The Alien Terrorist Removal Court

On this day:

1598
English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.
1692
Last people hanged for witchcraft in Britain’s North American colonies.
1776
Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.
1784
Russia establishes a colony at Kodiak, Alaska.
1792
Primidi Vendémiaire of year 1 of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
1823
Joseph Smith, Jr. states he found the Golden plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.
1941
World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
1975
Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple.
2011
CERN scientists announce their discovery of neutrinos breaking the speed of light

***

"Greg [Abel, the CEO] runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values — both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against." This was Warren Buffett explaining his appointment of his son, Howard, to Berkshire. But The FT disagreed, calling the decision nepotism "But culture and values do not exist separately from the balance sheet. It is in making balance-sheet decisions where culture and values are tested and realised. That is why experience, not just decency, is required of a chair."

FT doesn't like Buffett's decision-making.

***

Start with the hardest number in Washington. Medicare costs about $1 trillion in fiscal 2026. Eliminate it entirely — as politically unthinkable as that is — and you close only about half of the current deficit. Social Security, at $1.7 trillion and rising every year, is even further off the table. Wipe out every domestic federal agency most people call “waste” — the EPA, the Department of Education, the State Department, foreign aid, all of it — and you’ve touched only 13–14 percent of the federal budget. There is no spending-cut path that closes this gap. The math forces the conversation onto revenue.--The Hill, arguing for VAT, acting as if politicians will do the right thing

***

When children are the 'tip of the spear':
Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to an inferior school on purpose to do her part to right what she saw as an educational wrong, just as she sacrificed the truth in her advancement of the nonsense 1619 "Project" to right a wrong. So the innocent,--culture, history, and her daughter--suffered for a greater cause. Ms. Hannah-Jones, however, lives in a $1.5 million NY townhouse and did pretty well.

***

Despite my criticism: Cruz has become the third Pirates player to have three straight 20-20 seasons, along with outfielders Barry Bonds (1990-92) and Andrew McCutchen (2011-13). He's been fantastic since coming back from his broken hand, hitting .318/.407/.533 for an OPS of .940 in 29 games, with 34 hits in 107 at-bats, three doubles, a triple, six home runs, 23 RBI and seven stolen bases on 10 attempts.

***

Vladimir Putin is preparing to escalate his war against Ukraine and intensify hybrid attacks on Kyiv’s allies in Europe.--Telegraph

***

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court

Sometimes principles are sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was created by Congress in 1996 following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City. A judge reviews the government’s classified evidence alone, in chambers, and neither the accused nor the public may learn what it is or where it came from beyond an unclassified summary. The government may use the results of FISA wiretaps and warrantless physical searches, and the accused is specifically denied the right to suppress evidence. That is, the Federal Rules of Evidence don’t apply. The court allows the government to use classified information, where disclosing that information to the public would pose risks to national security. So there is no due process.

The statutory provisions that establish the court provide paid counsel to the aliens if necessary and also permit either party to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In the first-ever case before the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), Nazira Haji Zada, 47, an Afghan national previously residing in Fort Worth, Texas, was removed from the United States after conceding that she is an alien terrorist. Zada was arrested and appeared before the ATRC’s Chief Judge, Joan N. Ericksen, in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, July 30, at 11:00 a.m.

As the matriarch in her family, she supported a plot to commit an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day in 2024 for which her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were previously arrested and convicted. The ATRC issued an order of removal on Aug. 20 that was unsealed following her return to her country of origin.

This was the first case ever brought before the ATRC, which Congress established decades ago, and which no previous administration had used. Zada is now permanently inadmissible to the United States.

According to court documents, Tawhedi admitted that between June 2024 and October 2024, he conspired with at least one other individual to purchase two AK-47 rifles, 500 rounds of ammunition, and 10 magazines, with the intent to carry out a mass-casualty attack on or around Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, on behalf of ISIS.

According to the criminal complaint, to raise funds for their attack, in 2024, the family started selling off their property, including furniture, computers, a mobile phone, and the family’s two vehicles. Zada signed a contract to sell the family house. The family also purchased one-way airfare for travel to Kabul, Afghanistan shortly before Election Day 2024 for its members, including for Zada and other minor children but not Abdullah and Tawhedi.

In compliance with the ATRC statute, the government used classified information to establish that Zada is an alien terrorist. Additionally, the government provided Zada and her lawyers, two federal public defenders, with approximately half a terabyte of documents supporting the government’s case. With her lawyers, Zada conceded that she is an alien terrorist and waived her appeal of the removal order, terminating her previous status.

Rumblings on the Left suggest this law runs counter to American tradition and values, and this particular case has fascist qualities. Trump is held responsible--though he is five decades from the writing of it. The usual clichés trot out: ICE, misogynist white supremacists, "Whiskey Pete Hegseth" makes an appearance, Trump's tech bro billionaires--in general, a bigoted, power-obsessed, autonomous and reactionary power structure with a lot of free time.

Indeed, it has the feel of a military court in wartime, a legal system of a country under attack, stressed and afraid, turning to a junta for advice. And does the impractical distort the ideal? Once 20 million illegal immigrants, with their unknown proportion of national enemies, are here, what mechanism can deal with the risks? What principles will have to be sacrificed?

Does the citizenry not have some protection through due process themselves? Can't they at least try to protect themselves, interview immigrants, screen them before welcoming them into the country and the paid benefits the country will be responsible for? If an immigrant has entered the country with the admitted purpose of destroying it, does the intended victim have no recourse? "Now that you're here, you get to play by our rules?" Once the immigrant has evaded detection and is ensconced in the victim's home, is he now afforded the same protection as his legal target, shielded by the very concepts he hopes to overthrow? Does he become that strangely American protected species, the squatter?

Horribly, these questions get to be managed by the land's most ambiguous subset who worship the naturalistic fallacy that is the law: politicians and their familiars, lawyers. Seeing a room of ugliness, they would outlaw beauty.  

But 20 million illegal immigrants can't be wrong.

