Illegal Aliens, ID Theft, and A Personal Resurrection

 

Someone on Ricochet posted a link to a brilliantly written Mark Steyn article. If you haven’t read it, I think you should. Among various frauds discussed is half a billion dollars allocated to Internews Network, an NGO headquartered in an abandoned building. This is a trope of movies and TV, but in real life, it is jarring to see it actually happening with one’s tax money.

Steyn, in turn, linked to an excellent article by Mark Hemingway and Ben Weingarten, titled:

Lake Illinois

 

Some people are treating as a joke the recent name change of Lake Michigan to Lake Illinois.  But the name is nothing new.  For some people it’s just a matter of restoring an older name, if not the original name.  Even as late as 1703, there were French maps that had it labeled as Lake Illinois.

For example, there is this snippet from a map by Louis Armand Lahontan, first published in 1703.

QOTD: Love

 

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway

Hemmingway wrote of many things, including love. I chose this quote because on Friday, it will be The Day Of Romantic Love.

Happy birthday, Buster Keaton!

 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 2013 I narrated Cut to the Chase by Marion Meade, an excellent biography of Buster Keaton. I wish I had done a better job, but I was still learning my craft at the time. Still, it has sold well; not surprisingly, because of the quality of the writing and the subject. Keaton was a brilliant but humble man, who knew his craft and performed it.

As the new Trump Administration continues its work at a breakneck pace the Democrats are losing it.
And with RFK Jr taking over at HHS we talk to Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute about her new book, The World’s Medicine Chest, and contemplate what’s ahead for you, medicine and Big Pharma.

All that and the Parting Shot.

Despite the kerfuffle that President Trump is initiating a Constitutional crisis, the confusion and frustration surrounding his executive actions fit within a fairly common modern trend: Congress’s institutional inaction leaves a power vacuum which the president sets out to fill. In anticipation of the Supreme Court weighing in, Henry sits down with the inestimable John Yoo to discuss the larger constitutional questions that Trump’s test cases are likely to settle. Tune in for a refresher on the distinction between the separation of powers and checks and balances; an explanation of the unitary executive theory; and considerations on how justices may come down on the decisions that will be put before them.

See Enclosed List

 

I just watched a story about the archived records of US Government employees being stored in an Iron Mountain storage facility, 200 feet underground in a Pennsylvania limestone mine.  It’s all manual.  Paper records in manila folders.  A process designed in the 1970s.  Apparently Obama spent over 100 MILLION dollars to revamp this process and failed.  Unbelievable, right?  Oh, no.  I believe it…. every word.

Not too long ago, I had a Wall Street consulting firm whose forte was fixing broken bits of multi-billion dollar financial institutions.  During one project we were searching for old records relating to a particular business.  The archive records were a mess.  We opted for the brute force approach.  Iron Mountain was the archivist.   We ordered up a file of every box sent by our client to Iron Mountain over the past 5 years.  We got back a box containing a giant paper file… the two-tone green-striped computer paper… the details of thousands and thousands and thousands of archive boxes stored with Iron Mountain at (if I recall) $1.25 per box per month.    There was a group of boxes I still remember….

Abraham Lincoln, Duelist

 

I’m reading a biography of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  In setting the stage for discussion of the Battle of Kernstown – Jackson’s only defeat – the author gives a brief description of Jackson’s opposite number: hero of the Mexican War, Union Brigadier General James Shields.  In that short synopsis he drops the following nugget… that prior to the war, while a public official in Illinois, Shields was the subject of some “scurrilous” newspaper articles.  Though published anonymously, they were widely believed to have been penned by Abraham Lincoln.  Shields was so incensed that he challenged Lincoln to a duel.

In this episode of Microschooling Journeys, Curious Mike visits Rain Lily Microschool in Nassau County, Florida.  He visits: Wow.  Then he hears the two founders origin story.  Kati is a veteran Montessori teacher frustrated with culture and teacher respect issues in her former school, dreaming of a place where all parents felt welcome. Tania trains in Cuba, and then with her husband makes the fraught journey to USA, and ends up working her way up the ladder.  Like many, they have a dream of “their own” little school – but how?

Enter Wildflower Network.  It’s a network for teacher-led microschools, and they help people just like Kati and Tania: with septic tanks, with website creation, with touchy legal issues, with building a sliding scale tuition model that can tap Florida’s public dollars.  This episode is a little different stylistically: it’s Mike’s monologue. Tune in next time for an interview with Matt Kramer, CEO of Wildflower’s 70+ campuses, about expanding these innovative schools nationwide.

