Ilya Somin has written an in-depth analysis of Judge Kavanaugh’s opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision to lift the injunction against racial profiling by ICE. I can’t claim anything close to Somin’s expertise, but I want to call attention to an alarming point in Kavanaugh’s statement. Somin writes:
(more…)
There’s no hope for a near-term turnaround in the US. If there were any decency left in America, Trump, Rubio, Homan, Leavitt, and the rest of the crowd would be climbing out of the Potomac, covered with tar and feathers. I’ve done what I can, pointing out one outrageous act after another. Nothing helps. The United States is a nation of cowards with a large minority that favors thuggish central rule and controls Congress.
Concentrating only on the short term leads to despair. Avoiding tyranny in the US — or recovering from it — requires understanding its causes and changing the intellectual climate. There can be a resurgence of the liberal ideal in America, but it will take time.
(more…)
As I’ve noted in previous posts, it’s easy to get videos taken down on YouTube, harder to challenge the takedown. An FDA official may have taken advantage of this to censor videos he doesn’t want seen.
A Guardian article says:
(more…)
It’s been a while since my last Liberty Fund article, but I’ve got a new one on “Marlowe, Goethe, and the Faust Legend”. If you’ve read The Magic Battery or the related stories I’ve posted on this site, you know the Faust story fascinates me.
The story was posted to the Liberty Fund site about a month ago, after sitting with a promise of eventual publication since last year. I only found out when they paid me.
In my post on tech buzzword panic, I briefly mentioned a situation where Dragon Con bizarrely called the police to expel an exhibitor. Bleeding Cool mentions this situation and a somewhat similar one at Fan Expo Canada:
(more…)