January 17, 2025

WELL, GOOD: U.K. announces new inquiries into decade-old cases of child sexual grooming after pressure sparked by Elon Musk tweet. “Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced Thursday that there would be a number of new central government-backed local inquiries into years-old allegations of child grooming gangs, weeks after Elon Musk accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failings in relation to the handling of the crimes in a series of tweets. The crimes took place a decade ago when Starmer was the country’s top prosecutor.”

Still, it feels a bit like the fox investigating who raided the henhouse.

Posted at 4:54 pm by Stephen Green

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Sorry, WAY Wrong Number. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have one NSFW former sheriff’s deputy, the worst wrong number to dial, and a mystery woman’s MRI gone horribly wrong.”

Posted at 3:21 pm by Stephen Green

COMPLEXITY: Nine Months And GM Can’t Supply A Bumper. “Now, it’s tempting to think this is yet another result of the Flu Manchu supply chain disruption. And it might be. But something else is at play here: The drive to make new cars ‘smarter’ (and thus more expensive). The Lyriq uses ‘multiple ultrasonic sensors located on your front and rear bumpers.’ The more smart components the car has, the more fragile the supply chain and the easier to break.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Stephen Green

BRADLEY THOMPSON: The State of the Union…and What You Can Do About It.

At the highest level of abstraction, the greatest existential threat to the United States is a philosophic virus of the mind. Specifically, the two greatest threats to the United States are nihilism and socialism, which, as actionable ideologies, are working in tandem to destroy Western Civilization.

Socialism is the end, and nihilism is the means.

What do I mean by that? How has our present condition come to be, and how does it work in practice?

In the 1960s, the New Left abandoned Marx’s idea of a convulsive proletarian revolution because the working class was inherently conservative. The new revolutionary strategy was for the intellectual and cultural elite to engage in a long march through America’s cultural institutions. The nihilistic goal was to undermine all the values and virtues of America and Western civilization. America’s cultural Left attacked reason, truth, objectivity, free will, rights, individualism, freedom, constitutionalism, and capitalism.

Since the 1960s, the Cultural Left has successfully infiltrated and commandeered the universities, the K-12 school system, the churches and synagogues, the media, Hollywood, major philanthropic institutions, virtually all professional organizations, social media, corporate America, etc. Things are so bad that the Cultural Left even controls the NFL and ESPN!

This postmodern Left controls virtually every opinion-forming institution in the country today. Even the family has been gutted and transformed. Parents no longer have a right to know, for instance, if the government schools are socially transitioning their children in preparation for the medical transitioning of their children.

Let me sum up our situation in the starkest terms possible: What kind of society sanctions the drugging and mutilation its children?

Let that sink in for a moment!!!

This is the victory of nihilism. Destroy capitalism’s underlying civic culture, and you destroy capitalism. Socialism is what follows.

But the situation is much worse than this because the Left has also captured the Federal and state bureaucracies (as well as NGOs) to affect every aspect of our lives. The result has been the merging of nihilism and socialism with what we call the Deep State, which is an entirely legitimate concept. In fact, I would like to suggest that the Deep State is much deeper and broader than most people realize.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

NARRATOR: THE MARCHES WERE NEVER ABOUT A CEASEFIRE AND WERE ALWAYS ABOUT INTIMIDATING JEWS.

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green

UNEXPECTEDLY: National Archives rebuffs Biden’s attempt to add Equal Rights Amendment to Constitution.

The National Archives poured cold water Friday on President Biden’s declaration that the Equal Rights Amendment is now part of the Constitution, saying courts and Mr. Biden’s own Justice Department have rejected that notion.

Mr. Biden issued a statement saying he believed that 38 states have ratified the ERA, which would be enough to make it the 28th Amendment.

But the National Archives and Records Administration, the official keeper of the Constitution as a document, said it stands by its decision — announced last month — that the ratifications didn’t happen before the deadline.

“Court decisions at both the district and circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment,” the agency’s leaders said at the time.

The Archives said Friday that has been “a long-standing position” and Mr. Biden’s announcement doesn’t change “the underlying legal and procedural issues.”

The key point is whether the ERA, which was passed by Congress in 1972 and was sent to the states for ratification, has amassed the 38 states needed.

Just 35 had ratified the amendment by 1979, which was the deadline set by Congress. Capitol Hill then approved a three-year extension of the deadline, but that came and went with no new ratifications.

In 2017, Nevada belatedly voted for approval, followed by Illinois in 2018 and Virginia in 2020. ERA backers said that was enough to cross the finish line.

But that argument was rejected by federal courts that ruled the deadline had passed.

Mr. Biden’s Justice Department has also ruled that the deadlines are valid and the post-deadline ratifications cannot be counted.

Charles Cooke tweets, “I’m trying to get inside the head of anyone—Biden included, if he’s aware of it—who thought that it would be a good idea for the president of the United States to tweet out that he was unilaterally declaring that the Constitution had been amended. It’s so deliciously humiliating,” adding, “And not just humiliating for Biden and his team. Humiliating for all those people who said Biden was a decent guy who respects the law and America’s institutions and were rewarded with the student-loan grab, eviction moratorium, pardon of Hunter, and now this. It’s hilarious.”

Ed Morrissey writes: More Biden: I Hereby Commute ERA’s 1982 Deadline Too.

Presidents don’t get to overrule the courts, nor do they get to declare what is and is not in the Constitution. What makes this so outrageous is that Biden just warned against executive abuse of authority less than two days ago in his farewell address to the nation, proclaiming himself the hero of checks and balances:

After 50 years at the center of all of this, I know that believing in the idea of America means respecting the institutions that govern a free society: the presidency, the Congress, the courts, a free and independent press. Institutions that are rooted not — they just — not to reflect the timeless words, but they re- — they — they echo the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Rooted in the timeless words of the Constitution, “We the People.”

