The genetics of people who need little sleep

From Pop Sci.com (Dec. 15, 2024):

Everyone has heard that it’s vital to get seven to nine hours of sleep a night, a recommendation repeated so often it has become gospel. Get anything less, and you are more likely to suffer from poor health in the short and long term — memory problems, metabolic issues, depression, dementia, heart disease, a weakened immune system.

But in recent years, scientists have discovered a rare breed who consistently get little shut-eye and are no worse for wear.

Natural short sleepers, as they are called, are genetically wired to need only four to six hours of sleep a night. These outliers suggest that quality, not quantity, is what matters. If scientists could figure out what these people do differently it might, they hope, provide insight into sleep’s very nature.

“The bottom line is, we don’t understand what sleep is, let alone what it’s for. That’s pretty incredible, given that the average person sleeps a third of their lives,” says Louis Ptáček, a neurologist at the University of California San Francisco.

Scientists once thought sleep was little more than a period of rest, like powering down a computer in preparation for the next day’s work. Thomas Edison called sleep a waste of time — “a heritage from our cave days” — and claimed to never sleep more than four hours a night. His invention of the incandescent lightbulb encouraged shorter sleep times in others. Today, a historically high number of US adults are sleeping less than five hours a night.

But modern sleep research has shown that sleep is an active, complicated process we don’t necessarily want to cut short. During sleep, scientists suspect that our bodies and brains are replenishing energy stores, flushing waste and toxins, pruning synapses and consolidating memories. As a result, chronic sleep deprivation can have serious health consequences.

Most of what we know about sleep and sleep deprivation stems from a model proposed in the 1970s by a Hungarian-Swiss researcher named Alexander Borbély. His two-process model of sleep describes how separate systems — circadian rhythm and sleep homeostasis — interact to govern when and how long we sleep. The circadian clock dictates the 24-hour cycle of sleep and wakefulness, guided by external cues like light and darkness. Sleep homeostasis, on the other hand, is driven by internal pressure that builds while you’re awake and decreases while you’re asleep, ebbing and flowing like hunger. [read more]

May explain President Trump.

More articles on sleep: 

• Why do we sleep? The answer may change right before we turn 3.
• Jumping spiders might be able to sleep—perchance to dream

NASA Will Launch Artificial Star into Earth’s Orbit, Costing $19.5 Million

From The Gateway Pundit.com (June 21, 2024):

NASA is planning to launch an artificial star into the Earth’s orbit.

According to Futurism, the artificial star will be about the size of a toaster and equipped with eight lasers.

The creation of the star is part of NASA’s $19.5 million space project called Landolt.

The Landolt project aims to help scientists accurately measure real stars in space and are hoping it will assist in studying dark energy.

Per Futurism:

NASA is planning to launch an unusual payload, roughly the size of a toaster and outfitted with eight lasers.

Its job is to imitate stars and other celestial objects like supernovas, Live Science reports, by beaming lasers straight into their instruments back on the surface.

The false star is part of the space agency’s $19.5 million mission dubbed Landolt, and is designed to allow scientists to get more accurate measurements of real stars. Researchers suggest it could even help study dark energy, the mysterious hypothetical form of energy that’s been used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

“Even with today’s modern instruments, measurements of the true brightness of stars have only been known to a few percent,” said NASA Exoplanet Science Institute deputy director and Caltech astronomer David Ciardi in a statement. “Landolt will enable an improvement in those measurements by more than a factor of ten.”

The launch date of the artificial star will be in 2029. [source]

Interesting. But I would rather have the private sector (or even a university/universities—they have huge endowments) pay for it other than the taxpayers.

Other NASA news:

• NASA and US Space Force team up for planetary defense, moon trips and more
• NASA strikes asteroid with spacecraft in historic planetary defense mission
• NASA uses GPS on the moon for the first time
• NASA radar picks up frozen, buried Cold War base Camp Century
• NASA’s U-2 spy plane found gamma rays in 90% of lightning storms

Here Are The 8 Most Insane Things In The ‘DIGNIDAD’ Amnesty Bill

From Brianna Lyman on The Federalist.com (Apr. 9):

Despite President Donald Trump winning on the promise of “mass deportations,” a handful of spineless Republicans, alongside Democrats, are trying to push a mass amnesty act known as the DIGNIDAD Act — or, for English speakers, the DIGNITY Act.

The legislation is billed as not being amnesty, but would give millions of illegal aliens — both so-called DREAMers/DACA and non-DREAMers/DACA — a legal status. But co-sponsor Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., insists it’s not amnesty, so much so that she’s screaming at people on X to “READ. THE. BILL. BEFORE. YOU. OPEN. YOUR. MOUTH.”

So I read the bill.

And frankly, it might be worse than just amnesty.

Student Loan Forgiveness For Lawyers Who Provide Legal Services To Illegals

According to a “Section-by-Section Analysis” of the DIGNITY Act by Salazar and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, the legislation creates a special loan forgiveness program for lawyers who provide legal services to illegal aliens at “Humanitarian Campuses.” “Humanitarian campuses” would be new facilities where illegal aliens get processed. Lawyers who complete four years of full-time service get 75% of their outstanding law school loans forgiven.

In other words, Americans will have to pay for lawyers to keep illegal aliens here.

Importation Of Illegal Aliens Who Had Already Been Deported

The legislation also opens the door for aliens who were previously deported to come back to the United States and seek relief if they would otherwise qualify under the legislation.

“With respect to aliens who were removed or departed the United States on or after January 20, 2017, and who were continuously physically present in the United States for at least 5 years prior to such removal or departure, the Secretary may, as a matter of discretion, waive the physical presence requirement under section 2102 (b)(1)(A) or section 2302(1)(A) for humanitarian purposes, for family unity, or because a waiver is otherwise in the public interest.”

The section also stipulates the secretary of state should create a procedure for aliens to apply for the “relief” even if they had been deported but would otherwise have been eligible.

Exemptions From FICA Taxes

Aliens would be exempt from Social Security/Medicare payroll taxes but have to pay a 1 percent levy on adjusted gross income, according to Salazar and Escobar’s analysis.

“Dignity participants will be exempt from paying FICA taxes. However, they will be charged a separate 1% levy on their adjusted gross income,” the legislation reads.

The exemption from standard payroll taxes shifts the tax burden away from aliens while they receive work authorization and protection from removal.

Halts Deportations

The DIGNIDAD Act also includes protections that prevent aliens from being removed while their applications are pending. Under the legislation, aliens applying under the Dream provision can be given an opportunity to file even if removal proceedings have started, and those denied a change of status can seek judicial review without being subject to removal. According to the analysis, “Aliens that receive a denial of application for adjustment may apply for judicial review. Aliens seeking judicial review are exempt from removal proceedings during the review.” The analysis also states that the Dignity Program provides, among other things, “protection from removal proceedings, if conditions are being met.”

Further, the legislation is not merely for so-called Dreamers or DACA recipients, that is, aliens allegedly brought here as children. Under the legislation, there is a separate track for illegal aliens who do not qualify as DREAMers or DACA recipients. Section 2302 states the secretary of homeland security can register illegal aliens for the program if the alien “has been continually physically present in the United States since December 31, 2020,” pays a $1,000 fine, passes a background check, provides biometric data, and isn’t disqualified by any other section.

Such a provision, combined with a prohibition on deportations with paperwork pending, would effectively end mass deportations. [read more]

Stupid bill.  Definitely amnesty. Instead of rewarding illegals, maybe lawmakers should stream line the process for law abiding, peaceful, pro-America immigrants who want to come here legally.

