So I said... #16 for March 31 to April 7

 So another variegated conglomeration of perspectives and postulates from your couthy sesquipedalian. At or least I think it is.

As always, I’ve included context where I thought it would help understanding the comment itself along with links to the original if you’d like to check it out. With that, here we go.

2026-03-31
[Most comments in WaPo on SCOTUS oral arguments re Trump’s birthright citizenship order supported the 14th Amendment being read literally. Supporting Trump, someone wrote dismissively “Please tell me which Supreme Court case ruled where the plaintiff’s parents were in the US illegally. This reminds me of being told the 14th amendment case about getting Trump off ballot was a slam dunk, only to lose 9-0.”]

I expect this will not satisfy you but US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) involved a child who was born to parents who were subjects of the Emperor of China and so had neither US citizenship nor allegiance but yes, were here legally. But his parents had no diplomatic exception (they were “not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China”), so he was “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US - interpreted to mean “required to obey US law.” So yes, the Court did rule on that very point. Thus, the Court ruled, Wong Kim Ark was a citizen by birth.

Bluntly, it’s hard to imagine a space in there where the argument “Yeah, but they were documented so that doesn’t count” would fit unless you were to argue that being undocumented means you’re not required to obey the law, an argument I doubt would find much support.

Oh, as for those “legal scholars,” a phrase I strongly suspect was used sarcastically, you should have asked me. I predicted it would fail, albeit on a different basis.(1)
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[Wong Kim Ark was actually a test case. In 1884, a person named Look Tin Eli had sued the government in the US Circuit Court for the Central District of California over his citizenship. He won, as the court affirmed that a native-born person is a US citizen regardless of race or ancestry. Some supporters were disappointed that the US declined to appeal because they wanted to get the matter before SCOTUS and the case of Wong Kim Ark provided the opportunity. The Look Tin Eli case was cited by SCOTUS in its favorable opinion.]

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2026-04-01
There should be a requirement that any client considering conversion “therapy” should be given accurate information on all risks involved, including psychological harm and increased risk of suicide, and the success rate. Then they can make an informed decision and bluntly I wonder how many would continue in that event.

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2026-04-01
[A woman in Kansas named Samantha Boucher noted Trans Day of Visibility by openly defying the state’s new bathroom ban.]

Bravo to her.

I wonder if [Gov. Kris] Koback would try to dodge the whole thing by saying he doesn’t want to bring attention to a “stunt” so will do nothing because she didn’t really “use” the restroom, just went in and right out.

I doubt he’s that clever, but these kinds of laws are often passed with the idea that trans folks will simply disappear from the restrooms and there will be no consequences that might get attention or even some sympathy among the public.

==

2026-04-03
[Referring to a list of suggested responses to being challenged for using the “wrong” restroom.]

I’ve re-written this three or four times because I keep thinking it could by misunderstood. This is my last shot at this.

I doubt the situation described will arise for me (I’m cis and in a safe state) since the freakage level over transmen in restrooms seems quite muted (which I say supports my contention that a lot of this is old-fashioned, albeit an extreme form of, sexism) but if it ever did I would be the bystander.

I think in that case my first instinct would be to blurt out “Why?” and if anything about being trans figured in a response, follow with “Prove it.” That is, “put up or shut up,” intending to shield the target from the harassment. (It occurs to me now that a better response would be “And?”)

But my favorite among the proposed bystander responses is #3 - actually, forget the first part as unnecessary; just use the second.

[The whole #3 was ”Who polices other people’s restroom use? You’re being really weird right now.”]

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2026-04-03
[The Ohio House passed a bill to outlaw drag shows. Someone argued that some provisions could make it illegal for transgender folks to appear in public.]

The bill is indeed bad and hopefully will be killed or at least significantly modified, but I have to say I think your description in some ways goes too far.

Specifically, the section on “adult cabaret performance” (lines 153-173 of the bill, found at https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/api/v2/general_assembly_136/legislation/hb249/02_PH/pdf/) repeatedly uses the terms “performance,” performers,” and “entertainers.” Applying that to “a transgender individual simply walking down the street wearing makeup” stretches the wording (the “legislative intent”) far past the breaking point.

But! That “cisgender woman playing a guitar in a park” wearing “too masculine” clothing? Oh, yeah. Just call her a performer and bang, covered by the law. Um, except wait - the section also says the performance must be “harmful to juveniles or obscene,” so just playing a guitar in a park isn’t enough, regardless of the clothing. (Yes, I looked up the definitions of “harmful to juveniles” and “obscene.” They’re all about “prurient interest” and “arousing lust.” https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2907.01)

I wholeheartedly embrace your (implied but accurate) argument that actually defining what constitutes “masculine” and “feminine” expression is a fool’s errand and I also agree that any attempt to do so, even by implication, is a threat to trans rights.

But here I’d focus on the obvious intention to ban drag shows by regarding them as de facto sexual and thus obscene. One thing I think the attempt shows is how difficult (if it’s even possible, which I very much doubt) to do that without trampling on basic rights and opening the door to “guilt by personal opinion of a cop.” Such bills can and should be rejected outright.

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2026-04-03
Ben Meiselas reports that in a talk at George Washington University, Karoline Leavitt told the audience that her advice is to always be the most well-read person in the room - then said Trump always is.

I used to call her Levity because no one should take her seriously but this goes beyond that. She is either a pathological liar or in some other way deeply mentally disturbed.

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2026-04-03
[The Georgia legislature ended its session with all of the nearly 15 anti-trans bills having failed.]

This is excellent news and everyone involved in this achievement should savor the moment and accept congratulations.

In passing, this raises something I’ve wondered about. This isn’t the first time a state legislature has come to the end of a session with a whole bunch of anti-trans laws dying without action.

So do some of these people sometimes introduce such legislation without really caring if it passes or not, they just want to be able to use “I introduced” or “I supported” such-and-such on the campaign trail, avoiding both the possibility of being “out anti-transed” by some opponent and the stronger pushback from the other side that could arise if it actually passed?

Just speculating; as a practical matter, I doubt it makes any difference.

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2026-04-04
[Referring to forgiving MAGAs: “My gut instinct is to NEVER forgive them for their cruelty and greed.”]

I’ll just offer a variation on what I said about this very topic several days ago on a different site.

I’m what used to be called a fallen-away Catholic. In fact, I fell so far I fell away from theism altogether. But I can remember from my Catechism what’s required for forgiveness in Confession: contrition and penance - genuine regret and a sacrifice to make up for what you did.

The penance was pretty invariably symbolic, saying some prayers and the like, but still was a necessary part of the process of forgiveness.

The same should apply here. You want me to “welcome you into our tent?” First, give me good cause to believe you sincerely regret what you’ve done. (I think of the woman in that viral clip who said she voted for the Orange Overlord three times, punctuated with “That’s on me. Obviously, I’m an idiot.”)

Second, tell me what you’ll now do to make up for - more importantly, to undo - the harm you’ve helped to cause. Note that “I’ll never vote for another Republican” is not good enough. It is not penance and will not serve the purpose any more than a convicted robber saying “I’ll never steal anything else” does not excuse them from consequences. Tell me what positive action you will take (or have taken).

Then we can talk about forgiveness.

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2026-04-04
So Gregg Phillips, associate administrator for FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, has doubled down on his claim of having been repeatedly teleported and connected it to his religious beliefs, claiming that the Bible refers to being “translated” or “transported” - that is, he got to a Waffle House through divine intervention.

“Here’s the real question,” he said. “What’s harder to believe? That God could move in a moment during a spiritual battle, or Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is coming again?”

In other words, which is harder to believe: 1+1=5 or 2+2=pi?

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2026-04-04
[Various extremist Xians want women to be unable to vote.]

Whenever I read about this sort of bigoted insanity presuming a Biblical basis for their anti-democratic, anti-freedom, male-supremacist crackpot notions, I recall seeing (as part of my job at the time) a marriage manual from either the late 16th or early 17th century advising that, as near as I can quote from memory, a man who marries a woman from who he can’t get advice has a fool for a wife - and she has a fool for a husband.

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2026-04-05
[In a comment, a parent told how their trans daughter, despite having adopted a new name at school, had declined using it at home until some time later.]

I can understand how that would hurt. But I suspect there was a reason: The whole purpose of the sort of social transitioning she did at school could have well been for her a matter of, if you will, trying it on, seeing if it fits, if it feels right, “is this me.” You said it yourself: She “tried” new pronouns and a new name.

Doing it with you, OTOH, isn’t a trial or a test, it’s a conclusion. A decision. She just needed more time to make it.

