Forget Due Process, We Want Justice!

It’s always worth reminding people that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade’s charges, and tossed from office in disgrace.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/biden-prepares-to-strip-college-students-of-due-process-rights/

Oh, so funny, that doesn't happen to the Bidens! C'mon man ...

Don't Just Do Something, Stand There

Inaction kills, incorrect action kills, there's no easy path. Hind sight shows that government intrusions on liberty were not effective and therefore not justified. 

The government's responses (i.e., the severity index and the containment and health index) are strongly correlated with the second factorial axis (Figures 2, 4). The death rate from Covid-19 is not correlated with this axis. Therefore, the death rate appears not to be linked with the responses of governments.

The third axis shows a relationship between Covid-19 mortality and longitude as well as obesity and sedentarity (Figures 4, 5). American countries have a higher obesity rate and a higher Covid-19 mortality rate; Asian countries have lower obesity rates and lower Covid-19 mortality rates.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full

Authoritarian Power Sans Trump

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in

Two Tenths of One Percent

Nobody watches CNN on a slow news day, which is why CNN is always telling us things are falling apart. If a genuine horror takes place, such as the death of George Floyd, there is no effort whatsoever to remind us how statistically rare such incidents may be. Of all black homicide victims last year, only 0.2 percent of them were unarmed victims of police. In Chicago last year there were 492 homicides and only three of them involved police. Yet we’re told (by Chinese state propaganda, Al Jazeera, famous US professors and progressive columnists) that America is a failed state or a failed experiment.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/13/in-defense-of-america-not-a-failed-experiment-but-an-always-improving-one/

Safety Makes Us Safer (from the police)?

"The story only changed when a few criminologists, led by the Manhattan Institute’s George Kelling, and visionary police leaders, like William J. Bratton, began to advocate for community-based policing, including enforcement of quality-of-life offenses, and the deployment of more sophisticated data to target crime hot spots, to bring order back to urban neighborhoods. After Bratton became New York’s police chief under Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994, crime started to fall dramatically—including violent felonies, which fell by 70 percent. 

"As crime declined, so did some key indicators of police misconduct. The New York Police Department keeps extensive records on how often officers fire their guns, and the numbers tell a powerful story. In 1991, at the peak of the city’s crime wave under Mayor David Dinkins, officers discharged their guns 307 times. Ten years ago, in a much safer city, police fired their guns fewer than 100 times—and last year, they did so just 52 times, representing a greater than 80 percent decline from 1991."

https://www.city-journal.org/democrats-police-reform

This write up was enough to make me wish I could watch it ....

The best hope for the future of the world is that all parts of the world can be brought to property rights and rule of law, which would lead to stable or declining birth rates - at least, that is what has happened in every first world nation so far.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2020/05/28/the_green_god_that_failed__almost_494439.html

The Flynn Thing, Nasty, Ugly and Brutish

Too ugly for words. A weaponized FBI - for those as naive as I am, it would have been unthinkable. 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/29/explosive-new-flynn-documents-show-fbi-goal-was-to-get-him-fired/

More on Flynn

The over bearing force of the legal system, out of control. We should all be afraid.

For more than three years, Michael Flynn waged a strange battle to clear his name after pleading guilty to lying to FBI agents and then declining a judge’s invitation to withdraw the plea. But there has always been something very wrong about the case, and we’ve learned more about it in recent weeks.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-case-is-a-travesty/

More than a year ago I wrote a series of columns that made the point that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had been set up by the FBI and may have committed no crime. I repeated my legal arguments in several interviews. This led the professional Trump-bashers — who care more about “getting” Trump than about protecting civil liberties — to attack me for “inventing” legal principles that help the Trump team.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/495718-michael-flynn-case-places-both-fbi-integrity-and-civil-liberty-on-the-line

Dirt from the Ivory Towers

Can universities survive themselves?

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2019/10/02/university_admissions_scandals_go_deeper_than_you_think_110363.html

There's Plenty of Dirt Out There

Can you live and work in that cesspool and come out clean?

Why do we think any of them are not dirty?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/biden-outreach-to-dhs-and-doj-overlapped-with-work-by-son-hunters-lobbying-firm

Why Convince When Coercion at Gunpoint Is Easier

Legislating incandescents out of production is a tribute to the arrogance of the "knowitall" climate goons. Every problem is a chance for the well intended to force people at gun point to do the bidding of the elites. That is wrong.

And the Left says they don't like guns or violence -

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2019/09/14/Light-bulbs-efficient-LED-incandescent-Trump-administration-energy/stories/201909130032

CAFE Laws Just Keep on Giving (Worst of Both Worlds)

In the Obama era, Edmunds explained, fuel economy regulations “changed from just a straight average across the board to what’s called a platform-based fuel economy standard. So your fuel economy target for a given vehicle is based on its wheelbase and its tread width, which is the width between the tires left to right. So if you multiply that you find the area of that rectangle and there’s a table that shows what your fuel-economy target is. The bigger the vehicle, the smaller the target.” 

https://www.insidehook.com/article/vehicles/why-pickup-trucks-keep-getting-bigger

First they gave us older, gas guzzlers that polluted more but were kept longer because their functionality could not be replaced after manufacturers shifted their fleets to meet new legal requirements. Then, they gave us SUVs to replace the big family station wagons doomed by the CAFE laws.

