The Right Coast

The media dies in lies - The Spectator - news, politics, life & arts

The Washington Post issued a mammoth correction this week on a story about Donald Trump’s search for election fraud. The paper had admitted that they misquoted the former president twice. WaPo’s botched story is a cautionary tale of what happens when political biases cloud reportage and a reminder of why public trust in the media is so low.

via spectator.us

Newsom plans to ‘fight like hell’ to save political legacy - POLITICO

OAKLAND — California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke his silence on the California recall with a string of national television appearances this week, pinning the effort on President Donald Trump supporters, anti-immigrant forces and conspiracy-driven opportunists.

Heading into Wednesday's signature deadline, Newsom is trying to frame California's recall as an extension of the divisive 2020 presidential fight. The Democratic governor is leaning on progressive flag-bearers Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and gearing up for an airwave blitz expected to cost well over $100 million. He's also assembling a political A-team — a mix of veteran insiders who have long guided his political trajectory and are fresh off the rough-and-tumble presidential campaign trail.

via www.politico.com

Should the Black Lives Matter Agenda Be Taught at School? - The Atlantic

Last month, a public-school district that serves mostly elementary and middle-school students in Evanston, Illinois, held its third annual Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action—using a curriculum, created in collaboration with Black Lives Matter activists and the local teachers’ union, that introduces children as young as 4 and 5 to some of America’s most complex and controversial subjects. For example, parents of kindergartners in District 65 were asked to spend time at home discussing a book on race that teachers had read aloud to their children.

via www.theatlantic.com

Surge in Migrants Defies Easy or Quick Solutions for Biden - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration warned on Tuesday that the United States expected to make more apprehensions along the southwestern border this year than at any time in the past two decades, underscoring the urgency for the White House to develop solutions for the chronic problems with immigration from Central America.

The grim prediction by Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, came as President Biden was being assailed for his handling of a surge at the border involving thousands of unaccompanied children and teenagers from the region — with attacks coming from the right for not being tough enough and from the left for not being humane enough.

The president has pleaded for time and patience, blaming his predecessor for dismantling the immigration system in his zeal to keep foreigners out. But even Mr. Biden’s top advisers acknowledge that after unwinding President Donald J. Trump’s harsh policies, there is no easy or quick fix for a problem that has been a recurring crisis.

via www.nytimes.com

Immigration Enforcement: How Trump Got Control of the Border | National Review

The key insight of the administration’s immigration hawks, though, was that the statutory authority already existed to establish order at the border. It was just that the laws providing crucial enforcement tools had never been used, or become encrusted over time with regulatory practices and judicial decisions that made the system balky and ultimately unworkable.

A former official familiar with the issue explains, “If you actually look at and read and understand our immigration laws, they provide for a fair amount of enforcement. These laws were passed, a lot of them in the Nineties; several of the significant bills and laws we relied upon were signed into law by Bill Clinton or supported in a bipartisan way.”

The administration’s hawks undertook a constant interrogation of the standard operating procedure: Why are we doing it this way? Is there a law? If not, why can’t we change? And if there are practical obstacles, what are ways to solve them?

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What they usually found is that at the bottom of some suboptimal practice was a regulation, or agency guidance, or court edict, or unwritten rule, but very rarely a law.

A basic question that constantly came up was: Why could the U.S. send back migrants from Mexico with relative ease, yet basically couldn’t return migrants from countries a little farther south?

The administration found a way to effectively close the loopholes that accounted for this disparity and, in so doing, got the border under control even before the onset of the pandemic.

The former senior administration official says, “We took the tools that Congress gave us that had never been used, and we used them. Then we took the regulations and rules that agencies had created that muddied, diluted, or denuded Congress’s rules, and we fixed them.”

via www.nationalreview.com

Rich Lowry.

Professor criticized Critical Race Theory at University of Vermont, now students want him fired

The university released a statement saying “We will continue to lean into our [diversity equity and inclusion] efforts, and in so doing, create further opportunities to strengthen our community.” The statement also said students who want to be transferred out of his class will be allowed to do so.

As you’ll see, this video is very similar to one that a Smith College staffer released last month. Jodi Shaw wound up resigning because of the “racially hostile environment” she faced. But her story was confirmed a few days later by the NY Times. Prof. Kindsvatter has tenure so he probably can’t be fired over this but that doesn’t mean students won’t continue to demand it. Here’s the full video that students think is a threat to their safety.

via hotair.com

Opinion: The Spending Bill Cometh - WSJ

Democrats are elated with the popularity of their $1.9 trillion spending bill, which they passed under the political cover of the Covid emergency. Handing out money is always popular, especially when there appear to be no costs.

Enjoy the moment because the costs will soon arrive in the form of tax increases. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put that looming prospect on the table on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Here’s the exchange with George Stephanopoulos:

via www.wsj.com

Eliminate the Bar Exam for Lawyers - WSJ

The legal profession regulates itself—which explains how lawyers get away with practices that pad their own earnings and block nonlawyers from selling competing services at lower prices.

