The Land Of The ONT And The Home Of The Brave
—WeirdDave
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
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Fourth of July Cafe
—Ace
Washington Crossing the Delaware (of course)
Emanuel Leutze, 1851
A baby and a dog are manning the lemonade stand.
She rescued a paralyzed dog from the shelter -- where it was about to be euthanized, because no one wanted to take a chance on it -- and then a miracle happened.
Orphaned baby ducks are put into a duck pond. How long will it take for another duck to adopt them?
Rescue dogs are very grateful.
Owl and parakeet become friends.
Funny Amazon review for a Medusa head.
The important thing is that he tried.
Lion and tiger BATTLE over who gets to be the little spoon.
Olga Korbut's perfect (well, 9.8) parallel bars performance at the 1972 Olympics. The "dead loop" maneuver which was later banned for safety reasons is when she comes to a dead stop on the high bar and then stands on it.
A desperate intervention for JackStraw.
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The Gift of Crows Open Thread
—Ace
Animals are known to give presents to each other, but the crow is one of the only animals (apart from dogs and cats) to give "gifts" to humans they like.
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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case Addressing Whether “Reverse Discrimination” is also Prohibited by Civil Rights Act of 1964
—Buck Throckmorton
On this blessed Independence Day, I have a disappointing update on a legal case I’ve been covering. Had “B.W. [Brooks Warden] vs Austin Independent School District” been accepted by the Supreme Court, there might finally be clarity as to whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial discrimination against whites. For now, entities such as the AISD are free to continue engaging in racial animus based on a student’s skin color, so long as the student is white.
As I’ve written, Brooks’ parents, Brandi and Monte Warden, are personal friends of my wife and mine. When they notified me earlier this week that SCOTUS had denied certiorari, they were obviously disappointed, but their disappointment was also mixed with an equal and offsetting pronouncement of patriotism and faith. They stressed that ultimately all of this is in the hands of a higher power, and they also know that Brooks’ ordeal, and the legal path they pursued, will help chip away at the ugly 21st century version of state-sanctioned racism.
Our sacred Declaration of Independence acknowledges that we’re an imperfect Union, but we strive to to form a more perfect Union. Brooks’ and the Wardens’ legal battle will indeed help make this a more perfect Union. There are plenty of landmark cases for which there were preceding writs that were denied certiorari, but the pressure mounted until SCOTUS couldn't hide from the issue any longer. Brooks' case has paved the path for other cases to follow.
As I documented in my previous pieces in April and in June:
Among the abuses claimed by Brooks were a teacher calling him a racial slur; the Principal mocking Brooks and accusing him of listening to Dixie while wearing a headset; the Student Council President circulating a picture of Brooks as a Klansman; another student promising to kill Brooks and all Trump supporters; and a student beating Brooks up in a classroom while the teacher watched. That student is later alleged to have boasted about assaulting Brooks because of his race. As Brooks’ father documented, the Austin Independent School District never disputed or refuted any of this, they just chose to ignore the Wardens’ pleas to make it stop.
Aside from me, The Federalist has also been giving this case good coverage in conservative media, with articles published in February and in June.
Coverage has now broken out into the legacy media, with this surprisingly unbiased report from USA Today on the Supreme Court declining to take the case: “'Whitey' case: Texan cites racial harassment at school. What did Supreme Court say?”
The Austin Independent School District said Warden failed to show the alleged hostility was based on race, rather than his political views.
Isn’t it charming that a public school district is arguing that the persecution of one of its students is allowable so long as it’s because the student has the wrong political views, rather than because he has the wrong skin color. But the AISD seems to also understand that acknowledging the hostility Brooks endured with the school district’s acquiescence would get them into Title VI territory, thus their claim that racial slurs directed at Brooks were “political.”
But because the Supreme Court punted, there is still no clarity as to whether Title VI applies to non-minorities, meaning that the “right kind” of government-sponsored racial oppression is still not currently prohibited. We can therefore expect more awful stories like this one from earlier this week:
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Mid-Morning Art Thread
—CBD
Independence
Frank Blackwell Mayer,
It's such a simple proposition; just leave us alone! Yet we are the only country on earth that really understands it and is willing to fight for it.
The Morning Report — 7/ 4 /25
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids, and let me wish all of you a happy Independence Day and God bless America on its 249th birthday.
Of course the top story of the day is the passage of this so-called Big Beautiful Bill by the House. And President Trump is set to sign it into law some time today. Regardless of my personal feelings about government spending, the President is boasting that in the end, passage will supercharge an already recovering economy,
“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago when Congress passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill to Make America Great Again,” said Trump. “In the last election, the people gave us a historic mandate to cut taxes, raise take-home pay, bring back jobs, stop the invasion … deport the illegals, and slash hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud, and that’s what we’re doing.”“With this bill, every major promise I made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept,” he added.
