Why the State Won’t Tolerate Independence for Christianity

From Zachary Yost on Mises.org (Mar. 11, 2021):

On February 25, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a bill that is touted as a step forward for civil rights in the United States. If enacted, the bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the federally protected classes that cannot be discriminated against and would expand where such protections are applied. While expanding such protections is not necessarily widely opposed (Mormon Republican Chris Stewart has introduced the Fairness for All Act as an alternative bill), the act explicitly says that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 cannot be invoked, and this has generated tremendous concern that both private businesses and religious institutions will be forced to toe the current cultural line regarding sexual and gender ideology, or else face discrimination suits and be sued into oblivion.

Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and Christianity Today have argued against the bill on the basis of its effects on religious institutions, private schools, the legal rights of parents, and women’s athletics. While a discussion of such effects is important, the conversation has largely been missing the broader context of where this legislation and the numerous other proposals like it emerge from.

In his important essay “The Balance of Power in Society” sociologist Frank Tannenbaum argues that “society is possessed by a series of irreducible institutions, perennial through time, that in effect both describe man and define the basic role he plays.” These perennial institutions are the state, the church, the family, and the market. These institutions have eternally striven against each other to gain dominance and become what sociologist Robert Nisbet would call the primary reference group for its members, meaning the primary way in which they understand themselves and shape their beliefs and actions. At various times we can see one group coming to dominate the others, such as when the “trustee” form of family dominated social life in clan-based societies, or when the Roman Catholic Church exhibited tremendous power over the political affairs of Europe. Currently, we live in an epoch where the state has come to dominate social life to an extent never previously seen in human history.

It is useful to analyze the Equality Act from this perspective to truly understand its full implications. State hostility towards religion and the religious institutions through which religion is exercised is not driven solely, or in some cases even primarily, by the current secular zeitgeist. Rather, religion and religious institutions represent a major obstacle to the exercise of state control and the centralization of social power. In the Western context, orthodox Christianity especially poses a threat to this agenda due to its adherents’ membership in a kingdom “not of this world.” It is difficult for the immanent state to compete to be the primary reference for people who, by virtue of their religion, are members of a transcendent order.

However, it cannot be denied that the state has been very successful in undermining and sapping the power of religious institutions through two different means. The first is by expropriating those mundane areas of social responsibility and function that have traditionally been the purview of the church, such as charity and education. While churches are still involved in such things, the state has supplanted them as the primary social institution that provides them.

As Nisbet argues in his book The Quest for Community, a social group cannot survive for long if its chief functional purpose is lost, and unless new institutional functions are adapted, the group’s “psychological influence will be minimal.” No doubt the state has succeeded in centralizing so much power due to its success in poaching the historical functions of the church and family.

I noted above that in the Western context the emphasis of orthodox Christianity on transcendental concerns has proven to be a stumbling block to the state when it comes to becoming citizens’ primary reference group. However, the state has also attempted to muscle into that territory as well. Earlier I classified the state and the church as being two different institutions with separate functions. While this is often true, especially in the West due to the Augustinian formulation of the City of God and the Earthly City, in various times in history the functions have been unified.

In his work The Political Religions, political theorist Eric Voegelin explored this idea and traced its earliest sophisticated formulation back to Amenhotep IV/Akhenaton, a fourteenth-century BC pharaoh who temporarily upended Egyptian civilization by abolishing the old deities and introducing the monotheistic worship of the sun god Aton. By abolishing the old gods (references to traditional deities were eradicated and Amenhotep changed his name so that it no longer referenced the old god Amon), the newly named Akhenaton also abolished the old priesthood as well. What was new and innovative about Aton was that he was not just a limited god of Egypt, but in fact the god of the universe, who speaks and acts through his son, the Pharaoh. By obliterating the old gods such as Osiris, Voegelin argued that Akhenaton abolished those aspects of the Egyptian religion that were of the utmost importance to individuals, such as judgment and life after death, and replaced them only with a collective political religion of empire. This inability to fulfill the spiritual needs of the people, combined with the reaction of the defrocked priestly caste, led to backlash and restoration of the old order after the death of Akhenaton, when it was his turn to be obliterated from history.

Voegelin traces this idea of political religion through the ages and argues that Christianity, through the work of Augustine, seriously upended “the cosmos of the divinely analogous state” by subordinating the political-temporal sphere to the spiritual one. For hundreds of years this understanding dominated medieval Europe, but with the advent of the Enlightenment began to crack apart under a succession of philosophers, most notably Thomas Hobbes with his conception of the Leviathan state. However, Voegelin notes that over time, as the world has secularized, the political religions have closed themselves off to claims of being the conduit for God’s action on earth and instead have come to embody immanent forces such as “the order of history” or “the order of blood.” Metaphysics and religion have been banished in favor of a vocabulary of “science” that is “inner-worldly” and therefore closed off to what Voegelin would call the ground of being through which humans experience transcendent reality.

In the United States, our political religion takes the form of progressivism, which itself is the product of Protestant clergy who abandoned orthodoxy in the nineteenth century in favor of an immanent ideology in which the US would serve as the instrument to build God’s kingdom on earth. In his essay “The Progressive Era and the Family,” Murray Rothbard traces this movement to the rise of what he terms “evangelical pietism” and the way in which it altered traditional doctrine to require that man work for his own salvation by working for the salvation of the rest of the world through its immanent reformation.

The song “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was one product of this way of thinking and, in the words of one Voegelin scholar, its author “transforms Christ’s redemptive mission—which is not of this world—into the world immanent social activism of the Anti‑Slavery movement.” Rather than waiting for Christ to return, when he shall establish a new heaven and a new earth, the progressive creed held that it is the job of every true Christian to redeem the fallen world and to build God’s kingdom on earth right now. The Civil War was understood as one such redemptive episode (complete with a martyr in the form of Abe Lincoln), as was the First World War. In his book The War for Righteousness, historian Richard M. Gamble documents the way in which Progressive Protestant clergy led the charge to bring the US into the war with hopes of redeeming the world. Like Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson was perceived as a tragic martyr for the cause and was viewed with clearly religious veneration.

While the American political religion began by attempting to build the kingdom of God on earth, it has, in Voegelin’s term, ended up as an “inner-worldly” religion that does not even attempt to maintain a connection to the transcendent order of reality, and instead justifies itself as being the conduit through which the inexorable march of “progress” flows forth. Democracy and equality, not the return of Christ, are the new end of history.