Congress may soon strengthen the antitrust enforcement powers of the Biden administration’s Justice Department. The department should use those powers to eliminate the American Bar Association’s monopoly in determining what constitutes an acceptable legal education and state licensing requirements, which restrict the supply of lawyers.

Prospective lawyers generally graduate from an ABA-accredited three-year law school before taking a state bar examination to obtain a license to practice law. However, many people who are interested in and capable of providing legal services cannot afford the high tuition and opportunity cost of not working for three years and paying to obtain a law degree.

Limits on the supply of lawyers are reflected in prices. A simple contract can run $1,500, which most people cannot afford. One study by the National Center for State Courts found that 75% of civil matters in major urban areas had at least one self-represented party, and these parties are less likely to prevail in court without proper legal help. Others who can’t afford legal assistance end up stuck in horrific circumstances that ought to be criminal matters, such as domestic violence.

via www.wsj.com

U.S. Deploys Coast Guard Far From Home to Counter China - WSJ

Early last December, the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Myrtle Hazard sailed through the night, anchored off the Pacific island nation of Palau and boarded a group of Chinese boats to help seize tens of thousands of dollars worth of sea cucumber that had allegedly been harvested illegally.

The fast-response cutter, operating around 6,600 miles from the continental U.S. and roughly 750 miles from its home port in the U.S. territory of Guam, is part of the Coast Guard’s newest growth area: helping counter China’s growing naval power in the Pacific.

China has used coordinated action by its fishing fleets, coast guard and navy to establish its presence in the South China Sea. It increasingly also has a presence in the South and Central Pacific. Chinese fishing fleets have shown up in force around island nations like the Republic of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which have some of the richest tuna fisheries in the world, and China’s navy has established itself in the area as well, including with a stopover by warships in Sydney in 2019 and visits by a naval hospital ship to Fiji in 2018.

The U.S. Coast Guard is building up in the region in response. In the past few months, it based two of its most advanced new cutters in the U.S. territory of Guam, nearly 4,000 miles closer to Shanghai than it is to San Francisco. One more is due to arrive in the coming months. For the first time, the Coast Guard has an attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia, and another attaché will move to Singapore next year.

via www.wsj.com

The ‘Equity’ of Bill de Blasio - WSJ

Two facts stand out about public education in the de Blasio years. First, the majority of the city’s black and Latino students can’t read or do math at grade level. Second, the city’s poor and minority students do better at charters than at traditional public schools. Alas, instead of trying to fix the public schools where kids aren’t learning, the mayor has made war on the ones where they are.

Take the eight high-performing specialized high schools. Citing the disgracefully low number of African-Americans and Latinos who earn spots at these schools, Mr. de Blasio has tried to abolish or at least diminish the merit-based entrance exam—even if this means denying seats to another racial minority, Asian-Americans. Ditto for the Gifted and Talented programs.

When he does offer reform, it tends to come in the form of jobs programs for adults, such as universal pre-K or expanded after-school activities. Otherwise, Mr. de Blasio’s interpretation of equity seems to be that if he can’t fix the bad schools, he’ll cut the good ones down to size.

Indeed, the more successful charters are, the more the mayor resents them. He resents them because they don’t excuse failure and they demonstrate that all kids can learn given the right school, including schools in which black children are surrounded by other black children. It’s why he particularly resents Success Academy charters, arguably the best public schools in all of New York.

via www.wsj.com

New York’s Hot Export: People - WSJ

Legislators in Albany are considering two tax bills that could seriously damage the economic well-being and quality of life in New York for many years to come: a wealth tax and a stock transfer tax.

It is likely the top federal rate on capital gains will increase to 40%, and the combined New York state and city rate may reach 15%. Should New York enact a 2% wealth tax, a wealthy New Yorker could wind up paying a 77% tax on short-term stock market profits. And that’s a conservative estimate: It assumes that stocks return 9% a year. If the return is 4.4% or less, the tax would be more than 100%. Now we know what a “fair tax” looks like.

via www.wsj.com

Bitcoin’s Greatest Feature Is Also Its Existential Threat | WIRED

If an open network such as a blockchain were threatened by a powerful organization—China's censors, Disney’s lawyers, or the FBI trying to take down a more dangerous botnet—it could fragment into multiple networks. That’s not just a nuisance, but an existential risk to Bitcoin.

via www.wired.com

Don't put all your money in bitcoin. Put some money in gold, and some in ammunition and pork & beans.

Scientists may have solved ancient mystery of 'first computer' | Astronomy | The Guardian

The battered fragments of corroded brass were barely noticed at first, but decades of scholarly work have revealed the object to be a masterpiece of mechanical engineering. Originally encased in a wooden box one foot tall, the mechanism was covered in inscriptions – a built-in user’s manual – and contained more than 30 bronze gearwheels connected to dials and pointers. Turn the handle and the heavens, as known to the Greeks, swung into motion.

