News of the Week for Jan. 15^th, 2023

• Abortion
• Gun Rights
• Hide the Decline
• Obamacare
• War & Terror
• National News
• Economy & Taxes
• International News
• Opinion

 

Abortion

Dobbs Decision

 

Minnesota Democrats Vote to Repeal Law Requiring Medical Care for Babies Who Survive Abortions
A bill to repeal numerous longstanding abortion-related laws in Minnesota, including a law protecting newborns who survive abortion from being left to die, passed a Minnesota legislative committee today. The bill, H.F. 91 (S.F. 70), was approved by the House Health Finance and Policy Committee on an 11-8 vote.

 

Gun Rights

 

Colorado Democrats aim to ban entire class of semi-automatic weapons
In one of their first moves of the 2023 legislative session, majority Democrats — who control nearly two-thirds of both chambers — are gearing up to enact a ban on what appears to be the entire class of semi-automatic weapons.

ATF Finalizes Rule That Treats Guns With Pistol Braces as Short-Barreled Rifles
More petty annoyances for gun owners have been created by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The feds are finalizing a rule that targets pistol braces and would include higher taxes, longer waiting periods, and registration.

 

Hide the Decline

Environment &“Green Energy”

 

Not just stoves. NY to ban all gas appliances
Yesterday we looked at the federal government’s suggestion that they may either ban all gas stoves in the country or require expensive emission control modifications. This is supposedly being done as a public health measure, but under the covers, it seems like yet another covert attempt to eliminate fossil fuel use in America. That move, if it happens, clearly won’t be enough for the state of New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul will always try to bring her green energy one-upmanship game to the table. During her State of the State speech yesterday, Hochul pledged to not only do away with gas stoves but all natural gas appliances over the next decade. Thankfully, the ban would only apply to new construction projects in the initial phases.

House Republicans Demand Biden Not Ban Gas Stoves, Submit Legislation to Stop Agency From Doing So
“This kind of intrusion into the homes of Americans by the federal government as a way of forcing rush-to-green, liberal policies is the ‘nanny state’ at its worst.”

Bill Would Prohibit Sec. of Transportation Pete Buttigieg from Using Private Air Travel
Development comes after investigations most recent air fiasco is blamed on a lone contractor with corrupt software file, the latest crisis for Biden’s private-jet addicted DOT head.

 

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

Canadian Doctor Who Euthanized 400 People Described It as the ‘Most Rewarding Work’
After international criticism, Canada now looks to delay new assisted dying rules for mentally ill.

If you need an ambulance in England, you could die waiting
The BBC published a story today about one families tragic experience with the NHS ambulance service. Back in November a 68-year-old man named Martin Clark began having chest pains. His wife dialed 999 which is the British equivalent of 911 and asked for an ambulance. Thirty-two minutes later no ambulance had arrived and she called 999 again to inform them her husband was getting worse. Finally, after another 15 minutes passed, the family called a third time to inform the dispatcher that they would drive Mr. Clark to the hospital themselves. They were told that was not recommended but did it anyway.

Maryland Catholic Hospital Liable for Refusing Transgender Hysterectomy
Two principles of Catholic health-care ethics forbid removing healthy organs and sterilizing a patient absent a necessity caused by a pathology, such as cancer. These principles are increasingly in conflict with the transgender movement that has the ACLU and others suing when Catholic hospitals refuse transgender surgeries based on these religiously based precepts.

 

War & Terror

 

Russian Ship’s Secretive South Africa Stop Prompts U.S. Questions
The Lady R and its owner are under Washington sanctions for alleged weapons shipments

Las Vegas Solar Plant Suffers Terror Attack, but What Kind?
In our post-journalistic age, it’s common for news stories to raise more questions than they answer, but Las Vegas’ KLAS published an item Thursday that would certainly win the Pulitzer Prize in the Unanswered Questions Division, if they had such a thing (and they should). It seems that a man caused major damage to a solar plant and is facing a terrorism charge for doing so. That much we know. But why? What was he trying to do? There is any number of possibilities, and only one can we rule out: the perp was not one of those “white supremacists” who Old Joe Biden and his handlers keep telling us constitute the largest terror threat the nation faces today.

Man faces terror charge for damaging power plant outside Las Vegas
Police: Suspect from Idaho scoped out Nevada power-generating site

New Proposal Will Seek to Authorize Military Force against Mexican Cartels
Representative Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) said this weekend that he will introduce legislation to authorize the use of certain U.S. military capabilities against drug cartels in Mexico.

 

National

 

Transgenderism is experiencing a crisis of scientific legitimacy
On day one of his administration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order ostensibly aimed at “preventing discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity,” a term that has gained more prominence in recent years.

How DEI took over US universities
Writing for Bari Weiss’ new site, The Free Press, John Saller describes how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) took over US universities and how it now dominates hiring, promotion, tenure and pay decisions. The hiring of DEI administrators by universities has been going on for more than a decade but a major change came when California’s UC system made mandatory diversity statements part of the hiring process for all faculty

University job applicants must be ‘equity-minded,’ state their contributions to DEI
Candidates for an administrative position with the University of California, Berkeley must have experience with diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice.

