News of the Week for July 9th, 2023
- Abortion
- Gun Rights
- Hide the Decline
- Obamacare
- War & Terror
- National News
- Economy & Taxes
- International News
- Opinion
Abortion
Dobbs Decision
Wisconsin Judge Says 173-Year-Old ‘Abortion Ban’ Doesn’t Apply To Abortion
A lawsuit challenging the 1849 law may continue, the judge ruled.
Gun Rights
Armed Las Vegas worker stopped likely mass shooter in his tracks but received little attention: expert
A suspect in Las Vegas was seen in an apartment complex wearing a helmet and carrying an ‘AR-15 style rifle’
Hide the Decline
Environment &“Green Energy”
There Is No Transition
We are told constantly that the world is in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to “green” energy. “News” outlets commonly report this as fact. But in reality, no such transition is underway, nor will it ever be.
WEF Partner Aimed to ‘End’ ‘Private Car Ownership’ to Save the Planet
The World Economic Forum (WEF) isn’t the only entity planning for a world where you “own nothing, have no privacy” and enjoy it — or else. WEF’s partner Arup Group released a 2019 report pontificating, “private car ownership needs to end.”
Obamacare
Government in Healthcare
Netherlands killing people for being autistic or mentally handicapped
Autism is not “curable.” Neither are intellectual disabilities
Medical Establishment Loathes Anti–Affirmative-Action Case
Always remember that when the medical, scientific, or bioethics “experts” opine on matters of political or cultural controversy, they are almost always coming from a hard-a-port ideological perspective. Consider: The Lancet, the world’s oldest medical journal, just published a news story on the Harvard affirmative-action case.
War & Terror
Republicans’ New Border Plan: Send Military Into Mexico
GOP candidates and lawmakers want to use the U.S. military to battle drug cartels
Media Blackout: Philly July 4th Mass Shooter Is BLM Supporter, Uses They/Them Pronouns
A 40-year-old man donned a bullet-proof vest on the Fourth of July in Philadelphia and opened fire randomly, say police, killing five and wounding two young children.
Xi to Putin: If You Use a Nuke, We Won’t Have Your Back
For a long while now, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made oddly optimistic comments about China playing some sort of useful role in bringing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to an end. For much of the war, the Chinese government has combined bland calls for peace with criticism of NATO supplying Ukraine with weapons, declaring, “the continued supply of heavy weapons to one side of the war is not conducive to the end of the war as soon as possible, it is adding fuel to the fire.”
China Restricts Export of Chipmaking Metals in Clash With US
Beijing will limit gallium and germanium exports from Aug. 1
Lukashenko: Prigozhin’s in Russia — and his mercenaries haven’t arrived in Belarus
By this time, Yevgeny Prigozhin should have arrived in Minsk, and thousands of his Wagner Group mercenaries in Belarussian bases. Nearly two weeks have passed since the warlord lost his nerve on the road to Moscow and cut a deal with Vladimir Putin to go into exile. Given that it took Prigozhin less than two days to travel from Bakhmut to Rostov and then Voronezh, the country drive to Minsk should have taken only a few days on the scenic route.
Why the Marines Are Ditching Tanks and Howitzers to Prepare for America’s Next Big War
The service is returning to its roots as an island-hopping tornado to face off against Russia and China.
Pentagon has strategic germanium stockpile but no gallium reserves
The Pentagon holds a strategic U.S. stockpile for germanium but currently has no inventory reserves for gallium, a spokesperson said on Thursday, after China announced export restrictions on the two metals used in semiconductors.
Xi Tells Commanders to Focus on ‘War Preparedness’ as Yellen Arrives in Beijing
Chinese leader Xi Jinping huddled with his top officers in the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command, urging them to focus on “war preparedness.”
Is China moving to claim more islands in the South China Sea?
China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea is well known at this point. In particular they have built up military installations on the Spratly islands. This 2017 video from Vox remains the best visual primer on this topic. They key point here is something called the “cabbage strategy” which is a way of establishing dominance in a contested part of the South China Sea by sending a wave of ships into the area.
National
City Council Wants ‘NYPD to File Millions of Reports’ on Everything, Including Small Encounters
Nothing good ever comes out of more bureaucracy.
UCLA refused to hire a psychology professor after grad students complained he’d been critical of DEI on a podcast
Professor Yoel Inbar teaches psychology at the University of Toronto. Recently his long-time girlfriend who teaches psychology at a different university was offered a job by UCLA. Once it became clear her offer was solid she mentioned to the school that she had a partner who also taught psychology and asked if it was possible the school would consider hiring him as well. These kind of partner hires are not unusual in academia. UCLA asked Inbar to send his qualifications and next they set up a sort of job interview for him on campus.
Reality of Zero-Sum Game of College Admissions Was Critical To Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling
Despite attempts to cast racial preferences as merely a helping hand to minority applicants, those preferences ultimately mean that a proportional amount of non-minority individuals will be rejected based, in part, on their race.