The end result is that the state seeks to not only supplant religious institutions by usurping their mundane functions but by usurping their spiritual functions as well. Like the priests of Akhenaton’s day, American religious institutions, especially orthodox Christian ones, are both a competing pole of social power and the manifestation of a rival religion that must be subdued if the “State-God,” in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, is to prevail.

In this context, with legislation like the Equality Act the state is not only seeking to further erode the social power of religious institutions by making religious education or adoption more difficult, but it is also advancing a rival religious doctrine at the same time by foisting progressive sexual and gender ideology on society.

It is likely that the Equality Act will not manage to pass the Senate in its current form, but the reality of the situation is that as long as the progressive political religion remains a potent force in American life, independent repositories of social power such as the family and the church will continually be under sustained attack. We can only hope that one day progressivism will meet the same fate that Aton did after the passing of Akhenaton, but until then, those who do not adhere to the cult of the “State-God” can only resist its impositions as best we can. [source]

The Left doesn’t want independence for Christianity (or Judaism for that matter) but independence for Islam is fine. But appeasing the Islamists only gets you slavery or death. They don’t want to assimilate with any country that is not Islamic.

By Compensating Slave Owners, Great Britain Negotiated a Peaceful End to Slavery

From Mises.org (Sept. 8, 2022):

The 2018 announcement that the British government completed the payment of a loan that was borrowed to compensate slave owners for the abolition of slavery continues to evoke a flurry of emotions. Many find it outrageous that the British government would contemplate compensating planters rather than the enslaved. Such responses are expected because people are using current moral standards to judge historical realities.

But an appreciation of the sociopolitical events surrounding the loan suggests that compensating planters was a feasible alternative at the time. English laws and customs placed a premium on protecting the rights of property owners, and slaves were considered property. The idea of owning people today seems abhorrent; however, this was not always the case. In British colonies, planters fiercely guarded their right to acquire slaves and appropriate their labor.

Questioning the right to own property provoked contention, even when the property was a human being. This was also the case in the context of indentureship in Barbados, where white indentured workers were perceived as property and could be inherited. British colonies in the West Indies valued autonomy and often resented Britain’s involvement in West Indian affairs.

As a result, when dealing with West Indian colonies, the British government had to tread carefully or face the wrath of the powerful British West India interest. The concerns of West Indian planters were voiced by proslavery parliamentarians in England, who were unwilling dissolve the plantation system without a fight. Politics is futile without compromise, so to abolish slavery, the British government had no option but to negotiate with proslavery forces who saw abolition as a violation of property rights.

Due to the primacy of property rights in England, proslavery lobbyists were able to galvanize the support of nonplanters by arguing that abolishing slavery without compensating property owners would more broadly erode protection for property rights. Their messages were carried by newspapers, journals, and pamphlets admonishing abolitionists for hesitating to compensate enslavers.

Contextualizing the case for compensation, Kathleen Mary Butler shows that the proslavery West India interest employed blackmail to guilt parliamentarians into granting compensation:

The interest argued that successive British governments had condoned and encouraged slave holding…. On several occasions, the Quarterly Review pointed out that various acts of Parliament had encouraged slave owners to spend vast sums of money to buy land and slaves. To deny them compensation, the Review believed constituted a “flagrant breach of faith.”

Jamaican planters weaponized the rhetoric of property rights with equal vigor to bolster the case for compensation. Radical journalist and reformer Augustin Hardin Beaumont, editor of the Jamaica Courant criticized slavery but still noted that enslavers deserved compensation because slavery was enabled by the British and hence it was only fair for British taxpayers to compensate West Indian planters. Throughout the West Indies, slave owners echoed the sentiment that abolishing slavery without compensation was unjust.

These views were so widespread that black slave owners were unwilling to part with slaves unless they received compensation. In 1831, free people of color in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, organized a meeting to flesh out the problems of abolition and its effect on property rights. The chairman of the meeting was the prosperous Benjamin Scott Moncrieff, a prominent official who possessed four hundred slaves, owned three estates, and served as an attorney for other properties.

Kathleen Mary Butler reveals that this community endorsed compensation as a tool to safeguard their property rights:

Those attending the meeting objected strongly to comments that Stephen Lushington, the British abolitionist, had allegedly made to the effect that in Jamaica the free people of color had authorized him to emancipate their slaves. The members categorically denied giving any such authorization and stressed their determination to defend their property and surrender it only “for the most full and ample compensation.”

In fact, their resolutions were published in Jamaican newspapers and sent to proslavery outlets in Britain. The historical accounts covered indicate that compensation was a creative strategy to placate enslavers who refused to cede authority to abolitionists. Absent compensation, abolition would have been delayed and blacks would have served remained in slavery for a longer time. Some feel that slaves deserved compensation, but bribing planters was the best tradeoff that the political climate could accommodate.

Yet despite the complexities of the decision, many think that the British owe blacks an apology. However, the truth is that the British atoned for their actions years ago. Britain in 1846 instituted the Aberdeen Act, which intercepted Brazilian ships suspected of trafficking Africans and prosecuted slave traders in British admiralty courts. Historians assert that maintaining the African Squadron alone came at the cost of $6.8 million and the lives of five thousand seamen and officers, who died primarily due to malaria, all in the name of suppressing the slave trade.

The cost of resourcing the African Squadron was also greater than the value of Britain’s trade with the continent. Suppressing the global slave trade incurred considerable expenses for the British, and few appreciate this bold political move that came at the expense of British taxpayers. Indeed, it is ironic that the British are instructed to atone for the slave trade when their counterparts in the Middle East and Africa were coerced into abolishing slavery due to Western directives. Compared to its peers, Britain was a moral superstar and should be lauded for taking a tough stance when others vacillated on the question of slavery. [source]

Those slaveowners were laying down a bunch of bull crap.

Tiny robots made from human cells heal damaged tissue

From Nature.com (Nov. 30, 2023):

Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells that are able to repair damaged neural tissue. The 'anthrobots' were made using human tracheal cells and might, in future, be used in personalized medicine.

The research "points the way to a 'tissue engineering 2.0' that synthetically controls a range of developmental processes", says Alex Hughes, a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Developmental biologist Michael Levin at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and his colleagues had previously developed tiny robots using clumps of embryonic frog cells. But the medical applications of these 'xenobots' were limited, because they weren't derived from human cells and because they had to be manually carved into the desired shape. The researchers have now developed self-assembling anthrobots and are investigating their therapeutic potential using human tissue grown in the laboratory. They published their  findings in Advanced Science.