Our system of separation of powers, checks and balances, it may not be perfect, but it’s maintained our democracy for nearly 250 years — longer than any other nation in history that’s ever tried such a bold experiment.

And in fact, Biden used this to demand that the states amend the Constitution to limit presidential power even further:

We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president — no president — is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office. The president’s power is limit- — it’s not absolute, and it shouldn’t be.

It’s not and it isn’t, not even under Trump v US, which only recognized that official presidential acts are checked by Congress and not local DAs trying to conduct political lawfare. But Biden sure seems to think that his own power is unlimited when it comes to not only interpreting the Constitution but determining its contents, too.

Who is writing the material that appear under Biden’s name in his last days? The old Russian joke, “If only the Czar knew,” takes on new meaning as Brandon shuffles the halls in his last days in office.

Posted at 1:40 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLD WAR II: Chinese hackers accessed Yellen’s computer in US Treasury breach. “The hack, what the Treasury called a “major incident”, happened in December when Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the department’s computer security guardrails by compromising third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust, according to Treasury officials.”

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST:

Related?

Posted at 12:41 pm by Stephen Green

ROBBY SOAVE: Biden’s Farewell F-You to Elon Musk.

President Joe Biden bid a not-so-fond farewell to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other members of the tech “oligarchy” he suddenly believes is threatening American freedoms.

“I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern,” he said in his farewell address on Wednesday night. “And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America.”

Biden went on to compare these tech oligarchs to 19th century robber barons, who were eventually brought to heel by federal legislators.

“More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts,” he said. “We’ve got to do that again.”

As long as we can take some time off to give them the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Here’s Why Joe Biden Gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros.

Oh, and speaking of “Robber Barons:” The Robber Barons: Neither Robbers Nor Barons.

One of the most prevalent myths about economic freedom is that it inevitably leads to monopolies. Ask people why they believe that, and the odds are high that they will point to the “trusts” of the late 19th century that gained large market shares in their particular industries. These trusts are Exhibit A for most people who hold this view. Ask them for specific names of the villains who ran these trusts, and they are likely to point to such people as Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. They even have a label for Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and others: robber barons.

But a careful reading of the economic research on the “robber barons” leads to a diametrically opposite conclusion: the so-called robber barons were neither robbers nor barons. They didn’t rob. Instead, they got their money the old-fashioned way: they earned it. Nor were they barons. The word “baron” is a title of nobility, one typically granted by a king or established by force. But Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and many of the others referred to as robber barons started their businesses from scratch and were granted no special privileges. Moreover, not only did they earn their money and not only were they not granted privileges, but they also helped consumers and, in one famous case, destroyed a monopoly.

Musk’s X has restored some sense of free speech after the previous Twitter regime were happy to be in bed with the FBI and CIA. And his spacecraft are making Boeing look like even more of a joke: Return of NASA astronauts from space station further delayed until late March. No wonder Biden hates him almost as much as he hates his own party’s journalists.

Related: So now Biden’s worried about the tech oligarchy?

UPDATE: “Joe Biden shuffles off the stage,” Byron York writes:

Soros, who is 94 years old, did not attend the White House ceremony. But his son Alexander Soros, who has taken over the family’s political influence operation, did. If you’ve never seen it, you should look at Alexander Soros’s Instagram page. It’s a diary of the extraordinary access he, as the son of a politically active billionaire, enjoys with leaders around the world. Just from the recent U.S. presidential campaign, the younger Soros has posted photos of himself with Biden, Harris, Tim Walz, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Josh Shapiro, Hakeem Jeffries, Mark Kelly, Gretchen Whitmer, Charles Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, Raphael Warnock, John Kerry, and more. There is no one in the Democratic Party who is unavailable to George and Alexander Soros.

So, Biden refined his allegation. It is tech billionaires — people who have built big things, as opposed to currency speculators such as George Soros — who pose the real danger to American democracy. “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden said. “The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power.”

We know that Democrats are unhappy with the policies of X since it was purchased by Elon Musk, head of Tesla and SpaceX. We know they are unhappy with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is changing the content moderation policies of Facebook and other platforms to make them less biased. And we know that they are unhappy with Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’s management of the Washington Post, particularly his decision not to endorse a candidate — as opposed to its traditional endorsement of the Democratic nominee — in the recent presidential election.

We also know that those three — Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, the three richest men in the world — have been quite open, and in the case of Musk, wildly supportive, of the return of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. It seems odd that Biden would use the final address of a 50-year career in politics to denounce them, but that is what he did. National Review’s Rich Lowry got the sense of it when he posted: “Washington’s Farewell Address — avoid entangling alliances. Biden’s Farewell Address — I don’t like Meta’s new moderation policy.”

And Team Biden can’t be thrilled with this last minute sop to the far left being Community Noted into oblivion at Twitter/X: Breaking: Lame Duck Biden Attempts to Declare That the Equal Rights Amendment Is Ratified.

NRO’s Jeff Blehar wonders when Biden became the dictator of San Marcos with a Bananas callback:

But will the official language of Rehoboth Beach now be Swedish?

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MANDATES ARE DUMB: And Suddenly, Gavin Newsom’s Electric Car Mandate Looks Pretty Dumb to LA Fire Victims “No mocking these poor folks, America, because this Caltastrophe may have bought more time for the rest of the country to shout down the climate cultists in state houses across the country. California’s proof of concept showed that climate nirvana doesn’t protect the environment for humans.”

I’m OK with more mocking.

Posted at 12:15 pm by Stephen Green