So when she did come out to you, she was saying “This is who I am. I’ve decided.” By giving her that time, you did the right thing.

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2026-04-05
My response to “Yeah, well, all lives matter!” was to say “Yes, all lives matter. And if we actually acted like all lives matter, it wouldn’t be necessary to say ‘Black lives matter.’”

[I also used to say that in saying or thinking the phrase, the stress should be on the last word, not the first.]

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2026-04-05
[“Some Democrats soften or side step trans rights. It doesn’t read as strategic. It reads as hesitation in the face of coordinated attacks.”]

“It doesn’t read as strategic. It reads as hesitation.”

More accurately, it reads as fear. The same old fear that has plagued the Democratic party for decades, the fear that the reactionaries might say something nasty about you in a campaign, so better to downplay the issue, even better to avoid mentioning it at all and be forever prepared to yield ground if it comes up. Consider it a political version of “duck and cover.”

Transgender rights are not the only example. There have been many over the years. The issue here, narrowly defined, is not trans rights but institutional cowardice, the kind of stark political cowardice that has had a major role in getting us into our current mess.

I know I have several times on this platform recalled seeing a survey from all the way back in the Gingrich era finding that people didn’t dislike Democrats for what they stood for but because they didn’t seem to stand for anything.

Well, that remains true today, as the intensity of Democrats’ active opposition to The Orange Overlord (TOO) is pretty much in inverse ratio to his favorability rating and the safer it looks politically on a given issue the more willing they are to go after him.

(I still cringe when I recall Hakeem Jeffries, around the time of the OBBB - the Obnoxious Barbarous Bigoted Bill - actually saying something to the effect that the Dems were waiting for TOO’s favorability rating to drop below 40% - in other words, when it was safe enough - promising that then, they’d really go after him. You can decide for yourself how well they followed through on that.)

I’ve said this before, perhaps even here, but I think it bears repeating. It’s not necessary for Dems to make trans rights the or even a centerpiece of their campaign, particularly as it ranks low on lists of people’s concerns and even Republicans in some polls say their party spends too much time on the issue.

What is necessary is to say clearly that you support trans rights and when challenged don’t evade and don’t back down.

And don’t settle for defense. Instead say something like “Of course I support trans rights because they are human rights. Trans folks have every bit as much right to grow and flourish, to go through their lives smoothly, without discrimination, and to be treated with respect and fairness the same as anyone else does. The really important question is why the other side is so damned focused on people’s genitalia instead of on” whatever issue or issues seem appropriate at the moment.

I’ve gone on long enough. Probably too long. So I’ll stop.

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2026-04-06
The Pentagon has failed its department-wide financial audit eight years in a row.

Admittedly, US military operations are very complex, so clean audits are a challenge.

But if any “woke” program had a record anything like that, Faux News would be melting TV screens with the heat of its rage.

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2026-04-06
I was watching the live NASA coverage of the Artemis mission. As the crew went to the Moon’s dark side (losing contact for 40 minutes) one of them just had to invoke Jesus to say “love your neighbor,” punctuated by ground control echoing the statement and adding “How great Thou art.”

:sigh:

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2026-04-07
[Erin Reed demolished a study claiming to prove GAC actually harms the mental health of trans youth.]

Okay, I gotta be honest. I got as far as the percentages (the 9.8% before vs. 60.7% after) and a vibrantly bright red flag started flying.

Phrased rather more coherently than my initial response, it was “Wait - they’re comparing the mental health of folks who got and didn’t get GAC based on psychiatric visits after an initial one? But if someone was at that initial visit to obtain GAC, getting additional counseling would be a pretty normal part of the process of transitioning. Of course they’d have more visits than the general population!”

And that was before learning that they might have years of visits before they could even start actual medical transitioning (i.e. GAHT) - not to mention the history of the study author.

And this tripe got published? Just wow.

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2026-04-07
[A commenter responded to Megan Rapinoe saying “They lost the battle on gay marriage” with “If they don’t lose hard enough over transgender issues, they will level their political guns to reverse that loss.”]

“they will next level all their political guns to reverse that loss”

They already are. The “LGB without the T” folks who think they’re safe are fools.
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2026-04-07
[They are. I do think that attacking us is distracting some of the SoCons efforts from that though...]

True enough. But the reactionaries have already legitimized the notion “transgender = drag queen = sex” and it’s not that far a reach to reprising “disgusting” descriptions of “disgusting” gay/lesbian sex of the sort I remember from not that many decades ago.

The LGB/noT crowd should remember that Martin Niemöller’s poem is not just about Germany.

THAT’S IT! SEE YA IN A WEEK OR SO!

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1 The 14th Amendment, Section 3, says that anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US is ineligible for public office. The argument was that Trump was thus disqualified and Colorado tried to remove him from the ballot. The Court ruled that it was up to Congress, not the states, to make the decision about ballot eligibility. I had predicted they would rule that for Constitutional purposes he couldn’t be held to have “engaged in insurrection” absent a conviction on a relevant charge.

SCOTUS: Colorado can't ban conversion "therapy"

So SCOTUS chose to mark Trans Visibility Day by taking another sledgehammer to another support for trans rights.

On March 31, the Scurrilous Six - plus two others (Sotomayor and Kagan) who demonstrated in a supporting opinion that they utterly missed the reality surrounding the entire matter - but I’ll get to that later…

Anyway, SCOTUS, by 8-1, declared that the state of Colorado cannot ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ minors, framing it as a “content-based regulation” of free speech while rather desperately (and largely successfully) avoiding mention of the actual real-world impact that can be expected to arise from this ruling.

Instead, the Supremes devoted an inordinate amount of time to fine-lining a difference between “speech” and “action” in order to declare conversion therapy is the former and not the latter and so is protected speech - even though the Court had long ago recognized that action can be speech(1) and speech can constitute action.(2)

The result is that the Court wound up arguing in pretty much just these words that a state expecting a licensed therapist to treat clients in accord with prevailing standards of care is an offense to the Constitution.

In fact, according to Neil Gore-much, writing for the majority, prevailing standards of care are irrelevant if indeed they exist at all.

Wholly embracing the Department of Injustice’s argument, he cited the fact that homosexuality was once considered an illness to declare that “medical consensus is not static” and may change(3) and so cannot be allowed to impact the speech of a therapist.

But if current best knowledge and practice is not to be the standard the state can expect of a licensed medical practitioner, what is the basis for any regulation? You are left, it would appear, only with regulations that are purely arbitrary (and so even less likely to be “static” because of being based on the prejudices and personal advantage of whoever has power at the moment) or with no regulations at all and anyone, even licensed practitioners, can claim anything(4) provided, that is, their targets are transgender young folks.

The idea of standards, though, raises something else I found deeply offensive in the ruling, which is the tendency of SCOTUS - especially the Scurrilous Six making up the majority of this bunch - to treat standards like modeling clay, to be shaped to whatever form fits the moment and their ideology.

Consider that in the Skrmetti decision, the Court found that Tennessee’s ban on GAC for young trans folks merely “removes one set of diagnoses,” that is, those relating to gender dysphoria, “from the range of treatable conditions,” labeling that drastic restriction on access to health care as legitimate because the state has the power to regulate the practice of medicine.(5)

But here, according to the majority, the state does not have the power to regulate the practice of medicine to remove one method from the range of acceptable therapies - even though, unlike GAC, that therapy, “conversion” or “reparative” therapy, is rejected by every major medical organization as “pseudoscientific,” “discredited,” ineffective, and downright harmful. Put less delicately because I don’t have to be, it’s claptrap and its only effect is to make things worse.

According to the Trevor Project, research shows that “LGBTQ+ youth who experienced conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year” and the experience is “associated with long-lasting social and emotional consequences, including depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance abuse, post-traumatic responses, loss of connection to community, damaged familial relationships, self-blame, guilt, and shame.”

But all of that is irrelevant, unimportant, just collateral damage to be justified on the grounds that, as Gore-much put it, “the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

But the whole damn point of conversion therapy is to enforce orthodoxy! The whole purpose is to enforce orthodoxy! Eagerly embraced by reactionary faux-”Christian” bigots, the whole notion is to turn gay and lesbian minors straight and get transgender children to identify as their birth sex rather than their true gender - in other words, to insure every child is heteronormative without regard to whether they are happy or not, whole or not.

The name itself gives it away: When it’s not called “conversion therapy,” as in “we’re going to convert you,” it’s “reparative therapy,” as in “you’re broken and we’re going to ‘repair’ you.”

