Originally a comment by latsot on Preserving mystery in legislation.

I’ve lived a sort of double life as part scientist and part engineer, so I like to come at these things from two directions. On the one hand we have the big-picture thinking described well by iknklast and Holmes: this is a terrible idea for freedom and democracy. It will be used to serve political goals, that’s inevitable. Over in the UK, we’ve installed Police and Crime Commissioners as political appointments; these are the people who would be in charge of how hate laws are implemented in practice, which makes me more than a little uneasy. The entire principle of policing in the UK is that police are supposed to be civilians, not soldiers or agents of the government.

But the engineer in me sees it from the practical angle too. The phrase that keeps occurring to me is “if all else fails, we can always get him for hate crime.”

Police hate protests because they’re difficult and expensive to manage. They’re always looking for excuses to prevent them or to ban them outright. In the UK we’ve just passed an extremely dangerous law giving police authority to arrest people in the general area of a protest without probable cause. It was used on day one to do just that. It’s roughly the equivalent of arresting someone with a paperclip of “going equipped to commit a crime” because they might conceivably pick a lock with it.

If they had hate crime laws to back them up, I have no doubt at all that UK police would use them to put as much of an end to protests as they could; not for political reasons, but purely because of cost.

There is absolutely no upside to this law that I can see and I hate to think of it serving as a model in other jurisdictions.

Make it make sense.

Women have shared their concern about the erasure of “all female identities” after Johns Hopkins University used the phrase “non-man” to describe lesbians.

The Baltimore-based university received backlash online after defining “lesbian” as “a non-man attracted to non-men” in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The update, which has since been removed from the website, was initially meant to be inclusive of non-binary individuals, who may still identify as lesbians.

That last bit. What can possibly be the point of being “inclusive” of a tiny tiny tiny fragment of the population, which has a fatuous delusion that it’s something labeled “non-binary,” which doesn’t mean anything, at the expense of over half of the population? Why be “inclusive” of 147 people at the low low cost of excluding 4 billion? What is the point?

Katha Pollitt on Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-cancellation:

Sometimes, the censors get lucky. The latest writer to cancel herself is Elizabeth Gilbert, the immensely popular author of Eat, Pray, Love and other memoirs, novels, and self-help tracts. On Monday, Gilbert announced on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that she is “making a course correction” and pulling her upcoming novel, The Snow Forest, from publication. The novel, she explains, is about a Russian family that withdraws from Soviet society in the 1930s and remains isolated for many years in Siberia. “Over the course of this weekend,” she writes, “I have received an enormous massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers, expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain about the fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now, any book, no matter what the subject of it is, that is set in Russia.”

Which makes no sense. None. Zero. What about a book on how Putin clawed his way to power? What about a book on the state murders he has made happen? What about a book about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya? I have such a book; should I get rid of it?

What about a biography of Chekhov or Tolstoy or Balanchine? What about a book about Stalin’s Terror? What about a book documenting how New York Times journalist Walter Duranty prettied up Stalin’s Terror in Ukraine???

Katha goes on:

The publication announcement describes the book as “a dramatic story of one wild and mysterious girl in a pristine wilderness, and of the mystical connection between humans and the natural world.” To tell you the truth, it sounds rather silly to me. But since no one commenting has read the book, how do they know it romanticizes the Russian soul and admires Russia? After all, the book is about Soviet dissidents in the time of Stalin who are so horrified by their society they hide away from other Russians for many decades.

It sounds extremely silly to me, as does the eatpraylove book, but not as silly as her decision to cancel herself.

I support Ukraine in its self-defense against the Russian invasion. I don’t understand the infatuation of a part of the left with the USSR or Putin’s Russia, or their weird claim that Russia, currently invading a sovereign nation, is anti-imperialist. I can understand why Gilbert’s Ukrainian fans would be upset about The Snow Forest, as it exists in their imaginations. But I can think of better ways for Gilbert to have responded, beginning with “I think you’ll be surprised when you actually read the book.”

As for Hitler, should people really have stopped reading German literature when the Nazis came to power, let alone any book, by anyone in the world, set in Germany—in any time period? My mother, who was Jewish, took German as a student at New Utrecht High in Brooklyn in the 1930s—did memorizing poems by Heine make her a Nazi sympathizer?

Should Russian and German and Ukrainian people now stop reading US literature because of Trump? Reading anything is an act of rebellion against Trump, who can’t even manage to read the Presidential Records Act.

“The reason we haven’t defined hate crime in our bill banning hate crime is that then people would know what the crime is.” They’re going with that?

[Ireland’s Minister for Justice Helen] McEntee also defended the proposed hate crime and hate speech bill, and said she believes the majority of people want to see it enacted.