Levin and his team grew spheroids of human tracheal skin cells in a gel for two weeks, before removing the clusters and growing them for one week in a less viscous solution. This caused tiny hairs on the cells called cilia to move to the outside of the spheroids instead of the inside. These cilia acted as oars, and the researchers found that the resulting anthrobots - each containing a few hundred cells - often swam in one of several patterns. Some swam in straight lines, others swam in circles or arcs, and some moved chaotically.

To test the anthrobots' therapeutic potential, Levin and his colleagues placed several into a small dish. There, the anthrobots fused together to form a 'superbot', which the researchers placed on a layer of neural tissue that had been scratched. Within three days, the sheet of neurons had completely healed under the superbot. This was surprising, says study co-author Gizem Gumuskaya, a developmental biologist also at Tufts, because the anthrobot cells were able to perform this repair function without requiring any genetic modification. "It's not obvious that you're going to get that kind of response," she says.

Going forward, Levin, Gumuskaya and their colleagues think anthrobots made from a person's own tissue could be used to clear arteries, break up mucus or deliver drugs, with or without genetic engineering. By combining several cell types and exploring other stimuli, it might also be possible to develop biobots - robots made from biological material - with potential applications in sustainable construction and outer-space exploration.

"Once we understand what cell collectives are willing and able to do, then we can begin to control that not just for stand-alone bots, but for regenerative medicine," says Levin, including to regrow limbs. [source]

Nice.

Senator: Biden Agency Used ‘Benghazi’ To Hide Emails On Planned Parenthood Loans

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 29):

The moment is etched in 21st century memory. The shrill voice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, agitated and stretched, still rings in the ears. 

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” Clinton, with dreams of the White House dancing in her head, scolded Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., during an early 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

The Wisconsin Republican had gotten under Clinton’s skin, asking her about the secretary’s slow response to a preventable attack in September 2012 on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Benghazi became a political lightning rod, the leading symbol of the Obama administration’s anemic, incompetent, and deceptive foreign policy, particularly Clinton’s ineffectual “Smart Power” strategy. More so, the committee investigating Benghazi opened the lock to Clinton’s emails, the secret server, and more Clinton lies and obfuscation that contributed to her stunning loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

So what on earth does Benghazi have to do with abortion factory Planned Parenthood? It appears to be the codename for cover-up involving some $90 million in taxpayer-funded Covid-era forgivable loans to a nonprofit organization ineligible to receive the government handout.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into why President Joe Biden’s Small Business Administration used “Benghazi” in the subject lines of internal communications regarding the funding. Ernst, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, asserts “Benghazi” is code for “the possible unlawful concealment and attempted concealment of federal records by President Biden’s Small Business Administration officials, and potentially their White House colleagues — a violation of the Federal Records Act.”

‘Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions’

In a letter this week to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Ernst details the emails her office has obtained to date revealing that Biden officials, apparently led by the SBA’s top lawyer, developed strategies to explain how Planned Parenthood qualified for Paycheck Protection Program Loans.

An email from SBA General Council Peggy Hamilton, dated April 30, 2021, appears to be the first with the subject line, “Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions” in the subject line. Note that the reference to the small business loan program and the abortion provider are in parentheses, making requests for communications about the Covid relief program nonresponsive, or not relevant to key records search terms. The agency arguably would not have to turn over the requested information because, understandably, “Benghazi” would not be in the Freedom of Information Act request.

Hamilton’s email was part of a months-long thread about Planned Parenthood’s SBA loans, as well as the abortion giant’s loan forgiveness requests.

“The context of Hamilton’s email, as subsequent SBA emails elucidate, is whether or not the Biden administration would require the repayment of COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans made to potentially ineligible Planned Parenthood affiliates and how the SBA would respond to Congressional inquiries over its decisions,” Ernst’s letter states.

The loans were meant for employers with less than 500 employees, designed to help cover the paychecks for employees of small businesses hit hard by the pandemic and the destructive government-ordered lockdowns that accompanied it. Republican lawmakers, upon learning of PPP loans going to to the abortion industrial complex, demanded President Donald Trump’s DOJ at the time investigate which Planned Parenthood facilities received forgivable loans.

“These Planned Parenthood entities self-certified eligibility for these loans despite the clear ineligibility under the statutory text of the CARES Act,” Republican senators wrote in a letter to then-Attorney General Bill Barr. The CARES Act was the first massive infusion of panic cash thrown about to deal with Covid and the fear attached to it.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America denied any wrongdoing, asserting that some independent operations were awarded loans under the “eligibility rules established by the CARES Act and the Small Business Administration (SBA).” [read more]

More Biden regime corruption...

Anthony Fauci adviser indicted by DOJ on charges of concealing COVID records

From NY Post.com (Apr. 28):

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has indicted a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly destroying and concealing records from investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Morens, 78, has been charged with one count of conspiracy against the United States; two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records.

The conspiracy also included an alleged “kickback” scheme where Morens took or was promised gifts — including wine bottles and meals at Michelin-starred restaurants — to conduct “official acts favorable” to a federal grantee.

The ex-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official faces up to 51 years in federal prison if convicted of all charges.

The indictment, unsealed Monday in Maryland federal court, also notes two unnamed co-conspirators who “concealed, removed, destroyed and caused the concealment, and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act].”

Information in the indictment indicates the co-conspirators are Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of Manhattan-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Gerald Keusch, an associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory Institute and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantee.

Former House COVID Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup told The Post Tuesday that “additional indictments may follow.”

“The repercussions of these actions have caused significant damage to the public health system, and recovery may take considerable time due to the involvement of numerous individuals within various agencies,” he said. “The ongoing pursuit of justice is essential for the well-being of the American people.”

Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, added that “the evidence against the three is compelling.”

“Unless one or more flips and provides evidence against Fauci and others in exchange for immunity, all three should be, and likely will be, convicted,” said Ebright, who noted Keusch approved the first EcoHealth grant awarded to the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2002.

Fauci, who left government service in December 2022, is also referred to as “Senior NIAID Official 1” in multiple communications cited in the indictment — but not named as a co-conspirator. [read more]

So, this advisor is accused of "destroying and concealing records." That sounds similar to what Hillary Clinton did. Unlike, Clinton though, this advisor is being indicted. Good to see some justice. Too bad Fauci can't can't be held accountable since he was pardoned by the Demented One.