Even Kaley Chiles, the therapist at the center of the case, who calls herself “a practicing Christian” who believes that “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design” gives the game away even as she tries to hide it within carefully-chosen and movement-approved language. In the wake of the decision, she talked about “look[ing] forward to being able to help them when they choose the goal of growing comfortable with their bodies” - that is, becoming cis straight - and about “walking alongside these young people” when in reality she is behind them, consciously pushing them to a pre-determined (by her) conclusion, while (in her mind) bravely refusing “to promot[e] state-approved goals like gender transition, which often leads to harmful drugs and surgeries.”(6)

So how in flaming hell could Kagan and Sotomayor, who we thought would have some grasp of what this decision means, sign on to it?

The simple answer is that they did not grasp what it means, preferring to dwell in some ethereal realm of legal theory instead of the real world and real impacts on real people, rather like looking to use Plato’s perfect forms to deal with the daily physical reality we inhabit.

In the concurring opinion she wrote for herself and Sotomayor, Kagan bizarrely suggested that a complete ban on therapy aimed at a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity might be lawful - that is, the state can ban pseudoscientific, discredited, conversion therapy provided that it denies all youth access to any LGBTQ+-related therapy at all. Which is not only ridiculous on its face, it would effectively ban transition entirely because no one does that without counseling as part of the process. A case of “you really didn’t think this through, did you?”

It gets worse, though, because the real issue with the law, she wrote, is that “the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, [and so] the constitutional issue is straightforward.”

Except this is not a goddam political debate! This is not a philosophical discussion about varying perspectives on some hypothetical situation. This is about scientific fact. This is about the authority of a state government to protect its people from being victimized by bogus treatments, and banning conversion therapy should be no more controversial and with no more impact on the Constitution than banning snake oil.

And the failure of Kagan and Sotomayor to recognize that is and I’m being gentle here profoundly disappointing and bluntly they should be ashamed of themselves.

There was one person who saw the situation for what it was and is and addressed the actual impact and for that reason said “No.”

That was, of course, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who not only dissented, she did so loudly, taking the unusual step of reading her opinion (or maybe a summary of it, it wasn’t clear in the sources I saw) in the courtroom, something traditionally done by a Justice to register just how strongly they disagreed with the ruling.

And it was indeed strong, going after every aspect of the majority opinion, for example calling the conclusion that regulating speech-based medical treatments is unconstitutional(7) because the treatment is being administered solely through speech “maddeningly circular” and “based on happenstance, not logic.”

She also pointed directly to the record of damage caused by conversion therapy and accused the majority of potentially “ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care” with some forms of treatment are effectively unregulated.

She concluded by saying that “the correct course of action here is to hold” a line set by precedent: “Speech uttered for purposes of providing medical treatment may be restricted incidentally when the State reasonably regulates the speaker’s provision of medical treatments to patients.

“To do anything else opens a dangerous can of worms. It threatens to impair States’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect. It extends the Constitution into uncharted territory in an utterly irrational fashion. And it ultimately risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”(8)

That clatter you hear is a mic hitting the floor.

For my own closing statement, I will defer to the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, who note something that at this moment it is vital for all of us, LGBTQ+ folks and allies alike, to remember:

“This case is about how conversion therapy can be regulated NOT whether conversion therapy is safe or legal. No matter how the Supreme Court ruled, conversion therapy will remain malpractice, consumer fraud, and a violation of the ethical standards that govern every licensed mental health professional in this country.”

We can, we should, we must carry it on.

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1 Laws banning flag burning as protest were struck down as free speech violations because burning a flag is “symbolic speech.”

2 Slander and libel, for example, which can have real-world impacts on, can cause actionable “damage” to the target.

3 The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973 - 53 years ago.

4 Which may in fact be pleasing to some on SCOTUS and the rest of their reactionary ilk, remembering George Will’s recognition of “Back to 1900” as “a serviceable summation of the conservative goal.” Because medical care based on traveling patent medicine shows was so cool.

5 I wondered at the time if Tennessee could just decide that, say, a diagnosis of diabetes was also outside “the range of treatable conditions” and so ban treatments for the condition and make insulin unavailable.

6 It would be interesting for someone to ask her first how many of her clients actually come to her of their own free will saying some version of “I’m gay/lesbian/queer/trans and I don’t want to be” as opposed to being brought there by parents or someone else and second how many come to her saying “I’m anxious/depressed/whatever and she turns it into “It’s because you’re LGBTQ+, that’s the problem.”

7 Technically, “presumptively” unconstitutional because what the Court actually did is send the case back down for a rehearing to examine the law under “strict scrutiny,” a standard requiring the law to be a) required to achieve a “compelling state interest,” b) “narrowly tailored” to the purpose, and c) using the “least restrictive means” to achieve it. So few laws survive that test that it’s reasonable to say it was struck down except for the paperwork.

8 I admit to getting an ego boost from the fact that parts of her argument overlapped some of my own objections.

So I said... #15 for March 22 to 30

The next issue of my occasional comments on various topics on various sites over the past week or so with, as always, enough additional context for folks to be able to tell what’s going on. A note on style: If within a comment something is in brackets - [ ] - it’s as the comment originally appeared and signified I was editing something inside a quote; if it’s in italics it’s something added here for added context.

Let’s go.

2026-03-21
[Chris Giedner (Law Dork) posted about a recent court action in a case involving employees of the US Agency for Global Media who had been placed on administrative leave during the DOGE days of defenestrations.]

Your last line - “it is likely that a number of employees have left the agency for other work” - raises something I think hasn’t been considered enough.

The minions and jesters of the court of The Orange Overlord don’t have to outright win to do significant damage to the ability of the federal government to do useful work, they just have to stall long enough for the employees booted out to be unable to wait for a resolution.

Suppose half of those employees have gone on to other jobs. The result would be a court-approved 30% cut in USAGM staff with no requirement (or reason to expect) that those open positions would be filled.

For a similar reason, I’m also concerned about another topic up for discussion which I will make bold to refer to here: The Orange Overlord’s half-brag, half-threat to issue an EO federalizing the midterms. I keep hearing it said that in that event he’d be sued and he’d lose because the law, the Constitution, and history are so clear on the matter.

But my worry is that, just like with DOGE (which I always pronounce “dodgy,” because it was/is), he doesn’t have to win - he just has to cause enough confusion and delay to screw things up, disrupt the whole voting process, in enough places to give him a reason (not a good one, just a “reason”) to declare a national emergency and start seizing ballot boxes and declaring the vote void.

This doesn’t mean he’d succeed or even that he’d try; maybe he’ll think the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) raised by his constant ranting about “voter fraud” will be sufficiently useful to convince the faithful the election was “stolen” and enough others that elections are “insecure” and voting must be restricted.

But either way, it is a potential for social chaos that we ignore at our peril.

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2026-03-22
[YouTuber Farron Cousins posted about a report that the USPS is within a year of bankruptcy. Just to be clear, Cousins was speaking in support of the USPS.]

Thanks for the attention to this, but you left out the part about requiring the USPS to pre-finance retirement benefits out to 75 years - meaning the USPS is putting aside money to pay future benefits for future retirees who haven’t been born yet. Oh, and the rules limiting how much the prices for stamps and services can go up. And how Congress can make all these rules for how the USPS operates while - as you note - not putting a single damn dollar toward the cost.

That last is particular infuriating because the wingnuts are forever going on about how people too poor to pay federal income taxes should have to pay them in order to have “skin in the game.” Shouldn’t the same apply here?

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2026-03-23
[A discussion about Flat Earth brought in a reference to Einstein and the Theory of Relativity.]

Just a correction about the history: Einstein did not think the universe was shrinking. He thought it was eternal, steady, neither shrinking nor expanding - because that was the accepted belief at the time. But someone (I’m embarrassed to admit I’m both unable to remember the name and too lazy to look it up) [Credit is usually given to Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman in 1922.] proved that Einstein’s universe was unstable, it had to be growing or shrinking. So he created the so-called “cosmological constant,” an arbitrary factor inserted to keep the universe stable. When it was proved the universe is expanding,, he took it out, calling his failure to trust his own work his “greatest blunder.”

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mis2026-03-24
[A meme criticized using “they” as 3rd-person singular - and used it that way in the meme.]

Use of “they” as a third person singular has been in use since the 14th Century. At some point, apparently in the mid-1700s, some tight-ass grammarians decided it was wrong or low-class or some such crap.

The meme only serves to puts an exclamation point on how stupid the complaint is.

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2026-03-24
[A video showed a dog aggressively defending a stray kitten during a rainstorm. A passing driver rescued both. People claimed it was AI because the dog appeared to have an extra paw.]

The argument is not entirely convincing because if the dog was leaning against the curb with its back legs sprawled out to the other side, that “extra foot” could easily be the foot of the left back leg folded under the dog’s body - particularly because the “extra” paw is turned in the way that such a paw would be in that case.

