes Higher In Bad

Tanked Biden pick highlights escalation of dark-money forces (Associated Press) It couldn’t have possibly been that she (he? it? was a left-wing wacko.

Trump, DeSantis Beat Biden In ABC/WaPo Poll As Joe’s Approval Hits Record Low

Nearly 610,000 public sector workers got student loan forgiveness after Biden loosened the rules (CNN) One hand washes the other.

Biden Would Veto House GOP Immigration Bill

Texas Gov. Abbott Deploys ‘Tactical Border Force’

Axios With Hard-Hitting Scoop: Jill Hates How Old Joe Loves Ice Cream, Pizza

Kamala Harris Is Finding Her Stride as Team Biden’s Voice to Black Voters (Bloomberg) If that voice is a cackle.

Union Lawsuit Wants Biden, Yellen to Ignore Debt Limit  Look for … the Union label….

Biden Wages War On Small Businesses During National Small Business Week

The food fight in the White House: Biden’s diet (Axios) Another pro-Biden thumbsucker from the Narrative media.

Mexico: Smugglers Using Title 42 Expiration to Lure Migrants

Border Patrol Agents Seized Enough Fentanyl in Single Weekend to Kill Entire Population of Chicago

White House Blocks New York Post Reporter From Rare Biden Event

Nets Ignore Biden White House Banning NY Post Reporter Who Asked About Hunter

Watch: Drone Footage Shows Wave Of Migrants Approaching Texas Border

Retired Navy SEAL to Newsmax: ‘We Need Pipe Hitters, Not Pole Dancers’

Journos Spar with KJP Over Biden’s Lack of Focus on Job

Biden Admin Won’t Let Authorities Seize Sanctioned Iranian Oil Tankers

Biden Is Draining the Strategic Oil Reserve. Republicans Are Demanding an Investigation. I don’t know why we have a Strategic Oil Reserve in the first place. It might have made back in the 70s when we were an oil-importing nation, but today we have enough oil to sell it to other nations (when Democrats aren’t choking off the supply).

‘Nothing Like This Has Been Seen Before’: Migrants Crowd Border To Await End of Title 42

Biden to be first sitting president to visit Papua New Guinea (The Hill) But he can’t be bothered to visit the American border.

Politico Invokes ‘Russian Misinformation’ to Defend the Bidens on Bribery Allegations

Biden Taps Economist Who Slammed ‘Low’ Gas Prices

CNN Blasts State Dept on Afghanistan Withdrawal Cable

The Inhumanity of Biden’s Border Policies

‘Sad Joke’: Border Patrol Union Slams Biden Admin for Tipping Off Illegals to Enforcement Operation

Biden Delays SPR Refill Again, Now Says Must Wait For Storage Repairs First

Migrants Flow North to US Border Ahead of Policy Changes

Mayorkas Heads To Border To Fire Starter Pistol When Title 42 Expires (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

The floggings will continue until morale improves is an old workplace joke. As a joke it’s not up there with the bumper sticker advice to Support mental health or I’ll kill you, but it’s a classic. The latter seems to me to have taken on new life as the tactical wisdom of the left.

The former comes to mind in connection with the legacy of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The AP headline announces “UN urges Afghanistan’s Taliban to end floggings, executions.”

Reminder: Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion, with which no co-existence is possible.

Zman turns over a rock.

A sportsball coach is in the news for having used a taboo word during an interview with some jock sniffers. The other jock sniffers are now demanding the coach be hurled into the void so they can get some piety points on Twitter. The coach, of course, has issued the groveling apology, which will make no difference. The people howling for blood are not interested in his apology. They want blood. These cancel campaigns are a form of human sacrifice to appease the mob.

The thing about these campaigns is they obscure something that no one bothers to ask and that is who decided that you cannot use certain words? The coach in this story was responding to a question about fans throwing rubber marital aids onto the floor during games at Xavier University. He jokingly referred to them as “Catholic fags” because it is a nominally Catholic college and the fans of their basketball team seem to be obsessed with rubber penises.