A video about Fauci and his misdeeds: Connecting the Dots Between Fauci, MKUltra, and JFK

Democrat melts down after Secretary Doug Burgum drops bombshell about NGOs during committee hearing

From The Blaze.com (Apr. 21):

Democrats had a meltdown during a committee hearing while grilling Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on all of the programs he is attempting to shut down.

And no one was ready for his answer.

In a Monday House Committee Hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) asked for clarification on Burgum's proposed "complete elimination" of some programs in the Fish and Wildlife Service, including some state and tribal wildlife grants.

Burgum replied with a shocking statistic about where some "nongovernmental organizations" get their money.

"There was a review done of the grants," he said.

"And that is an area where there's been substantial review. We found organizations that were receiving grants from Interior where 80 to 100% of the revenue of that NGO was a grant from the federal government."

"And yet those organizations, we were the sole source of their revenue, but they would have a CEO making $650,000 and four $400,000 lobbyists," Burgum continued.

DeLauro stammered in reply: "It would be very interesting because we can't get any information. We may agree with you. Give us the reasons why all of these grants are cut, the organizations are cut. ... We just can't take your word." [source]

Gut away! Keep going!  You never hear the Left complaining about CEOs of NGOs (or for that matter labor unions) making huge salaries.

The Insanity of Denying Free Will

From Breakpoint.org (Nov. 20, 2023):

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton observed that even insane explanations for the world can have a perverse consistency. A madman who thinks he’s the king of England has a ready explanation for anyone who denies his claim: They’re conspirators trying to keep him from his throne. “His mind,” wrote Chesterton, “moves in a perfect but narrow circle.”

Chesterton’s asylum example also applies to a recent article published at Phys.org about a scientist who has written a book to convince everyone that humans don’t have free will. Neuroendocrinologist and MacArthur “genius grant” winner Robert Sapolsky has studied people and primates for over 40 years. In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Dr. Sapolsky argues that humans are molecular machines, wholly determined by our genes, our environments, and our past. Thus, our behavior, even when condemned as criminal or evil, is no more a choice than “the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.”

Of course, the implications if this were true would be incredible. As a Los Angeles Times reporter memorably put it:

This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.

However, rather than justifying or enabling acts of violence, Sapolsky believes his deterministic view of human choices could actually make society better:

The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over. We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.

Sapolsky’s argument isn’t new. It is, in fact, the standard, reductive version of metaphysical naturalism, which teaches that all phenomena have material causes. Since these causes are themselves materially caused, nature is a closed system of dominoes. In this theory, an observer with perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of the universe could accurately predict every event that followed, right down to the choices individuals make about what to eat, where to live, who to love, what to believe, and even whether to kill.

The problem, which philosophers and writers over the years have pointed out, is that if everything is determined and humans do not have a free will, that would include the belief in metaphysical naturalism and every part of the thought process that led to it. Assuming this view, the reason Sapolsky believes what he does has nothing to do with what he has learned in his research or whether it’s true. Instead, it is the predetermined result of a long process of material causes stretching back to the Big Bang. His book, his arguments, and his belief that they’ll somehow make the world a better place are not meaningful. They’re just the latest dominoes to have fallen, and it could never have been otherwise.

In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis critiqued this brand of reductive naturalism:

[N]o account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished.

To his credit, Sapolsky seems aware of this absurdity but just accepts it: “It is logically indefensible, ludicrous, meaningless to believe that something ‘good’ can happen to a machine,” he admits. “Nonetheless, I am certain that it is good if people feel less pain and more happiness.”

But why is it good for people to be happier or have less pain if everything is determined? Why is it preferable to live in a society marked by peace and safety, instead of chaos and violence? And why appeal to people to make a meaningful choice between these options when their choice is already determined and meaningless? 

Chesterton’s answer to such small, reductive worldviews was to confront them with the immensity of the real world and human experience, and to notice how they do more explaining away than explaining.

We know our choices are not mere results of physical processes, and that they have a deep moral significance. We know it so deeply that even those trying to convince us we’re mere machines must contradict themselves by treating some choices, such as their choice to write books to convince readers, as if they mean something.

In the very act of denying our moral responsibility in a moral universe, we must, in some sense, act as if meaning exists. It’s a crazy effort to deny meaning, but that doesn’t stop even geniuses from trying it. All the more evidence of our profound freedom, and of our ability to abuse it. [source]

Five Keys to Professional and Personal Development

From Jeff Deist on Mises.org (Sept. 19, 2022):

The remarks I’ve prepared today relate to your personal and professional development, which are of course closely interrelated. This is not to be confused with “self-help,” a somewhat disreputable genre whose practitioners often want to sell you shortcuts. Development means just that: developing your skills, knowledge, and interests to advance toward goals which hopefully become more clear as you go through your twenties and thirties. Remember, you may well have a longer work life than your parents and grandparents, so you have more time and more choices perhaps than they did. But it is important not to waste your best years for learning, when your brain’s neurons fire at their best! Even at your age, still in college, it is not too early to view yourselves as professionals and to take your work seriously.

Here are five suggestions you can implement immediately to stand apart from your peers.

1. Sift

Access to information is virtually costless today. Your job is to sift through all of the white noise and recognize what is important.

The supply of information in a digital age outpaces demand, and makes information very, very cheap. In a digital world, information is instantaneous and often free of any financial cost. This is especially true of social media, where information and opinion are readily available but knowledge and discernment are in short supply. When something is cheap and easy, we naturally tend to discount its importance.

This was not always true. In fact, previous generations had to work hard for access to information, which was largely contained in physical books which may not have been easily available or affordable. My great-grandfather, who lived with us very briefly, was born in the late 1800s. Like many of his generation, he did not finish high school and thus was only “qualified” for manual labor. So he took it upon himself to enroll in a correspondence course, the kind of thing literally advertised in the back of magazines. He probably mailed physical cash to an address listed, then waited some time for the materials. He read each course, took tests at home, and sent the tests by mail for grading. All of this took a couple of years, but at the end he had enough knowledge and some kind of credential to become an electrician for a large company. This job paid enough to afford a middle-class home, which he largely built and wired himself. The information needed to become an electrician was quite valuable to him—it was not cheap and instantly available.

But even in the 1980s and ’90s things were much different relative to today. Your average chain bookstore at the mall maybe had a few books by Ayn Rand, and perhaps Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. You might find John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society and something by Henry Hazlitt if you were lucky. You certainly would not have found any Menger, Mises, or Rothbard. This was also true of your local public library, or even a university library.

