OPEN THREAD: Enjoy!

IDIOCRACY WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: The dumbest five minutes of Congress, ever: Dems demand sources from journalists who exposed government-media censorship complex.

Get ready for seven minutes of brain-warping idiocy on those points, on top of which Democrats apparently now think journalists have a duty to reveal sources to government. And if you think Garcia’s lack of research into Substack is the stupidest moment in this utter fiasco, just wait until she asks about Bari Weiss:

The winner of the stupidest congressional comment of the day, and hopefully the year, the decade, and the century, is this: “So you’re in this as a threesome?”

YGBFKM.

This is five-plus minutes of total non-sequiturs, bizarre demands for one-word answers when witnesses were willing to give full answers, and a smear campaign to paint Taibbi and Shellenberger as paid campaign activists. At no point in this does it appear that Garcia has the slightest comprehension of the subject matter, nor of the work that either of the witnesses do or have done. Or indeed even the work that they did in exposing the government attempts to suppress and censor dissent and debate, the evidence of which they exposed from Twitter’s communication files.

Weis is pretty gracious about Garcia’s unpreparedness and general cluelessness:

I am dead. Couldn’t get to D.C., but nothing but love for @ShellenbergerMD and @mtaibbi who do a heroic job of not completely breaking down here. https://t.co/Wpp41oiweX

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) March 9, 2023

As John Nolte likes to say, “Democrats sure got it good.” If the parties were reversed this material would lead every network’s 6:30 newscast.

Related: Watch: Jim Jordan Drops Receipts on House Democrats During Contentious Exchange on Government Censorship.

UPDATE:

https://twitter.com/MelissaTweets/status/1634020481358495745

(Updated and bumped.)

SOMETHING ON THE MODEL OF THE AIR NATIONAL GUARD MIGHT WORK: There’s a new push to create a Space National Guard. Lawmakers say the price is right. But I think the Space Guard is likely to be more like a Coast Guard for space.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: The Thing That Swallowed Britain.

A doctor rushes to the side of a patient who has just collapsed on the way to the toilets in the emergency wing. He checks for signs of life—pulse, circulation, breathing. He has never seen the patient before. How serious, he wonders, could this be? The doctor calls out: “Does anyone know anything about her?” The senior nurse, who has just come over, looks shocked.

“Him!” she practically shouts at the doctor. “You refer to that patient as him!”

And the doctor thinks to himself: “So I’m supposed to check the patient’s pronouns before I check his pulse.”

This story—I heard it from the doctor himself, David Mackereth—illustrates a salient point about what I call the Thing, that combination of postmodern identity theory, religious fervor, pseudo-therapeutic “empathy,” dogmatic moralism, private bullying, and ritualized public humiliation which has swept through Western societies over the last decade. The Thing may seem an irresistible force, but in truth, it can only take possession of an institution if that institution has already lost its identity.

If an organization knows and cherishes its history, if it empowers its members, if they understand their role in society, their vocation and contribution to the common good—then it is significantly less likely to be captured by the Thing.

But when you talk to people in the National Health Service, or the labor movement, or the police, you hear an eerily similar account of what has happened: a forgetting of the social role that used to give that institution meaning; a transfer of power from those on the front line to a remote administrative class; vocation edged out by bureaucracy; pronouns instead of pulses.

The next update to Peter Hitchens’ The Abolition of Britain is writing itself these days.

RIP: Robert Blake, TV’s Baretta Who Was Tried for Murder, Dies at 89.

THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD: Colin Kaepernick accuses white adoptive parents of ‘problematic’ upbringing, perpetuating racism.

One of these disagreements illustrated in the novel was a fight over his hairstyle.

Kaepernick, in an attempt to idolize basketball player Allen Iverson, wanted to embrace his blackness by wearing cornrows, but his mother pushed back.

“He’s getting what rolls?” his mother, Teresa, is cited as saying in the book.

In reality, she allegedly told him: “Oh, your hair’s not professional. Oh, you look like a little thug.”

The conversation with his mother has continued to impact Kaepernick’s life decades later, he said, even influencing his now-famous afro hairstyle.

“It also is informed why I have my hair long today,” Kaepernick said Thursday.

So for those keeping score at home, Kaepernick has compared police officers to pigs, compared the NFL draft to slavery, and his parents of perpetuating racism. To borrow a line Dennis Miller said regarding former President Obama, if Kaepernick’s “skin were any thinner, he’d have a reservoir tip on top of his head.”

NEXT: A LUNAR TIME ZONE? This has more to do with network timekeeping than with when to have breakfast.

MATT TAIBBI: The Censorship/Industrial Complex.

