Flotsam and Jetsam - The BBB Trundles Along

Sundance at CTH hosts National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett Outlines Importance of Big Beautiful Bill. Ace, "Big Beautiful (?) Bill" Passes Cloture Vote, Now In "Vote-a-Rama" Phase for Amendments, "The Democrats are proposing dozens and dozens of amendments just to delay the final vote." From Da Caller, Senate GOP Slashes Spending In ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill As Fiscal Hawks Push For More Cuts. At Hat Hair, Inside the OBBB: AFP's Kent Strang Breaks Down Senate Drama and Fiscal Showdowns. Cam at BA heartened, Senate Language Zeroing Out Taxes on Suppressors, Short-Barrels Passes Byrd Bath. Hat Hair's Duane Patterson thinks the media and Democrats are being Willfully Obtuse about the BBB. Matt Vespa at TownHall hears Fetterman say I Want to Go Home. Sundance says I told you so, Elon Musk Pledges to Launch Third Party if Big Beautiful Bill Passes Congress. CNN just reported Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ awaits final Senate vote. From the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 06.30.25, EBL: Chuck Schumer Melts Down Over The Big Beautiful Bill, Victory Girls: About Time: Green New Deal Energy Subsidies Booted From Trump’s Bill, also, Vote-a-rama: The Last Scene Is Being Played Out In The Senate.

At Hat Capt. Ed Hair reads the WSJ: Say, Remember the Great Stock Market Crash of 2025? Well "... neither does anyone else" and Larry has a video, Dems Melt Down Over Trump Wins! CNN Can't Handle Scott Jennings! Dmitri Bolt at TownHall, Thanks to President Trump, America Enjoys the Lowest Summer Gas Prices Since 2021. Ace, #Winning: Inflation Rises More Slowly, Gas Prices Fall, and the Markets Hit All-Time Records, A European Economist Admits: "Maybe Trump Has Outsmarted All of Us" "The markets soared to record highs on Friday, despite the "predictions" (or partisan rooting interest) of the liberal establishment. Part of the rally is due to falling, get this, inflation." Matt Vespa at TownHall sees a Dem Strategist Loses It After She Cannot Deny America Is Better Off With Trump. Matt Margolis at PJM thinks Elie Mystal’s MSNBC Meltdown Over Trump Is One for the Ages. From the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 06.30.25, American Thinker, ‘A Very Consequential Two Weeks’ and Transterrestrial Musings, Trump’s Past Two Weeks.

ABC reports Iran crackdown deepens with speedy executions and arrests, "Three Iranians were executed for alleged spying, Iran's judiciary said." Hat Hair's Dave Strom hears Iranian Women Take to Streets to Offer Babies Up for Martyrdom. Dan Chaitin at Da Wire, Trump Predicts More Nations Will Join Abraham Accords After Iran Strikes. Sarah Arnold at TownHall, Jeffries Slams Trump for Abandoning Obama's Iran Strategy, That Included Sending Tehran Pallets of Cash. From the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 06.30.25, American Thinker: Yes, the U.S. ‘Obliterated’ Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities, BattleSwarm: Hegseth Slams Lying Media, Trump To Iran Last Week: We Can Remove Sanctions On You Now. Trump This Week: Or We Could Have, If You Hadn’t Been Such Colossal Dicks. At NYPo, Where’s Tulsi Gabbard? Intelligence director missing from key moments as insiders call her ‘wrong on the big stuff.’

Don Surber, Trump celebrates Canada Day, "TACO becomes POCA—President’s Opponents Cave Again." Politico whines Canada drops digital tax that angered Trump to resume US trade talks, "The move comes as Washington pressures multiple trade partners — including the EU — to ease digital rules targeting American tech firms." Liz Stauffer at LI, says Canada Capitulates: Will Scrap Digital Services Tax, Restart Trade Talks “So revenues collapsed in Canada during his [Trudeau’s] 10-year reign, and now [Prime Minister Mark] Carney has no income. … So, he’s trying to find any way he can to make income.”  Ace, Canada Surrenders to Daddy Trump on Tax on Tech Services "Canada decided to join the EU in punishing US tech firms because they're mad that Elon Musk allows free speech."

From sundance, HHS Secretary RFK Jr Tells Tucker Carlson all the Terrible Stuff HHS is Doing.

From Sarah Anderson at PJM, a puff piece on the second lady, Usha Vance Gets Personal, and It's a Breath of Fresh Air.From the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 06.30.25,   Shark Tank: DeSantis Confirms Trump Will Join Him At “Alligator Alcatraz” Opening.