By contrast, today we hold almost of all the world’s history and accumulated knowledge in the smartphone sitting here. This is both a blessing and potentially a curse. Sifting, not access, is the challenge. Your job is to sift through it all and not get sidetracked by the wrong information. Time is important, and everything you do has an opportunity cost. Forbearance can be as effective as action.

2. Read

The simplest thing you can do to distinguish yourself is to become a voracious reader. This is simple but not easy.

In fact, you should strive to read one book every week. This may be difficult if you are a full-time student, and of course you probably can’t read a 900-page treatise like Human Action so quickly. But if you make the habit now as a young person, when reading speed and retention are higher, you will reap enormous benefits. For longer books, set a target page count each day. When life intervenes, make up the lost day or days over the weekend.

Charlie Munger, the billionaire partner to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, describes his friend’s day as 80 percent reading—often five hundred pages. Before he invests his client’s money in a company, Buffett puts the odds in his favor by reading everything he possibly can about the company itself and the broader industry. He is not always right, but he is always informed. We might imagine him flying around on private jets, wheeling and dealing, when in fact he is more likely sitting at his desk, reading everything from the great books to technical analysis.

Mr. Buffett’s reading habit provides a powerful lesson for all of us. But most Americans read almost nothing. A friend who teaches at a large public university thinks less than half of his incoming freshmen have ever read a single book in full! So while our great-grandparents saw access to books (and education) as a luxury, most people today fail to take advantage of our modern tools. This is an opportunity for you to stand out.

One caveat with respect to books you read: as Charles Haywood counsels, give strong priority to books written more than one hundred years ago, and be careful with books written in the past fifty years. Older books have passed the market test; we still read Socrates and Shakespeare for a reason. If book or author still resonates after a century, your time is probably well spent. And almost all new books, regardless of genre, have an earlier and better analogue. This may not apply to recent developments in science and technology, but when reading philosophy, history, humanities, and social sciences, you should go to original sources at this point in your education. [read more]

Not bad advice. I do like the second suggestion. The other keys are:

1. Learn Continuously
2. Avoid Arguments
3. Promote People, Not Just Ideas

Massive genetic study finds genes linked to cannabis addiction

From Nature.com (Nov. 20, 2023):

By analyzing more than one million people's genomes, researchers have identified stretches of DNA that could be linked to cannabis addiction. They also found that some of the same regions in the genome are associated with other health conditions, such as lung cancer and schizophrenia.

The findings are evidence that cannabis addiction "could have substantial public-health risks if the usage increases", says Daniel Levey, a medical neuroscientist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a co-author of the study, published today in Nature Genetics.

Taking cannabis recreationally is legal in at least 8 countries, and 48 countries have legalized medicinal use of the drug for conditions including chronic pain, cancer and epilepsy. But one-third of people who take cannabis end up becoming addicted, or using the drug in a way that is damaging to their health. Previous studies have suggested that there is a genetic component, and have shown links between problematic cannabis use and some cancers and psychiatric disorders.

Drug taking and addiction can be in influenced both by people's genes and by their environment, which makes them extremely difficult to study, says Levey. But the team was able to build on data from previous work by including genetic information from additional sources, predominantly the Million Veteran Program - a US-based biobank with a large genetic database that aims to improve health care for former military service members. The analysis encompassed multiple ethnic groups, a  first for a genetic study looking at cannabis misuse.

As well as identifying regions of the genome that might be involved, the researchers saw a bi-directional link between excessive cannabis use and schizophrenia, meaning that the two conditions can in influence each other. This  finding is intriguing, says Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist-scientist at King's College London. Cannabis use "is the most preventable risk factor" for schizophrenia, she says, adding that the type of genetic data examined in the study could be used in future to identify and support people at increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders through cannabis use.

More information about the biological mechanisms that connect cannabis use with health conditions will provide a better evidence base for policy and medical practice, says study co-author Joel Gelernter, a psychiatric geneticist at Yale University.

He adds that researchers need to continue to build on this knowledge and use the data to understand the health risks of both medical and recreational cannabis use. Di Forti agrees, adding that it will also be important to investigate the specifics of how the drug is administered, and how much of the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) users consume. [source]

Genetically Engineered Animals and Insects Could Benefit People and the Planet

From Red State.com (Sept. 23, 2020):

Amidst the human tragedy that is the coronavirus pandemic, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that persistent threats to human health and well-being that pre-existed COVID-19 still remain.

Insect borne diseases, hunger, and malnutrition, constantly simmering threats that only rarely get the attention of the pandemic, kill and harm far more people every year than the coronavirus.

Whatever the new post-corona normal will be, we should sustain and increase efforts to reduce premature mortality from starvation and disease.

Thankfully, biotechnology companies are continuing to develop animals that could both help reduce hunger even as world population grows and increasing numbers of people in developing countries are beginning to include more animal protein in their diets, and that could reduce disease by reducing the numbers of illnesses spread by insects.

Among the biotech innovations currently being developed, tested, or marketed that could help reduce hunger and disease are genetically modified cattle, goats, pigs, salmon, mosquitos, and moths.

Reuters recently reported scientists in the United States and Britain are using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to create farm animals that could be used as “surrogate sires,” essentially sterile blank slates that could then be transplanted with stem cells producing sperm, carrying desired traits.

The process could allow for widespread dissemination of genetic material with traits that produce healthier, more productive animals using fewer resources such as feed, medicines, and water.

“With this technology, we can get better dissemination of desirable traits and improve the efficiency of food production,” Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist at Washington State University, who co-led the work, told Reuters. “If we can tackle this genetically, then that means less water, less feed and fewer antibiotics we have to put into the animals.”

Alternatively, if one is worried about climate change, this technology might be used to produce animals that need less land or crops for food, and/or that digest food more efficiently, reducing livestock methane emissions.

One must also remember that seafood accounts for approximately 20 percent of the animal protein consumed annually, yet many fish stocks are in decline. With this in mind, in mid-2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the importation of AquaBounty’s genetically modified Atlantic salmon eggs to be raised in the United States.

The bioengineered fish grow to maturity twice as fast as wild salmon, meaning they can be harvested and replenished much more quickly. Raised in controlled, land-based facilities and bred to be sterile, the fish are incapable of affecting wild salmon. Aquabounty’s salmon could become the world’s most sustainable salmon having a smaller environmental footprint than traditional salmon farming or commercial harvesting on the open seas.

