Category Archives: Government

An Obvious Question

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Over at The Lid Blog, Jeff Dunetz has a post that asks an obvious question: “IG Report Shows Andrew McCabe Is A Criminal – So When Is He Going To Jail?” It details why the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report is so damning for McCabe.

Read the whole thing.

As to when McCabe will go to jail, I’m betting on never. He knows too much to be tried publicly. My guess is that he will eventually be retired to a quiet sinecure at some foundation or think tank that will more than make up for the loss of his government pension.

I’m Not Making This Up, You Know

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What’s Up With That? reports that Los Angeles is spending $40,000 per mile to paint streets white in order to fight global warming.

Two points—

First, tires are abrasive. How long do they think the paint will last?

Two, most highway-grade paint is petrochemical-based. Did they consider the carbon footprint of the project from manufacturing the paint all the way through to application and maintenance?

Oh, one more thing … there are 6,700 miles of roadways in LA. Doing the whole network would cost something north of a quarter-of-a-billion bucks. What if that money were spent on something like schools or housing for the homeless?

UPDATE—The Daily Mail reports that the product being smeared on LA’s streets is CoolSeal. (H/T, Stephen Green). According to the manufacturer’s website, it is a water-based asphalt sealant designed “for lightly trafficked areas,” so it’s not exactly highway-grade. They may need to find something else to use on roads such as Century Boulevard.

UPDATE 2—Won’t this make the white lines between lanes and defining crosswalks hard to see?

Adjourned Sine Die

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There’s a Mark Twain quote about no man’s life, liberty, or property being safe while the legislature is in session. At midnight a few minutes ago, the 2018 session of the Maryland General Assembly adjourned sine die, and we bloggers dodged a bullet. A few weeks ago I wrote about Senate Bill 726, the so-called Grace’s Law 2.0. I referred to it as Brett’s Bill because it would have had the effect of making writing truthful things on the Internet a crime (up to 3 years in prison) if it caused upset to a minor. If that had been the law when Aaron Walker and I were charged under Grace’s Law in 2015, I might still be in jail.

The bill passed the Senate, but lobbying with the House Judiciary Committee by the ACLU, Aaron Walker, and me helped keep the bill from being reported from the Committee to House floor. My work was mostly through email. Aaron and the ACLU also met directly with legislators. Aaron’s story of how Brett Kimberlin had used Maryland’s existing laws had a chilling effect on many of the Delegates he was able to speak with. I’ll have more to report about what I learned during the lobbying, but that will have to wait for a few days.

I can tell you from my family’s own experience that cyberbullying needs to be dealt with firmly, but we need to do it within the limits of the First Amendment. I hope to be able to work with the legislators from Carroll County to draft a bill that will help protect kids without trampling on the Bill of Rights.

Team Kimberlin Post of the Day

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One of the claims that The Dread Deadbeat Pro-Se Kimberlin made in his Kimberlin v. National Bloggers Club, et al. (I) RICO Madness LOLsuit was that writing truthfully about him created “false narratives” which caused harm to his “relationship as an educator” with the State Department. The TKPOTD from four years ago today had some details about that claim.

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The following is from The Dread Pro-Se Kimberlin’s proposed Second Amended Complaint in his Kimberlin v. The Universe, et al. RICO Madness. ECF 100-1-152He goes on to complain that he lost his contract when the State Department became aware that his background was becoming publicly known.

Well, let’s think about the situation from the State Department’s point of view. Would they want the governments of those countries to be able to claim that our government was bringing “activist” to the U. S. for training by the Speedway Bomber?

Bad optics.

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The Gentle Reader should not be surprised to learn that I investigated TDPK’s claim. My investigation included a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department concerning in contracts awarded to Kimberlin or his not-for-profits.

The most charitable interpretation of the response to my FIOA request was that the State Department doesn’t want to admit to having had anything to do with Brett Kimberlin. My interpretation is that Kimberlin was lying in his complaint. The Gentle Reader may make up his own mind.

Don’t Know Much About History

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The kids marching in the Children’s Crusade for gun control this past weekend seem to believe that they are on the Right Side of History. I believe that they are misinformed. Indeed, they don’t seem to know enough about History to understand the dangers of being on its Right Side. There’s a good post over at Brickmuppet Blog that talks about some of those dangers.

There have been many Right Sides of History over the past 150 years or so. Social Darwinism justified racism. Postmillennialism led to a social gospel that brought us Prohibition. Marxism … well, Marxism is in a class by itself, being even more deadly than National Socialism. Most of the 20th-century was burdened by our betters trying to make one or more of these work in the Real World.

So by the 1930’s hopelessness and nihilism were universally accepted as the right side of history….

Well, not really, because those aging Fabians and their ilk had determined that history was still on the side of central planning, expansive government and direct solutions those annoying problems that confront us all….

…and so those on the right side of history wisely and virtuously gave support to various strong central governments uninhibited by voter interference who could deal with those issues, most notably the U.S.S.R., which people on the right side of history cleverly recognized as the last best hope.

It’s good that our betters figured that out, because it turned out that in the 20th century alone there were about 130 million people on the wrong side of history.

Actually, there were lots more, but the rest of the ignorant bastards got away …

That was then; this is now.

Today the right side of history is populated by those who wish to make the people safer by disarming them, those who take seriously the free flow of information and their responsibility to stifle it and, as always, those who acknowledge the utter sub-humanity and atavistic inferiority of honkies…well, the ones who aren’t well connected or don’t live in Tony zip codes.

Read the whole thing.