News of the Week for August 27th<\/sup>, 2023<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n South Carolina’s highest court upholds strict abortion ban<\/a> <\/p>\n Massachusetts judge: Second Amendment rights cross state lines<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Energy, Finally Some Good News<\/a> Green Energy: Whitehouse Pushes Legislation that Helps Wife’s Climate Change Firm <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Multiple failures in Scotland’s audiology services, report finds<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n US Navy destroyer to be fitted with hypersonic missiles<\/a> How China spreads its police state to small Pacific nations<\/a> Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin presumed dead after Russia plane crash<\/a> Row erupts as Chinese nuclear sub ‘crashes’ near disputed waters<\/a> Lithuania Hasn’t Forgotten the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact<\/a> Ukraine says it launched ‘special operation’ in Russian-occupied Crimea<\/a> GOP talk of military action in Mexico sparks dire warnings<\/a> Sea Change: Rebuilding the Navy for the Pacific<\/a> Air Force Colonel, Selected for Promotion to Brigadier General, Pushes DEI, CRT, and Racist Dogma<\/a> China’s attempt to seize another island in the South China Sea failed (for now)<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n San Fran State hires ‘anti-racist’ engineering dean<\/a> Alabama’s Ban on Childhood Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones Reinstated By Unanimous Appeals Court<\/a> Hawaii Wildfires: 114 Confirmed Dead, 850 Still Missing<\/a> By 2030 you will not eat meat and you will be allowed only three items of new clothing a year, report says<\/a> Maui residents who disobeyed barricade survived fires<\/a> Outrage in Oakland as wild video shows woman being violently dragged on the ground during armed robbery<\/a> Feds Claim Key Mar-a-Lago Obstruction Witness Has Flipped On Trump<\/a> Racially Discriminatory Youth Programs At Six Private NY Medical Schools Challenged by Equal Protection Project<\/a> Excluding Farmer’s Market Vendor for Refusing to Host Same-Sex Weddings on Its Land Violates Free Exercise Clause<\/a> Ivy League business schools to offer ESG majors and courses in fall, despite controversy<\/a> How to Screw Up a Free Lunch<\/a> Yale Police Union Distributes Campus Safety Flyers Featuring Grim Reaper to New Students Causing Outrage<\/a> Only Paved Road Out of Maui’s Devastated Town of Lahaina Was Barricaded During Wildfire Evacuation<\/a> Activist Behind Harvard Affirmative Action Case Now Suing Law Firms<\/a> Protests outside 9th Circuit Court over removal of homeless camps<\/a> AMA Journal: Subsidize Uterus Transplants for Trans People<\/a> America’s Public Schools Are Terrible<\/a> Fox News Debate Viewership Blew Tucker’s Trump Interview Out of the Water<\/a> NJ Governor Sues Schools To Halt Parental Notification Of Gender Social Transitioning of Their Kids<\/a> Trump Booked and Released From Fulton County Jail, Posts Picture of Real Mugshot<\/a> The Ne Plus Ultra of Collegiate Wokeness<\/a> Parents find remains of teen son hugging dead dog in Maui home destroyed by wildfire<\/a> Chicago Mayor Suing Auto Makers for Building Cars That Are Too Easy to Steal<\/a> Times Square back to the bad old days: ‘It’s a sh-thole’<\/a> The fight to repeal conversion therapy bans<\/a> Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions<\/a> Nothing is Safe. Now the Biden Administration Wants to Regulate Your Ceiling Fan<\/a> Thousands of Minors Have Received ‘Gender-Affirming Surgeries’<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As China Falls Into Deflation, the Mood Turns Dark<\/a> Low bridge, everybody down: 200 ship bottleneck at drought-stricken Panama Canal<\/a> De-Industrializing Germany<\/a> Smoot-Hawley II?<\/a> Biden’s economic plan may be tough sell to 2024 voters<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eskom slowly dying<\/a> Ally of former leftist Ecuador president to face tycoon’s son in runoff election<\/a> Sadiq Khan plunged into race row after his official website publishes picture of white family and says they don’t ‘represent real Londoners’<\/a> Cuban government store distributing worm-infested rotten ham<\/a> Australia is dragging this women’s rights activist into court FOUR TIMES over the next few weeks for “misgendering” trans soccer players<\/a> This is totally insane<\/a> Big Tech braces for EU Digital Services Act regulations<\/a> Naked ‘Wolf Man’ spotted by hikers in German mountains: ‘He wouldn’t take his eyes off us’<\/a> Surprise! Cuban colony of Nicaragua bans Jesuit order, confiscates all of their property<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rural Americans Are Not Okay<\/a> The Decline of American Politics, in One Senate Seat<\/a> Supplying Racism<\/a> The Heritage Foundation’s Odd Shift Left<\/a> Some Debate Observations That Don’t Matter<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Newsboy.jpg\" "\\"News")
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<\/a>Abortion<\/h1>\n
Dobbs Decision<\/h2>\n
