THIS WILL END WELL: Universities’ opposition to ICE raids puts professors on the front line. “My university’s guidance does seem designed to delay ICE agents’ access to certain spaces on campus and to complicate identification of any particular person that agents may be seeking.”
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
February 11, 2025
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Incompetent or crooked? Elon Musk exposing Washington’s rotten system. “Generally, when auditors find that an organization’s accounting system makes errors easy to commit and difficult to spot, they assume the system is designed that way because it is intended to facilitate fraud.”
ABOLISH THE CBC FOR A START: CDR Salamander: What if Canada Were Conservative? America’s Hat Could be Warm Comfort. “I cannot give a stronger endorsement to both Poilievre and his plan. It is exactly what the moment needs.”
OH NOES, A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: Double Down, Dudes: Dems Willing to Shut Gov Down to Save Fraud and Abuse From Trump.
COMMUNITY NOTES WINS AGAIN:
And @CommunityNotes wins again pic.twitter.com/nDjZcwltqp
— Harry Bōlz (@elonmusk) February 11, 2025
ANYBODY BUT THE NORMAL-AMERICAN COMMUNITY, WHICH THEY REGARD AS DEADLY ENEMIES:
Democrats have identified two groups of people they’ll go to the mattresses to defend: illegal immigrants and government employees. What a platform.
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) February 10, 2025
IMMIGRATION HYPOCRISY:
I just visited the Vatican for the first time last month. It was freezing. While in line outside, there was a homeless man with no shoes or socks on begging right outside the Vatican gates.
Then I walked through Vatican security.
No more homeless people to be seen. https://t.co/0rXvmkW7YG
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) February 10, 2025
MOST OF THE POLITICIZATION IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS AN OBAMA PRODUCT: Chaos At DOJ In The First Week Of The Trump Administration? Blame Barack Obama. “We are now 15 years past the start of that Obama-era hiring frenzy that turned DOJ a department full of social justice warrior zealots.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump is not the radical — he’s simply undoing radical things Dems did. But he’s breaking the compact of the last 80 years, in which Democrats do radical things, and then Republicans “conserve” them.
Related: John Stossel: I’m with Elon — we must rein in Washington’s crazy spending, toxic rules.
February 10, 2025
A FRIEND COMMENTS, “A WEIRD HILL TO DIE ON BUT SO LONG AS THEY DIE ON IT.” Liberal Analyst Warns Dems: ‘Suicide’ to Defend USAID.
Related: Thoughts from Kurt Schlichter on the injunctions.
Here is a long take on the court injunction crisis, which is less crisis than an opportunity…
OK, stop panicking about all the stupid legal decisions from leftist judges that the left is getting from judge shopping in leftist jurisdictions.
Stop. Panicking.
First, no one should…— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 11, 2025
Plus:
Listen Larry, we need to stop government spending like a drunken sailor on fraud & waste or America is gonna go bankrupt.
That does mean a lot of grifters will lose their grift and complain loudly about it.
Too bad. Deal with it. https://t.co/7mrwqDxyIc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Incompetent or crooked? Elon Musk exposing Washington’s rotten system. “Generally, when auditors find that an organization’s accounting system makes errors easy to commit and difficult to spot, they assume the system is designed that way because it is intended to facilitate fraud.”
METAPHOR ALERT: NASA expects to continue using electric vans it acquired to transport astronauts to the pad for Artemis missions even though the vehicles’ manufacturer has gone out of business. They should last quite a while; it’s not like they’re getting much use.
WELL, GOOD: Radical Study Proposes a Single Cause to Explain Alzheimer’s Disease. Let’s get to a cure.
CHANGE: Trump’s all-out assault on woke is tearing down the left’s cultural sway. “The right just experienced its best three weeks in the culture war in 50 years.”
Related: The country has what can only be described as “bullshit fatigue.”
HOW IT’S GOING:
CNN: "We're living in a different world… 70% of Americans say Trump is doing what he promised to do."
Incredible.
pic.twitter.com/V0eAkwexji— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 10, 2025
GOOD QUESTION: Canned foods are convenient, affordable and nutritious. Why do they have a bad reputation? “Canned foods are not the villains they’re made out to be. These pantry staples are affordable, nutrient-rich and exceptionally convenient. They have a long shelf life, provide great value and can be a lifesaver when you’re scrambling to figure out what’s for dinner on a hectic weeknight. Of course, there are some caveats to consider when selecting canned foods, but if you shop wisely, they can be a powerful asset in your kitchen.”
I think it’s because they’re too dead-center middle class, associated with 1950s housewifery which we’re supposed to hate.
HYBRIDS, NOT E.V.s, ARE THE FUTURE: Subaru Has Two New Hybrids—and It’s Only Getting Started.
ELON’S A BUSY MAN:
BREAKING: A group of investors led by Elon Musk have made a $97 billion bid for control of OpenAI, according to Elon's lawyer Marc Toberoff – WSJ
Elon: “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” he said in a statement provided… pic.twitter.com/XPnusA9S1L
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 10, 2025
WELL, I’M CERTAINLY NOT GOING THERE IN PERSON: Exploring Venus may require exotic tech like balloons and ‘aerobots.’
THIS IS A FOLK TREATMENT I’D NEVER HEARD OF: Human breast milk found to enhance corneal healing in new research.
Years ago, a young patient’s mother told Emily McCourt, MD, associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, that she hadn’t used a prescribed ointment to treat her baby’s chemical corneal burn but instead used her own breast milk.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s interesting because this patient looks amazing,” McCourt recalls. “Then, I thought about all my patients who said they’ve used breast milk in their baby’s eyes for blocked tear ducts and rashes. There was a real opportunity to look into what was happening and why.”
Interesting.
THE DEEP STATE IS REAL, BUT IT’S NOT ALL THAT SPECTACULAR:
On the one hand it's hilarious and pathetic – but on the other it's incredibly instructive – that US corporate media continues to refer to propaganda outlets funded by USAID as "independent media."
Trump and Musk attack "independent media"! (by cutting their US Govt funding). https://t.co/IHoOGIK0nh
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 10, 2025
More like pathetic and dishonest, and kinda cringey.
Related: Your Job Is to Push the Yes Button: The secretaries make the game clear.
Notice when a counter-argument doesn’t describe the argument: I refute (thing I will only vaguely reference). This mode of “argument” is somehow becoming the new normal, quickly.
A gaggle of former Secretaries of the Treasury — Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen — warn in the New York Times today that the President of the United States is interfering with the operations of the executive branch. No, really. It remains entirely true that warnings about the threat to “Our Democracy” are, in fact, warnings about the threat to Our Bureaucracy. Five people who’ve served at the top levels of the federal government can’t produce one clear and reasonable premise between them.
They just want the money to go to their crowd, because it always has and they feel entitled to it.
The administrative state is impartial, honest, accurate, and pure. “Civil servants” are good; political people are bad. But this is how Article II begins: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Our entire system of government is premised on the authority of people who, having been elected to office, are accountable to be the people of the country for their choices. A function of government that “has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants”: not present in the Constitution. Prove otherwise, if you’d like to try. Show me the authority of that “very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants” in Article II, and tell me exactly where to find it.
Five former senior government officials, feeling themselves wonderfully virtuous, have casually upended the entire American system of government without noticing that they’ve done it. Dire warning: The President of the United States is acting like he’s in charge of the executive branch.
More reason to abolish the civil service.
Related: Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — how elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms.