Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
March 5, 2024
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: The Law of the Case: Trump v. Anderson. “Because the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, the opinion and order of the state trial court judge remains good, persuasive law. The Colorado state trial court held that the President of the United States is NOT an ‘officer of the United States.’ That’s the law of the case.”
ME ON THE SUPREME COURT RULING TODAY: The Supreme Court Rules. Many Pundits Are Fools.
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I JUST SAW THIS: Confessions of a Corrupt Liberal: I voted “Blue no Matter Who” because I thought I was saving the World. I was wrong. “I have been a willing participant in taking us to this desperate moment we now face, where both political parties seem crippled and bottlenecked, but only one of them has turned to corruption to stay in power. Only one of them has blocked any challengers to their preferred candidate. And unfortunately, it’s the one I chose to support.”
CHANGE: Scotus Showdown: Texas Immigration Law. “The court cases are an inconvenient reality in this election year for Biden. The Biden border crisis is so bad that Democrats and their cohorts in the media can no longer ignore it. Some Democrats join with Republicans in demanding that the border be secured. Joe Biden was shamed into making a trip to the border last week. He went to Brownsville, though, which is an area where Governor Abbott’s efforts to secure the border have been successful. The flow of illegal aliens at that point has slowed to a trickle. Donald Trump went to Eagle Pass the same day. Eagle Pass is also doing well right now, thanks to Abbott’s determination to stop the flood of illegals entering Texas every day. If Biden wants to see chaos at the southern border, (he doesn’t), he would go to Arizona or southern California.”
WELL, THERE SHOULD BE: There are growing calls for Google CEO Sundar Pichai to step down.
Me in 2017: Google needs a new CEO, but dumping Sundar Pichai is not enough: When a gigantic corporation that controls our data and knows us intimately takes a controversial political stance, it ought to make us worry. “Since its 1990s heyday, Silicon Valley has transformed from an unruly collection of aggressive upstarts disrupting existing industries to a flabby collection of near-monopolies, now busy enforcing gentry-liberal norms on their employees and customers. Whether it’s censoring right-leaning political figures, or firing employees who dare say something truthful but politically incorrect, there’s not much of the old startup spirit there. These are flabby overstaffed Big Business corporations, run by their HR departments. You might find more dynamism at General Motors, these days.”
Related: Google’s Culture of Fear inside the DEI hivemind that led to gemini’s disaster. “Could the story really be so simple as out-of-control DEI-brained management? To a certain extent, and on a few teams far more than most, this does appear to be true. But on closer examination it seems woke lunacy is only a symptom of the company’s far greater problems.”
Get woke, go broke. But getting woke may well be a symptom of a deeper management dysfunction. “The only thing connecting employees is a powerful, sprawling HR bureaucracy that, yes, is totally obsessed with left-wing political dogma. But the company’s zealots are only capable of thriving because no other fount of power asserts, or even attempts to assert, any kind of meaningful influence. . . . One of the more fascinating things I learned about Google was the unique degree to which it’s siloed off, which has dramatically increased the influence of HR, one of the only teams connecting the entire company. And that team? Baseline far crazier than any other team.”
PRIVATE SPACE IS A PART OF AMERICA THAT WORKS, SO NATURALLY THINGS NEED TO CHANGE: Space is Vast. So is the Administration’s Mission Authorization Proposal.
At the end of last year, the Biden administration released a draft bill for Congress to consider passing into law. This legislative proposal is for so-called “mission authorization.” Under the proposal, the Departments of Commerce and Transportation (via the FAA) would regulate all space activities that are not currently under some other agency’s authority. New and novel operations such as space habitats, asteroid mining, and lunar construction would require federal licenses.
Satellite remote sensing, satellite communications, and commercial launches and reentries already require licenses. If Congress passed the proposal as a law, the FAA would acquire authority over all human spaceflight and Commerce would regulate unmanned activities, such as robotic in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing, and debris removal.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that although she was glad to see the administration working on the issue, she thought it contained “numerous ambiguities, new undefined terms, and broad grants of open-ended authority.” As Space News noted, she did not elaborate on these concerns. Perhaps the Senator meant the same thing as the courts do, when they turn a jaundiced eye on impermissibly broad grants of open-ended authority.