\nSouth Carolina’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a new law banning most abortions after roughly six weeks, a move that could once again shake up the nation’s abortion landscape in the Southeast.<\/p>\n<\/a>Gun Rights<\/h1>\n
\nAs FPC Action Foundation’s Cody J. Wisniewski said on Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co yesterday, since the Bruen decision was handed down by the Supreme Court last year we’re starting to see lower courts around the country start to take the Second Amendment a little more seriously. While we’ve still seen some egregiously awful misreadings of Bruen over the past twelve months, we’ve also seen some major successes, including one case out of Massachusetts that addresses the fact that in many states, your right to keep and bear arms stops at the state line.<\/p>\n<\/a>Hide the Decline<\/h1>\n
Environment &<\/a>“Green Energy”<\/h2>\n
\nI see that everything I have written today is about energy, which makes sense given that, along with general civilizational collapse, it is the defining issue of our time. So let’s finally have some good news: Duke Energy, one of America’s largest utilities, has announced that it has shifted course and will replace a retiring coal-fired power plant in North Carolina with nuclear energy rather than expensive and unreliable wind turbines.<\/p>\n
\nSen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) has introduced several bills that could provide a windfall for a firm that employs his wife, raising potential conflict of interest concerns for the liberal Democrat. <\/p>\n<\/a>Obamacare<\/h1>\n
Government in Healthcare<\/h2>\n
\nMultiple, systematic problems have been found in Scotland’s audiology services, according to an independent review.<\/p>\n<\/a>War & Terror<\/h1>\n
\nThe USS Zumwalt is the lead ship of the Zumwalt class of naval vessels. She has been described as the largest destroyer in the world.<\/p>\n
\nThe Washington Post published an excellent story today about the nation of Fiji and how China spent more than a decade trying to co-opt their police force. Fiji has a population in excess of 900,000 people and has a national police force. In 2011, China and Fiji signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which created direct cooperation between China’s police force and Fiji’s police. The agreement created an ongoing exchange of officers that lasted for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
\nWagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a jet which crashed killing all on board, Russia’s civil aviation authority has said.<\/p>\n
\nReports suggest that everyone on board was killed, after the sub crashed in a hotly contested area.<\/p>\n
\nVladimir Putin has long peddled a narrative of World War II that whitewashes Soviet complicity in the outset of hostilities in Europe. To justify Russian aggression today, he wholly ignores Moscow’s role in enabling Nazi Germany’s march toward war in 1939.<\/p>\n
\nUkraine’s navy and military intelligence carried out a “special operation” overnight in which units landed on Russian-occupied Crimea, the defence ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\nRising GOP support for the U.S. taking unilateral military action in Mexico against drug cartels is increasingly rattling people on both sides of the border who worry talk of an attack is getting normalized.<\/p>\n
\n“Because of its economic strength and growing military power,” Seth Cropsey writes in the new cover story of National Review magazine, “China is the greatest threat the U.S. faces.”<\/p>\n
\nAir Force Colonel demonizes his fellow “white colonels” as racists and embraces racist propaganda \u2013 the result? Promotion to Brigadier General!<\/p>\n
\nThere has been a strategic battle taking place in the South China Sea this year between China and the Philippines. As you probably know, China has laid claim to most of the South China Sea and over the past decade has been using a strategy called the cabbage strategy to gradually claim individual islands.<\/p>\n<\/a>National<\/h1>\n
\n‘She is engaged in scholarly work related to culture, race, gender and intersectionality’<\/p>\n
\nStrikes down District Court injunction. Alabama law “makes it a crime to take part in providing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormone treatment to a minor for purposes of treating a discordance between the minor’s biological sex and sense of gender identity.”<\/p>\n
\nHawaii governor is still trying to tie climate change into the cause of the wildfires.<\/p>\n
\nA report published in 2019 and re-emphasised in 2023 recommends that by 2030 we will not be permitted to eat meat or dairy products, we will be limited to three items of new clothing per year and one aeroplane flight every three years. It will start in countries that “consume the most.” <\/p>\n
\nThose who disobeyed the barricaded road closures during the Maui fires survived the disaster, while many of those who heeded orders to turn around perished in their cars and homes with no way out, The Associated Press reported.<\/p>\n
\nThe shocking incident unfolded on August 16 and left the unnamed woman with severe injuries<\/p>\n
