Nov 4, 2019 | Politics
Reports the NY Post, on Pregnant Florida mom uses AR-15 to kill home intruder
A pregnant woman is credited with saving the lives of her husband and daughter after she used an AR-15 to fatally gun down a home intruder, a report said. The hero mom sprung into action when two intruders entered the family’s Lithia, Fla. home last week and pistol whipped her husband while violently grabbing their daughter, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. “They came in heavily hooded and masked,” the husband, Jeremy King, told Bay News 9. “As soon as they had got the back door opened, they had a pistol on me and was grabbing my 11-year-old daughter.”[...]“He made it from my back door to roughly 200 feet out in the front ditch before the AR did its thing.” [...] The homeowner said he took a “severe beating,” but credited his wife for saving him. “I’ve got a fractured eye socket, a fractured sinus cavity, a concussion, 20 stitches and three staples in my head,” said King. “Them guys came in with two normal pistols and my AR stopped it. [My wife] evened the playing field and kept them from killing me.”
Oct 29, 2019 | Politics
The Mathusian is quoted in the Daily Mail Online:
Prince William has warned that the future of wildlife is under threat from rapid population growth, as he prepares to welcome his third child.
Oct 16, 2019 | Politics
From CLP Files Amicus Brief in United States v. Facebook:
Should an individual lose the protection of our Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement simply because he or she shares information, for a limited purpose, on Facebook? Today the Center for the Legalization of Privacy filed its first amicus brief, in United States v. Facebook, currently pending before Federal District Court in the District of Columbia. The case concerns whether the Court should approve a settlement reached between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission, embodied in this stipulated order.
You can read the entire brief and support Amy Peikoff's work at Legalize Privacy.
Oct 14, 2019 | Politics
From How the EU created a cadre of loyal academics - CapX
EU positivity is moulded from years of association born not simply of certification, but of financing. The EU is a massive donor and awarder of grants, even if it is not of course handing out its own money. But the association of grant and grantee, in fields and subjects chosen by the EU’s civil service, under systems run by its fellow travellers, encourages the recruitment, the development, and the progression of a pro-EU cadre – whether they are fully aware of it or not. This is particularly clear with respect to academics, from whom over October we can expect to hear a great deal as they are drafted in to act as commentators.
The problems arising from the EU funding academic research are several.
Firstly, the bidding system and scale of money available inevitably risks skewing academic research along the EU’s pro-integration priorities. Secondly, the selection points and networking system heavily risks openly pushing bids and bidders themselves along pro-EU lines. Thirdly, the nature of the inducements generates an elite of EU-specialists, whose starting point is one of explaining rather than challenging the process, and who are self-recruited from pro-EU academics. It also then supports the career progression of those professionals, bridging academia, thinktanks, governance, and the private sector. Finally, can only encourage a measure of professional hostility to Euroscepticism.
In other words, the mass funding scheme supports the creation of a pro-EU elite that has, to varying degrees, bought into supporting the system and professionally engaging with it – which to be fair is precisely why the funding streams were originally set up.
Oct 11, 2019 | Politics
From Kavanaugh calls out racism on first day of new Supreme Court term — Quartz:
The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that allows criminal convictions based on jury verdicts that aren’t unanimous.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the Louisiana law had racist roots. He noted that there were two “practical reasons” to overrule the precedent the state relied on. One was unfairness to defendants who may well have a constitutional right to a unanimous jury, and the other was the law’s apparently racist intent. “The rule in question here is rooted in a—in racism, you know, rooted in a desire, apparently, to diminish the voices of black jurors,” the justice told the state’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Murrill. “Why aren’t those two things enough to overrule… unfairness to defendants and rooted in racism?” he asked Murrill. She replied that the law was not “fundamentally unfair.” But Kavanaugh didn’t look convinced.
Although the conservative justice seems a somewhat unlikely champion of minorities, he recently also authored the majority opinion in a case reversing a quadruple murder conviction based on a racist jury selection process and is actually steeped in the topic. The opinion was an eloquent condemnation of racism.
Kavanaugh’s unexpected question was just one sign that, as ever, it will be impossible to predict where the justices fall on any issue until they reveal their decisions.
Kavanaugh only "seems a somewhat unlikely champion of minorities" to actual collectivists, toxic "feminists" and "reverse" racists who claim to speak for minorities.
Oct 8, 2019 | Politics
Speech by Davy Crockett (House of Representatives 1827 -1831, and 1833 -1835) in regards giving government relief to the widow of a Naval officer:
Mr. Speaker—I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity.Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.
Comments Hal Gordon, a former speechwriter at Reagan White House in "Drain the Swamp"? Davy Crockett Did It With a Speech | Vital Speeches:
When Crockett sat down, the bill was dead. He had shamed it to death. Furthermore, according to [his biographer and friend Edward] Ellis, not a single member of Congress offered to join him in contributing a week’s pay for the relief of poor widow, about whose plight so many of them had waxed eloquent when they thought they were going to be spending the taxpayers’ money rather than their own.At that time, the records of the House did not include transcripts of speeches made on the floor. So some historians have questioned the authenticity of Crockett’s speech. But Crockett is known to have opposed a similar bill in 1828, and the speech certainly sounds like him.So does the observation that Ellis says Crockett made to him in private afterwards:
There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men—men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased—a debt which could not be paid by money—and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.
