from Thomas’ own written opinion:
“If the Government is now content to allow States to act “as laboratories” “‘and try novel social and economic experiments,’” Raich, 545 U. S., at 42 (O’Connor, J., dissenting), then it might no longer have authority to intrude on “[t]he States’ core police powers . . . to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens.” Ibid. A prohibition on intrastate use or cultivation of marijuana may no longer be necessary or proper to support the Federal Government’s piecemeal approach.”
Supreme Court Says Over 200 Patent Judges Were Improperly Appointed:
“The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that more than 200 administrative judges who hear patent disputes, some of them over billions of dollars, had been appointed in violation of the Constitution.”
These judges are indeed unconstitutional. Because they are judges — in the Executive Branch. Which means the Executive Branch is pretending to be the Judicial Branch. And that’s a bit of a Separation of Powers problem.
These alleged judges preside over the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) — about which we’ve been warning for more than a while.
So we take timing, attention, name recognition, Ngo’s primary subject of reporting, and the typical leftist social media pattern of nebulous reasoning, and you have a strong case for Ngo’s banning by SoundCloud to be a message to America.
“We’re running SoundCloud,” is the message and it’s a message coming straight from the hard-left. Combined with the fact that almost every social media platform shares this sentiment, it’s one more place that makes the message concrete. They own the internet and they want you to know that. //
progerp
an hour ago
As long as they can buy political loyalty every election cycle, they will be allowed to discriminate against conservatives at will. It is no different than teacher and labor unions buying influence. The days of representation for the people is gone, and it has been replaced by representation for the highest bidder.
But newly retired Detroit Police Chief James Craig argues the country has a criminal problem, not a gun problem and that demoralizing law enforcement has led to a crime wave.
“Conveniently, a lot of the issues are left out, and I’ve seen this, criminals are emboldened. You talk about bail reform, it’s a miserable failure,” Craig said during a recent interview with The Next Revolution. “We have to start supporting the men and women who do the tough job.”
“It’s ridiculous, it’s surface and we’re not going to the root,” he continued. “We don’t have a gun problem in America. What we have is a criminal problem…criminals don’t follow the law. They’re going to get guns, so what do we want to focus on? Getting guns from law-abiding citizens?…it’s not about guns, it’s about criminals who have guns and they don’t get the guns legally. That’s the bottom line.”
The climate change group showed up in Washington D.C. and then blocked all ten entrances to the White House, sitting in roads and taking over guard shacks. This was done as part of a demand to include a “civilian climate corps” in the recent infrastructure deal, which is a favorite pet project of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. //
Did you get that? If you are a left-wing activist trespassing on federal property in order to make demands of Congress, you not only don’t go to jail, you get let free the same day without so much as a ticket for your troubles (or if they were ticketed, they aren’t saying). And yes, despite a lot of the media’s framing, almost everyone arrested on January 6th only committed the grand crime of misdemeanor trespassing according to the DOJ itself. //
This kind of thing is dangerous because it means the DOJ can arbitrarily decide to come down on whomever they want based on their politics. We saw plenty of examples of that during the Trump era. But it’s also harmful to every other institution in our government. No open-minded individual can see this stuff and trust that any bureaucracy is going to operate fairly if they have the “wrong views.”
Observers have recently commented that the January 6 criminal cases are being treated differently from other cases, often, referring to criminal cases arising from Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and/or Antifa riots. The difficulty in making that comparison is that those cases are often not similar to the January 6 cases in ways that the law considers relevant to the question of equal treatment. For example, the BLM and Antifa cases are often being pursued in state courts by state prosecutors, which operate very differently from federal prosecutors and federal courts. Or the types of charges or the specific conduct of the defendants is different from the January 6 defendants. Those differences make the claim of disparate treatment relatively easy to brush off.
However, the claim of unequal treatment is, in fact, legitimate. A comparison of the January 6 cases to other federal cases involving the same kind of conduct demonstrates that the January 6 cases are being treated significantly more harshly by DOJ and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office.
This article is the first of three in a series demonstrating that that the government has been and is, in fact, treating the January 6 cases more harshly in terms of the charges brought, requests for detention of the defendants pending trial, disposition of the charges, and sentencing demands.
Even on the New York route a significant share of the regular traffic was accounted for by a small number of repeat customers travelling on a high frequency basis. When a number of these customers lost their lives in the 9/11 terror attack of 2001, British Airways saw a significant dent in its clientele on the service. //
Concorde, too, enjoyed optimistic production forecasts and received a number of orders from leading global airlines of the time, but when the oil price shocks of the early seventies hit, it all evaporated. Only the then-state airlines of the U.K. and France, the countries producing the aircraft, remained to take a handful of aircraft, effectively being gifted them by their respective governments.
In more recent times and in a different market context, Airbus had strong demand forecasts for the giant A380 and many arguments to support their confidence in these. Once more, circumstances conspired to prove these forecasts to be well short of reality, with production of the aircraft now ended.
Demand projections for a new supersonic airliner 10 years or more into the future can only be treated with extreme caution. I see too many uncertainties and factors mitigating against high demand levels. //
Concorde was sold as a time machine, as would any new supersonic airliner. Customers are paying for speed and if that cannot be delivered on a reliable and consistent basis then the whole raison d’etre is lost.