Michael Wright, a former curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, pieced together much of how the mechanism operated and built a working replica, but researchers have never had a complete understanding of how the device functioned. Their efforts have not been helped by the remnants surviving in 82 separate fragments, making the task of rebuilding it equivalent to solving a battered 3D puzzle that has most of its pieces missing.

Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the UCL team describe how they drew on the work of Wright and others, and used inscriptions on the mechanism and a mathematical method described by the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, to work out new gear arrangements that would move the planets and other bodies in the correct way. The solution allows nearly all of the mechanism’s gearwheels to fit within a space only 25mm deep.

via www.theguardian.com

The Rise and Fall of Andrew Cuomo - The New York Times

“The problem with Cuomo is no one has ever liked him,” said Richard Ravitch, a former Democratic lieutenant governor. “He’s not a nice person and he doesn’t have any real friends. If you don’t have a base of support and you get into trouble, you’re dead meat.”

New York’s two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have now abandoned him, along with most of the state’s congressional delegation. A majority of the State Legislature, whose members he has long treated dismissively, have called on him to resign, including more than 40 percent of his fellow Democrats.

“I have not met a person yet in New York politics who has a good relationship with Andrew Cuomo,” said State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat and outspoken critic of the governor who also once worked in his administration. “And I’m not saying ‘close relationship,’ I’m saying ‘good relationship.’ Even people who are close to him I cannot say in good faith have a good relationship with him.”

via www.nytimes.com

With bipartisan support in Congress for permanent daylight saving time, could this weekend's time change be the last? | The Spokesman-Review

WASHINGTON – Congress may be more divided than ever, but there’s one thing on which Republicans and Democrats can agree: No one likes losing an hour of sleep when the nation “springs forward” at the start of daylight saving time every March.

Momentum has been building across the country in recent years to do away with the twice-yearly switch between daylight saving and standard time. Starting in 2018, when Florida’s legislature became the first to pass a law to adopt year-round daylight saving time, 14 other states have followed suit.

“Daylight saving time has never saved us from anything,” fictional New Hampshire Rep. Jonah Ryan said on HBO’s “Veep” in 2017, a likely catalyst for the veritable tidal wave of anti-time change legislation that swept the country soon thereafter.

State lawmakers in Washington passed legislation to “ditch the switch” in 2019, and Idaho’s legislature a year later adopted a bill that would allow North Idaho to follow Washington’s lead.

There’s just one problem: While states can opt out of daylight saving time – as Hawaii and most of Arizona have done – federal law requires an act of Congress to allow states to adopt daylight saving time on a permanent basis.

via www.spokesman.com

US Military: Social Justice Warriors | The American Conservative

I still struggle to process the meaning of the Pentagon’s propaganda blitzkrieg against Tucker Carlson. Even if you think Carlson is wrong in his criticism of the woke military (see here for some of it), the fact that the Defense Department has reacted so aggressively is extraordinarily troubling. I would have been troubled by it had the DoD hit out at left-wing media critics like this. But to my knowledge, they never have. They reserved this kind of response for a conservative media figure who questioned the military’s new wokeness. This tells us something.

I’ve been hearing from a number of you since I first posted about it the other day. A pastor I know personally told me that one of his congregation is in a service academy, and sends him photographs of assignments and readings they are given. The young person asks the pastor for advice on how to navigate all this as a Christian. The pastor said he — the pastor — is a conservative, but the things that the new woke military is putting into the heads of our young people are shocking. Let me be clear: the pastor is not hearing about this second-hand; he’s seeing photos of the actual documents. I have asked him to share them with me so I can pass them on to you. I’m waiting to hear back.

via www.theamericanconservative.com

This makes me nervous. Nothing like having the big guns on your side if you're in the mood for stamping out civil rights.

Congressional Testimony: The Leading Activists for Online Censorship Are Corporate Journalists - Glenn Greenwald

But the broader context for the bill is the one most interesting and the one on which I focused in my opening statement and testimony: namely, the relationship between social media and tech giants on the one hand, and the news media industry on the other. Contrary to the popular narrative propagated by news outlets — in which they are cast as the victims of the supremely powerful Silicon Valley giants — that narrative is sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the opposite of reality: much if not most Silicon Valley censorship of political speech emanates from pressure campaigns led by corporate media outlets and their journalists, demanding that more and more of their competitors and ideological adversaries be silenced. Big media, in other words, is coopting the power of Big Tech for their own purposes.

via greenwald.substack.com

Florida vs. California State COVID Data Proves Lockdowns Don't Work – OutKick

As a result, the California unemployment rate is 9.3%, and the COVID death rate per a million residents is 1,413.