Matt Vespa sees a Whitewash: Watch CNN Pull a 'Kamala Harris' on Zohran Mamdani's Views. At Hat Hair Dave Strom notes the Pravda Media is Covering for Mamdani and a Michele Tafoya video, Congressman Mike Lawler Knows Zohran Mamdani. Driscoll at Insty, OLD AND BUSTED: ‘I’m Not A Witch,’ Republican Candidate Christine O’Donnell Tells Delaware Voters. "—NPR, October 5th, 2010. The New Hotness?" MAZE @mazemoore "This is not terrible AI, it's a real message from the current frontrunner for NYC Mayor to his socialist comrades. "The end goal of seizing the means of production." I can't believe this is actually happening." Chicago Boyz, observe Enablers of Mamdani: America’s Universities. Jesse Kelly @JesseKellyDC, "Mao, Che, Pol Pot, on and on it goes. Communist leaders are almost always rich kids with a god complex who pretend to be of the peasant class to gain power. Almost every time." Quote End Wokeness @EndWokeness "Zohran says his worldview is inspired by the 3rd world while eating rice with his hands" Renu Mukherjee @RenuMukherjee1, "Mamdani’s mother is a world-famous, Academy Award-nominated Bollywood director worth tens of millions of dollars. His father is a chaired professor at Columbia. He is, in effect, a perpetual theatre kid who’s pretending to be “Third World.” It’s all so, so performative + stupid." Bonchie @bonchieredstate, "What you have to realize about the communist class in America is that they are all bored, privileged theater kids with nothing better to do than destroy Western civilization. None of them actually grew up hard knocks," Quote "Breaking911 @Breaking911 "Despite her ‘Bronx girl’ claims, AOC graduated from suburban Yorktown High School in 2007 as “Sandy Cortez”. You mean she's been lying? What a shocker." Dana Loesch @DLoesch, "Nepo baby who never worked and only became a citizen a few years ago hates the country in which he wants to impose his authority," Quote R A W S A L E R T S @rawsalerts "BREAKING: Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who is running for New York City mayor, said he doesn't think we should have billionaires." Insty, DEMOCRATS IN A NUTSHELL: Maud Maron @MaudMaron, "He says he “grew up in the third world” but he was living in the United States attending private school since he was 7 years old—that’s not “code switching,” that’s lying. He is a spoiled, privileged young man playing today’s most popular parlor game “Look how oppressed I am.”: The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee "Mamdani Clarifies He Is Not A Communist, He Merely Wants To Seize The Means Of Production And Put All The Capitalists In Gulags https://buff.ly/4Ob4CoD."

John Kass predicts Democrat Anguish Will Only Get Worse. Buck Sexton @BuckSexton "The Right takes pride in being American. The Left takes pride in believing they’re better than America. More true now than ever." Quote FischerKing @FischerKing64 "Gallup poll results that will surprise absolutely no one. While Republicans overwhelmingly are proud to be American, Democrats are not - and the number keeps falling." At Althouse, "Pride among Democrats tumbles, while independents also hit new low, more than offsetting increase among Republicans." "According to a new Gallup poll, reported at "American Pride Slips to New Low.""

From the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 06.30.25, This Ain’t Hell, Jasmine Crockett questions Melania Trump’s visa, Hunter Biden Coughs Up Law License. 

From the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 06.30.25, Don Surber: SCOTUS saves the judiciary. Randy Barnett @RandyEBarnett "“It just can’t be right….” This is what makes Justice Kagan’s vote in this particular case so disappointing. The least she should have done is to write her own dissenting opinion to justify this change of mind from 2022, The Federalist: We Still Have An Imperial Judiciary, Yet Trump Continues To Exercise Extreme Restraint, Lawsuit Claims Nevada Elections Chief Is Hiding Records On Alleged Illegal Voter, America Deserves Better Than Amnesty For The Politically Connected." PJM's Stephen Kruiser thinks Dem Reactions to SCOTUS Kneecapping Activist Judges Are Delicious and Matt Margolis explains why Justice Jackson Is Even Worse Than We Thought. Tim Carney @TPCarney "Your reminder that every media figure in the past 10 years who posed as the defender of democracy just meant “I want libs to win elections and court cases,”" Quote Julie Roginsky @julieroginsky, "It's not an exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court today put the final nail in the coffin of our constitutional republic by anointing a king." Virginia Kruta at Da Wire, hears Biden’s Lone SCOTUS Pick Wonders What Aliens Would Think Of The Court’s Latest Decision. "'A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: 'what good is the Constitution, then?'' Andy Paquette at Zark, Justice Jackson and the AI law professor "For fun, I uploaded the documents to Claude.ai and asked it to grade them from the perspective of a Harvard law school professor, on quality of argument and understanding of law. . . . Grade: F. This work demonstrates such fundamental misunderstanding of judicial role and legal methodology that I would recommend you seriously reconsider whether law is the right field for you.”" The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee, "KBJ Issues Savage Dissent In Form Of TikTok Dance." At the Babylon Bee, District Court Issues Nationwide Injunction Against Supreme Court Ruling: "This nationwide injunction holds that the Supreme Court's ruling against our nationwide injunctions is unconstitutional," Boasberg said in his ruling. "The United States Supreme Court, despite holding ultimate legal authority over all other courts in the country, simply holds no authority over any other court in the country. I hereby decree that any ruling that declares our injunction unconstitutional is unconstitutional. Checkmate, Supreme Court."

John Sexton at Hat Hair, Investigation Uncovers Massive Medicare Fraud. Kaelen Deese at WaEx, DOJ charges hundreds of people in $14.6 billion healthcare fraud takedown. Dave Strom, $42 Billion in Two Days: Bidenistas Went on Green Spending Binge in January.

At Hat Hair, Beege Welborn is scandalized that CNN is Helpfully Explaining the Latest in ICE Tracking Apps in Case You, Like, Need to Know. Sundance reports CNN Promotes ICE App an Alert System to Help Illegal Aliens Avoid Capture. Driscoll at Insty,  IT’S 2025, TRUMP’S BACK IN OFFICE, AND CNN IS BACK TO DOXXING AMERICANS: "CNN Helpfully Explaining the Latest in ICE Tracking Apps in Case You, Like, Need to Know." Jonathan Turley is also upset "ICE, ICE Baby: Denver City Council Ends Car Theft Tracking System to Protect Illegal Immigrants." 

Da Wire reports the State Department Looks To Revoke Visa For British Rappers Who Chanted ‘Death To The IDF’, "State Department official: "The U.S. government will not issue visas to any foreigner who supports terrorists." Matt Vespa, Whatever This Is, It's Being Called a Nazi Rally. Here's Why. Capt. Ed, Rubio to Drop a Beat on Anti-Semitic Brit Rappers? UPDATE: BBC Says ... Oops, Our Bad; UPDATE: Revoked! From the Victory Girls, Bob Vylan Rappers Who Led Antisemitic Chants At Glastonbury, Banned From U.S. Driscoll cites MELANIE PHILLIPS: Nuremberg at Glastonbury. "Apparently the British government is shocked that the Bob Vylan spot was live-streamed on the BBC. The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy — the former chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East — has asked the BBC Director-General Tim Davie for an “urgent explanation” about what due diligence it carried out into Bob Vylan. . ." From Da Mail, Tourist who claimed he was banned entry to US because of a JD Vance meme on his phone was actually denied for a different reason, Homeland reveal.

