News of the Week for March 9th, 2025
News of the Week for March 9th, 2025
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
With foreign relations in flux in this day and age, let us look back at the era of détente with William F. Buckley, Jr. discussing the politics of Henry Kissinger with Kissinger himself.
Until next Friday.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Mother Nature sure is contentious by proxy
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Nothing makes you more certain that environmentalism is anti-human as nature rights for forests being championed by the World Economic Forum.
“We must reshape the relationship between capitalism and life itself. A groundbreaking concept is emerging — bestowing legal personality upon forests, enabling them to act as legal persons in global discourse. . . . This approach can guide us toward a renewed dialogue. Our forests are not mere resources but as representatives demanding their rightful voice.”
The proponents of legalized abortion style themselves as “pro-choice” and that the choice of a woman or girl to have an abortion is sacrosanct and must be protected. Of course, that “choice” seems to only be protected in one direction, particularly in Nevada. Even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Nevada’s laws protected the right to an abortion such that the legislature was restricted from overturning that. But that protection wasn’t enough.
This past Fall, a measure to enshrine the most extreme procedures with full dearth of limits was passed by the voters, and will become part of the state’s Constitution when passed again, as seems likely, in the Fall of next year. But even that isn’t enough for some. A bill, AB 101, has been introduced to the Nevada Assembly the belies the use of “choice” by attacking pregnancy centers that do not perform or refer people for abortions by labelling them “deceptive” in that “health care” and “pregnancy” is presumed to be one and the same. It reads, in part:
- A health care facility shall not make or disseminate, or cause to be made or disseminated, to the public in any newspaper or other publication, in any advertising device, over the Internet or in any other manner a statement that the health care facility knows or should know is deceptive concerning any service that is or is not offered by the health care facility.
- For the purposes of subsection 1, a statement is deceptive if the statement includes, without limitation, assertions to mislead persons to believe that the health care facility provides a health care service that the facility does not actually provide.
The bill would empower the Attorney General, currently a Democrat planning to run for Governor in 2026 the power to punish a pro-life pregnancy center because they don’t offer “pregnancy” “healthcare” in the form of abortion services.
Even worse, it regulates (and restricts) the use of medication to specifically to stop or reverse the initial stages of an abortion, but not cause one.
Upon determining that prescribing, dispensing or administering a medication to stop or reverse an abortion meets generally accepted standards of the practice of medicine, the Board may, in consultation with the State Board of Osteopathic Medicine, State Board of Nursing and State Board of Pharmacy, adopt regulations authorizing a physician or physician assistant to prescribe, dispense or administer medication to stop or reverse an abortion. Any such regulations must specify:
(a) Each medication that a physician or physician assistant may prescribe, dispense or administer to stop or reverse an abortion; and
(b) The required procedures for prescribing, dispensing or administering a medication specified pursuant to paragraph (a) to stop or reverse an abortion.
It’s only a “choice” if you choose what they want you to choose.
The bill can be read here, or below:
Over the past decade the Republican Party has transformed, for good or ill. For some, it was a purging of the “establishment” and “cuckservatives” and the rise of “fighters”. For others, it was a vehicle for vengeance and and emotional catharsis. Still yet for others, it is a way to grift and exploit the other two. But one thing for sure, it is slowly devolving into the the elephant in the same circus as the clowns—those trolls and meme lords who do it “for the lulz”. In much the manner of 4chan, it has gone from adults who have fun joking around amongst themselves into crap-posting social media obsessives. Oh, just amongst the overly online purported hoi polloi on social media, but by some of our highest elected and appointed officials. How bad has these memeification? So bad that the rape of minors has become fodder for the clown show of influencers and even a Rickroll by the official Twitter/X account of the House Judiciary Committee.
The tweet was deleted but the internet is forever.
