Author: nick
Former Pennsylvania State Police Corporal Stephen Kamnik pleaded guilty to crimes including unlawful use of a computer and wiretapping. Investigators found he had used official police databases, including driver’s license photo records, to obtain images of women and create thousands of pornographic deepfake pictures and videos without their consent. Authorities said he generated over 3,000 fake images and that the victims included his own relatives. Source link
A March 20 headline in the New York Post declared “Cigarettes are Back!” It seems that in liberal, health-conscious Hollywood, celebrities are smoking publicly and on magazine covers and cigarettes are big at the events, including in some instances provided to guests by the host. This is a good sign for those of us who oppose the nanny state, as the obsessive hatred of smoking has been one of the most egregious infringements on personal liberty in the last forty years. The pretense of anti-smoking legislation, when one is given anything besides sheer hostility, is that smokers cost the taxpayer…
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair On April 1, Donald Trump startled the world by publicly declaring that he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing the United States from the 77-year-old NATO alliance. Trump’s remarks came only hours after Pete Hegseth, his Defense Secretary, declined to reaffirm the U.S. government’s commitment to NATO’s collective defense. Actually, the Trump administration’s recent trashing of NATO was less shocking than it appeared. During Trump’s two terms in office, he derided the alliance from the start, developed a warm relationship with its foremost adversary (Vladimir Putin), withdrew U.S. support from embattled Ukraine, called for U.S. annexation of…
On April 27th, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Chatrie v. United States, on the Fourth Amendment implications of geofencing. I have already posted the amicus brief I wrote for the Court in the case, and I have decided to write a series of posts in anticipation of the argument. This is the first. For my first post, I want to suggest that Chatrie may end up being decided on relatively narrow grounds. That’s relevant because the Chatrie case implicates a very wide range of potential issues. The Court granted cert on the first of Chatrie’s proposed Questions…
Donald Trump sold himself to the American people as the ultimate dealmaker during his first run for President. He argued that Obama’s poor negotiating skills had impoverished the American people, and he would Make America Great Again by getting tough with both allies and adversaries. The American people bought the narrative and elected him over Hillary Clinton in 2016. In the President’s five years in office, he had been unable to cement any agreement that benefited Americans. During his first administration, he engaged in talks with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. The two leaders met three times, including…
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires. In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same…
Jonathan Kozol, screen grab from an interview in Brainwaves Video Anthology. The following is a Q&A discussion about Jonathan Kozol’s new book, We Shall Not Bow Down Children of Color Under Siege: An Invocation to Resistance, published by Seven Stories Press. 1) You have long argued that educational inequality is not inevitable but the result of political decisions. Why do you think the idea that inequality is “natural” or unavoidable continues to have such influence in American education debates? The notion that inequality in educational outcomes is “natural” or “unavoidable” has had a persistent history in American education thinking. As long ago…
President Trump was presented with a great opportunity on Saturday to take the off-ramp from his war on Iran. After threatening Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” Trump managed to get a two week pause in the war with the intervention of the Pakistani government. A window opened to end this illegal war. Vice President Vance traveled to Pakistan to negotiate with a high-level Iranian delegation and from press reporting progress was made on many issues. Unfortunately, after a month and a half of war, where tens of billions of dollars have been spent, every US base in…
This headline captures President Donald Trump and the Republicans’ midterm election problems in a nutshell: Inflation in March hit its highest level in two years as the Iran war spiked energy prices. There is simply nothing that has happened in American politics between Trump’s epic 2024 political comeback and the Democrats’ romp in last year’s off-year elections running on an affordability mantra that would suggest voters prioritize a foreign war over higher prices. A thousand clips of Trump expressing his distaste for the ayatollahs or a hundred polls showing rank-and-file Republicans still support him do not prove otherwise. Before the…
Image Wikipedia. Amidst Donald Trump’s wild Middle East War declarations, the tech billionaire push to nuclear reactor suicide has escalated with the shock relicensing of California’s two nuclear power plants at Diablo Canyon, now being pushed by the state’s liberal Governor Gavin Newsom, who has also joined Trump in their all-out attack against renewable energy. Together, Trump and Newsom are pushing decrepit, virtually uninsured, militarily indefensible nuclear power plants whose drastic deregulation may now rival the dangers posed by any bombs Iran could produce They also make no economic or ecological sense. Despite the latest tsunami of “Nuclear Renaissance” hype,…