Obviously, it remains to be seen what real, tangible positive effects will be to the average citizen. And those will shake out over the long term. Of course, the reactions on Wall Street and Main Street will be quicker as they make moves to adjust and adapt to undergird their bottom lines to government regulations and (even better, deregulation) that could affect their ability to invest, create jobs and make a profit.
With all that said, the real tell are the reactions from both the Democrats and their propagandists in the media. The hyperbole, has been completely off the charts, and these are the people (on paper) that created the disgusting and puerile agitprop porn of Paul Ryan shoving granny in a wheelchair off of a cliff.
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill will cause people to die.
Wait, Democrats for decades have been taxing and spending us into oblivion. So on the one hand they're suddenly fiscal hawks while at the same time claiming that a massive spending bill will cause people to die?
And from a political standpoint, we have this
CNN analyst Paul Begala said Thursday on “Anderson Cooper 360” that the “Big, Beautiful Bill” was a “political death warrant” that will cause the Republican Party to lose the majority in the 2026 midterm elections. Begala said, “Hakeem Jeffries gave the Democrats a voice today. He set the new record for a speech in the House. They don’t have filibusters in the House, but they have this rule that allows the leader to speak pretty much unlimited. So he went on for hours, and he focused on Medicaid, focused on health care.”
Is it just me, or did you read "CNN analyst" as CNN Anal-Cyst.
Maybe he didn't listen quite closely to Hakeem who stated unequivocally:
If Big Beautiful Bill Passes, a ‘Deportation Machine Will Be Unleashed on Steroids’
Uh, if Hakeem Jeffries is right then guess what, the Democrats will be wiped out electorally for the foreseeable future! Please God let Hakeem be right. The GOP base will be energized and millions of illegal aliens gone not only improves society and our economy, it protects future elections and perhaps will prevent Texas' 38 electoral votes from shifting to the communists forever.
The dissonance between Jeffries and Begala is quite stunning. And that Jeffries would be stupid enough to articulate a position that is music to the ears of the vast majority of Americans is amazing. I think they need to show MAGA-hat wearing Ron DeSantis with a swastika armband throwing little brown babies into a pond of alligators. The Paul Ryan as Tommy Udo schtick is getting stale.
“I didn’t vote for him and I’m not always aligned with his approach, but his success on the domestic and international front in such a compressed period of time is nothing short of remarkable and it’s all due to his impressive use of political and executive power,” Michael LaRosa, a former Biden White House spokesman, told The Post. “The last two weeks of his presidency are a throwback to the strong leadership styles reminiscent of LBJ or Reagan, both of whom engendered such personal and political loyalty within their parties, that they could muscle through historic success out of sheer goodwill.” A different Biden White House official, who served all four years in the Democratic administration, said Trump has “hit a stride” and marveled at his ability to pressure holdout Republicans into voting for the major legislation despite centrist reluctance over Medicaid and SNAP cuts and conservative demands for deeper spending reductions. . .. . . “You voted for it because you’re scared of the guy. And frankly, that’s impressive, given that Biden never invoked fear in anyone,” the former Biden aide said of the GOP holdouts, all but two of whom eventually backed the bill.
“Successful campaigns and successful operations excel when they are provided clarity in mission from their leader — in this case President Trump,” said Chris LaCivita, who ran Trump’s 2024 campaign alongside current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
“Elections matter because you now have one of the greatest realignments in political history happening and being backed up by policy. If you work, pay taxes and aspire for a better tomorrow, you are voting Republican,” LaCivita said, describing the working-class reforms encompassed in the bill, which also made permanent Trump’s 2017 tax cuts to all brackets.
When even two Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants stooges praise Trump, with the faintest of damnation, that kind of says something.
Finally, You'll be shocked to know that rising Democrat Superstar Mamdani lied about being an abeed, as my Syrian friends from Brooklyn would refer to him, in order to get into Columbia. Jeez, Obama 2.0 in more ways than one! Lord forbid.
On a bit of a positive note, SCOTUS has smacked down the lower courts' overreach and ruled the President can deport criminal illegals to places like Sudan.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
Have a happy, safe and enjoyable Fourth of July weekend.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- Lloyd Billingsley: Let it begin this July 4. . . In 2025 the president has grounds to withdraw the USA from the United Nations and evict the globalist talk-shop from American soil. That long overdue move would be great preparation for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year. 2026.
American Independence Movement
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Daily Tech News 4 July 2025
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- The US government is planning to breed billions of flesh-eating flies, zap them with radiation, and dump them on Mexico. (CBS)
Take that, you smug-druggling bastiches!
...
Actually, this has been going on for years in Panama. These are New World Screwworm flies, and they are a major problem. The project - which has been keeping them penned up in South America for decades - breeds huge numbers of sterile but otherwise healthy males, which then compete to breed with the females, which produces... Nothing.