The Twelve Good Men and True of Democracy

 On this day:

1521
The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade.
1862
American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas.
1955
Black teenager Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech
1968
Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.
1979
An IRA bomb explodes on the Grand Place in Brussels.
1991
Collapse of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
1991
Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
1996
Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales divorce.

***

"It is a cruel mortification, searching for what is instructive in the history of past times, to find that the exploits of conquerors who have desolated the earth, and the freaks of tyrants who have rendered nations unhappy, are recorded with minute and often disgusting accuracy, while the discovery of useful arts, and the progress of the most beneficial branches of commerce, are passed over in silence, and suffered to sink into oblivion."--John Kenyon’s 1983 volume, The History Men

***

Many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. But actually, it’s English that is odd: almost all European languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders that way.

***

Some kid named Lucas McGill flew a drone into the sky to measure CO2 levels and found, surprisingly, that ground-level CO2 in cities was lower than in rural areas. That's good because we should be able to shut down the farms more easily than cars.

***

The Twelve Good Men and True of Democracy

Is it wise to assume that silly opinions will dissolve in the light of public scrutiny?

A few weeks ago, Karen Bass, the once-and-future mayor of LA, patiently explained the dynamics of homelessness to wide-eyed Americans. It seems that the drug-addled, criminal vagrants plaguing American streets have a cause we had overlooked and we can treat. The real problem is they have no teeth. 

We'll see the effect of militant Dental Activists that will surely follow.

A DSA spokesman gave an interview attacking rental property, claiming there is no constitutional provision for double-digit returns on investment.

Some successful recent campaigns promise the end of the Supreme Court and the Senate; some promise to end the Presidency. And, of course, no police, prisons, or borders.

Several senatorial candidates plan to establish 50% national ownership of the nation's largest companies.

A power company rerouted its lines to avoid the site of house-elf Dobby’s grave in the film Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, which contains a pile of stones with the words “here lies Dobby.” 

Are the shallowness and scope of these opinions and promises self-disruptive? When you hear opinions like diverting a multi-zillion-dollar power line because it complicates the non-existent gravesite of a non-existent character representing a non-existent species in a children's fantasy book —your tendency is to turn off the critical-thinking part of your brain and rest. You do not join in the fray. You can not imagine any consequence of this non-storm in this non-existent teapot.

This may be an underestimating the foolishness of humanity.

Imagine children reporting being abused in mysterious tunnels under a daycare center or teachers killing rabbits and turtles to intimidate them. Or a baby being sacrificed in a church. Barnyard animals being sacrificed in schoolrooms. A student taken to a graveyard, where he helped unearth a coffin and saw a body that was then cut with knives. "Bad Clowns," "robots," ritualized abuse, "magic rooms," and "Satanic practices." Preschool teachers who flew in the air while dressed as witches.

This was not Salem three hundred years ago; this was California and New Jersey a generation and a half ago.

Margaret Kelly Michaels, a teacher at the Wee Care Nursery School, was indicted for 299 offenses in connection with the sexual assault of 33 children and eventually convicted and sentenced to 47 years in prison. Albert Algerin, employed at the Praca Day Care center, was sentenced to 50 years for rape and sexual abuse. Bernard Baran, working at Early Childhood Development Center in Pittsfield, was convicted on January 30, 1985, of three counts of rape of a child and five counts of indecent assault and battery. He was sentenced to three life terms, plus 8 to 20 years on each charge. At Fell Acres, Gerald Amirault was convicted of assaulting and raping nine children, and sentenced to 30 to 40 years in state prison. In a separate trial, his mother, Violet Amirault, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, were also convicted of similar charges, and sentenced to jail for 8 to 20 years. (Reporting on this case won Dorothy Rabinowitz the Pulitzer Prize.)

All of these cases were brought by educated American citizens, prosecuted by adult law graduates (including Janet Reno), and all the victims were convicted by 12 good men and true. All of those convicted went to prison; Margaret Kelly Michaels went to prison for five years before she was rescued by a bloodied and battered common sense.

In this context, perhaps it is unwise to be confident that political positions that are clearly nuts will be easily sterilized by the purifying air of our sacred democracy.

So, start handing out the toothbrushes.

Righteous Vigilante

On this day:
47 BC
Ptolemy Caesarion of Egypt, the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, is born
1314
First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn (south of Stirling) begins.1611
The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson’s fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they are never heard from again.1758
Seven Years’ War: Battle of Krefeld – British forces defeat French troops at Krefeld in Germany.
1760
Seven Years’ War: Battle of Landeshut – Austria defeats Prussia.
1917
In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retires 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching the umpire.
1942
World War II: the first selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz take place on a train full of Jews from Paris.
1959
Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.
1972
Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.
1982
Chinese American Vincent Chin is beaten to death in Highland Park, Michigan, by two auto workers who had mistaken him for Japanese and who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.

***

Socialism, which had never really taken root in America, is now in danger of becoming the secular religion of many voters — especially disillusioned young people.--Fund, in NR

***

A blogger referred to the Tkachuk brothers as "thumb-shaped."

***

According to the startup Subquadratic, it has developed a new kind of LLM, called SubQ, that is faster, cheaper, and uses a lot less energy than any other model on the market. The company also claims that SubQ is able to process up to 12 times as much text at once as most other models, allowing it to carry out a range of data-heavy tasks, such as analyzing hundreds of documents or entire code bases. These results, reported in MIT Technology Review, rely on in-house studies.

***

Alphabet shares dropped 5% and lost $225 billion in market value after Nobel laureate John Jumper left Google DeepMind for Anthropic.

***

This daily news out of the Middle East would be comic if it were not such a scary indicator for the future. Taken individually, the plublic statements could all be unrelated. The common thread is that everybody is lying to everybody else at breakneck speed.

***

Righteous Vigilante

Nothing in a culture is more dangerous than allowing the courts and the law to become a sword rather than a shield. Or to allow for that perception.

And Democracy's sword is two-edged.

Jury nullification occurs when a jury believes a defendant is guilty but renders a “not guilty” verdict because it regards the relevant law as unjust.