Meanwhile, Florida hasn’t shut down at all, at least not since around May of last year when the COVID restrictions were lifted in the state. All kids have attended schools in person since last summer. All schools and youth sports leagues have played full sports schedules. Businesses have all remained open. Even amusement parks in the state, like Disney World, have remained open. (Full disclosure, I took my family to Florida for the month of May last year and also took my family to a fully open Universal Studios in Orlando for a week around Christmas of last year.)

The result?

Florida has an unemployment rate of 5.1%, and a COVID death rate per a million residents of 1,503.

So Florida’s COVID death rate is a bit higher than California’s, yes, but when you adjust for the average age of the population, Florida, which has a much larger elderly population than California, has actually outperformed California when it comes to dealing with COVID deaths in the state. The more elderly residents a state has, in general, the higher the danger of COVID deaths. The median age of a person in Florida is 42.4, the fifth highest in the United States, while the median age in California is 37, the eighth youngest in the country. California, therefore, with a much younger population, should have an advantage when it comes to dealing with COVID in the state. It’s also worth noting that California’s death rate has surged throughout the winter, while Florida’s has not. In other words, California may end up passing Florida in COVID deaths before the final tally is complete.

via www.outkick.com

Yeah, so thanks for that.

Biden being pressured to scrap Trump-era Title IX changes because of "insane" results

The incoming Biden administration may have chased Betsy DeVos out of the Department of Education, but they haven’t managed to wipe out all the progress she made. At least… not yet. But one liberal activist group named “Know Your IX” is trying to change that. They issued a report this week designed to apply more pressure to the President and get him to wipe out changes DeVos made to the Education Department in how schools handle the investigation of sexual assault allegations on campus. One advocate described the results of a fair hearing abiding by due process rules as “an insane result.” The irony of a group calling for more “justice” for female students working to deprive individuals accused of serious crimes access to due process is apparently completely lost on them. It would almost be funny if it weren’t such a serious matter. (NBC News)

via hotair.com

Thoughtcrime at Georgetown? “It Is … Wrong for Faculty to Be Thinking — Not Just Speaking — …” – Reason.com

I appreciate the disagreement on the factual question. As I mentioned in my original post, there had been nationwide aggregate evidence gathered on this in the 1990s, and discussed seriously in the mid-2000s by scholars with different normative viewpoints. But perhaps things have dramatically changed, or are different at the Georgetown law school. It would be great if Georgetown could shed light on that dispute by distributing aggregate data on its students' grades, broken down by race.

But I'm more interested in the professor's normative judgment: that it is wrong for university faculty to think that such a thing might be the case, to the point that letting slip the fact that you think this is a fireable offense. Indeed, if taken seriously, that normative judgment would preclude any discussion of the factual question, because even open-mindedly considering the factual question whether disproportionate numbers of black students tend to get lower grades would risk "wrong … thinking."

I appreciate that, say, some churches might excommunicate a member for wrong thoughts, or for speech that reveals the presence of wrong thoughts. I just didn't think that this was seen as a proper position for a university.

via reason.com

Remember RBG? Josh Blackman

Justice Gorsuch often relays a story from Justice White. Justice White would ask his clerks how many portraits of Justices they could identify. A young Gorsuch said maybe half. White relayed that soon enough, people would forget him. Indeed. Most of my law students have never heard of White. When I teach some of his First Amendment decisions, I make a point of talking about Whizzer White. But all students know Holmes. They know Brandeis. They know Marshall and Story. They know these legends not because of the substantive results reached in any particular case (who actually cares about the Bank of the United States or the Sedition Act of 1917). They know these giants because of their legal acumen. Their way of thinking will endure long after the controversies of the day. And, I submit, law students will know Scalia for generations to come.

via reason.com

Blizzard Conditions In Wyoming, Colorado, Bring Travel To A Standstill : NPR

Parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska are digging out from under over a foot of snow, in what the National Weather Service has called a "historic and crippling" blizzard. And the storm is likely to continue, as the central part of the country is poised to see blizzard conditions before snow moves into the Midwest.

With at least 25.8 inches of snow in Cheyenne, Wyo., it's broken the record for the heaviest 2-day snow storm there. According to NWS Cheyenne, the previous 2-day total record was 25.2 inches, set in November 1979. The storm has blanketed southeast Wyoming, northern Colorado and western Nebraska.

Throughout Wyoming, wind gusts up to 55 mph have helped cover the state with heavy and blowing snow. According to the NWS, travel in Wyoming and the western Nebraska Panhandle will remain "extremely dangerous or impossible," including in the I-80 corridor between Cheyenne and Rawlins.

via www.npr.org

Skiers will like it though.

