First, this is the Daily Mail, so caution is advised – but, that said, if the facts are as stated…there’s an issue. The claim is that judges have been ordered to give harsh sentences to people convicted of “transgender and homophobic hate crimes” – that is, hate crimes against LGB and trans people. New sentencing guidelines say six months in prison should be the minimum.

But what are they defining as hate crimes? That’s the crucial question, and from what we’ve seen lately it includes dissenting from various wild truth-claims about Magic Gender Changing.

The instructions, which will come into effect on January 1, follow a series of cases in which police have been accused of launching heavy-handed investigations

White House people are upset because…they can’t keep doing whatever they want without any oversight? I guess?

Inside the West Wing, sources say, there is escalating concern about administration witnesses who are giving depositions on Capitol Hill.

Pence’s lawyer Matthew Morgan says but history and precedent.

“Instead of being accountable to the American people and casting a vote to authorize what all agree is a substantial constitutional step, you have instead attempted to avoid this fundamental requirement by invoking the Speaker’s announcement of an ‘official impeachment inquiry’ at a press conference?” Morgan wrote in a letter to House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.

Morgan added, “Never before in

Let’s all congratulate Dawn, Naomi and Kirsten:

Congratulations Dawn, Naomi, and Kirsten for coming First, Second, and Third – your efforts are to be commended and I’m looking forward to watching you in future races.

And there he is in all his glory:

Sport is a human right! Cheating at sport is a human right!… Read the rest

Trump betrayed the Kurds; Trump betrays everyone. Peter Wehner writes:

For once, Republicans have forcefully spoken out against Mr. Trump. Graham said our Kurdish allies had been “shamelessly abandoned by the Trump administration.” Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said Trump’s decision is having “sickening and predictable” consequences. Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran, said on Face the Nation that “leaving an ally behind … is disheartening, depressing.” He added, “The Kurds found out on Twitter, for goodness’ sake. We have left them to the wolves. And the message this is sending to our allies around the world, I think, is really going to be bad.” Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican lawmaker

Jolyon Maugham again. Sigh.

James Kirkup tweeted his Spectator piece yesterday:

A ‘transphobic’ crime wave has hit Oxford: stickers so offensive the police refuse to describe them. (The stickers say “Women don’t have penises” and “Woman = adult human female”)

Maugham replied:

Surely you can see what an ugly and destructive provocation that is?

Ah yes; women saying women are women is so ugly and destructive. How dare we.

Jane Clare Jones:

Surely you can see that female people have the right to their own ontological, legal and political category and have a right to defend that category from colonization. Oh no of course you can’t. You just expect us to be good compliant little girls and hand

Dominionism at the State Department:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech on Friday to the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) at its 2019 world conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Outlining “what it means to be a Christian leader,” while relaying family anecdotes and stories from his West Point education, Pompeo described how he applies his religious faith to government administration.

Titled “Being a Christian Leader” and promoted in his official government capacity on the homepage for the State Department, religious and civil liberties organizations have decried it as a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s intended separation of church and state.

That second paragraph is a syntactical trainwreck. The speech was titled “Being a Christian Leader” … Read the rest

It’s been a day of Dueling Statements. Exciting stuff! Mitch McConnell issued one, so of course Donald Trump had to issue one right back.

First:

New McConnell statement on Trump’s Syria decision: “Abandoning this fight now and withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria would re-create the very conditions that we have worked hard to destroy and invite the resurgence of ISIS.”

Next:

Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding Turkey’s Actions in Northeast Syria

Genius. Tell Erdoğan to go ahead and invade Syria, and then when he does, impose sanctions. But wait, they’re powerful sanctions, so that will definitely fix everything. Or as Matt Miller puts it:

The guy who opened the barn door is now running

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To celebrate the launch of Trump Towers Istanbul.

…somehow an advocate of both burning everything down and building everything up; an optimist, pessimist, realist and cynic; certainly naive: shat on but fierce, fierce but trying to help; not helping.

I get that. Hell, I have single days when I can whip through those states of mind. I currently think we’re totally fucked, and I would wish that when we go extinct, we take as few other species with us as possible (with perhaps the exception of our industrial agricultural domesticates, though they aren’t to blame for their own existence). At the same time, I would like humans to smarten up … Read the rest

Cis privilege:

A newborn baby girl has been discovered buried alive in northern India, a local police chief has revealed.

Abhinandan Singh told reporters the baby was found by a villager who was burying his own daughter, who had died minutes after birth.

The baby girl, who had been placed inside an earthen pot about 3ft (90cm) below the ground, was rushed to hospital, where she is recovering.

Anoop Kumar Mishra

India’s gender ratio is one of the worst in the world. Women are often discriminated against socially and girls are seen as a financial burden, particularly among poor communities.

Campaigners say a traditional preference for sons has meant millions of female children lost to foeticide and infanticide over

James Kirkup at The Spectator:

Oxford is suffering a crime wave. Police are investigating numerous serious offences over more than six months. Thames Valley Police has issued this sweeping statement about unacceptable acts in the city:

“Thames Valley Police is appealing for witnesses following a number of public offences in Oxford.

Officers are investigating a large number of offensive stickers that have been placed across Oxford city centre containing transphobic comments. It is believed they started appearing in March 2019 within the High Street, Catte Street and Parks Road area.

Investigating officer PC Rebecca Nightingale based at St Aldates police station said: “Behaviour like this is not acceptable and we take incidents of this nature very seriously.

“I am

The mother of Alanna Smith, one of the Connecticut high school runners pushed out by two boys who “identify as” girls, points out how grotesquely unfair it all is:

Men are stronger than women. Boys are faster than girls. An influx of hormones doesn’t undo these realities.

Study after study has reaffirmed this basic fact about what it means to be human. Most recently, Swedish scientists followed 11 biological men whose testosterone was dramatically decreased due to cross-sex hormone treatments over a year.

Even when the men’s testosterone levels matched that of ­biological women, the men’s competitive advantages remained almost fully intact, with muscle size and bone density remaining virtually unchanged in some and decreasing only 5 percent in

Another rage-attack because Meghan Murphy is going to say things in a room rented from the Toronto Public Library:

Hey @torontolibrary, given that you’re a place deeply invested in education and learning, why are you hosting an event by a known TERF? Twitter banned Meghan Murphy for being transphobic. Why give her a platform?

Yes how dare a feminist woman ask questions about what “gender identity” means for women. It’s not as if women have any stake in the subject after all.

But never mind all that, just tell lies.

I would also like to know why my hometown library system is allowing someone who thinks someone like me doesn’t deserve to participate in society to use their facility.

Elizabeth Warren tweets:

For most of America’s history, when our companies did better, our workers did better – and America built a thriving middle class. The Accountable Capitalism Act will help realign our skewed market incentives so companies & workers can once again do well together.

Erm, no. Not for “most” of America’s history at all. For a couple of decades after World War 2, and even then of course black people were almost entirely shut out. What was different about those two decades? Strong unions and high taxes on extreme wealth.

There are a lot of replies saying that.

When unions did better workers did better. This rhetoric can only come from a capitalist.

That was unions Liz.