John Adams said about jurors, “It is not only his right, but his duty … to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

It has been said that such an attitude prevailed in the pre-Revolution period when English law was thwarted in the colonies because it was felt the individual was guilty of violating the law, but that the law was wrong. Conscience is a difficult bellwether when the culture does not have common ground. How would someone advocating jihad vote on a matter of terrorism, for example?

States and cultures are organized on basic precepts. That is, basic assumptions. This unanimity among people's beliefs on the nature of life--or the organization of life, the state--is the state's DNA. Law and the courts are a culture's epicenter.
How much latitude can such a system tolerate and maintain its integrity?

What would be the consequences, for example, if a jury thought that Mangione had a point?

The Morality of Lynching

 

The Morality of Lynching

As the Bell Curve flattens, more murders seem motiveless. Children shoot other children in schools, strangers push strangers in front of trains. But most murders are still reasoned. A perceived enemy, a rival in business or love, or a simple envy. But we humans always expand our world and encounter new risks. In the jungle, we found AIDS, in the lab, COVID. And the anxious, intense modern body politic has picked at the scab of dimwittedness and resentment and uncovered a new version of an ancient depravity: the vigilangione.

Vigilante means "watchman." It is from "vigil" meaning "watchful, awake," and has the same origin as "vigor." It emerged in early American communities that had grown beyond the law and resorted to undeputized law enforcement. "Angione" is from "Mangione," a pretty boy who made up a crime, made up a punishment, convicted a man of that crime in his mind, then murdered him. 

Mangione's victim was not even the perpetrator of Mangione's made-up crime; he was just in the moral vicinity. But the scythe of righteousness swings wide. The vigilangione is much like the religious maniac doing God's work, but without a letter of marque. He's a man of the time of "the feud," where Hatfields were held responsible by McCoys for acts, sometimes serious, sometimes merely perceived, sometimes only distantly related, often from barely remembered times.

The vigilangione emerges from a world of uncodified law, where rules are created and enforced by individual whim, not just for personal gratification, but for a perceived greater good. Like at an individual lynching, the man stands by his work.

Or like the modern politician, who must set aside society's abstract legal restraints and rise above the law to set things right.

So it is in a land that has rejected the very laws that allow us to live together. 

Cry Havoc.

 
 

An Economy Filtered

On this day:

1815
The Second Serbian Uprising – a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire.
1940
The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people.
1942
World War II: Baedeker Blitz – German bombers hit Exeter, Bath, and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.
1967
Soviet space program: Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1), a manned spaceflight, is launched into orbit carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov.
1968
Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

***

"As I said the other day, I promised my family, this organization and this team that I was going to give them the best version of me that I can possibly give them. In order to do so, I have committed to seeking counseling, starting this weekend," Vrabel said Wednesday night. "This is something that I have given a lot of thought to and is something I would advise a player to do if I was counseling them.
"I have always wanted to lead by example, and I believe this is what I have to do to be the best husband, father and coach that I possibly can be. This is not an easy thing for me to admit, but it is one that I know will make me a better person. I appreciate the support that everyone has given me and promise a stronger resolve as a result."

Well, that should make America feel better.

***

This day, in 1564, is the birthday of William Shakespeare, English writer and actor (d. 1616) (traditional approximate birth date in Julian calendar based on April 26 baptism)

***

The Penguins, the third-highest scoring team in the NHL during the regular season, have four goals in three games during this series. One came at even strength, two came on the power play, and one came with the goaltender pulled in Game 1.

***

Berkshire's Abel has more than $43 billion of his company's assets invested in Japanese stocks as of the April 17 closing bell.
Whereas many of Wall Street's leading public companies trade at premium valuations, Japan's trading houses have consistently traded at high-single-digit to low-double-digit price-to-earnings ratios. The companies are paying dividends to shareholders, and their management teams are receiving modest pay packages compared to those of most large- and mega-cap U.S. public companies.

***

An Economy Filtered

California cannot permit the construction of a smartphone factory, an electric car plant, or a Navy destroyer shipyard. Not won’t — can’t. The regulatory environment makes it effectively impossible to build new semiconductor fabs, automotive paint shops, battery gigafactories, or steel foundries.

Tesla didn’t put its Gigafactory in Nevada out of affection for Reno. General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego can build destroyers only because it’s been grandfathered in since 1960. If it closed tomorrow, it could not be rebuilt.--Tabarrok

So we can't build businesses but complain there are no jobs? We can't drill and sell oil, but complain about the cost of importing it?

I know a man who owns a coffee shop and was told by local regulators that his floor space required that he build a second bathroom. So, he made the shop smaller. I know a farmer whose kids wanted to set up a roadside vegetable stand to sell produce from their garden and were told they needed a $40,000 investment in air conditioning to meet regulations.

China may be a problem, but a suicidal culture does not need enemies to be rewarded.

 

Tempest

On this day:

1146
Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492
Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1717
A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1854
Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1994
Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995
Selena, an American singer, was murdered by her friend and employee of her boutiques, Yolanda Saldívar, who was embezzling money from the establishments. The event was named “Black Friday” by Hispanics.

***

“The worst enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge”--Hawking

***

America first, right after I call my broker: 

A broker for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make a ​big investment in major defense companies in the weeks ‌leading up to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

***

Bangorian Controversy: From John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world." Hoadly deduced, supposedly at the request of the king himself, that there is no biblical justification for any church government of any sort. He had not delegated his power, like temporal lawgivers during their absence, to any persons as his deputies; and that the church of England, as all other national churches, was merely a civil or human institution, established for the purpose of diffusing and perpetuating the knowledge and belief of Christianity.

***

NASA is targeting an April 1 launch for the historic Artemis II mission, with meteorologists currently tracking an 80% "Go" weather forecast at Kennedy Space Center.

***

13 starting pitchers across all of MLB were drafted out of high school, are still with the team that drafted them, and, according to FanGraphs' 2026 playing time projections, are projected to be one of their team's primary starting pitchers this season. The Pirates have four of them — Mitch Keller, Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler, and Jared Jones.

