Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 6/28/2025

Sequels: A Choice

When something original and new gets sudden success in Hollywood, there's the immediate need to capitalize on it. Sequels have always been a thing in Hollywood, extending back to the silent era with serials (William Wyler cut his teeth making serial westerns for Universal), but it was the 80s where Hollywood decided to make them a cornerstone of their financial well-being rather than an ashamed underbelly of cashflow that it had always been.

For decades, the question of how to approach sequels was easy: more of the same. Another adventure for the Lone Ranger or Flash Gordon. Even outside of franchises, you could just have Randolph Scott amble into another isolated western town and deal with some injustice and then amble out again, and the B-movie fans will show up in enough numbers to financially justify the next. So, that means formula. You just do the same thing again.

And when sequels turned into huge business, that approach becomes a bigger question. If you're Fast and Furious, you can keep tweaking the formula slightly with every entry until you reach ridiculous, borderline parody of the original film, and the audience will go along with it. If you're Star Wars, you go in a different direction and deepen emotion and increase danger...for one film and then revert to the formula of the first.

In my cinematic journeys, I've grown less patient with formula. I don't reject it or hate a film because it follows formula, but I've always looked forward to sequels that broke with formula more than those that stuck to it. So, now we must talk about Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:45 PM | Comments (355) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - June 28, 2025 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. As previewed last week, we gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin and it came up with lighthouses.

After all, Ace of Spades brings light to the dark places and guidance to those in need of direction.

[Top photo: Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse, Florida
(photo credit: Mike Seeley]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (181) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, June 28

* * *

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

* * *

Posted by: K.T. at 03:36 PM | Comments (75) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, June 28

Big as my hand

Long-time lurker - Lil ‘Ol Texas Lady – here. Hubby and I moved back home to Texas from the frozen northeast a few years ago and have been working on establishing veggie (his) and flower (mine) gardens since then. He inherited a green thumb while I, alas, can barely grow mold on a shower curtain; we tend opposite ends of the property.

Three years ago, my older sister sent me splits from daylilies hybridized nearly 100 years ago by my maternal grandmother. My grandmother, a tough little firecracker standing nearly 4’10 in heels, and HER husband, were passionate gardeners well into their dotage, so skilled and noted at hybridizing they became national judges of a slew of varieties from irises to daffodils to daylilies.

Of her creations, none were or remain as glorious as “Elsbeth”, a ruffled, butter-yellow daylily, growing as tall as 3 feet with blooms as long and wide as my hand. So prodigious are they that each bloom stalk will produce as many as 6-10 blooms over the course of their 90-day life.

And who knew, these magnificent flowers absolutely thrive in the East Texas sun and heat despite being tended by one as botanically ‘tarded as I.

Meet “Elsbeth”.

How wonderful to have a daylily hybridizer in your family, and a sister to share splits of the plants with you. This is a wonderful plant. Thanks for sharing the details of its history with us.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:23 PM | Comments (78) | Trackbacks (Suck)

When is owning property a good idea?

Looking to buy or sell property? Buying and owning property comes with some complications. You may have noticed some the news lately.

* * * * *

Confiscation of property by government

Posted by: K.T. at 11:00 AM | Comments (247) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival there are a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Nekoosa.)

1) This is an open thread, feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Remember it's OK to beat and release trolls.
3) No, you may not run or walk fast with sharp objects.
4) Next Friday have a wonderful and safe Independence Day.
5) Have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 07:51 AM | Comments (357) | Trackbacks (Suck)

EMT

It's morning, I'll concede that point.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 06:24 AM | Comments (98) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 28 June 2025

Top Story

• In the midst of a string of straightforward decisions by the Supreme Court upholding the plain meaning of the Constitution, such as Trump v. CASA, limiting the power of the inferior courts, and Mahmoud v. Taylor, limiting the power of the the indoctrination guilds, there was one with the exact same 6-3 split that went in a perhaps unexpected way. (The Verge)
  
  In FSC v. Paxton the Free Speech Coalition sued Texas attorney general Ken Paxton to block legislation to enforce age filters on online pornography on the grounds that it would inevitably infringe upon the free speech of adults.
  
  A 2004 decision against the federal Child Online Protection Act, as well as a 1997 decision against the Communications Decency Act, both ruled that the legislation would violate the First Amendment on precisely those grounds.
  
  This time though the court ruled that there was no fundamental right infringed by the Texas legislation - or by similar laws proposed or enacted by 21 other states - stating that advances in technology something something something, an argument I find questionable.
  
  Expect sales of VPNs to teenagers to soar.
  
  This does leave open the question of more recently proposed age filter laws for social media. I don't care much if fifteen-year-olds have to circumvent the filters to watch PornHub and OnlyFans, but if they suddenly can't access Bluesky they'll infest sites that aren't age restricted and we all remember the Great Tumblr Containment Breach catastrophe.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (76) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The ONT

Hello everybody! Tonight's advice is geared towards promoting family harmony.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (474) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Stupid Human Tricks Cafe

A quokka being a Straight-G Goof

Teaching your chicken to pull an ollie.

Puppy does not like his medicine.

ICYMI: Border collie speed challenge.

A little rain in Paris.

"Come to Africa, she said. We'll see the lions, we'll have a good time..."

Baby shark.

Can he do it?

Maybe you can beat the duck. Maybe you're dead wrong.

Little girl takes her teddy bear dog out for a ride.

ICYMI: Man saves a sea lion, and the sea lion remembers his kindness.

Blind and deaf dog takes a while to recognize the smell of her owner, but then she's very happy.

Giving a baby elephant a treat and a pet.

Seeing an old friend and giving him some presents.

Puppy will only be walked by his actual daddy.

Yesterday I posted:

Swimming with the sharks. Why?

Well, here's an OnlyFans model similarly posing with sharks.

Maybe this is the new thing, with "influencers," sinfluencers, and OF models using their legs as bait for sharks. I can see a truly spectacular cautionary tale in the making.

It's adorable to see these four golden retrievers keeping a close watch on a sleeping baby, but the sad truth is, they just think he's a jumbo-sized Hot Pocket.

Man the Hot Pocket chicken and broccoli was so good you guys. No wonder dem dogs want to eat dat baby.

Posted by: Ace at 07:35 PM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week in Woke

We're hitting levels of True Conservatism that shouldn't even exist!!!

I've gotta say, I'm rapidly becoming more anti-anti-Zohran than anti-Zohran. https://t.co/NqVH18uKcH
-- Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 26, 2025

In other words, the True Conservative is pro-socialist/globalizing the intifada.

I hope the globalized intifada starts at Kristol's home.

Obligatory cruise ship.

When Pete Hegseth praised the "boys" who dropped the MOP on Fodrow, some idiot reporter whined, buh-buh-but what about the single woman pilot?

Shut up, Silly Woman!

Los Angeles liberals: ICE has scared illegals into not coming to work so we think that everyone should be free to remain in their apartments without paying rent.

Several unions are calling on the Los Angeles City Council to vote for a rent moratorium on the basis that deportation operations have severely shut down business activity.

The community groups say that businesses have been crippled by the loss of workers as well as consumers who are fearing detainment from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

...

"We know that many tenants will not be able to pay their rent come July 1," said Kenia Alcocer of LATU, who said she is also an illegal alien.