My Own Conspiracy Theory

 

My own “conspiracy theory” is not a theory about a conspiracy at all, but a major conclusion reached by myself alone about the current “state of the Union under Trump,” supported by several minor conclusions about the purpose, effects, and current status of several factions whose influences have been significant in America arriving where we are today.

News these days is dominated by reports about what President Trump has been doing in the three-plus weeks since he took office. One report says that 70% of Americans believe he is fulfilling his campaign promises. His approval rating is the highest it’s ever been. I approve of what I’ve seen thus far.

Quack Science

 

On his Substack, Robert Bryce has an interesting article regarding the Rocky Mountain Institute.  RMI is a left-wing energy think tank, and has been wrong about everything from the beginning.  Somehow it grows and prospers.  Somehow it vacuums up massive federal grants, to the point it has over six hundred employees and a long roster of +$200,000 executives.

Its most recent debacle was to claim that gas stoves were responsible for a large proportion of childhood asthma.  Unfortunately, they had neglected to cite the most definitive and thorough previous study that showed no correlation.  For this, Bryce labels them an organization of Quack Science.  I hope this term catches on and is used appropriately for the most egregious cases of left wing scientific errors.

Is It OK to Bribe for Contracts?

 

Across most of the world (and, as we see, in the US as well), it is expected – even required – for local officials to wet their beaks on fat contracts. If you want to sell a gas turbine or power plant or engineering services into India or Kazakhstan or Nigeria, paying off the local pols (and others) is necessary.

Of course, this is also illegal. The US and the EU selectively and sporadically enforce anti-bribery laws – often guided by whether or not that same company has been dutifully paying off the US/EU politicians as well. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Trump’s Executive Order yesterday tried to address this:

“DOGE is coming!” The Eye of Elon Swivels to the Mines of Moria

 

Well, I don’t think it’s quite that dire, but I did get a good chuckle out of a Fox News article today: Musk uncovers limestone mine used for manually processing federal workers’ retirement papers.  Musk says the retirement process at the facility is done by hand, limits the number of federal employees who can retire to 10,000 a month, and is “like a time warp.”

Oh, my giddy aunt.

It’s not often I think of Elon Musk as being a day late and a dollar (or several hundred billion dollars) short, but he’s missed the boat this time.

Flipping the Last Bit

 

Everyone understands binary math now, right? I’ve had my head inside a computer for almost fifty years, so I can’t entirely trust my sense of what non-nerds do, and don’t know, but I’m thinking that the basics of bits and bytes are common knowledge this far into the 21st century.

Certainly everyone understands the idea of place value as it applies to regular, decimal numbers; that the two in $205 is “bigger” than the five in the same number because the two is a number of hundreds and not a number of ones.

Join us this week for a conversation with Hollywood insider, public advocate and Food Network host Melissa Mayo – a fierce advocate for Israel, fighting antisemitism and radical Islam – discussing the hostage/ceasefire deal, and what to expect for Israel and the US with President Trump’s groundbreaking proposals and support for Israel.Brash, irreverent, and mostly peaceful! Stay in contact with us!

Melissa Mayo
Website: https://melissamayo.com/
IG – @themelissamayo
FB – @TheMelissaMayo

In this episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Alisha Searcy interview Steven Wilson, a senior fellow at Pioneer Institute and a leading voice in education reform. Mr. Wilson discusses his journey into K-12 education policy, reflecting on his early work with Gov. Bill Weld and the landmark 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA), which helped propel the state’s schools to national and international success. Steven highlights the contributions of Linda Brown and Building Excellent Schools in fostering high-performing charter leaders and networks and addresses the political and curricular challenges charters face today. Wilson also examines the academic stagnation that continued with the 2024 NAEP results, linking it to the adoption of Common Core and broader shifts in education policy. He explores the intersection of K-12 curricula with race- and class-based politics and discusses themes from his upcoming book, The Lost Decade. He continues by discussing policy recommendations, calling for a renewed focus on rigorous academics to close achievement gaps and restore excellence and equality of opportunity in American education. In closing, Wilson reads a passage from his new book The Lost Decade.

The Pirates of the Judiciary

 

District judges are not elected. They are appointed after being nominated and approved by the Senate. Some of them appear to be doing the bidding of desperate Democrats who are rudderless and shouting epithets to the wind. For example, District Court Judge John Bates has just ruled that the Trump administration must restore information regarding transgender surgeries and transgender ideology that was removed from the websites for HHS, the CDC, and the FDA. His rationale — if it can be called that — is the following (emphasis mine):

“It bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare,” [U.S. District Judge John Bates] wrote. Citing declarations from two doctors filed in the case, Bates said if they “cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions. The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health.”