Matt Vespa says BOOM: Harvard Violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Could Lose ALL Federal Funding and Capt. Ed echoes Boom: DoJ Formally Finds Harvard Violated Civil-Rights Laws. From the Free Bacon, Harvard Begs Major Corporations for Cash Amid Trump's Funding Cuts. At the College Fix, Georgetown professor walks back statement that Iran should perform 'symbolic' strike on U.S. base. "Georgetown Professor Jonathan Brown said in a viral X post that he hopes Iran strikes a United States military base. Brown has since deleted the post and made his X account private." Well, they took his advice, and it was ineffective (by design). At his substack Professor Insty wonders What is College Good For?

Althouse finds "I am a philosopher, not a physician... Philosophers prize clear language and love unravelling muddled arguments, and the writings of pediatric gender specialists..." "... serve up plenty of obscurity and confusion.... The review describes how the medicalized 'gender affirming care' approach to treating pediatric gender distress, endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, rests on very weak evidence.... [N]o reliable research indicates that these treatments are beneficial to minors’ mental health.... Writes MIT philosophy professor Alex Byrne, in "I co-wrote the anonymous HHS report on pediatric gender medicine/The hostile reaction to our work shows why we needed to do it in the first place" (WaPo)(free-access link). " Katie Jerkovich at Red State reports JK Rowling Gets the Final Word After Trans-Activist Attacker Ends Up Behind Bars For Child Rape. At TownHall, Jeff Charles wonders Do We Really Need to Trans Shakespeare? "An academic in the United Kingdom claims all of the main characters in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” were gender-fluid. The play is a tragedy about a Scottish nobleman who resorts to skulduggery to seize the kingdom with the help of his wife, Lady Macbeth." The test of a true academic is whether they can believe 7 outrageously stupid ideas before lunch.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Surf’s Up and FMJRA 2.0: Not Long Before The End up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

Are the Cute a Constitutionally Protected Class?

Dilek Edwards

Woman fired for being ‘too cute’ may have a case after all

Hot women have rights, too!

A Manhattan appeals panel — in a first-of-its-kind decision — Tuesday overturned a lower-court ruling that said you can’t be fired because of your gender but you could get the boot for being “too cute.”

The decision involved a 2013 lawsuit filed by blond massage therapist Dilek Edwards against her former boss, Wall Street chiropractor Charles Nicolai and his former lesbian Playboy Playmate wife, Stephanie Adams.

Stephanie Adams in her Playboy days

Hot may be a bit strong. Well toned perhaps?

Dilek, 33, said she was axed after Nicolai admitted to his 46-year-old wife that she “might become jealous’’ of his bubbly staffer because she was “too cute.’’

Last year, Manhattan Judge Shlomo Hagler had ruled against Dilek, saying her cuteness quotient couldn’t be cited as the basis for a discrimination claim.

But the appeals panel disagreed.

Dilek “was fired for no reason other than Adams’ belief that Nicolai was sexually attracted to her,” lead Judge David Friedman wrote. He was joined by Judges Karla Moskowitz, Judith Gische and Marcy Kahn.

”This states a cause of action for gender discrimination under New York State Human Rights Law,” Friedman said.

A circuit court in Iowa had ruled the opposite of the New York appeals panel in 2013.

The all-male Iowa panel OK’d a male dentist’s ouster of his female hygienist because he viewed her “as an irresistible attraction.”

Dilek’s lawyer, Maimon Kirschenbaum, said other courts have rejected the “too cute” discrimination claim, too.

“We had looked extensively to find a case for what should be obvious — that firing a woman because you might be attracted to her is discrimination,” Kirschenbaum said.

Adams may have a bit of a security issue, don't you think?

This is not Adams' first foray into the new since her Playboy days. Former Playboy playmate claims New York cops are denying her gun license in revenge for winning a $1.2million lawsuit against police after they threw her to the ground

A former Playboy Playmate claims that police have refused her gun license application in revenge for a $1.2million law suit she won against the NYPD for excessive force.

Stephanie Edward, Playboy's Miss November 1992, was furious after the application was declined after the New York Police Department cited various domestic incidents.

They claim that the application was refused due to the incidents 'as a victim and as a perpetrator' between 2003 and 2013, and lying about receiving protection orders in the past.

The Licence Department also used a sexy picture posted on the internet of Adams wearing a skimpy mock police uniform and holding a gun as a reason to deny her.

In a letter, Deputy Inspector Michael Endall, commanding officer of the license division, wrote: 'You are photographed holding what appears to be an NYPD authorized Smith & Wesson 5946, with your finger in a 'nonsafe' position in the trigger well,' reports the New York Daily News.

Linked above the line at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Thanks Teach! Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Butts! Boobs! The Final OUTRAGE!!!" up on time and within budget.

Maryland Moves to Erase the Past

Maryland Governor Orders Removal of Chief Justice Taney Statue

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has ordered the statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who found in the 1857 Dred Scott decision that a slave had no right to sue for his freedom, removed from the grounds of the state house.

His 2018 challenger for the governor's seat, former NAACP president Ben Jealous, claimed that Hogan was making a political move a day after Jealous gave a statement in front of the Taney statue calling for its removal.

Taney, who was born in Calvert County, wrote in the 7-2 opinion for the majority that the framers of the Constitution regarded blacks "as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

"...It is obvious that they were not even in the minds of the framers of the Constitution when they were conferring special rights and privileges upon the citizens of a State in every other part of the Union. Indeed, when we look to the condition of this race in the several States at the time, it is impossible to believe that these rights and privileges were intended to be extended to them."