"Why? Because this militarization of our communities, this occupation of our community, this terrorizing of our communities have closed down businesses, have taken away street vendors, have separated families -- and then people cannot pay their rent," she added. "They have barely the minimum to survive."

...

"Our businesses are struggling. Entrepreneurship is at a standstill," the man said. "Fear has taken a toll on our society and our local economy."

That's not all. The Denver City Council voted to end a highly-successful program to apprehend car thieves. Why end a successful anti-crime program? Because it's successful, and they're catching a lot of illegal alien car thieves, and Denver doesn't want ICE deporting the illegal alien car thieves stealing citizens' cars.

Jonathan Turley:

In May, the council refused to renew the $666,000 contract with Flock for camera monitors around 70 Denver intersections to screen for car theft. That system resulted in the recovery of 170 stolen cars and 300 arrests. It is also credited with key evidence in the investigation of hit-and-run and murder cases.

However, it could also be used to assist ICE, and that is all that matters. Councilman Kevin Flynn explained it is all about Trump's election: "We know that it can help solve crime. But I think since maybe Jan. 20 of this year, those concerns are greatly heightened and have a new reality about them."

Note that hit-and-run killers are now being let free to kill again.

Andrew Sullivan wrote that the transgender movement has set back the gay movement by doing what the gay movement swore it would never do: Go after people's kids.

This is pretty obvious, yes, but it's published in the New York Times, which indicates that the left is attempting to prepare the base to abandon the transgender extremists.

John Sexton quotes Sullivan's obvious and very late take:

In the gay rights movement, there had always been an unspoken golden rule: Leave children out of it. We knew very well that any overreach there could provoke the most ancient blood libel against us: that we groom and abuse kids. You can bring up your children however you like, we promised. We will leave you alone. We will leave your children alone.

So what did the gender revolutionaries go and do? They focused almost entirely on children and minors. Partly because the adult issues had been resolved or close to it, and partly because true cultural revolutions start with the young, it meant overhauling the education not only of children with gender dysphoria, but of every other kid as well.

Kids all over the country were impacted. Your children were taught in elementary school that being a boy or a girl was something they could choose and change at will. Your daughter found herself running against a trans girl (i.e. a biological male) in athletics. Children in elementary school got to pick pronouns, and some children socially transitioned at school without their parents' knowledge or permission...

Soon enough, the right began associating what used to be the lesbian and gay movement with this gender extremism, and the L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement responded not by moderating tone or substance, but by closing ranks, seemingly determined to prove its point.

As LizLem said in a comment: Drag Queens never visit senior centers to read "Swish-Swish Go the Hips of the Drag Queen." The go right for the children.

See Sexton's article for NYT subscribers comments on the article -- they seem to agree. Oh, they don't really agree, I'm sure. But they've recognized the electoral apocalypse that's coming if they don't at least pretend to disagree with the child-obsessed trans groomers.

The feds are investigating Minnesota for allowing a hulking 6'2" man to dominate "girls" softball by pitching whiff shutouts like he's F*cking Thor hurling Mjolnir from the mound.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced it has launched a Title IX investigation into the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League.

The inquiry will investigate whether Minnesota violated federal law by permitting male athletes to compete on girls-only sports teams--including in a recent high school softball championship.

OCR said the investigation was triggered because the "male athlete's participation was instrumental, leading the team to win the state title."

AOC continues lying about being a "Bronx girl." A former classmate of hers posted a picture of her in the Yorktown High School yearbook, proving this "Bronx girl" grew up in the affluent NYC suburb Westchester County.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 'Bronx girl' narrative was shattered when a New York State Republican lawmaker exposed her yearbook photo from a top-ranked, high-performing public school.

On Tuesday, State Assemblyman Matt Slater jumped into the online clash between AOC and President Donald Trump, after the liberal progressive called for Trump's impeachment over his approval of airstrikes on Iran without congressional authorization.

The online clash ignited a fiery exchange between AOC and Trump, during which the congresswoman appeared to invoke her Bronx roots as a source of her toughness.

'Also, I'm a Bronx girl. You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast. Respectfully,' AOC wrote to X in regards to the president's Queens upbringing.

But Slater escalated the debate by unveiling a yearbook photo of her as a high school freshman in the affluent suburb of Yorktown, Westchester County - a 40-minute drive from the Bronx.

'If you're a BX girl then why are you in my Yorktown yearbook?' Slater wrote on X. 'Give it up already.'

Alongside his tweet, the Republican lawmaker posted two images: a black-and-white throwback of a young, smiling AOC, and the 2004 yearbook cover from Yorktown High School.

In a statement to The New York Post, he dismissed the 'AOC-Bronx mythology' as 'laughable,' adding that the claim is just as laughable to the 36,000 residents of the Westchester community.

'The truth is AOC is Sandy Cortez who went to Yorktown High School and lived at the corner of Friends Road and Longvue Street,' Slater told the outlet.

'She may think it makes her look tough or like some kind of champion for the radical left who voted for Zohran Mamdani, but she really needs to come clean and drop the act,' he added.

...

But Slater - representing parts of both Putnam and Westchester counties - quickly jumped in, posting the two photos with the caption beneath one: 'Here's the Yorktown High School '04 yearbook pic. Friends Road looks nothing like the Bronx.'

...

However, at just five years old, AOC moved with her family to a modest two-bedroom house on a quiet street in Yorktown Heights - a suburban relocation driven by the search for better schools, according to a 2018 article by The New York Times.

In 2007, the congresswoman graduated from Yorktown High School before attending Boston University, where she studied economics and international relations--and briefly engaged with establishment politics - before returning to the Bronx.

AOC has an answer to this: See, she visited her cousins who did live in the Bronx, and their tales of the desperation of Bronx-living are, like Jenjhis Khan, seared, seared into her memory.

Throughout her childhood, Representative Ocasio-Cortez traveled regularly to The Bronx to spend time with her extended family,' it adds.

'From an early age, the stark contrast in educational opportunities available to her and her cousins, based on their respective zip codes, made an impression on her.'

I once did a book report on Martin Luther King Jr. so I grew up in Georgia under Jim Crow. Do not deny My Truth.

Lawsuit alleges that the woke, anti-white racist corporation IBM fired a white man, claiming he was incompetent.

The lawsuit further alleges it then hired two minorities to do the job that the one "incompetent" white guy did.

Two legal groups are suing IBM over claims the technology company discriminated against an older white employee for the purpose of advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

America First Legal (AFL) and JW Howard Attorneys, LTD, filed a federal lawsuit against IBM on behalf of former employee John Loeffler, 64.

The lawsuit alleges that Loeffler was targeted to "advance IBM's internal DEI quotas," accusing the company of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The lawsuit claims that despite Loeffler's history of positive performance reviews and successfully leading a $30 million project, IBM placed him on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) with conditions that were "impossible to meet."

Loeffler objected to the plan and his recently assigned manager, Eric Castillo, conceded that the PIP's goals were unattainable, according to the lawsuit. Loeffler's lawyers contend the PIP was intentionally designed to force him out of his role in favor of younger, non-white staff.