But that's the point. It has to be kept up continuously (and has been) but it has drastically reduced their numbers north of the canal since the 1960s. Until recently, when they swarmed and made a break for it.
The fly-factory in Panama currently produces 117 million dead-inside flies per week; the plan is to increase the number of sexual zombies to 400 million per week to outcompete real men. Real flies. Real fly men. You know what I mean.
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Opinionated Consumer Cafe
—Ace
US Coast Guard Cutter Spencer Destroys The Nazi Submarine U-175,
April 17, 1943
From @LostTemple7
Dog vouches for his brother, but not for the cat.
A stray dog that a man feeds went away for a few months. Then she came back with the litter of pups she just had.
Sylvester Stallone runs lines with a young actor.
A man put GPS trackers on his dog and cat.
Don't watch, it's gross: ejecting a horsehair worm parasite from a praying mantis. As in America, the parasite is nearly as large as the host.
Baby giraffe shows off the new legs for mom.
Let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go!
Hunting dog lied on the job application.
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The Week In Woke
—Ace
Target stopped funding the Congressional Black Caucus's "nonprofit arm" (read: grift to pay off their political cronies and unemployable children and mistresses).
The CBC now threatens a boycott unless their grift is restored.
The Congressional Black Caucus is boosting a boycott effort against retail giant Target for ending its DEI initiatives, a rollback that included the termination of a corporate sponsorship program that has been lucrative for the caucus's nonprofit arm.Since 2020, Target has donated at least $1.4 million to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a think tank that works hand in hand with the 62-member caucus. Target pledged $1 million over five years to the foundation through its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiative to "advance social justice and racial equity for Black individuals" in the wake of the death of George Floyd. The retail giant donated $200,000 to the foundation for "meeting expenses" in December to honor several caucus members, according to lobbying records.
But Target shut off the cash spigot for all of its DEI programs in January in response to President Donald Trump's executive action on DEI. The company announced it will wind down REACH and reevaluate "corporate partnerships to ensure they are directly connected to our roadmap for growth," seemingly putting funding for the CBC Foundation on the chopping block.
Now, the Congressional Black Caucus is making thinly veiled threats to endorse boycotting Target if it does not reinstate "diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that were eliminated or rolled back," according to a statement the caucus released after a meeting with Target CEO Brian Cornell and other executives last week. CBC members "warned that efforts to restore consumer and public trust without genuine action and accountability would risk inflicting lasting damage to the company's brand and credibility," according to a statement from the caucus.
Columbia President (and former NBC "News" Karen) Claire Shipman told the former university's board of trustees to fire an outspoken Jewish member who was complaining about the harassment and assaults on Jewish students and replace her with an "Arab," as she called it.
Before she became the acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman argued that the school needed to get an "Arab on our board" and suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy, according to text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce."We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board," Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia's board of trustees, wrote in a message on January 17, 2024. "Quickly I think. Somehow."
A week later, Shipman told a colleague that Shoshana Shendelman, one of the board's most outspoken critics of campus anti-Semitism, had been "extraordinarily unhelpful," adding, "I just don't think she should be on the board."
Harvard is facing a billion dollar deficit due to the imminent loss of federal funding, and is begging woke corporations for donations to make up the gap.
Harvard University is asking major corporations for research funding after President Donald Trump revoked more than $2 billion in federal grants from the school over campus anti-Semitism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.Harvard is "ramping up conversations with big technology and pharmaceutical companies in efforts to drive more corporate funding so research stays active," the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The talks remain in early stages, with no new funding agreements yet secured, according to university and company sources.
The corporate outreach comes as Trump has cracked down on Harvard for failing to protect Jewish students from violent protesters and implementing what he calls "discriminatory and illegal" DEI policies. Trump has frozen nearly $3 billion in federal funding from Harvard, revoked the school's authorization to host international students, and proposed removing Harvard's tax-exempt status if the university "keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting 'Sickness.'"
For purposes of allowing unqualified DEI law students to become lawyers, they've made the bar exam childishly easy.
For decades, the bar exam was the last line of defense -- a rigorous filter ensuring that only those with real legal chops could represent the public. Today, that filter is being shredded, sacrificed on the altar of equity and inclusion. The result? A collapse in standards, the death of meritocracy, and a profession on the brink of irrelevance.The NextGen Bar Exam, set to roll out in 2026, is not about modernizing legal education or making better lawyers. It is about making the exam easier to pass. Out go the demanding essays and complex legal analysis; in come more multiple-choice questions and "practical" scenarios that test little more than common sense and the ability to regurgitate buzzwords. The new mantra is "minimal competence," a phrase so hollow as to be meaningless.
The new system benefits neither clients, who deserve skilled and well-prepared advocates, nor the public, who depend on lawyers to guide them through a complex legal system. The only winners are bureaucrats and activists obsessed with "equity."
