Oh and by the way also…

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.

What were they doing? Relief work? Technical advice? Helping?

Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

They were in Ukraine … Read the rest

Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert on Orwell and Big Brother and who saw Big Sister on the horizon?

You also showed us the way out of this insane “sanity”:

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

But you also wrote, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” You said a boot. You did not say a men’s size twelve Christian Louboutin Hot Chick Patent Leather Pump stamping on a human face — forever. You, who predicted

Multiple whistleblowers now.

The attorneys representing the whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine said they are representing “multiple whistleblowers” in connection to the case, including one with “first hand knowledge” of events.

“I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General,” attorney Andrew Bakaj tweeted Sunday. “No further comment at this time.”

Mark Zaid, another member of the first whistleblower’s legal team, also said the team is representing a second official with first-hand knowledge of events, as first reported by ABC News. The original whistleblower had not heard or seen a transcript of the phone

Guest post by Dave Ricks.
In the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA), the word “sex” was clearly intended to remedy a history of discrimination based on “sex” meaning female (i.e. a dictionary definition, biologically, XX chromosomes, etc.).

But recent legal actions conflate “sex” with “gender identity”.  For example, the way the Democrats wrote the Equality Act (EA) as changes to the CRA (PDF here), they replace the word “sex” with the phrase “sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity)“.  A civil rights lawyer wrote three blog posts here that show how this conflation will undo 50 years of case law, spawn 50 years of new cases to interpret the conflation, and be a disaster for … Read the rest

Pliny the in Between:

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Not so much an annoyance as a burning social injustice.

That sounds ridiculous. I’ve not heard of that before.

I know it’s not the same thing, but sanitary napkin disposal boxes became an issue at the concert venue I used to manage. Our toilets went “all-gender” a few years ago due to demands from our young hyper-woke employees. (This consisted of replacing the “Men’s/Women’s” signs with ones that read “Washroom with Urinals/Washroom with Stalls”.) The employees wanted us to install a pad/tampon disposal box in the former men’s washroom (like we have in every stall in the former women’s), since it was expected that women would start using the men’s stall. Naturally, no … Read the rest

It appears that women are getting too educated.

The gender imbalance in educational attainment is getting larger every year. That may spell good news, ultimately, for income and employment equality—but it presages increasingly problematic social conditions for generations of men and women.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 57% of the class of 2018 who graduated with bachelor’s degrees were female. The gap for master’s degrees was even wider: 59% to 41%.

In terms of economic justice this is good news, Gerard Baker admits, but what about The Mate Quest?

Most studies of human heterosexual attraction suggest both that intellectual capacity and achievement is an important attractor and that people tend to gravitate toward a partner

Rosa Silverman on why toilets are a feminist issue:

Discussing “the tyranny of the toilet queue” on Emma Barnett’s BBC Radio 5 Live show this week, the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez made a spirited and well-founded argument for why toilets are a feminist issue; not so much an annoyance as a burning social injustice.

“Everyone knows that women have to queue for the toilet and men tend to just walk in and out, and that’s because we have traditionally given equal floor space for men and women for their toilets,” she told listeners.

It might seem fair on the face of it but, she contended, it isn’t: “For a start, male toilets tend to have urinals in them,

Kate Aronoff says what I’ve been saying:

The standard lines from Democrats about Hunter Biden and his business dealings in China and Ukraine have been consistent: Donald Trump has abused the office of the president by asking foreign leaders to investigate Biden’s son, and there is absolutely no proof that either Joe or Hunter Biden have done anything to break the law. Any questionable dealings by Biden’s son also pale in comparison to ethical breaches on the part of Ivanka, Eric or Donald Trump Jr, who have routinely blurred the lines between the extended Trump Organization – the family’s business empire –and their presence in the White House.

This is all true, and arguably these are the right lines vis-a-vis

I have a column in the current Free Inquiry and it’s one of the non-paywalled items this time.

It’s about Trump’s patriotism theater. It was fun to write.

Even if we can figure out exactly what we’re being ordered to love, it’s not actually the case that we’re legally obliged to do so. We’re not required to feel amorous toward “it” as a condition of being allowed to go on living here as citizens. We’re not made to undergo regular “love it” inspections to gauge whether our affection levels are above the red line. We don’t have to send monthly reports on our patriopassion on pain of expulsion. If we were born here, we get to live here, no questions

1950 here we come.

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear June Medical Services v. Gee, a challenge to Louisiana’s stringent abortion restrictions. There is very little doubt that the conservative majority will use this case to overrule 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, allowing states to regulate abortion clinics out of existence. In the process, the Republican-appointed justices will set the stage for the formal reversal of Roe v. Wade. The court’s decision to hear June Medical Services came with the alarming announcement that it will also consider whether to strip doctors of their ability to contest abortion laws in court. These aggressive moves augur an impending demise of the constitutional right to abortion

Also…Maddow had a good deal of innocent fun night before last with a large envelope that sported a weirdly baroque address (Secretary Pompeo attn Ruth – the “attn Ruth” was pretty hilarious too). Now I understand, via Josh Rogin:

Rudy admits to CNN he passed the packet of Ukraine conspiracy theories and attacks on a U.S. ambassador to Pompeo. “They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it.”

By the way, Rudy is admitting to manufacturing White House logos and sticking them on non-White House documents and pushing the real government to act on them.

Walter Shaub:

Josh, are you inferring that from his statement that he’s responsible for the packet, or is he literally saying he

This is disgustingly flippant and cynical.

Marco Rubio blows off Trump’s “Chye-nah should investigate Biden” as trolling:

This morning in the Florida Keys, @marcorubio was asked about the President calling on China to investigate @JoeBiden – see his answer↓

His answer:

I don’t know if that’s a real request or him just needling the press knowing that you guys were going to get outraged by it. He’s pretty good at getting everybody fired up, and he’s been doing that for awhile, and the media responded right on task.

A reporter repeated the question.

I don’t think that’s a real request. I think he did it to gig you guys. I think he did it to provoke you to ask