***


Tempest

The American court is a microcosm of the evolution of the American democracy. 

A debate over right and wrong, sometimes life and death, is moderated by a supervisor of uncertain--but undeniably unpredictable-- intelligence and knowledge, carried out between equally unpredictable individuals willing to debate either side of the conflict for money. This is resolved by the votes of twelve average citizens assigned this duty against their will.

A recent case is enlightening. Meta, a huge company that deals in complex technology and algorithmic predictability, was accused of luring children into an interactive computer program, habituating them to it, and distorting their personalities and judgment. They were accused of developing a product that encouraged people to like it and then changing how they think.

People selling a product with the hope that customers will like it? A technology company can predict how people's minds develop and work when no psychiatrist, or physician, or research scientist can? The complex ball of yarn that is nature and nurture has been untangled?
These complexities will be debated and decided by the same people on your bus?

Oh, brave new world!

Little Chicks Up Front

“Everything must change for everything to remain the same.”--The Leopard

*

Norway has won the last two winter Olympics and is leading this one. They have 5 million people.

*

A Swedish Olympic ski jumper is afraid of heights and is getting therapy.

*

President Trump’s private company has filed for trademarks for airports not yet named after himself—setting up the possibility he could profit from what has historically been an honor in name only.

*

Johnson, the American speed skater, started skating in in-line tournaments. She's a materials engineer.

*

So, the representative government passes a law about illegal immigration. Many people think this is artificial and should not be enforced because the land was previously occupied by another group of people who invaded it earlier. Why their invasion is more meaningful than the European one is not explained.

*

There are 100,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America in the world. The world.

*


Little Chicks Up Front

There is a law passed by America's representative government that places certain requirements on people who wish to immigrate to America. People who ignore or subvert these laws are sought out and arrested by immigration police and deported back to their home country. This behavior is typical of most organized national cultures.

Recently, things have changed. A small number of people have decided to oppose the actions of these immigration police. Keep in mind, these are American citizens sworn by the immigration officials to enforce American laws passed by America's elected representatives. The self-appointed judges block, obstruct, attack, and, if possible, prevent the enforcement of the law. Sometimes they attack the police physically or with weapons. One can imagine the danger of injecting oneself into that dangerous interface between police and criminal. Many people have been injured and several killed in these meddled confrontations.

Sort of reverse vigilanteism.

Astonishingly, this behavior has been supported by many local and state officials. Local politicians are encouraging lawbreaking. One can only wonder which of their laws deserve violent opposition, which don't, and what they would do should the approval of lawbreaking culturally spread.

Cries for general strikes have been raised, and students from elementary and high schools are being urged to participate in The Resistance. Children are being asked to skip school to join the protests. And their teachers are encouraging them to do so. Politicians, political leaders, and educators are encouraging children--children--to place themselves between law enforcement and its objective.

Who said the Americans are uninterested in caring for their children?

 

The Constitutional Flaw

On this day:

1503
Disfida di Barletta – famous challenge between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.
1542
Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1692
Massacre of Glencoe: About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
1935
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
1945
World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.
2000
The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.

***

Buffett: On Focus. The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

***

The Pirates' All-Star reliever Elroy Face has passed away at 97.

***

The parody continues. Nevada is the only state where people can legally purchase sex, and now 'sex workers' at one of the state’s oldest brothels are fighting to become the nation’s first to be unionized.

***

The Constitutional Flaw

For the last year, the winds of lies, innuendo, and manipulative conspiracies directed against Trump have reaped their poetic whirlwind.
A man, and a political group, who have been maligned and ridiculed by a small elite for as long as they can remember, have the upper hand for the first time since Reagan.

Jacoby summarizes it. "In just the past few weeks, the American president has threatened military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, if it doesn’t surrender Greenland to the United States. He moved to punish a US senator — a retired Navy captain and combat veteran — for reminding service members they must not obey illegal orders. He posted a grotesquely cruel message on social media jeering the deaths of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. He sent his press secretary to warn CBS News that unless it broadcast a presidential interview complete and unedited, we’ll sue your ass off.” He deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, then announced that the United States was now “in charge” of that country, and “we’re going to be taking oil.” He summoned Justice Department attorneys to berate them for not moving fast enough to prosecute his critics and opponents. And when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, the White House instantly pronounced her a “domestic terrorist” and refused to open an investigation into the shooting."

Jacoby calls this vengeful thuggishness, and to some degree, he's right. But how much Federal rummaging through your wife's underwear can a guy take? How much journalistic-approved lying vitriol are you supposed to tolerate?

In El Salvador, not much; in America, a lot.

This country is not an accident of geography, not a religious or ethnic redoubt. It is a philosophical creation, an embodiment of ideas and principles long debated. It is complicated because its citizens do not recognize each other in the street by their color, their physiogonomy, or their religious apparel. They are united by belief, a belief that, until recently, any man in history could only dream of. But there is a change in the country, a change that Trump does not epitomize but only represents. It is an essential defect in the Constitution.

The Constitution makes an assumption, an assumption of a precondition in its citizens and its leaders. Virtue. And the preference for the betterment of the nation over the whims of the few. 

These last years have revealed a loss of virtue. People do not take the Constitution's morality seriously.

Many of our problems--particularly foreign ones--are missteps. Bad judgment. With good intent, they will self-correct. But the real problems that threaten the nation are simple moral laxity and malice. A disregard of-- or overt animosity to--the guiding principles of the country--and how they impact the very health and well-being of the nation.

How could the national debt not be a front-page discussion topic? The topic? How could the Biden Regency — the complete takeover of the executive branch by a small cabal — not be in the daily conversation? How could Obama amend environmental legislation without a word of objection? How could Trump's gratuitous insults and chest-thumping--however gratifying to those who have been ignored, belittled, and insulted for so long--not be rejected? 

How have the politics of El Salvador immigrated here?