And even then, this is not to say that the new bar somehow guarantees equality of opportunity. Rather, it tries to force equality of outcome, no matter how much the universal bar must be lowered in the process.
Jonathan Turley on the Katanji's Oprah Winfrey "jurisprudence."
Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that "JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: "[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law." Ibid. That goes for judges too."She added, "We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."
In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that "when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too."
The last term has laid bare some of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a certain exasperation with having to closely follow the text of laws. (In an earlier dissent this term, Jackson lashed out against the limits of textualism and argued for courts to free themselves from the confines -- or shall we say the "minutiae" -- of statutory language). In this opinion, Barrett slams Jackson for pursuing other diversions "because analyzing the governing statute involves boring 'legalese.'" Again, what Jackson refers to as "legalese" is the heart of the judicial function in constraining courts under Article III.
Untethered by statutory or constitutional text, it allows the courts to float free from the limits of the Constitution.
MIT student: I was chased out of the school due to being Jewish, and the administration allowed it.
[A career in academia] is no longer available to me. In January, I left MIT because of the antisemitism I experienced on campus. Now I'm suing the university.The antisemitism didn't start on Oct. 7. I joined the board of MIT Grad Hillel during my first year on campus because, as I told MIT News, "I think it's important to demonstrate Jewish culture at a time when antisemitism is on the rise."
Three months after the profile was published, Hamas terrorists waged the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust -- and my fellow students at MIT celebrated, posting, "Victory is ours."
...
We witnessed our peers chant for violence against Jews, take over buildings, interrupt classes with antisemitic rants, and harass, intimidate and bully Jews for being Jewish.
This hostile environment was exposed to the world in December 2023 when MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, was called to Congress alongside the presidents of Harvard and Penn, to answer for the antisemitism on her campus.
She testified, now infamously, that calls for the elimination of the Jewish people can be antisemitic "depending on the context." After that day, calls for the genocide of Jews continued, and the climate of terror on campus intensified.
...
With MIT doing nothing to curb the escalating antisemitism on campus, the situation spiraled out of control.
In November 2024, a tenured MIT professor posted online that a "Zionist 'mind infection' " is being funded by "Jewish student life organizations" such as Hillel and Chabad.
When I pointed out that his message was extremely dangerous rhetoric, the professor began targeting me personally in X posts to his 10,000 followers. He did so over and over again. In his sixth post, for example, he referred to me as "an excellent case study."
I sent the professor an email with a simple request: "Please leave me alone." He then emailed the entire Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, including students and faculty, promising to use me in his upcoming seminar as a "real-life case study" of the Jewish "mind infection."
He continued targeting me in a relentless series of mass emails, copying high-level administrators, including Kornbluth. In one of these emails, he stated that I have "powerful connections" to the media and to "influential friends in Congress like Rep. Elise Stefanik" -- which is false.
Suddenly, I became the target of widespread harassment. Students, staff and non-affiliates piled on, amplifying the professor's vitriol against me. One staff member sent a mass email painting me as a racist. My mother worried I would be killed.The most disturbing aspect of this whole episode was that Kornbluth -- who was copied on the exchange where the harassment was on display in real time -- stayed silent, as did the other high-level administrators. Not one of them intervened.
On the morning of the seminar, flyers were slipped under the doors in the graduate dormitory where I used to live, containing an article advocating for violent "resistance" against Jews. The flyer specifically targeted me. It contained a graphic styled after Hamas headbands that read, "This article and the author were banned from MIT after Zionists tweeted about it."
I was one of the Jews who had tweeted about the article, which says, "We will burn the ground beneath your feet" next to the logo of a US-designated foreign terrorist organization.
He's suing. Good. Burn it down.
The BBC took part in a calculated broadcast of "hate speech."
Bear in mind, conservative women are in jail right now for tweets about immigrants the British establishment found too "hateful" to be permitted.
Why aren't Kneecap and Bob Vylan in jail, too? Why aren't the BBC's directors?
THE events at Glastonbury this past weekend should concern anyone who believes that anti-Semitism has no place in British public life. What unfolded on one of the country's most iconic cultural stages wasn't spontaneous rebellion or edgy political commentary: it was a deliberate and co-ordinated act of provocation. Worse, it was broadcast live to a national audience, under the watch of both the BBC and the festival's organisers.Kneecap are a band whose lead singer has previously been arrested under anti-terrorism legislation and who has openly threatened to use his platform to make anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements, both on television and at Glastonbury. Despite this history, the band were not only invited to perform but reportedly informed by the BBC that their set would not be aired. In reality, what followed suggests a calculated workaround.
Just before Kneecap's performance, the BBC aired the set of a lesser-known duo, Bob Vylan, with a troubling legal background and a documented history of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Bob Vylan, known associates of Kneecap, were given a prime broadcast slot directly before their set. This was no coincidence. Judging by the crowd's reaction, many knew what was coming.
...