Nor have harmful insects been ignored by the biotech industry. For instance, biotech company Oxitec has developed a modified version of the diamondback moth, which could lead to the pest’s extinction. Diamondback moths, the most resistant of all insects to pesticides, can wipe out entire fields of cold weather crops including, broccoli, cabbage, canola, cauliflower, and kale, resulting in billions of dollars in lost crops each year. The Oxitec diamondback moths contain a lethality gene, which when they mate with moths in the wild, prevents the female offspring from developing, so they die as larvae, with half male offspring in each generation inheriting the “lethality” gene meaning the entire population declines over each generation.

Oxitec is also at the forefront of developing genetically modified mosquitos that could reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as chikungunya, dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, and the zika virus.

The World Health Organization reports mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals on earth, attributing 438,000 deaths to the insects from malaria alone in 2015. Other mosquito-spread diseases claim thousands more lives each year.

Oxitec’s mosquitos have been modified so when they mate with females, their offspring are incapable of surviving to adulthood. Laboratory tests and field tests have indicated widespread introduction of this mosquito could dramatically reduce the population of the disease-spreading mosquitoes.

Federal government and state regulators in Florida recently approved the introduction of Oxitec’s mosquitos into a small area of the Sunshine State. This follows the actions of the governments of Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama, which have allowed Oxitec to release its bioengineered mosquitos at selected sites. Brazil reported mosquito populations fell by at least 90 percent in the locations Oxitec’s mosquitos were released in the year following their introduction.

Unfortunately, environmental extremists have targeted genetically modified products for extinction, fighting to delay the approval of or suing to block the introduction of bioengineered products, saying genetic engineering is akin to “playing God.”

While caution must be exercised with the introduction of any new technology, genetic engineering carries much promise, and the crops and animals developed using it are the most intensively studied and tested technologies ever to be produced. If the search for a COVID-19 vaccine is teaching us anything, it is that too much caution can be as deadly or even deadlier than too little caution. With millions of lives on the line, research and regulatory approvals should be expedited, not delayed.

If environmental fear-mongers successfully block the use of bioengineered animals, they will be condemning millions of people to unnecessary suffering and early deaths—now that would be playing God (or the devil) with a vengeance. [source]

Grand Jury Indicts Southern Poverty Law Center For Secret Fraudulent Payments To Racist Groups

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 21):

A federal grand jury indicted the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Tuesday for allegedly making fraudulent payments to racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement announcing the charges. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”

According to a Justice Department press release, the SPLC — which has often put targets on the backs of nonviolent conservative organizations by falsely labeling them as “hate groups” — has been charged with 11 counts of “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.” Per the presser, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division “filed two forfeiture actions to recover alleged proceeds of the organization’s fraud scheme.”

The agency noted that the indictment returned by the Alabama grand jury detailed how the SPLC reportedly began a “covert network” in the 1980s comprised of individuals “who were either associated with violent and extremist groups … or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction.” The SPLC, however, allegedly did not inform its donors that “some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”

According to the DOJ, between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC allegedly took more than $3 million in donor funds and “secretly funneled” it to people affiliated with “various violent extremist groups.” Among these organizations are the KKK, United Klans of America, National Alliance, and several others.

Referencing the indictment’s findings, the DOJ disclosed that the scheme purportedly sought to “obtain money via donations through materially false representations and omissions about what the donated funds would be used for.” As alleged by the agency, the SPLC “opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities” as a means of “covertly” paying those involved.

“The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals,” the press release reads. “In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.”

Addressing the indictment, FBI Director Kash Patel — whose agency investigated the case alongside the IRS Criminal Investigation division — classified the SPLC’s alleged actions as “illegal.” He further confirmed that the probe remains “ongoing.”

Patel previously severed the FBI’s ties with the SPLC last year following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. TPUSA is one of several conservative organizations the SPLC has smeared in recent years. [source]

A grift anyone?  Welcome to accountability.

More articles on SPLC:

• The SPLC Is A Hedge Fund With A Dumb Anti-Racism Newsletter
• How SPLC’s $520,000-per-year CEO helped turn civil rights group into a ‘partisan smear machine’
• Analysts: SPLC Fraud, Money Laundering Charges Could Be The Tip Of The Iceberg
• SPLC Finally Faces A Reckoning For The Political Violence It Stoked
• SPLC Indictment Shows Partisan Activists Were Running The FBI Domestic Terror Program
• Biden DOJ Was In Cahoots With SPLC As It Funded Extremist Groups, Former Official Admits    
  

Assassination, Normalized: WHCD Gunman Radicalized by Mainstream Dems, Not Left-Wing Streamers

From Free Beacon.com (Apr. 27):

Cole Tomas Allen, the gunman who tried to murder President Donald Trump and other senior officials at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday, is the latest would-be assassin whose radicalization owes less to the juvenile rantings of left-wing influencers than to the everyday rhetoric of mainstream Democrats and media figures.

Many have pointed out that just days before the failed assassination, the New York Times hosted a roundtable discussion in which radical left-wing pundits Hasan Piker and Jia Tolentino endorsed shoplifting and other crimes while expressing sympathy for Luigi Mangione, the gunman accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Piker is a beefcake moron who hates America and routinely justifies Islamic terrorism and other forms of political violence, but he does not appear to have inspired Allen to take a shot at Trump. On April 22, Allen promoted a post on his Bluesky account (@coldforce) criticizing Piker's defense of petty crime. "I've spent a lot of time in countries where graft and grifting are the norm and I assure you it is worth a truly immense cost to prevent that from taking hold in our society," wrote Bluesky user @machete.gay. "You do not want to live in that kind of society." The same user went on to describe Piker as a "fucking idiot."

Allen seems to have agreed with that assessment. On April 11, he promoted a Bluesky post from Sam Deutsch, the Jeopardy! National College Championship champion turned liberal policy wonk, who wrote, "I do not listen to any streamers because streamers are dumb."

A review of Allen's archived posts on Bluesky—his account is currently suspended, for obvious reasons—suggests that the alleged gunman was primarily drawn to mainstream "resistance" figures. Allen's favorite accounts included Democratic activist Will Stancil, Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse, Democratic propagandist Aaron Rupar, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, and Sarah Jeong, the former Times editorial board member who kept her job in 2018 after social media users discovered her racist tweets from years past.

Last week, Allen promoted Bouie's post on Bluesky denouncing Elon Musk as a "vicious white supremacist who thinks poor [A]frican children ought to die, so that the world can be whiter." On the X platform, Allen promoted several posts in 2024 from then-Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler. He would presumably agree with Lincoln Project cofounder Steve Schmidt, who in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt condemned Trump as a "vile and disgusting man."