Silvio Micali: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Algorand, Bitcoin & Ethereum | Lex Fridman Podcast #168

via www.youtube.com

Can Democrats Make Child Checks Permanent? | RealClearPolitics

Democrats took a bold step in their $1.9 trillion pandemic relief law, tucking in a child tax credit that was expanded in size and scope. Nearly every family in America gets money for every one of their dependent children under 18. The credit can be taken in the form of monthly payments. If you don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax, you still get the money. And there are no conditions on how the money is spent. The program transforms how our federal government supports families and combats poverty.

via www.realclearpolitics.com

Journalists Start Demanding Substack Censor its Writers: to Bar Critiques of Journalists - Glenn Greenwald

Do you see how these online journalists have been taught to think about themselves and the world? Do you see the bottomless sense of entitlement and self-regard and fragility that defines who they are and how they behave? They specialize in trying to ruin people’s reputations and wreck their lives — not just other journalists but private citizens — but the minute someone objects to their journalism or what they say or do, they summon a team of teachers, psychologists, therapy dogs, digital police officers and tech executives to demand that their critics be silenced and their anguish be treated. They really do believe that the world should be organized so as to authorize them to attack whoever they want, while banning anyone who criticizes them when they do it.

via greenwald.substack.com

Glenn Greenwald.

Vatican bars gay union blessing, says God 'can't bless sin' - StarTribune.com

ROME — The Vatican decreed Monday that the Catholic Church won't bless same-sex unions since God "cannot bless sin."

The Vatican's orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response Monday to a question about whether Catholic clergy have the authority to bless gay unions. The answer, contained in a two-page explanation published in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis, was "negative."

The note distinguished between the church's welcoming and blessing of gay people, which it upheld, but not their unions. It argued that such unions are not part of God's plan and that any such sacramental recognition could be confused with marriage.

via www.startribune.com

I wonder what the over/under would be on how long this lasts.

Kroger grocery store closes three Los Angeles locations after city council mandates $5 hero pay hike

The list of Southern California stores that have been forced to close over government-implemented “hero pay” hikes has grown to five after three more locations announced they will close their doors.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

The dumbness. The dumbness.

Tesla Names Musk "Technoking of Tesla" In Bizarre, Cryptic 8K Filing | ZeroHedge

In keeping up with what's important - and perhaps as a not-so-subtle troll to the world after Bitcoin eclipsed $60,000 this weekend - Tesla released an odd series of 8-Ks Monday morning.

One SEC filing says that, as of Monday, March 15, 2021, "the titles of Elon Musk and Zach Kirkhorn have changed to Technoking of Tesla and Master of Coin, respectively." The filing, signed by Kirkhorn, says "Elon and Zach will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer."

via www.zerohedge.com

It's as if they don't respect the regulatory process.

North Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Judicially Mandated Speech And Censorship On Blog – JONATHAN TURLEY

The failure of the North Carolina courts to fully address, let alone reverse, this abusive use of judicial power is breathtaking. It is equally shocking to see the virtual silence of media and academic groups. With the exception of Judge Brook, there is little more than a shrug from both the appellate and supreme court in North Carolina.

     I can understand an order that a site publish an order or an apology as part of a probation agreement. Since the site published improperly recording material, there is a need for the defendant to take action to address that harm or error. (It is common for example for newspapers to publish corrections and apologies for defamatory or false reporting). However, this is a very fine and precarious line for any court. The order however showed little concern for these countervailing issues. Requiring long essay and censorship of opposing commentary is a dangerous overreach of judicial authority in my view.

via jonathanturley.org

The RC stands with Prof. Turley at least until we are censored.

The Fairness Doctrine Is Bad News – JONATHAN TURLEY

The doctrine was finally, mercifully rescinded in 1987, but it is now back with a vengeance. Some members of Congress are calling for an array of regulations of media and the internet, including demands for censorship of “disinformation” on subjects ranging from election fraud to climate change to gender identification. Others, like Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), recently wrote cable suppliers to push for content controls over news media and strongly suggested they should prevent viewers from having access to networks like Fox News. Many, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), have referred to such content controls as part of a new fairness doctrine.

Such speech and media controls have become a main Democratic talking point. It sometimes seems that, to be progressive, you must be regressive on issues like free speech and the free press. With the ascension of conservative networks like Fox, many are demanding a redefinition of our values to allow greater regulation of speech and press.

via jonathanturley.org

Ai chihuahua! Say it while you can!

The Spice Must Flow: A Dune Reading List

Dune, Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel about feuding interstellar nobility, mind-altering spice, and killer sandworms, has inspired fervent devotion since it was published in 1965. But despite being one of the most influential science fiction books ever written—no Dune, no Star Wars—the franchise has never quite achieved mainstream status.

That could change later this year with the release of the first part of Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated film adaptation starring Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, and Zendaya. The time is now to get up to speed on lasguns, space guild navigators, and gom jabbars. Whether you’re a lifelong fan who can recite the Bene Gesserit “Litany Against Fear” or just want to know what the big deal is, read on for a curated guide to the world of Dune and its lasting impact and influence.

via getpocket.com

I loved Dune when I read it in the 1970s.