When the president was asked in a recent interview whether he recognizes any checks on his powers, he was his direct self in response: “Yeah, there is one thing,” he said. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

The fatal flaw of the U.S. Constitution is revealed. The law of the land must start with reverence for it. Its virtues. It's not a tool in a shed; it is a relic in a tabernacle. And it is worthless when it takes itself more seriously than do the people it is supposed to guide.

 

Political Couture

On this day:1685
James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II.
1820
The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society started a settlement in present-day Liberia.
1952
Elizabeth II becomes the first queen regnant of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms since Queen Victoria upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.
1959
At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
1959
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.
1976
In testimony before a United States Senate subcommittee, Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian admits that the company had paid out approximately million in bribes to the office of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.

***

And how much did the global lockdown reduce 2020’s global carbon emissions? By about 6 per cent. It is the largest reduction ever but nowhere close to what would be needed. If we were to meet the Paris Climate Agreement by 2030 just by doing and travelling less, we would need to suffer a pandemic like this every year for the next decade, without allowing us to have any recovery between the pandemics. Which, of course, would lead to an unprecedented social collapse.--norberg

***

UFOs, Epstein, Omar's theft--we all know this, but when will the innuendo be separated from the chaff? Or is insincerity the arbiter, and truth will never escape it?

***

How could a voter ID law not distinguish Republicans from Democrats to the Republicans' advantage?

***

A Russian general serving as deputy head of Russian military intelligence was shot and seriously wounded in Moscow on Friday, officials said – the latest in a series of attacks on top military figures.

***

Innuendo Alert:

“Dear Director Ratcliffe, I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities,” Senator Wyden wrote.

***

The chairman of the new prospective owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins says his company is reportedly in discussions to acquire the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

***

Political Couture

Among the many declarations of The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is this insight:

“Customary obligations are the same for all States and exist independently regardless of whether a State is a party to the climate change treaties" (para 315). 

That is, it applies to you whether you agree to it or not. Like gravity.

It's one of the ICJ's more than 200 references to 'customary international law' (CIL), which is essentially the unwritten rules that bind the world. They're the rules so basic, they don't need a treaty.

America's own judge on the ICJ, Sarah Cleveland, reiterates this point. And that's particularly intriguing when you recall the US has now twice withdrawn from the Paris Agreement that the world negotiated to try and slow rising temperatures.

So the court (including Cleveland) is basically saying you can withdraw from as many treaties as you like, but your climate obligations remain unchanged at this point. It’s CIL.

This should sound familiar. It's much like Trump's campaign slogan of "It's common sense." The unagreed-upon assumption. The battle cry in the field of opposing opinion.

It's obvious and definitive. 

"It's couture."

Politics?

On this Day:
960
The coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song, initiating the Song Dynasty period of China, which would last more than three centuries
1703
In Edo (now Tokyo), 46 of the Forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master’s death.
1789
George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.
1797
The Riobamba earthquake strikes Ecuador, causing up to 40,000 casualties.
1801
John Marshall is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.
1846
The first Mormon pioneers make their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Utah Territory.
1859
The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt.
1861
American Civil War: In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six break-away U.S. states meet and form the Confederate States of America.
1974
The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.
2010
The Federal Court of Australia’s ruling in Roadshow Films v iiNet sets a precedent that Internet service providers (ISPs) are not responsible for what their users do with the services the ISPs provide them.

***

Legendary investor Ray Dalio warned on Tuesday that the world is “on the brink” of a capital war, amid simmering geopolitical tensions and volatile capital markets.

Speaking to CNBC’s Dan Murphy on stage at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dalio said we are close to teetering into capital war territory — when money is weaponized using measures like trade embargoes, blocking access to capital markets, or using ownership of debt as leverage.

***

A mother asked her 13-year-old son Austin to swim four hours through dangerous waters to get help after her family was swept out to sea.

***

This note by Michael Brendan Dougherty in NR struck me. 

"I try not to overreact, but there is something about this that gets deep under my skin and unsettles me about my country.

 

Alex Pretti has no more or less dignity than any other human being, looking exactly as he looked. And yet, a photo editor took time — perhaps a decent bit of it — completely changing his skin tone, his beard, and jaw. We have history textbooks that condemn the Stalin regime by showing how the officials altered photos in order to alter the perception of history.
At least those officials could explain themselves — that they were acting under real compulsion, the real threat of execution, exile, or imprisonment by another apparatchik. What is the excuse of Americans in 2026? Why do people volunteer to create this kind of propaganda? Would you want to try to make a public reputation for virtue in a country whose sense-making institutions act like this?"

***

Politics?

300,000 children were admitted into the country without an adult or other supervision during the Biden Regency.

Schools closed during COVID. The National Strike includes truancy so students can be in the street.

Elected representatives become wealthy after their election.

Cocaine in the White House.

$9 billion--BILLION--stolen from the taxes in one--ONE--state.

The son of the President, who can honestly be described as a degenerate.

An organized, coordinated effort to keep the President in office by fraud and deception despite his inability to even speak.

A political party with a political pillar encouraging purposeful defiance of the law and its representatives.

Now the former husband of the President's wife has been arrested for murder.

These aren't the Democrats; these are the de Medici. 

Maybe our worst fears are true. Maybe government is only a by-product of an organized crime syndicate.

Law From a Great Distance

On this day:

1048
Protestantism: The villagers around today’s Baden-Baden elect their own priest in defiance of the local bishop.
1649
King Charles I of England is beheaded.
1661
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed two years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.
1703
The Forty-seven Ronin, under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master.
1835
In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.

1862
The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched.
1933
Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1945
World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,400 people.
1948
Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi known for his non-violent freedom struggle is assassinated by Pandit Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
1969
The Beatles’ last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.
1972
Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers kill fourteen unarmed civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.
1996
Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, is killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit.
***
More than four million Americans will turn 65 between now and 2027. “That’s over 11,000 people hitting this milestone every single day. The program's cash surplus is expected to run out in less than a decade,” according to NPR.

***

The fast-growing measles outbreak in South Carolina is now the largest in the United States since the disease was declared eliminated in this country more than two decades ago. 789 cases were reported as of Tuesday.