"The PIP was pretextually designed to remove Loeffler from his position because he is an older white male," the lawsuit states. "IBM discriminates in favor of younger workers generally (as the EEOC explicitly found), and, in the name of 'diversity,' specifically discriminates against white males"

The lawsuit alleges that, after terminating Loeffler due to his inability to meet the targets, the company replaced him with two younger, non-white employees.

Prior to being fired, Loeffler had a nearly decade-long track record of success at IBM, according to AFL.

According to the lawsuit, Loeffler's 2021 performance review states, "John, your excellent work ethic and support for your teammates and others speaks for itself. I particularly would like to highlight the great work you continue to do."

The lawsuit also alleges that IBM denied Loeffler commissions he earned on a $30 million government contract that he worked on.

"Others on his team (who did less work on the project than he did), including racial minorities, were credited with work and afforded commission on the project, while he was denied it," AFL reported.

This lawsuit comes after years of IBM engaging in DEI policies that target white men. In 2021, video footage surfaced of IBM's CEO, Arvin Krishna, calling for racial and gender quotas in the hiring process. Krishna supported using coercive tactics to reach their goals, including financial incentives for those who met the quotas.

Pop singer Azaelia Banks pulls out of a London concert after alleging they pressured her to make a statement supporting the Palestinians: "I'm not putting on a f***in' hijab."

Azealia Banks
@azealiaslacewig

So guys, I am cancelling Boomtown and Maiden Voyage, the promoters have been stressing me out for weeks trying to force me to say free Palestine and threatening to cut me from the bill because I won't say free Palestine and I'm not dealing with the threats and I'm not putting on a fucking hijab.

They're both basically trying to extort me - by insinuating that I need to say I support Palestine or they will drop me from the gig BUT I would much rather drop them and not associate with anything that has cheap group think bullshit attached to it.

If they want to allow some no-name dj's to bully them into desecrating the nature of this music ecosystem and make ME the issue - whilst there being absolutely no ethical consumption under capitalism. Then that's fine.

More thinly veiled racism
And overt antisemitism from the fucking gays for Hamas.

Banks is black. Azaelia Banks more like Azaelia Based, amirite

Azealia Banks
@azealiaslacewig

And no, I'm not saying fuck actual Palestine. But fuck your dumb ass slogans and performative bullshit. Yall wanna make a stance so bad but stand for absolutely nothing. As soon as the media says pedophilia is "natural and normal,"
You bitches will be right there talking about #PEDOPHILERIGHTS

Like be fucking forreal.

That war has been going on in the background for fucking decades . Way before anyone alive today was born

And all of a sudden yall are throwing around words like genocide and Zionist not even knowing the meaning of those words

While you drive around in ur teslas and leave comments from your iPhones all built off the backs and the blood of children working in mines from dusk til dawn

There is zero ethical consumption under capitalism.

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING.

I'm going to enjoy the rest of my summer and make music

It's time for a new ab record.
I don’t need to be on stage stressing out to appease some dumb ass protesters who literally rely on those people in Palestine being crushed so they can solicit donations they DO NOT give to the cause.

Kiss my ass

The backlash is growing, and it will break with a fury.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (345) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Death of European Democracy
Plus: Trump Announces Truce in 30 Year War in the Congo

Three items:

Europe's woke police state is chasing social conservatives down and arresting them for... speaking.

Last week, a young Dutch woman was arrested outside an abortion clinic in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Thirty-five weeks pregnant herself, she had offered leaflets to two people; one took a brochure, the other declined. The police arrived and, without evidence, arrested the woman on fictitious allegations of "disturbing the peace." It was the ninth recent arrest made for peacefully engaging in pro-life outreach outside an abortion facility, even though it is not against the law to do so.

It is the third arrest for the young woman--who chose to remain unidentified--and at times she has been held in jail for three to six hours. Two other Dutch women have been similarly arrested three times each. Dirkje de Ruiter, for example, was arrested last year outside a clinic in Utrecht before she had even passed out a single leaflet; the police informed her that, despite doing nothing illegal, her mere presence constituted "disorder."

De Ruiter had been previously arrested in Rotterdam; a couple turned away from the clinic as the officers were confronting her. "When I arrived at the police station, all my things had to be handed in, and I was put in a cell measuring 2 metres by 1.5 metres," she told me. "Some of my clothes had to come off, and I was given a blanket against the cold. In the cell I thanked God for the life that had been saved... I was not afraid." Again: De Ruiter had not broken any laws.

The arrests of citizens doing peaceful pro-life outreach in the Netherlands are part of a broader continental crackdown on social conservatives, usually Christian, for expressing their beliefs in public. In Brussels earlier this month, Lois McLatchie of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Chris Elston, the anti-trans ideology activist known to his social media followers as "Billboard Chris," were arrested, strip-searched, and detained for hours by police merely for holding signs reading "Children Are Never Born In The Wrong Body" and "Children Cannot Consent To Puberty Blockers." Their signs were destroyed. They were charged with no crime.

In the United Kingdom, pro-lifers have been arrested for the thought crime of silent prayer so frequently that the Trump administration took the extraordinary step in March of sending "a team of U.S. officials to the UK to investigate concerns over freedom of speech restrictions," according to GB News. Diplomats from the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, led by State Department adviser Samuel Samson, met with five British pro-lifers who had been arrested for silent prayer at clinics across the country.

One woman was arrested for being silent. The police feared that she might be "praying in her head," which would create a disturbance.

Meanwhile, the UK has delivered over white working class girls to be raped and groomed for a life of forced prostitution by Pakistani rape gangs.

No worry there about creating a disturbance -- unless you point these crimes out. Then you get arrested for a breach of the peace and hate speech.

The EU is all-in crushing "hate speech" in Europe -- and in America as well.

Happy International Day for Countering Hate Speech, to all who celebrate.

Wednesday, June 18th, apparently marked the third ever day against so-called hate speech, as well as the start of the Council of Europe's No Hate Speech Week.

The theme of this year's No Hate Speech Week is about as pithy and inspiring as you might imagine: "Enhance legal and non-legal measures against hate speech through a multi-stakeholder approach." In practice, this means brainstorming the ways in which the European Union can keep control of the narrative, especially on social media.

Council of Europe chief Alain Berset made this clear when he opened the festivities with a speech in Strasbourg yesterday. "Hate speech is not an isolated issue," he said, "but a part of a deeper challenge--to trust, to truth, to democracy itself." This might be true according to the topsy-turvy definitions of Eurocratic newspeak. But in reality, free speech is a fundamental part of any democracy. The right for people to say whatever they like, no matter how crude, offensive, or hateful, is crucial for a society to remain open and free.

Berset also declared: "Hate begins with words but does not end there. The Council of Europe has been clear: hate speech and hate crime are not separate problems--they exist on a continuum."

What they mean by "hate speech," of course, is the speech of anyone arguing that they do not want their countries to become outer suburbs of Islamabad.

The transnational elites thereby protect their deeply unpopular policies from challenge by the old methods known by all tyrants: they will simply criminalize any attempts to change the policy.

No Hate Speech week is just the latest strategy in the EU's censorship crackdown. The main culprit is the Digital Services Act (DSA), the draconian piece of legislation that polices 'harmful content' online. According to the DSA, even interviewing a former president of the United States could constitute hate speech. This was the conclusion last year of Thierry Breton, the then European Commissioner in charge of enforcing the DSA. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections, Breton warned that Musk livestreaming an interview with Donald Trump on X could violate EU law on spreading "harmful content."