…

“Firstly, when it comes to the hate speech and the hate crime legislation, the reason that we haven’t defined hate is by defining hate and using another word, you then have to try and describe essentially what that means. And you’re potentially leaving a gap where certain prosecutions might fall or where it may be more difficult to have prosecutions under this legislation.”

It takes the breath away.

Dang, self-important much?

Definitely! So especially important for some boutique genderperson to cross the pond to rescue Britain from the parching lack of boutique genderpersons. Thank god she has arrived to do her advocacy work!!

Even Parliament is asking her what it should do! I’m impressed now.

Hmmmmmm. Do we think that really happened? Google News doesn’t even turn up news of her arrival.

Don’t bring up Anne Frank only to talk about something else.

Uganda Afghanistan and Somalia are not havens of human rights, for sure, but if you’re going to talk about Anne Frank, then talk about Anne Frank. Don’t bring her up just to point to something else.

Fucking hell.

Trump says the law is not the law.

Hours after he was fingerprinted, booked and entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court in Miami, former President Donald Trump defied the very premise of the federal government’s case against him, claiming presidents have an “absolute right” to keep any and all documents they want. 

Which is funny because that’s the opposite of the truth.

“Whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It’s an absolute right. This is the law,” Trump said. 

The law is the opposite of that. The exact, clearly worded, explicit opposite. At noon on January 20 all presidential records become the property of the National Archive. That is the law.

News from Queensland:

Trans and gender-diverse Queenslanders will be able to change the gender on their birth certificates without having to undergo surgery, in a development that advocates have called “life-changing”.

Previously, people could only apply to change the sex on their birth certificates where they’d undergone sexual reassignment surgery – an invasive, costly procedure that isn’t readily available.

The new laws remove that provision and instead require people to supply a supporting statement from someone they’ve known for 12 months or longer.

Well let’s not stop with gender. Let’s have laws saying people can change their species on their birth certificates. First you’d have to make species a category on birth certificates, because as of now it’s just assumed that people are this one narrow species. So let’s do all that – add the category, and make it that you’re whatever species you say you are, no need for pesky intrusive snoopy questions about why anyone should believe you.

They’ll also allow people to formally change their name at the same time as an alteration of sex.

Ymania Brown — a trans woman and a spokesperson for Equality Australia, who campaigned for the changes — said the passing of the laws was a “life-changing” development.

It’ll be “life-changing” for women, too.

“Queensland was one of the last places in Australia to have cruel and outdated legal barriers that deny many trans people ID that accurately reflects their gender,” Ms Brown said.

Or, to put it another way, the legal requirement to have accurate ID.

Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath said in a statement that the law change brings Queensland more into line with other Australian jurisdictions.

“This historic bill belongs to those in the LGBTIQA+ community who despite facing the brunt of vitriol, discrimination and hate have chosen to stand up and fight for legal recognition,” she said.

“I want Queensland’s rainbow community to know: your lives matter, your stories matter, and your struggles matter.”

Women’s lives, on the other hand, women’s stories, women’s struggles, do not matter. Women are by definition privileged cis Karens and they must learn to take a step back when there’s a trans woman in the room.

The passing of the laws has been met with praise from advocacy groups including Rainbow Families Queensland and Transcend Australia.

Somehow the article neglects to mention the opposition from feminist women.

The very first words of the Newsweek piece are a lie.

A small subset of conservatives online has expressed outrage at Johns Hopkins University over its non-binary-inclusive definition of “lesbian” in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The people outraged are far from exclusively “conservatives” and there’s nothing “inclusive” about defining women as non-men – especially when the Johns Hopkins definition of “gay” does not match that insulting (and useless) definition of “lesbian.”

The Baltimore-based university, a major hub of medical research in the U.S., maintains an extensive glossary of definitions for terms relevant to the broad LGBTQ+ community. The definitions are often updated with greater inclusivity in mind, and as the medical establishment’s understanding of gender and sexual identity evolves.

Again, it’s not “greater inclusivity” to exclude and insult half the population. Pious vocabulary can’t disguise the gross offensiveness of this move.

On Monday, the glossary’s current definition of “lesbian” came under attack from right-wing users on social media.

Again – not right-wing. Feminists mostly. This guy – Thomas Kika – is just blatantly lying and Newsweek editors aren’t correcting him. This is Pink News-level crap.

As the university defines the term as “a non-man attracted to non-men,” the users accused it of attempting to “erase” women. They also pointed to the glossary’s listing for “gay man,” which does not use similarly non-binary-inclusive language.

Exactly so. It’s not conservative for women to expect equality in definition.

The flare-up comes amid a broader backlash among conservatives to LGBTQ+ rights and the embrace of queer communities by society. 