To make matters worse, Glastonbury also hosted a scheduled talk by Palestine Action, a group that was recently proscribed by the UK government under anti-terrorism legislation. Their inclusion wasn't just provocative; it may well constitute a direct violation of UK law. That one of Britain's most visible cultural institutions gave a platform to an organisation designated a terrorist group is not only outrageous -- it raises urgent questions about institutional responsibility and legal oversight.
...
This is not just about Glastonbury. It speaks to a broader institutional failure -- across the BBC, the arts sector and civil society -- to recognise and respond to anti-Semitism when it comes cloaked in the language of activism. The double standards are glaring. No other form of bigotry would be tolerated so openly at a major UK event, let alone amplified to millions via public broadcast.
What we witnessed was not a mistake. It was a choice. The BBC and Glastonbury's organisers must answer for it. Who signed off on these decisions? What safeguards failed? And what's being done to ensure it never happens again?
I would defend them if the UK were a nation that defended free speech -- but they don't. They send people to jail for objecting to unlimited third world immigration.
Kneecap and Bob Vylan must go to jail as well.
But they won't.
And the head of the BBC won't be punished, either.
Avon and Somerset police have confirmed that they are assessing coverage of the event to decide whether a criminal investigation will be mounted.In Two-Tier Keir's Britain, there is no guarantee of that, but on the face of it Vylan should be in the dock for his call to kill Jews -- and so should the BBC senior executives who allowed this torrent of hate to be broadcast live on their platform to millions of people world wide.
This stands out as one of the worst misjudgements in the 100-year history of the BBC, and it is so serious that director general Tim Davie should be sacked for gross misconduct and a flagrant disregard to ensure impartiality. Even culture minister Lisa Nandy has asked for an explanation.
There are no extenuating circumstances. Since the October 2023 massacre of more than 1,000 Jews by Hamas terrorists, Jewish groups have been warning the Corporation that their coverage of events in Palestine has been seriously biased, but precious little has been done to redress the concerns. The BBC response is almost invariably to say -- without a scrap of evidence -- that their critics are wrong.
How did this horror story happen? It's because for the BBC, Glastonbury is a sacred event. Every year, it sends a reputed 1,000 staff to Worthy Farm to facilitate the worship. They stay in L400-a- night hotels and write acres of self-congratulatory verbiage about how wonderful their coverage will be.
...
It's been obvious for years that Glastonbury organisers Michael Eavis and his family -- condoned by the BBC -- have made the festival into a major far-left political event. Sponsorship has been totally dominated by right-on organisations such as Oxfam and Greenpeace and audience flag-waving features constant reminders of that agenda.
In effect, the BBC have used the excuse of artistic merit to ignore their Charter obligation for impartiality, and now that self-righteous complacency has blown up in their face. But they should have seen it coming.
The Pride group founder who has attacked JK Rowling constantly online has been arrested for sexually assaulting children. This was a pastime he engaged in with his boyfriend, who was also arrested.
A man has been jailed for 24 years for raping an "extremely vulnerable" 12-year-old boy after the pair met on a dating app.Stephen Ireland, 41, who co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, raped the child at the flat he shared with his then-partner and co-defendant David Sutton, 27, in Addlestone on 19 April 2024 after messaging on Grindr.
Ireland was also sentenced to a further six years on extended licence, while Sutton was jailed for four-and-a-half years for making indecent photographs of children and possession of an extreme pornographic image.At Guildford Crown Court on Monday, Judge Patricia Lees said Ireland "took advantage" of a vulnerable child.
The boy - referred to in court as Child A - who had been reported missing at the time, told police they had sex in the flat, smoked a bong which was later found to have contained methamphetamine, and that pornography was played on a laptop.
The court heard the boy had initially told Ireland he was aged 17 -- but when he later claimed to be aged 13, Ireland replied: "OK -- we just have to keep it a secret."
"Your response was telling," Judge Lees told Ireland, who sat in the dock dressed in a large red T-shirt and showed no emotions throughout the hearing.
"Far from finding that repugnant, you found that exciting, and sought to do it again."
In a Telegram chat that took place after their encounter, Ireland sent Child A a message in which he described his age as "naughty and kinky", the court heard.
On the same day, Ireland asked the boy if he would have a threesome and sent the child pictures of himself and Sutton.
Jurors heard that Ireland sent a picture of Child A to Sutton, describing him as a "14-year-old baby" who "wants to play with men's bodies", and the pair exchanged messages about the child.
...
"You fed off one another," Judge Lees told the defendants during the sentence hearing on Monday.
"You definitely supported one another in your perversions."
So close to Pride Month?
SO CLOSE TO PRIDE MONTH?!?!
Ofcom is the UK's Orwellesque media regulator. It's supposed to insure that the state media remain impartial, given that everyone, on the left and right, is compelled to pay for the BBC if they own a TV at all.
In practice, what it does is ruthlessly enforce a left-wing speech code on all media outlets, including the ones that are privately funded.