Hogan said this evening that Maryland "has always been a state of middle temperament, which is a guiding principle of our administration."

Taney Place 

As I have noted previously, Justice Taney's birthplace is just a few miles from here, off Adelina Road.

Roger Brooke Taney was born on March 17, 1777 in Calvert County, Maryland, the son of Monica (Brooke) and Michael Taney. He was the second son, and the third of seven children (four sons and three daughters) born to a slaveholding family of tobacco planters in Calvert County, Maryland. He received a rudimentary education from a series of private tutors. After instructing him for a year, his last tutor, David English, recommended that Taney was ready for college. At the age of 15 he entered Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, graduating with honors in 1795. As a younger son with no prospect of inheriting the family plantation, Taney chose the profession of law. He read law with Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase and was admitted to the bar in 1799. He quickly distinguished himself as one of Maryland's most promising young lawyers.

He couldn't be a Republican, because the modern Republican Party had not yet come into existence.

Taney, a Jacksonian Democrat, was made Chief Justice by Jackson. He inherited slaves from his father but manumitted them and gave pensions to the older ones. He believed that power and liberty were extremely important and if power became too concentrated, then it posed a grave threat to individual liberty. He opposed attempts by the national government to regulate or control matters that would restrict the rights of individuals. From Prince Frederick, Maryland, he had practiced law and politics simultaneously and succeeded in both. After abandoning the Federalist Party as a losing cause, he rose to the top of the state's Jacksonian machine. As Attorney General (1831–1833) and then Secretary of the Treasury (1833–1834), and as a prominent member of the Kitchen Cabinet, Taney became one of Jackson's closest advisers, assisting Jackson in his populist crusade against the powerful Bank of the United States.

Time to remove the statue of  the man who ordered Japanese orphans interned at Manzanar from his memorial in Washington D.C. Or maybe we should just remove the whole memorial.

Both sides can play this game.

Reason #5396 Trump Was Elected

There were a lot of contenders for this honor today, but without a doubt, the prize has to go to Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), who famously said on one of the Sunday talk shows that he did not consider Donald Trump to be a legitimately elected President (elect), and that he was boycotting the inauguration using the supposed release of DNC and John Podesta's email as an excuse.

This was widely touted in the media as a brave and unprecedented protest against their oppressor, but it turns out that Lewis also said the G. W. Bush was illegitimately elected and boycotted his inauguration. Apparently, he just doesn't approve of white Republicans in general.

Trump, of course, responded to the gentle nudge with overwhelming negativity, pointing out that Lewis' district was poor and mismanaged, and that perhaps his time would, indeed, be better of spent managing the true needs of his constituents. Or you could look at it that way. . .

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

Then, of course, the MSM went off on Trump for having the temerity to talk back to Lewis. Even some Trump supporters thought he might have been better off leaving that one alone on the day before Columbus Martin Luther King Day.

On the other hand, this looks like a pure trap by the Democrats, one into which Trump blithely walked. They know that Trump can’t help but respond with personal-tinged attacks when he’s criticized in public, so they put their civil-rights icon on stage to attack Trump’s illegitimacy on the weekend before Martin Luther King Day. All that’s missing is Admiral Akbar spotting the Imperial forces swarming around the Death Star — and yet Trump didn’t see it coming. Instead of pointing out the continuing Democratic hypocrisy on election and legitimacy, Trump attacked Lewis personally. Voila! Democrats got the media narrative they wanted coming into MLK Day, and the media got the excuse they needed to put Team Trump on the defensive.

To which I would respond that Trump didn't get elected for turning his cheek.

And not all civil right figures agree with Lewis. When asked, begged, cajoled for an anti-Trump. Martin Luther King III refused, and in fact, had a meeting with the Donald at which he cited as very constructive. And Alveda King, Martin III's cousin not only supported Trump in the election, she voted for him and admitted to it in public:

Ms. King said Monday on “Fox & Friends” that she admires Mr. Lewis’ “legendary legacy” of civil rights and believes he can help America by working with the president.

“Mr. Trump, I voted for him, I understood what he meant when he says let’s roll up our sleeves together, and we can do that,” she said.

John Lewis is a genuine civil rights hero, from the days of Selma, Alabama, but he hasn't done much since then except parrot the Democratic line, and falsely accuse Tea Party protesters of using the "n-word" and spitting on him at a Capitol Hill protest. As John McCain and Bob Dole might tell you, even if it risked helping Donald Trump, hero status only goes so far in quelling criticism of your policy choices. Look, if you don't want to go to the inauguration, don't go. I'm not big on ceremony and parties, either, especially for people I don't like. Go fishing, or see you grand kids or something. We understand. But challenging the legitimacy of the election because you don't like the results makes you smaller and less heroic.

The Quotable Stacy McCain

#FreeStacy Quoting My His Favorite Source

Did you know that there is an online list of quotes by me? Who started compiling my aphorisms at AZ Quotes, I don’t know, but here are a few of my favorites, with links to the original sources:

“Writing is a skill, not a talent, and this difference is important because a skill can be improved by practice.”
. . .
“When I said that the mentally ill should be in institutions, public universities weren’t the kind of institutions I had in mind.”
. . .
“One of the most annoying habits of liberals is their tendency to confuse their political agenda with moral virtue.”
. . .
“Offend a Christian and he is obliged to pray for your salvation. Offend a Muslim and he is obliged to murder you.”

Not bad. Now go get a few more going.

By the way, wouldn’t this be a good time to use the #FreeStacy hashtagand ask @Twitter @Support to restore @rsmccain? It’s rather annoying to be an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in the news business, and to know that some whiny complainer’s bogus claim that I was “participating in targeted abuse” should have caused the suspension of an account I’d been using for seven years. Twitter’s project of silencing Hillary Clinton’s critics failed to get her elected, and they should repeal their transparently partisan policy of preventing free speech.