The idea that merely giving air time to a presidential candidate might be so hateful as to break the law is beyond reason. But the EU has been waging a spiteful war against Musk, a self-professed free-speech absolutist. Since 2023, the European Commission has been investigating his social-media platform, due to Musk's commitment to allowing users to post virtually whatever they want. The EU alleged that X failed to comply with the DSA. Falling foul of the DSA could technically see X banned across Europe, but it is more likely that Musk will face a fine of somewhere around $1 billion.

You're never going to believe this, but Germany, of all countries, is embracing full Nazism.

Police in Germany have executed more than 170 operations targeting people they referred to as "digital arsonists".

Starting early on the morning of June 25, officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the homes of people suspected of running "criminal posts" online.

The police move was not the first such in Germany, where it is flagged a "day of action", targeting alleged authors of "online hate and hate messages".

This was the 12th time that the police took such nationwide action against so-called politically motivated crime (PMK).

Two-thirds of those people whom officers hit had reportedly made right-wing radical statements. The police also went after alleged religious extremists and left-wing radicals.

The targeted speech was speech demanding an end to open borders. Some other speakers were also arrested so it wouldn't be so obvious the state was attempting to arrest its citizens until they complied.

But Germany also decided to arrest citizens for referring to the morons that make up its government as morons.

That's right, insulting a f*cking politician is now against the law in Germany.

The raids also included people who were suspected of violating a specific part of the German criminal code, namely those who allegedly insulted politicians.

German politicians have been increasingly using this law, leading to hefty fines against those found guilty of calling politicians "morons", for example, or mocking them with degrading images.

Greens politicians in particular have made efforts to seek redress against who insulted them.

...

Starting from 6am, police officers searched the houses of suspects and confiscated computers, mobile phones and tablets.

"Digital arsonists must not be able to hide behind their cell phones or computers", North Rhine-Westphalian interior minister Herbert Reul, a Christian Democratic Union MP, told news agency dpa.

"Many people have forgotten the difference between hatred and opinion, but it's so simple: If you don't do it in the real world, it's not appropriate to do it digitally. It's time for more attitude, offline and online."

And that's the real goal: they want to make people afraid to voice their opinions on unlimited third world immigration in the real world polling stations.

Meanwhile: Trump announces a peace deal between Congo and Rwanda, ending 30 years of grueling warfare. The deal was brokered by Marco Rubio.

Posted by: Ace at 05:08 PM | Comments (291) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Poised to Remove Illegals from Census Calcuations

Let's take a break from today's Supreme Court decisions to talk about future Supreme Court decisions.

As you know, the Democrats insist on counting illegal aliens in their blue sanctuary states. This results in blue states and blue cities having more representation in Congress than a count of their legal US citizen-voters would dictate.

Some people estimate that this overcount of "citizens" results in Democrats having up to 27 representatives they're not entitled to.

Trump is ready to reverse this, says Ben Weingarten at Real Clear Investigations.

Following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census.

President Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President Biden overturned his predecessor's policy before it was implemented. Now, buoyed by red state attorneys general and Republican legislators, the second Trump administration is determined "to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted," White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said last month.

What Miller didn't mention are the political implications of the administration's move. It could have significant political implications because the census count is used to apportion House seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College for selecting the president, and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds.

Some immigration researchers project that including noncitizens in the census count disproportionately benefits Democratic states with large illegal alien populations. A recent study counters that, based on 2020 census figures, there would have been a negligible shift to the political map had the U.S. government excluded noncitizens from that count. But looking backward, those researchers found, red states would have benefited under the administration's desired census counting shift. Had authorities excluded such migrants from the 2010 census, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and North Carolina all would have gained one seat in the House, while California would have lost three seats, and Texas and Florida would have each lost one seat -- with the total number of Electoral College votes allotted each state changing accordingly.

...

Trump's first term hints at what is to come if his administration vigorously pursues a citizen-centric census policy. In July 2020, when the president issued a memorandum to exclude illegal migrants from the census, blue states and immigration groups challenged it in court almost immediately.

Those challenges rose all the way to the Supreme Court. But it did not rule on the merits -- whether all residents must be counted and if the president has the authority to exclude nonresidents -- setting the stage for a battle over immigration and presidential power.

The census issue hinges on the Constitution's language, which calls for apportioning House seats among the states "according to their respective Numbers." Those "Numbers" originally included "free Persons" and "three-fifths of all other Persons" -- namely slaves, a result of the states' compromise. The framers excluded "Indians not taxed" -- Native Americans who were members of sovereign tribal nations, not citizens -- from the count.

After the Civil War, Congress passed the 14th Amendment to recognize the rights of the formerly enslaved. It states that congressional representation "shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State," again excluding Indians not taxed. Under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, this population would be granted citizenship.

...

Echoing arguments against birthright citizenship, critics on the right say that the 14th Amendment aimed to address the status of former slaves, not masses of illegal migrants. They assert that including this population in the census artificially skews political power, effectively disenfranchises citizens, and incentivizes states to adopt sanctuary policies protecting people here illegally.

"...[R]espect for the law and protection of the integrity of the democratic process warrant the exclusion of illegal aliens from the apportionment base, to the extent feasible and to the maximum extent of the President's discretion under the law," President Trump wrote in the 2020 memorandum.

I think the Supreme Court will, unfortunately, rule against Trump. Conservatives like Thomas and Alito are textualists, meaning they rule on, get this, what the law actually says and not what liberal justices wish it said. And in this case, the law speaks of counting "Persons," not "Citizens."

But give it a try.

And we really need to get the amendment process moving on both counting illegals as citizens and on birthright citizenship.

Weingarten has another recent article worth reading -- how Democrats are judge-shopping in their lawfare against Trump.

Most federal courts have a mix of judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans. The plaintiff's goal in forum shopping is to launch their suit in a district where they are more likely to draw a sympathetic justice -- ideally, this district would also include an appellate court stacked with like-minded judges.

To see whether Trump's adversaries are engaging in forum shopping, RealClearInvestigations analyzed 350 cases brought against the administration. We found that plaintiffs have brought 80% of those cases before just 11 of the nation's 91 district courts. While Democrat presidents have appointed roughly 60% of all active district court judges, each of the 11 district courts where the anti-Trump challenges have been clustered boasts an even higher percentage of Democrat appointees. In several of these venues, the administration's challengers are almost guaranteed that a judge picked by Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Bill Clinton will preside over their case.

The analysis of these 350 cases, which covers all those identified in popular litigation trackers and RCI's independent research as of this week, lends credence to claims that anti-Trump litigants may be strategically filing suit in courts where they are most likely to receive a favorable ruling -- a practice that has been both pursued and decried by Democrats and Republicans.

RCI also analyzed three dozen cases in which judges imposed the most extreme restraint on the Trump administration by entering a nationwide or universal injunction -- prohibiting the administration from enforcing its policy not only against the party bringing the case, but anyone, everywhere. The analysis shows that these injunctions have disproportionately emerged from Democrat-leaning courts where plaintiffs have brought the lion's share of suits, and that Democrat-appointed judges are overwhelmingly responsible for ordering them.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 PM | Comments (258) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Supreme Court Rules That States May Stop Medicaid Payments to Planned Parenthood, Completely
Update: Ketanji Brown Jackson Confesses Dozeons of Times "I Just Don't Understand"

Sorry, back to the Supreme Court. (There's a lot of this today.)