Now Ofcom is warning a privately-funded news channel, GB News, that they have to keep indoctrinating the public that trans women ARE women-- even in the face of a UK Supreme Court finding that they're not.
Media regulator warns GB News that it cannot treat the controversy as settled despite Supreme Court ruling in AprilBroadcasters must give airtime to claims that biological men are women when covering trans issues, Ofcom has said.
The media regulator warned GB News in a letter seen by The Telegraph that it could not treat the controversy as settled, despite the Supreme Court victory for women's rights campaigners in April 2025.
The court decided that under the Equality Act, the word "woman" means a biological woman rather than a person's self-identified gender.
As a result, women-only spaces have a legal right to be protected. Sir Keir Starmer has told hospitals and universities to obey the law and ban trans women from female lavatories "as soon as possible".
However, Ofcom has said that the judges' ruling does not mean the matter is "settled".
In the past, the regulator has said that it considers it "settled" that climate change is real and a man-made phenomenon.
Therefore, in situations discussing climate change, broadcasters do not have to provide an opposing view such as a climate change sceptic.
GB News wrote to Ofcom asking it to confirm that the ruling had settled the matter of the definition of a woman by saying it was defined by biological sex and not gender identity.
The station also asked the regulator to confirm that television companies would be able to refer to people such as sports stars solely by their biological pronoun.
But Ofcom said the Supreme Court only ruled on the definition of a woman in terms of the Equality Act and not on its meaning in other contexts.
The decision suggests broadcasters will continue to have to present both sides of the debate: those who believe there are only two sexes and those who believe a person's gender identity can change their actual sex.Ofcom's response also suggests that broadcasters should use a person's preferred pronoun.
In its letter, GB News wrote: "We would be grateful if Ofcom could confirm that in light of the Supreme Court judgment, it is now a settled matter that the terms 'man', 'woman' and 'sex' can only be understood to mean biological sex, biological woman and biological man and, as a consequence, it is also a settled matter that a 'trans woman' is not a biological female, and a 'trans man' is not a biological male."
It added: "Following the Supreme Court judgment we are of the view that (provided there is no deliberate intention to cause harm or offence), contributors should generally be able to use biological pronouns."
In its reply, Ofcom said that it could not agree with the broadcaster's "dogmatic" pronouncements.
There is additional reporting on the UK Pride founder who repeatedly raped young boys, if you can bear it.
A man has been jailed for 24 years for raping an "extremely vulnerable" 12-year-old boy after the pair met on a dating app.Stephen Ireland, 41, who co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, raped the child at the flat he shared with his then-partner and co-defendant David Sutton, 27, in Addlestone on 19 April 2024 after messaging on Grindr.
Ireland was also sentenced to a further six years on extended licence, while Sutton was jailed for four-and-a-half years for making indecent photographs of children and possession of an extreme pornographic image.
At Guildford Crown Court on Monday, Judge Patricia Lees said Ireland "took advantage" of a vulnerable child.
The boy - referred to in court as Child A - who had been reported missing at the time, told police they had sex in the flat, smoked a bong which was later found to have contained methamphetamine, and that pornography was played on a laptop.
The court heard the boy had initially told Ireland he was aged 17 -- but when he later claimed to be aged 13, Ireland replied: "OK -- we just have to keep it a secret."
"Your response was telling," Judge Lees told Ireland, who sat in the dock dressed in a large red T-shirt and showed no emotions throughout the hearing.
"Far from finding that repugnant, you found that exciting, and sought to do it again."
In a Telegram chat that took place after their encounter, Ireland sent Child A a message in which he described his age as "naughty and kinky", the court heard.On the same day, Ireland asked the boy if he would have a threesome and sent the child pictures of himself and Sutton.
Jurors heard that Ireland sent a picture of Child A to Sutton, describing him as a "14-year-old baby" who "wants to play with men's bodies", and the pair exchanged messages about the child.
Ireland along with Sutton, who was a volunteer for Surrey Pride, were found guilty of a string of sexual offences against children including voyeurism, arranging commission of a child sex offence, and possession of prohibited images of children, after a trial at Guildford Crown Court earlier this year.
In August 2022, Ireland and Sutton discussed arrangements to procure a 13-year-old boy for Sutton's 25th birthday in October of that year, the court heard.
Ireland and Sutton were also found guilty of one count of voyeurism and one count of perverting the course of justice.
The court heard that Ireland had watched live camera footage of Sutton having sex with a 16-year-old boy at their flat in March 2024.
The teenager did not know he was being recorded, with Ireland sending Sutton messages such as "he doesn't know I'm here" and telling him what to do, the court heard.
"You fed off one another," Judge Lees told the defendants during the sentence hearing on Monday.
"You definitely supported one another in your perversions."
Ireland and Sutton also perverted the course of justice by intentionally deleting material and search history from their phones after they were released on police bail in June 2024.