***

The Left is whispering. They say last week in Brussels, Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister and one of Europe’s most vocal Trump supporters, pulled aside his fellow European leaders to share what he’d witnessed during a private meeting with the American president. The word he used to describe Trump’s demeanor? “Dangerous.”

Governing by rumor and innuendo is how the Left works now. We don't know if it's true, what he meant, or what accuracy governs Mr. Fico, but we do know that when you govern by rumor and innuendo, and you allow your President to abdicate his powers to a group of grad students for four years, you lose a lot of credibility.

***

Law From a Great Distance

Rules should be a relief to a culture.

The oldest known evidence of any law code are tablets from the ancient city Ebla (Tell Mardikh in modern-day Syria). They date to about 2400 B.C. — approximately 600 years before Hammurabi put together his famous code.

"An eye for an eye ..." is a paraphrase of Hammurabi's Code, a collection of 282 laws inscribed on an upright stone pillar. The code was found by French archaeologists in 1901 while excavating the ancient city of Susa, which is in modern-day Iran.

He ruled the Babylonian Empire from 1792-50 B.C.E. And his laws seem to grow out of necessity: he was trying to organize an expanding empire of diverse groups with diverse rules and norms.

His was actually an effort to eliminate tribal justice that holds groups responsible for individual acts and individuals for group acts, for example, Hatfield and McCoy thinking. If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the thinking of the modern, ironically named, Progressive.

Group identity is the most primitive of all legal forms. Hammurabi's genius was to overcome it, to apply individual crimes to individuals. There is a thesis that it influenced the Old Testament (through the Babylonian Captivity).

Group identity has never left the Middle East. And it's strong, the obverse of our bonding. We will always have the lurching monster staggering around, fed and encouraged by the Left in the American University Lab, as it seeks a place to apply its broad brush.

Its threat in places like Minneapolis is that it appeals to very early, unformed human thought because it requires so little of it. A complex problem can be quickly solved and acted upon without the hesitancy and uncertainty of unfocusing debate.

And in the softer mind, certainty is its own reward. Law is a unifying and stabilizing element in a culture. It takes advantage of that bonding tendency in us and focuses it towards a general, agreed-upon good.

In Minneapolis, the local government has officially denied the law, sits back while the Feds go in alone to enforce it, and then complains bitterly about the chaotic results.

That takes a special kind of high-minded cowardice.

Policing a Feeding Frenzy

On this day:
1500
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil.
1531
Lisbon, Portugal is hit by an earthquake--thousands die.
1564
The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
1565
Battle of Talikota, fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan, leads to the subjugation, and eventual destruction of the last Hindu kingdom in India, and the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.
1885
Troops loyal to The Mahdi conquer Khartoum.
1949
The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory sees first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope (until BTA-6 is built in 1976).
1978
The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).
1998
Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

***

When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to concoct a legal justification for the unsavory U.S. measures that enabled construction of the Panama Canal, Knox replied, “Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”

***

I looked over old records of the Kent State shootings. While I found interviews in which the students thought the Guard's weapons had blanks, I found nothing to show the Guard thought so.

***

Why is the Minnesota fraud case a partisan investigation?

***

Spot prices of silver cracked past $103, while gold ran to as high as $4,988, just $12 shy of $5,000.

***

There was a dramatic selloff in the Japanese bond market last week, accompanied by wild swings in the yen. Inflation, long dormant in Japan, has taken hold, and, moreover, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pushing fiscal stimulus plans that would swell a government debt pile that is already uncomfortably large. As a result, investors have been frantically sending bond yields up to levels once unthinkable — more than 4% on the longest-dated JGBs. That’s exerting upward pressure on interest rates from the US to Britain and Germany.
Higher Japanese yields will prompt domestic investors to bring much more of their money back home. Some $5 trillion of the country's capital is deployed overseas.

***

Policing a Feeding Frenzy

So the residents of Minnesota have organized into helpful little volunteer groups to monitor whether the Immigration Police are operating within the law. They are trying to make these encounters more difficult but more safe, a bit contradictory. Re the safety part, isn't that what the cops are supposed to do? Why do they need these standins? Apparently, the most recent shooting involved the victim intervening between ICE and an observer. They've been complaining that ICE is undertrained; are the self-appointed observers well-trained?

And the 'making the police action more difficult' part, how exactly does that fit in? Does that make things safer?

What's really happening is that amateurs are interfering with the cops. They are intervening in police actions against illegal immigrants. Dangerous stuff. Combustible. And unpredictable. Why would amateurs expose themselves to such risk? To pacify? Maybe they plan a religious conversion? Do they even know there is a risk? Do they think the good guys can shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand? Do they think that in a fight with the cops and someone yells "Gun!", that there will be several calm moments to debate if the cry is accurate or not?

We are seeing a growing number of militant busybodies who are trying to influence behavior in a shark tank. Why would any sensible person do such a thing? There may be some recent insight. A congressional representative recently said in an interview that ICE was not in Minnesota to enforce immigration law; they were there for 'intimidation.' The crack interviewer did not ask any clarifying follow-up questions, so we were not told who was being intimidated or why.

This is the opinion of an elected official. We can't explain what the thought process was here or its relationship to the militant observers. But we can accept the innuendo: the bell-shaped curve is a hell of a lot flatter and broader in this country than we thought.

 

911. Can You hold?

On this day:

971
In China, the war elephant corps of the Southern Han are soundly defeated at Shao by crossbow fire from Song Dynasty troops.
1368
In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends to the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.
1556
The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
1570
James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such.
1897
Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.
1941
Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
1943
World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marks the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.
1960
The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet) in the Pacific Ocean.
1968
North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying.

***

However, as much as the political left loves to use words like “change” and “revolution” as if they had a monopoly or a copyright on them, the actual track record of the left pales in comparison with the social revolutions created by the free market.
No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.--Sowell

***

Hayek pushes the point that markets are about price discovery. In controlled systems, the price is arbitrary.

