KEEP THEM ON THE RUN: Starting pistol: Landmark Supreme Court gun ruling sparks lawsuits on ‘sensitive places.’

THAT SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT: Mark Judge: Liberal Supreme Court journalists admit incompetence, prescribe propaganda and harassment of justices.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Missing Source of the Virus Was a Man. “Even with the cat out of the bag, Forbes notes that, shockingly, laboratories are still performing gain-of-function research on viruses more dangerous than Covid-19. ‘Whatever rationales proponents come up with for this kind of activity — Dr. Anthony Fauci has long been a powerful supporter — enhancing viruses in such ways is a mortal threat to humanity. Accidents are inevitable, yet gain-of-function research is growing with little effective oversight.'”

BUT OF COURSE: Queering Jesus: How It’s Going Mainstream at Progressive Churches and Top Divinity Schools.

EAT, PRAY, CRINGE: “Following a backlash so mild it hadn’t even cracked Twitter, Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, initiated a dramatic, public self-cancellation, and removed her latest ‘offending’ work from publication. The crime? Her unreleased novel, which followed a family’s struggle against Soviet communism in the 1930s, was set in Russia, which a small group of actual crazy people on the internet apparently believe forbidden. Gilbert’s was a wild act of self-censorship, which set a dangerous precedent. But mostly… nobody cared, and it was all kind of just embarrassing.”

The proper response to these people, taken from Monty Python, is “You’re a loony!” Followed by either more abuse, or ignoring them, as you choose. I think abuse is better, as they only thing that will make them stop this bullshit is the likelihood unpleasant consequences. Even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain, which suggests there’s at least a 50% chance that they will too.

FAILING UPWARD: Ousted Chicago Mayor Lightfoot to teach Harvard public health course.

Harvard University has granted a fellowship in public health to former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who recently became the first Chicago mayor to lose a re-election bid in 40 years after a controversy-ridden tenure as the Windy City’s top boss.

In her role as the Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow, Lightfoot “will teach a course in the fall at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health,” the Ivy League institution recently announced.

The June 1 announcement lists several of Lightfoot’s achievements as mayor, such as leading the citywide response to the pandemic and creating a “Racial Equity Rapid Response Team.”

It does not mention the spike in violent crime in Chicago during her term.

I’m sure Lightfoot will do as good a job of cleaning up Harvard as she did Chicago.

YOU AREN’T PARANOID: The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens.

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members.

What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders.

“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”

In the shadow of years of inaction by the US Congress on comprehensive privacy reform, a surveillance state has been quietly growing in the legal system’s cracks. Little deference is paid by prosecutors to the purpose or intent behind limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance activities. More craven interpretations of aging laws are widely used to ignore them. As the framework guarding what privacy Americans do have grows increasingly frail, opportunities abound to split hairs in court over whether such rights are even enjoyed by our digital counterparts.

Read the whole thing.

IT’S ONLY A PROBLEM IF YOU WANT IT TO BE: The NCAA Has a ‘Hot Girl’ Problem: The Cavinder Twins, the emerging oligarchs of women’s college basketball, aren’t the best players. But they might be the best-looking.

“If you look at the NIL girls, the first ones who were getting deals were the blonde girls,” Louis Moore, a sports historian at Grand Valley State University, told The Free Press. The Cavinder Twins, Moore said, have benefited handsomely from “their very blonde, girl-next-door looks,” posting videos of themselves in bikinis and tight-fitting dresses. Lots of their videos hint at the possibility of one twin having a boyfriend. Others wink at the male fantasy of group sex with identical sisters, featuring captions like “when he asks for blonde twins for Christmas” and “I want a girl with a twin sister.”

The Twins get their appeal. And even though they think it’s unfair that the mostly black top scorers in women’s college basketball make less than they do—including Louisiana State University’s Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson—that’s not stopping them. . . .

Meanwhile, the NCAA is extra-sensitive to the optics. The organization made a point of singling out the Cavinder Twins when, in February, it announced that for the first time in the NIL era, it was fining a member school, the University of Miami, and putting the university on probation for a year—despite men’s college sports being rife with more serious improprieties, and widespread uncertainty about what is permissible.

“The Miami (Florida) women’s basketball head coach violated NCAA rules when she facilitated impermissible contact between two prospects and a booster,” the NCAA declared in a statement explaining the $5,000 fine.
NCAA spokeswoman Meghan Durham declined to comment.

This didn’t sit well with the Twins, who posted a video February 25 using Chris Brown’s song “Look at Me Now.”
The video featured the Twins, apparently in a public restroom, looking confused. But the important thing was the caption beneath the video: “dear NCAA, scared that female athletes have value?”

In good, second-wave feminist fashion, the NCAA, by targeting Miami, seemed to be saying it didn’t like women athletes being objectified—and the Twins, being the body-positive twentysomethings they are, replied: Actually, that’s our business model.

The thing is, the women will never match the athletic performance of the men. And since ultimately it’s about pleasing the crowd, you’ve got to give the crowd something it likes. This was inevitable once the NIL stuff began.