Ireland was sentenced for one count of rape, three counts of causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, sexual assault, conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, arranging commission of a child sex offence, six counts of making indecent photographs of children, four counts of distributing indecent photographs of children, possession of prohibited images, and possession of an extreme pornographic image.
Sutton was sentenced for offences including voyeurism, possession and distribution of prohibited images of children, and perverting the course of justice.
Judge Lees said: "Stephen Ireland is a man who prided himself on being versed in and highly alive to the vulnerabilities of young people linked to the Surrey Pride organisation he was at the time pivotal to.
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Democrats Block School Choice Tax Credits in the Big Beautiful Bill
—Ace
I'm sure the bill is flawed, but giving parents a way out of our deliberately-catastrophic fake education system is a great boon.
But only some of them. The Democrat-hired, John-Thune-permitted Senate Parlimentarian ruled that the provision to provide tax credits for private school was not a purely fiscal matter, and to get a vote on it, Republicans had to agree that only parents in states whose governments permitted them to use these tax credits could do so.
In other words: All of the blue states are going to forbid any of their citizens from using their own tax money to send their kids to good schools that they themselves pick.
Why? To protect the teachers union failure factories, of course. The teachers unions have a couple of truly disgusting imperatives, but the most sacred of them is having a monopoly on teaching children. They know if parents have any other choice, they'll flee the teachers union monopoly.
But maybe blue state voters will get angry enough when they see red state parents choosing their own schools that they'll demand that blue states opt in to the program, too.
And if not: F**k 'em. Let the blue states burn to the ground.
Buried in the 940-page "big, beautiful" budget blueprint is an unprecedented tax credit that, if approved, will be a long-sought victory for the private school choice movement in its drive to expand and break into Democratic states that for decades have blocked its path.The tax credit program, which would provide scholarships to K-12 students to pay for private schooling, would mark a significant shift in federal education policy. The scholarships would be the first major federal initiative designed to propel the nationwide growth of private school choice, a largely conservative and Christian movement championed by President Trump and suburban Republicans alike.
...
Beyond boosting participation, the program is also a wedge to crack into states controlled by Democrats. These blue-state lawmakers, backed by teachers' unions, have long resisted private school choice as a threat to public school enrollment. The granting of scholarships, advocates say, would plant a seed of interest among families in Democratic enclaves at a time when enrollment and academic performance have been steadily declining at public schools."In terms of the number of students served and the geographic scope, it would be the most important piece of school choice legislation ever," said Patrick Wolf, a prominent scholar of the movement at the University of Arkansas. "Advocates hope it will provide a proof of concept in blue states and show that if a few thousand kids get scholarships the public school system won't crater."
But the potential of the scholarship program to meet the advocates' goals has been weakened this week in the Senate. The program was included in the massive budget bill because, as a standalone measure, it wouldn't survive a filibuster by Senate Democrats. The budget bill can be passed by a simple Senate majority, provided it only addresses fiscal matters.
The Senate parliamentarian, however, objected to the scholarship program, ruling, to the dismay of Republicans, that it seeks to impose a policy on the states. In response, Republicans had to amend the initiative to allow states to decide whether to participate, a change that could hamper the movement's efforts to breach liberal jurisdictions.
...
"We're all disappointed that the bill is not as good as it was when it went into the committee," said Jim Blew, co-founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute and former assistant secretary in the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos. "If the Senate version is the final, it's a big win for families that want to choose a better school for their children."
A Blue State Workaround
The tax credit is partly a workaround of the blue wall of opposition to private school choice. Some 15 mostly Democratic states have never passed or have overturned measures that use public funds to pay for students' private education. The battles have been heated, with state teachers' unions typically leading the resistance to protect public school funding. In Colorado, the state education association helped defeat a ballot measure last year that it feared would lead to the establishment of a voucher program. Voters in Nebraska shot down an existing voucher program in 2024. Illinois is the only state in which the legislature ended a private school choice program. In the big blue states of California and New York, choice advocates have made little headway.
If the federal program becomes law, however, some Democratic states may come under pressure to opt in, partly because it doesn't draw on local tax dollars. It's free money.
"Leaders of blue states would have to explain to their citizens why they rejected free federal education dollars, instead leaving all that money for red states," said Wolf. "That's a tough sell."
Is This Something?
—Ace
Running Man remake with Maverick's Val Kilmer replacement, Glen Powell.
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James Varney: "Biden" Authorized $42 Billion In Graft to His Political "Environmental" Allies in Just the Last Two Working Days of His Potemkin Presidency
—Ace
Bumped. I took the post down when the BBB vote came in.
$42 billion in 48 hours. Less when you consider they were only working, at most, 10 or 12 hour days.
In its last two working days, the Biden administration's Energy Department signed off on nearly $42 billion for green energy projects -- a sum that exceeded the total amount its Loan Programs Office (LPO) had put out in the past decade.