However - my problem is that I can’t see a way to trace that paw back to a leg. Maybe there is, but I’m not seeing it.

My conclusion: AI? Yeah, I suppose more likely than not - but not for the reasons people here have cited. And I’m not convinced it is.

What’s sad is not only that now we have to think “Is it real or is it AI” (Anyone else old enough to recall “Is it live or is it Memorex?”) but that it’s become an ego game to pore over details of cute but ultimately unimportant videos in order to be the first to shout “AI!” and thus demonstrate your supposed cleverness. Or cynicism, whatever.

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2026-03-24
So now it’s “extermination” rather than “obliteration” in Iran? What, did The Orange Overlord turn the page on his “Word of the Week” desk calendar?

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2026-03-25
A the risk of appearing in a future video about odd comments, I have to dispute one assertion you made about sex and gender. They are indeed different things, but gender is not a social construct. Gender expression, what behaviors, dress, and the like mark “masculine” and “feminine” in a given culture, is. But the concept of gender itself is not.

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2026-03-28
[Kentucky is about to pass a bill declaring trans people to be mentally ill and barring them from being teachers. A response referred to a likely veto by Gov. Andy Beshear.]

GOPpers hold super-majorities in both Houses of the Kentucky legislature. Beshear’s likely veto is for them a mere momentary glitch.

There was a time - not even all that long ago - when it was possible to regard moves like this as cold-blooded political calculation driven by selfish interest and rooted in the the notion that it was good for votes.

But we have gone far past that. There is nothing cold-blooded about this; rather, it is the fiery blood of hatred fueled by fanaticism - and, I strongly suspect, the self-loathing over guilty fantasies turned outward.
-
2026-03-28
[By the time the red and blue states finish passing their “Soft Secession” laws, there will be no “United” in United States.]

Tgerue enough. You can get a reasonable sense of the geographic nature of that division by examining a map of the US Courts of Appeal and looking at the 5th, 8th, 10th, and 11th Circuits, removing Minnesota, Colorado, and New Mexico, and adding Montana and Idaho.
-
2026-03-28
[A different comment on the same post referred to the Kentucky bill as “stupid” because of the mixture of standards it uses.]

It’s not stupid. Offensive, hating, vicious, lots of other noxious qualities, but not stupid. They know exactly what they’re doing, picking and choosing what works and words serve their twisted impulses.

It’s much like Humpty Dumpty, who said “When I use a word” - or a citation - “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

I look to the time when these Humpty Dumptys have their great fall and can’t be put together again.

==

2026-03-29
[At a hearing on March 26, Minnesota State Rep. Mary Franson dismissed a panel discussing climate change because “my faith is not in climate change ... my faith is in Jesus” and the world doesn’t end that way. The post also referred to Sen. James Inhofe who once carried a snowball onto the Senate floor to deny climate change.]

To Rep. Mary QuiteContrary, who says “My faith is not in climate change.” That’s because recognizing climate change does not require faith. You have actual physical evidence and records; you have observations and measurements; you have predictions borne out by later observations and measurements. You don’t need the “evidence of things not seen” if the things are seen.

Oh, and climatologists are not predicting the end of the world, you dumb bozo. They are predicting mass damage to human civilization. You may in your delusion think they’re the same. I suspect both those who die from the coming changes and those who manage to survive them will think differently.

You might do well to contemplate Mark 8:18 - “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?”

(As a footnote, I clearly remember five-time winner of my “Clown Award” James “RocksInHisHead” Inhofe - my appropriate name for him because his middle name was no joke “Mountain” - and his being repeatedly mocked by Sheldon Whitehouse after his stunt by going through a list of proofs for climate change and punctuating each by saying the Senate could believe the science or “the senator with the snowball.”)

==

2026-03-30
A few brief thoughts on my New Kings day.

All the expected adjectives - exciting, invigorating, enthusiastic, simultaneously joyful and angry, and more - all apply. The crowd was larger than the last time (although the organizers did fall short of their hope to double it) but the growth in energy clearly outstripped the growth in numbers.

I have a decent degree of confidence in my own crowd size estimates but I do lean toward being conservative because I envision a protest crowd as a measure of potential energy and I like thinking that the energy present is more than I’m estimating rather than less. With that in mind, I estimated 4,000 were present.

Beyond that, I was surprised even maybe taken aback by the overwhelmingly favorable response by the cars coming by on this busy roadway to the point that I didn’t hear a single vulgar shout and my housemate only noticed two - and it wasn’t just a single beep going by, it was people riding the horn the length of the line.

But what really did my heart good is that when things broke up, I hopped in my car to catch the last quarter hour or so of another rally because it was in the town I grew up and the idea there was one there, well, I had to see that. As I approached, I saw a small group at one corner of an intersection, okay, maybe they turned out 200 or maybe more - only to then realize that the line actually stretched out in all four directions and there were by my guess pushing 1000 people there. And yes, that made me smile. To steal a phrase, bigly.

Next up big day: May 1.

Missing Obama outrage? Memes and meanings

[A friend emailed me a meme showing a smirking Obama next to a poster saying “I used ICE to deport three million Americans at the same time I bombed seven countries without Congressional approval. Where was your outrage then?” He asked me “Is any of this accurate?”]

The simple answer is yes, the real answer a bit more complicated.

The administration of The Amazing Mr. O was a mess of contradictions on immigration.

On the one hand, it supported things like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the DREAM Act, which would have provided people who came here as children with a path to citizenship.

On the other hand, it did deport more people than any previous administration and yes the total came to about 3 million over the eight years, leading immigration-rights communities to call him “the Deporter-in-Chief.”

On the other other hand, over time, particularly after a policy change in 2014, the deportations came to focus more and more on people who had actually been convicted of serious crimes, as result of which the rate of deportations pretty steadily dropped over the period 2009-2016. And a not-insignificant percentage of the deportations were I forget the technical term but were people who were caught crossing the border and were sent back immediately, so that in the technical legal sense they never entered the US but were counted as deportations - as even the administration of The Orange Overlord not only admitted but criticized as suggesting Obama was overstating his administration’s attempts to “secure the border.”

Oh, wait, I need a fourth hand. A lot of the people now targeted by the reactionaries populating what should be called the wrong wing are those who had entered legally and simply overstayed their visa. They were supposed to obtain a green card within a year. The Orange Overlord canceled a policy that said that simply not having done that by then was not by itself sufficient grounds for detention or deportation. That policy was adopted in 2010 - that is, during Obama’s first term (and therefore existed throughout TOO’s first term).

As for outrage, it was indeed muted (I have groused often enough about how the left goes silent when a D is in the White House) but not absent; thus the “Deporter-in-Chief” label and the shift in later years in the direction of the actually convicted. So yeah, definitely bad - but today is way worse.

The outrage now is driven by four differences: The open violence and racism of the approach, intentionally designed to spread terror among immigrant communities; the indiscriminate sweeping up of citizens and legal residents¹; the refusal to acknowledge and deliberate efforts to avoid providing an opportunity for habeas relief; and the openly-declared intent to deport not the roughly 400,000 per year of the Obama term, but a million per year while all but openly declaring they want the US to be a white ethno-state. (”America is for Americans and Americans only.” - Stephen Miller, October 2024)

Oh, and don’t forget the attacks on birthright citizenship and the recrudescence of family separation. (I recently learned the word “recrudescence,” meaning “the return of something bad after a period of relief,” and I love it.)

Bottom line for me: Yes, Obama deported three million people and yes that was more than any previous administration and yes he didn’t get near enough pushback. I was among the guilty on that, as immigration was a topic I only occasionally addressed prior to about 2016. I did do a three-parter on the overall topic in 2019 which I reposted in 2024; if you want, you can see them here:

https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-three-fer-on-immiagration-part-one.html
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-three-fer-on-immigration-part-two.html
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-three-fer-on-immigration-part-three.html

As for the bombing, yeah, he absolutely did bomb seven countries (some claim eight, but that involves stretching definitions): Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen. And yes, it absolutely was without specific Congressional authorization.

Obama claimed the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) from either 2001 or, in the case of Iraq, 2002 gave him the authority, an assertion at best called a cheap and convenient excuse (more accurately, complete bullshit) to avoid any necessity to justify any of it and knowing he could get away with exercising extraordinary and extra-legal power because Congress was too feckless or in the case of Democrats too anxious about the horrifying prospect of challenging their popular president to do anything about it.² All he had to do was to wave around the label “terrorist” and anything goes³ - including goes “boom.”