Another article on the bill: The Dignity Act Is the Same Bad Deal as Ever

Life on Venus and Why ‘Settled Science’ Is Often Hot Air

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Sept. 28, 2020):

Hope for E.T. springs eternal, despite the definitive lack of evidence for his existence. After decades of peering through telescopes, listening with giant radio antennae, and hurling probes to distant worlds, astronomers have yet to find even a hint of life beyond Earth. So, instead of looking for actual evidence of life, some scientists have begun looking for conditions that could theoretically be associated with life. And when they find that, they hold press conferences.

When scientists discovered that liquid water may once have existed on Mars, it was reported with the excitement we’d expect if probes had found Martian guppies. The discovery of a probable ocean under the ice of a Jovian moon is reported as if alien life forms had already been filmed doing backstrokes in there. Just this year, the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a distant red dwarf star was reported by most articles as if Kepler-1649c were a perfect potential host for life.

The latest episode of astrobiological hype involves our nearest planetary neighbor. Venus has long been dismissed in the search for extraterrestrial life due to its hellish climate. After all, it’s wrapped in sulfuric acid, with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead.

Then, just a few weeks ago, an international team of scientists from MIT and Cardiff University published evidence of phosphine gas high in the atmosphere of Venus. On Earth, the only two known sources of phosphine are human industry and microscopic life. So, according to this team, the presence of large quantities of this gas on Venus can only be explained by living things.

The press’s reaction was predictable. Every headline featured the word “life.” Clamor to divert space exploration resources to Venus mounted so quickly that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine had to issue a statement in which, while praising the insight of these astronomers, he noticeably downplayed Venus, pointing instead to other, more promising missions already on the space agency’s docket and in their budget.

Other critics were more measured: “[T]his can hardly be taken as a biosignature,” one biologist said to the New York Times, “…only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry.” Another professor of planetary sciences who was quoted in the Financial Times sounded even more skeptical: “The scientists can’t think of a way of getting these phosphine levels without it being a byproduct of life,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t another way, and it is a long way from proving that there’s life on Venus.”

So much of the fanfare of stories like this follow a familiar script: scientists rush through the peer-review process and go straight to the press with speculative conclusions. Along the way, “anomalous chemistry” becomes “alien life.” Later, once cooler heads prevail, the same newspapers and websites carrying the fantastical headlines, print a retraction with a less exciting explanation for all that phosphine gas … usually in small print on a back page somewhere.

Of course, proposing and challenging theories is what science is all about. Where science goes wrong is in treating these findings—especially in the early, speculative stages—as if anything is “settled,” much less announcing the speculations as settled conclusion with breathless news reports and demands that NASA rework their budget.

In one of our latest “What Would You Say?” videos, my colleague Brooke McIntire takes on the myth of “settled science.” Proposing and overturning theories is an ongoing part of the process. Even longstanding scientific consensus is vulnerable to new and contrary evidence, and scientists are fallible and biased human beings too. It’s a great video, especially one to share with your kids and grandkids. To watch and share it, just go to whatwouldyousay.org.

None of this means, of course, that life on Venus is impossible. What it does mean is that a pair of papers linking the presence of a particular gas to life doesn’t amount to all the hype it generated. Without more and better evidence, speculation about little E.T.s on Venus is like its sweltering atmosphere … so much hot air. [source]

Science is never settled because unlike God, humans are not omniscience. We are always learning. Seeking the Truth. Always updating our theories with better evidence. Or we should be doing that anyway.

Excerpts from Republican Party Platforms

• Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery. (1856)
• Resolved, That Kansas should be immediately admitted as a state of this Union, with her present Free Constitution, as at once the most effectual way of securing to her citizens the enjoyment of the rights and privileges to which they are entitled, and of ending the civil strife now raging in her territory. (1856)
• 9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic. (1860)
• 10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-Intervention and Popular Sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and a demonstration of the deception and fraud involved therein. (1860)
• Thirteenth. We denounce repudiation of the public debt, in any form or disguise, as a national crime. We witness with pride the reduction of the principal of the debt, and of the rates of interest upon the balance, and confidently expect that our excellent national currency will be perfected by a speedy resumption of specie payment. (1872)
• 2. The Constitution of the United States is a supreme law, and not a mere contract. Out of confederated States it made a sovereign nation. Some powers are denied to the Nation, while others are denied to the States; but the boundary between the powers delegated and those reserved is to be determined by the National and not by the State tribunal. (1880)
• We favor the establishment of a national bureau of labor; the enforcement of the eight hour law, a wise and judicious system of general education by adequate appropriation from the national revenues, wherever the same is needed. We believe that everywhere the protection to a citizen of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption; and we favor the settlement of national differences by international arbitration. (1884)
• (c) League of Nations
• The Republican party stands for agreement among the nations to preserve the peace of the world. We believe that such an international association must be based upon international justice, and must provide methods which shall maintain the rule of public right by the development of law and the decision of impartial courts, and which shall secure instant and general international conference whenever peace shall be threatened by political action, so that the nations pledged to do and insist upon what is just and fair may exercise their influence and power for the prevention of war.
• We believe that all this can be done without the compromise of national independence, without depriving the people of the United States in advance of the right to determine for themselves what is just and fair when the occasion arises, and without involving them as participants and not as peacemakers in a multitude of quarrels, the merits of which they are unable to judge.
• The covenant signed by the President at Paris failed signally to accomplish this great purpose, and contains stipulations, not only intolerable for an independent people, but certain to produce the injustice, hostility and controversy among nations which it proposed to prevent. (1920)
• We advocate the issuance of a simplified form of income return; authorizing the Treasury Department to make changes in regulations effective only from the date of their approval empowering the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with the consent of the taxpayers, to make final and conclusive settlements of tax claims and assessments barring fraud, the creation of a Tax Board consisting of at least three representatives of the taxpaying public and the heads of the principal divisions of the Bureau of Internal Revenue to act as a standing committee on the simplification of forms, procedure and law and to make recommendations to the Congress. (1920)

Tech expert reveals how boom in AI has enabled hackers to create sordid real-life scenarios to target victims online - and what you can do to avoid being extorted

From Dailymail.co.uk (Jan. 7, 2024):

Virtual kidnapping scams have crept into the US for more than two decades, but the bizarre scheme has recently evolved and exploited many individuals across the country.

In a recent case, foreign exchange student Kai Zhuang, 17, was reported missing on December 28 after his family in China received threatening messages that he had been kidnapped.

Despite his host family in Utah reporting he had been seen earlier that day, his family paid an $80,000 ransom fee to Chinese bank accounts.

He was later found in the Brigham City Canyon after cops said he fell victim to a sordid 'cyber-kidnapping' scam.

The teen was told that his family back home was in danger while his parents in China were told that he had been kidnapped before they were extorted out of $80,000.

Dr. Chris Pierson, the founder and CEO of BlackCloak, a cyber security firm for high profile individuals, exclusively told DailyMail.com that Zhuang's case is 'an interesting escalation in terms of the current common scams' and that artificial intelligence is making cases like these easier to facilitate.

Though Pierson specifically represents celebrities and successful cooperate executives, he was also the former president of the FBI's InfraGard chapter in Arizona and worked for the Department of Homeland Security on the Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee.

When asked about the Utah case and cyber kidnapping as a whole, Pierson said that criminals behind these suspicious and frightening schemes typically target the foreign demographic and strive to get as much money as possible from their victims.

He revealed that foreign exchange students are the 'perfect demographic' for the crime mainly due to the time difference that they share with their biological families.