Cheerleader's mom created deepfake videos to allegedly harass her daughter's rivals - ABC News

A Pennsylvania mother allegedly sent deepfake photos and video of her teenage daughter's cheerleading rivals depicting them naked, drinking and smoking to their coaches in a bid to get them kicked off the team, the Hilltown Township Police Department said.

via abcnews.go.com

Funny, she doesn't look like an evil mom.

Biden's Chance to Open a Clean Slate on Surveillance | RealClearPolitics

President Joe Biden has an unprecedented opportunity to restore faith in America’s intelligence agencies -- if he seizes this opportunity to make a clean break with the practices of the past 20 years.

The era begun on 9/11 featured the growth of government secrecy, mass surveillance, and misplaced priorities. Hundreds of millions of Americans’ information can now be captured by the FBI and National Security Agency simply because a person knows someone overseas -- or a legal U.S. immigrant. As recently as 2015, the Department of Justice and NSA argued they didn’t need a warrant to acquire the records of calls of all people in the United States based on the mere notion that some records could be relevant to foreign intelligence.

via www.realclearpolitics.com

Stephen Harper: Tech Integration With China ‘Incompatible’

China’s technology apparatus is geared to do the very things that alarm western democracies about big tech, former prime minister Stephen Harper told attendees at a defence and security conference on March 12.

“The biggest single concern that Western citizens … have about big tech is about power. It’s about privacy, it’s about surveillance, it’s about the use of personal data,” Harper said, speaking at the Conference of Defence Associations Institute’s Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence in a keynote discussion with his former national security adviser Richard Fadden.

 “The entire Chinese technology system is designed for that purpose.”

Harper said he’s not against Chinese consumer products, but that Beijing should not be allowed to have its technology at the core of the systems of Western democracies.

He spoke of the double edged sword that tech is: while it increases what humans can achieve in a number of ways, it can also be used as an instrument for authoritarianism. 

via www.theepochtimes.com

De Blasio: 'Thoroughly corrupt' Cuomo must resign to save lives

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign from his “almost imperial governorship” — insisting it will help save lives.

“He should resign right now because he’s holding up our effort to fight COVID. He’s literally in the way of us saving lives right now,” de Blasio insisted in a fiery interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“Andrew Cuomo can’t lead us into the future. We’ve got the people, the state ready to reopen, but we need to get him out of the way to do it,” the mayor said.

The mayor repeatedly took aim at his longtime foe throughout the interview, blaming him for the Empire State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as holding up vaccine supplies for the Big Apple.

He also accused him of deliberately hiding the death toll from the virus in nursing homes to keep getting millions in “campaign contributions.”

via nypost.com

Newt Gingrich Locked Out Of Twitter For Criticizing Biden's Immigration Policy | ZeroHedge

Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich was locked out of his Twitter account for over a week after he published a tweet that criticized the Biden administration’s approach to the southern border and raised concern over immigrants crossing the border illegally who may be infected with COVID-19.

via www.zerohedge.com

The Whales of NBA Top Shot Made a Fortune Buying LeBron Highlights - WSJ

Levy is one of the biggest winners of a manic new market that true believers say is the future of collecting and skeptics call a slightly absurd form of speculation. At the center of the frenzy are assets known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which use the blockchain technology powering cryptocurrencies to authenticate digital art, memorable tweets and a remarkable variety of ephemera suddenly worth a mind-blowing amount of money. 

via www.wsj.com

Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New Bodies - The New York Times

“I was really surprised and shocked to see the head moving,” said Ms. Mitoh, who studies the life history traits of sea slugs. She added that she expected the slug “would die quickly without a heart and other important organs.” But it not only continued to live, it also regenerated the entirety of its lost body within three weeks.

via www.nytimes.com

This is a metaphor for something.

Did you hear that? Another mystery boom leaves San Diego grasping for answers - The San Diego Union-Tribune

After Wednesday’s boom here, the first thought of many people — this being California — was “earthquake.” But the United States Geological Survey said no. Their seismic-activity sensors recorded nothing.

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This being San Diego, longtime home to military jets, a lot of folks thought “sonic boom,” too. “That wasn’t one of ours,” said Cmdr. Zachary Harrell, a Navy spokesman, who noted that planes breaking the sound barrier are required to do it far off the coast.

The Marines? They didn’t respond to a request for comment. Local defense contractors testing some kind of newfangled weapon? Mum was the word there, too, as it usually is with classified military projects.

via www.sandiegouniontribune.com

I must have missed it. But it was probably aliens. Or perhaps the CIA.

