MY LAST WORD ON THE EVOLUTION DEBATE: That was quite an interesting and much appreciated discussion in the comments yesterday and it prompted a clarifying post on HillFaith this morning.
Author Archive: Mark Tapscott
July 29, 2022
July 28, 2022
NEW EVIDENCE OF J6 COVERUP: Patricia Tolson of The Epoch Times has obtained a Capitol Hill Police Use of Force Report on January 6 that includes orders not to use heavier, less-than-lethal weapons like flash bangs for crowd control. There is also a significant amount of repetitive use of language by multiple officers in their reports, which raises some serious questions about the veracity of those reports.
TURLEY CRITIQUE OF ANTI-FREE SPEECHERS: And speaking of censorship, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley has in recent years found himself increasingly on the “wrong” — that is, pro liberty, pro freedom of expression — side of multiple issues.
Despite that positioning, the Journal of Law & Public Policy, an independent publication of Right Harvard students, has published Turley’s lengthy and richly detailed analysis of the history of free speech in America since John Stuart Mill. Highly recommended from this corner because of Turley’s superb explication of how contemporary censorship advocates corrupt Mill’s concept of Harm and liberty.
NOTE: This post has been updated to correct Turley’s law school and to more accurately describe the Journal of Law & Public Policy. Apologies to readers for the errors and thanks to my ever-vigilant friend, Eugene Volokh, for diplomatically pointing them out.
SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS ACTIVELY AIDED CDC CENSORSHIP: A treasure trove of documents obtained by the America First Institute and shared with the Washington Free Beacon make clear the active partnership between Facebook, Twitter and Google with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in censoring what the government viewed as “misinformation” about COVID-19.
“Over the course of at least six months, starting in December 2020, CDC officials regularly communicated with personnel at Twitter, Facebook, and Google over ‘vaccine misinformation.’ At various times, CDC officials would flag specific posts by users on social media platforms such as Twitter as ‘example posts,'” according to Joseph Simonson.
One of the many emails included among the documents is an email that “shows a senior CDC official appeared at Google’s 2020 ‘Trusted Media Summit.’ The conference, according to its website, was ‘for journalists, fact-checkers, educators, researchers and others who work in the area of fact-checking, verification, media literacy, and otherwise fighting misinformation.'”
LONG STORY SHORT ON DARWIN’S DOUBT: Charles Darwin was a smart guy and he recognized one very big problem with his theory of evolution. As this new Discovery Science video on HillFaith makes clear, it’s still a big problem.
I tend toward the theistic evolution side of things, so this may not be a show-stopper but people who are a lot smarter than me have been debating it for a century and a half now, so it’s well-worth serious attention.
SINCE BIDEN WANTS TO REDEFINE A RECESSION: Jeff Dunetz at The Lid helpfully offers a number of suggested new definitions. For example, recession could be redefined as “when the economy is so bad that President Biden reopens the Keystone pipeline and allows drilling at ANWR.” Jeff is a creative fellow and he has a bunch of alternatives you will appreciate.
July 27, 2022
NIH WANTS TO SUPPRESS NAME IT MADE PUBLIC MONTHS AGO: A federal judge has agreed with the remarkable request by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to withhold the name of a Chinese scientist and his NIH correspondent.
What makes the agency’s request remarkable is that NIH made both names public two years ago! Zach Steiber at The Epoch Times has the details that scream something is really, really rotten in Denmark/NIH.
WANT TO BLIND YOUR KID? GIVE HIM PUBERTY BLOCKERS: That’s according to the FDA, so expect a chorus of cries to start shortly calling for the end of the agency. Hans Bader has a mountain of examples and details.
July 26, 2022
REMEMBER JOE ISUZU? HE SAYS HE PRAYED WITH SUPREME COURT JUSTICES: Actually, the guy’s name is Rob Schenck and he’s a former evangelical-preacher-turned-progressive-polemicist. He claims to have prayed with Justice Samuel Alito for years, who was then so impressed that he used Schenck’s pro-life “bumper-sticker slogans” in the recent Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade.
Now, I’m from out of town and all, but I read Alito’s Dobbs decision and I don’t see anything that resembles a bumper sticker slogan. So I emailed Rob and asked him to point out at least one specific example of a Schenckian bumper sticker slogan that Alito used because of those prayerfests. You can read in my latest column on PJ Media how Schenck responded here.
THEY REALLY ARE COMING AFTER YOUR CAR AND TRUCK: World Economic Forum article lays it out about as clearly as it could be – You don’t need to own an automobile, you just need to be able to use one owned by somebody else. Check it out:
“Be honest, you likely have at least one old mobile phone tucked in the bottom of a drawer. Possibly an unused hard drive taking up space too. You aren’t alone. The average car or van in England is driven just 4 percent of the time. While most already have a personal phone, 39% of workers globally have employer-provided laptops and mobile phones.
“This is not at all resource efficient. More sharing can reduce ownership of idle equipment and thus material usage. Car sharing platforms such as Getaround and BlueSG have already seized that opportunity to offer vehicles where you pay per hour used.