San Francisco State University fails to provide all documents
After initially promising to deliver all documents related to Campus Reform’s public records request by June 30, San Francisco State University delivered just one round of documents on June 28.
LGBTQ Folx Beware: New York Wants To Keep an Eye on You
Anytime the government wants to keep a closer eye on us, it’s a good time to ask why. Most people would agree that it is a good idea for the government to track terrorists, human and drug traffickers, and child abusers. But the argument has been cogently made that our current government has some very different ideas about who is a terrorist than many citizens. Be that as it may, governments at all levels have insatiable appetites for the details of everyone’s lives. And of course, it keeps the wheels of bureaucracy oiled and more importantly, funded. Besides, who knows when that information may prove useful for some yet-to-be-determined reason at a future date?
Texas professor fired after teaching sex is determined by chromosomes: legal group
A biology professor in Texas says he was fired after teaching that sex in humans is determined by X and Y chromosomes.
San Francisco Reparations Panel Member Claims ‘Straight White Men are Serial Killers’
Last week, the panel submitted a list of demands over 1000 pages, which included a ban on enforcing public urination laws and a $225 billion reparations price tag.
ALITO and THOMAS: Government resorting “to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment … would be a very strong case for prompt review by this Court”
SCOTUS didn’t take the case involving racist anti-white NY State Covid therapeutic guidelines because the crisis has passed, but Justices Alito and Thomas issued a Statement warning that “New York’s general reference to ‘longstanding systemic health and social inequities’ would not have sufficed to allow the State to deny a person medical treatment simply because that person is viewed by the State as being a member of the wrong racial or ethnic group.”
Mothers and nannies attacked by children on school run as San Francisco suffers new crime wave
City officials blame truancy and zero interest from police for ‘kids doing these really awful things’
California Reparations Task Force Recommends over $225 Billion Payout for War on Drugs Compensation Alone
Based on a formula created by California Reparations Task Force, a nine-member panel appointed by Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, the total amount owed to black California residents victimized by the War on Drugs since 1970 amounts to over $225 billion.
July 4 Injunction Bars Various Federal Departments from Encouraging Social Media Platforms to Delete Content
The opinion (Missouri v. Biden) by Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.) is here, and the injunction is here. The opinion is 45,000 words long, and I doubt I’ll have a chance to fully analyze it for a while (I’m largely tied up for the next couple of weeks); but in the meantime, here’s the opening
High School Debater Takes on the Political Bias of the National Speech and Debate Association
“At the NSDA National Qualifier debate tournament in March, my judge warned me not to mention former President Donald Trump in a debate on President Joe Biden’s foreign policy record.”
NCInnovation Raises Serious Transparency Concerns
North Carolinians deserve better oversight than they’re getting.
Six Ways Higher Ed Will Attempt To Evade The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling
Our Op-Ed at Fox News Digital: “You probably think the Supreme Court just ended racial discrimination in university admissions, euphemistically called affirmative action, and a new day of equal treatment without regard to race or skin color has dawned. You are mostly wrong.”
The MTV generation’s unemployment problem
The Labor Department reported Friday morning that the U.S. job market added a net 209,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.6 percent.
France’s Macron Refuses to Address Migrant Violence, Seeks Powers to ‘Cut Off’ Social Media and Add More Electronic Surveillance
Macron’s right-wing rival Marine Le Pen surges in polls.
Court allows ‘collegiality’ to be used as a pretext for punishing professor’s non-woke viewpoint
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that it was OK for North Carolina State University to punish a professor for “uncollegiality” after he criticized a “diversity” question on student evaluations, and a diversity-oriented faculty search, and wrote a blog post about the increasingly “woke” nature of his field. This is the same federal appeals court that ruled on May 31 that it was OK for a university to send “bias response teams” after students for constitutionally protected speech that didn’t remotely constitute harassment or discrimination (that same ruling wrongly refused to block an onerous requirement that students apply for a permit on behalf of a registered student group before handing out leaflets anywhere on Virginia Tech’s 2600 acre campus, based on an absurd rationale: an alleged scarcity of space).
Professor: Michigan ‘hate speech’ bill could criminalize conservative opinion
‘Proponents use these laws to silence and financially cripple those who dare to adhere to a different viewpoint’
Oregon’s Castration Machine
A public hospital in Portland is using a robot to create artificial genitalia.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ‘Overwhelmingly’ Booted From House Freedom Caucus
Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from the House Freedom Caucus after repeatedly siding with Speaker Kevin McCarthy on a series of key votes.
Appeals Court Rules University Can Punish Professor for Criticizing ‘Diversity’ Hiring
The academic left has no tolerance for faculty members who aren’t all in favor of the DEI agenda. It will look for any pretext to punish those who dare to disagree.
Brave aims to curb practice of websites that port scan visitors
Brave will allow users to choose which sites can access local network resources.