It wasn’t only bombing, by the way. Over his time in office, he also blew through his own declared limits on US forces in Iraq, the time frame for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and no “boots on the ground” in Syria.

And again, the outrage was muted - but I had enough of my own. You might like to watch this starting at about 11:15 to see my 10 reasons I wasn’t going to vote for Obama in 2012:

I just realized that this was very likely TMI but screw it, I’m not going to edit it. Just correcting typos takes more energy than I case to devote.

-- 

¹I did note with bitter amusement that apparently when Obama deported people, they were “Americans,” not “illegal alien murderers and rapists threatening our very way of life.” Then again, a study of deportation cases in the period January 1, 2011 to September 30, 2014, discovered that over a quarter of them had to be dropped because the assumed “illegal alien” was somehow able to prove that they are a US citizen. As I said at the time, “We can only wonder how many others, unable to afford an attorney, got railroaded right out of the country in the midst of - or as the result of - rushed proceedings pushed through overloaded immigration courts without proper research or background.”

²It is worth recalling that in 2007, Obama said that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

³Including extrajudicial murder.

So I said... #14 for March 13 to 21

The latest more-or-less weekly collection of comments I've made at various sites on various topics, with come context added where needed for clarity.

2026-03-13
"There is no credible evidence of widespread non-citizen voting"

Hell there's no evidence of even "spread," never mind "wide." Studies repeatedly and I would easily venture invariably show such non-citizen voting at tiny fractions of one percent.

In fact, just today (3/12) came news that in January, the DOJ dropped an investigation into claims of non-citizen voting in Nevada in 2020 after finding just 38 possible - not confirmed, just maybe - non-citizen voters. That's 0.003% of the vote.

==

2026-03-14
[Alina Habba attacked Kamala Harris’ talk at Jesse Jackson's funeral, calling it "comments of desperation at Reggie Jackson’s funeral, and she didn’t even know him."]

I'm with Alina! Obviously, Harris didn't know Jackson. I mean, she didn't even mention "Thriller!"

==

2026-03-14
[Amber (Eevie) Bateman posted about her rejection of MAGA types who now regret voting for The Orange Overlord and "want to find community with the left," saying “I will never forgive them for the chaos, fear and cruelty.” In response, someone said "What would it take?" and that not "accept[ing] those willing to admit that they made a mistake" would make them turn back to TOO.]

I’ll tell you what it would take for me. Genuine contrition. Not just the banal “I didn’t vote for that” which just deflects responsibility onto some unspecified other, but a recognition that “I did vote for that because through my vote I helped it to happen” and “I either knew and did it anyway or damn well should have and it’s on me that I didn’t” and most importantly, “I was wrong.” Not just "I made a mistake," but "I was wrong."

Combine those with an actual commitment to doing something to undo the damage done - and I mean something both positive and goes beyond voting a different way in November - and we’ll have a basis to talk.

I was raised Roman Catholic and I recall the key elements of Confession were admitting your sins, being genuinely sorry, and doing penance. I also remember learning about existentialism, including the principle that you are responsible for your decisions. Put those together in principle and forgiveness becomes a possibility; put them in together in practice and it can be offered.

==

2026-03-14

[The Women's Institute announced it would continue accepting trans women despite complaints]

Years ago in another forum I used to have a heading of “Another Small Victory In The Struggle.” This definitely would have made the list. I would have been happier if the WI was active in the US, but I will take what I can get.

==

2026-03-14
[Mindy OkayIloveyoubyebye wrote about returning to it, i.e., writing, modestly dismissing having been in a couple of anthologies.]

“No big deal, trust me.”

I beg to differ. Being in an anthology is a big deal. Period.

For the literally hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written over the years, my entire list of “published by others” is a stolen leaflet text and an acknowledgement over a chapter about deterrence theory in the 1986 book Ammunition for Peace-makers. So being in an anthology would be a thrill.

And I think you for this note because it has spurred me to get back in touch with an old friend, a woman who writes horror fiction and, like you, was in a couple of anthologies - that last being the spark.

==

2026-03-14
And now for today’s Clown Award:

Pete “I’m a manly man” Hogsbreath: “The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that.”

And the only reason for a traffic jam is the number of cars on the highway. It would be open if no people were driving.

==

2026-03-17
So when will the Israel-US war on Iran end?

Apparently, when our Orange Overlord feels it in his bone spurs.

==

2026-03-17
[A young Dem candidate was asked on CNN if dems need to "moderate" positions on social issues and "move to the center."]

"Do we need to “moderate, move to the center?”

No effing way. What we need to do is aggressively advocate for what we believe in, for what is just and right and stop trying build campaigns on anodyne aphorisms only to shrink away from even those as soon as the right wing - which should be called the wrong wing - cocks an eyebrow in our direction.

I still remember all these years later polling that was done in the early days of the Newt Gingrich era that found that people didn’t like Democrats - but not because of what they stood for but because they didn’t seem to stand for anything, seemed to have no core values from which they would not shrink in the face of opposition, no convictions that were not subject to focus-group-based re-writes.

This doesn’t mean that we have to make any given issue, including trans rights, the centerpiece of a campaign. Candidates and parties certainly can focus on the issues most important to them or most likely to bring victory.

What is does mean, however, is that we have to have ethical and moral standards on which we will stand.

It does mean that we hold some things to be basic truths - including, as here, that trans rights, including access to health care and full engagement in society, are human rights and therefore worthy of support and we are called to meet that need.

It does mean that we do not evade or hide our commitment to those basic truths and when challenged on them we do. not. back. down. And that includes ditching Gavin Newsom-style triangulation.

And it does mean as a practical and tactical matter that we should adopt one part of the reactionary playbook: Attack, attack, attack. A past world chess champion named Emanuel Lasker advised players that no move should be entirely defensive. Every move should carry some threat. It’s wise advice in politics as well as chess: Even defense should involve counterattack.

“Moving to the center” as a result of political calculation rather than genuine commitment violates all those principles and generally serves to lose you supporters without gaining ground among your adversaries. In all honesty, I can’t say it never works - but it has failed often enough to file it under “Use only as desperation.”

==

2026-03-18
[The TN House has advanced a bill ordering health care providers to give the state personal medical information that would enable the public identification of anyone receiving transgender care.]

I didn't get to the end your subhead before I was looking up HIPPA to confirm my understanding of it.
I'm certainly not known for any Pollyanna-ish tendencies, but I have to say that after spending some time looking at that, including your link to the discussion of exceptions, I am still mystified as to how these buffoons and bozos can think - for all their self-satisfied pretensions to the contrary - that this bill does not violate HIPPA and by passing it Tennessee will not be setting itself up for an embarrassing defeat in court.
-
2026-03-18
[This cruel, draconian, and needless bill is designed as a test case for the Supreme Court with the aim of codifying transphobia into law.]

No argument there. But what I think will cripple it in court is that the whole impact on trans folks, desired by the bill's supporters or not, doesn't impact the claim that it violates federal law.
-
2026-03-18
[I hope they pass it so they can get their asses sued so hard - problem with that is if it passes, trans folks will be persecuted by this law until it gets thrown out.]

Which is why it would be good for opponents to very publicly note before the bill gets final passage that in the likely event of the bill being tossed there could be potential for legal consequences for those who cooperate.

==

2026-03-18
[An anti-trans ballot initiative was certified for the November ballot in Colorado, leading someone to say Colorado should be scratched fromthe list of “safe” states.]

No, not yet. Remember, what's happened is that a ballot question got certified. That's all. It's a long way from passing. Considering it's common for ballot questions to lose support as a campaign goes on and that we don't even know if it has majority support now (personally, I suspect it doesn't), while there is a battle to be fought, it's way too early to throw in the towel.

As a footnote, I’ve just seen where Colorado’s second largest school district rejected demands from the Orange Overlord’s Dept. of Miseducation to enact anti-trans policies.

==

2026-03-20
[A woman in Georgia has been charged with attempted murder for taking mifepristone.]

It’s what women have been saying all along. What health care advocates have been saying all along. The drive to ban abortion doesn’t have an effing thing to do with “the sanctity of life” or any of the rest of that bs.

It’s about domination, control, and subjugation. And anyone who tells you otherwise is either a damn fool or a despicable liar.

==

2026-03-21
[Chris Giedner (Law Dork) posted about a recent court action in a case involving employees the Agency for Global Media who'd been placed on administrative leave during the DOGE days of defenestrations.]

Your last line - "it is likely that a number of employees have left the agency for other work" - raises something I think hasn't been considered enough.

The minions and jesters of the court of The Orange Overlord don't have to outright win to do significant damage to the ability of the federal government to do useful work, they just have to stall long enough for the employees booted out to be unable to wait for a resolution.