“To enable a broader transition from ownership to usership, the way we design things and systems need to change too. For example, car sharing is made possible by new keyless unlocking features. Similarly, user profiles that create a distinction for work and personal use on the same device is needed to reduce the number of devices per person. A design process that focuses on fulfilling the underlying need instead of designing for product purchasing is fundamental to this transition. This is the mindset needed to redesign cities to reduce private vehicles and other usages.”
To paraphrase Charlton Heston, they’ll take my truck only after they pry my cold, dead fingers off the steering wheel.
AND IN OTHER NEWS FROM THE LUNATIC ASYLUM: Alana Goodman of The Washington Free Beacon reports that Camille Stewart, the deputy national cyber director in the Biden administration, views “systemic racism” as a threat to national security. Bet you sleep better tonight knowing that!
HOW MANY FEDERAL RESERVE OFFICIALS HAS CHINA BOUGHT THIS WEEK? That’s a relevant question, given the report of the minority staff investigators on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs on China’s bribing of Federal Reserve economists and other officials there.
July 25, 2022
CLIMATE EMERGENCY? RIGHT: President Joe Biden claims America faces a “climate emergency.” Those cranky skeptics at Issues & Insights (I&I) claim Biden’s warning is a “crock.” Why the completely opposite conclusions? Because at I&I they depend on facts, unlike the guy in the Oval Office.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Turns out taxpayers are funding recruiting advertisements for the Minnesota National Guard in … an LGBT magazine.
CARJACKING IS NOW A TEEN SPORT: Hans Bader looks at the undeniable surge in carjackings and associated murders that now plague the nation. Among much else in the data, he finds this illuminating tidbit:
“Maryland and Virginia are alike in many ways. But Maryland has shorter sentences for criminals than Virginia. It also has a violent crime rate more than double Virginia’s. In 2018, Maryland had a violent crime rate of 468.7 per 100,000 people, according to USA Today, compared to a violent crime rate of only 200 per 100,000 in Virginia.
“Virginia’s Fairfax County is quite similar to Maryland’s Montgomery County, Md. The two counties border each other, have similar economies, cultures, and demographics, and had a similar crime rate back in the 1970s. Yet by 2018, Fairfax County ended up with a a violent crime rate less than half Montgomery County’s in the early 21st Century. Experts attributed that to Virginia’s tougher sentences and its abolishing parole for violent felons in the 1990s.”
July 23, 2022
REMEMBER WHEN CLARK TOLD RUSS TO ‘UNRAVEL THESE’? Our bodies often face a similar but vastly more serious challenge in which failure is not an option. Fortunately, as explained in this Discovery Science video on HillFaith, we have what “Christmas Vacation” lacked – a Topoisomerase Molecular Machine (TMM)!
And, since I can already see on some of the regular commenters here the same skeptical face that Russ gets when Clark asks him when was the last time he overdid anything, yes, the video is intended to illustrate Intelligent Design. Regardless of your take on that issue, give the video a watch and I suspect we can all agree that the TMM is remarkable, regardless of its origin.
July 22, 2022
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: National Institutes for Health’s (NIH) Dr. Anthony Fauci’s federal pension will be $414,667 annually. That’s more than the President gets in annual salary. Fauci, who is the highest paid employee on the federal payroll of 4.3 million people, has said he will officially leave the government in January 2025 after 59 years, at age 85.
That pension income, by the way, does not include any of those 23 secret royalty payments Fauci received from still-undisclosed payers and unknown amounts between 2010 and 2020. And don’t forget that Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, is also on the federal payroll in the same NIH, making a salary that is higher than that paid the Vice President.
July 20, 2022
WHY THE LEFT HATES THE CONSTITUTION: It’s all about power and not being blocked from its exercise by those pesky articles and amendments, says The Washington Stand’s Rob Schwarzwalder.
SCHOOL RESTORES MASK MANDATE: The insanity in the public school system just keeps getting more and more blatant. And check out this report on the student body in San Francisco public schools.
SOMETHING BREWING IN CHINA: At the Daily Gouge, Thom McKee compiles a dozen headlines and some provocative analysis that taken together suggest things are not so happy in the land of the Red Dragon.
July 19, 2022
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? He makes more than the President and his wife makes more than the Vice-President. Both work for NIH.
July 15, 2022
HOW BIDEN BLEW UP THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS: He said just before departing for the Middle East that he supports the historic agreement negotiated by then-President Donald Trump. But, as The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains, the reality is Biden has all but rendered the accords useless.
TWO BIDEN HANDSHAKE FLOPS IN ISRAEL: And don’t miss how our Chief Executive, the leader of the Free World, has to be led to his seat after receiving an award, as explained by Issues & Insights.
THEY REALLY DO HATE FREE SPEECH: Openly calling for increased censorship of conservative expression is GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
July 14, 2022
NEVER HEARD OF AMBER MCREYNOLDS?: Hayden Ludwig of the Capital Research Center (CRC) explains she could be the key player in making permanent the mail-in voting “reforms” Democrats used so effectively in 2020.