Appeals Court Reinstates Tennessee Law Prohibiting Child Gender Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers
“It is well within a State’s police power to ban off-label uses of certain drugs. At the same time, it is difficult to maintain that the medical community is of one mind about the use of hormone therapy for gender dysphoria when the FDA is not prepared to put its credibility and careful testing protocols behind the use.”
Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Volatile behavior, boorish flirtation, insufficient collegiality.
Trump Vows to ‘Deny Entry to All Communists and Markers’ Into ‘Our Cunny’
Former President Donald Trump vowed to “deny entry to all communists and markers” into “our cunny” during a campaign rally gaffe in Iowa on Friday.
People on the Hawaii island of Nihoa ‘disappeared.’ Here’s why.
Hawaii may be known for its eight main islands, but the Hawaiian archipelago is a string of 137 islands, most of which exist beyond the shores of Kauai. These islands, including reefs, islets and atolls, make up the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, established in 2006.
South Fulton mayor released after being arrested for trespassing, burglary
The mayor of South Fulton was arrested Saturday morning. Khalid Kamau was later booked into Fulton County Jail on the charges of criminal trespass and burglary in the first degree.
YMCA Accuses Teen Girl of Hate Speech for Opposing Man in Girls’ Locker Room
Yet another “trans”-cultic offense against children, women, decency, reason, and basic human rights has taken place. Such offenses will continue unless and until right-thinking Americans oppose them with courage and tenacity—oh, and lawsuits.
Economy & Taxes
Los Angeles Learns the Downside of Social-Justice Taxation
Los Angeles passed a tax on mansion sales to fund government programs for the homeless. Sounds simple, right? Take from the rich, who can afford the tax, and give to the poor, who need the assistance.
Emerging economies are decoupling from China, helping them stay strong despite rising interest rates, market veteran says
Emerging markets are proving resilient amid post-pandemic challenges, Ruchir Sharma wrote in The Financial Times.
China is in default on a trillion dollars in debt to US bondholders. Will the US force repayment?
Every country should pay its sovereign debt. Default, we are told, is not an option. But has anyone told China?
Homeowners Cutting Back on Spending, Plan to Look for Second Job: Bank of Canada Survey
Homeowners with variable-rate mortgages are cutting back on household spending and planning to look for a second job, according to a survey by the Bank of Canada (BoC).
International
Paris Resembles War Zone as France Endures Sixth Night of Migrant-Driven Rioting
Le Figaro newspaper: “Police and gendarmes are paying a heavy price, with 700 injured” overnight.
Jamie Sarkonak: American universities see end to affirmative action. Not so in Canada
SCOTUS found that race-based college admissions were unconstitutional
Ireland: Hate speech law won’t progress further until autumn at the earliest
A number of senators have requested a meeting with the minister about the legislation.
Dutch government collapses over disagreement on immigration
The Netherlands is government by a parliamentary system and over the past year and a half the group in power was a coalition made up of four parties. Today that coalition collapsed over a disagreement on immigration policy. Specifically, Prime Minister Mark Rutte belongs to the conservative party and was trying to secure an agreement that would limit the number of asylum seekers coming into the country. But the smallest party which was part of the coalition refused to go along with his plan.
Opinion
Just How Bad Was the Dissent in SFFA v. Harvard?
Last week, the Supreme Court declared in a 6–3 ruling that the racial-preference programs that nearly all selective colleges and universities use to achieve student-body “diversity” violate the 14th Amendment.
Will the Supreme Court Dismantle the Administrative State?
As I have written more than once, the government we live under is not the one described in the Constitution. The ubiquitous and powerful arm of our government, found nowhere in the Constitution, is the Fourth Branch, the plethora of federal agencies, the administrative state. The administrative state has assumed much of the power that the Constitution assigns to the legislative and executive branches, a development that has progressed now for more than a century without serious challenge. Do we finally have a Supreme Court willing to take on the unelected Fourth Branch and restore a government that looks more like the one that is outlined in the Constitution?
The eternal meaning of Independence Day
On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech.
The eternal meaning of Independence Day (2)
President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety.
How to Cut Costs on Campus
Many university expenses are difficult to trim. But not impossible.
What the Declaration of Independence Said and Meant
It officially adopted the American Theory of Government: First Come Rights; Then Comes Government to Secure These Rights
Who Embraces the Slogan, ‘Trump or Death’?
On the menu today: What does it say about our country that there is a market for flags that declare, “Trump or Death?” Why do some fans of the former president find that an effective or inspiring rallying cry? And are they play-acting in the role of revolutionaries, or do they mean what they say?
Decline is a Choice
The California panel reviewing reparations has made several policy choices. Those choices indicate California, like much of the urban progressive core in America, has chosen to decline. Among the matters for which the panel has voiced support is an end to police enforcement of public nuisance laws such as public urination, minor trespass, sleeping on the streets, etc. Individually, they may seem like no big deal. In their totality, failing to enforce the small things will cause the big things to fester.