One example from the proposal is the administration’s request that the FAA be able to issue licenses and thus regulate human space activities consistent not only with public health and safety (among other things) as it does now, but consistent with the ambiguous, undefined, broad, and open-ended “national interests.” Although the administration’s accompanying explanation states licensing in accordance with national interests would allow the FAA to ensure other U.S. interests than national security and foreign policy interests are addressed in licensing, particularly those associated with the U.S. civil space program, planetary protection, and lunar heritage sites, it couches this in terms that make it clear that these are examples, not an exhaustive list. National interests could extend further.
In short, the administration seeks unfettered authority for Commerce and the FAA to regulate as they see fit.
I wish that I trusted them. I don’t.
March 4, 2024
BUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT, RISK DEATH:
This is nuts. Mayorkas consulted with a five-member committee, four of whom are leaders of the two major parties Kennedy is opposing, about whether he should get Secret Service protection. The political cartel gets to cancel non-members in more than a figurative sense. https://t.co/JnfyIjBMwJ
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) March 4, 2024
Then again, Jackie Kennedy said the Onassis security team was much better than the Secret Service. So go private? Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. But if some nutcase kills RFK, Jr. Mayorkas should be drawn and quartered, along with his “bipartisan” committee.
HE CAN’T EVEN PLAY SOFTBALL: ATF Director’s Interview on Face the Nation Was a Complete Disaster.
OPEN THREAD: Now what?
I LIKE THE LAMENTATIONS OF THE WOMEN: The Tears at WaPo Over the SCOTUS Decision Are Bitter Indeed. “This is what we’re dealing with today. It’s a collision of reality with a retelling of history that’s convenient to liberals who are so terrified of losing power and seeing Trump return that they can justify literally anything in their quest. I am counting the days until we see calls from the left – likely from the Washington Post – to simply cancel the 2024 elections and allow Joe Biden to remain in office. Why? To save Democracy, of course.”
GOOD IDEA: Space Force eyes smaller, cheaper GPS satellites to augment constellation. Lots of cheap satellites make a less valuable target than a few expensive, hard to replace ones do.
INTERVIEW: I talk about stuff with Karol Markowicz. Starts about 7:30 in.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Cheap Daily Supplement Seems to Boost Brain Function in Older Adults. “The twin who unknowingly took inulin or FOS generally scored higher on a cognitive test three months later. What’s more, the daily fiber supplements were linked to slight changes in the gut microbiome between twins. The beneficial Bifidobacterium, for instance, were more plentiful in twins taking inulin or FOS.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: TODAY IN NY TIMES BIDEN DOOM-POLLING.
FASTER, PLEASE: Ion Beams Unleashed: The Nanotechnology Game Changer.
IT’S A BIG DAY FOR JUSTICE:
BIG news (ignored by media): DC Circuit UNANIMOUSLY rules that Biden DOJ got much longer sentences for J6 defendants than allowed under law.
Opinion authored by an Obama appointee & joined by another Obama appointee.
Biden DOJ is the MOST partisan & political DOJ in history. https://t.co/0xlORoxXHT
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 4, 2024
Story here.
AVOIDING GAY ORGIES IS PROBABLY THE SINGLE BIGGEST PREVENTIVE: What is mpox, and how you can protect yourself. “Because mpox remains rare, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not recommending vaccination for everyone at this time. The 2022 mpox outbreak mainly involved men who have sex with men, and many men in that risk group did opt for vaccination at the time. Mpox is also highly preventable with a few simple steps.”
I’m so old I can remember when mpox was called monkeypox before they changed the name because monkeys are racist or something.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do I really need to descale my coffeepot and teakettle?
ME ON THE SUPREME COURT RULING TODAY: The Supreme Court Rules. Many Pundits Are Fools.
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IT’S GREEN LIES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Plastic makers lied about recycling for decades. What do we do next?
SKYNET SMILES, SHOUTS “ACTION!” Rapid Progress With AI Video Tools.
I PREDICT LONGTERM INCREASES IN SKEPTICISM TOWARD VACCINES IN GENERAL AS COVID FALLOUT CONTINUES: Only nine percent of older Americans were vaccinated against RSV before the disease hit this fall and winter.
When you abuse people’s trust, they trust you less. Or not at all.