This decision is from yesterday.

Later in the post I discuss Ketanji Brown-Jackson's objection to having to actually read the law when "interpreting" the law.

States previously had the power to forbid Medicaid dollars from being used by Planned Parenthood for abortions. Supposedly -- we all know this is a lie, because money is fungible.

Now the Supreme Court says that states may cut Planned Parenthood off completely.

State Media NPR:

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed South Carolina to bar Planned Parenthood's access to federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion services. The decision allows states to ban the organization from getting Medicaid reimbursements for cancer screenings and other care not related to abortion.

LOL, sure, Planned Parenthood is known for its cancer care services.

At issue was a provision of the federal Medicaid law that guarantees Medicaid patients the ability to choose their doctors, or in the words of the statute, they are entitled to "any qualified and willing provider." South Carolina, however, maintained that it could disqualify Medicaid providers for "any reason that state law allows." Or as Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, put it, "Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs."

On Thursday, the Supreme Court -- by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines -- agreed.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court majority, said that regardless of the words in the statute, the law does not "clearly and unambiguously" provide individuals the right to sue to enforce the "any qualified provider" measure, as Congress didn't specifically authorize such suits.

"Though it is rare enough for any statute to confer an enforceable right, spending-power statutes like Medicaid are especially unlikely to do so," he wrote. And he wrote that allowing someone to sue over one aspect of Medicaid plan requirements could also open the door to a flood of lawsuits over other requirements.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing for the dissenting liberal justices, described the case as a civil rights issue, saying citizens have the right to sue over deprivation of rights.

...

The court's decision comes at an important time for Planned Parenthood, which is facing financial difficulties nationwide -- NPR reports that Planned Parenthood has closed at least 34 clinics since last year. And in Congress there is pending federal legislation that, if passed, would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Related: The Genius Ketanji Brown Jackson attacks her colleagues for being "textualists" -- that is, they make their rulings based on the actual text of the Constitution and the text of laws -- rather than just free-ballin' it and claiming the law means whatever she wants it to mean this morning.

ABC "News" think that this stance makes The Genius look good.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson unloaded on her Supreme Court colleagues Friday in a series of sharp dissents, castigating what she called a "pure textualism" approach to interpreting laws, which she said had become a pretext for securing their desired outcomes, and implying the conservative justices have strayed from their oath by showing favoritism to "moneyed interests."

The attack on the court's conservative majority by the junior justice and member of the liberal wing is notably pointed and aggressive but stopped short of getting personal.

She's accusing them of twisting the law on behalf of "moneyed interests." How much more personal can she get?

She's Jasmine Ratchet in a robe.

Can't wait until Alito or Thomas gets similarly "short of personal" with her, and her qualifications to sit on the Court. Update: I wrote this yesterday, before I knew of today's majority opinion trashing the Highly Unqualified Ketanji.

It laid bare the stark divisions on the court and pent-up frustration in the minority over what Jackson described as inconsistent and unfair application of precedent by those in power.

Jackson took particular aim at Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion in a case brought by a retired Florida firefighter with Parkinson's disease who had tried to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act after her former employer, the City of Sanford, canceled extended health insurance coverage for retirees who left the force before serving 25 years because of a disability.

Gorsuch wrote that the landmark law only protects "qualified individuals" and that retirees don't count. The ADA defines the qualified class as those who "can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires."

"This court has long recognized that the textual limitations upon a law's scope must be understood as no less a part of its purpose than its substantive authorizations," Gorsuch concluded in his opinion in Stanley v. City of Sanford. It was joined by all the court's conservatives and liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

Jackson fired back, accusing her colleagues of reaching a "stingy outcome" and willfully ignoring the "clear design of the ADA to render a ruling that plainly counteracts what Congress meant to -- and did -- accomplish" with the law. She said they had "run in a series of textualist circles" and that the majority "closes its eyes to context, enactment history and the legislature's goals."

"I cannot abide that narrow-minded approach," she wrote.

I forgot to mention in the previous post: Barret insulted Jackson by stating that Jackson doesn't know the difference between a judgment and an opinion.

A judgment is the basic "this side wins, this side loses" part of a ruling. You have to pay this guy $50,000. You have to stop building housing complexes on an old Indian burial site.

The opinion announces the rule underlying that judgment, and announces the rule-going-forward in all similar cases.

Coney made the point that lowly district court justices can only render judgments for the parties before it -- but then their opinions assert an anti-constitutional unlimited jurisdiction across the entire country. And Coney accuses Jackson of not being able to tell a judgment from an opinion. This distinction may be lost on a layman who doesn't understand the legalese of the law, like Ketanji Brown Jackson, but it is extremely important to actual jurists who weren't absent the day they taught law in law school.

Coney says that Jackson ignorantly believes that a mere opinion about cases well outside of a lowly district judge's jurisdiction have the full force of law.

The whole article -- by ABC "News" -- is about the ignorant Ketanji's constant dunking on her colleagues for believing that the text of the law matters when interpreting the law. ABC "News" thinks she's a brave, tough-talking hero, like other progressive Moron-Heroes like Donkey-Chompers and Jasmine Ratchet.

So just so you know -- liberals pick and choose from a thousand different outside factors they can use to challenge, undermine, and twist the actual language of the law. They will claim, for example, that if someone proposed an amendment to a law which was rejected by legislators, that amendment should still be consulted to determine "legislative intent." They claim that everything can be used to "interpret" the text of a law except for the actual text of the law.

They're big fans of citing legislative and judicial decisions in foreign countries as evidence of a supposed "consensus" among "world authorities."

Of course, they only pick and choose these extraneous sources according to how they advance the progressive/communist cause. They never will cite legislative history to advance a conservative interpretation.

Congress passing a law is only one step in the legislative process, radicals believe. The second step is stuffing into that law a whole wish list of leftwing priorities, stuff Congress could have put into the law but didn't, or even stuff that was proposed to be added to the law but was affirmatively rejected.

It doesn't matter. Leftwing judges think they have plenary power to say a law means whatever they wish it to mean. The actual law is just a starting point for their Judicial Jazz Odysseys.

Posted by: Ace at 03:10 PM | Comments (389) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Readies "Maryland Man" Abrego-Garcia for Deportation to Third Country

Here's a break from Supreme Court rulings. Kind of.

I don't see how a lowly district court judge can block this -- he has multiple deportation orders against him. His legal claim last time was that he could not be deported to his home country of El Salvador, because he feared he might be killed by a gang there. Because... he had murdered the mother of a man in a rival gang.

Trump is getting ready to deport him to a third-party nation.

What contrivances and convolutions will communist traitor judges use to keep in in the US this time?

The Trump administration said it would send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, to an unnamed "third country" as part of its renewed effort to deport him, multiple outlets reported on Thursday.

The big picture: The Trump administration has included deportations to non-origin countries in its immigration policy with permission from the Supreme Court.