What foreign policy challenges does the Trump Administration face as of February 2025? Where are the potential flashpoints of global conflict and strife? What ‘bad actors’ are out there, and are they working together?

Defense Policy expert Rebeccah Heinrichs discusses these serious issues with Jeff, and offers some ideas for how America can defend itself and work to promote and protect our national interest and citizens.

Donald Trump Threatens Hamas Again: Will it Work this Time?

 

Donald Trump has run out of patience with Hamas, and rightly so. They are trying to renege on the current criteria of the ceasefire agreement, and Trump knows they are playing games:

Hamas said late Monday that it was indefinitely postponing the next hostage-prisoner swap Saturday, accusing Israel of continuing to shoot at Palestinians, stopping them from moving back to the northern part of the strip, and delaying the entry of medical supplies and shelters.

Human Intelligence Masquerading as AI

 

“We are not judgmental, so we blame the technology and absolve the people.” – David Gelernter, Drawing Life

I once commented to a friend that I thought all of the climate change hysteria was a case of scaring ourselves to death with our own spreadsheets. Anyone who has had any experience working with spreadsheets should know by now that the extrapolations performed by them are entirely a function of the assumptions they contain. Change a single value in a single cell and the spreadsheet’s prediction can go from catastrophe to nirvana. But here is a truism that would be good for us all to remember: There are spreadsheets. And there is reality. And they are two very different things.

BREAKING: Republican Senators Have Had Enough…

 

… and, with a 52-46 vote, invoked cloture on the nomination process of Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. If the Dems use all of the 30 allowable hours for blah-blah-blah, she’ll be confirmed just past midnight on Wednesday morning. If they don’t, around 7 PM this evening.

Immediately following Gabbard’s confirmation vote, cloture will be invoked on the nomination of RFJ Jr. for HHS. Depending on the aforementioned Dem behavior, he’ll be confirmed either Wednesday evening or in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

It’s intimidating to be in the presence of heroes

 

I drove 12 hours from Hilton Head to Cincinnati to my cousin Laura’s house to visit my Aunt Esther last weekend.  Go read that post first if you haven’t yet, so this post makes more sense.

Laura has three daughters:  An eight-year-old, a five-year-old, and a six-month-old old (This essay may flow a little weird, since I don’t use the girls’ names – sorry about that.).  And now Laura’s mother is dying of a brain tumor in her spare bedroom, on hospice.  She gets agitated and scared and in pain, and Laura goes in and gives her Mother liquid morphine until her eyes flutter shut.  But first, she must promise her Mother that this medicine will not prolong her life, just ease her suffering.  Only then will Esther accept it, so Laura can give her the dose, then go cry in the bathroom so her daughters won’t see her.

I witnessed an extraordinary 15 minutes last Saturday.  So extraordinary that I’ve thought of little else since then.  It started when the 5-year-old came crying to Laura that her older sister wouldn’t let her play basketball.  So Laura and I went out in the driveway to investigate.  The 8-year-old was shooting basketball, and wouldn’t play with her sister because this was “basketball practice for big kids” – she had just recently started playing on a team and viewed basketball as serious business now.  The way little kids do.

The State of the Union Address is Going to be Lit

 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has invited President Trump to deliver his State of the Union address on March 4th. The event is sure to be raucous. Given all the revelations about fraud, waste, and abuse that Democrats refuse to address specifically, Trump will hopefully read out each example. Whether he pauses to shake his head or look directly at the Democrats and say, “Really?” or “Have you no shame?”…or “American taxpayers’ money to terrorists and terrorist affiliates? Really?” remains to be seen.

The Democrats are sure to heckle or stage a walkout…or perhaps all dress like handmaids. We do know that at least one Democrat congressman will dress like a woman. My suggestion would be that they all wear cones of shame around their necks…but that’s just me.

I just hope that Elon Musk is in the gallery and Trump calls on him to rise to the applause and cheers of Republicans in the chamber. I recommend the gladiatorial chant from, well, Gladiator: “Maximusk! Maximusk! Maximusk!

Trump Team Won’t Hire People Critical of Trump

 

When I first read the title of this article, I scratched my head, because I had to ask, why would Trump want to hire people who weren’t supportive of him? But then I looked into the likely reasons behind the article, and the reasons Trump’s team was going to pick people who were loyal and supported him, and it made sense.

How many times did we learn of people betraying Trump in his first term? Trump admitted that his personnel decisions seriously handicapped him his first time around. We heard about Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Jim Mattis, John Bolton, Nikki Halley, Mike Pence, Gary Cohn and Anthony Scaramucci, who made the betrayers’ list, to name a few. They either worked against him when they served, attacked him after they left the government or were dismissed, or leaked information to the media.