Fuck off, Mr Kika. It comes amid Trump’s many crimes, too, but it has nothing to do with them. We are very much pro LG rights; what we oppose are the competing claims to invented rights from trans activists.

Victory!

CNN goes through some of Trump’s lies about his activities:

In his speech in Georgia on Saturday, Trump mentioned a photo that was included in the indictment. The photo, which was taken at Mar-a-Lago, shows a toppled box from which papers had spilled out onto the floor.

Trump said: “I looked – it looked so orderly and nice. Somehow somebody turned over one of the boxes. Did you see that? I said, ‘I wonder who did that? Did the FBI do that?’”

Facts First: The suggestion that it’s even possible that the FBI might have turned over this box is nonsense. According to the indictment, the photo was taken in December 2021 by Trump aide and accused co-conspirator Walt Nauta, who the indictment says texted the photo to another Trump employee with the words “I opened the door and found this…” The FBI did not execute its search warrant at Mar-a-Lago until August 2022, eight months later, so it could not possibly have done the toppling.

But of course trumpians will be careful not to know that; they’ll just believe what Sackofwind tells them.

In a Friday social media post, Trump also claimed that the photo of the toppled box did not show any “documents” at all: “The Box on the floor which was opened (who opened it?) clearly shows there was no ‘documents,’ but rather newspapers, personal pictures, etc. WITCH HUNT!” He said in the speech in Georgia: “But the box that was turned over – it had newspapers, it had pictures, it had clippings, it had all sorts of things. Nobody saw any documents there.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that nobody saw any “documents” in the photo of the toppled box is false. While the photo does show newspapers and pictures among the materials that had spilled onto the Mar-a-Lago floor, the photo also clearly shows other unidentified papers in the pile – one of which prosecutors allege was classified and labeled with markings making clear it was releasable only to the members of an intelligence alliance composed of the US and four other countries.

And this is Trump’s Genius Mastermind method – he has all these boxes, see, lots of them, see, full of memorabilia from his fun time in the White House. They’re souvenirs, dammit! Not classified documents, souvenirs!

In the Georgia speech, Trump said of the 37 federal charges on which he was indicted in the documents case: “They take one charge, and they turn it into 36 charges. You saw that. Everybody was amazed. Lawyers on television … they’re not usually the best lawyers, but some are very good – they say, ‘We’ve never seen anything like it; they took one charge, and they made it 36 different times.’”

Sigh. We don’t even need to read Daniel Dale’s rebuttal. No, lawyers didn’t say that, because it would be asinine. It’s one crime committed 36 times.

Of the 37 charges in the federal indictment, 31 are for allegedly violating the same statute, against “willful retention of national defense information,” but each charge is for allegedly retaining a different classified document.

Same statute, different document. Mkay? We clear?

It’s worth noting that Trump could have conceivably faced far more than 31 charges for willfully retaining national defense information; the indictment says 102 documents with classification markings were found during the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, 38 other such documents were returned by Trump in June 2022 in response to a subpoena, and 197 more were returned by Trump in January 2022 “after months of demands” from the National Archives and Records Administration. As is also standard, prosecutors used their discretion to file charges over only some of the documents.

Be grateful, Don. It could be way worse.

It’s all or nothing, I tells ya, all or nothing.

In the bin with her! She doesn’t do it abjectly enough so into the bin.

“You don’t pretend I am what I’m not, so into the bin with you. Saying men are a group separate from women is wrong. You have to utter the lies exactly as we tell you to utter them, or it’s the bin for you.”

Well when you put it that way…

This is an interesting little detail. Trump isn’t even paying Walter Nauta: he’s making the campaign pay him. I think we’ve been reminded that’s illegal via all the other ways Trump has flouted campaign laws.

When Trump left the White House, Nauta was part of the post-presidency transition, serving for another six months while still in the Navy. Trump indicated in a social media post that at some point, Nauta “retired” from military service and “then transitioned into private life as a personal aide.”  

Federal Election Commission records show that beginning in August 2021, Nauta was paid by Trump’s “Save America PAC,” compensation that included salary, travel expense reimbursement and bonus. He later appeared on Trump’s 2024 campaign payroll. He has remained on the payroll in 2023. It is unclear if he received any funds from 45 Office, Trump’s official post-presidency office.

So far I can’t find any news media reporting this. Speak Up for Women has a statement on Twitter:

Speak Up for Women statement regarding the granting of diversion for Albert Park assailant.

New Zealand has a shameful record of family and sexual violence. A main driver of this is that male violence is excused and minimised. This Court decision to grant diversion to the man who assaulted the 70 year old grandmother at the Let Women Speak event in Albert Park is part of a dangerous cultural shift the political class has endorsed – that the use of physical violence is to be expected and excused in retaliation for words or beliefs that don’t align with theirs.