In Zhuang's case, his parents were back in China at the time of his apparent abduction, making it difficult for them to get in contact at the time.

Pierson also said that language barriers play a role in the offenders game plan as the victims can't pick up on differences or red flags, making it easier for them to be 'preyed upon.' [read more]

Welcome to the brave new world.

Quantum internet breakthrough could help make hacking a thing of the past

From Siddarth Koduru Joshi on Live Science.com (Sept. 3, 2020):

The advent of mass working from home has made many people more aware of the security risks of sending sensitive information via the internet. The best we can do at the moment is make it difficult to intercept and hack your messages — but we can't make it impossible.

What we need is a new type of internet: the quantum internet. In this version of the global network, data is secure, connections are private and your worries about information being intercepted are a thing of the past.

My colleagues and I have just made a breakthrough, published in Science Advances, that will make such a quantum internet possible by scaling up the concepts behind it using existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Our current way of protecting online data is to encrypt it using mathematical problems that are easy to solve if you have a digital "key" to unlock the encryption but hard to solve without it. However, hard does not mean impossible and, with enough time and computer power, today's methods of encryption can be broken.

Quantum communication, on the other hand, creates keys using individual particles of light (photons) , which — according to the principles of quantum physics — are impossible to make an exact copy of. Any attempt to copy these keys will unavoidably cause errors that can be detected. This means a hacker, no matter how clever or powerful they are or what kind of supercomputer they possess, cannot replicate a quantum key or read the message it encrypts.

This concept has already been demonstrated in satellites and over fiber-optic cables, and used to send secure messages between different countries. So why are we not already using it in everyday life? The problem is that it requires expensive, specialized technology that means it's not currently scalable.

Previous quantum communication techniques were like pairs of children's walkie talkies. You need one pair of handsets for every pair of users that want to securely communicate. So if three children want to talk to each other they will need three pairs of handsets (or six walkie talkies) and each child must have two of them. If eight children want to talk to each other they would need 56 walkie talkies. [source]

Ten most important revelations about the Obama-Biden era of weaponization

From Just the News.com (Aug. 25, 2025):

The Trump administration’s probe into weaponization of the intelligence community, beginning with the genesis of the fake Russia collusion allegations in 2016, has kicked into full gear this summer.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel have declassified and released a mountain of documents shedding light on how the bureau's deeply flawed and politically-motivated Trump-Russia inquiry, known as "Crossfire Hurricane," got off the ground.

The documents also detail fact-laden whistleblower complaints and an internal FBI probe into then-Rep. Adam Schiff’s and then-Director James Comey’s orders to leak classified information to the press, respectively.

"No one is above the law"

Ironically, several of the key players in what could be a coordinated abuse of power consistently chanted that "No one is above the law," and may face legal consequences of their own.

Senator Adam Schiff, D- Calif., under investigation for mortgage fraud, said through his spokesperson, Marisol Samayoa, that “It’s clear that Donald Trump and his MAGA allies will continue weaponizing the justice process to attack Senator Schiff for holding this corrupt administration accountable.”

Similarly, the DOJ initiated two grand jury investigations into New York Attorney General Letita James, one in the Northern District of New York related to her civil fraud lawsuit against President Donald Trump and one related to mortgage fraud allegations in Virginia, where James claims she "helped her niece purchase a home in 2023." James' civil lawsuit was overturned by a New York Appellate Court this week.

James' attorney in the mortgage fraud matter, Abbe Lowell, wrote to the DOJ that "[Y]ou are not conducting a serious investigation or review of 'mortgage fraud,' and that, despite the lack of evidence or law, you will take whatever actions you have been directed to take to make good on President Trump’s and Attorney General Bondi’s calls for revenge for that reason alone."

Lowell is best known to many Americans as the criminal lawyer for Hunter Biden.

Recently exposed documents also suggest that the FBI conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to smear Trump with Russian allegations.

Here are the most significant developments covered by Just the News so far:

• New declassified emails show key spy shocked to learn Steele dossier used in Russian meddling intel

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified bombshell emails showing the shocked reaction of a top cybersecurity spy when he was belatedly informed in 2019 that the discredited anti-Trump Steele Dossier had been used to develop the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Just the News reported.

• Intel community's assessment didn’t say Russia wanted Trump win, but that changed after he won

A newly declassified assessment by the U.S. intelligence community from September 2016, obtained by Just the News, showed the IC did not seem overly concerned by Russian meddling in that year's presidential election. More significantly, it made no mention of the Kremlin backing or even preferring GOP nominee Donald Trump – a tone that would shift dramatically after Trump won the race in November.

• Once-secret report confirms U.S. intel used Steele Dossier to push narrative that Putin helped Trump

A newly-declassified House Intelligence Committee report shows that the Obama-era intelligence assessment on Russian election meddling used the discredited Steele Dossier to underpin its conclusion that Putin aspired to help Trump win the 2016 election, directly challenging the congressional testimony of officials like CIA Director John Brennan, who denied that had ever happened. [read more]

Just a reminder of how the Left and Deep State tried to stop President Trump. They will continue the weaponization to their political opponents (or as Hillary called the republicans--the enemy) as long as the Left and their allies are not held accountable.

6 Things To Know About 2019 Impeachment Coup Against Trump, As New Docs Confirm Federalist Reporting

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 13):

From the beginning, the 2019 impeachment coup against President Donald Trump was a hoax riddled with Democrat collusion and deep state deception. Newly released transcripts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s closed-door interviews of then-Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) Michael Atkinson give even more details about how intelligence officials and anti-Trump politicians worked together in an attempt to charge the sitting president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The testimonies, recorded in September and October 2019 respectively, show Atkinson and his office bypassed normal credibility and bias assessments of a firsthand witness in favor of hearsay from the whistleblower who submitted the original complaint alleging corruption.

As Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland noted in her breaking news column on Monday, “the transcripts released Monday also highlight the politicization of the FBI that continued under Trump 1.0 after Director James Comey’s firing.” Atkinson testified that an FBI division, which he refused to name, tried to reopen the investigation into Trump even after the Department of Justice “concluded the matter.”

It’s been a long six and a half years since Democrats and the deep state managed to pull their first sham impeachment of Trump together, but the story isn’t over. Here are six key facts that you need to know about the coup, as reported by The Federalist.

Complaint Laden With Lies and Gossip

In a July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump mentioned concerns about Biden family corruption in Ukraine — concerns that future reporting would prove to be legitimate. Weeks later, in August, a Democrat operative posing as a whistleblower misrepresented the content of the call to falsely accuse Trump of weaponizing the call as a quid pro quo.

The complaint alleging that Trump engaged in corruption and crimes in his phone conversation relied largely on “open-source information” such as gossip, corporate media articles, and even Twitter posts instead of the witness or firsthand evidence required for further investigation.

As Federalist CEO Sean Davis noted at the time, the complaint “follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.”

The whistleblower admitted “I was not a direct witness to most of the events” and instead cited conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials,” who remain unnamed, to falsely assert that Trump demanded Zelensky turn over “servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)” and keep a certain prosecutor general “in his position.” [read more]

The Deep State at work. They will do it again and again as long as they can get away with their attacks. The whistleblower should be prosecuted. Also, Trump should sue the whistleblower for slander and Congress should reverse Trump’s impeachment.

Another article on the impeachment hoax:

Gabbard says intel community watchdog helped ‘manufacture a conspiracy’ in Ukraine impeachment saga

No Christianity, No “Human Rights”

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 20, 2020):

In July, the U.S. State Department’s “Commission on Unalienable Rights” released a draft report that attempted to provide a grounding for our country’s commitment to human rights. Fundamental among those rights, the report declared, are freedom of religion and the right to private property.