Since I'm not on twitter (a vice I've managed to avoid) I can't help there. However, if it's illegal for Bakers not to write on cakes because of their opinions, it should be illegal for Twitter to practice workplace bias based on opinions. They are a public accommodation in the US every bit as much as bakeries and pizzerias.

They Say This Like It's a Bad Thing

Sessions pick as AG could spark exodus from civil rights division

"If there was a level above DEFCON One, it would be that," said Sam Bagenstos, who was the civil rights division’s No. 2 official from 2009 to 2011. "Jeff Sessions has a unique and uniquely troubled history with the civil rights division. ... From the perspective of the work of the enforcement of civil rights, I think the Sessions pick is a particularly troublesome one — more than anyone else you can think of.”

The concern at the Justice Department's anti-discrimination unit stems largely from the same accounts of alleged racist remarks and racially tinged incidents that emerged when Sessions was nominated to a district court judgeship in 1986. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard a black lawyer testify that Sessions referred to him as "boy," and another attorney testify that Sessions said about the Ku Klux Klan that he thought the group was "OK, until I heard that they smoked pot."

Sessions' allies insisted the claims of racial bias and insensitivity are off-base and amount to thinly veiled disagreement with the senator's political views.

"The only reason folks are criticizing him is because people don't like his conservative principles," said Hans von Spakovsky, a former official in the Justice Department's civil rights division under President George W. Bush. "He's a very good guy. The claims resurrecting these claims of racism are complete and total bull."

Von Spakovsky said Sessions' critics were intentionally or inadvertently ignoring his efforts to fight racism in his home state. "It was his case that he filed against the KKK that helped break the back of the Klan in Alabama," von Spakovsky said.

The current crop of activist lawyers in the DOJ civil rights division, pushing to get men into women's bathrooms across the country desperately needs to be thinned in favor of  lawyers who would look at real civil rights issues, like attempts to squash the second amendment. But it's too much to hope for self-pruning.

SJWs Browbeat Pretty Girl into Submission

Previous Rule 5 subject Blake Lively Surrenders To Gawker, Agrees To Delete Her Lifestyle And Fashion Site

In an interview with Vogue published today, actress and model Blake Lively revealed that she will be deleting her lifestyle site Preserve on October 9. The site has been decried again and again for celebrating antebellum fashion and decor, and it seems like the criticism has pushed her to shuttering the site just a year after its launch.

Lively’s announcement has already spurred an article with this gleeful headline from Gawker (emphasis added): “Blake Lively Finally Deletes Her Antebellum-Obsessed Lifestyle Site Preserve.” Gawker‘s triumphant tone on the news of Preserve‘s demise follows a year-long string of stories skewering Lively for — gasp — praising Southern culture.

Man, you can't have that. You might start thinking southern folk are human or something, and you might have to grant them the right to think, speak, and maybe even vote. Who knows where that might lead?

Last fall, Lively’s site featured a fall fashion photo spread called “Allure of Antebellum.” Naturally, there was a social media firestorm, saying that the site glorified slavery and oppression.

Alongside photos of a woman dressed in clothes available for purchase on the site ran the following text:

“The term Southern Belle came to fruition during the Antebellum period (prior to the Civil War), acknowledging women with an inherent social distinction who set the standards for style and appearance. These women epitomized Southern hospitality with a cultivation of beauty and grace, but even more with a captivating and magnetic sensibility… While at times depicted as coy, these belles of the ball, in actuality could command attention with the ease of a hummingbird relishing a pastoral bloom.”

One of reasons that the SJWs are out after Lively is that she is an entrepreneur, a damned capitalist.

While glossing over the horrific aspects of the antebellum south (like slavery and the Civil War) isn’t the most intellectually honest thing in the world, keep in mind that the purpose of her site was to sell clothes and feature recipes, not to bring back the slave trade. Future generations aren’t dependent upon an actress’s lifestyle site to preserve a perfect picture of history. We can let Lively praise genteel femininity if she wants to without treating her like a pariah for failing to sufficiently decry slavery more than 150 years after its prohibition.

Lively isn’t the only target of this kind of hate. It seems that modern culture is terrified of the Southern belle. In March, the University of Georgia banned hoop skirts from all campus events after it had already banned Confederate uniforms. Ironically though, hoop skirts aren’t a symbol of white oppression or slaveowner sensibilities, rather they were a great equalizer of the time.

I covered the hoop skirt "debate" in a previous post.

As Denise McAllister explained:

The hoop skirt was worn by all social classes and all racial groups. That’s right… The hoop skirt is a symbol of inclusion, not exclusion! […] The white Southern woman “with her attire, manners, and demeanor” … has an identity that is beyond racism. It is an identity rooted in faith, family, individualism, quiet determination, social struggle, and freedom.

As McAllister writes, there’s nothing wrong with finding the good in the Southern belle. . . 

The reason that SJWs keep pushing such ridiculous shit is because it works. Each incremental attack on American culture as it exists is a win for them. We must resist at all costs.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Columbus Day Edition" ready at The Other McCain.

ACLU Gives Up on Religious Freedom

It's not worth supporting if it might help Christians.

ACLU: Why we can no longer support the federal ‘religious freedom’ law

The RFRA was passed in 1993 after two Native Americans were fired from their jobs and denied unemployment benefits because they used peyote, an illegal drug, in their religious ceremonies. The Supreme Court rejected a claim they had brought under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, but Congress disagreed with the justices and enacted the RFRA with near-unanimous support.