Men are taking advantage of this new loophole to abuse, threaten and assault women because of the “words are harm” claim promoted by a loud minority.

We extend our aroha to the victim and we will not stop our public opposition to radical gender ideology.

NZ Media Watch comments:

This afternoon we spoke with the advocate of the 71 year-old lady violently assaulted in Albert Park.

On May 22nd the victim was advised by @nzpolice: I am emailing to let you know that diversion has NOT been approved by the diversion officer due to the serious nature of the offence.

Yesterday –June 12th– the accused was scheduled to appear in Auckland District Court. At the last possible moment police advised the victim: The defendant has been granted diversion and the hearing has been adjourned to allow him to complete his diversion. I have been advised as part of his diversion he will be asked to pay [the victim] $1,000, do counselling, complete community work, and to write an apology letter.

The victim has opposed diversion throughout the process and feels thoroughly let down by NZ Police, the Ministry of Justice, and Victim Support. She considers diversion to be an outright miscarriage of justice, that a conviction and the naming of her assailant ought to be the absolute minimum outcome.

We agree.

Disgust is all I have.

For some reason Trump has been unable to hire new lawyers to help him clear up this little misunderstanding.

Trump and his legal team spent the afternoon before his arraignment interviewing potential lawyers but the interviews did not result in any joining the team in time for Trump’s initial court appearance scheduled for 3pm ET on Tuesday after several attorneys declined to take him as a client.

Trump has also seemingly been unable to find a specialist national security lawyer, eligible to possess a security clearance, to help him navigate the Espionage Act charges.

The last-minute scramble to find a veteran trial lawyer was a familiar process for Trump, who has had difficulty hiring and keeping lawyers to defend him in the numerous federal and state criminal cases that have dogged him through his presidency and after he left the White House.

This is the downside to being a conspicuously bad person. People don’t want to deal with your shit, even for lots of money.

Among the Florida lawyers who turned down Trump was Howard Srebnick, who had discussed defending the former president at trial as early as last week in part due to the high fees involved, but ultimately declined the representation after conferring with his law partners, the person said.

Oh boy, high fees, but…um…oh the hell with it, it’s not worth the torture.

Part of the problem of recruiting new lawyers has been Trump’s reputation for being a notoriously difficult client who has a record of declining legal advice and seeking to have his lawyers act as attack dogs or political aides rather than attorneys bound by ethics rules, people close to the process said.

Along with his reputation for being a complete asshole, a reputation which is bolstered by the thousands of hours of video we’ve all seen of him being a complete asshole.

It all makes sense now – straight people can be “queer.” Who knew?!

Then what does “queer” mean? Interesting? Special? Better than all those boring beige people in long term relationships (commonly known as “marriages”) with someone of another gender?

Dennis isn’t having it.

Give that child a scholarship to a university of her choice.

Guest post by Jonathan A. Gallant

I invite truly virtuous individuals to join my new organization “Electron Justice”.  We are dedicated to decolonializing electricity by eliminating all the terminology of the colonialist, Eurocentric, heteronormativist old culture we must overturn.

For example, consider the coulomb, the unit of electric charge.  It is named after the engineer and electrical experimenter Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, who was also a militarist and a colonialist.   He served in the French army for 28 years, retiring with the rank of captain right after the French Revolution.  Part of his military service was spent overseeing military construction in Martinique, a Caribbean island where black slaves labored on plantations, and which remains a French colonial possession to this day.  

The family of James Watt obtained its wealth from Watt’s father’s shipping business, which was partly involved in the slave trade.  Moreover, James himself was a long-time friend of the philosopher Adam Smith, the famous proponent of (gasp!) market capitalism.  Alessandro Volta was an aristocrat, named a Count by Emperor Napoleon in 1810.   The father of André-Marie Ampère was a counter-revolutionary who was guillotined by the Jacobin revolutionary government in 1793.   No connections between Georg Simon Ohm and obvious forms of wrongthink have been discovered.  However, since he died in 1854, it is certain that Ohm never filed a DEI statement, as is now routinely required for all academic candidates in Mathematics, Physics, and Electrical Engineering.

On these grounds, we call for abolition of all the electrical units—coulombs, watts, volts, amps, and ohms–named after these malefactors.  Even if their association with retrograde practices and ideas is a little vague in some cases, there is no question that they are all old white men.  Therefore the continued use of units named after them could discourage members of marginalized communities and female persons from following electrical pursuits, such as studying Physics, charging their cellphones, or replacing a light bulb.  On the contrary, we demand that electricity be granted a new set of diverse, equitable, and inclusive units. 

In order to raise consciousness about our cause of Electron Justice, we are beginning a campaign of direct actions.  Until the electrical units are changed, wherever we go we will turn off the lights or blow the fuses:  our motto is “No Justice, No Current”.