The Commission sought comments from the public, and they’ve gotten them. While the part about property rights garnered little response, the insistence on religious liberty has sparked a firestorm of protest, including from a “group of academic and religious leaders.”

Most Americans take the existence of human rights for granted. We see them, to borrow a phrase, as “self-evident.” We can’t really imagine a world without them, or we look at places like China or North Korea with incredulity, as if it’s obvious that their way is clearly wrong. Instead, what these countries demonstrate is that there’s nothing “natural” about the idea of human rights. Rather they are the products of Judaeo-Christian beliefs about the intrinsic dignity of the human person.

After all, as the State Department report points out, “more than half the world’s population suffers under regimes where the most basic freedoms are systematically denied, or under regimes too weak or unwilling to protect individual rights, especially in the context of ethnic conflict.”

Most countries don’t deny the idea of human rights outright. However, because they lack adequate moral grounding for them, human rights become a kind of buffet. Those in power pick the ones they like, for the groups they like, and ignore the rest. Again, to quote the report, “human rights are now misunderstood by many, manipulated by some, rejected by the world’s worst violators, and subject to ominous new threats.”

Given these threats, it’s vital that we who take the idea of universal human rights for granted, ground them on something more permanent and transcendent than international consensus or “we’ve always done it this way.”

The only secure basis for human rights, of course, is the Christian belief that humans are created in the image of God. Think about that line from our founding documents: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But it’s not self-evident that we are equal, if we only consider the external attributes humans have. We don’t all share those attributes. We don’t all share the same height, or weight, or IQ, or hair color, or skin tone. Thus equality must be based on some universal human quality that is intrinsic to our humanity. Christianity offers this in the idea of the image of God.

The report acknowledges this: “Protestant Christianity, widely practiced by the citizenry at the time [of the founders], was infused with the beautiful Biblical teachings that every human being is imbued with dignity and bears responsibilities toward fellow human beings, because each is made in the image of God.”

Even non-believers such as Tom Holland, the author of Dominion, have recognized that the West’s ideas about freedom and the dignity of the human person are the product of Christianity. Atheist philosopher John Gray has written that modern politics, with its idea of human rights, “is a chapter in the history of religion,” specifically Christianity. Another atheist philosopher, Luc Ferry, in his book A Brief History of Thought, observes that it is to the idea of the image of God that the “west owes its entire democratic inheritance.”

Without the Christian idea of the imago Dei, “universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated” human rights simply wouldn’t exist. In fact, even the guy who said “God is dead,” Friederich Nietzsche, said universal human rights, an idea he considered weak, came from a Christian view of the world.

Unfortunately, there are many, like that “group of academics and religious leaders” I mentioned earlier, who deny that connection. In a statement protesting the draft report’s emphasis on religious liberty, they said that the attempt “to elevate religious freedom above other human rights . . . will weaken religious freedom itself and undermine respect for and damage the protections of the universal values of human dignity.”

As you may have guessed, those they claim most likely to be violated by the elevation of religious freedom are those “denied these [human] rights because of who they are or whom they love.” In their minds, religious freedom is really code language for a “license to discriminate.”

In a world where religious minorities increasingly face persecution and death, to trivialize religious freedom in this way is myopic. However, it is inevitable once rich concepts like “freedom” and “human dignity” are defined down to mere personal autonomy and self-actualization.

Our first freedom, like the rights that depend on it, are grounded in a Christian view of what it means to be human. They cannot be sustained otherwise. This new U.S. State Department Report is a welcome reminder. [source]

Amen. Any polytheistic pagan religions that sacrifices people to their gods and goddesses (like the Mayans and Aztecs) definitely don’t recognize human rights. God never required the Jewish people to make human sacrifices to Himself.

Highlights of Democrat Party Platforms Part 3

• We pledge the Democratic party to the enactment of a law prohibiting any corporation from contributing to a campaign fund and any individual from contributing any amount above a reasonable maximum. (1912 Democratic Party Platform)
• We insist upon the full exercise of all the powers of the Government, both State and national, to protect the people from injustice at the hands of those who seek to make the government a private asset in business. (1912)
• We pledge the Democratic party to the enactment of a law prohibiting any corporation from contributing to a campaign fund and any individual from contributing any amount above a reasonable maximum. (1912)
• We favor a single Presidential term, and to that end urge the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution making the President of the United States ineligible to reelection, and we pledge the candidates of this Convention to this principle.* (1912)
• We pledge the Democratic party to the enactment of a law creating a department of labor, represented separately in the President's cabinet in which department shall be included the subject of mines and mining. (1912)
• It summons all men of whatever origin or creed who would count themselves Americans, to join in making clear to all the world the unity and consequent power of America. This is an issue of patriotism. To taint it with partisanship would be to defile it. In this day of test, America must show itself not a nation of partisans but a nation of patriots.^ (1916)
• The Democratic Party favors the League of Nations as the surest, if not the only, practicable means of maintaining the permanent peace of the world and terminating the insufferable burden of great military and naval establishments. (1920)
• We endorse the proposed 19th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States granting equal suffrage to women. (1920)
• The income tax was intended as a tax upon wealth….We favor a graduated tax upon incomes, so adjusted as to lay the burdens of government upon the taxpayers in proportion to the benefits they enjoy and their ability to pay. (1924)
• Recognizing in narcotic addiction, especially the spreading of heroin addiction among the youth, a grave peril to America and to the human race, we pledge ourselves vigorously to take against it all legitimate and proper measures for education, for control and for suppression at home and abroad. (1924)
• The republican administration has failed to enforce the prohibition law; is guilty of trafficking in liquor permits, and has become the protector of violators of this law. (1924)

*FDR completely ignored this platform.

^This is before the party got infected by Marxism.

FBI: Illegal Aliens Tried Nearly 48,000 Times to Purchase Firearms Over Past 25 Years

From USNN.news (Jan. 8, 2024):

PHOENIX, Ariz.—The FBI logged more than 47,000 attempts by illegal aliens to purchase firearms at gun shops over the past 25 years, according to a group that monitors border security policy.

On Jan. 2, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported the FBI currently has almost 14 million records of firearms applications that failed a national background check.

Of these “unique prohibiting events,” the FBI index included 47,930 denied purchases of firearms by illegal aliens in the National Instant Crime Background Check System (NICBS) between November 1998 and November 2023.

“While the 13.9 million unique prohibiting events cataloged in the FBI database represent events—not individual illegal aliens—the data point to large numbers of migrants in the market for firearms. Whatever the total may be, one is one too many,” FAIR wrote.

The organization added that “the dangers posed by largely unvetted illegal aliens possessing firearms has been vastly exacerbated over the past three years, as the Biden administration has presided over record numbers of new illegal aliens entering our country.

“At the same time, federal policies and the proliferation of sanctuary jurisdictions that prohibit the sharing of critical law enforcement information will inevitably result in more Americans falling prey to criminal aliens.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there were 547,610 seizures of illegal weapons, including ammunition, gun parts, scopes, silencers, and body armor in 2023, which is consistent with the 595,154 total number of weapons seized in 2021.

In 2022, there were 1,147,497 weapons seizures, according to CBP data.

The Epoch Times has reached out for comment to the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but has not received responses.

In light of these statistics, Arizona gun shop owner Charlie Bollenbaugh says there’s only so much law enforcement can do to stop criminals from obtaining firearms.

“We’ve got plenty of laws; criminals are criminals,” says Mr. Bollenbaugh, owner of Strapt Armory in Phoenix. “They’re going to find ways around them.”

Mr. Bollenbaugh added that there’s “no real way of telling” who is a U.S. citizen the moment they walk through the door to purchase a gun.

But there is a legal process to weed out the ineligible buyers, he said.

In Arizona, as in other states, the gun buyer must first show a valid state driver’s license or government-issued photo ID along with proof of age and residency and have no felony convictions.

Federal law requires that each buyer fill out and sign a Form 4473 national background check under penalty of perjury. The form is submitted by the gun store electronically through the NICBS, and the results are known within minutes.

“If they are legally allowed to purchase a firearm, and they’ve come here correctly, the government tells me to go ahead and proceed,” Mr. Bollenbaugh told The Epoch Times.

“They can’t buy a firearm without going through a valid background check and presenting a government-issued ID.”

Beyond having actual proof of citizenship, “there’s no way for the gun stores to know” if a buyer is in the country legally, he said.

In the meantime, an estimated 300,000 illegal border crossings continue to occur monthly under the Biden administration’s immigration policies. [read more]

The Left probably thinks this activity is OK. It’s just when law-abiding citizens try to buy guns then it is a sin.

CCP-Controlled Messaging App WeChat Used for ‘Coordination Among Chinese Criminal Networks’ in US, Sen Lankford Writes to Trump

From Free Beacon.com (Jan. 26):

CCP-controlled messaging platform WeChat has become a favorite tool of Chinese criminal rings inside the United States to "facilitate drug trafficking, human trafficking, [and] money laundering," according to Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon requested that the White House ban the app from cellphones in the United States.

WeChat, owned by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd., has emerged in recent years as a primary means of "coordination among Chinese criminal networks" operating stateside, wrote Lankford, who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The app has grown in popularity as Chinese nationals enter the United States, buy inexpensive farmland in places like Lankford’s home state of Oklahoma, and use that land to grow illicit marijuana for sale on the black market.

U.S. law enforcement agencies, Lankford noted in the Jan. 16 letter, do "not have access to WeChat’s server or any of the encrypted communications and transactions that occur on this app," making it "an investigative black box" that is "uniquely appealing to Chinese criminals operating on American soil."

Lankford’s request comes nearly six years after President Donald Trump’s first-term attempt to ban WeChat from U.S. app stores with an executive order, citing China’s control over its user data as a pressing national security risk. A California magistrate judge ruled the action unconstitutional, and the Biden administration subsequently nixed the executive order, instead instructing the federal government to conduct a national security assessment of both WeChat and the similarly CCP-controlled TikTok.

In the intervening six years, though, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a 2024 law requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the social media platform. The law also included provisions allowing the president to blacklist Chinese applications like WeChat, meaning that a fresh ban on its presence on U.S. app stores would likely be upheld in court, particularly in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s mid-January decision backing the law.

Trump now has "explicit authority to identify and act against companies whose ownership or control by foreign adversaries poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security," Lankford wrote. The next step would be for the White House to formally determine "that WeChat qualifies as a covered company under the statute," effectively banning its use and availability on U.S. cellphones, according to the senator.

The Pentagon blacklisted Tencent early last year over its role as one of several "Chinese military companies" operating in the United States, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused Tencent of conducting "espionage and censorship" on behalf of the CCP. Its founder, Ma Huateng, is a member of the CCP and the Yale Center Beijing advisory board, which the university uses to "form new partnerships with organizations in China," the Free Beacon reported at the time.

Republicans broadly considered WeChat a national security threat during Trump’s first term, primarily because the Chinese government has access to its user data, but legislation to curb the problem did not yet exist. Without a policy fix, WeChat evolved into the top platform for Chinese criminals in the United States. In 2022, for instance, a Chinese national was charged with murdering four people on an illegal marijuana farm in Kingfisher, Okla., in a crime believed to be linked to Chinese crime networks. State law enforcement agencies assessed that "many of these groups have direct financial backing from China," with WeChat being a central cog in the operation, according to Lankford.

Given the past and present threats posed by WeChat, Trump must use his newfound legal "authority to designate WeChat as a covered company" under the law, Lankford wrote, adding that such action "would advance U.S. national security interests, protect American citizens from foreign criminals operating inside our borders, and help our law enforcement fight against Chinese criminal networks operating in my state and across the country." [source]

The Chi-Coms up to no good again. Terrible.

How the Amazing Rescue of Two American Airmen Unfolded

From Red State.com (Apr. 5):

Overnight, the U.S. military pulled off one of the most difficult missions in the playbook: the rescue of a downed aircrew deep inside enemy territory.

Easter morning, an F-15E weapons systems officer was extracted from atop a 7,000-foot ridge in southwestern Iran, having been on the run since Friday (this sounds sort of Biblical, doesn't it).

This is how the operation played out. Mind you, it is all based on reports patched together from various sources. U.S. Central Command has yet to issue a statement on either the loss of the aircraft or the successful rescue of the flight crew. President Trump was not quite that constrained; see 'WE GOT HIM!' President Trump Responds As Second Airman Is Rescued From Enemy Territory in Iran – RedState.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Friday morning, April 3. An F-15E Strike Eagle was apparently hit by Iranian fire near the village of Talkhuncheh, Isfahan Province, Iran. There is a lot of boasting from the Iranians about an advanced passive infrared detection system used to guide a missile. There are online accounts linking the downing to Russian ships arriving at Iranian ports. We don't know the cause, but based on the history of the Operation Epic Fury air campaign, the plane going down from a bird strike is just as likely as an Iranian anti-aircraft missile. Both pilot and weapons systems officer (WSO) eject.

When the pilots punched out, they would have transmitted a MAYDAY on Guard frequency. This would have alerted the Combat Search and Rescue element that was on standby. The WSO, who is reported to be a lieutenant colonel, is reportedly injured during ejection. This is not unusual. Within a short period of time, an image of one of the ejection seats appears on social media.

The pilots have some emergency supplies, including a radio and a personal defense weapon that is stored under the seat.

Within a short period of time, a CSAR element composed of an MC-130J refueling aircraft and two HH-60 "Jolly Green" 2 helicopters was spotted near the scene. I know, you're asking why they are called "Jolly Green" 2 helicopters. The original "Jolly Green Giant" was the HH-53B designed for CSAR work during the Vietnam War. The name stuck. [read more]

Glad the awesome American commandos were able to rescue the downed airman in Iran. Great job guys. 

Other articles on the rescue:

• Commandos Probed Deep Into Iran to Rescue Downed Airman
• Baker to Newsmax: CIA Played Key Role in Rescue of Airman in Iran
• The secret, never-before-used CIA tool that helped find airman downed in Iran: ‘If your heart is beating, we will find you’
• Trump, US Feared Iran Trap in F-15 Crew Rescue
  

Artemis II Mission Shows There Are No Limits To American Exceptionalism

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 7):

Pushing the boundaries of what was once thought to be impossible is a hallmark of American greatness. And the recent mission to circle the moon is no different.

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission set a record on Monday for traveling further into space than any humans have ever gone before. As part of their “lunar flyby,” the four-person crew (consisting of three Americans and one Canadian) broke Apollo 13’s record by reaching an estimated 252,756 miles from Earth.

While traveling in their Orion capsule, the team viewed previously unseen surfaces of the moon and captured breathtaking images in the process. Amid their discoveries was a noticeably bright crater, which one of the astronauts suggested naming “Carroll” after mission commander Reid Wiseman’s wife, who died of cancer in 2020.

