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Update

Tranche No. 2 — Are We Getting Anywhere?

The War Department has released another tranche of UFO files, yesterday. The first tranche was released on May 8. And they seem, for the most part, old hat: blips and lights and odd video of not-very-distinct things. Or audio about astronauts seeing “fireflies” in space, back in the Mercury days. (A not-very-exciting explanation is offered as definitive.) Most of the new video is from recent military sightings, but there are other things, too, such as a report from 1973 about a Soviet sighting of bright green object in the skies.

Most news reports covered the batch release like this:

Worth noting from this specific report is the relaying of an Avi Loeb comment that these initial releases are just the low-hanging fruit of UAP/UFO data. Later ones, we hear, will get more definitive and much stranger.

What does it all mean?

Eric Weinstein, who used to be a UFO denier got on board a few years ago, and now says that the UFO, Epstein, and nuclear science stories are likely going to converge:

But in case this all seems too objective and two-steps-removed from actual data, expand the scope and we discover that Bigfoot and mysterious disappearances are involved somehow in this, too:

Was anyone asking for a Bigfoot connection?

Meanwhile, Rep. Eric Burlison (R.-Mo.) relates that when President Trump was first briefed about UFOs and an alien presence on the planet, in his first term, he “joked in the briefing, whenever they said there were these halfbreeds, he joked that Adam Schiff must be one of them.”

Categories
Thought

Joanna Russ

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That’s the trouble with women, too.

Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, in Existence (1975).
Categories
Today

El Libertador

On May 23, 1813, South American independence leader Simón Bolívar entered Mérida, where he was proclaimed El Libertador (“The Liberator”), leading the invasion of Venezuela.

Other May 23 events include:

1788: South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1900: Sergeant William Harvey Carney became the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for his heroism in a Civil War battle fought 37 years prior, in 1863.

1958: Birthday of American comedian and game show host Drew Carey.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Welcome the Revolutionaries?

Declaration of Independence, freedom, communism, leftism, universities, education, schools, anti-Americanism

Attending his son’s commencement ceremony at the University of Michigan, Judge Michael Warren came away . . . concerned. 

“In stark contrast to several speakers who dutifully acknowledged that the campus sits on land ceded by the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations by the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs (or Treaty of the Foot of the Rapids),” the judge lamented in The Detroit News on Monday, “not a single speaker dared to acknowledge the birthday of our own nation.”

The ceremonies, writes Judge Warren, “could have occurred in any country without missing a beat.” 

Warren, a U of Malumnus, sadly notes how thoroughly “in thrall” to the “well-documented anti-West, anti-American sentiments” his old school has become. He also highlights how very different they were from the ceremonies, a half century ago, during the Bicentennial, when the keynote speech was entitled “Welcome to the Revolution.”

Nowadays, any Revolution extolled on campus might best be symbolized not by fife and drum or quill on parchment, but by a raised red fist.

Or hammer and sickle — perhaps painted in rainbows.

Lost on the university class? Any charm to the “near magical words” of the Declaration of Independence. Before the Declaration, Warren explains, all governments “were unequivocally opposed to recognizing that the people had the right to reform or start government anew.”

Today’s university folk, expressing the typical pieties of the center-left, in fact mimic our familiar American model to justify their own, much less impressive and far more dangerous notions of never-ending revolution.

In April, Republic Book Publishers came out with The Revolutionary Words that Forged America: The Definitive Guide to the Declaration of Independence by this very same Judge Michael Warren. I bought a copy. It looks great. 

For he takes the founders’ seriously good ideas seriously.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: Judge Warren also happens to be a very serious candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court. And, in full disclosure, my friend.

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Categories
Thought

Frédéric Bastiat

When law and force keep a man within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing upon him but a mere negation. They only oblige him to abstain from doing harm. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others. They hold themselves on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850).
Categories
Today

Aaron Burr Indicted

On May 22, 1807, a grand jury indicted former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason.

At issue in the trial was Burr’s dealings in Louisiana, including leasing 40,000 acres and forming “an army.” President Thomas Jefferson issued an order for Burr’s arrest, and, after a chase, Burr was captured and charged with treason, though the case was always shaky. His defense lawyers included Edmund Randolph, John Wickham, Luther Martin, and Benjamin Gaines Botts. Jefferson’s distant cousin, Chief Justice John Marshall — who hated Jefferson — presided over the trial, which began on August 3. Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution requires that treason either be admitted in open court or proven by an overt act witnessed by two people. No witnesses came forward; Burr was acquitted on the first of September. He was then immediately tried on a misdemeanor charge and was again acquitted.

Other May 22 events include:

  • 1848: Slavery was abolished in Martinique.
  • 1856: South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery. Sumner did not return to the Senate for the three years of his recovery period.
  • 1995: In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Arkansas’s congressional term limits law, 5-4, overturning the congressional term limits then the law in 23 states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Categories
First Amendment rights social media too much government

Are British Censors Winning?

An outfit in the United Kingdom called Ofcom, the main enforcer of the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, is requiring social platforms to implement onerous procedures to censor “hate,” including stripping users of anonymity — or face mammoth fines, bans in the U.K., and other draconian penalties.

Nobody would object to compelling the removal of content that is clearly criminal. But is that what most so-called “hate” content really is? Of course not. Much of what irks censors and the merely censorious is merely vituperative, and no small part of what gets their goat is nothing other than sharp disagreement with those authorities who decide what “hate” is — that is, the censors themselves. 

Last year, the social media platform X formally decried Ofcom’s demands as “overreach” even as it tried to comply with the new regulations. The platform objected to U.K. mandates that would “prevent adults from encountering ‘illegal’ content” and impose “steps to ensure age verification that limit adults’ anonymity online.”

But X has now caved. It has agreed to review most content flagged as illegal “hate” within two days. All the language of that earlier remonstration is “gone now,” Reclaim the Net observes. What remains is only an agreement to comply with an organization and a system known to be militantly hostile to freedom of expression — and to Elon Musk’s X.

What could X do instead? 

Fight. 

Pull out of the United Kingdom and tell UK users, “Sorry. You’re just going to have to use a VPN to disguise your location in the UK if you want to keep using your X account,” with links to free VPNs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Further Reading:

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Thought

Robert Silverberg

Schizoid times demand schizoid government.

An excuse-making rumination of the mad dictator, Genghis II Mao IV Khan, in Robert Silverberg’s science fiction novel Shadrach in the Furnace (1976), Chapter 20.

Categories
Today

Colombian Emancipation & War Against Slavery

On May 21, 1851, the Colombian Congress passed a law to free the country’s slaves as of January 1, 1852, compensating slave masters with bonds. The decree itself was insufficient to abolish the practice, however, with masters refusing, in many locales, to let the slaves go in a peaceful way. This led to the Civil War of 1851, which began with an insurrection in Cauca and Pasto headed by Manuel Ibáñez and Julio Arboleda — with the support of the Ecuadorian government. In Antioquia the rebellion broke out led by Eusebio Berrero. The war would end in four months with a liberal victory and the final liberation of the slaves.

Categories
regulation too much government

Regulating BBQ

Los Angeles, busybody, regulations, busybodies

Los Angeles councilwoman Nithya Raman wants city officials to impose new regulations on backyard grilling when conditions are dry and windy. The mayoral candidate proposed restricting “backyard barbecues, fire pits and other open flames” in residential neighborhoods when such conditions exist.

Cities often prohibit burning leaves on windy days, in part because burning leaves may spread too easily when it’s blustery. But barbecues are more contained.

National Review’s Noah Rothman suggests that the caution would be more plausible if California had ever suffered a “rash of fires — or even just one — attributable to the careless mishandling of charcoal briquettes.”

Accidental causes of conflagrations tend to be things like lightning strikes and faulty power lines. These work in conjunction with poorly managed forests.

Arson, a big danger in recent years, comes in a variety of forms, as Mr. Rothman explains. “The record-breaking 2024 Park Fire was set by an intoxicated motorist who pushed his car into some flammable brush after an accident.”

The Palisades Fire was “first set by an embittered anti-capitalist vigilante” who hated the rich.

Arson and drunk driving are already illegal.

Anybody can try to cook hamburgers by setting a fire in the middle of high vegetation and calling this a “barbecue.” But that’s not the kind of thing Raman had in mind.

Fortunately, another councilwoman, Monica Rodriguez, managed to block Raman’s effort to toss a wet blanket on barbecues.

“The last thing Angelenos need,” Rodriguez says, “is a ban on hosting a carne asada in their own backyard.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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