***

The astonishing rise of standards of living over the last two centuries has lifted everybody. Even a Dickensian street urchin has joined the productive class with hopes of more than others' success. And some have more success than others. This is the dreaded so-called income disparity. Many reasons might explain these disparities, although one rarely hears that any of the unhappy have themselves to blame.
But the idea that any inequality inspires some to break the system that has revolutionized the world is breathtaking.

***

Mamdani's restricted housing is like restricted car-buying. The story is in the circumstances. There is abundant, affordable housing, but not in Manhattan. Or Marcos Island.

***

What in the name of heaven is Newsom doing stalking Trump in Davos? Did he think he would rescue the stupid appearance with a stupid gay joke?

This is a leader?

***

911. Can You hold?

The Minneapolis conflicts have an asymmetry. The ICE problem is an unusual external, whereas the everyday is the local cops, and what is asymmetrical is their absence in civic disturbance, disturbances that are advertised and certainly easy to find. These diffuse confrontations, which seem to be planned with the hope of escalating violence, would be ended with the appearance of the local police. Yet they are not in evidence, even by accident.

How is that possible? How can the people and the organizations responsible for civil order ignore this dangerous chaos? They are employed--and paid--to maintain civil order but seem devoted not to do so.

So, who is responsible for the citizens' safety? For the general order of the community?

And, on a coarser level, who is legally responsible when those agents, for whatever reason, refuse their sworn duty?

Human Rights

 On this day:

42 BC
Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus’s army. Brutus commits suicide.
1641
Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
1642
Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War.
1861
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1906
Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.
1911
First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.
1912
First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies begins.
1956
Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
1958
The Springhill Mine Bump – An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
1983
Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.
2002
Moscow Theatre Siege begins: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage.

***

"...job opportunities will exist as long as we human beings have wants to be met, and entrepreneurs and workers are free to bargain with each other to find ways to satisfy those wants.

Unless AI becomes godlike and fully satisfies each and every human desire, leaving no one wanting for anything, humans will have demands that can be met only by cooperating commercially with other humans. This cooperation creates jobs."--letter to the editor WSJ, on AI

***

Will AI history formulas emerge from AI writing formulas?

***

Which laws approved by duly elected representatives should we oppose in the streets? How is that decision made? Why are some law agents opposed and not others?

***

It is said that discussion is an alternative to violence. Here is an interesting etymology:

Polemical:

MEANING:
adjective: Relating to or involving strong, critical, or controversial writing or speech.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek polemikos, from polemos (war). A related word is polemology (the science and study of human conflict and war). Earliest documented use: 1615.

***


Human Rights

Where are rights from? What rights are inalienable?

Cicero, bringing the Greek Stoics' idea of higher law to Rome, expressed the primacy of moral standards over government laws. These standards became known as natural law. Above all, Cicero declared, government is morally obliged to protect human life and private property.

Natural rights are those inherent to human beings, before any formal legal or social structures were in place. They can not be removed and do not need to be granted. 

Thomas Hobbes, a much later English philosopher, described nature as a “war of all against all,” where life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In this chaotic environment, Hobbes argued that individuals had the natural right to do whatever they needed to survive, and society's restrictions arose to moderate it.

John Locke had a more optimistic view of the state of nature. He believed that people were generally reasonable and moral, but still needed a government to protect their natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that humans were naturally good but were corrupted by society. The development of property, social institutions, and technology led to inequality and conflict.

Jeremy Bentham was a critic of natural rights. He described the idea of natural rights as “nonsense upon stilts,” that rights are created by laws and cannot exist outside of a legal framework.

"Natural." "Rights." A merging. A two-way street. A partnership. The Left takes a leap of faith.

The “nature rights” movement is pushing environmentalism into that unscientific realm. Specifically, the movement promotes a neo-pagan mysticism — such as invoking Pachamama, the Incan earth goddess — as a major basis for its advocacy.

The Left is, in the absence of argument, becoming fantastical. 

Such approaches have reached the highest levels and are in use in medical and scientific journals.

And symposiums.

Harvard Kennedy School hosted a symposium on “nature rights” undergirded by “indigenous knowledge” as part of the 2025 Harvard Climate Action Week. From “Indigenous Leadership on Protecting Water as a Fundamental Right:”

Throughout the event, a recurring theme was the need to reframe the human relationship with water—not as a resource for human consumption but as a living relative with which humans share reciprocal duties.

So, if a river rises and the flood hurts people, should we whip the waters? Or can we sue it?

Or are we above that?

Three Maniacs Walk into a Bar

On this day:

490 BC
Battle of Marathon: The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece.
1213
Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Battle of Muret.
1683
Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna – several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
1846
Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning.
1857
The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 13–15 tons of gold from the San Francisco Gold Rush.
1940
Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France.

***

"The Supreme Court blocked me; it will not stop me."--Joe Biden. Is that threatening a constitutional crisis?

***

911 yesterday marked a significant national threat from a tiny external group. The Kirk murder is an internal threat by an individual. It is, like the external threat, a serious threat.

Strangely, both threats are marked by bravado. 

***

In NYC, 63 people are responsible for 5000 arrests.

***

CMU is advertising on Gutfield.

***

Three Maniacs Walk into a Bar

In 2023, about 869,000 hourly workers —1.1% of all hourly workers — earned at or below the federal minimum wage, the lowest in history. Slightly less than 50% of them are aged 16 to 24. In the largest study ever done on homosexuality in the Western world, 0.7% of women and 1.4% of men admitted to having at least one (and some only one) episode of homosexual physical contact (kiss and/or caress included) in their entire adult lives.

Why is it that such small parts of our population --and such peripheral parts of the bell curve--demand such a disproportionately large part of society's time, attention, and energy? In a culture such as ours with economic problems, unemployment, drug use and crime, broken homes with fatherless children, endless and pointless wars, and general malaise and philosophical uncertainty, it cannot be that we have no more important projects to focus upon.

One would hate to think these small problems are the result of pointed, self-absorbed special interests or, worse, insincere political distraction from the bigger and more difficult problems.