The ACLU supported the RFRA’s passage at the time because it didn’t believe the Constitution, as newly interpreted by the Supreme Court, would protect people such as Iknoor Singh, whose religious expression does not harm anyone else. But we can no longer support the law in its current form. For more than 15 years, we have been concerned about how the RFRA could be used to discriminate against others. As the events of the past couple of years amply illustrate, our fears were well-founded. While the RFRA may serve as a shield to protect Singh, it is now often used as a sword to discriminate against women, gay and transgender people and others. Efforts of this nature will likely only increase should the Supreme Court rule — as is expected — that same-sex couples have the freedom to marry.

In the Hobby Lobby case last year, a Supreme Court majority blessed the use of the RFRA by businesses to deny employees insurance coverage for contraception, a benefit guaranteed by law, if those businesses object on religious grounds and there is some other means of furthering the government’s interests. Religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations such as universities are taking the argument further. They invoke the RFRA to argue not only that they should not have to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, but also that they should not even have to notify the government that they refuse to do so because, they maintain, notification would trigger the government to intervene to ensure coverage.

Hey, remember when the ACLU supported the American Nazi Party's right to demonstrate in Skokie? Good times!

GAO to Federal Workers: Fork You!

Bring your own damn forks to work, or wash the cutlery you bring from home, lazy slackers: GAO to fed workers: No, taxpayers can’t pay for your plastic forks

Federal workers who pack their lunches should also remember to pack their own utensils.

A Government Accountability Office decision released last week determined that federal agencies cannot supply “disposable cups, plates, and cutlery” for employee use because they are for personal benefit and not a specific government purpose.

The issue was brought to light in a dispute between the Commerce Department and the National Weather Service employees. In 2009, Commerce had allowed the weather offices to supply hand sanitizer, paper goods and plasticware in response to the H1N1 flu outbreak. In 2013, Commerce determined that those offices could no longer provide “disposable plates, cups, and cutlery.”

The NWS employees organization objected and the subject went to arbitration. The arbitrator at the time sided with the employees that providing the disposable items could lead to a healthier, and thus more productive, workplace. But the Commerce Department appealed to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), and that decision is still pending.

Unbeknownst to the NWS employees, Commerce asked GAO to separately look into the dispute. The GAO made a final decision on Dec. 23 that the bar was very high for allowing taxpayer dollars to be used for anything viewed as a personal expense.

“Disposable cups, plates, and cutlery clearly constitute a personal expense,” the GAO concluded. “Commerce has not demonstrated that using appropriated funds to provide these items would directly advance its statutory mission and that the benefit accruing to the government through the provision of these items outweighs the personal nature of the expense.”

Oh, the humanity!

O'Malley: WiFi a Human Right

Right up there with eating, sleeping and breathing:

Good news from would-be president Martin O’Malley: “WiFi is a human right”

Jon Ward of Yahoo News wonders if the next human right is the right to Frosted Flakes.

“Baby boomers and older were often told that if we specialize in terms of our skills, we will be more secure and prosperous, that the definition of ‘making it” was living out in the suburbs as far way as possible with the biggest lawn possible,” he said. “Young people have flipped that on its head. Younger people are choosing to live in cities. They realize that connections to each other are making us better. That WiFi is a human right. That proximity is important to entrepreneurship, access to capital and talent and diversity. There is an opportunity there for us as a nation to embrace that new perspective.”

I don’t follow Maryland politics so I can’t say whether O’Malley might be capable of believing something this stupid on the merits. Let’s be charitable, then, and assume that it’s just his goofy way of getting liberals’ attention while he’s busy trying to decide whether to primary Hillary. . . .

I'm kind of forced to follow Maryland politics, and I assure you that O'Malley is indeed stupid progressive enough to imagine that anything that could he could steal tax from one group (usually a rural group who doesn't vote for him)  to give to another group, particularly an urban group who votes for him, is indeed, a "human right", while it serves its purpose. Governors in Maryland, and O'Malley in particular have acted essentially as governors for the urban core of the state, and the plantation owner of the rural fringe.

The point isn’t really to propose WiFi as a human right, it’s to signal in an unusually clumsy way that he’s to the left of the Clintons; and since it’s young progressives who are most likely to drive a left-wing primary challenge to Hillary in 2016, it’s young progressives whom he’s most eager to pander to. He did something similar on immigration a few months ago. At the height of the border crisis, Hillary called for sending young illegals back to their families in Central America as soon as possible after they crossed the border. O’Malley pounced on that, arguing that we should give them every procedural opportunity to make their case for asylum in the U.S. Maybe that’ll win him one percent of the Latino vote against her instead of the expected zero. And hey, if Clinton ends up passing for whatever strange, surprising reason, this sort of hyper-progressive slobbering will leave O’Malley well positioned in the primaries — until Elizabeth Warren jumps in and sends him to the back of the pack again.

Really? Can he make Hillary look better? He just might.

Shotgun Wedding: Gun Law Reciprocity Across State Lines?

From Pirates Cove, home of the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and the daily "If All You See Is. . ." a bit of thoughtful advice to gun rights advocates on how to approach the question of state gun laws unequally restricting the 2nd Amendment rights of people to own and carry weapons.  Use the same argument that seems to be working for same sex marriage:

Court Rules Missouri Must Recognize Gay Marriages From Other States – What About Gun Reciprocity?

Liberals should be very careful in opening this door, because it could easily be applied to gun permits

(Buzzfeed) Missouri must recognize the marriages of same-sex couples that were granted elsewhere, state Judge Dale Youngs ruled on Friday.
“[T]o the extent these laws prohibit plaintiffs’ legally contracted marriages from other states from being recognized here, they are wholly irrational, do not rest upon any reasonable basis, and are purely arbitrary,” Youngs wrote.
The ruling followed a hearing in September on the case, which was brought by 10 same-sex couples represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The same could be said about gun laws in many Left leaning States, regarding “irrational, no reasonable basis, and purely arbitrary”. The judge uses the 14th Amendment to make his case, pointing towards “equal protection”. If Liberals want to open this door, let’s open it. If someone has a concealed carry permit, according to this order they would be fully allowed to carry in exactly the same way in, say, New York, as they would in their home state.