While the mission has certainly boasted its great moments, there was something the astronauts reportedly said before embarking on their journey that puts a perfect bow on the entire thing. As summarized by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, the Artemis II crew said that they hope their feat “will be remembered as the moment people started to believe that America can once again do the near-impossible and change the world.”

It’s a simple, yet important point to remember given the constant barrage of negativity Americans hear about their country from its most vocal institutions. From higher education to legacy media and Hollywood, everyday citizens are regularly inundated with anti-American rhetoric about why their nation is evil, stupid, and not that great after all.

Why would you want to try your best and work your hardest in a racist, bigoted, oppressive, hateful country like America? or so the conventional leftist groupthink goes.

The Artemis II mission provides a stark contrast to that backwards thinking. It teaches America’s people that adventure and risks are worth taking, that hard work wins, and that there are no limits to what their country can accomplish.

That’s American exceptionalism at its best.

So, dream big. Reach for what others believe to be impossible. Give 110 percent into what you do. And always remember that it could happen nowhere else except in the United States of America. [source]

USA! USA! USA! 

More articles on the mission:

• 16 inspiring Artemis II photos that’ll make you feel like a tiny Earthling
• Artemis II astronauts reflect on historic flight as they wrap up moon mission
• 9 highlights from Artemis II's epic journey around the moon
• NASA’s Artemis II mission’s return to Earth, hour by hour
• Artemis II's Grand Moon Finale Almost Here With a Pacific Splashdown to Cap NASA's Lunar Comeback
• Artemis II splashes down off the coast of San Diego, finishing historic journey around the moon
• Watch a recovery crew open Integrity’s hatch for Artemis II astronauts
  
• NASA Artemis II Zero Gravity Indicator & Moon Mascot 'Rise' Back Home on Earth
• Artemis, the Greatness of God, and Human Exceptionalism

Assisted Suicide for the Healthy

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 5, 2020):

Physician-assisted suicide is sold to the public as a “compassionate” measure, necessary to spare those with no reasonable chance of recovery the unbearable pain and suffering of the last days of their lives. In every context in which it has been made legal, however, what might be called euthanasia-by-another-name has never remained limited to the rare instances on which it was sold.

There are reasons this slope has proven so slippery, literally everywhere it has been made legal. Once it is decided that certain lives are not worth living, the list of people eligible for physician-assisted suicide inevitably grows. As the list of people without intrinsic value grows, it becomes impossible not to re-evaluate lives based on some other criteria, perhaps convenience or financial costs. It’s a small step indeed from “eligible to die” to “expected to die.”

Wherever doctor assisted suicide is legalized, in a bait-and-switch from what is sold to the public, the category of “terminal” illness is often expanded to include “chronic” illnesses and permanent disabilities. Even mental illness and depression are now considered sufficient justification for suicide in places such as Belgium and the Netherlands. Given this trajectory, it’s only a matter of time before we dispense with the requirement of any illness whatsoever.

In fact, that’s what has just happened in the Netherlands. A recently introduced bill there would “allow healthy individuals over the age of 75 to request assisted suicide, if they have had a ‘strong death wish for at least two months.’” The bill, which is expected to be up for a vote sometime in 2021, would, according to the bill’s sponsor, give the elderly “…the choice at an advanced age, if [they] consider their lives complete, to die with dignity, with careful help.”

Thankfully, the two Christian parties in the governing coalition are strongly opposing the measure, but it will not be easy to keep it from becoming law. After all, the bill is the next logical step in the Dutch trajectory. Having embraced what novelist Walker Percy called “Thanatos Syndrome,” every promise to limit euthanasia in any way has not only been broken, but any so-called “safeguards” have been swept aside.

For example, the people were promised that only those certifiably in their right minds would be euthanized. That was a lie. Anyone who goes into an American emergency room and tells doctors they had a “strong death wish” and were “done with life” would be diagnosed with “suicidal ideation” and immediately admitted to the psych ward. To not do so, in fact, would be medical malpractice. Suicidal ideation is rightly regarded as a symptom of an underlying mental disorder. People with untreated mental illnesses are not allowed to make life-and-death decisions.

Or at least they weren’t. In Oregon, since doctor-assisted-suicide was legalized, over 96 percent of people given lethal drugs did not undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Not to evaluate is neglect, but if this Dutch bill becomes law, any elderly person who admits suicidal wishes will be referred to those who will help them turn their desires into reality.

This is why, as our recent “What Would You Say” video so clearly explained, there’s nothing compassionate about physician-assisted-suicide. In fact, it is the exact opposite of compassion, the abdication of a civilized people’s responsibility to offer compassion to those who need it most when they need it most.

In his book The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy described how a society devolves to the point of thinking that killing patients instead of healing them is compassionate. A psychiatrist, he wrote of well-trained and exquisitely credentialed doctors who “turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind.”

Percy’s literary prophecy, written in 1987, is becoming reality. Some form of assisted suicide is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. That number will only grow unless we convince people what true compassion is and make the idea that assisted suicide is compassionate unthinkable.

Come to WhatWouldYouSay.org for the latest video on assisted suicide, and be equipped to make the case. And please, share it with your pastor, community leaders, and legislators. It’s literally a life-and-death issue. [source]

Canada isn’t much better with its “Medical Assistance in Dying” law.

Hitler, Islam, Iran, Hezbollah and 9/11

One twentieth-century European, however, was disappointed that Charles Martel had defeated the warriors of Islam, for the same reason that Gibbon was relieved. He exclaimed:

Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers—already, you see, the world had fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing was Christianity!—then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies heroism and which opens the seventh heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.

The man expressing that regret was Adolf Hitler.

…….

[U.S. District judge George B.] Daniels found that Iran and Hezbollah had cooperated and collaborated with al-Qaeda before 9/11 and continued to do so after the attacks.

Before 9/11, Iran and Hezbollah were implicated in efforts to train al-Qaeda members to blow up large buildings—resulting in the bombings of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Shortly after the Cole attack, the 9/11 jihad plot began to come together—and Iran was involved. Former MOIS operative Abolghasem Mesbahi, a defector from Iran, testified that during the summer of 2001, he received messages from Iranian government officials regarding a plan for unconventional warfare against the U.S., entitled “Shaitan dar Atash” (“Satan in Flames”).

“Satan in Flames” was the elaborate plot to hijack three passenger jets, each packed full of people, and crash them into American landmarks: the World Trade Center, which jihadis took to be the center of American commerce; the Pentagon, the center of America’s military apparatus; and the White House.

A classified National Security Agency analysis referred to in the 9/11 Commission report reveals that eight to ten of the 9/11 hijackers traveled to Iran repeatedly in late 2000 and early 2001. The 9/11 Commission called for a U.S. government investigation into Iran’s role in 9/11, but none was ever undertaken. Kenneth R. Timmerman of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran was, in his words, “engaged by the Havlish attorneys in 2004 to carry out the investigation the 9/11 Commission report called on the U.S. government to handle.”

Timmerman noted that during the 9/11 hijackers’ trips to Iran, they were “accompanied by ‘senior Hezbollah operatives’ who were in fact agents of the Iranian regime.” Iranian border agents did not stamp their passports, so that their having been inside the Islamic Republic would not arouse suspicion against them when they entered the United States.

