Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

RUNNING ON EMPTY: History shows that the veneer of civilization is thin. A moral vacuum makes it thinner. “I was born into and grew up in an era of miracles wrought by hard work, dedication, and dearly earned competence. So it’s a bitter pill to swallow when I look around now and see that our greatest challenge isn’t going to the moon and back with slide rules and vacuum tubes; it’s trying to figure out who gets to use the girls’ bathroom at an Ivy League swim meet.”

Plus: “We are, these days, a nation in the thrall of lazy, dishonest, spineless, clueless, incompetent, yet endlessly entitled and arrogant academics, bureaucrats, politicians, media figures, and other ‘experts’ who can’t seem to find their way from their heads to their asses with their hands when something important, like, say, COVID or the 25th Amendment, is in play.”

Kick them in the asses a few times and they’ll be able to find them in the future. The problem has been the lack of consequences.

HMM: Criticisms of the Military’s XM7 Rifle Spill Into the Open. “But, despite widespread criticism, the Army has gone all-in on defending the brass’s choice of the XM7. The first soldiers to experiment with the weapon, we’ve been told, gave it glowing reviews. Then, subsequent units that picked it up had nothing but good to say about it. This led public opinion to waver a bit. Maybe the brass was right if all of the grunts love it . . . right? It turns out that (as is often the case) we may not have been told the whole story.”

ENCRYPTION IS OVERRATED AS A MEANS OF SECURITY: Paris kidnap bid highlights crypto data security risks. “Since 2014, software developer Jameson Lopp has recorded 219 physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency users.”

Remember, if it’s secured by your fingerprint, all they need is your finger.

JESSE SINGAL: Of Course Liberal Institutions Are Engaging In Illegal Hiring Practices On The Basis Of Race: And of course this will turn out to have been a very bad idea. “Lucas notes that until recently Harvard touted, right on its website, the reduction in the proportion of white male faculty members. . . . I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if the Trump administration does engage in a thorough investigation here, it is unlikely to come away empty-handed.”

(BUMPED): I’M BETTING THEY KNEW THIS A YEAR AGO:

Get him re-elected, have him step aside for health reasons, let Kamala be president without an election, let the usual crowd of apparatchiks actually run things.

UPDATE: “Are we only receiving this news now to distract from the just-released Hur tapes — to quiet all criticism?”

Yes. Next question?

Related:

Yes, the real question is who was President when Slow Joe clearly wasn’t? Everything else is distraction.

UPDATE: I mean, like, yeah.

FLASHBACK: Dealing with the Lower Courts.

Related: Make the Supreme Court lots bigger. It’s not a priesthood, it should represent America. “Increasing the number of justices would reduce the importance of any single retirement or appointment. And it would also reduce the mystique of the court, which I see as a feature, not a bug. Nine justices could seem like a special priesthood; two or three times that number looks more like a legislature, and those get less respect. Which would be fair. The Supreme Court, after all, isn’t made up of Platonic guardians. It’s made up of lawyers. If you asked Americans at random what kind of people they think are best suited to provide moral leadership, I rather doubt that lawyers would rank high on the list.”

Plus: Ginsburg flap shows Supreme Court, justices are too important. “Under my proposal, the death or retirement of a single justice wouldn’t be much more than a blip in the news, instead of something serious enough that there are people talking about violence in the streets. A Supreme Court composed of 59 justices wouldn’t have the mystique of the current Court — you might believe in 9 Platonic Guardians, but the notion of 59 such is absurd. And since governors would presumably select people from their own states, it would bring a substantial increase in diversity to the Court.”

WELL, LET’S SEE SOME REAL INDICTMENTS NOW: Jonathan Turley: “For Posterity’s Sake”: Why the Biden-Hur Tapes is a Virtual Racketeering Indictment. “The real indictment that comes out of these tapes is a type of political racketeering enterprise by the Washington establishment. It took a total team effort from Democratic politicians to the White House staff to the media to hide the fact that the President of the United States was mentally diminished. If there were a political RICO crime, half of Washington would be frog-marched to the nearest federal courthouse.”

I suspect a prosecutor less creative than the ones that went after Trump could still find a plausible theory of crime here.

Related: The Evil Scheme Behind the Spate of Anti-Trump Lawsuits.

Reminder: Tit-for-tat is the only scientifically proven approach to limit cheating in repetitive interactions.

ICYMI: THIS IS THE QUESTION THEY DON’T WANT ANSWERED. OR EVEN ASKED.