Do you, like me, have certain commenters that get under your skin? After you have battled with them fruitlessly enough, do you just start to ignore them and not engage? Or do you wish that something proactive would occur so that their offensive speech would just not be in the posts you follow?

This is when it is important to stand back and ask yourself: Am I committed to free speech? If the First Amendment protects anything it is speech that offends and irritates you. That doesn’t mean you have to listen to it; you just don’t get to suppress it. 

It was 64 years ago today, on February 3, 1959. Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed when their plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, crashed near Clear Lake, IA, when the pilot lost control of the plane in bad winter weather, and crashed into a cornfield. All four on board, including the pilot, 21-year-old Roger Peterson, died in the crash.

Holly’s touring group, which also included such notables as Waylon Jennings, Dion and the Belmonts, and an assortment of excellent but lesser-known musicians, had been on a whirlwind tour of the Midwest. Many of the performers were suffering the effects of a very cold winter, with colds, flu, and frostbite making the rounds, and the plane was chartered to get Holly and a few others to the next destination (Moorhead, MN) more quickly and comfortably.

Waylon Jennings was supposed to be on the plane, but swapped with Richardson, who had the flu. Guitarist Tommy Allsup “lost” his seat on the plane to Valens through a coin toss. Allsup, who was originally thought to have died because he’d given Holly his wallet, so that Holly could pick up a letter on his behalf, survived and went on to work with, among others, Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson, and later produced retrospective hits for the great Bob Wills.

I didn’t write this post to rehash the Ricochet oldie but goodie, “Conservatism vs. Libertarianism.”  My point isn’t about the Libertarians or the Conservatives, but about the recent power grab by establishment leftists. Democrats have always been, um, rather coy about their true beliefs. They weren’t socialists, of course. They just believed more in cooperation (not coercion, of course!) and less in, um, not liberty, not independence, um, they just believed less in, um … you know, Ronald Reagan is mean! Yeah! Right. So it was hard to say what Democrats actually believed in, unless you ignored what they said, and instead observed what they did. Which most people did not do.

Anyway, I’ve been fascinated by the recent newfound honesty among Democrats. There are Democrats running to the left of Bernie Sanders, who self-identifies as a socialist. Suppose, hypothetically, that Democrats thought they could control the outcome of elections. That would allow them to be more honest, forthright, and thus assertive about achieving their true goals. Goals that look a lot like socialism. Or at least, strong centralized power systems.

If they see an opportunity to press their luck while they have the chance, that’s a rational decision. But having the government tell the citizens people residents of America that their God-given inalienable rights are actually government-granted privileges that can be taken away if they don’t play along — that may wake enough people up to create a backlash. Maybe.

As readers know, I like to study the actual text of the Torah. In no small part, this is because most people of all Judeo-Christian faiths tend to rely on what other people say the text says, instead of reading it themselves and trying to make sense of it directly.

Take, for example, the splitting of the Sea. Everyone knows the story: In view of all the people, Moses raises his staff, and G-d makes the sea split in two. The people walk through, marveling at what they see. The Egyptians, consumed with a battle lust that blinds their better judgment, chase after the Israelites – only to be drowned. The entire event is a visual spectacle. It is at once a demonstration of G-d’s power and the symbolic birthing of a nation. The Exodus has been memorialized in cinematic glory and countless storybooks for children. Everyone knows this version of the story.

2023 is turning out to be something of a breakthrough year for artificial intelligence. Actually, the real breakthrough year was 2017 and the introduction of the Google Research paper, Attention Is All You Need.  Generative AI — AI that can generate seemingly original content — has been significantly improved by the insights and approach described in the Google paper.

But generative AI will be put into service for things that are, well, problematic. Already college professors are pulling out their collective hair, wondering how they will be able to determine if essays and reports were original to the student or were obtained from an AI engine. A friend and co-worker, who was recently a professor of computer science at a major university, has been keying in his third-year computer science assignments to ChatGPT and has received responses containing source code reflecting correct answers to his assignments. ChatGPT recently passed the Wharton MBA and the US Medical Licensing exams.

But I wonder, how will we respond to AI-generated, photo-realistic porn that simulates, say, the sexual abuse of children? Make no mistake, it’s coming. And it will eventually be indistinguishable from photographs and videos of real children, but will be entirely artificial.

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper.  Most journalists are leftists, but you might think that perhaps a religion writer for a southern newspaper might be an exception. Or, perhaps not. Last April, Mr. Adams published an article that began with the following remarkable paragraphs:

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is the only Nashville-based transqueer Latinx neurodivergent public theologian that they know.

“I don’t know anybody like me,” Henderson-Espinoza, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said in an interview.

A friend of mine was traveling in Europe some years ago, and a few feet away on a public sidewalk near a café, a large man started beating up a woman – quite possibly his girlfriend. He had her on the ground, and he was systematically whacking her head against the curb.

My friend looked around, and although people were watching, nobody was doing anything. So my friend, a tourist from Scotland, acted. Despite being physically small and relatively unimposing, he promptly put himself in the middle of the two people and stared the attacker down until he decided to walk away. (My friend was, quite understandably, terrified.) The woman needed – and received – medical attention.

So, February is Black History Month. Most people are unaware that the first 21 black US Congressmen and the first 3 black US Senators, were all, entirely, Republicans.

Wikipedia lists them here:

Michael Behe, John Lennox, and Steven Meyer are three of the leading voices in science and academia on the case for an intelligent designer of the universe and everything in it (including us). In this wide-ranging conversation, they point out the flaws in Darwin’s theory and the increasing amount of evidence uncovered by a rigorous application of the scientific method that points to an intentional design and creation of the physical world.

A group of vegan protesters outside a meat plant attempted to stop a truck delivering to the plant. However, they didn’t realize (or never considered) that a 35,000- to 40,000-pound truck, can’t stop quickly.

Vegan activists try to stop a truck 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/ejm0WnsDsv

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) January 30, 2023

Some people seemed surprised to discover that five black cops abusing a black victim in Memphis was symptomatic of white supremacy.  But we already knew that the race of alleged perpetrators is irrelevant from the lessons derived from the circumstances surrounding the death of Freddy Gray in Baltimore in 2015.

After an arrest involving six officers (three white, three black), Gray was handcuffed and placed in a van but not seat-belted.  The black officer driving the van allegedly gave him an intentional  “rough ride” such that he fell off the bench and, in a freak accident, broke his neck and soon died.

. . . her bid for the GOP nom. I suppose it’s time to send some reporters to Mar-A-Lago to await the white puff of smoke that indicates DJT has chosen a derogatory nickname; wonder what it will be. Thought Nikki Fail-y would be good at the UN. Big disappointment! Iran and China still members. 

Well, that’s not fair. The story says he approved and welcomes the competition.

For those (like me) who have concerns about what American interest is served by our financial and military material support for Ukraine, there is a theory that the American arms establishment is pushing the conflict and looking to goose their bottom lines by selling the US government arms to replace those sent to Ukraine. But what if that isn’t so?

There is a Powerline post out today that raises questions about the ability of arms providers to rearm America. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal: