Yes, and sow the ground with salt.
Category Archives: Law
America The Weird
Victor Davis Hanson on the appeal of the West:
America remains the exceptional Western nation, whose influence and stature transcend the size of its economy and population, and its vast land mass of rich natural resources. Its cocktail of property rights, unfettered oil and gas development, muscular national defense, gun rights, religiosity, free-market economics, limited government, philanthropy, and great private universities is, again, unlike anything in the West.
Likewise, its excesses that arise from the marriage of free-market affluence and constitutionally protected unfettered expression, in the eyes of the world, appear often as license and indulgence. Certainly, the First and Second Amendments, the National Football League, rap music, the U.S. Marine Corps, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the Ivy League, or 24/7 cable news could not originate elsewhere.
The result is that America exists both as the world’s refuge and its beacon, the sole place where individuals can find a safe harbor. Only in America can the individual remain free and able to live his life under the assumption that the major decisions of his life are his own and not predicated on state approval. Only in the United States does the rags to riches story still exist, given that neither regulation, the deep state, nor an entrenched aristocracy can fully suppress entrepreneurs or aspiring capitalists.
A key goal of my Outer Space Treaty project is to extend this to the solar system. Speaking of which, Michael Listner has an analysis of the latest U.S. legislation along these lines.
Rejuvenation
This seems like a very promising approach. First dogs, then use the revenue to do clinical trials on humans. I’m holding up pretty well for my age, but I’d really like to set the clock back.
[Update a few minutes later, after reading]
I’d note that one of the “diseases of aging” listed is diabetes. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that this is mostly a problem of poor diet, based on decades of criminally terrible nutrition recommendations, and can largely be reversed by simply going keto. In fact, they’ve found that it can even be an effective treatment for Type 1 (and it was, prior to the development of insulin).
[Thursday-morning update]
New at Analog: Can we reverse aging?
[Via Gary Hudson]
[Bumped]
Nitrogen
I’ve been wondering for years why states don’t do this for capital punishment. I can’t imagine a more cheap, pleasant, painless way to go.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Some of the objections are ridiculous. For instance, there would be no need to “clear the room” of nitrogen if you use a mask.
Mueller’s Investigation
Forty questions about it. Meanwhile, Mueller just had a really bad day in court.
[Update Monday morning]
Will there be a plea reversal in the Flynn case? If so, it could be more bad news for Team Mueller.
The Clinton (Crime) Family Foundation
Time to declare it the biggest charity fraud ever.
Comey And McCabe
The media hasn’t been reporting much on the initial release from Horowitz, but it looks like some potential bombshells in here for the Democrats.
[Update a while later]
More from Andy McCarthy.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And it wasn’t Comey’s decision to exonerate Hillary; it was Obama’s:
Bottom line: In April, President Obama and his Justice Department adopted a Hillary Clinton defense strategy of concocting a crime no one was claiming Clinton had committed: to wit, transmitting classified information with an intent to harm the United States. With media-Democrat complex help, they peddled the narrative that she could not be convicted absent this “malicious intent,” in a desperate effort to make the publicly known evidence seem weak. Meanwhile, they quietly hamstrung FBI case investigators in order to frustrate the evidence-gathering process. When damning proof nevertheless mounted, the Obama administration dismissed the whole debacle by rewriting the statute (to impose an imaginary intent standard) and by offering absurd rationalizations for not applying the statute as written.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
More thoughts from (still Democrat, as far as I know) Jonathan Turley.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Jack Goldsmith on the Deep State. It also seems relevant to this post.
[Friday-morning update]
Is Comey lying about his memos?
Probably.
In the future, I’m going to take encomia and praise of the “integrity” and probity of these Beltway denizens from other Beltway denizens with a truckload of salt.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Donald Trump and the star chamber of horrors:
As the past year-plus of Robert Mueller’s tedious investigation has proven, there is no very great crime behind Trump’s very great fortune of having been elected the 45th president of the United States. The entire notion of Russian “collusion” (not in itself actionable in the first place) was cooked up in the witches’ cauldron that was Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The resulting brew was liberally dispensed to the cadres of media operatives pretending to be dispassionate reporters in order to assuage the failed candidate’s rage over losing what she thought—what she was assured by her friends at the CIA and the FBI—was a fixed fight.
And so the Big Lie—that Trump had collaborated with Vladimir Putin to change the course of an American election—was born.
There was and is nothing to it, of course. But that hasn’t stopped the Democrats, whose sterling moral history of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition has prepared them for just this moment.
Don’t hold back, Michael, tell them what you really think.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Comey makes surprising new claims in a disastrous Fox News interview.
The House IT Scandal
Though I guess it’s not a scandal, like all of Obama’s scandals weren’t scandals, because the media refuses to report it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Another story the media finds uninteresting: The Clinton campaign illegally laundered $84M.
Gorsuch And The Administrative State
Along with the “liberals” on the court, he just struck a blow against it. As Will says, it would be nice to see the conservative justices see the light. But I suspect many conservatives will rail against him, calling him a “liberal,” “soft on crime and illegal aliens.”
[Update a while later]
This seems related: The SEC’s administrative judge scandal. I’d love to see this sort of thing struck down as unconstitutional. Same with the IRS tax court.
The New Commercial Space Bill
Brian Weedon analyzes it, on Twitter.
It looks like a significant improvement over the current situation. It’s worth noting that in moving regulation to the Commerce Department, it could set the groundwork for a U.S. Space Guard. There have been times in history in which the Coast Guard was under Commerce.
[Late-morning update]
The Bridenstine era at NASA (finally) begins.
I think he’ll be one of the best administrators in recent history. I should add that Rubio’s (and others’, like Bill Nelson’s) statement that NASA should be run by a “space professional” are historically ignorant. Jim Webb was not a “space professional.”