Suppose half of those employees have gone on to other jobs. The result would be a court-approved 30% cut in USAGM staff with no requirement (or reason to expect) that those open positions would be filled.

For a similar reason, I'm also concerned about another topic up for discussion which I will make bold to refer to here: The Orange Overlord's half-brag, half-threat to issue an EO federalizing the midterms. I keep hearing it said that in that event he'd be sued and he'd lose because the law, the Constitution, and history are so clear on the matter.

But my worry is that, just like with DOGE (which I always pronounce "dodgy," because it was/is), he doesn't have to win - he just has to cause enough confusion and delay to screw things up, disrupt the whole voting process, in enough places to give him a reason (not a good one, just a "reason") to declare a national emergency and start seizing ballot boxes and declaring the vote void.

This doesn't mean he'd succeed or even that he'd try; maybe he'll think the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) raised by his constant ranting about "voter fraud" will be sufficiently useful to convince the faithful the election was "stolen" and enough others that elections are "insecure" and voting must be restricted.

But either way, it is a potential for social chaos that we ignore at our peril.

The return of The Outrage? Alabama qualifies.

I've been thinking about resurrecting "Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages," a popular feature of my old cable access show. Part of the reason is this would be in line for recognition:

On March 17, the Alabama Supreme Court effectively ruled that everyone in Alabama - residents and visitors alike - must carry  personal identification with them at all times even though there is no law requiring it.

This came as the result of a suit filed by Michael Jennings, a Black pastor who was arrested in May 2022 by Childersburg police while watering his neighbor’s flowers after a woman called 911 about a "young Black male" on the property.

When the cops came, Jennings identified himself as “Pastor Jennings,” said he lived across the street, and that he was caring for his neighbor’s yard while they were vacationing.

Apparently still suspicious that this Black man (Did I mention Jennings is Black?) seen in police body camera videos standing in a driveway holding a garden hose and spraying glowers was up to something nefarious, the cops demanded he produce identification.

He refused, saying he'd done nothing wrong.

So the cops arrested him for "obstructing a government operation." The charge was later dismissed, and he sued the city and the officers in federal court for false arrest.

Federal District Judge R. David Proctor dismissed the claim but in what could well be thought a surprise twist, the reliably right-wing 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, finding that the cops did not have sufficient cause for an arrest.

Here's where it becomes an Outrage.

Proctor took it on himself to ask the Alabama Supreme Court to weigh in - much like Daddy says "no," so you run to Mommy to see if you can get a different answer. 

Well, the Mommy court ruled 6-3 that the state’s “stop-and-identify” law “does not,” wrote Justice William Sellers for the majority, “exclude from its purview a request” - “request” being legalese for “do it or else” - “for physical identification when a suspect provides an incomplete or unsatisfactory response to an officer’s demand” for ID. Meaning the demand for physical ID was legit and so was the arrest.

Okay, but who gets to decide when a “suspect” had offered an “incomplete or unsatisfactory response?” Who gets to decide if that response is incomplete or unsatisfactory enough to justify a demand for physical ID? Why, the cop, of course. The very person towards who you were not overtly subservient gets to decide if you’ve been cooperative enough or not.

What’s more, Sellers’ opinion referred to “Terry stops,” named for the 1968 SCOTUS case Terry v. Ohio, in which the Supremes said cops only need reasonable suspicion to stop and question someone, “reasonable suspicion” meaning they could specify an “articulable reason” - no hunches or feelings, but a reason they could actually state - for suspecting the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity. Apparently in Alabama a Black man watering flowers (Did I mention Jennings is Black?) constitutes reasonable suspicion of criminal intent.

The ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, The Woods Foundation, and the Cato Institute and filed amicus briefs in support of Jennings, to no avail. Matthew Cavedon of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice accurately described the decision as a “significant expansion of government power over people.”

Which it is. Applied to the real world, this gives cops, at least (for now) in Alabama, the effective power to stop anyone on the flimsiest of pretexts and demand physical ID anytime they want to and to arrest you if you won’t produce it - or if you can’t because you’re not carrying any because there is no law requiring you to. Put another way, the cops can demand physical proof of ID because the law doesn’t say they can’t.

Which seems to be the standard rule which is being applied here: Cops can do whatever the laws don't say they can't, a principle predating and extending well beyond the injustice to Jennings, who is just another example of the long history of abuse we have wrapped in that standard.

And it properly can be said of both the particular wrong to Jennings and the collective long train of wrongs done to a long train of people under that principle: It is an Outrage.

So I said... #13 - March 5-12

Here we have the latest more-or-less weekly collection of my various musings and comments on things here, there, and everywhere, with context added where I thought it necessary for folks to get what was going on.

A note on style: If within a comment something is in brackets - [ ] - and it is in regular type, that’s how it appeared in my original comment. If it’s in italics, it’s something I’ve added here for additional clarity for those who didn’t see the original.

Onward.

2026-03-05
[A friend asked me via email where was the school that was bombed in Iran at the opening of the war and for a suggestion for keeping up with events. Unfortunately, I overlooked the mail for a couple of days.]

A little late for the purpose, I expect, but yeah, there was a school bombed in Minab, a small city in southern Iran on the Straits of Hormuz. I had heard about a second school, but now I don’t see any reference to it.

The US and Israel both deny responsibility (although the Pentagon is “investigating”), so I guess the place just spontaneously combusted - or engaged in what the Department of Death would probably call a “self-initiated rapid kinetic disassembly.”

It is possible the school wasn’t the target (there is a military site nearby) but al-Jazeera did an investigation showing that either the school was hit deliberately or that the US and/or Israel relied on intelligence that was 10 years out of date.

[To save you having to check the link: Intelligence images showed that 10 years ago the building where the school was had been physically separated from the rest of the base and facilities like a sports field had been added. As a footnote, major US media have started reporting the same thing - over a week later.]

Neither case changes the fact that it was hit and “oops, my bad, oh well,” is not an acceptable response - particularly in light of the fact that there have now been large-scale attacks on undeniably civilian targets including hospitals, residential buildings and schools across Tehran and other locations with repeated accounts of “double-tapping,” that is, bombing a site, pausing long enough for assistance to arrive, then bombing the same place again.

(As a sidebar, that’s a tactic for which the US has been known; for one example, the fire bombing of Dresden in WW2 involved a wave of bombing followed by a second one deliberately timed to catch fire-fighting equipment out in the open.)

For a general source of info beyond regular media (where I STRONGLY recommend non-US sources), two that are good on keeping up with events in the vicinity are Drop Site News and within that Jeremy Scahill because they have contacts within the Iranian government (and also Hamas) for perspectives we generally never see in US media. I’m usually very suspicious of partisan sources, but I’ve seen enough cases of something reported on Drop Site being confirmed - days later - in major media to give them a fair degree of credibility.

==

2026-03-05
[Indiana AG Todd Rokita has been compiling a list of his state’s trans people, apparently intending to copy Kansas in invalidating their IDs and maybe charging them with the felony of “falsified” documents.]

FWIW, “retroactively enforcing this would pose a significant legal question” is an understatement as it would appear to be a blatant example of an ex post facto law, trying to make into a crime an action that was not illegal at the time it was performed.

That may be why [Kansas AG Kris] Kobach, who has never shown any shyness about pursuing his own personal obsessions (including extremism in restrictive voter laws, being anti-choice, and xenophobia, the latter of which being where I first encountered him in 2004) didn’t try that route in Kansas.

==

2026-03-06
[This was about a video by Dave McKeegan about Bill Kaysing, considered the father of the “we never landed on the Moon” conspiracy theory. McKeegan is a professional photographer who uses that expertise to debunk photo and video “evidence” that the landing was faked.]

Something that struck me was in the clip about the interview that mentioned the [Werner] von Braun memo supposedly saying a Moon landing was impossible. Part of the answer got rather buried under the interviewer’s next question; that part being that the memo reported von Braun as saying there was a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting to the Moon on the first try.

Considering the idea of just shooting a rocket straight to the Moon and landing there was at one time on the table, the existence of such a memo is plausible. But since we didn’t do it that way, we first just went around the Moon and later sent a multi-stage rocket to end with a module orbiting the Moon with a lander that descended from that orbiting module to make the actual landing, that memo, even if real, is wholly irrelevant.

==

2026-03-06
[This is sort of out of sequence. In the previous issue of “So I said...” I posted my reaction to a video by the Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta questioning the report about a US military commandeer preaching “last days” theology to his troops. Subsequent to that posting, I got a reply to my comment; I think my response is worthy of including here. For the original, go here and scroll down to March 3.]