Catch up quick: Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. earlier this month, and the Justice Department was ordered to release him from prison in Tennessee while he awaited trial.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw said on Wednesday that Abrego Garcia is likely to eventually be deported to El Salvador, where he's originally from.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty to allegedly smuggling undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Zoom in: "Our plan is that he will be taken into ICE custody and removal proceedings will be initiated," Jonathan Guynn, deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ's civil division, told the court on Thursday, per NOTUS.

"To El Salvador or a third country?" U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis asked.

"To a third country is my understanding," he responded.

...

A Justice Department spokesperson also said Abrego Garcia "will not walk free in our country again."

Oh and another cultural-enriching cancer-curing Maryland Man is getting deported:

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (392) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Supreme Court Rules that Public Schools Cannot Preach the Gay/Trans Agenda to Children Without Alerting Their Parents and Allowing Them an Opt-Out

You probably remember this dispute. Maryland, as deranged a progressive cesspit as there is, insists on teaching kids to be gay in grade school. Not middle school, grade school.

Initially, they permitted parents an opt-out of Lessons In Homosexuality, but then reversed themselves, denying parents that opt-out. It seems too many parents wanted to opt their children out, and that defeats the whole point of their gay and trans grooming.

Also, they said they couldn't just excuse kids when they were going to give lectures about changing your gender, because these lectures could come at literally any moment and who could plan for when teachers were going to start grooming children?

Which leads to a question that should be asked and answered: Just how often are teachers engaging in grooming behavior such that they cannot even say when the groomings will begin and end? Maryland's position seems to be that teachers are going to groom children nigh-constantly, so it's too much of a bureaucratic chore to excuse children every time a groomer teacher wants to tell them that gender is infinitely mutable and just "assigned at birth" as a guess by a bigoted doctor and isn't it wonderful to have gay sex?

The Court rejected these arguments, and found that bureaucratic convenience did not overrule the protections of the First Amendment, which guarantees parents the right to decide their children's religious upbringing.

And note that all parents are forced to pay for public school and also that schooling until age 16 (or whatever) is compulsory, so parents cannot just "remove their children from school," as -- guess who? -- Ketanji Brown Jackson asserted in oral arguments.

Public schools in Maryland must allow parents with religious objections to withdraw their children from classes in which storybooks with L.G.B.T.Q. themes are discussed, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The vote was 6 to 3, with the court's liberal members in dissent.

The case extended a winning streak for claims of religious freedom at the court, gains that have often come at the expense of other values, notably gay rights.

The case concerned a new curriculum adopted in 2022 for prekindergarten through the fifth grade by the Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland's largest school system.

The storybooks included "Pride Puppy," an alphabet primer about a family whose puppy gets lost at a Pride parade; "Love, Violet," about a girl who develops a crush on her female classmate; "Born Ready," about a transgender boy; and "Uncle Bobby's Wedding," about a same-sex union.

At first, the school system gave parents notice when the storybooks were to be discussed, along with the opportunity to have their children excused. But school administrators soon eliminated the advance notice and opt-out policy, saying it was hard to administer, led to absenteeism and risked "exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation."
Parents of several faiths sued, saying the books violated the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion. The books, their complaint said, "promote one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning and focus excessively on romantic infatuation."

The parents said they did not seek to remove the books from school libraries and classrooms but only to shield their children from having to discuss them. (The school system has since withdrawn two of the seven books, including "Pride Puppy." In court papers, officials said the books had been re-evaluated under standard procedures but did not elaborate.)

Jonathan Turley notes there is more sharp argument between the justices, with the conservatives rebuking the "Wise Latina" Sotomayor and Ketanji "I don't understand why there's so much legalese in the law" Brown Jackson.

Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley

...We have our fourth opinion. It is Mahmoud v. Taylor, by Justice Alito. Huge 6-3 victory for parental rights over the ability to withdraw their children from LGBTQ lessons.

...Another sharp exchange between the justices. Alito goes after Sotomayor's characterizations: "We similarly disagree with the dissent's deliberately blinkered view that these storybooks and related instruction merely "expos[e] students to the 'message' that LGBTQ people exist"

...For those of us who wanted a robust defense of parental rights, there are some strong lines, including: "We reject this chilling vision of the power of the state to strip away the critical right of parents to guide the religious development of their children. Yoder and Barnette embody a very different view of religious liberty, one that comports with the fundamental values of the American people."

...There was also an implied push back on Justice Jackson stating in oral argument that parents can simply take their children out of schools -- a rather callous position for many families who have no other financial choice...

...From Alito: "According to the dissent, parents who send their children to public school must endure any instruction that falls short of direct compulsion or coercion and must try to counteract that teaching at home. The Free Exercise Clause is not so feeble. The parents in Barnette and Yoder were similarly capable of teaching their religious values "at home," but that made no difference to the First Amendment analysis in those cases."

...The Court includes pictures from these books to drive home these points...

The pictures begin at page 42 of the opinion, in an Appendix to the decision.

Leftist always lie about everything, but this is one of their favorite lies: Claiming that books that show boys giving men blowjobs are just about "acknowledging that homosexuality exists." They refuse to acknowledge the pornographic illustrations, and, when you try to show them at school board meetings, they tell you you're out-of-line because they don't allow explicit images in their meetings.

The images here do not show boys giving men blowjobs, but they are very blatantly gay groomer propaganda.

Those aren't necessarily the worst images -- I just picked those two at random.

Totally not preachin' and groomin':

Dress as whatever sex you like, and use whatever bathrooms feel right today:

If you can't read the text of that totally-not-grooming page:

Some may be confused that a kid like me
Can wear what I want and be proud and carefree.
My friends defend my choices and my place
A bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.

No, no sexual-political messaging for kindergarten-aged children here, nope, none at all!

I can't even imagine the images in "Pride Puppy" might be-- even the school admitted that that one was over-the-line and had to withdraw that one.

From the Court's conclusion:

The Board's introduction of the "LGBTQ+-inclusive" storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents' rights to the free exercise of their religion. The parents have therefore shown that they are likely to succeed in their free exercise claims. They have likewise shown entitlement to a prelim- inary injunction pending the completion of this lawsuit. In the absence of an injunction, the parents will continue to be put to a choice: either risk their child's exposure to burdensome instruction, or pay substantial sums for alternative educational services. As we have explained, that choice unconstitutionally burdens the parents' religious exercise, and " '[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.' " Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U. S. 14, 19 (2020) (per curiam) (quoting Elrod v. Burns, 427 U. S. 347, 373 (1976) (plurality opinion)). Fur-
thermore, in light of the strong showing made by the parents here, and the lack of a compelling interest supporting the Board's policies, an injunction is both equitable and in the public interest. The petitioners should receive preliminary relief while this lawsuit proceeds. See Winter, 555 U. S., at 20. Specifically, until all appellate review in this case is completed, the Board should be ordered to notify them in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.

So much legalese in that! So much dry technical reasoning!

Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley

...The dissenting justices again raise apocalyptic predictions for the nation by allowing children to opt out of LGBT readings: "The result will be chaos for this Nation's public schools. Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent's religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools.

Oh, so it's all about the teachers and poor beleaguered educrats, huh?

Oh wait, no it's not: Children may be harmed by being robbed of learning about how wonderful gender transitions are:

The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students' learning and development."