Except for one thing: maniacs who stalk and kill strangers. How many maniacs does it take to ruin a society? It used to be that the destructive, homicidal maniac was royalty, whose poor subjects believed had a divine right to harm or kill them for his greater cause. Now that maniac is a poor brand of us. 

For perspective, look at IQ. If IQ tests are collected and analyzed, a curve will develop, composed of the collected scores. 100 is the average, the norm. About 68% of scores will cluster between IQs of 85 to 115. One deviation. About 95% will cluster in the 70-130 range. Two deviations. So about 2.5% will have IQs over 130 and 2.5% below 70. That is a rarified group. But if that group is a subset of the larger population of 350 million people--and that subset is morons and maniacs--that's a lot of maniacs and morons. 8.75 million.

On the edge of the bell curve. Is two standard deviations off the mean enough? Or should it be three standard deviations? That's only 0.1% but among 350 million, that's 350,000 maniacs, most with gun ownership rights. And this doesn't include the simple criminal or the desperate addict. Or the ideologically bent. And two standard deviations is a lot more. 

And, of course, there is the frightening undercurrent: the fear that the peripheral is bleeding into the mainstream. Is the guy who killed Kirk part of an early guerrilla movement? Or are these guys too crazy to organize?

A norm of death, fear, and chaos. Lunatics following the blueprint of the Heroes of Beslan. What's hard to understand is why the Left isn't as alarmed as the Right. Maybe civilization isn't as high on their list.

A Bell Curve:

America Is a Theocracy

On this day:
1515
Thomas Wolsey is invested as a Cardinal
1823
Simón Bolívar is named President of Peru.
1846
Elias Howe is granted a patent for the sewing machine.
1897
Lattimer massacre: A sheriff’s posse kills 20 unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania, United States.
1898
Empress Elizabeth of Austria is assassinated by Luigi Luchen
1939
World War II: The submarine HMS Oxley is mistakenly sunk by the submarine HMS Triton near Norway and becomes the Royal Navy’s first loss.
1963
20 African-American students enter public schools in Alabama.
2008
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history, is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.

***

Poland shot down drones that entered its airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine on Wednesday, the first time a NATO member state has fired shots in the war. Russia launched around 415 drones and over 40 missiles across 15 Ukrainian regions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. Ukraine's air force reported shooting down 386 drones and 27 of the 43 missiles.
The first violation of Polish airspace occurred at around 2130 GMT on Tuesday, and the last one took place at around 0430 GMT on Wednesday.
Polish officials said they were unable to say immediately whether any of the drones had been targeting the capital Warsaw, a western Ukraine aid logistics hub in southeastern Poland or any NATO infrastructure.

***

When he was 21, Ryan Peake was a member of the Rebels, an outlawed motorcycle gang, and he wound up being sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a serious assault. In March, he won the New Zealand Open. No mention was made of the gallery.

***

Prosecutors have charged 75 Kenyans with terrorism in recent weeks, the majority for allegedly destroying government property during street demonstrations against President William Ruto. The charges raise the possibility that dissidents could find themselves in maximum-security prisons for decades. Defense lawyers say none of the accused has a known criminal record or connections to designated terrorist groups. The anti-terrorism courts are U.S.-funded. *** On the most recent state tests in math and English language arts (ELA), for example, black students in NYC charter schools had a proficiency rate of 61.5 percent in math and 58.6 percent in ELA. Black students in district schools had a proficiency rate of just 34.3 percent in math and 40.3 percent in ELA. At the same time, Latino students in charter schools had a proficiency rate of 60.5 percent in math and 55.2 percent in ELA, while Latino students in district schools had a proficiency rate of 35.7 percent in math and 39.4 percent in ELA. *** Qatar threatened to "retaliate" against Israel in the wake of an airstrike in Doha that targeted the leaders of Hamas, as the country’s prime minister called the situation a "decisive moment" for the Middle East. *** So the decision to have Biden run again was a personal one, not a democratic one? *** America Is a Theocracy The behavior of American politicians from month to month and year to year often amaze. So many policies make no sense, so many problems vulnerable to sensible solutions are ignored. Bizarre statements, strange antagonisms, curious rebranding terminologies sneak into the discussions. The new bright lights in the Democratic Party speak a political language formerly heard only in the echoing political museums of Europe. The good news is that we may have an explanation; the bad news is that it's terrifying.   A Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State (for "democracy, human rights, and labor"), appeared recently before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. In his opening statement, he said that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.” So we are, by our nature, endowed, not granted, rights. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) offered an astounding response: “The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.” Kaine ran for Vice-President under Hilary Clinton. He is not a Mamdani; he was a national candidate. The idea that laws “come from the government” is the basis of what is called “legal positivism,” which holds that the legitimacy and authority of laws are not based on God or natural law but rather legislation and court decisions. This is a sort of a naturalistic fallacy, a legal Darwinism where laws evolve subject to accidents and plots, stupidity, twists, turns, rational and irrational conflict, graft, greed...all the inevitable human factors the geniuses who crafted the American Constitution tried to protect us from. This allows politicians to bypass any basic human responsibilities and defer instead to the self-declared expertise of... ambitious politicians. Law is the consensus of the day. Legal Positivism is university-speak to say, "the citizen is caught with what we've given him." This is exactly what sparked the American Revolution. A commentator, Jennifer Szalai, has denounced what she called “Constitution worship” and argued that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.” That chorus includes establishment figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley Law School and author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” Other law professors, such as Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale, have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” What exactly is reclaimed when the law has such a whimsical basis is hard to explain. That “reclamation” is easier if our rights are based not in natural law, but rather in the shifting priorities of lawmakers like Kaine. Law protections then become based not on divine human rights, but on needs divined by humans. The American Constitution was a revolutionary creation. It turned government on its head, putting the nature and rights of the citizen first. The American legal system starts not with efficiency but with the protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary and from governmental abuse. Such a belief is binary; you either believe it or you don't. Why do people like Kaine, who don't believe it--more, think it's offensive--continue to stay and suffer under its assumptions rather than go to other places compatible with his narrow thinking is a source of wonder.