 

The Antiplanner.

In 2004, Denver voters approved spending $4.8 billion building six new rail transit lines, and the first line opened ten years ago. This was soon followed by four more to the gushing praise of various outsiders.

Inside Denver, however, people are beginning to realize that the whole thing was a miserable failure, suffering massive cost overruns and never attaining its ridership projections. The West line, which had its tenth anniversary last week, never carried as many passengers as were projected in its first year. It’s too bad that the reporters who are questioning this now weren’t asking the same questions in 2004.

Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) suffers from numerous problems that can be traced back to its rail construction projects. It is heavily in debt and doesn’t have the money or the borrowing power to build the last rail line it promised in 2004. It also doesn’t have enough money to pay enough drivers to keep its trains and buses running, and staff shortages have led to many delays and reduced service. The rail lines never attracted enough riders to put a dent in traffic congestion or reduce air pollution before the pandemic.

Read it.

Of all living Americans, Angela Davis may have the most disgraceful history. She is a Communist–her description, not mine; she was twice the Communist Party’s candidate for vice president, and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union. She once participated in the murder of a judge in California. She was acquitted of the crime by a biased jury, but there was never any serious doubt about her guilt: the murder and associated crimes were perpetrated with her guns.

Since then, Davis has gone on to a lucrative career as a taxpayer-supported professor. Above all, she has gotten rich on the college lecture circuit. Universities pay her tens of thousands of dollars to deliver an hour-long rant against free enterprise. Nothing original, just warmed-over Marxism. Apparently today’s college students are too dumb to notice the irony.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

The Left’s campaign to replace meat with insects in our diet–more specifically, your diet, not theirs–continues apace.

Read it.

Neukölln is a severely culturally enriched borough of Berlin. Last week a man went on a stabbing rampage in a primary school in Neukölln, seriously wounding two little girls.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

ZMan show & tell.

If you were around in the 1980’s and old enough to pay attention to the news, you remember the debate about the news media. One side, the conservatives, complained about the media bias against them. The other side, the liberals, dismissed the claim as something like a conspiracy theory. For its part, the media spent time trying to prove they were not biased at all. They would point to the one conservative story in the back pages as proof they were giving both sides equal treatment.

The funny part about that debate is everyone was right. The conservatives were right in that self-described conservatives outnumbered self-described liberals two-to-one, but the media was almost entirely liberal. The liberals were right in that it was not some sort of conspiracy to silence conservatives. The media simply reflected the opinions of the people who were in the media and politics. The media was being generous to conservatives, given that everyone they knew was a liberal.

Fast forward to the present and the media is insane. Right now, they are claiming a Mexican immigrant, who shot up a Texas mall, is a white supremacist. Here is the Washington Post version of this whopper. Here is Rolling Stone. Here is the Daily Bleat hyperventilating over it. Of course, the volunteer army of regime toadies is uncritically posting this on social media. The thing missing from all of these stories is a picture of the shooter, Mauricio Garcia.

Of course, by the time they get around to showing a picture of the shooter, someone will have doctored the photo to make him look like a German. The previous Texas spree killer, also a migrant from Mexico, was whitewashed so he could look the part, but the real photo was soon on the internet. The media did the same trick with the Uvalde, Texas shooter last year, then they edited their own news articles when the fraud was detected, but by that point it was too late.

Read it.

Germany returned the Benin Bronzes last year with plans for a permanent museum in Nigeria financed by the German taxpayers. The plan now seems unlikely after the Nigerian president handed ownership of the artefacts to a local chieftain.

Read it.

Have you ever come across the New York Destination fee? Or New York amenity fee? Or resort fee? No? Well, me neither. Until our recent NYC trip. Seems this kid has many names. And is common practice in quite a few US cities (Las Vegas being a really notorious one apparently). Until about two years ago, this wasn’t a big topic in New York. But things change. To save you the same nasty surprise we had checking in, let me tell all you need to know about the New York destination fee. What you get for it (or not), how much it is per night and if there is a way to avoid it.