Below, an example of why the liberals may have a point: Many "teachers" seem to have taken the job exclusively for purposes of sharing their Trans Journey with their state-compelled captive audience of children:

Posted by: Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (440) | Trackbacks (Suck)

BY A 6-3 VOTE. THE SUPREME COURT INVALIDATES PRACTICE OF LOWLY DISTRICT COURT JUSTICES CONTROLLING THE NATIONALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT VIA UNIVERSAL INJUNCTIONS

Or, as The Bee puts it:

This case is about two issues:

First, about Trump's EO declaring that "birthright citizenship" is not supported by the Constitution and should not be recognized by the executive or courts. The Court did not reach this issue, as they "disposed of it," as they say, by its other ruling.

Which was about lowly district court hacks presuming to not just rule on the parties before them in the specific, defined jurisdiction they sit in, but to issue universal injunctions of national reach in order to dictate their Liliputian wills to the nationally-elected constitutional chief executive officer.

Amy Coney Barret wrote the opinion declaring that lowly district court judges have never in all of American history had the power they routinely assert to essentially invent national policy as they see fit.

The Supreme Court delivered a significant win for the Trump admin on Friday, limiting the power of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions. In a 6-3 ruling, the justices said such injunctions likely go beyond what the Constitution allows, especially in cases targeting executive actions.

Key Details:

The Court ruled that federal judges overstep their constitutional authority when they issue nationwide injunctions, particularly when only a handful of plaintiffs are involved.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated that "[f]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch," emphasizing that their role is to resolve specific legal disputes, not to dictate national policy.

While the Court did not weigh in on the legality of Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship, it granted the government's request to limit injunctions to apply only to plaintiffs with standing.

Diving Deeper:

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case that challenged the use of sweeping nationwide injunctions to block federal policy. The ruling significantly curtails the ability of lower courts to issue broad orders that halt executive actions across the country, reinforcing the constitutional limits of judicial power.

The case stemmed from multiple injunctions that had been issued to stop President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship--a policy announced on his first day back in office. Though the justices did not rule on the constitutionality of the order itself, they took aim at the overreach of lower courts in issuing expansive blocks on executive policy.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett emphasized that "[f]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them." She added, "When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too."

The Court ultimately agreed to grant the government's request to scale back the injunctions. "The Government's applications to partially stay the preliminary injunctions are granted," Barrett wrote, "but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue."

Unfortunately, the unreliable ditz Coney Barret left open the possibility that lowly district court justices can issue nationwide injunctions in cases where a state is suing the federal government:

The CASA ruling leaves room for judges to order relief akin to a nationwide injunction when a state sues the federal government. But the justices provided little guidance, which indicates that different judges could reach different conclusions on whether and how states can get universal injunctions -- until SCOTUS resolves that question too.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett writes, "We decline to take up these arguments in the first instance. The lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate; we therefore leave it to them to consider these and any related arguments."

The opinion states that Congress never granted lowly district court justices the power to grant "equitable relief" (injunctions) to anyone except the exact parties in court in front of them. They cannot simply just say that their rulings apply across the country to anyone else who might make a similar complaint.

Katanji Brown-Jackson wrote an illiterate dissent in which she railed against "legalese" and "dry technical arguments" to assert that yes, lowly district court judges can overrule the nationally elected constitutional chief executive officer whenever they feel that liberals really need a win.

Coney Barret blasted her, accusing her simply ignoring 250 years of constitutional practice in order to create an "imperial judiciary."

i/o
@avidseries
"We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."

-- SCOTUS majority opinion today

The full passage is worth the read. Amy Coney Barret calls Ketanji Jackson-Brown dumb, in so many words, incapable of reading, understanding, and applying the law, simply acting like a panelist on The View popping off about what she thinks the law should be while complaining about the "legalese" in the law.

She doesn't seem to grasp that "legalese" is what makes up the law. She seems to dismiss it because she can't follow it.

Now, for a layman, this is understandable. Laymen don't understand legalese and are impatient with it.

But this is, allegedly, a Supreme Court Justice. Shouldn't the "legalese" and "dry technical arguments" (as she dismisses all legal reasoning) be of some concern to her?

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (493) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Might A.I. do to Universities What Gutenberg did to Monasteries?

There is a growing consensus that the education obtained by going to college could almost certainly be obtained more quickly and at less expense with tools available on the internet, but that the credentialing provided by legacy universities is what keeps the higher-education leviathan in place. Now we have AI coming along, with the capability of pretty much completing any assignment given to a student. Might AI finally cause the university cartel to lose its position of importance in this country? Perhaps.

John Carter wrote a fascinating piece at his Postcards From Barsoom substack titled ““AI Is Doing to the Universities What Gutenberg Did to Monasteries.”

First, he drew an analogy between the power, wealth, and prestige of monasteries in the middle ages with that of universities today. He wrote, “By the late middle ages monasteries were spectacularly wealthy. They were immune from taxation, and possessed vast land holdings thanks to generous donations made over the centuries by nobles looking to assure themselves a comfortable place in the afterlife.” Monasteries were also the “repositories, preservers, and disseminators” of all scholarly knowledge in the era before the printing press came along. All books were handwritten by monks until Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press in the 1450s.

Although the democratization of knowledge was thus unleashed when the Gutenberg Bible was published, the full impact kept unfolding over subsequent decades. A similar analogy might be the modern digital revolution, evolving from personal computers in the ‘80s and ‘90s to the internet growth in the ‘00s to whatever the introduction of AI will bring now.

But the monasteries retained their wealth and influence, much as modern universities have continued to retain their wealth and influence since the internet era started.

While the monasteries’ collapse was unthinkable, it was also inevitable. They had exerted enormous political power while no longer meaningfully contributing to society. It was King Henry VIII who finally decided to put an end to the monasteries’ reign of power and prestige in the 1530s. This paragraph from Mr. Carter’s piece sounds like it is written about our own Ivy League schools:

It struck many at the time as an unthinkable outrage, but in retrospect dissolving the monasteries was almost the most obvious move that Henry VIII could make. They had made themselves his political enemies, the domestic allies of his adversaries abroad: thus, by dissolving them, he crushed a hostile power centre.

Yes, dissolving a domestic hostile power center allied with foreign adversaries makes perfect sense.

They had, over the centuries, allowed their wealth and power to lead them towards luxury and corruption. The monasteries were hostile, rich, and unsympathetic, and therefore a vulnerable and attractive target for liquidation.

But most importantly, monasteries were no longer necessary, just like the entrenched four-year university structure is no longer necessary to provide a post-high school education.

Now that the world had the printing press, the monasteries’ primary reason for existence – the core justification for both their prestige and their accumulated wealth – no longer applied.They had outlived their usefulness, making them nothing more than an irritating thorn in the king’s side and a tempting concentration of loot. Henry VIII lost nothing whatsoever by dissolving them, and gained a great deal.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (461) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Les Otages
Jean-Paul Laurens

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (413) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 6/ 27 /25

Good morning kids. As CBD and I discussed/lamented on the latest episode of the podcast ((here and in the sidebar as well as the usual outlets listed at the bottom of this post) New York the most Jewish city on the planet outside the state of Israel has chosen a bust out rabid Muslim Socialist to be the Democrat nominee for mayor. Of course, Jewish in this case is defined by lineage and not by attitude, mindset and/or lifestyle. Even though this was only the primary which I suppose makes people even more lazy and apathetic than usual, Daniel Greenfield notes

I said the results either reflected low turnout or tinkering. Probably both.