Yes, Other Animals Do Have Sex For Fun | Discover Magazine

This hypothesis about sex has been tested. Since the word “pleasure” is quite vague, scientists have tended to focus on orgasms. As a particularly intense form of sexual pleasure for many people, the logic has been that if non-humans experience orgasm, they are almost certainly experiencing pleasure.

via www.discovermagazine.com

Thanks goodness for science!

The Town That Didn’t Lock Down – Reason.com

Johnson made the decision to defy Newsom's shutdown order and keep her business open. She wasn't the only one. 

Across California, the reaction to the governor's order was swift and negative. Videos of business owners pointing out the absurdities of the new restrictions went viral on social media. Sheriff's departments across the state, including in Los Angeles and Orange counties, said they wouldn't enforce the order. Trade associations and local governments readied lawsuits. Nine months into a deadly pandemic that had left hundreds of thousands of people dead nationwide, and everyone else stuck inside their homes away from family, friends, and colleagues, the risk was clearly real, as I would find out myself. But patience for another lockdown had been depleted.

Nowhere was this more evident than Paso Robles, where most of the businesses in town came to the same realization as Johnson: Another shutdown could mean their doom. 

But instead of accepting their fate, they got organized. Through Facebook groups and clandestine in-person meetings, a coalition of business owners decided to defy the state's latest order and keep their town open.  

It was an exercise in COVID-era civil disobedience. And in many ways, it worked. 

via reason.com

We took 5/6 of the family unit and vacationed in Paso Robles as it turned out shortly before the lockdown. It was really nice. Great food and wine of course. Too much wine. Hills. Wild critters. Great weather. I wish them well.

Lapdog Corrupt Media Coverage Of Biden's Carteresque Speech Is Embarrassing

It’s embarrassing. Our corrupt, partisan media are embarrassing.

Thursday night, President Joe Biden gave a speech to mark the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s delayed acknowledgment of the COVID-19 pandemic that China unleashed upon the world. The media swooned.

via thefederalist.com

It's only embarrassing if your expectations are too high.

CDC Can’t Force Landlords To Provide Free Housing, Says Court – Reason.com

Mexico moves forward with legalizing marijuana. On Wednesday, Mexican lawmakers in the country's Chamber of Deputies voted 316-129 to legalize marijuana for recreational, not just medical, purposes. "The measure is widely expected to sail through the Senate before being sent to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has signaled support for legalization," notes The New York Times. "The measure, as of Wednesday night, would allow adults to smoke marijuana and, with a permit, grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. It would also grant licenses for producers — from small farmers to commercial growers — to cultivate and sell the crop."

via reason.com

I have it on good authority (one of my former students who was deeply immersed in the pot business) that the cartels are now firmly in control of weed distribution in California, as they were before. Other illegal drugs are of course far more profitable for all concerned, except of course the consumers.

New York Sens. Schumer, Gillibrand call for Gov. Cuomo's resignation | Fox News

New York Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer have joined a long list of lawmakers in calling for their state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, to resign amid mounting allegations of inappropriate conduct.

via www.foxnews.com

HR 1 Bill -- The Left Launches Two-Pronged Assault on American Democracy | National Review

A full-out assault on our election system — a two-pronged project of the Democratic Party and the vast and crazy-funded left-wing conspiracy — is underway, threatening a radical transformation of our republic, making mincemeat of the notion of states (those things currently considered “united”), and erasing our Declaration’s assurance that America operates via “the consent of the governed.”

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Can this actually come to pass?

Well, can Joe Biden be elected president? So, yes — fret.

via www.nationalreview.com

The Lockdowns Weren’t Worth It - WSJ

I’ve looked at more than 100 regions and countries. None have seen exponential growth of the pandemic continue until herd immunity was reached, regardless of whether a government lockdown or other stringent measure was imposed. People eventually revert to more-relaxed behavior. When they do, the virus starts spreading again. That’s why we see the “inverted U-shape” of cases and deaths everywhere.

Sweden was the first to learn this lesson, but many other countries have confirmed it. Initially held up as a disaster by many in the pro-lockdown crowd, Sweden has ended up with a per capita death rate indistinguishable from that of the European Union. In the U.S., Georgia’s hands-off policies were once called an “experiment in human sacrifice” by the Atlantic. But like Sweden, Georgia today has a per capita death rate that is effectively the same as the rest of the country.

That isn’t to say that restrictions have no effect. Had Sweden adopted more-stringent restrictions, it’s likely the epidemic would have started receding a bit earlier and incidence would have fallen a bit faster. But policy may not matter as much as people assumed it did. Lockdowns can destroy the economy, but it’s starting to look as if they have minimal effect on the spread of Covid-19.

via www.wsj.com

But they brought us together as a people. (/satire)

Biden's new Covid workplace rules set to collide with reopenings - POLITICO

The Biden administration is expected to issue new temporary rules next week to curb Covid-19 spread in the workplace, setting a collision course with the growing number of states loosening restrictions on businesses to aid their reopening.