Republican/non-gun grabby States should go further, and provide inexpensive permits for open carry, which would mean Democrat/gun-grabby States would be required to allow those citizens with the permits to open carry. Otherwise, the gun-grabby States would be in violation of the 14th Amendment. Also, the Full Faith And Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1). It’s time for Republicans/Conservatives to turn the tables.

I think it's optimistic to imagine that liberal judges will be thunderstruck by the obvious parallels and suddenly decide either to vastly expand the rights of gun owners to carry their guns from one state to another without fear of being arrested and jailed, or on the otherhand, suddenly deciding that gay marriage is a matter for states to decide after all. However, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to confront them with the argument in court and force them to put their rationalizations for their inconsistency on paper.

College Students Demand Content Warnings

Liberals afraid of having their sensibilities offended by education

One has to wonder how recent college graduates will survive for five minutes after leaving their university confines. The New Republic reports that students at several universities are now demanding “trigger warnings” on course syllabi for material that might make certain snowflakes uncomfortable.

On college campuses across the country, a growing number of students are demanding trigger warnings on class content. Many instructors are obliging with alerts in handouts and before presentations, even emailing notes of caution ahead of class…Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to “be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” to remove triggering material when it doesn’t “directly” contribute to learning goals and “strongly consider” developing a policy to make “triggering material” optional.

. . . However, what is wonderfully perverse about the demand for trigger warnings is the effect that it could have on Cultural Studies. Off the top of my head, here is a list of authors and their associated fields of study that would require trigger warnings. This is just in the field of Literature, so feel free to add more in the comments.

African American Studies:

James Baldwin (Torture, Racism)
. . .

I guess if Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of Relativity is too painful for them, physics majors could insist on triggers to allow them to dodge anything beyond Newtonian physics.  You can do almost anything with Newton's math that that you can with the more advanced stuff, except explain the universe and build GPSs.

Woman Stands Ground, Shoots Attacker but Gets Off

Female, off-duty D.C. cop shoots assailant

On Tuesday at 6:30 a.m., an off-duty, female police officer was getting out of her car on 18th Street, S.E. when a man approached her.

Metropolitan Police Department Spokesman Gwendolyn Crump told me that 28-year-old Marcus Young of Southeast indicated that he had a weapon while reaching in his waistband. Mr. Young threatened the officer and tried to rob her.

The officer feared for her life, according to Ms. Crump, so she shot the suspect in the chest with her service weapon. The police will not identify the officer who joined the force last year.

Mr. Young was transported to a local hospital and treated for his injury. He was charged with assault with the intent to rob.

Remind me again how this differs from the Trayvon Martin incident.  We have only the woman's word that he attempted to rob her. Since weapons charges are not mentioned, one would presume no weapon was found on the alleged would be robber.  In Washington D.C., unlike Florida, you have a duty to retreat in the face of armed threat.  Only if you are unable to retreat are you before you're legally permitted to fire in self defense.

However, I'm not expecting this to rise to a national civil rights crisis.

Gingers Become a Protected Minority

At least in the New York Police Department

NYPD supervisors have been put on red alert: Don’t discriminate against carrot-top cops!
An anti-bias message went out this month to Manhattan sergeants and lieutenants, who were told that redhead harassment would not be tolerated.

“We’re apparently victims now,” said one cop with ginger locks. “We’re protected from discrimination.”

No lawsuit has been filed against the city, but the feds say a claim alleging unfair treatment over red hair would be supported by federal law, which bars workplace bias against applicants and employees based on race, national origin, skin color, religion, sex or disability.

In celebration, I've decided to introduce you to some potential candidates for Nanny Bloomberg's finest.  At least they make me want to work undercover.  Have you noticed that most cop shows these days have a woman supervising?

Red hair qualifies because people with that color are found in higher numbers in Britain and Ireland than elsewhere, according to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Experts say it’s 13 percent in Scotland and less than 1 percent in most countries in Asia, Africa and South America.

“It’s an innocuous-seeming criteria, but if it has a ‘disparate impact’ on a certain racial group, red hair could be considered the basis of discrimination,” said Justine Lisser of the EEOC in Washington, DC.

So they're the 1 percenters all those democrats, media and Occupy Wall Street people are always raging about?  Even more reason to like them.  Even if they don't have souls.

The NYPD has one of the most racially and culturally diverse workforces in the country, but includes a large percentage of officers of Irish descent.

Some claim they’ve endured years of ridicule over their hair color.

One retired cop told The Post that he was constantly roughed up as a kid and called a “red-headed devil.”

Lily Cole

 I believe that's what they called Georgia as a kid...

“You get abuse every day when your hair is red,” he said. “You get beaten and chased. You better learn how to fight.”

The issue is a hot topic in Britain, where model Lily Cole, who sports cinnamon curls, blasted teachers for allowing bullying to go on “because there isn’t a stigma around it.”

I used to make fun of Georgia for being ginger.  But then we got married.

Still, some shrugged off any need to protect the NYPD’s ginger set.

A retired Irish-American cop who was one of two redheads at his Brooklyn precinct enjoyed the good-natured jabs he exchanged with fellow officers, who were mostly of Italian descent.

“I never felt I was a minority,” he said.

“To put redheads in a protective class — that’s ridiculous!” said a retired officer who was often called “Carrot Top.”

“Toughen up.”

This post acknowledged by Proof Positive in his "Best* of the Web Linkaround" (*that I've seen this week).  Thanks! It also made the short list a The DaleyGator's "DaleyGator DaleyBabe Carissa Rosario and a Rule 5 tour." Also, now linked at Wombat-Socho's ginourmous three week make-up "Rule 5 Sunday: Cinco de Mayo Massive Catching-Up Edition" at The Other McCain.

