VOICES FOR LIBERTY SYMPOSIUM ON FREE SPEECH AND CIVIL RIGHTS: My Liberty & Law Center at Scalia Law School has a conference on Friday that some Insta-readers might be interested in attending (live if you live near Arlington, VA, online otherwise).

“Does free expression help or harm the cause of social progress? Join senior scholars and exciting new voices presenting cutting-edge research on the role freedom of speech plays in advancing civil rights movements (past, present, and future). Academic research into this important topic has been surprisingly limited. Scholars will present new papers exploring whether free expression entrenches an unjust status quo or provides critical support for groups wishing to challenge it.”

You can find the program here.

And you can register here.

STANDARDS:

1938: dudes wearing ties to do oilfield work

2023: sitting Senator wears gym shorts and hoodie to work https://t.co/Gg4TNqNHy4

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) September 19, 2023

IN MY TRAINING CLASS THEY SAID PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO TOUCH THEIR CHESTS OR RIP THEIR SHIRTS: Women less likely to be given CPR than men in public places.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Woman accidentally discovers swallowed AirPods are acid resistant for nine hours.

WOKE BURIES EVERYTHING: ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3’ Both Loves and Buries Greece.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden short-circuits during UN speech then gets in a fight with his teleprompter … and loses (watch).

Biden says he wants to work with China on "accelerating the climate crisis" pic.twitter.com/EWxRdvyuew

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 19, 2023

Why oh why can’t his handlers get the adrenochrome dosage right on road trips?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Become a Fudd: A How-To Guide.

WELL, YES: It’s normal for parents to object to graphic sex in kids’ books. “If you can’t read the sexy kids’ book in Congress without grossing people out and having them tell you to please stop, Dad, maybe children shouldn’t read it.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK? RealClearInvestigations: Did Hunter Biden Lie to His Own Memoir?

GORGEOUS: NASA’s Webb Snaps Supersonic Outflow of Young Star.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Biden crime family is our own reality-TV mafia show.

For one thing, as the legal commentator Jonathan Turley and others pointed out, the gun charges against Hunter appear to insulate the Big Guy, Mr. 10 percent, master of  the pseudonymous email handles, President Joe Biden.

And remember, it’s not just dear old dad who is being protected here. The bank records released by the House Oversight Committee in August show that Hunter received millions of the crispest from Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, the wife of the Mayor of Moscow.

The last time I checked, one of my least favorite constitutional amendments, the 16th, stipulated that Congress could put its hands in your pocket for “taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” There is no exception for money-for-access from Russian Oligarchs, Ukrainian businessmen, Chinese or Romanian shakedown artists. As Turley observed in one of his great moments of understatement, Hunter is “not going to be held accountable for the full range of the potential crimes here.”

I doubt that he will be held accountable at all, though given the Hindenburg-like implosion of the Biden administration, I can see how a truth-is-stranger than fiction scenario could unfold whereby Joe agrees to step aside to spend more time with his fantasy in exchange for Hunter quietly having the hook extracted from his mouth and getting tossed back in the pond to swim away. Stay tuned.

And the beat goes on: Hunter Biden Sues IRS. “He wants his tax charges dismissed, and he knows that Very Special Counsel David Weiss wants to dismiss those charges. But Weiss can’t do that, because the public objects. So Hunter files an absolutely baseless suit. This will give David Weiss the pretext for dismissing the charges. Just as in a normal Sue & Settle political op, Weiss will claim that he was legally forced to do what the public did not want him to do. Because Lawsuit.”

HMM: Low-Dose Aspirin Linked to 15% Lower Risk of Diabetes in Older Adults.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Chicago Teachers Union Boss Sends Son to Private School. Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, previously said school choice is for “racists.”

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT RESTORING MORE OF THAT DIGNITY TO GOVERNMENT: John Fetterman Admits He Dresses ‘Like a Slob.’

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, CHAIRMAN XI: Canada Could Pass China’s GDP by 2100.

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: WTH? What is going on in Plum Grove, Texas, Governor Abbott?

The community is called Colony Ridge and it is located in Plum Grove, Texas. Plum Grove is a small town in Liberty County and is north of Houston. I live in Houston. I write about illegal immigration and the Biden border crisis every week, sometimes every day. I try to keep up with it as best as I can because it is destroying our country, whether that is something people want to know about or not. So imagine my shock to read this report at the Daily Wire and discover this community just north of the city in which I live. I had no idea it is there.

This is a huge story and Republican voters should be outraged because Republican lawmakers, including Governor Abbott, are dragged into it. The development of Colony Ridge is sprawling and growing.

Read the whole thing.

THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH I-TOLD-YOU-SOS IN THE WORLD FOR THIS STORY: Once a global ideal, Germany’s economy struggles with an energy shock that’s exposing longtime flaws.

For most of this century, Germany racked up one economic success after another, dominating global markets for high-end products like luxury cars and industrial machinery, selling so much to the rest of the world that half the economy ran on exports.

Jobs were plentiful, the government’s financial coffers grew as other European countries drowned in debt, and books were written about what other countries could learn from Germany.

No longer. Now, Germany is the world’s worst-performing major developed economy, with both the International Monetary Fund and European Union expecting it to shrink this year.

It follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the loss of Moscow’s cheap natural gas — an unprecedented shock to Germany’s energy-intensive industries, long the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe.

There’s a lot of talk about losing access to Russia’s natural gas, but the author doesn’t bother to mention until the 18th paragraph Berlin’s 2011 decision to shut down every nuclear plant in the country.

THIS WOULD EXPLAIN A LOT: Researchers discover learning and memory deficits after ingestion of aspartame.

THIS ISN’T SUSTAINABLE: Take a Guess What the Fastest Growing Jobs Sector Has Been.

OUT TODAY: Mark Levin’s The Democrat Party Hates America. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

GOOD, BECAUSE IT’S NOT THEIR JOB AND THEY DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT IT: Doctors often reluctant to discuss guns, firearms safety with patients.

GOOD: Musk says X will charge everyone to use the platform.

Musk replied: “The single-most important reason we’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system is it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”

Musk said adding a subscription would make it much more difficult for bots to create accounts, because each bot would need to register a new credit card.

He added that the company plans to come out with “a lower tier pricing,” than what it currently charges for its X Premium subscribers, which is around $8 monthly.

This should have happened years ago.

NOW OUT FROM JIM BUTCHER: Warriorborn. No, it’s not a Dresden Files book, but Larry Correia says he loves it.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Argentina’s Milei Warns U.S.: Socialism Is ‘Violent, Murderous, Impoverishing.’

Yet the same thugs sell it to the same idiots, time after time.

THE IRONY OF THE BATTLE OVER LEGAL REFORM IN ISRAEL:

The Israeli Supreme Court has accrued to itself more power than any other Supreme Court in the world. Even more striking, the attorney general has power to by herself undermine almost any Israeli law or policy, a power that is shocking to those of us used to the American concept of separation of powers. And both the Supreme Court and the Attorney General have seized these powers based on only the flimsiest of rationales.

Hence, the irony referred to in the title of this blog post. Secular, left-leaning Zionists have seen their power erode for decades. The peace process is on life support. State-run industries have been replaced by economic liberalization. Rabbinical authority governs family and conversion law with ever-increasing stringency. Religious Zionists have gradually replaced secular kibbutzniks in the military elite. Shockingly illiberal parties are now routinely serving in government.

None of those developments managed to galvanize the Zionist left. Instead, relatively minor proposed limits to the authority of the attorney general and the supreme court, which would still have powers unheard of in most of the democratic world, has led to months of mass demonstrations and general social turmoil.

The left is similar everywhere.