Allen, who donated to Kamala Harris in 2024, appears to have been particularly outraged about the Trump administration's lack of support for Ukraine and NATO, a popular sentiment among #Resistance Democrats and #NeverTrump former Republicans. He promoted a post criticizing Mehdi Hasan after the former MSNBC anchor attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for being insufficiently pro-Iran. Ryan Wesley Routh, the failed gunman who plotted to assassinate Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2024, was also extremely distraught over the Ukrainian conflict and Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Routh's manifesto contained rhetoric that echoed the anti-Trump tirades of Ben Rhodes and other former Democratic officials.

Allen expressed disdain for Israel, obviously—but that hardly makes him a leftist radical. Earlier this month, he promoted a post from Ken White, a.k.a. "Popehat," the prominent attorney and political commentator, denouncing Israel for "bombing the shit out of Lebanese civilians like there are Palestinian toddlers hiding there." White authored a Substack post earlier this year in which he argued there was a "plausible argument that it is morally permissible, and even morally necessary, to use political violence against the Trump Administration and its agents and supporters under the current circumstances in America." He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

In the manifesto he wrote before the attempted shooting, Allen said he was "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes"—language that would not be out of place on CNN or MS NOW, at a "No Kings" protest, or on a mainstream Democrat's social media feed. Hollywood actor and Democratic activist Mark Ruffalo called Trump a "pedophile," a "convicted rapist," and "the worst human being" on the Golden Globes red carpet earlier this year. Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic congresswoman and former candidate for U.S. Senate, said during a November 2025 appearance on CNN that Trump "may be a pedophile." In June 2025, the official Democratic Party X account described Republicans as the "Pedophile Protection Party." Bouie, the Times columnist, has also insinuated that Trump is a pedophile who participated in Jeffrey Epstein's "massive child sex trafficking ring."

Allen was particularly fond of mainstream Democrats and media figures who attacked Trump's mental fitness and called for his expulsion from the White House. Earlier this month, he promoted two Bluesky posts from Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, in which Wyden vowed to prosecute Trump at "Nuremberg 2.0" for "covering up for pedophiles" and called the president a "deranged" war criminal who "must be impeached and removed from office." He promoted Rupar's post attacking Trump as a "demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity."

On April 12, Allen promoted Stancil's post arguing that Trump "absolutely cannot [be] allowed to continue" because he, along with "the entire Republican Party," is "destroying" the country. Replace the word "continue" with "win the election," and you have Democratic Party's closing message from 2024. Trump was repeatedly denounced as a "fascist" who posed an "existential threat" to American democracy. Democrats lost the election, but their voters didn't forget the hysterical warnings. Several months into Trump's second term, Axios reported that Democratic lawmakers were hearing from panicked constituents who insisted that "civility isn't working" and urged them to prepare for "violence … to fight to protect our democracy."

It's not yet known whether Allen was a fan of Jimmy Kimmel, the former comedian turned ABC News late night host. Kimmel, who is also a prolific Democratic fundraiser, was briefly suspended in 2025 for falsely suggesting that Tyler Robinson, the alleged gunman who killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was a Trump supporter. Last week, a mere 48 hours before Allen made his mad dash for the Washington Hilton ballroom, Kimmel aired a monologue in which he joked that Melania Trump had a "glow like an expectant widow." [source]

Of course he was. The Dems keep saying President Trump is a Nazi, an existential threat to America's democracy.  It's almost like they want Trump to be assassinated.

More article and videos on the killer:

• Sources Say Suspect's Gunfire Hit Secret Service Agent
• He Tried to Kill the President. I Found His Tweets.
• Judge to Accused Would-Be Trump Assassin: 'I Apologize'
  
• The Most Disturbing Part of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting [video]
• It’s CLEAR Why the Third Trump Assassination Attempt Happened [video]

Why We Cannot Be “Uncontroversial” Christians

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Nov. 25, 2022):

The girls’ volleyball team at a rural Vermont high school was banned from their own locker room when several players reported feeling uncomfortable after a male teammate, who identifies as transgender, was allowed to join them in the locker room and watch them change clothes. When the girls said they’d prefer to not share this private space with a boy, they were told that, by law, they had to.

The school also suspended one of the female volleyball players for allegedly “harassing” her male teammate by calling him a “dude.” The girl’s father, a soccer coach at the school, was suspended without pay for the rest of the season because he called the student a boy on Facebook. After the father and daughter filed a lawsuit on free speech grounds, the school walked back its disciplinary actions against the girl. Her father remains suspended, and her team remains barred from their locker room.

This kind of story isn’t as rare as it used to be. Thanks to the Biden Administration’s creative new interpretation of Title IX, which was meant to protect female athletes, many school officials believe they have to allow boys to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms if asked to do so. As a result, kids are being put into dangerous situations, like the two girls who were allegedly raped at school in Loudon County, Virginia, last year when a boy who said he was a girl was granted access to the girls’ restroom.

Scripture teaches that Christians are called not just to follow Jesus in abstract ways, but in the specific times and places to which we’ve been called. How we respond to our own cultural moments will look different, depending on how God has gifted us and how the Holy Spirit empowers us. At the same time, because of our culture’s embrace of harmful ideas about gender and sex, from our medical institutions to our schools, not responding to this cultural challenge in some way is not an option.

What this young volleyball player and her dad did in Vermont was courageous, but it would be a mistake to view their actions as exceptional. Refusing to stand by while your daughter’s school tries to force her to undress in front of a boy shouldn’t be viewed as this particular man’s unique or special calling. Anyone presented with this scenario should refuse to subject any kids to this kind of danger. Opposing boys in girls’ private spaces has become an unavoidable part of our call to love our neighbors, as has speaking out against subjecting kids to dangerous ideas, not to mention hormone treatments and invasive and irreversible surgeries.

In other words, this is not one of those situations in which a variety of responses are valid, as if some will be called to “take a public stance” and others to “stay above the fray.” That principle only holds if our cultural and political leaders agree about what is good and safe for children but have different strategies about how best to achieve it. Now, there is no shared or defensible understanding of what good or safe is. Because children are the disproportionate victims of our bad ideas, Christians have a duty, a calling, to defend them.

