It takes the breath away:

Queensland police have revealed that a man who killed his wife and three children by dousing them with petrol and setting them alight had a history of domestic violence and was known to them.

Not just murder but murder by extreme agony.

But in comments that have shocked domestic violence campaigners, the force says they are keeping an “open mind” about suggestions the 42-year-old Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far” and are appealing to people who knew the couple to come forward to understand his motives.

…

On Thursday, Det Insp Mark Thompson confirmed domestic and family violence orders had been granted against Baxter, saying there had been “a number of engagements of

Jane Clare Jones reads another piece by another trans activist, this one by

Torr Robinson, a person with they/them pronouns who is the Trans Officer for London Young Labour and one of the founders of the recent pledge defaming Woman’s Place and calling for us to be expelled from the Labour Party.

Is it a good piece? It is not. Does it contain surprises? It does not.

The piece is called For Trans Liberation, and this idea is summoned throughout. There is, however, no specification about what Torr is calling for liberation from, or what the specific demands for liberation are.

There never is. There is never any explanation of what “trans rights” are, either. There is … Read the rest

Oh gee, some House Republicans are unhappy about Blagojevich’s commutation.

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich profusely thanked Trump for commuting his prison sentence in a press conference today.

He would, wouldn’t he.

“We want to express our most profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump,” said Blagojevich, appearing alongside his family. “How do you properly thank someone who’s given you back the freedom that was stolen from you?”

Says the guy who wanted to sell Obama’s Senate seat for $$$.

But others are less thrilled about Blagojevich’s commutation, considering he was caught on tape trying to sell a Senate seat.

A group of House Republicans from Illinois released a statement yesterday calling Blagojevich “the face of public corruption” in the

Sure, Hogan Gidley. Whatever you say.

“The president is against aggressive sentencing,” whether it’s Alice Johnson or Rod Blagojevich, spokesman Hogan Gidley says on Fox News. pic.twitter.com/uxLnm6mFn4

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) February 19, 2020

Aaron Rupar at Vox 9 days ago:

President Donald Trump is campaigning on criminal justice reform efforts that reduce sentences for nonviolent offenders, while suggesting he’d like the American justice system to work more like ones in authoritarian countries where drug dealers are executed after “fair but quick” trials.

Well, exectution is a reduced sentence in a way…

Just days after his Super Bowl ad and State of the Union speech highlighted his support for legislation that makes a modest effort to reduce prison sentences

Mo transitions.

J and M on Patreon… Read the rest

Who is Joe Grogan? According to his Twitter bio:

Assistant to the President & Director of the Domestic Policy Council Tweets may be archived: http://wh.gov/privacy

Which is kind of creepy since he apparently thinks of most of us as an occupying enemy.

Just landed in California. POTUS power swing through occupied territory. ⁦ https://t.co/3juICy6NHN

— Joe Grogan 45 Archived (@joegrogan45) February 19, 2020

Power swing? What does that mean – that Trump and his goons will be shooting at people?

God I wish this were over.

Brendan O’Neill is wrong about most things but not about the hot new trend of pretending reality can be altered by saying a magic word or two.

Imagine if a politician went on TV and said ‘The Earth is flat’. Or ‘Man didn’t really land on the Moon, you know’. We would worry about that politician’s fitness for public life. Well, Dawn Butler has just done the trans equivalent of that. She appeared on Good Morning Britain yesterday and said babies are born without a sex.

There are a lot of things you could say that about. Babies are born without a language. Babies are born without a religion. Babies are born without a driver’s license. Babies are born … Read the rest

The Nation piece the ACLU shared is by Dave Zirin, who does not have any personal stake in whether or not girls and women can continue to compete against other girls and women without an admixture of some boys and men who “identify as” women. He’ll be fine either way.

Naturally his piece reflects that indifference.

There is a right-wing campaign afoot using the presence of transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming women in sports as a stalking horse to attack the already limited and precarious civil rights held by the trans community.

That’s just a lie about “gender nonconforming women.” Nobody objects to gender nonconforming women in sport or on women’s teams. Nobody.