The mandates — which would add enforcement powers to guidelines that are now just optional — threaten to further roil the politics around President Joe Biden’s cautious reopening strategy and ramp up tensions between the administration and the business community, particularly with industries hard-hit by closures like restaurants and entertainment and hospitality venues.

via www.politico.com

Osha! To the rescue! Just in time!

Wind Power Is a Disaster in Texas, No Matter What Paul Krugman Says | Mises Wire

In the wake of February’s tragic power outages in Texas, during which 4.5 million households suffered service interruptions, partisans on both sides have been quick to interpret the events as confirmation of their preferred energy policies. With news images of helicopters deicing frozen turbines, conservatives lambasted Texas’s increasing reliance on wind power as the villain in the story.

Trying to temper this knee-jerk reaction, Reason.com columnist Ron Bailey argued that “[m]ost of the shortfall in electric power generation during the current cold snap is the result of natural gas and coal powered plants going offline.” And Paul Krugman for his part declared that it was a “malicious falsehood” to blame wind and solar power for what happened in Texas, as it was primarily a failure of natural gas.

In this article I’ll lay out the basic facts of which power sources stepped up to the plate during the crisis. Contrary to what you would have known from reading Ron Bailey (let alone Paul Krugman), when the Texas freeze hit, electricity from natural gas skyrocketed while wind output fell off a cliff. The people arguing that wind wasn’t to blame mean it in the same way Jimmy Olson wasn’t to blame when General Zod took over: wind is so useless nobody serious ever thought it might help in a crisis.

via mises.org

I like Ron Bailey but I don't like Herr Doktor Professor Krugmaniac. Wind power is, IMHO, the most exquisitely hilarious form of power ever conceived. But I don't like it because it kills birds of prey and makes ugly techno-messes in the desert.

The Truth about Sherman's "Antitrust" Act | Mises Institute

Today regulation is generally recognized as a mechanism by which special interests lobby the government to create barriers to entry or other special privileges. Research has shown, for example, that the Civil Aeronautics Board cartelized the airline industry, the Interstate Commerce Commission helped monopolize the railroad and the trucking industries, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sharply limited entry into the banking business, and occupational licensing created entry barriers into hundreds of occupations. Much of the history of regulation chronicles monopoly privileges procured through the auspices of the state, as Adam Smith pointed out more than 200 years ago in The Wealth of Nations.

Oddly, antitrust regulation is still widely viewed as government’s benevolent response to the “failures” and “imperfections” of the marketplace. Even economists who are usually skeptical of regulations enacted in the name of the public interest seem to lose their perspective when it comes to antitrust. George Stigler, for example, has stated: “So far as I can tell, [the Sherman Act] is a public-interest law … in the same sense in which I think having private property, enforcement of contracts, and suppression of crime are public-interest phenomena…. I like the Sherman Act.” [Quoted in Thomas Hazlett, “Interview with George Stigler,” Reason, January 1984: 46).]

A 1984 survey of professional economists revealed that 83 percent of the respondents believed that “antitrust laws should be used vigorously to reduce monopoly power from its current level.” [Bruno Frey, et al, “Consensus and Dissension Among Economists,” American Economic Review (May 1984): 986–84.] His opinion is widespread despite common knowledge among antitrust scholars that in practice the antitrust laws restrain output and the growth of productivity have contributed to a deterioration of the competitive position of U.S. industry, and are routinely used to subvert competition.

Why then do the antitrust laws continue to command such powerful support among economists and legal scholars when the pervasive failures are so well known? There are several possible explanations. Antitrust consultants and expert witnesses often stand to make a good deal of money, so financial self-interest may preclude criticism of antitrust. Many economists are also unable to voice informed opinions on antitrust. If it is not their area of expertise, they may not have kept up with research over the past 30 years, or excessive concentration on mathematical models may have left some economists somewhat detached from economic reality. Finally, it is widely believed that there was once a “golden age of antitrust” during which the public was protected from rapacious monopolists by benevolent public servants. According to this perspective, although mistakes have been made, more knowledgeable and public-spirited regulators can successfully reform antitrust. Once reformed, antitrust policy can then perform its original purpose and defend competition and free enterprise.

Unfortunately, the Sherman Act was never intended to protect competition. It was a blatantly protectionist act designed to shield smaller and less efficient businesses from their larger competitors. There never was a golden age of antitrust. The standard account of the origins of antitrust is a myth.

via mises.org

No idea if any of this is actually true, but it stands to reason.

What’s Behind the Huge Spike in Reserves, a Liability on the Fed’s Balance Sheet? | Wolf Street

The deeply negative repo rates on 10-year Treasuries have raised concerns in certain corners of Wall Street that otherwise clamor for more QE that the Fed has pushed QE too far, and that some aspects of the markets are starting to malfunction.

via wolfstreet.com

It's the end of the world. Nah, just kidding. But it's weird.