The reality is that there are always teething problems and even when bedded in, technical glitches and operational problems occur on a daily basis. BA had spare capacity built into its Concorde fleet and all aircraft operated primarily out of its Heathrow base. United’s plans, by contrast, call for a small, dispersed fleet operating in multiple markets including trans-Pacific and transatlantic routes. This looks like a recipe for complexity in terms of crew and engineering resources and spares inventories, risking fragile reliability of operation while also adding to operational costs.
What this means is that the Democrat Justice Department intends to continue to file criminal charges against EVERY PERSON who entered the Capitol on January 6 when they can verify the identities of the persons captured on videotape.
EVERY PERSON.
That means that anyone who attended the January 6 protest and went inside the Capitol, but has not yet been charged, will wake up every morning until the statute of limitations expires and wonder, “Will today be the day the Democrat Justice Department arrests me because I protested the election of Joe Biden?” //
the heavy-handed policy of “no exceptions” which is being followed only ensures that the damage to the country created by political divisions which exist will only get worse. It is a statement by the Biden Administration that it intends to criminalize to the greatest extent allowed by law the sentiment following the 2020 election that the outcome was not legitimate.
More significantly, it is a legitimate basis upon which the segment of the population who politically oppose the Biden Administration can reasonably claim the Administration is employing the criminal justice system to delegitimize that political opposition by declaring it to be based in criminality.
The Democratic messaging group Future Majority in May released a deck identifying areas where Republicans hold an advantage:
Of the issues polled, “defunding the police,” “open borders” and “reparations for slavery” were by far the biggest turnoffs for both independents and voters in general.
Republicans bested Democrats on jobs and the economy, gun rights, and “keeping you and your family safe.”
The poll, Future Majority wrote in its report on the findings, “shows voters, especially Independents, believe Democrats overspend.” //
Of course, Republicans could screw all this up, whether it’s by folding to Democrats on policy or focusing on issues that don’t move the needle such as making everything about the 2020 election. If the GOP is going to win in 2022, they have to remain laser-focused on the issues that win elections. The time to worry about investigations and other issues like that is after retaking power because if they don’t, they won’t be able to move on any of that stuff anyway.
In a per curiam decision — meaning the outcome is 9-0 but no specific Justice was assigned to write the Opinion of the Court — the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and sent the case back. The Court held that the “taking” of property by a governmental entity happens upon the act giving rise to a federal constitutional claim, and the Pakdels’ claim against San Francisco was not dependent on their following-through on and compliance with various procedural requirements under the ordinance in order to have that their “takings” claim heard by a federal court.
The only “finality” required for their federal claim was an expression by the governmental agency that the landowner either do “something” with the property or suffer consequences for not doing so. San Francisco told the Pakdels to either offer a lifetime lease to the renter or they would face an “enforcement action” that could have canceled the conversion or fined the Pakdels for their failure to do so.
Acosta: “So take the bike to work, huh?”
Brooks: “Sometimes.”
Acosta: “Congressman, is there any way we can get you to talk about January 6th?”
Brooks: “I do not do interviews with CNN because I do not trust CNN to be honorable or truthful.”
Acosta: “Well, can I ask you do you still believe Antifa was behind January 6th?”
Brooks: “I’ve already said what I’m going to say. I don’t trust y’all to be truthful or honest.”
Acosta: “Well, can you tell us if you if you regret what you said on January 6th?”
Brooks: “I do not trust CNN to be truthful or honest, so I do no interviews with CNN.”
Acosta: “I’m just asking you questions. I’m asking you fair questions here, sir. Why can’t you answer the question?”
Brooks: “I do not trust y’all to be truthful or honest with anything CNN does.”
Characterizing the current warming as an urgent and impending crisis is silly considering the scientific evidence we have today. There is no need to remove national boundaries, form a global government, and abandon capitalism to “save the world.” Climate changes, we all accept this, perhaps it is mostly man-made, perhaps it is mostly natural, we don’t know. What we do know is that many communities may be affected by climate change. Sea level is rising, the best long-term estimates are that it is rising between 1.8 and 3 millimeters per year. This is not a large rate, perhaps seven inches to a foot in 100 years, much less than the daily tides. But, if it causes problems, seawalls can be built, people can move from dangerous areas or elevate their houses; it is a problem that can be dealt with locally, as it has been for thousands of years. Why use a global solution? //
Gordon J. Fulks, Ph.D. is a physicist, originally from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research. He is currently one of the Directors of the CO2 Coalition, a group of prominent scientists and economists who point out that carbon dioxide and water vapor are the entirely beneficial byproducts of our civilization. He has been fighting the good fight against knaves and fools pushing climate alarmists’ draconian economic solutions for a nonexistent problem that have become manifested in a “Green New Deal.” In a letter below, he provides a colleague with a succinct scientific argument that can be used to educate people about global warming. It is repeated in its entirety with his permission with the hope that the arguments presented can be used by many to combat the Left’s environmental propaganda:
In the absence of the divine, humanity has always looked to somewhat more tangible (but no less complex and just beyond our grasp) targets for our faith. In the case of an increasingly secular United States, the Democrats (and, to a lesser extent depending on the circumstances, Republicans) put all of their faith in the government, expect its power to flow to them in a more grotesque and symbiotic way than the woman who sought healing from Christ. And, while Jesus was given the power to help and heal the people of God, government is given power and uses it to feed and grow itself.