“Until it’s sourced, it’s just more smoke and that’s the last thing we need more of. Don’t you think?”

It’s not unsourced. It’s from a reputable source with access to the original material whose accounts have proven accurate in the past.

Should we dismiss as “smoke” accusations of Trump abusing a child because we don’t have the original source? In fact all we truly have is a paper reading that someone whose name we don’t know said that someone whose name we don’t know said it was so. But given the overall circumstances, I have no trouble giving a great deal of credence to that report even though a court could legitimately dismiss it as hearsay.

Same here. Lack of perfect knowledge does not prevent reaching justifiable conclusions. And my conclusion is that, given that Hegseth is a Christian nationalist who has conducted Bible study classes while in office and has opened the gates to proselytizing (plus the fact that right-wing religion being pushed in the military has been an issue before), yes, there was a commander preaching apocalypticism and yes, there are others preaching some flavor of fundamentalist Christianity to those under their command.

And I find Hemant’s doubts quite unpersuasive.

==

2026-03-08
[Still more on this. Jonathan Larsen, author of the piece Hemant questioned, replied to the critique. In comments there some suggested Hemant acted out of jealousy that he hadn’t broken the story himself.]

I don’t think jealousy is part of it. Hemant tends to work in the areas of court cases, public and organizational statements, and news accounts - that is, areas where questions about sources generally don’t arise. So I expect he’s not used to dealing with stories like this where you have to some degree make the call as to the trustworthiness of sources.

Jonathan touched on one of the reasons I found the story persuasive: MRFF has been reliable in the past, so it may be a single source, but it’s one that has demonstrated trustworthiness.

==

2026-03-08
Sam Ames (sames) recently posted an essay about forced outing of transgender students in schools.

He referred to his “least favorite line” in a recent SCOTUS action upholding at least for now an injunction against a California law barring the practice. (To be clear, this doesn’t mean California now has forced outing; it means that such outing can’t be banned statewide pending further court action.)

That line was “But those [student privacy] policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”

“Least favorite” is a worthy description because a world of hurt can be found in that supposedly self-evident homily.

I started to say “because it assumes,” but that’s not strong enough. It doesn’t just assume, it sets as a baseline declaration not only that parents protect the best interests of their children but also that they know what those interests are, that parents by definition “know what’s best” for their kids.

And we do like to tell ourselves that. But in fact, in practice, we don’t say that, not by definition. Rather, it’s a “rebuttable assumption,” an assumed stating point that can be overcome by evidence - where possible before any harm arises. That’s why there are agencies like Child Protective Services, why there is such a thing as foster care, why there are custody battles in divorce proceedings, because we as a society recognize that parents don’t always know what’s best for their children, that sometimes they are even harmful to them.

Forced outing policies strip away a layer of protection for children, turning “rebuttable assumption” into “final decision” and opening LGBTQ+ (these days, mostly trans) children to risk of harm without the chance for questions to be raised until it’s too late and without providing them any benefit.

In fact, I wrote somewhere else recently that I can recall from my youth seeing PSAs saying that if there’s trouble at home, “tell someone,” with one specific example being “a trusted teacher.” With forced outing, a teacher becomes someone you must not trust, not just because they might out you but because they would have no true choice in the matter, not when silence risks their entire career.

Trans children get no benefit from forced outing and supportive parents effectively have no need for it. Rather, I would argue that the only people who benefit from such a policy - other than the trans-hating ideologues who just want to force all trans folks so far into the closet they couldn’t even find the door much less open it - are the hostile parents, those whose response to having a transgender child would range from fury to forced conversion therapy to total rejection and ejection from the home.

So to any parent who would say “Why didn’t the school tell me my kid says they’re trans,” my reply is that’s the wrong question. The right one is to ask yourself “Why couldn’t my kid tell me? What message am I giving out such that they felt they needed to hide this from me?” Or, both more philosophical and harsher, “Do I really love my kid? Or do I just love the idea of what I imagine them to be?”

Forced outing answers neither of those questions. It just provides a means to avoid them.

==

2026-03-09
On February 25, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said an “historic” agreement with the US was “within reach” ahead of renewed talks in Geneva. On the 27th, Oman’s foreign minister said a “breakthrough” had been reached in the negotiations.

On the 28th, the bombing began.

In the ST:TOS episode “The Savage Curtain,” one character is a reincarnated version of an Earth warlord named Colonel Phillip Green. Kirk says he was known for attacking his enemies in the middle of peace negotiations.

That description was used to establish Green as representative of historic evil.

Just a thought.

==

026-03-09
Wait - so Dep. UN Ambassador Tammy Bruce says “two times they voted for him,” that is, Trump? (About 7:15 at the linked video.)

So Bruce is saying The Orange Overlord lost the 2020 election? She better hope the The Boss doesn’t notice!

==

2026-03-11
[The 4th CCoA upheld a West Virginia law that denied Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery, in so doing effectively extending the Skrmetti ruling allowing bans on transgender care from youth to adults.]

“It is not irrational for a legislature to forgo Medicaid coverage of arguably ineffective and dangerous procedures.”

The word “arguably” is doing a hell of a lot of work - in fact, all the work - in that sentence.

I suppose we can expect the same panel at some point in the future to rule that a state can ban the teaching of evolution because it is “arguably” (according to creationists) incorrect and ban the use of globes in schools because the planet is “arguably” (according to flat Earthers) a flat disc while asserting, as it did here, the state “did not have to take any third party at its word to find a good reason” for the bans - that is, “We don’t need to hear from no stinkin’ experts.”

It sometimes seems the 4th and 5th Circuits are in some private competition as to which can make the stupidest argument to support the cruelest outcome. This one will be hard to beat, but I’m sure the 5th will take up the challenge.

Oh, btw, for all the terfs and “LGB without the T” types out there who I’m sure are quite gleeful over this, who will you turn to when some court rules that a state’s authority to “encourage citizens to appreciate their sex” is interpreted to mean their “natural” sex, so “becom[ing] disdainful of their sex” by rejecting “normal reproduction” sex by being gay or lesbian can legitimately be outlawed?

Reminder: Niemöller’s poem was not just about Nazi Germany.

==

2026-03-12
[Under a new rule, the State Department will be able to revoke trans people’s visas over “misrepresentation,” giving ICE grounds to suspect all non-native born trans people of being in the US illegally. In response, someone asked “Why is our government so obsessed with the genitals of strangers?”]

Because they are trying to suppress the lurid, guilty fantasies the concept of being transgender stirs in them, an outgrowth of our on-going, Puritanical, gross immaturity about anything even remotely related to sex or sexuality.

So I said... for February 25 to March 4

Updated to include links, which I failed to include before posting.

The next issue of my irregular compilation of comments I’ve made at various places on various issues over the past week or so, with some added context as seemed needed.

2026-02-25
[In the SOTU, the Orange Overlord endorsed forced school outing of trans kids.]

What still seems so tragic to me that is I can recall from a good number of years ago PSAs on TV (okay, maybe it was radio; the words are what I remember) telling children that if there were problems at home and they needed help, to tell an adult, including, I remember this specifically, “a trusted teacher.”

Now, that’s simply no longer true. If you’re trans and home feels like a hostile environment, a teacher is someone you dare not trust. Not just because they might expose you to your parents but because they might have no choice in the matter, so you remain silent, feeling trapped and isolated and alone - and potentially suicidal.

Ignorance leads to fear (transphobia). Fear leads to hate (transmisia). Hate leads to inflicting suffering. And the infliction of suffering will be described as doing good - because the alternative is facing the reality of what it is being done and that is too much to bear.

[Footnote: “Tell a trusted adult” is still standard guidance. The issue is, if you’re a trans child, who could such a person be?]

==

2026-02-26
[H.R. 7661, introduced hours after the SOTU, would prohibit schools from “promoting” or “facilitating” anything involving “gender dysphoria” or “transgenderism” and codify the idea that anything to do with trans people is “sexually explicit.” The only thing other than being trans designated “sexually explicit” is depictions of sexual intercourse as defined in 18 USC §2256.]

This just goes to confirm what I’ve been saying for a long time: These are mentally disturbed, ethically warped people driven nearly mad by their obsession with sex such that they can’t conceive of being transgender as a matter of who a person is but only in terms of how they “do it” and “what’s in their pants” and all their attempts at disappearing trans folks are really attempts to repress their hidden, lurid, guilty fantasies.

==

2026-02-27
A simple question I have not seen asked regarding impending war on Iran:

WHAT THE FLAMING HELL IS “COMMERCIAL-GRADE ENRICHED WEAPONS MATERIAL??”