Around the country, legislation is being introduced

The ACLU is still at it.

Trans and nonbinary people won’t simply be used as pawns.

Politicians who want to come for our rights, you’ll have to get through ALL OF US.https://t.co/2Xq59fbTq2

— ACLU (@ACLU) February 18, 2020

The image doesn’t really help them make their case – it comes across as a threat rather than a brave expression of solidarity. Miller and Yearwood are both conspicuously much bigger than the girls on the girls’ team, so the image just looks as if they’re going to run over us.… Read the rest

The purification continues.

My support for trans rights has never been conditional. That’s why I signed the pledges despite opposing bureaucratic solutions to deeper problems.

My position is consistent: unrepentant transphobes/misogynists/antisemites etc. should be expelled where education does not work.

— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) February 18, 2020

And what are transphobes? Whatever the loudest trans activist says they are, of course.

Yes, as I’ve said above, unrepentant transphobes/racists/misogynists etc. should be expelled.

The Labour Party should educate those who are ignorant rather than ideological. And if they don’t respond to education, they should also be expelled.

— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) February 18, 2020

So feminist women who are “ideological” in the sense of continuing to think that women … Read the rest

It gets so wearying, watching political figures – people who directly affect our lives in many ways, or who aspire to – mouthing the nonsense as if it were just ordinary fact-based language. The weariness washed over me reading about Rebecca Long-Bailey’s “clarification” in the New Statesman:

Rebecca Long-Bailey’s team has clarified the Labour leadership contender’s position on same-sex spaces and the Equality Act 2010 to the New Statesman following her interview with Andrew Marr yesterday.

Long-Bailey supports reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to allow for trans people to self-identify as their preferred gender, as do all the candidates for the Labour leadership. Her team has clarified, however, that she would not reform the 2010 Equality

Jo Bartosch writes:

The markers of masculinity and femininity are not ‘inside us’, as internal essences which we express, and then demand that the outside world recognise as our true selves. Rather, gender identities surround us, in the messages, images and expectations we are born and then socialised into, as social animals. We may be born male or female, but we become feminine or masculine.

That. It’s one reason it’s so annoying when people drone on about their inner sense of being the sex they’re not – this clueless, childish lack of awareness of socialization. How can anybody possibly know that her/his “feeling” about something external and factual is 100% internal as opposed to being a product of many … Read the rest

Hopeless.

That’s Julia Long asking the question.

Lisa Nandy says firmly “I believe fundamentally in people’s right to self-ID.”

She doesn’t though. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as Lisa Nandy for instance (apart from the few people who really are named Lisa Nandy). She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the rightful occupants of her house. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the owners of her car. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the MP for her constituency. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the prime minister, the mayor of London, her doctor, the director general of the UN, her cousins, the head of the … Read the rest

Snerk.

Andrew Sabiski is out.

Andrew Sabisky, who was brought into Downing Street by Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings as part of his appeal for “misfits and weirdos”, became the subject of intense media scrutiny after details emerged of his views on subjects ranging from black people’s IQs to whether benefits claimants should be encouraged to have fewer children.

But amid mounting criticism within the Conservative party after No 10 stood by the appointment, Sabisky said that he would be stepping down as a “contractor” to No 10.

He tweeted: “The media hysteria about my old stuff online is mad but I wanted to help [the government] not be a distraction. Accordingly I’ve decided to resign as a

I guess we’ll have to start paying attention to this Andrew Sabisky fella.

Downing Street has refused to condemn controversial past remarks on pregnancies, eugenics and race reportedly made by a new adviser.

This appears to be why Dawkins was musing aloud about eugenics yesterday, with such stimulating results.

Labour said Andrew Sabisky should be sacked for suggesting black people had lower average IQs than white people and compulsory contraception could prevent “creating a permanent underclass”.

Compulsory contraception for…whom? The parents of the future permanent underclass? How would he know which those were, exactly? Cue Dawkins explaining that it would totally work and we shouldn’t confuse that fact with whether it’s a good idea or not.

Mr Sabisky, appointed