Report: Two More VA School Principals Admit To Withholding National Merit Awards From Students
“To have an equity-centered organization, we have to have the courage and the willingness to be purposefully unequal when it comes to opportunities and access”

Study: U Cal Education Schools Indoctrinate Future Teachers in Critical Race Theory Exploiting ‘Ethnic Studies’
Fox News reports on Legal Insurrection study: “California public schools are ‘saturated’ with teachers who were taught critical race theory at University of California Schools of Education and teacher preparation programs, according to a new study released Monday.”

Researchers Could Track the GPS Location of All of California’s New Digital License Plates
After gaining access to a powerful administrative account, the researchers could perform all sorts of tasks inside Reviver, the sole company that sells the digital plates in California.

Once in 50,000-year comet may be visible to the naked eye
A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said.

Safety agency considers ban on gas stoves amid health fears
Natural gas stoves, which are used in about 40% of US homes, emit pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter.

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Steven Hayward in California, Environment
Mass transit—the holy grail of urban progressivism (Quest for the Holy Rail, as I sometimes put it, or, A Desire Named Streetcar)—is struggling right now.

Arkansas bill classifies drag show as adult-oriented business, adds location restrictions
A bill filed Monday in the Arkansas Senate would define a drag performance as an adult-oriented business and place restrictions on where they could take place.

Lawsuit Filed Challenging Affirmative Action in Texas Public Medical Schools
Complaint: “Each of the defendant medical schools and universities, along with nearly every medical school and university in the United States, discriminates on account of race and sex when admitting students by giving discriminatory preferences to females and non-Asian minorities, and by discriminating against whites, Asians, and men.”

Democratic Rep. Katie Porter Announces California Senate Bid Even Though Feinstein Hasn’t Retired
Why announce without an opening?

Mass transit is dying in cities around the country
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a story about a topic I’ve covered before, the hollowing out of American cities as a result of changes brought on by the pandemic. One symptom of those changes is the decline of mass transit in major cities on both coasts.

“Transmaxxing”
It is well established that some teenage girls choose to identify as boys to escape the difficulties of female adolescence. Now the Daily Caller reports that some young men see transitioning as a solution to sexual frustration. These “transmaxxers,” an online “community of men who consider themselves involuntarily celibate, or ‘incels,’ are transitioning to the opposite sex to escape sexual rejection and improve their lives.”

FAA lifts U.S. ground stop after technology outage delays thousands of flights
The Federal Aviation Administration suffered an outage of the system that sends messages to pilots.

U.S. investigating FAA outage, cause not clear -Biden
President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation into an FAA system outage that grounded flights across the country Wednesday morning and said the cause of the failure was unknown.

Biden Admin Extending COVID State of Emergency…Again
The pandemic is never going to end.

House Adopts New Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government
Democrat Rep. Jim McGovern: “This committee is deranged. It’s a bad idea.”

Social Media Gave Me the Idea ‘I Could Be a Boy.’ Chloe Cole’s Journey Into and Out of Transgenderism.
Cole began telling her friends and family that she was a boy when she was 12 years old after she was introduced to gender-identity ideology through social media. She started taking testosterone and puberty blockers at 13 and had a double mastectomy at 15.

Mellon Foundation pivots to DEI, awards millions to ‘social justice’ initiatives
The Mellon Foundation, which awarded over $500 million in grants in 2021, recently ended two of its social science fellowships ‘as part of a broader refocusing on social justice.’

Woman gets five years for tossing her newborn in a gas station trash can and walking away
This is probably the worst story you’ll hear today though at least some measure of justice was eventually handed out. The story began in 1997 when a woman walked into a Chevron gas station and headed directly for the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later she walked out. Later someone cleaning the bathroom found a dead infant in the trash can. He became known as Baby Boy Doe.

Using the term “field” is racist or something
The University of Southern California School of Social Work is blazing new trails in finding racism. After intense research, years of study, numerous Masters Degrees and PhD theses, they have mined the English language and found yet another word that must be banned in the service of antiracism.

Democrats Pick Up State Senate Seat in Virginia
In November, Virginia state senator Jen Kiggans, a Republican, unseated U.S. representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat, triggering a special election for Kiggans’s state senate seat.

How Gerrymandering Helped House Democrats in 2022
David Wasserman writes at the Cook Political Report: “Democrats won 14 [U.S. House] seats they might not have won had the lines not changed, one more than the 13 Republican redistricting-attributable flips or holds. Throw in reapportioned seats, and Democrats may have gained four seats from redistricting overall.”

This Prestigious Harvard Fellowship Bans White Applicants
As the university defends its affirmative action program before the Supreme Court, it is not shying away from discriminatory programs

Delayed Amtrak Auto Train arrives 37 hours after departure
The train with 563 passengers on Wednesday reached its Florida destination.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Asked CPS Teachers to Push Students to Help Reelect Her
The students would participate in an “externship program” and earn class credit if they volunteer 12 hours a week.

Pakistani Movie Star Complains: Hollywood Only Wants White Villains
Streams of actors would surely love to play a hero, but a villain offers a ton of teeth-sinking fun.

