WHEN THE DEMOCRATS HAVE LOST DAVID FRENCH: No, Ron DeSantis Isn’t Worse than Trump.

Trump wasn’t even bad, though, which French never grasped for some reason.

WHEN SECONDS COUNT, THE POLICE ARE ONLY MINUTES AWAY WILL FART AROUND FOR NEARLY AN HOUR EVEN AFTER THEY ARRIVE: The awful Uvalde surveillance video.

It’s awful because it brings home the extent of the cops’ paralysis in a way nothing else can. Even at just four minutes in length, with cops visible in the hallway for only about half that time, the extent of the delay is maddening. You’ll want to crawl through the screen after 60 seconds or so and head down towards the shooter yourself.

They’re outside the door of the classroom at 11:37 a.m. but a few shots from the gunman send them fleeing in terror. That’s when the long wait begins.

An officer briefly checks his smart phone at one point. Another, later in the standoff, helps himself to some hand sanitizer from the dispenser on the wall as he waits around. Ballistic shields are on scene at 11:52, but nothing happens.

There’s finally movement at around 3:15 of the clip, but pay close attention to the “real time” clock in the upper left-hand corner. The police begin making their way down the hallway at 12:21, shortly after they hear the gunman fire four more shots. But it’s another *half-hour* before they finally enter and take him down.

Didn’t we used to brand cowards, or was that just a Chuck Connors TV show?

THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION WANTS TO USE ITS REGULATORY POWER TO REQUIRE “CLIMATE CHANGE” MEASURES. Boyden Gray says the law doesn’t support that, especially after West Virginia v. EPA. He’s right. (I should note that the D.C. Circuit just struck down a somewhat similar regulatory power grab by the FCC.)

Famed climate scientists William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT say that the SEC’s action is based on bad science. I think they’re right too.

At any rate, the SEC has plenty of legitimate core business on its plate, and should be relying on Congress to do any necessary climate regulation.

WALTER DURANTY, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Chinese Zero Covid was always a lie.

The reality that the AP report papered over — and what virtually all Western media has missed as it swallowed CCP’s Covid narrative whole — is that China’s true Covid strategy wasn’t aimed at containing the virus; it was aimed at containing the narrative. “The Chinese CDC was told how it’s going to go,” a private intelligence analyst with knowledge of the data said. The source explains that the CCP’s methodology of choice is not to flatly deny data or take down reporting wholesale but simply “round the edges” off the story by obfuscating just enough to blunt any alternative narrative from forming.

This new inflection in the Zero Covid narrative, which claimed that Omicron reveals the “limits” of China’s approach, merely served to reinforce the idea that China had successfully contained Covid had up that point. In an article on the limits of Zero Covid in the Omicron era, the BBC credulously noted, “If you adjust for population size, there’s been around three deaths per million people in mainland China, compared with about 3,000 in the US and 2,400 in the UK.”

Even entertaining China’s absurd Zero Covid claims requires suspending basic human logic. Consider the case of Singapore, a country much richer and more advanced than China that was able to drive compliance at least as well. (Though considering the entire country is an urban island, in distinction to China’s vast rural expanses, probably much better.)

According to analyst George Calhoun, official Chinese data put China’s mortality rate 50 times lower than Singapore’s. South Korea — which has a single, permanently closed border which effectively makes it an island — is another standout for Covid success. Yet by Chinese official reporting, South Korea’s Covid mortality would be 73 times higher Covid-19 than China’s.

The story here isn’t that Chinese Communists lie but that American fellow travelers help them do it.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT, AS WELL AS SEVERAL VARIETIES OF TORT: Morton’s and others brace as activists offer cash for SCOTUS sightings.

ROGER KIMBALL: Against the Great Reset: ‘Sovereignty and the Nation-State.’

The question of sovereignty—of who governs—is at the center of all contemporary populist initiatives. It has been posed with increasing urgency as the bureaucratic burden of what has been called the “deep state” or administrative state has weighed more and more forcefully upon the political and social life of Western democracies.

The phenomenon is often identified with the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 and his candidacy in 2020. But the political, moral, and social realities for which Trump was a symbol and a conduit both predated his candidacy and achieved independent reality in countries as disparate as the United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy, and Brazil.

