So I said - something about, well, a bunch of stuff.

A series of comments on posts that I thought worth repeating. Adds some content here, anyway.

2025-12-26
One point I wish people would make, indeed emphasize, is that the Orange Overlord’s toady hit man Marco Rube is decrying supposed “suppression of free speech” (i.e., consumer protection rules) in Europe at the same time that his demented boss is demanding various people be fired and outlets have their broadcast licenses be stripped for saying things he doesn’t like.

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2025-12-26

When I was in college, a silly joke made the rounds “proving” that Alexander the Great had an infinite number of limbs and never existed in the first place.

The first line was “All horses are black. Proved by blatant assertion.” (I'll only tell the rest if someone asks.)

I’m reminded of that by RF “My father would be ashamed of me” Kennedy’s assertion that gender affirming care is “neither safe nor effective” despite multiple decades of experience and studies showing otherwise. It is a blatant assertion untethered to facts and just as accurate as “all horses are black.”

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2025-12-26
I’d like to share others’ vision of appropriate retribution being meted out to the grifters and ghouls of the court of the Orange Overlord for their various crimes and cruelties, but I have a genuine fear that come 2027 for Congress and 2029 for the White House, we will be hearing from the Dem misleaderhip a chorus of “We must look forward, not backward!” coupled with official amnesia.

They did it in 2009. They did it in 2021. It will be up to the mass of us to stop it from happening again - because we can’t depend on the leaders of the institutional Democratic Party to do it on their own.

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2025-12-26
So redactions in the Epstein files can be removed because the incompetent bozos of the White House didn’t use the right version of Acrobat.

So WHERE ARE THEY?

No one publishing them can be accused of wrongdoing; those documents should have been released unredacted (save info IDing victims) on 12/19.

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2025-12-27
[one person suggested SCOTUS would strike down a proposed Shadow Docket Sunlight Act]

I would argue that a law saying that SCOTUS must explain the basis for its decisions, including those on the shadow docket, is well within the authority of Congress.

The Constitution gives Congress a fair degree of latitude to regulate the courts, including SCOTUS. Article III, Section 2, Clause 2 says:

“In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a Party, the Supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

A law that doesn’t in any way impact the powers of the Court but only requires that it explain the reasoning for its actions cannot by any rational argument be said to be outside the limits of “Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

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2025-12-28
[A comment raised two versions of a “forced outing” law of transgender students by schools: A)employees must notify parents or B)they can notify or not at their discretion with no requirement either way.]

Bluntly, it doesn’t matter. Either way puts trans students at significant risk of unwanted outing and strips them of privacy rights.

I’m old enough to remember when children would be told that if there was trouble at home they should find an authority figure to talk to - including, specifically, “a trusted teacher.” Now, amid all the pushing for outing laws, that advice should be “except a teacher - unless you can be absolutely certain they will never mention to anyone at any time, even in passing, even at the risk of their career.”

The only acceptable version I can see is (B) with the word “their” replaced with “the student’s.”