Author: nick
Justice Sotomayor is on a speaking tour. In a series of public remarks, she has offered some striking comments about her colleagues. On Wednesday, she spoke in Lawrence, Kansas about Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. “I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,” Sotomayor said, referencing a concurrence written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during an event Tuesday hosted by the University of Kansas School of Law. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” . . .…
Yesterday morning, when Donald Trump declared “[a]n entire civilization will die tonight[,]” Ray Bradbury was first to my mind. In sophomore year of high school, our English teacher had us read Fahrenheit 451. So began my adoration of Bradbury’s poignant storytelling and exquisite prose. In 451, Bradbury crafts an iconic world where books are illegal and “firemen” are tasked not to fight fires, but to burn books and execute or imprison their readers. Provocatively, this policy is not enforced through top-down diktat. It is the people themselves that demand it. In the backset of 451, there are always military jets…
The Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz. Photo by Matthew Stevenson. I don’t think there is anything that gives Donald Trump quite so much pleasure as failure, perhaps one of the reasons why he is so enjoying blowing through $50 billion in taxpayer money on his way to numerous defeats in the Strait of Hormuz. I realize Trump has taken out primetime copyrights on various brands of success—all those “arts” of the deal—but at the end of the day what Trump likes most is to measure himself by the size of his failures (no doubt the only time…
Forty-six years ago, I told an editor of The New Republic that I’d like my first article for this publication to be about the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Source link
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the SAVE America Act “could disenfranchise over 20 million American citizens,” while Republicans dispute that the voter registration and ID bill would block any legitimate voters. Election experts say the bill, which isn’t expected to pass, would make it difficult for some unknown number of voters to register and cast a vote. At times, Schumer has used more definitive language about the bill’s impact, saying that “more than 20 million legitimate people … will not be able to vote under this law” or that it “would disenfranchise tens of millions of people.” Schumer…
Here is one narrative violation in the usual drumbeat of doom that we’re used to hearing about housing in America: The rent, in many cities across the US, is getting cheaper. Source link
So, unless you have been living under a rock these past few days, you have seen the breathless, uncritical news coverage about the latest “UFO whistleblower” making extraordinary claims. His is a former Intel guy named David Grusch, who has recently been turning up all over the credulous media, making claims of ‘secret government crashed UFO retrieval programs.’ How to know which reporters are credulous and foolish? That’s easy: if they ran with this story on the basis of no evidence at all, that’s them. And Grusch admits all this is only hearsay – he says he hasn’t seen any…
Practically everyone has heard of the tick-borne infection known as Lyme disease, even if they don’t live in a high-risk area. Some are aware of long-standing controversies about the consequences of infection or how best to treat it. Our concern here is for a newly emerging controversy about Lyme disease—namely, the theory that it originated as part of a bioweapons program. As U.S. Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey is heard to say while participating in a Department of Health and Human Services roundtable on Lyme disease: “They were weaponizing Ixodes burgdorferi [sic], as we all know.”https://www.youtube.com/live/U3ilMz3Y0J4?si=uZHffRVbmI2PN-Gj) of the Roundtable…
A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week. Source link
So, you’ve probably seen wild stories about this on the news: “Big, shiny eyes. Towering nearly 10 feet tall. 100% not human.” the Los Angeles Times.”Vegas police respond to report of ’10-foot creature’ in yard after green flash across sky.” CNN.”Aliens among us? Vegas UFO report latest in UAP sightings investigated worldwide.” USA Today. And many other places. UFO stories are good for “clicks”, for ratings, and the wilder, the better. But let’s look at this carefully. From this video, it is obvious that the object is a brilliant meteor fireball. I’ve seen many such videos before, and even a…