Well the low turnout has been confirmed. Less than 30% of Democrats voted in the party’s mayoral primary. Of those 43% supposedly voted for Mamdani. (Ranked choice voting also makes this whole thing more complicated, but I’m keeping it simple.)

As I note in my upcoming article, “56% of registered voters in the city are Democrats so some 7.2% of city residents voted for him. New York City has a population of 8.2 million. Of those 432,305 or 5% voted for Mamdani.”
You can go with the 7% figure which represents voters, but either way this is far from the massive sweep of the city that the media is hyping.

Most New Yorkers didn’t vote for Mamdani. Even most Democrats stayed home.

So assuming there was tinkering with the results, and being New York you can bet Rachel Levine's balls to the doors of Evin Prison that there was tinkering, What does this say about the leadership of the local and for sure national Democrat Party if this is who they want as the candidate. If the across the board visceral revulsion at the wave of anti-Semitism in NYC and the nation in the wake of the 10/7 pogrom in Israel as well as the general revulsion over the illegal immigration crisis and other Leftist criminality, dissolution and perversion being forced down everyone's throats, or at the least the overt promoting of it all by leading politicians is supposedly frightening Democrat leadership and pundits, then how in the hell does one account for this Mamdani cancer? Sure, Cuomo and Adams might have had all sorts of baggage but, they still would've and did have that all important "D" designator after their names Adams now running indy. I don't think even a Curtis Sliwa or whoever could've overcome that in the general.

So, if the Democrats are all supposedly running scared from Mamdani, then what of this miserable degenerate shitstain Mark Pocan:

To paraphrase the late Freedom Center founder David Horowitz: scratch a tolerant, inclusive, compassionate “liberal” and just underneath the surface you’ll find a raging, totalitarian racist and antisemite. Wisconsin Democrat Congressman Marc Pocan is the latest example of this ugly truth. On Wednesday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tweeted in regard to New York City Democrats embracing Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan immigrant, as the city’s mayoral candidate: “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.” In response to Miller’s suggestion that America needs to quit importing people who are actively seeking to undermine our nation and civilization, Rep. Pocan, 60, tweeted this intemperate message: “Racist fuck. Go back to 1930’s Germany.”

Pocan represents the communist shithole of Madison WI, sadly only an hour or so upwind of where I am. God bless Stephen Miller but when he tweeted about "the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.” He was about 80-90 years too late. Like the taqqiya sunrisers including Mamdani and Bro-Fo Omar who come here to undermine us from within, the Soviets and now the Chi-Coms have been and are doing the same thing for decades. When two to three generations of Americans are taught to hate their birthright, their parents, their wonderful nation, its heritage and ultimately themselves, that is how police, ICE agents and Jewish students get molotov cocktails hurled at them. And ultimately how normal people are arrested for merely praying in front of Abortion abbatoirs, speaking their minds at school board meetings, or showing up in DC to protest a stolen election only to be entrapped in a manufactured sting operation staged by Pelosi and the FBI.

And speaking of corrupt, amoral evil tyranny parading around in the moldering skin-suit of Lady Liberty and demanding respect:

Per a report at Fox News, township officials in the unincorporated community of Cranbury, NJ are in the process of seizing a historic family farm that has been under the family’s ownership for 175 years—that means since 1850—because they want to use it for a welfare housing project.

Benji Farraro reports that in April, Andy and Christopher Henry, the two brothers who currently own the farm, received a letter that informed them that Cranbury would be seizing all 21 acres, but government officials have now decided that they’ll make do with just half of the farm, and benevolently leave the house for the Henry family—now the Henry family gets to be neighbors with the third world foreigners who will no doubt be taking up residence in the “affordable housing” units built on Henry land! (Kind of reminds of when Abraham Lincoln spitefully directed the federal government to seize land that belonged to Mary Custis Lee as retribution for her husband’s allegiance to country over the Union, citing a “tax” dispute.)

The only thing I found surprising was that one of the owners of the farm was “shocked” that the government would operate in such an evil way:

I guess they never heard of the KELO decision either! (Burn in hell, John Paul Stevens)

So while the Democrats are falling all over themselves to defend and even directly organize LA gangbangers to attack ICE and police to prevent the arrest and deportation of illegal aliens, What do you suppose the reaction would be if the Henry brothers and their friends and neighbors were to attack US marshals or other law enforcement officers with deadly force to prevent the seizure of their land. To ask that question is to answer it.

And on the other side of the world:

On Christmas Day in 1989, the people of Romania held a long-awaited ceremony that was more joyous than any Nativity had been in decades. They held a spontaneous trial of President Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, found them guilty of capital crimes against the Romanian people, and sentenced them to death. There was no shortage of volunteers for the firing squad, and those lucky enough to be chosen didn’t wait for the order to fire: they riddled the Ceaușescu’s bodies with more than one hundred bullets.

The story of how the dictatorial couple met their end has important lessons for those wondering about the fate of today’s Iranian Islamic Revolutionary government. What caused the Ceaușescu regime to collapse and how did the people overcome the power of the dictatorship?

Thankfully, yet despite Donald Trump once again being in charge, I was kind of hoping that the Democrat/globalist/Deep State cabal would be totally vanquished, preferably not via the Ceaucescu route – though it is plain to see, despite the Claude Rains reaction by those poor New Jersey farmers, that those in power have no compunction about going that route to preserve protect and defend their hold on power over us to make it as absolute and permanent as possible.

Capping it all off is this howler from as repulsive and despicable a purple-helmeted fire alarm puller as you'll find.

The reason why heart disease and cancer and obesity and diabetes are bigger in the black community is because of the stress we carry from having to deal with being called the n-word - directly or indirectly - every day," Bowman yelled at a white Republican on the panel.

For decades now, Black culture – so-called – has made that word as commonly spoken among blacks as "gesundheit" among the general populace. Not only is it commonly spoken but among blacks it's supposedly an honorific. Woe-betide comedian Michael Richards who you may recall committed career suicide by daring to rattle off the word like machine-gun fire. Of course his career was destroyed by either intentionally or perhaps accidentally pointing out the hypocrisy of using the word, inartfully to be sure to make a point but worse to commit the most heinous crime against humanity of using the word while being white.

Of course Stephen Miller is at no risk of heart disease, obesity, cancer or diabetes for being told to go back to Nazi Germany to be gassed or shot into a mass grave. And Jews who commit the heinous crime of defending Israel or even being seen in public are at no risk of being beaten, raped, stabbed or immolated to death on the streets or campuses of New York, eh Jamal?!

I'd ululate and pass out candy if Bowman et al were Ciao-Ciao Ceaucescue'd away for good.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

Have a great weekend!

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Just because the judiciary chooses to violate the Constitution does not mean the other branches are required to follow suit.
  If Trump Doesn’t Reject Judicial Supremacism, His Presidency Is Finished
  
• This is who the Democrats are.
  Dem Congressman Tells Jewish Stephen Miller to Go Back to ’30s Germany
  
• What radicalized me? Stories like this.
  NJ smirks and cites ‘eminent domain’ to seize a 175-year-old farm so it can build welfare housing

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:30 AM | Comments (413) | Trackbacks (Suck)