Archive for 2025

February 22, 2025

SIT DOWN. LET’S TALK. CHANCES ARE YOU HAVE:  Battle Fatigue.

Posted at 3:33 am by Sarah Hoyt on Feb 22nd, 2025

February 21, 2025

IT SEEMS A FAIR QUESTION TO ASK:

Posted at 10:46 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 21st, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 21st, 2025

GOOD:

Meanwhile, advice from a wired-in reader:

What Kash Patel needs to do is hit the ground running with a lightning strike round of firings, disciplinary actions, DOJ investigations and prosecutions. Which has already started but needs to be ramped wayTF up. Knock them back on their heels. Put every single senior agent in a personal defensive state. Plus a lot of the junior ones.

Go after them like … well, like the FBI. They’ll start turning on each other.

Put them on the receiving end for a change. A taste of their own medicine. With predawn raids and perp walks.
It’ll hamstring the agency at the upper levels, render it combat-ineffective. So political operations come to a complete halt. The lower level agents doing sometimes actually useful work in the field offices should be able for the most part to keep doing that. Unless any given agent here or there was involved in, you know, dirty unconstitutional gestapo-style work.

Knock them back on their heels with rapid fire firings, disciplinary action. Suspend all operations until they can justify those operations and their methods. What kind of coercion are they practicing, what use of criminal and other informants. Make them justify everything, because face it, their track record is spotty at best.

Treat the FBI like the corrupt, incompetent, partisan and criminal organization it is. Then work back from that. Get some of Elon’s 20-year-olds in there to apply the screws. You won’t see a lot of people shedding tears for dirty feds.

I highly doubt there is any worthwhile, legit FBI investigation or operation that will be harmed by a pause of a week or a month or two. Exempt counter-terrorism from suspension, not review. Not that they have that good a track record, but…

Oh, here’s a good one. Inform FBI agents they might be shown leniency if they rat out their rotten colleagues.
A few executions, I mean firings, should focus the minds of the others.

And don’t forget the pre-dawn raids and perp walks. Treat them as they have treated the American people.

Shock and awe. I’m pretty sure Kash is on the same page here. We’ll see.

Posted at 9:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 21st, 2025

REGIME TOOLS:

I believe that NewsGuard was behind my demonetization.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 21st, 2025

DEVELOPING: President Donald Trump fires Gen. CQ Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yesterday, ABC News reported: Joint Chiefs Chairman Brown on list to possibly be removed from post by Hegseth.

Gen. C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s top admiral, are on the list of general officers provided to Congress this week whom Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could fire or remove from their current jobs, according to two U.S. officials.

Spokesmen for both Brown and Franchetti declined to comment. CNN was first to report their names were on the list for possible removal.

“We are aware of the reports but have nothing to add,” the spokesman for Franchetti told ABC News.

Brown serves as the president’s top military adviser and has been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since October 2023, his four-year tenure is supposed to end in 2027.

Franchetti has been the chief of naval operations since November 2023.

The president has the authority to remove any general or senior officer from their current position and reassign them, should they refuse a request to resign. Three- and four-star generals or admirals only hold those ranks while in certain senior leadership roles. If forced out of a current role, there might not be another opening available for them, and such relief of authority is generally a career-ender.

Both officers had been criticized by Hegseth prior to his becoming defense secretary during the Trump administration.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said in a November appearance on the “Shawn Ryan Show.”

“But any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in any of the DEI woke s— has got to go,” he continued. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.”

In June of 2020, Brown shot a video in support of George Floyd and those rioting in his name:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine will be nominated to be the next chairman. Trump said: ‘General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience,’ Trump said.”

UPDATE: Hegseth is calling for Franchetti to be sacked as well:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2025

TRUE: Why the Argument for Birthright Citizenship Is Not the Slam Dunk Many Say It Is.

Trump’s order would align U.S. policy with much of the developed world, including the European Union, Japan, and the world’s two most populous countries, China and India. But it would make the U.S. an outlier on this side of the Atlantic: Almost all of the estimated 33 nations that embrace what’s called birthright citizenship are North and South American nations that accepted waves of mostly European settlers and enslaved people.

The United States appeared to codify the policy with the passage of the 14th Amendment following the Civil War, which was intended to grant citizenship to freed slaves. A subsequent Supreme Court case from 1895, involving the son born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants who were here legally, has long been interpreted as making all babies born on U.S. soil citizens. That son would still be considered a citizen under Trump’s executive order. . . .

Supporters of Trump’s order argue that the inclusion of the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” transforms what would be a straightforward assertion, that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, into a fraught legal question. Although they appear to be the minority, various scholars have long doubted the validity of birthright citizenship because of that ambiguous phrase – and by applying what they see as basic common sense.

We’ll find out.

Posted at 7:54 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 21st, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE L.A. CLOWN SHOW: Karen Bass Boots LA Fire Chief After Blaming Her for Ghana Trip.

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass (D.) on Friday terminated city fire chief Kristin Crowley, whom she accused earlier this week of failing to warn her about last month’s wildfire threats before Bass traveled to Ghana.

In a press release, Bass said, “1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch.” At the time the flames erupted on Jan. 7, Bass herself was at a cocktail party in Ghana.

“Bringing new leadership to the fire department is what our city needs,” said Bass, who is herself facing dismal approval numbers and threats of a recall.

Bass also said that Crowley refused to conduct an after action report on the fires. Ronnie Villanueva, a recently retired LAFD deputy chief, will run the department while Bass’s office conducts a national search for a permanent replacement.

Or perhaps not. KTLA-5 is reporting that: LAFD Chief’s firing could be overturned by city council.

The firing of Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley by Mayor Karen Bass could be overturned by the L.A. City Council should Crowley file and win an appeal.

According to the city’s charter, Bass has the authority to remove most department heads, such as the fire chief, without the city council’s approval.

However, Crowley also has the right to file an appeal within “10 calendar days of the removal.”

“The council may reinstate the chief administrative officer by a two-thirds vote of the council,” the city charter states. “Failure of the council to reinstate the chief administrative officer during this time period shall constitute a denial of the appeal.”

Crowley is on her eight or ninth life at this point, considering that it was reported on January 10th: LA Fire Chief is dismissed by Mayor Karen Bass after lashing out over department cuts as deadly blazes devastate city.

Only for Bass’s office to walk the story back shortly afterwards:

Picking Crowley as her scapegoat this week seems particularly ill-advised, but then pretty much everything Bass has done in recent weeks has been awfully ill-advised:

Related: Karen Bass wants to speak to whoever is in charge of Los Angeles.

Heh, indeed.™

Posted at 6:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2025

WHAT’S THE NEW YORK TIMES’ PROBLEM WITH JEWS? Did you hear about the violent night-time riot against Jewish residents in a Brooklyn neighborhood earlier this week? Not if you depend upon The New York Times for your news. It happened but the editors of the NYT simply ignored the latest eruption of anti-semitic extremism of pro-Hamas/pro-Palestinian radicals.

Richard Pollock explains in his latest Substack column why it should come as no surprise that a calculated mob attack one of America’s neighborhoods with a high concentration of Orthodox Jews was ignored by the NYT. After all, the NYT had some major problems with the Holocaust.

Posted at 5:08 pm by Mark Tapscott on Feb 21st, 2025

HEH:

Posted at 4:49 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 21st, 2025
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