Suing to Stop Race Discrimination
Race discrimination has been widespread in America ever since affirmative action became entrenched in the early 1970s. Now, the Supreme Court may finally be poised to bring it to an end, at least in some contexts.

Organization of ‘nonbinary scientists’ influences universities, professional organizations, publications
Advocacy from the International Society of Nonbinary Scientists has reached universities, the Scientific American, the American Astronomical Society, and other institutions.

Progressives Pressuring Justices Sotomayor and Kagan to Retire While Dems Control Senate, WH
“We have now lived with the consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s late-life arrogance for more than two years.”

Are book bans discrimination? Biden administration to test new legal theory.
The federal government has opened an investigation into a Texas school district over its alleged removal of books featuring LGBTQ characters — marking the first test of a new legal argument that failing to represent students in school books can constitute discrimination.

Supreme Court investigators have narrowed leak probe down to a small group of suspects
I was thinking yesterday that we haven’t heard much about this recently. Today the Wall Street Journal reports there has been some progress in narrowing down the list of suspects but still no definitive conclusion.

Supreme Court Decides to Hear Case Challenging State Law Empowering Government to Seize Entire Value of a House to Pay Much Smaller Property Tax Debt
Minnesota law allowed Hennepin County to seize a $40,000 home owned by a 93-year-old widow to pay off a $15,000 tax debt.

Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Florida riots, MAGA hats, and an eyeball tasing.

The Next California Disaster
If it’s not earthquakes, it’s pandemics. If it’s not droughts, it’s floods. But if there aren’t any natural disasters in California, there’s always the political variety in the Democrat-controlled state, and rumblings of a new Democrat-inflicted catastrophe can be heard now that Sen. Dianne Feinstein is rumored to be retiring, leaving the seat up for grabs in 2024.

 

Economy & Taxes

 

Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that has unions nervous
Back in October the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case called Glacier Northwest Inc v International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174. Oral arguments will be heard in the case tomorrow and some union supporters worry it could be used to undermine the right to strike.

Do Americans Hate Deficits?
I believe that polling has long shown broad support for a balanced budget and for a balanced budget amendment at the federal level. (Most states already have such a requirement.)

House Republicans to vote on bill abolishing IRS, eliminating income tax
Vote on abolishing IRS was part of deal between Speaker McCarthy and House Freedom Caucus

Oral arguments suggest Supreme Court is ready to side with concrete company against union
Yesterday I wrote about the case Glacier Northwest Inc v International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174 which the Supreme Court announced it would consider back in October. If you missed the previous story go back and have a look for a more in depth explanation of what’s at stake here.

Apparently, Economic Conservatives Hate Cost-Cutting Leaders Now
In a repellent demonstration that many of today’s Republican Party differences are about personality and style, and not about policy or philosophy, the Club for Growth is choosing to run attack ads against former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, as he contemplates running for the U.S. Senate in 2024 to replace Mike Braun. (Braun will not run for another term, and intends to run for Indiana governor.)

Estonia’s Plain and Simple Tax Policy
Lessons from one of the world’s most efficient and transparent tax regimes

 

International

 

Chinese Scientists Manipulate Zika Virus and Mosquitoes to Create Vaccinator Insects
In their experiments, the Chinese researchers essentially blended Zika with another virus that thrives in mosquitoes but not other lifeforms.

Cuban dictatorship purchases record amount of chicken from U.S. in November
Embargo? What embargo? The communist Castro dictatorship bought a record $32 million worth of chicken from the U.S. in November.

Royal Mail unable to send letters and parcels overseas after ‘cyber incident’
Royal Mail has told customers sending parcels abroad it is facing ‘severe service disruption’ due to a cyber incident.

Constantine, the former and last king of Greece, dies at 82
Constantine, the former and last king of Greece, who won an Olympic gold medal before becoming entangled in his country’s volatile politics in the 1960s as king and spent decades in exile, has died. He was 82.

The Irish Nanny State Goes after Alcohol
There seems to be no end to efforts by the overweening progressive regulatory state to meddle in the individual choices of citizens. Ireland’s government, doing what would have been unthinkable to prior generations of self-governing Irish, is hectoring its people about the dangers of alcohol.

Sweden claims largest discovery of ‘crucial’ rare-earth elements in Europe
It could be more than a decade before mining begins.

French Online Geography Quiz Recognizes Palestine “From the River to the Sea”
Online geography challenge recognizes “Palestine” that includes all of Israel within its pre-1967 borders.

 

Opinion

 

The 2024 Presidential contest conservatives want, but don’t deserve
Every year, people start looking forward to the Super Bowl, and begin wishing the matchup could actually be between the best two teams. It often doesn’t work out that way. The same is true about American presidential politics.

The Attack on Things That Work
Some of the bluest states in the nation have committed themselves to war with the most efficient appliances in your home: natural gas-powered heaters, furnaces, and stoves.

Analysis: The Destructive Power Of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ Doesn’t Stop At Higher Education
Prof. Jacobson: “At Cornell, they now require DEI statements from all new hires, faculty hires, and all faculty promotions. So as warped as the ideological outlook is among faculty in universities, it’s going to get worse….”