\n“Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.”<\/p>\n
\n“‘Erecting additional barriers for some races and ethnic groups in and of itself is unlawful discrimination,’ Jacobson told DailyMail.com. ‘Imagine if the roles were reversed, and these programs explicitly favored Asians and whites \u2014 there would be universal outrage and these medical schools would never accept such funding.'”<\/p>\n
\nSo holds a federal court.<\/p>\n
\nWharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania announced two MBA majors in Environmental, Social, and Governance initiatives.<\/p>\n
\nYou have probably heard the phrase, “He’s so dumb. (How dumb is he?) He’s so dumb he could screw up a free lunch.” Well, lo, and behold, it happened. Someone was that dumb. Namely Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his staff. Maybe we should change the phrase to “He’s so liberal he could screw up a free lunch.” I can think of no more apt metaphor, no better example, no Price is Right Fail Horn, step-on-a-rake, seltzer-in-the-face illustration of progressive policy than what you are about to read.<\/p>\n
\n“These pamphlets included disturbing and inflammatory rhetoric about the safety of Yale’s campus and its home city of New Haven, aimed at creating fear among new students and their families.”<\/p>\n
\nOfficials also appear to be slow-walking the count of casualties, as the number of declared dead remains under 120\u2026.yet 1100 is now the tally of those officially missing.<\/p>\n
\n“Excluding students from these esteemed fellowships because they are the wrong race is unfair, polarizing and illegal. Law firms that have racially-exclusive programs should immediately make them available to all applicants, regardless of their race.”<\/p>\n
\nThe backstory here is that San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed has been genuinely trying to do something about the chaos on the streets of her city. In May she announced a crackdown on open-air drug markets at an outdoor press conferences. She was heckled and someone threw a brick at her. Nevertheless, police started arresting drug users again and quickly discovered that 95% of them were from out of town. San Francisco has become a drug den for dealers who are mostly from Honduras and for users who are mostly from other towns and cities.<\/p>\n
\nThe medical establishment has gone totally around the woke bend. Now, a peer-reviewed advocacy article in the AMA Journal of Ethics argues that the cost of uterus transplants for trans people should often be subsidized, particularly for “transwomen who want to gestate children.” From, “Should Uterus Transplantation for Transwomen and Transmen be Subsidized?”<\/p>\n
\nAmerica’s public schools are almost unbelievably bad, to a degree that poses an existential threat to the republic. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most Americans are figuring it out. Rasmussen finds that a 36% plurality say that our public schools are poor. That is a remarkable finding. A sadly misinformed 9% think our schools are excellent. But that disproportion is revealing. The teachers’ unions aren’t fooling many people anymore.<\/p>\n
\nThe Fox News Republican debate on Wednesday night surpassed ratings expectations for an event that was missing the biggest audience draw of Republican politics: former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\nNJ Parent: “They’re making it like ther’re suing the Board of Ed. [But] they\u2019re suing the parents and they’re suing the taxpayers who support the Board of Ed.”<\/p>\n
\n“This is yet another SAD DAY IN AMERICA!”<\/p>\n
\nThe Scott Gerber case at Ohio Northern University is a new low for campus politicization.<\/p>\n
\nGrieving parents found the body of their 14-year-old adopted son hugging his dead dog after the Maui wildfires \u2014 then carried him around half a mile to a police station to be confirmed among the dead.<\/p>\n
\n“The failure of Kia and Hyundai to install basic auto-theft prevention technology in these models is sheer negligence, and as a result, a citywide and nationwide crime spree around automobile theft has been unfolding right before our eyes.”<\/p>\n
\nTimes Square is looking a lot like its bad old self, with vagrants, boozy migrants, junkies, and scofflaws making the Crossroads of the World look more like the third world, infuriating those who played an important role in its cleanup.<\/p>\n
\nWaterloo, Iowa was in the news this week after the City Council there voted to repeal a ban on what’s known as LGBTQ conversion therapy. The ban had been introduced in May but was facing the threat of a court challenge. A Florida organization called the Liberty Counsel had been threatening to take the city to court on behalf of a therapist who claimed that the ban infringed on their right to free speech and to practice therapeutic treatments. Similar challenges are underway around the country. The Associated Press predictably describes this type of therapy as being homophobic, and multiple courts around the country have previously taken a similar view.<\/p>\n
\nZombie jokes, perplexing paths, and a handsy officer.<\/p>\n