The CIA, embarrassed by its failure to recognize the import of these trips, tried to suppress this revelation. But Timmerman contends that even the available evidence is explosive enough, revealing that the Islamic Republic of Iran, in his words:

• helped design the 9/11 plot; 
• provided intelligence support to identify and train the operatives who carried it out;
• allowed the future hijackers to evade U.S. and Pakistani surveillance on key trips to Afghanistan where they received the final order of mission from Osama bin Laden, by escorting them through Iranian borders without passport stamps;
• evacuated hundreds of top al-Qaeda operatives from Afghanistan to Iran after 9/11 just as U.S. forces launched their offensive;
• provided safe haven and continued financial support to al-Qaeda cadres for years after 9/11;
• allowed al-Qaeda to use Iran as an operational base for additional terror attacks, in particular the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

The Ayatollah Khamenei knew about the plot. During the summer of 2001, he instructed Iranian agents to be careful to conceal their tracks and told them to communicate only with al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Imad Mughniyah of Hezbollah.

Source: The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS (2018) by Robert Spencer.

More reasons why Trump felt compelled to stop Iran.

Japanese company successfully tests a manned flying car for the first time

From koat.com (Aug. 30, 2020):

A Japanese company has announced the successful test drive of a flying car.

Sky Drive Inc. conducted the public demonstration on Aug. 25, the company said in a news release, at the Toyota Test Field, one of the largest in Japan and home to the car company's development base. It was the first public demonstration for a flying car in Japanese history.

The car, named SD-03, manned with a pilot, took off and circled the field for about four minutes.

"We are extremely excited to have achieved Japan's first-ever manned flight of a flying car in the two years since we founded SkyDrive... with the goal of commercializing such aircraft," CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said in a statement.

"We want to realize a society where flying cars are an accessible and convenient means of transportation in the skies and people are able to experience a safe, secure, and comfortable new way of life."

The SD-03 is the world's smallest electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle and takes up the space of about two parked cars, according to the company. It has eight motors to ensure "safety in emergency situations."

"In designing an unexplored, new genre of transportation known as the flying car, we chose the keyword "progressive" for inspiration," Design Director Takumi Yamamot said.

"We wanted this vehicle to be futuristic, charismatic and desirable for all future customers, while fully incorporating the high technology of SkyDrive.

The company hopes to make the flying car a part of normal life and not just a commodity. More test flights will occur in the future under different conditions to make sure the safety and technology of the vehicle meet industry standards.

The success of this flight means that it is likely the car will be tested outside of the Toyota Test field by the end of the year.

The company will continue to develop technologies to safely and securely launch the flying car in 2023, the news release said. No price has been announced. [source]

Cool. Here come the Jetsons.

A Tax Man with Convictions and Courage

From Lawrence W. Reed on FEE.org (Apr. 15, 2025):

Have you ever heard of someone so principled that he quit his job rather than do something he knew to be wrong?

I admire people of such integrity. We need more of them. Let me tell you about one whose story is especially relevant on April 15, the date the federal government demands we meet our income tax obligations. This man was head of the IRS. His name was T. Coleman Andrews.

Born in Virginia in 1899, Andrews possessed a head for numbers. He loved accounting, an affection which I personally could never understand. Accounting baffled and frustrated me during my undergraduate days; I scraped by with a “C.”  I agree with whoever described an accountant as “someone who solves a problem you did not know you had in a way you don’t understand.”

Andrews was not only good at it, but he also founded several successful accounting firms and worked in high accounting positions for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the US State Department, and the General Accounting Office in Washington.

In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him Commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In an interview while still new in the job, Andrews said that he would insist that every employee engage taxpayers with “a sincere desire to be helpful,” but he promised to come down hard on anybody caught cheating on his taxes.

Andrews moved to simplify complex tax forms. He changed the Bureau’s name to what we know today—the Internal Revenue Service. He adopted numerous measures to improve efficiency, but when Congress overhauled tax law in 1955, he realized how “unreformable” the system was. Isaac William Martin, in his 2013 book titled Rich People’s Movements, quotes Andrews as lamenting that the congressmen who wrote the bill “do not themselves know what they mean.”

Barely two years into his tenure on the inside, Andrews abruptly resigned. His views on the agency and the income tax had evolved. Andrews was one of those rare public servants who “grew in office.” He could no longer hold a position that put him at odds with his conscience. He came to see the IRS and the tax code as oppressive, incomprehensible, and corrupt. Shortly after his departure from the IRS, he issued a statement explaining his position:

Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.

The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.

The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.

The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.

As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.

Clearly, this was a guy who didn’t allow power or a paycheck to turn either his brain or his spine into jelly. Agree with him or not, you must admit there’s some impressive personal character there.

Andrews continued to speak out against the income tax and the ever-bigger government it was financing. In 1956, he even ran for President of the United States on a third-party ticket—a campaign that, controversially, was built around a states’ rights platform. While some saw it as a principled stance for limited government, others rightly noted its alignment with political figures and movements that defended segregation. He died in 1983 at the age of 84.

The school in my native state of Pennsylvania where I struggled in that accounting class more than a half-century ago is Grove City College. In researching this article, I was proud to learn that in 1963, GCC bestowed an honorary doctorate upon T. Coleman Andrews.

What Andrews had to say may not be much consolation to you this tax season. Perhaps it will be of at least small comfort, however, to know that we once had an IRS Commissioner who saw the harm of the whole business and possessed the courage of his convictions to wash his hands of it. [source]

Wow. If the IRS was corrupt back then, how corrupt is it now? Not very many bureaucrats quit a job because of its corruption. That’s integrity for you.

Trump Signature Set for US Currency in Historic First

From Newsmax.com (Mar. 26):

U.S. paper currency will bear President Donald Trump's signature to mark the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, the Treasury Department said Thursday, a first for a sitting president, while deleting the Treasurer of the United States' signature from U.S. money for the first time in 165 years.

The Treasury said in a statement to Reuters that the first $100 bills with Trump's signature and that of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be printed in June, followed by other bills in subsequent months.

The Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing is currently still producing notes bearing the signatures of former President Joe Biden's Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, and Treasurer Lynn Malerba.

Malerba will be the last of an unbroken line of Treasurers whose signatures had appeared on U.S. federal currency since 1861, when it was first issued by the U.S. government.

The signature change is the latest effort by the Trump administration and its allies to put the president's name on buildings, institutions, government programs, battleships and coins. The design of a commemorative gold coin with Trump's image was approved by a federal arts panel whose members he appointed.

Bessent said in a statement that the move was appropriate for the U.S. 250th anniversary, given strong U.S. economic growth, financial stability and "lasting dollar dominance" during Trump's second term.

"There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S. dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial," Bessent said.

An effort for a circulating $1 Trump coin was set back by laws prohibiting the depiction of living individuals on U.S. coins.

A statute governing the printing of Federal Reserve notes gives the Treasury broad discretion to change designs to guard against counterfeiting. The law requires keeping certain elements, including the words "In God We Trust," and only allows portraits of deceased individuals.

The overall designs of bills will not change, except for Trump's signature replacing the Treasurer's, Treasury officials said. [source]

Nice. Although, the Left will probably find a reason to complain about this small, temporary (I believe) change.

Trump targeted by four FBI code-named counterintel probes that ensnared hundreds of Americans

From Just the News.com (Mar. 9):

President Donald Trump and his supporters were targeted by four consecutive FBI code-named counterintelligence investigations over the last decade that secretly subjected hundreds of innocent Americans to privacy-invading tactics and essentially treated the man twice elected president as a national security threat for most of the first nine years of his political career, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Just the News.

FBI Director Kash Patel has personally led the effort to review the operations code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, Plasmic Echo and Arctic Frost that stretched from summer 2016 to January 2025, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials said.