It is delusion to think this type of regulation is ever going to win for the citizenry. 

Tamny on CO Tax Hike

Tamny's gift for seeing things more clearly, for reframing the question, is unique in the econ world.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/04/26/gov_jared_poliss_rocky_mountain_tax_hike_is_a_self-defeating_non_sequitur_103716.html

Government, a monopoly on coercion by force

Under the bill, all federally funded entities, from educational programs (college sports teams, school bathrooms) to public accommodations (women’s shelters, locker rooms), would be forced to interpret “sex” to include “gender identity.” In other words, to treat men as women if they identify as such, and vice versa.

Already we are seeing the harmful effects of such policies. In the state of Connecticut, two biologically male students who self-identified as transgender finished first and second in an event in the girls’ high-school track championships. A biological man asked the Massachusetts attorney general’s office to force a women’s spa to wax his genitals. In Palm Springs, Calif., three teenage girls encountered a naked man showering in the women’s locker room. All of these incidents are part of a social and legal revolution that the Equality Act would advance.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/the-equality-act-is-about-coercion/

This is a no win for all sides - I empathize with those who live with the issue in question. What to do by force to the rest of us for the sake of possibly ameliorating the suffering of this population is vexing. Use of the vast coercive power of the government in this way will hurt more people than it helps.

Why We Should Not "Pull Together"

Hank Aaron. His life was threatened because he was a great hitter, and played smart and stayed healthy and broke some drunk's hitting record. I didn't know why there was an uproar about Hank in my youth. He was a Brave, I cheered for him. Grown up, I heard the back story - urine dumped on him at MLB games. Death threats as he approached the record. When he hit that 715th in 74, they say his mom ran on the diamond not to cheer him ... but out of fear he would be killed. Killed for hitting a baseball really, really well, and being black skinned... 
So you think it's bad today when some whack job sends pretend bombs?

Oh, and Trump "attacks the press". Wowee. Look at what JFK did with the protection of the oh so noble press. How was anyone ever so naive as to believe all the mythical majesty of the "press". Rate gathering wonders, yes they are that. Purposeful? Doing meaningful work? Only by accident. There could hardly be anyone more reprehensible to me than Trump, he's easily the worst employee I've ever been stuck with. Still, he's a step above "the press" in terms of integrity since he clearly is just what he says, a compulsive self promoter - just like the press but honest about it. 

I struggle to make sense of this time, too. I feel angry at the stupid. People say silly stuff like "we must all pull together to make our democracy work" as if the alpha and omega of this nation is what the government does or doesn't do (and as if the USA was a democracy - "and to the republic for which it stands").
People say silly stuff like "we must all pull together" as if they don't see how afraid I am of what you want the government to do to me, and what you think I want the government to do to you.
Pull together? Well, are you going to stop using the government against me? If not, how can I pull with you?
With this much power at stake, does it make sense to "pull together"? "Pull together", whatever that means. Really, you think 300 million people are going to have a common interest other than you shouldn't hurt me and I shouldn't hurt you?

You don't like violence? Every act of government is an act of violence, we ignore that we accept violence from the powerful. You want to smoke something that I don't think you should? Well, someone with a gun will take care of it and you can go to jail or get shot for "breaking the law". That is violence, lawful or not.

When someone says "we should all pull together" I wonder how they can miss how absurdly thin that gruel is when the pulling apart they are arguing against is about who gets to do what to whom with the violence of law. The Germans and Japanese "pulled together" about 70+ years ago, I don't want any part of "pulling together".

I'd rather we do what I see us doing every day which is looking each other in the eye with a polite greeting and mutual acknowledgement of the humanity before us and refuse to let these empty headed political types drag us into their nightmares of political conquest and imagined glory. 

If you want to pull with me, let's pull for more and greater restrictions on what you can use the government to do to me, and on what I can use the government to do to you. 

If you insist on having more reasons why government can commit violence on your fellow citizens, be aware enough not to ask them to happily participate in their own victimization.

Shady - Seems Like A Polite Term

And it also seems completely predictable since power in the hands of government is always going to be for sale at some level.
https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-equity-firm-run-by-kerry-and-bidens-kids/

Something Liberals and Conservatives Should Be Able To Agree On

The justices seemed to indicate the answer is “No,” but mainly because the California law was so manifestly written to target pro-life pregnancy centers. What if the law were more fairly written? The pro-life side will argue that the cases are completely different inasmuch as “informed consent” explanations take place before a serious medical procedure, and pregnancy centers don’t offer medical procedures. We agree, but the Court won’t answer that question in NIFLA v. Becerra.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/forced-speech/article/2012049

Fighting for Control of Your Mind

This is not the pregnancy center you are looking for ...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/forced-speech/article/2012049

When the Truth Is A Lie

You will do what this fellow does ...
https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/james-okeefe-is-bringing-back-the-best-practice-of-journalism/

No Glory In War

"He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers. 

I don't think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected president if Patton had lived to say the things he wanted to say." Mr Wilcox added: "I think there's enough evidence here that if I were to go to a grand jury I could probably get an indictment, but perhaps not a conviction."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3869117/General-George-S.-Patton-was-assassinated-to-silence-his-criticism-of-allied-war-leaders-claims-new-book.html

This is not to say that I know what happened, just that even in a world saving victory over the enemy, there was incredible ugliness.