Electriv.com

The Norwegian company ENRX wants to inductively charge electric vehicles with 200 kW while driving on a section of highway in Florida. A one-mile section of a four-lane highway near Orlando is to be electrified.

ENRX was founded in March this year, as a merger of EFD Induction, a provider of induction heating solutions, and IPT Technology, an expert in wireless power transmission. ENRX has teamed up with the Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX) and the Aspire Engineering Research Center for an initiative to build a 1.6-kilometre section on a four-lane highway near Orlando that will inductively charge the batteries of moving electric vehicles at 200 kW.

The principle is clear: the electric vehicle batteries are fitted with a special receiver pad and charged as they drive over the coils embedded in the road. In the process, the energy is transferred from these coils to the receiver pad mounted on the vehicle floor, which according to ENRX should provide “a safe, wireless power supply” even at motorway speeds.

Not in California. Not in New York. Not in Bernie Sanders’ state. Not in Elizabeth Warren’s state. In Florida–Ron DeSantis’ state.

US weighs restrictions on investment in Chinese AI firms (Fox)

Brussels to Sanction Chinese Tied to Russia

China Wants Killer Robots To Fight The Next War

Iran Hid Arms in Earthquake Aid to Syria In Order to Attack US Troops

Growing Pushback Over BlackRock In Ukraine: “Taxpayers Pay The War Bills, Private Firms Get The Profits”

Arab League Agrees To Reinstate Syria After 12 Years

Russia Launches Mass Strikes Across Ukraine

Sanctions don’t work

WARPLANES: Shahed-136 Scam

SUBMARINES: Iran Builds More Big Submarines

China’s Arctic Ambitions Pose a Threat to the Western World

The 3 likely ways Bud Light disaster might end – and only one is good news (Fox)

Chicago gay bars boycott Anheuser-Busch as brewer shuns Dylan Mulvaney (N.Y. Post)

AB InBev boss blames ‘misinformation’ after rightwing backlash against Bud Light (Financial Times)

Anheuser-Busch Cuts Ties With Marketing Firm Responsible For Dylan Mulvaney Disaster. (OutKick)

NYC building that once housed ‘Brooklyn’s hippest hotel’ turned into migrants shelter (N.Y. Post) Time to leave.

NYC migrant crisis (Fox 5 New York)

NYC has to stop putting migrants’ needs ahead of the general public (N.Y. Post)

NYPD training facility turns into makeshift shelter for asylum seekers (Spectrum News) NYC gets a taste of Texas.

What Are They Hiding? Pro-Transgender Groups Refuse to Hand Over Internal Documents Even as They Move to Oppose Florida’s Medicaid Rule

Fox Sends Cease-And-Desist Letter To Media Matters Over Leaked Tucker Tapes

Downtown San Francisco Becomes A Ghost Town As Major Retailers Flee

Mayhem Unfolds In Oakland As Soros-Backed DA Fails To Enforce Law And Order

California Approves Reparations Recommendations, Proposing $1.2 Million Checks For Black Residents

California Defaults On $18.6 Billion In Debt, Saddling Employers With The Expense

Liberal Utopia: Two-Mile-Long Vehicle Encampment Spotted In California

EXCLUSIVE: Colorado Would Force Her to Create LGBTQ Wedding Websites. She’s Fighting Back.

In NYC Subway, Leftist Governance Reaps What It Sows

The Risible Case For Reparations

Money for Nothing: Reparations and Riots

Mayorkas deflects blame on border crisis, says it’s been an issue ‘since the ‘90s’ (Fox) Yeah, but it’s your job to fix it.