The question of sovereignty was perhaps most dramatically posed in the United Kingdom. In June 2016, more Brits voted to leave the European Union and return sovereignty to Parliament than had ever voted for any initiative in the long history of Great Britain. Some seventeen million people voted to leave the European Union and regain local responsibility for their own lives. That’s more people than had ever voted for anything in Britain. It took more than three years for that promissory note to be cashed. The U.K. formally began its split from the E.U. at 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January 2020. Like the Battle of Waterloo according to the Duke of Wellington, it was a “near run thing.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised that he would, deal or no deal, get Brexit done by the end of October 2019. He was stymied for months, as much by the established elites of his own party as by Labour.

The process of emancipation had not proceeded far before it was interrupted by the advent of a new Chinese import, the novel coronavirus which swept all other news from the front page for months (until, that is, it was half-superseded by the extortionist Kabuki theater of “Black Lives Matter”). As I write in the summer of 2021, Europe and the United States both are poised to return to a state of state-enforced semihibernation or “lockdown,” an insidious flu-like respiratory virus created in a Chinese virology lab having paralyzed their populations with fear and transported their governments with the tantalizing prospect of greater control over every aspect of life.

I am not sure I have ever heard Joe Biden utter the word “sovereignty.” But Donald Trump spoke about it often.

Read the whole thing.

GOOD LORD: Seven Kids, One as Young as 10, Hunt, Kill Elderly Philly Man, Locals Can’t Understand.

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO PRO-RAPE? Roman Polanski could return to the US without serving time with help from DA George Gascon.

A REASONABLE REACTION TO INSULTINGLY OBVIOUS PROPAGANDA: News engagement plummets as Americans tune out.

FROM C. CHANCY:  Oni the Lonely.

#CommissionEarned

A grieving mountain cove doctor. A pair of wayward oni. A curse borne on the black wings of crows.

The Rivertown Shopping Village has seen a lot of strange proprietors. An oni painter on the run from a bad breakup is a new one. Maple Leaf Studio opened with blazing color, but will a haunting end Kyosai Momoji’s dream before it begins?

At the south end of Rivertown, Rain McKee delivers soap and perfume with a hint of mountain blessings, picking up her life in the wake of her grandparents’ deaths. Deaths that may have been from a firstborn curse….

Kyosai’s a firstborn, and oni attract trouble like lightning strikes. If either of them want to survive, they’ll have to face haunts, monsters, and a curse so ancient no living mortal knows its name.

The Appalachians are old; the evils lurking there, older still….

(If you want ancient folklore, modern magic, and a love story that prioritizes friendship first, this is the slow burn for you!)

PRIME DAY DEAL: Casper Sleep Pillow. #CommissionEarned

AND ABOUT TIME:  The times, they are a’changing: maverick Greens embracing emissions-free nuclear energy; 1st ever picture from the Webb Space Telescope.

PAY ATTENTION:  Bari Weiss on our revolution of culture.

SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED:  Today blacklisted American: Scientists questioning Big Bang theory protest censorship of their work.

OF COURSE IT’S CHEAPER: MEXICO ISN’T SUPPRESSING THEIR OIL PRODUCTION:  Mexico President AMLO invites Americans to buy cheaper gas in his country.

UNLIKE PRESIDENT TRUMP, THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ISN’T PUTTING CHILDREN IN CAGES!   Unaccompanied migrant children found along border, given snacks by agents.

LA TAKES ANOTHER STEP TOWARD THE ABYSS:  LA-area 7-Elevens encouraged to close after violence, robberies.

LEARN IT, THEN STOP IT:  Samizdata word for today: paraprofessional.

SURE AND SRI LANKA SHOWS HOW TO HAVE A COUNTRY LIKE CUBA:  Claim: Cuba Shows We can Grow Food Without Fertiliser.

BUREAUCRATS AREN’T KINGS:  Biden’s Transportation Department targets CO2 emissions of cars on highways to push EVs.

And it’s time we told them that.

MY DAYS OF NOT GIVING A D*MN WHAT SOROS OR THE EU SAY ARE CERTAINLY COMING TO A MIDDLE:  George Soros and the EU Parliament condemn the SCOTUS for following the Constitution.

WE SHOULD:  Use RICO to get to the bottom of Seth Rich’s Murder.

THEIR PROGRAM FAILED TO BRING ABOUT UTOPIA:  Hopelessness is all the Democrats have left.

ENJOY IT WHILE YOU HAVE IT: The Golden Summer.

AND FRANKLY ALL THEY’RE DOING IS GETTING US ANGRY:  The ‘Chekhov’s Gun’ of Political Intimidation.

And unlike them we don’t turn anger on and off for effect.