\nIf I were a climate change fanatic, I wouldn’t stop at anything to cut carbon. This explains a lot about the Department of Energy’s proposed rules on energy efficiency for ceiling fans.<\/p>\n
\nA new study has been published by the Journal of the American Medical Association about the number of people who have had “gender-affirming” surgeries \u2014 including minors \u2014 between 2016-2019. <\/p>\n<\/a>Economy & Taxes<\/h1>\n
\nWhen their government abruptly ended its harsh Covid measures in December, many Chinese expected a robust rebound from pent-up demand. Eight months later, China is instead facing an accumulation of bad news: record youth unemployment, a deep housing slump, stagnant spending, even deflation.<\/p>\n
\nIt might be raining in California in August, but it’s the driest it’ been in Panama in about 100 years. And that is causing some serious problems at a place that never really registers in the national consciousness anymore \u2013 the Panama Canal.<\/p>\n
\nIt is hard to believe, but Germany is on its way to becoming a post-industrial country. What its economy will look like at that point is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be pretty.<\/p>\n
\nI don’t suppose many people care, but Donald Trump’s latest venture into trade policy is idiotic. Trump’s tariff plan is so dumb that for once, the Washington Post is actually right: “Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war.”<\/p>\n
\nJoe Biden’s effort to sell his economic agenda has a problem: Its name.<\/p>\n<\/a>International<\/h1>\n
\nRenowned economist Dawie Roodt said Eskom\u2019s generation and distribution divisions are slowly dying, similar to South African Airways (SAA) and the South African Post Office (SAPO).<\/p>\n
\nLuisa Gonz\u00e1lez, who has pledged to revive Rafael Correa’s social programmes, to run against Daniel Noboa in October<\/p>\n
\nLabour London Mayor faces calls to apologise after message appeared online. The photograph featured in a guide on how to portray the ‘brand’ of the Mayor. Mayor’s spokesperson said photo caption was added by staff member ‘in error’ <\/p>\n
\nThis ham being sold in a government store in communist Cuba is the perfect metaphor for socialism: You are promised a feast, but all they deliver is rotten food infested with worms.<\/p>\n
\nI guess it shouldn’t come as a total shock that Australia would be the country to have a kangaroo court, but that’s what this looks like.<\/p>\n
\nI could write multiple posts about this story because in truth there are so many outrages all converging around one bizarre set of circumstances.<\/p>\n
\nMore than a dozen of the world’s biggest tech companies face unprecedented legal scrutiny, as the European Union’s sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes new rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency.<\/p>\n
\nHikers captured a bone-chilling photo of a mysterious naked “wolf man,” who officials believe has lived in the wild for at least 5 years, as they traveled through Germany’s Harz Mountains on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\nIn a stunningly ironic twist, Nicaraguan sub-dictator Daniel Ortega has cancelled the religious order to which Papa Che belongs and stolen all of its assets, including an entire university. <\/p>\n<\/a>Opinion<\/h1>\n
\nFirst,Dominic is correct when he says, “Blaming a caricature of poor and resentful rural people for lashing out and causing political problems isn’t very productive.” But there exist legitimate reasons for despondency in rural America, even if, as Dominic notes, there are some positive material statistics coming out of the bayous, hollers, and backwoods. Whatever economic abstractions we cite cannot rebuild congregational churches, repair family structures, or undo chemical dependencies that are a visual reality for millions of our countrymen.<\/p>\n
\nSince the death of James L. Buckley on Friday, tributes have made his sterling character and incredible legacy clear. One can also learn something about our politics from the trajectory of the New York Senate seat he held.<\/p>\n
\nIt has been observed that the demand for racism outstrips the supply, and hence the need for defining racism down to sweep up any observable disparity between racial groups or “microaggression,” or the proliferation of outright race hoaxes, such as racist graffiti on college campuses, etc. Academia and the media are driving this trend. <\/p>\n
\nFor those of you unfamiliar with the eclectic world of D.C. think-tankery, the Heritage Foundation has long been the undisputed king of conservative doctrine. Think tanks are policy-research hubs, housing scholars and analysts and former Hill staffers, that formulate new ideas for government officials. Though they often claim apolitical stripes, these guilds of high nerdery are typically aligned with political factions, whether it is the American Enterprise Institute powering conservative thought or the Center for American Progress introducing the latest terrible new idea from the progressive Left.<\/p>\n
\nNone of these observations matter, because the front-runner wasn’t there, and nobody did anything to distinguish themselves from the field as an obvious alternative to Trump.<\/p>\n