What makes it a problem is just that, once again, the public wants what it wants, not what the stuffed shirts want it to want.

WHEN ROADWAYS COLLAPSE: A ‘Test’ for DeSantis, but Business as Usual for Buttigieg.

Buttigieg’s intervention [after Sunday’s I-95 collapse in Philadelphia] has not inspired any indication from the political press that Biden’s transportation secretary has something to prove, though he most certainly does. His tenure in this role has been one of the more eventful transportation administrations in recent memory, not because it was typified by the secretary’s unique competence or his agency’s fleet-footedness. Moreover, Buttigieg’s political aspirations transcend the office he presently occupies, and he is often cited in polls alongside prominent Democrats such as Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren as a potential future presidential candidate. The collapse of I-95 should be as much of a “test” of Buttigieg as the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and the damage it inflicted on Florida’s roadways was a “test” for Governor Ron DeSantis.

Nearly a week before Ian’s landfall, in late September of last year, political observers forecast the “challenge” the storm and its aftermath would pose to the governor. “To a national audience that knows him mostly as a provocateur,” a Wall Street Journal report observed, the storm would “test” DeSantis and challenge his characterizations of Florida’s relative livability. In particular, NPR observed that the speed with which “roads repaired and bridges reconnected” would either prove DeSantis’s mettle or showcase his shortcomings. In the storm’s aftermath, some even wondered if it was possible to rebuild in coastal areas of the country beset by “natural disasters intensified by the climate crisis.” Those who weren’t inclined to surrender the coasts to the ravages of nature were at least convinced that DeSantis could either concentrate on rebuilding Florida or run for the White House, but not both.

DeSantis passed this test, and it didn’t seem particularly strenuous. A severed link between Pine Island and Fort Myers was rebuilt in fewer than three days. The causeway over open water that couples Sanibel Island with the Florida mainland reopened within three weeks of Ian’s landfall — twelve days ahead of schedule. Florida voters registered their overwhelming satisfaction with DeSantis’s emergency response in polling, and they ratified his performance in November with a 20-point victory over his Democratic opponent.

Hopefully Buttigieg can quickly get back to his main job of posing for Time magazine covers and being feted with fawning Wired and Axios hagiography.

Evergreen:

ILYA SOMIN: How America’s Growing Diversity Weakens the Case for Racial Preferences in Education: Affirmative action becomes harder to defend when it entails discrimination against a variety of racial and ethnic minority groups.

FLASHBACK: Biden Promised to Use His Power to Prevent Trump From Returning to White House.

FROM ARI H. MENDELSON:  Consent (Kingmaker).

CDR SALAMANDER: “Optimal Manning’s” International Public Disgrace – Norwegian Edition. You have to have an effective military at war, not one optimized for peacetime efficiency.

IF I WERE STARTING OVER AGAIN, I’D NOT USE MY REAL NAME, AND I’D HAVE CONSTRUCTED PERSONAS FOR FICTION AND THE BLOG. JUST TO STAY PRIVATE:  Give and take of a semi-public life.

YEAH:  This is why you should be wary of smart homes.

FIRST AMENDMENT:  Today’s blacklisted American was arrested for quoting the Bible.

WHY? IS THERE A PRIDE EVENT?  Will Pete Buttigieg fit some time in his calendar to visit Philadelphia after I-95 highway collapse?

LIKE TRUE MARXISTS, THE FORGOT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ATTACK YOUR CLIENTS:  China Struggles With Weak Post-COVID Economic Recovery.

THEY REALLY NEED AND WANT A WORLD WAR:  Historic NATO Exercise with 2,000 National Guard Troops, 100 US Planes Begins in Germany.

THEY WANT A NUCLEAR WAR, FOR THE SAME REASON THEY WANTED THE COVIDIOCY:  Biden Preparing Plans to Evacuate Americans From Taiwan: Report.

Even with fraud, it might be the only way they can win the election in 24. So look for war in the beginning of 24.

SPEAKING OF BACK PEDALING, JOHNS HOPKINS DECIDED THE HUMAN RACE CONSISTED OF MEN AND NON-MEN:  I wrote about it here.
Obviously I wasn’t anywhere close to alone, because this is a comment on my post:

Ride right through them. They’re demoralized as h*ll. ;)

AKA RAPID ONSET GENDER DYSPHORIA:  How online communities feed the transgender spread.

VERY FAST BACK PEDALING:  White House Condemns ‘Disrespectful’ Trans Model for Baring Breasts at White House Pride Event.

ALPHABET CLOWN CAR IS THE BEST TERM:  Video: how to spot a woke corporation (satire?); Douglas Murray and Julie Bindel on the “alphabet clown car” and why they want no part of it.

HE HIT BOTTOM AND GOT A NUCLEAR POWERED DIGGING DEVICE:  Keith Olbermann hammered after claiming Hillary Clinton team never destroyed gov’t devices: ‘Hallucinating’.