I have to assume the “enriched weapons material” refers to enriched uranium or plutonium. The only sense I can make of “commercial grade” is that it’s enriched to a degree useful for commercial applications - specifically, running a nuclear reactor.

That’s an enrichment level of 3-5% (i.e. 3-5% of the fuel is actual U-235 or Pu-239). Weapons-grade is >90% enriched.

So unless there is some explanation of which I am unaware, the administration of The Orange Overlord and his coterie of clowns and lickspittle liars is threatening to go to war because Iran is “a week away” from being able to operate a nuclear reactor.

[I made essentially the same comment just in a shorter form on another site on March 1 in reply to the observation that “they’ve been saying Iran is days away from producing nuclear weapons for decades. They’re probably hoping we don’t remember that so they can justify what he wants to do.]

==

2026-02-27
[In the Orange Overlord’s SOTU he said “The first duty of government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” The same day, a nearly-blind, non-English-speaking Burmese refugee was found dead after being dumped by CPB at night, in a Buffalo winter, five miles from his home.]

“If he’s going to die, the better he do it sooner, so to reduce the illegal population!”

Seems to me I heard that or something like it sometime in I think it was December.

==

2026-02-28
So Secretary of “War is Peace” Pete “Manly Man” Hogsbreath says the Pentagon has made a deal with Scouting America to eliminate DEI programs and end tolerance of transgender scouts.

To the relief of some, the group declared it would still “have transgender people in our program going forward.”

For my part, I’ll hold my applause until I hear more details. The statement says that yes, trans kids are still welcome - but it does not say that they will not be programmatically segregated by birth sex nor does it say anything about the cutting back on or elimination of DEI programs.

Suppose some state said “Of course trans people are welcome to use our bathrooms or compete in sports - as long as they do it according to their sex assigned at birth.” Would that satisfy? Because it shouldn’t.

This may turn out better than I think it sounds, but I’ll need to be convinced it isn’t just a smokescreen over what is essentially a surrender.

In any event and personally, I think Scouting America should tell the Pentagon to, as I used to put it, “remove thyself to an alternate location, there to engage in autoerotic activities” - i.e., GFY. Crafts, outdoor camping, and sports should not be pipelines to the military.

==

2026-02-28
[In response to the same announcement, someone noted the Scouts are significantly dependent on the DOD, e.g., the Corps of Engineers maintains a lot of Summer Camp infrastructure.]

Yes, and why do they do it? Civic duty? Contribution to the public good?

Nah. It’s because Scouting America acts - whether consciously or by default - as recruitment for the military. The group will even brag about how many of its participants wind up in the military.

==

2026-03-01
[Robert Reich referred again to how offended he was by Randy Newman’s song “Short People.”]

Randy Newman’s song “Short “People” was intended as a satire about prejudice. Apparently he was unaware of the prejudice based on height, saying later he couldn’t see why people would think that anyone “was as crazy as that character” or something to that effect. It was not his only satirical song about bigotry where he spoke in the voice of the bigot, it was just the one that became well known. If you still wonder, you should read the lyrics to see that it is deliberately way over the top.

Just remember, Newman also wrote “Political Science” in which he said we should “drop the big one” on everybody because everybody hates us - except on Australia because we “don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo.” Failing to recognize obvious satire is a rookie mistake.

==

2026-03-01
So I see people saying “Iran is just another distraction from Epstein.”

NOT EVERYTHING IS A DISTRACTION, DAMMIT!

This is a real war with real people really dying, not a damn sideshow and I guarantee you it’s not a “distraction” to the people doing the suffering and dying.

Do you really think that there would be no war, no attacks on immigrants, no undermining of science and public health, no stripping of LGBTQ+, particularly trans, rights, no voter suppression, no pushing of white Christian nationalism, no assertions of near-dictatorial powers, no threats about Greenland or Canada, no the list just goes on and on and on, if it wasn’t for Epstein?

Get a flaming grip!

[This resulted in my being accused of being unconcerned with child rape so I’ll add this addendum, something I apparently should have included but didn’t because I thought it was apparent: When you label something as “a distraction,” you are saying it is unimportant, irrelevant, not worthy of attention and can be safely ignored; in fact it should be ignored so as to keep all focus on whatever is claimed in the particular case to be the singular “real” issue.

As horrific as the facts and the further implications surrounding the Epstein files are, I find myself incapable of letting pass without resistance all the other examples of heinousness coming from the court of the Orange Overlord. I will make no apologies for that and I reject the underlying suggestion that those actions would not have been undertaken, that is, were done only to serve as distractions, were it not for Epstein.]

==

2026-03-03
[Hemant Mehta wrote about his doubts about a story that a combat-lever commander told officers under their command that Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon,” leading to the Second Coming.]

I come to this as, if you will, a virgin, as while I had seen the headline on [Jonathan] Larsen’s story, I hadn’t read it. I still haven’t.

That said, I was put off by your “just asking questions” approach, one that despite your disclaimers came across much more as debunking the story than as expressing healthy skepticism.

For example, you took a couple of personal shots at [Mikey] Weinstein[, President and Founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the source of the story] - “he brags about being repeatedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” “every email publicized by MRFF reads more like an internal fundraising email,” the group “takes in a lot of donations on the backs of stories like these,” he personally gets paid about $375,000, about half the group’s total income - while insisting they’re not relevant or “not accusations, just observations.” Then why bring them up?

What’s more, some of your “red flags” aren’t even flags, much less red ones. So the theology expressed by this commander isn’t the same as that of Pete Hegseth? Okay, now that is irrelevant not only to the truth of the story but to the central issue of such “last days” theology being expressed in the military and how far it is being spread, if it is. 

You also said “If they’re actively editing the emails, then they need to admit that” just a few paragraphs before stating that he did precisely that when you asked for an original.

So do I think that some commander could have expressed that sort of “final days” theology to those under their command? Yes. Considering the number of examples of right-wing pastors declaring Trump was “anointed of God” to be president and “Jesus is returning,” I have no doubt.

Beyond that, I suspect that a lot of the reports were repeating scuttlebutt and that they didn’t “call a reporter” because beyond concern about being outed - seriously, how many reporters would be willing to deal with a report from someone who wouldn’t ID themselves, leaving no way know the source - they didn’t have additional info to offer and it was more a case of “I heard about this and I thought you should know.”

The question of how widespread the particular form of religious extremism involved is in the military and if it’s being promoted by higher-ups are important ones and wholly worthy of investigation. But neither was the question at hand; the reliability of the story and therefore the trustworthiness of the MRFF was.

Bottom line: At this point, do I have cause to doubt that basic story? No. And bluntly, neither do you.

==

2026-03-04
[In this case, literally “said.” A local Board of Education was considering revoking its guidance on dealing with transgender students, that is, stripping away their protections. Several folks spoke against it at the meeting; this is from what I prepared (which likely makes it seem more polished than it was as delivered).  In the end, the motion lost on a tie vote of 4-4.]

Good evening.

I come before the Board tonight to urge you to continue to support and indeed where possible to strengthen the Transgender Student Guidance.

I say this despite the fact that I am not trans, no one in my family is trans, and in fact as far as I know I do not personally know a single transgender person.

The point is, you don’t need to have a personal connection to be to be aware, to understand, to have empathy.

I was bullied growing up. A lot. I was a fat, shy, bookish kid, the kind who becomes a natural target for bullying, for mockery, being picked on, teasing, and “jokes.” The result was that I never felt connected, never felt I belonged.

It was bad enough that in my teen years I seriously considered suicide and a few years later I attempted it.

Looking back on that time, I can understand to some degree what it’s like to be trans, indeed how much harder to be trans than it was for me. Because if you’re trans, you’re not just made to feel apart, you’re actively set apart, tagged, marked  as the “other,” as the “not us” by the society around you - increasingly, even legally so.

Transgender children deserve support, protection, and encouragement sufficient to thrive of the sort that any child should be able expect in any public school.

I’m not an expert, but as a layperson I’m fairly conversant with the science involved here. But you don’t have to be an expert to know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, between fair and unfair, just and unjust, between what is kindness and what is cruelty, to recognize the difference between performative concern and concealed contempt.

So I want to again, call on the Board of Education to continue, and where possible deepen, the support. the protection, the inclusion for trans students in this school system.

What’s more, I call on you to not be deterred or stampeded by the fears, fables, and fairy tales likely to be thrown at you in the course of considering this issue but rather to adopt just some portion of the courage it takes to be transgender and embrace the right, the fair, the just, and the kind.

I want to thank the members of the Board for taking on this civic responsibility of being on the BOE and I thank you for your time.