The Republican Party has gone from a serious party that cared about making America better to one where the only palatable victory is “pwning the libs”. Fighting human trafficking or the pimping out of underage girls is passé and just not emotionally cathartic enough. No, you have to act like an online pre-juvenile joker.
Yes, this is in bad taste. But that's the point, you see. Because if you're put off by the flippancy with which their toying with the sexual trafficking of underage girls, you've somehow lost. https://t.co/lp25Vfffwr
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) February 27, 2025
The system of checks and balances is one of the genius aspects of the Constitution of the United States. Each of the three branches are, or at least ought to be, supreme in their respective sphere with the Constitutional leadership commanding it’s own branch, but none commanding the whole government.
Between them, Congress via Article I of the Constitution ought to be considered the first among equals, but equal nonetheless. They are constrained by the Constitution via the Supreme Court, and in part by the President via the power of the veto. The Supreme Court is constrained by the Constitution and via statutes enacted by Congress and the discretion of the administrator in chief (i.e. the President).
The President is unitary executive that enacts the will of Congress, but is restrained by Congress and the Supreme Court alike. As Yuval Levin notes:
“A rough but useful rule of thumb would be that the president does command the executive branch but the executive branch does not command our government.”
As such, while all executive power is wielded ultimately by the President, that power is not unlimited. Indeed, ‘twould be an odd interpretation that the Constitution grants plenary power to the President subject to only enumerated or limited exceptions. This flies in the face of the very nature of the 10th Amendment as well as the worldview of the framers, who less than a decade prior were busy fighting for independence from a monarchy with less extensive powers than some would assert for the current President (though maybe not another President).
News of the Week for March 2nd, 2025
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
The pretentiousness of “art” that is supposed to “make you think” is something that still plagues us today just as much as it did half-a-century ago when William F. Buckley, Jr. and Tom Wolfe discussed the “answer in search of a question” that is the painted word of post-modernist art.
Until next Friday.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: In a post-Roe world, abortion is anything but a settled question.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
In Missouri, the voters directly are at odds with the voters indirectly. Specifically after enshrining abortion rights via initiative, the Missouri legislature is seeking to reverse that.
“Three months after Missouri voters enshrined reproductive rights in the state constitution, abortion remains unavailable as the state’s main provider fights legal hurdles to resume offering the procedure.
“At the same time, opponents of abortion in the state Legislature, stung by the passage of Amendment 3 in November, have filed a raft of bills aimed at thwarting implementation of the measure or undercutting its goals while they try to find a unified strategy to prevent the return of abortion services.
“This week, state lawmakers held a hearing on a conservative-backed plan to put a new amendment on the ballot that would block most abortions. If passed by the General Assembly, the measure could go to voters as soon as this year.
“The proposed amendment would ban abortion except for in medical emergencies, when a fetus has abnormalities, or in cases of rape or incest, with rape or incest cases requiring a police report and subject to a 12-week limit. It would also prohibit public funding for abortions. What’s more, it would ban providing surgeries, hormones or drugs to assist a child with a gender transition, procedures that are already illegal in Missouri.”
Demonstrating that yet again the modern GOP is a party of action first and thinking about the consequences later, a state Representative submitted a bill intended to ban the LGBTQ&c. pride flag (HB77) that also then specifically allowed for flying a “historic version of a flag” including the flag of other countries such as Germany:
“‘You may have a Nazi flag. You may have a Confederate flag, and so you are allowed to display those flags… as part of the curriculum, and that is okay.’”
Now, the point was to allow for flags in their relevant historical context as part of the curriculum, but the author of the bill clearly felt the push back and went back to amend the bill from allowing the display “in or on the grounds of government property” for a generic “educational purposes” to such flags usage limited as outlined by approved curriculum by the relevant governing board.
Lemmy hardest hit.
The entire flag flap could have been avoided, including defending the Nazi flag in any context by simply getting the wording right before pushing it through. But if anything, prudence is just a big of an enemy to some as the LGBTQ&c. pride flag.