SUE THEM: Cops Harass Parents Who Let 6-Year-Old Daughter Take a Walk Outside, Arrest Dad.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Fields once wide open to English majors — teaching, academia, publishing, the arts, nonprofits, the media — have collapsed or become less desirable.”

THIS DOESN’T STINK TO HIGH HEAVEN AT ALL: Prosecutors: Gun in “Rust” shooting broke during testing, and “destroyed.”

WELL, GOOD: Limits to acetaminophen in prescription painkillers linked to drop in hospitalizations. I’ve never understood the point of adding acetominophen to opioids, which are vastly more powerful. The article says: “According to the study authors, the intended purpose of combining acetaminophen with an opioid was to enable doctors to expose patients to lower doses of each of the two drugs. Given the burgeoning opioid addiction crisis, that approach made sense. But researchers started to warn that at such high doses acetaminophen was proving toxic to the liver.”

Do tell.

BEN SHAPIRO: What We Weren’t Shown About Jan. 6.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, ANTI-LOCKDOWN AUTHORS ATTACKED AS “FASCIST C**TS:” Authors Attacked At Stolen Youth Book Launch, Attendees Called ‘Fascists C***s.’

“Our book is a calm, rational take on the indoctrination and forced conformity happening in America today and the way it is aimed at children,” Markowicz noted. “Their protest proved our point.”

Earlier: Glenn and Helen interview Karol Markowicz and Bethany Mandel about their new book, Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.

CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL. Please Don’t Call It Capitalism: It’s Not Just about the Money!

By calling the system of economic freedom, or (alternatively) commercial republicanism, by its Marxist label, its advocates are implying that the battle between socialist and free regimes was really about the competing interests of labor and “capital.” That is, socialist regimes supposedly advance the interests of workers (the vast majority of human beings) while capitalist ones just benefit greedy, materialistic plutocrats. As the current slogan of the American Communist Party puts it, Communists supposedly serve “People and Planet Before Profits.” (Stalin, Mao, and their cohorts, who lived in luxury while their subjects starved, would have a good, if private, laugh at that line!)

As already mentioned, the Times’s “1619 Project” exemplifies the error of blaming on “capitalism” what are really the consequences of arbitrary, corrupt, or merely private-interest-based government regulations that improperly interfere with the operation of the free-enterprise system – as well as, to the extent that their effects are still felt, of the pre-“capitalist” practices of slavery or serfdom.

As the Journal review of the Hulu series by economists David Henderson and Philip Magness demonstrates, the “1619 Project” inadvertently makes the case for economic freedom, since most of the contemporary injustices it cites resulted from government interventions that undercut free markets and property rights and therefore limited the opportunity for black advancement. These include the abuse of eminent domain, racial red-lining of Federally subsidized mortgages, minimum-wage laws originally designed to protect white workers in the North from competition by black migrants from the South who were willing to work for less, and governmental support and enforcement of labor monopolies by unions that systematically excluded blacks.

Read the whole thing.

THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FLUSH THE PUBLIC TRUST: Covid backlash hobbles public health and future pandemic response. “Health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates, ordering school closures and imposing other protective measures or must seek permission from their state legislatures before renewing emergency orders, the analysis showed. The movement to curtail public health powers successfully tapped into a populist rejection of pandemic measures following widespread anger and confusion over the government response to covid.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jon Stewart Meets the Divisive Country He Helped Create.

Speak the “wrong” truth and you’ll be chased from polite society. Embrace free speech, a la Joe Rogan, and you’re a MAGA-hat wearing Trumpster. J.K. Rowling went from beloved author to pariah by deviating from part, but certainly not all, of the trans community’s agenda.

Dave Chappelle, the comedy GOAT, nearly saw his career collapse for telling jokes about the trans community.

And we have Stewart to partly blame for this corrosive mindset.

And yet, presented with that truth, Stewart would simply put the clown nose on, and declare that he’s simply a comedian.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: ‘Why can’t I identify as a black lesbian?’ Piers Morgan highlights the absurdity of radical gender ideology.

OOPS: Brand-New Ford Ranger Raptor Totaled by Dealer Employee With Drink in Hand.

AD ASTRA: SpaceX launches 40 more Internet satellites for competitor.

BUT OF COURSE: Biden Official Leaked Classified Info About Trump-Era Chinese Spy Balloons To Deflect Criticism of Admin, Senators Say.

BE PREPARED: TurboTax Deluxe 2022 Tax Software. #CommissionEarned

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Armed Citizen’s “New Normal.”

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Did Tucker Hit a Nerve? Axios Wants to Move On From January 6.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What kind of worm is in your mezcal?