On April 26, 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the sky over L’Aigle, France — convincing European scientists that meteors exist.
Author: Redactor
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Trans Is Out at HUD
“Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced a new proposed rule on Thursday,” explains The Epoch Times, one “that seeks to end the use of ‘gender identity’ across all departmental programs, which is intended to ‘restore biological reality and protect women.’”
HUD plans to “remove radical definitions of gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender, replacing them with sex” an April 23 statement from HUD clarifies.
Common terminology — including mother, father, woman, man, girl, and boy — will return to a commonsense usage, relating to a person’s sex as understood universally until just a few years ago with the rise of “gender theory” and “queer theory” and transhumanism, transgenderism and other now evidently transient fads in ideology.
In February the HUD secretary claimed that the new standards are in line with the infamous executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office.
“In its February 2025 statement,” the Epoch Times concludes, “HUD said that the 2016 rule allowed men to take advantage of department programs directed at women.”
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Charles Dickens
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1841).
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A Very French First
On April 25, 1792, Nicolas J. Pelletier, a highwayman, became the first person to be executed by guillotine.
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What We Want and How to Get It
British-American philosopher Mick Jagger put it best: “You can’t always get what you want.”
A universal verity.
But what about a sadder situation? “You must always get what you don’t want.”
Only the deepest pessimist thinks this pertains to our lives, our “lived experience” in even these our mixed-up times. But it does apply to one huge domain of life: our representation in Congress.
Or so says Stephen Erickson. “The American people consistently rank career politicians among the least trustworthy professions. At the same time, professional politicians are supposed to represent us, and they have more power over our lives than any other profession.”
I don’t think this needs to be argued. Though Mr. Erickson does cite evidence, the thesis hardly needs massive data sets. Or British-American philosophers. So what to do? Erickson, being a practical man, takes the bull by the bumps on its head, two of them:
“First, we need to show how representative democracy might work without professional politicians.” The basic proposal is to “Reduce all local electoral districts to no more than 10,000 residents” where “every district becomes walkable and winnable with handshakes, flyers and yard signs.” This would work because small districts turn politics into “personal reputations and relationships, not money and marketing. Special interests therefore lose their influence.”
His second show-and-tell is “a realistic path forward.” That path lies with “the citizens’ initiative and referendum.”
As readers of this column know, my support for this more direct approach is both long-standing and thorough-going. The initiative process is the only decent process for serious reforms of our representative system because our representatives will block serious reform otherwise.
Please read Stephen Erickson’s essay, “How to Eliminate Politics as a Profession.”
No one wants to be their Beast of Burden.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Dostoyevsky
Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other “higher” ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1: 1873-1876, ed. Kenneth Lantz (1994), p. 734.
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Library of Congress
The United States Library of Congress was established on April 24, 1800, when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.”
A circuit court has ruled that Virginia’s new voter-passed congressional map, gerrymandered to give Democrats in the state a prohibitive advantage in the next congressional election, is unconstitutional.
Judge Jack Hurley, of the Circuit Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the 29th Judicial Circuit, Tazewell County, denied a motion to stay his injunction blocking certification of the election using the new districts. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli reports that once a final order is drafted and entered, “it will be immediately appealed.”
If the rejiggering survives the challenge, it could be the factor that tips the balance in the House of Representatives toward the Democrats next November.
Cuccinelli, who is now national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, had been saying that passage of the gerrymander would not be the last word. In their rush to get the measure to voters and enacted before November 2026, lawmakers ignored sundry constitutional requirements.
The 2024 special session that took up the redistricting measure had been convened to legislate about the budget. “Its governing resolution limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.”
Also, says Cuccinelli, the state constitution requires that “an election must intervene between first and second passage” of a proposed constitutional amendment. “Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.”
Among other problems is the constitutional stipulation that “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed map violates this requirement “badly.”
When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, and this partisan map must go.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Every government explains its existence, and justifies its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not exist the condition of things would be very much worse. After assuring the people of its danger the government subordinates it to control, and when in this condition compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the assurance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations.
Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism (1895), as translated in The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï, Vol. 20, p. 44.
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A Bach Premiere
Du Hirte Israel, höre (“You Shepherd of Israel, hear”), BWV 104, a church cantata, was performed for the first time in Leipzig 302 years ago on April 23rd, the composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, conducting.