Pastors need to prepare their congregations to join believers throughout the centuries who were labeled “controversial.” Christians need to be ready to support our neighbors caught up in a controversy in every way we can, spiritually, emotionally, or even financially. When the tension comes to our daughters’ schools or our workplaces, we need a theology that refuses to live by lies or to “go along” with them, like the two employees of the Kroger supermarket chain fired recently for refusing to wear a new company-wide uniform with the rainbow LGBTQ logo casually slapped on the front. We need a theology of getting fired, suspended, kicked out of locker rooms, and refusing to submit to “re-education” efforts. We need a theology of being labeled controversial, and a theology of helping each other through the professional, reputational and personal fallout that comes with that label.

I’m not suggesting we should go looking for trouble. I am suggesting that, in this case, the trouble has come to us. [source]

Amen. Protecting the innocent is the natural default action. Or should be. It’s what decent people do. Now, putting the innocent in situations that makes them feel unsafe or that goes against their core beliefs is borderline evil.

Obama-era CIA Cover-up, the Havlish Lawsuit and Islamists Groups

On December 22, 2011, U.S. District judge George B. Daniels ruled in Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., that Iran and Hezbollah were liable for damages to be paid to relatives of the victims of the September 11, 2001, jihad attacks in New York and Washington, as both the Islamic Republic and its Lebanese proxy had actively aided al-Qaeda in planning and executing those attacks.

Daniels found that Iran and Hezbollah had cooperated and collaborated with al-Qaeda before 9/11 and continued to do so after the attacks.

…..

The Obama-era CIA went to great pains to try to ensure that information about Iran's role in 9/11 did not come out in the Havlish case. In August 2010, a CIA official pressured a Havlish witness to withdraw his testimony in exchange for a new identity, new passport, and new job. In December of that year, another CIA operative approached a different Havlish witness, showed him documents stolen from the case, and took him to a U.S. embassy, where he was subjected to five hours of interrogation and finally offered cash if he recanted his testimony. Says Timmerman, "After I reported those attempts at witness tampering to a Congressional oversight committee, they ceased."

Judge Daniels determined that Iran, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and other Iranian government departments, as well as the Ayatollah Khamenei himself and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were all directly implicated in Iranian efforts to aid al-Qaeda in its 9/11 plot. He awarded the plaintiffs in the Havlish case 394,277,884 dollars for economic damages, as well as ninety-four million dollars for pain and suffering, eighty hundred and seventy-four million for mental anguish and grief, and 4,686,235,921 dollars in punitive damages, along with nine hundred and sixty-eight million in prejudgment interest, for a total of 7,016,513,805 dollars.

..….

In it, Muslim Brotherhood members were told that the Brotherhood was working on presenting Islam as a "civilizational alternative" to non-Islamic forms of society and governance, and supporting "the global Islamic state wherever it is." In working to establish that Islamic state, Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States: "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

The Muslim Brotherhood has been active in the United States for decades, and is the moving force behind virtually all of the mainstream Muslim organizations in America: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), and many others.

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

Mysterious ‘Tasmanian devil’ space explosion baffles astronomers

From Nature.com (Nov. 15, 2023):

An explosion in space nicknamed the Tasmanian devil has confused astronomers by   flashing at peak brightness more than a dozen times, months after the initial event. The observation, while posing new questions, could help to narrow down what might cause such explosions, which are known as luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs).

LFBOTs are seen across the Universe and defy explanation. The first, dubbed the Cow after its designation AT2018cow, was spotted in 2018 in a galaxy about 60 million parsecs (200 million light years) from Earth. The Cow was notable for being up to 100 times brighter than a supernova before dimming over just a few days, a process that takes weeks for a supernova.

More than half a dozen LFBOTs have since been found, including ones referred to as the Koala, the Camel and, earlier this year, the Finch. But astronomers are still not sure what is causing them. The leading ideas are that these explosions are either failed supernovae - stars collapsing into a black hole or neutron star before they can explode - intermediate-mass black holes consuming other stars, or the results of objects interacting with hot, bright stars known as Wolf-Rayet stars.

In a study published on 15 November in Nature, a team led by astronomer Anna Ho at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, describes new activity from an LFBOT that had been discovered about 1 billion parsecs away in September 2022; this one, formally called AT2022tsd, is known as the Tasmanian devil. Initially using the Magellan-Baade telescope in Chile, the researchers found that the Tasmanian devil repeatedly flashed at its peak brightness, starting in December 2022. They saw 14 of these flaring events in total, each lasting only minutes.

"Flashes like this haven't been seen before in LFBOTs," says Ho. She adds that each of the unexpected flares was "as powerful as the original LFBOT".

"It's an amazing observation," says Raffaella Margutti, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. "This is unprecedented. It opens a lot of questions."

Collapsing star

Ho says that the flaring could support the failed supernova idea, which would involve a massive star about 20 times the mass of the Sun running out of fuel and collapsing, leaving a dense neutron star or black hole inside the remains of the surrounding star. "We think these flashes are probably coming from either a neutron star or a black hole that was formed in the original LFBOT event," she says.

If the neutron star or black hole at the centre of the LFBOT had powerful jets of energy firing from its poles, it could explain the flaring. These jets would fire out into space as the object rotated - and, if they repeatedly pointed in the direction of Earth, that could explain the flashes of light from the Tasmanian devil. "This could be one of the few cases where it was directed to us," says Ho.

Brian Metzger, an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York City, says that the observation is "quite striking" and "sort of confirms what we had concluded based on other evidence" - namely, that LFBOTs involve electrons that are travelling close to the speed of light being "heated or accelerated in some form of out flow".

Further observations could help to determine the mass of the object, which could definitively explain its origin. "An intermediate mass black hole is a 10,000-solar-mass black hole," says Ho. "A failed supernova is more like 10 or 100 solar masses." The flares could offer a way to work out the mass of the object, she adds. "When you measure a fast-varying signal, you can use how quickly that signal is varying to estimate the size of the object emitting the signal." A high speed would indicate that the object is rapidly rotating - suggesting a lower mass.

Margutti says that the flaring "definitely tells us that LFBOTs are really a different beast than supernova explosions", but she adds that the jets could be powered by accretion onto a black hole, such as from a companion star.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is under construction in Chile and is expected to begin a wide survey of the universe next year, is expected to find "10 to 100 times more of these objects", says Ho. That could help astronomers to narrow down what might be causing them. Finding and studying the objects early after their initial explosion will also be crucial. "Right now, by the time we notice them, they're usually two to three weeks old," says Ho. "We need to ¬nd these a lot more quickly." [source]

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.