In two days, they pushed more graft to their leftwing political allies than they did, in total, over the course of ten years.
The frenzied activity on Jan. 16 and 17, 2025, capped a spending binge that saw the LPO approve at least $93 billion in current and future disbursements after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election in November, according to documents provided by the department to RealClearInvestigations. It appears that Biden officials were rushing to deploy billions in approved funding in anticipation that the incoming Trump administration would seek to redirect uncommitted money away from clean energy projects.
The agreements were made despite a warning from the department's inspector general, urging the loan office to suspend operations in December over concerns that post-election loans could present conflicts of interest.
The Biden Crime Family specializes in conflicts of interest.
In just a few months, some of the deals have already become dicey, leading to fears that the Biden administration has created multiple Solyndras, the green energy company that went bankrupt after the Obama administration gave it $570 million. These deals include:Sunnova, a rooftop solar outfit that thus far had $382 million of its $3.3 billion loan guaranteed, filed for bankruptcy this month. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Li-Cycle, a battery recycling facility, had a $445 million loan approved in November, but since then, the company was put up for sale and has filed for bankruptcy. The Energy Department said no money has been disbursed on that deal. Li-Cycle did not respond to a request for comment.
A $705 million loan was approved on Jan. 17 for Zum Energy, an electric school bus company in California, and its "Project Marigold." At $350,000 and more, electric school buses currently cost more than twice as much as their diesel counterparts. So far, Zum has received $21.7 million from the government, according to usaspending.gov. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
A $9.63 billion Blue Oval SK loan on Jan. 16 was the second largest post-election deal, topped only by a $15 billion loan the next day to Pacific Gas & Electric, with most of that for renewables. The Blue Oval project in Kentucky -- a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and a South Korean entity -- has been dealing with numerous workplace complaints, and construction of a second EV battery manufacturing plant there has been delayed. More than $7 billion has been obligated on that deal, according to the Energy Department. Blue Oval did not respond to a request for comment.
The money and the hasty way in which it was earmarked have drawn the attention of the Trump administration. "It is extremely concerning how many dozens of billions of dollars were rushed out the door without proper due diligence in the final days of the Biden administration," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement to RCI. "DOE is undertaking a thorough review of financial assistance that identifies waste of taxpayer dollars."
The enormous sums came from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which injected $400 billion into the LPO, a previously sleepy Energy Department branch originally intended to spur nuclear energy projects. That total represented more than 10 times the amount the LPO had ever committed in any fiscal year of its existence. Prior to the post-election blowout, the office's biggest fiscal year was 2024, when it committed $34.8 billion, records show.
Even with the rush to push billions out the door in its last months, close to $300 billion of the Inflation Reduction Act money remains uncommitted by the LPO. Trump administration officials have already nixed some smaller deals. Secretary Wright recently urged Congress to keep the money in place as the LPO now aims to use it to further the Trump administration's energy policy, particularly with nuclear projects.
Note that this is in addition to the $20 billion graft bonanza you already know about.
That unprecedented gusher of cash from the LPO echoes the efforts of the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency to push $20 billion out the door before it left office. As RCI has previously reported, the EPA -- which had never been a consequential grant-making operation -- was tasked with awarding $27 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and Solar For All programs. It did so in less than six months in 2024, including an unorthodox arrangement in which Biden officials parked some $20 billion outside the Treasury's control. That money was earmarked for a handful of nonprofits, some of which had skimpy assets and were linked with politically connected directors.
Yeah I'll bet.
Read the whole thing.
Update on BBB: I think Hakeem Jeffries ended his stupid inarticulate ramblings after breaking the (meaningless, trifling) record.
I think the vote will happen soon.
JD Vance @JDVanceGOP Congressman just texted me:
"I was undecided on the bill but then I watched Hakeem Jeffries performance and now I'm a firm yes."
"Big Beautiful Bill" Passes House, Goes to Trump's Desk for Signing
—Ace
JD Vance @JDVanceGOP Congressman just texted me:
"I was undecided on the bill but then I watched Hakeem Jeffries performance and now I'm a firm yes."
Congress has officially passed President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" on Thursday afternoon after back-to-back sleepless sessions for both the House and Senate.The massive agenda bill now goes to Trump's desk to be signed into law just in time for Republicans' self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
The bill -- which advances Trump's policies on tax, the border, defense, energy and the national debt -- narrowly passed the House of Representatives in a mostly party-line vote.
It's a commanding victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and for the president himself, both of whom spent hours overnight trying to persuade GOP critics of the bill.
"The President is very engaged. He was very helpful in the process. He helped answer questions and articulate his vision and what this bill will mean for the country, and his agenda, and how urgent it is for us to get it done," Johnson told reporters the morning ahead of the vote.
The House initially passed its version of the legislation by just one vote in late May.
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