January 20, 2025

January 19, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, CITIZENS: L.A. officials stop use of disappearing Google Chats, citing Palisades fire.

For years, Los Angeles city employees could communicate through Google Chat messages that were automatically deleted after 24 hours.

Even after the practice, which was sanctioned by the city, was uncovered last year by a community group and good government experts questioned whether it violated public records laws, city officials declined to stop it.

This week, after wildfires devastated Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other communities, the city abruptly changed course. All one-on-one and group Google Chat messages will now be saved.

The news was announced by the city’s Information Technology Agency on Tuesday in an email to employees. The city enabled Google Chat history “in response to user requests related to the citywide emergency,” the email said, referring to the wildfires.

The email noted that those messages would now be “subject to production in legal proceedings, public records requests, and internal investigations.”

Well, good: The legal fight over the L.A. fires is already here. What previous lawsuits can tell us.

Posted at 9:25 pm by Ed Driscoll

ROGER KIMBALL: Heading to Washington, DC to celebrate two zero hours.

Naturally, the first cause for celebration is the second inauguration of Donald Trump, an event that by my reckoning (and not mine alone) will mark the beginning of a new golden age for America.

At the same moment, however, we have a second zero hour in which to rejoice: zero hour for the country’s principal zero, the departure of Joe Biden from the White House, power and anything resembling a public platform.

Having proved that a mental incompetent, so long as he is fired by a rancid woke malice, can occupy the office of President of the United States, Biden will, as of noon tomorrow, find his power cables unplugged.

It’s been a grim couple of months with Biden. His peevish animosity, fired first by being pushed out of his presidential campaign in July, and then by Kamala Harris’s resounding loss in November, has been ranging far and wide. His incontinent spate of presidential pardons of criminals and lowlifes, beginning with his extraordinary get-of-jail-free-now-and-forever card for his cokehead son and bagman Hunter, made the world purse its lips. Really, pardoned back to 2014 for anything he did or may have done?

Biden also flew back to DC today — and in a perfect metaphor, exited Air Force One from the short steps:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE PARTY OF YOUTH AND ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Nancy Pelosi’s daughter goes scorched earth on Jill ‘Lady McBiden’ in the bitter feud between Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi daughter Alexandra has some choice words for First Lady Jill Biden as the family stews over her mother’s role in ousting President Joe Biden from his reelection campaign.

Pelosi’s daughter described the First Lady as ‘Lady McBiden,’ comparing her to Lady MacBeth, the evil wife controlling her husband’s kingdom from behind the scenes in the legendary Shakespeare play.

‘If I was Lady McBiden, I’d put on my big girl pants, play the long game and think about my husband’s legacy,’ Alexandra Pelosi told Politico.

Pelosi’s daughter reacted to the First Lady’s lament that the Bidens and Pelosi had been friends for 50 years, but was politically stabbed in the back after the president’s terrible debate performance in June.

‘We were friends for 50 years,’ said the first lady when asked about Pelosi by the Washington Post. ‘It was disappointing.’

Pelosi was a vocal proponent of Biden stepping out of the race, even going on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and raising doubts about whether he could continue even after he reasserted that he would stay in the race.

Pelosi’s daughter indicated that the Bidens should be grateful that her mother was still praising the president for his legacy.

‘There aren’t that many people left in America who have something nice to say about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is one of them,’ she said.

This new comedy satire of Downfall has been surprisingly fun to watch, as the clock ticks down on the Biden (p)residency: Watch: Biden Moving Out of White House — People Love It and Ask One Big Question.  “Is someone at the White House inventorying what’s going out the door? Given prior history with Democrats, particularly when the Clintons walked out with thousands of dollars worth of things they weren’t supposed to take, that might be a good idea. Whose chair is that, that the movers are carrying out there? Yes, and maybe do a thorough check that there isn’t anything funny left behind, since cocaine seems to have found its way into the Biden White House before without anyone ever figuring out how that happened. And is anyone checking if any classified documents are going out the door with Joe?”

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

AXIOS: Biden planning book with his narrative on presidency, election exit.

President Biden plans to write a book after leaving office, the White House confirmed to Axios, giving him an opportunity to try and shape the narrative around his presidency and the tumultuous weeks leading to his historic withdrawal from the 2024 race.

Why it matters: There’s a glut of reporting coming out on Biden’s fateful decision to run again in 2024 and ultimately step aside after his disastrous debate with President-elect Trump — most of it unflattering to the 82-year-old president.

  • Biden’s own version of those events has hardly registered, beyond his contentious claims that he could have beaten Trump.

  • If the book project comes to fruition, it will be a chance for Biden to lay out, in full, his views on what he accomplished and why he handled the 2024 cycle the way he did.

  • NBC News first reported that Biden was planning a book. A White House spokesperson confirmed the plans but did not provide additional details.

Jill could really bring things full circle by hiring the perfect ghostwriter: Neil Kinnock, an admitted Biden supporter, is tanned, rested, and ready!

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANYTHING THAT PRODUCES A NUMBER GETS MORE RESPECT THAN IT SHOULD: The problem with pulse oximeters. I was at the doctor’s and my pulse ox reading seemed kinda low to me — I think it was like 95 or something — and when I said something the nurse shrugged, wiped off the little sensor with an alcohol wipe, and put it back on my finger, where it then read 99.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TIME TO EXPAND THE HATCH ACT TO COVER CONTRIBUTIONS? Ever since FDR was in the White House, the Hatch Act has barred federal workers from partisan activities while on duty.

Now that there are so many of them, making an average $101,000+ annually, they provide millions of dollars to Democrats and Republicans who protect their jobs and programs. And nearly half of the managers in the nation’s capital openly declare in a recent survey they will actively oppose President Donald Trump’s policies and programs.

All of which raises a logical question that I cover in my latest PJMedia column: Should feds also be barred from contributing to partisan political campaigns?

Posted at 5:45 pm by Mark Tapscott

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

We know the withered and sclerotic Biden has no idea about much of what was issued under his name. Does AOC, age 35, remember how many things her Green Nude Eel were going to ban in 2019?

Although to be fair, her earlier efforts to fight global warming are now paying spectacular dividends! Coldest Inauguration Day in 40 years expected as polar vortex invades America.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll