Non-binary government boffin Sam Brinton got lucky with that second stolen bag:

The nonbinary Biden administration official facing up to five years in prison for allegedly stealing luggage in Minnesota now faces up to 10 years in prison for stealing another bag in Nevada, according to a police report obtained by Fox News Digital.

Samuel Brinton — who has served as the Energy Department’s (DOE) deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition since June — allegedly stole a suitcase with a total estimate worth of $3,670 on July 6 at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, according to a declaration filed by a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) detective on Wednesday. The bag contained jewelry

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Thanks to latsot we can have hours of fun picking apart Stanford’s ElimiNation of HarmFul LangUage InItIaTive, which is “a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford.” I guess all the other bits of Stanford will go right on having harmful language.

It’s not that I don’t think there is such a thing as harmful language (although I wouldn’t use the word “harmful” to characterize it). It’s that…oh well, you’ll see.

At the end of the intro to the thingy on harmful language there’s a WARNING all in bold that the language ahead is…harmful. Or offensive. It fails to warn that some of it could be both. Proceed at your own pace, it says. Race … Read the rest

The BBC starts with a man who says he is a woman.

The diamond grass of Cathkin Park is glinting in the winter sun as Ellie Gomersall reflects on something intensely personal – her identity. It is a bitterly beautiful December day on the south side of Glasgow and Ms Gomersall, 23, is telling us about “coming out” as a woman.

You can’t “come out” as a woman. Coming out is a lesbian/gay thing, and that in turn is because being lesbian or gay has not always been socially acceptable, to put it mildly. It’s also, I suppose, because the majority is straight, so the working assumption about people is generally that they’re straight, so “coming out” is making … Read the rest

Word it carefully now. Very very carefully. Take instructions from the BBC:

MSPs are debating final changes to controversial gender recognition reforms. The Scottish government legislation is aimed at simplifying and speeding up the process for trans people to change their legally recognised gender.

See how it’s done? The Beeb just assumes, with “the legislation is aimed at simplifying and speeding up the process,” that the “process” of declaring yourself the other sex should be simplified and sped up. Why? When declaring yourself the other sex is nonsensical, and when we’ve had years to expose all the ways this sort of declaring impinges on the rights of other people, especially women – why breezily assume that it needs … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The symbols of what did you say?

From where I sit, it is the women who support this legislation who find themselves voiceless:…

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. You must be sitting somewhere with your head up your ass because I can see FROM A WHOLE FUCKING OCEAN AWAY that women who have tried to question or slow down this fait accomplit have been demonized, vilified, threatened and, yes, silenced.

safe in the knowledge that the bill had a parliamentary majority. It would pass, and so too in time would the fractious debate.

What fractious debate? Your side was all “NO DEBATE!” You couldn’t afford full and open discussion. Trans activism never can. … Read the rest

Jeremy Clarkson broke a record:

Jeremy Clarkson’s Sun newspaper column, in which he said he “hated” the Duchess of Sussex, has become the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s most complained about article, the regulator has said.

Ipso said the piece, which was removed from the Sun’s website on Monday at Clarkson’s request, had received more than 17,500 complaints as of 9am on Tuesday.

…

The number surpassed the total number of complaints the media regulator received in 2021, 14,355.

A whole year’s worth of complaints. That’s impressive.

More than 60 cross-party MPs have written to the Sun’s editor, Victoria Newton, to demand an apology and “action taken” against Clarkson for the column where he said Meghan should be paraded through

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They’re fighting amongst themselves.

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1604987464942174208 https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1604987478149959680… Read the rest

Sometimes I get the feeling we live in parallel worlds.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill sits on the edge of passing through the Scottish Parliament this week – and all it took was six years of undelivered manifesto commitments, two public consultations and one online apology for failing to deal with transphobia in the SNP from the First Minister herself. Not that it changed anything.

Oh no not public consultations! Obviously laws that contradict reality should be passed instantly with no public consultation at all.

Six VERY long years, where Britain’s chattering class lost its collective mind in service to a relentless campaign of anti-trans misinformation; a conspiratorial crusade that falsely claimed, among many other things, that child

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Mike Pence tries to split the difference:

Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Monday that he hoped the Department of Justice would not bring charges against Donald J. Trump, calling the former president ’s conduct “reckless” but not criminal.

It’s not criminal to try to overturn an election in order to steal a second term? It’s not criminal to incite a mob to attack the legislature and then watch them do it on tv for hours before gently urging them to back off for now?

I kind of think Pence might be wrong about that.

Asked about facing potential criminal indictments that could stem from the House investigation into the Capitol riot, Donald J. Trump suggested he had

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Aha. Levine is glad he transitioned late, because otherwise he wouldn’t have his children.

So……….

“If I had transitioned when I was young then I wouldn’t have my children. I can’t imagine a life without my children.”

–@SecretaryLevine

Meanwhile, Levine is working hard to medically transition YOUR kids and leave THEM infertile.

It’s disgusting and unethical. pic.twitter.com/1O6ZLOqjpK

— Meg Brock (@MegEBrock) December 18, 2022

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The four referrals:

Jan 6 Committee refers Trump to DOJ for violating:

1. Obstruction of an official proceeding;
2. Conspiracy to defraud the United States;
3. Conspiracy to make a false statement;
4. Inciting, assisting or aiding/comforting an insurrection

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 19, 2022

Again:

The January 6th Committee refers Donald Trump to DOJ for Criminal Prosecution.

The Constitution and democracy won today! #USA #truth pic.twitter.com/rPChg7L51L

— Tamie Wilson for US Congress (OH-4) (@TamieUSCongress) December 19, 2022

He was stupid enough to incite the insurrection right in front of us, on the big screen, where everyone can see.… Read the rest

Referrals.

Jamie Raskin reads the four criminal referrals against Donald Trump that the January 6 Committee has made to the DOJ. pic.twitter.com/PokMcFLJMK

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) December 19, 2022

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Yet another sneaky dishonest bit of word manipulation to deceive the readers or audience: Kezia Dugdale, former Member of the Scottish Parliament in the Times:

There is a rotten irony in the tagline “women won’t wheest.” That line is used by many campaigners against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which will go through its stage 3 proceedings in the Scottish parliament this week. The phrase implies both that women are united in opposition to this legislation and that they have been somehow silenced during the bill’s passage.

From where I sit, it is the women who support this legislation who find themselves voiceless: women who have watched the colours green, white and purple, the symbols of universal suffrage, be

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More from Jon:

This paragraph, which is – and I can't stress this enough – *all over the place* is the IOC account of fairness with respect to female sport. Here are a few things that are wrong with it… pic.twitter.com/3grA0rQvdx

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) December 19, 2022

You can see where they’re going with this. We’re familiar with the “argument” – it’s the one that goes “Why don’t you ban very tall [or strong or muscular etc etc etc] women from women’s sports?!”

… gives the game away. We know that some male advantage is thereby allowed. What male advantage? Any, so long as it is proportionate, – like those other 'diverse sources of advantage.'…

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite)

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The thing about this is, it’s about women’s sport, of course, but it’s also about the bizarre shocking surprising enraging utter indifference to women and our rights that it reveals.

Can you think who might be directly affected by eligibility criteria for *female* sport?
Who might be stakeholders?
It's tricky, and it would be awful to leave out an affected group. pic.twitter.com/qbJQ3KC2TP

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) December 19, 2022

“the athletes that would be most directly” affected by making a subset of men eligible for women’s sports, “namely trans athletes and/or athletes with sex variations.” Not, you see, women. Women aren’t as directly affected by allowing men to be “included” in their sports. Why aren’t they? Because they don’t matter. … Read the rest

The ACLU is a misogynist organization.

VICTORY: Today the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a student athletic policy in Connecticut allowing transgender students to play on the teams consistent with their gender identity.

Trans youth have a right to equal and fair play.

— ACLU (@ACLU) December 16, 2022

Women and girls have a right to equal and fair play. Boys who compete against girls by claiming to be girls do not have a right to destroy the right to equal and fair play of women and girls.… Read the rest

Here I was thinking Forbes was a conservative sedate business magazine but I find it’s running a classic dopy childish “Rowling is the devil” piece:

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has become the most prominent face and voice in the world of anti-trans rhetoric, where she spends all day on Twitter sparring with critics and activists.

No she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. She’s a very busy human. She writes books, lots of them; she writes fast but not that fast – she can’t possibly spend all day on Twitter and also write a long novel every few months. Plus she does other things, like philanthropy. You’d expect that kind of sloppy casual lying in a … Read the rest

JKR had a little fun with an Twitter ActiVist yesterday.

Deeply disappointed @jessiegender doesn't realise purethink is incompatible with owning ANYTHING connected with me, in ANY form. The truly righteous wouldn't just burn their books and movies but the local library, anything with an owl on it and their own pet dogs. #DoBetter 1/2 pic.twitter.com/LqANqab8Km

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 17, 2022

He won’t begrudge anyone. Isn’t that sweet? So compassionate, so caring, so broad-minded.

Of course he’s milking it for all he’s worth.

Since JK Rowling retweeted me with an honestly nonsensical argument; I’m gonna stay off the Musk app today cause she knows she’s sending harassment my way. I send you all love & this article with my

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Originally a comment by Sastra on Far from being deprived of a chance.

As far as I know, when black athletes were allowed in the mainstream sports teams & leagues, the argument was about fairness and wasn’t followed up with “it won’t be that many and they won’t be that good.” When gay marriage passed into law nobody was reassuring people to “relax, there won’t be a lot of same-sex marriages.” That’s because if it’s fair, it shouldn’t make a difference whether there are a lot of them or whether they win all the prizes or not.

And since they’re now arguing that it’s “fair” to let trans-identified males into women’s sports, I give absolutely no weight to the … Read the rest

Hmmmm. Who has a cringeworthy desperation to be edgy? Who wants to be considered dangerous, rebellious and exciting? As opposed to self-involved, dim, and pseudo-radical?

I really don’t think it’s feminist women who refuse to agree that men are women if they say they are.

One thing transphobes and xenophobes have in common- alongside their Tufton street mailing address- is a cringeworthy desperation to be edgy. To be considered dangerous, rebellious and exciting rather than what they in fact are, which is boring, predictable and conservative.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) December 18, 2022

… Read the rest