Census Bureau Finally Addresses Portuguese Problem

Are Portuguese Hispanic?

The Census Bureau is planning to categorize people of Portuguese descent as Hispanic, but some Portuguese-Americans don’t like that a bit (h/t Steve Sailer). Evidently the leaders of this group did not try to ascertain opinion among Brazilians or those of Brazilian residing in the United States, even though Brazil has 20 times the population of Portugal.

Portuguese Pop Star - Katy Perry

I'm sure there are more Armenians in the United States than are left in Armenia, too. 

By the way the list of Portuguese descended Americans who are obviously hugely disadvantaged in life because of their heretofore unacknowledged Hispanic status include the actors Tom Hanks and Keanu Reeves and singers Katy Perry and Steve Perry. Affirmative action to the rescue!

Funny, she doesn't look Portuguese...  We'll have to look at a few more photos to be sure, though.

Now that we’re elevating Portuguese-descended people to an affirmative action category, what about Morocco-descended people? Many of them must be descended from Muslims expelled from the Iberian peninsula after the Reconquista of 1492. That unfortunate political decision—one which people would surely not make now—deprived them of an obvious claim to Hispanic status, but they still have a plausible claim to it.

It is my impression that Portuguese in general, and Basques in particular would resent the implication that they were in any way related to, or descended from the Spanish.  Unless of course, it's worth victim points in our system that rewards victim points.

Of course it doesn’t really matter whether the Census Bureau classifies your ethnic group as Hispanic or not, because Hispanic identity is determined by a separate question to which anyone can answer yes. I could claim to be Hispanic because I had great-grandparents who immigrated from Sicily, which was ruled for 300 years by the kings of Spain (that’s about as long as they ruled Mexico). The Hispanic category was invented by the Census Bureau for the 1970 Census and no one has ever been sure exactly who is supposed to be covered.

Let's see, the Spanish controlled the Netherlands for a while, the Nederlanders call themselves the Dutch, and the Germans call themselves the Deutsch, I'm of German descent, so I must be able to claim the Portuguese points, too!  Cool...  And I did spend a month in Baja Californian many years ago.

Former Congressman Tony Coelho, who is of Portuguese descent and who represented a district in California’s Central Valley with many Mexican-descended Hispanics, applied for membership in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He was denied entry. To prove he qualified, he submitted a map of the provinces of the Roman Empire in which “Hispania” covered the whole Iberian peninsula. They let him in. It may have helped that he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Nope, she still doesn't look Portuguese to me. But she might pass as Spanish in a pinch...

You Can Take the Woman Out of the Cave...

...But you can't take the cave out of the woman, part, uh, whatever.

Queen Bee Syndrome:  Women who reached positions of power were supposed to be mentors to those who followed—but something is amiss in the professional sisterhood.

The term "queen bee syndrome" was coined in the 1970s, following a study led by researchers at the University of Michigan—Graham Staines, Toby Epstein Jayaratne and Carol Tavris—who examined promotion rates and the impact of the women's movement on the workplace. In a 1974 article in Psychology Today, they presented their findings, based on more than 20,000 responses to reader surveys in that magazine and Redbook. They found that women who achieved success in male-dominated environments were at times likely to oppose the rise of other women. This occurred, they argued, largely because the patriarchal culture of work encouraged the few women who rose to the top to become obsessed with maintaining their authority.

Four decades later, the syndrome still thrives, given new life by the mass ascent of women to management positions. This generation of queen bees is no less determined to secure their hard-won places as alpha females. Far from nurturing the growth of younger female talent, they push aside possible competitors by chipping away at their self-confidence or undermining their professional standing. It is a trend thick with irony: The very women who have complained for decades about unequal treatment now perpetuate many of the same problems by turning on their own.

A 2007 survey of 1,000 American workers released by the San Francisco-based Employment Law Alliance found that 45% of respondents had been bullied at the office—verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority, deliberate destruction of relationships—and that 40% of the reported bullies were women. In 2010, the Workplace Bullying Institute, a national education and advocacy group, reported that female bullies directed their hostilities toward other women 80% of the time—up 9% since 2007. Male bullies, by contrast, were generally equal-opportunity tormentors.

A 2011 survey of 1,000 working women by the American Management Association found that 95% of them believed they were undermined by another woman at some point in their careers. According to a 2008 University of Toronto study of nearly 1,800 U.S. employees, women working under female supervisors reported more symptoms of physical and psychological stress than did those working under male supervisors.

As the old male-dominated workplace has been transformed, many have hoped that the rise of female leaders would create a softer, gentler kind of office, based on communication, team building and personal development. But instead, some women are finding their professional lives dominated by high school "mean girls" all grown up: women with something to prove and a precarious sense of security.

Wombat-Socho at The Other McCain was right on schedule this week with "Rule 5 Sunday: This time It's for Real."

Colorado School Endorses "Separate but Equal"

Aurora Colorado school sets up mentoring program for "children of color" only. Stacey McCain comes up with a good lead in.  Must be that J-school training.

Plessy and Ferguson Could Not Be Reached for Comment

In Aurora, Colorado, an elementary school set up an after-school tutoring program from which white students were deliberately excluded. When the mother of a 10-year-old white girl complained, she got a phone call from Mission Viejo Elementary principal Andre Pearson explaining that the program is “focused for and designed for children of color.”

This revival of public-school segregation — unexpectedly! — caused Pete Da Tech Guy to notice that Aurora school policy sounded oddly familiar:

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.

Of course, that’s from the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld the “separate but equal” rationale of segregation.

But we might go back even further to the local hero Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (he was raised near Prince Frederick, Maryland, on a tobacco plantation in a little town called Adelina, which still exists).  In the memorable decision, Dred Scott vs. Sandford, Taney wrote:

The question before us is whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

 He would understand completely!