Many of the investigative files were hidden from view, even from most FBI agents, because they were marked "prohibited access" and controlled carefully by FBI leadership.

Patel's search has been aided by whistleblowers inside his agency, a handful of senior bureau executives close to the director and some members of Congress, particularly Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

FBI's work hijacked by politics, invading citizens' privacy

Those who have seen the records told Just the News they chronicle how the FBI's expanded counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions after the Sept, 11, 2001, terrorist attacks eventually became hijacked by politics and led agents to deploy tools meant for terrorists and spies against everyday Americans in a bid to find a way to bring criminal cases against Trump.

One whistleblower this month told the FBI that surveillance and monitoring of Trump figures continued right up to the president’s January 2025 inauguration, according to multiple interviews.

Few inside Trump’s orbit were spared from targeting by their stature: a dozen members of Congress and their staffers, his future chief of staff Susie Wiles, journalists, campaign advisers, defense lawyers, and even Patel himself had their privacy pierced by warrants, wiretaps, FISA surveillance, phone record analysis, FBI assessments, or grand juries.

Many targets and subjects fell under the bureau’s definition of special circumstances targets because they have recognized constitutionally protected privileges – like lawyers, members of Congress, journalists, and political figures.

Even a political consultant turned documentary filmmaker who investigated Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings before joining Trump’s 2024 campaign was recently notified he was targeted in a criminal investigation that only recently was shut down, according to letters between Congress and the FBI reviewed by Just the News.

Michael Caputo had his emails and communications seized in 2023 by a “classified subpoena” issued about two weeks after he joined the Trump campaign and the email account the bureau penetrated “contained correspondence on The Trump Campaign’s private strategies and deliberations,” the correspondence stated.
Patel’s FBI has informed Congress that probe has been shut down. But the question of how so many Americans were targeted remains open.

At least 1,200 people that fall into the categories of special circumstances targets or subject were investigated under assessments by the FBI between 2018 and 2024 during Wray’s tenure, an explosive recent audit report to Congress revealed.

You can read that report here.

File

Gao_Report_Fbi_Assessments.pdf [read more]

Disgusting.  Abuse of power? I would say so.

Why We Should Thank God that Our Sun is So ‘Boring’

From Breakpoint.org (May 29, 2020):

Recently, a New York Times article drew attention to a corona that’s not a virus and that makes life possible instead of threatening it. The corona, or outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere, puzzles astronomers because it is, as compared with similar stars, so calm.

We take the sun for granted, unless it disappears for a few cloudy days or burns us at the beach or, less often, disrupts satellite communications. Once every century or so, it might burp enough energy to fry technology and maybe even ignite the Northern Lights over the Caribbean, as happened in 1859.  Aside from instances such as these, it’s easy to forget that the local star that warms our faces and wakens our flowers, this “blazing ball of fusion-powered plasma,” is actually capable, at least in theory, of scorching our planet and all of us to a lifeless cinder.

However, a new paper published in the journal “Science” suggests that’s exactly the sort of thing we should expect from the sun, if it behaved like other stars of its kind. But it doesn’t. The good news is, as the Times put it, the star around which we orbit is downright “boring” compared with its solar siblings.

Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, after compiling data from NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope, which spent years monitoring 150,000 distant stars, concluded that our sun’s relative calm is among the reasons we are here at all.

After identifying 369 comparable stars in our galaxy, these scientists learned something astounding: The magnetic activity that creates the sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections on other stars is, on average, five times more intense than on our sun. On many stars that were studied, disruptions were even twelve times more intense. That level of chaos makes life in their orbits virtually impossible.

So why would our sun behave so differently than all the others? One unsettling theory, especially given the “what else could possibly go wrong” start to 2020, is that our sun is currently asleep, but might, at some point, wake up and blast us with deadly levels of radiation.  Another idea is that our sun is aging, and because it is now over-the-hill, has fewer bursts of energy to give off.

That sounds reasonable to those of us reaching middle age.

Currently, according to researchers, one theory is not to be favored over another, but what is clear, as the Times observes, is that our sun’s relative tranquility has unquestionably “benefited our species.” As the study’s lead author put it, “It may be no coincidence that we live around a very inactive star.”

Of course, coincidence is the only reason that anyone already committed to naturalism can feasibly offer. If, however, the blinders of that particular worldview are removed, there’s a third possible explanation: Our host star is uniquely friendly to life because it was finely-tuned by God to support life.

In the marvelous book, “The Privileged Planet,” Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez list the many features that make our Earth, sun, and our corner of the universe uniquely suited for life.

Not only do we have the right kind of star, we are just the right distance from that star. We are at the right location in the galaxy. We are in a solar system with gas giants that shield us from wandering asteroids and comets. We have a moon just the right size to stabilize our axis and create tides and seasons. We are on a planet with land, liquid water, oxygen, plate tectonics, and a molten iron core to generate a magnetosphere.

Tally up all these factors, as Richards and Gonzalez do, and it’s a dizzying improbability that we would be here at all: something like 1 out of 1 followed by 15 zeroes.

And yet, here we are, bathed in the warmth of a star scientists increasingly recognize as rare and hospitable. Our brightest minds could hardly imagine, much less attempt to design, a better solar system. All of which is why we ought to thank the brightest of all minds, the One who also made our own minds bright enough to discover all of these remarkable things about our privileged planet, our privileged place in the universe, and our blessedly boring sun. [source]

Thank God the sun is “boring.”

Highlights of Democrat Party Platforms Part 2

1868 Democratic Party Platform

Second. Amnesty for all past political offenses, and the regulation of the elective franchise in the States, by their citizens.

Third. Payment of the public debt of the United States as rapidly as practicable. All moneys drawn from the people by taxation, except so much as is requisite for the necessities of the government, economically administered, being honestly applied to such payment, and where the obligations of the government do not expressly state upon their face, or the law under which they were issued does not provide, that they shall be paid in coin, they ought, in right and in justice, to be paid in the lawful money of the United States.

……..

Eighth. Equal rights and protection for naturalized and native-born citizens at home and abroad; the assertion of American nationality, which shall command the respect of foreign powers, and furnish an example and encouragement to people struggling for national integrity, constitutional liberty, and individual rights, and the maintenance of the rights of naturalized citizens against the absolute doctrine of immutable allegiance and the claims of foreign powers to punish them for alleged crimes committed beyond their jurisdiction.

In demanding these measures and reforms we arraign the Radical party* for its disregard of right, and the unparalleled oppression and tyranny which have marked its career.

After the most solemn and unanimous pledge of both Houses of Congress to prosecute the war exclusively for the maintenance of the government and the preservation of the Union under the Constitution, it has repeatedly violated that most sacred pledge, under which alone was rallied that noble volunteer army which carried our flag to victory.

Instead of restoring the Union, it has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten States, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and negro supremacy. [read more]

1904 Democratic Party Platform

Election of Senators By the People

We favor the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people.**

…..

Condemnation of Polygamy

We demand the extermination of polygamy within the jurisdiction of the United States, and the complete separation of Church and State in political affairs. [read more]

1908 Democratic Party Platform

Income Tax

We favor an income tax as part of our revenue system^, and we urge the submission of a constitutional amendment specifically authorizing Congress to levy and collect a tax upon individual and corporate incomes, to the end that wealth may bear its proportionate share of the burdens of the Federal Government. [read more]

The 1908 Democrat Party platform also wanted election of senators by popular vote.

 

Notes:

* The Republican party.

** Not part of the 1904 Republican Party Platform.

^ Not part of the 1908 Republican Party Platform.