In Bordertown USA, Biden sends in troops — and Trump rubs his hands (The Times)

Abbott: We don’t need 1,500 soldiers at the border, we need 15,000 or 150,000 (The Hill)

Mayorkas ripped for saying there are ‘orderly pathways’ to enter country legally: ‘That’s for suckers’ (Fox)

Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner Devon Archer urged to spill Biden dirt to avoid prison (N.Y. Post)

Biden Black Voters Lacking ’20 Enthusiasm

Desperate Dems Float 14th Amendment As Debt Ceiling Override

Will Biden’s Plan To Tax Crypto Mining Reduce Emissions? Critics Say No

New Disinfo Office to Combat Foreign, US ‘Public Opinion’

Parody Becomes Reality: Babylon Bee Predicts Gender Bender Friendly Military Recruitment

Biden Admin Backs Down In Standoff With Catholic Hospital Over Chapel Candle

Israeli Whistleblower With Info On Biden Corruption Disappears In Cyprus After Saying Biden Regime Wants To ‘Bury Him’

How Did They Get Here? What We Know About Unaccompanied Children Arriving at Southern Border

U.S. Offers Palestinians $100k to Promote ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ in Arts and Sports

Inside the ‘Death Match’ that Helped Doom Tucker Carlson at Fox (Rolling Stone)

Republicans like Abbott and Cruz who are politicizing gun violence (MSNBC) She actually said that with a straight face.

Massacre witness refutes right-wing talking point: ‘It wasn’t mental health that killed these people’ (Raw Story) Nope, the gun just pulled it’s own trigger; the crazy person holding it was just, like, standing there.

Like A Tweet, Lose Your Job

Asa Hutchinson: Trump Has ‘Moral Responsibility’ for Jan. 6  No, he doesn’t.

Vietnam and Laos record hottest temperatures ever as heat wave grips Southeast Asia (CNN)

Climate change: Vietnam records highest-ever temperature of 44.1C (BBC) Communist regimes get a preview of their eventual destination.

Weather tracker: Vietnam and Laos set records for highest-ever temperatures (The Guardian)

Germany And The EU Are Hopelessly Behind On EVs & Artificial Intelligence

Climate Extremists Vandalise Historic Roman Monument

Manmade: Studies Suggest That Wind Parks Cause Climate Change, Even Regional Drought

What to know about the newest COVID-19 variant (NPR)

How China Used a Prominent HBCU to Spin Its Pandemic Response

FDA Issues Emergency Bacteria Warning For 500,000 COVID-19 Tests

E. Jean Carroll Demands Trump Follow Court Order, Remove Rape Trial Posts (Newsweek) Free speech? Not for Trump!

Texas mall massacre gunman identified as witnesses describe horror of the shooting spree that killed 8 people (CNN)

Dallas mall shooter: Who is Mauricio Garcia? (Fox)

Texas mall shooter wore neo-Nazi symbol and shared ‘white-supremacist content online’: report (AlterNet) Another ‘white Hispanic’?

RWDS’: What the Patch Found on the Texas Gunman’s Chest Stands For (Daily Beast)

Texas Mass Shooter Posted Neo-Nazi Content, FBI Document Reveals (Rolling Stone) I guess Brown Is The New White.

WP: This Tall White Man with the Backward Baseball Cap Must be the White Supremacist Shooter (Just Look at Him)

‘Right Wing Death Squad’? Bizarre Claims About Texas Outlet Mall Gunman

Media’s long con to bury Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal (N.Y. Post)

Yellen Warns Against Debt Ceiling Talks With ‘Gun to the Head of the American People’  That’s not what she minds; what she is really objecting to is the gun held to the head of the ruling class.

Gingrich Steamrolls Williams on Hunter’s Corrupt Business Dealings

‘Not a Good Number’: CNN Reports on Bad Polling Numbers for Biden

limate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM – then came the harassment (The Guardian)

America Needs Permitting Reform To Reduce U.S. Reliance On Foreign Energy

A Heavy Dose of Reality for Electric-Truck Mandates

Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out Has Been a Disaster

Marc Morano to Newsmax: Energy ‘Conspiracies’ Became ‘Reality’