The result is a behemoth that constantly requires feeding and that no one in office seems to have the bravery to deny. The legislative branch surrenders its power to the executive, and the executive branch surrenders its power to bureaucracies, which exist solely to give themselves purpose and become accountable to no one. //
Rather than putting their faith in the divine and seeking a greater, eternal reward, they wish to put all their faith in government and hope that its power will save everyone. That, however, is an insane proposition that ignores all the times giving all the power to government not only didn’t work but actually made things worse. The very idea that government can solve all of our problems is anathema to the foundations of the country, drafted by men who saw exactly what a government with all the power and no accountability could do.
Now, this can’t be all on the Democrats, as there are Republicans who really and truly think that if we just grow government their way instead of the Democrats’ way, we actually can make the country a better place. But growing government is still feeding a beast. Unlike God and Jesus, government does not reward the power your put into it by rewarding you with its own. Government takes the power you give it and only uses it to feed itself and grow bigger. //
Jmied01
3 hours ago edited
I think this explains the rift in America; half the country believes in God as their salvation and authority and half of the country doesn’t. So they have to replace him with another higher being, and they look to government, and I can’t think of any outlook on life more depressing.
I often struggle to think what makes people look at Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton the way that a Maddow or a Stelter or any other dem sycophant does, but it’s pretty simple when you understand that humans crave leadership and a power higher than them, and without a god there is no higher power than their pathetic government.
Jenna Ellis
@JennaEllisEsq
Buried deep in the Atlantic piece is this real gem.
To my knowledge, Barr never interviewed one witness or reviewed one affidavit.
He simply formed a conclusion, sandbagged Trump’s effort to get to the truth, and let the clock run out. //
According to The Atlantic, the DOJ never opened a formal investigation into any of the claims.
Think about that for a second. Of course, if they never open any investigation, they’re never going to find anything. Yet he applied that expletive to it anyway.
So what did he actually do, if anything?
verify that the user’s VeraCrypt installation is not configured to encrypt keys and passwords stored in RAM. To check this option, open VeraCrypt Settings – Preferences – More settings – Performance/Driver configuration and check if the Activate encryption of keys and passwords stored in the RAM box is selected.
If this option is selected, EFDD will be unable to locate the encryption keys. Note that disabling this setting requires a reboot, so the point of this action is lost as the encrypted container will be locked/unmounted after the reboot.
What is RAM encryption?
According to Mounir IDRASSI, “RAM encryption mechanism serves two purposes: add a protection against cold boot attacks and add an obfuscation layer to make it much more difficult to recover encryption master keys from memory dumps , either live dumps or offline dumps (without it, locating and extracting master keys from memory dumps is relatively easy).” (We strongly recommend reading Mounir’s entire post as it contains important details on how this protection is implemented).
Known limitations
As you already know, breaking VeraCrypt is extremely complex. VeraCrypt presents one of the strongest encryption options we have encountered. Even a thousand computers or a network of powerful Amazon EC1 instances with top GPUs may spend years if not hundreds of years to break a strong password. Extracting and using OTFE keys remains one of the few usable method to break in to encrypted containers. Yet, this method has a number of limitations.
One of the most restricting limitations is the requirement to obtain physical access to the computer during the time a VeraCrypt disk is mounted: only in that case the encryption keys are available in RAM. That computer must not be locked, and the authenticated user session must have administrator’s privileges (you need them to obtain the memory dump). Finally, the memory encryption option in VeraCrypt must not be used. On the bright side, the choice of encryption and hashing algorithms does not matter, as well as the PIM number.
Actually, I think a fair and dispassionate reading of this article and the rest of Ms. Schumann’s work would say she is selfish (her irrational fears take precedence overall). If being opposed to the Constitution and our traditions qualifies one as unpatriotic, then bingo.
She and her experience are the focal point of everything she writes about…like, for instance, the book from which this essay was extracted. She is demanding that others give up something to make her feel better, while she gives up nothing. Her definition of “compromise” seems to be “how much of your stuff am I going to take.”
Her rhetorical question is just stupid. The only way me giving up my guns saves a life is if you are accusing me of being a murderer-in-waiting. One might, with equal justice, demand, “If buying a gun meant saving a life (this is much, much more likely scenario than hers), would you do it?”
Her denigrating the faith of others because they don’t share her unreasoning fears is the action of someone who is actually using God as nothing more than a debate tactic. //
Then we have this, which seems theologically ignorant as well as manipulative and selfish:
If you know and love Jesus and are going to spend eternity in Heaven with him, why does the idea of not having guns anymore scare you so much?
When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There are no guns in heaven. When I pray this prayer, I ask that God would help me bring some of his kingdom to earth. I pray that, in the same way, there would be no gun violence here on Earth, just as there is no gun violence in heaven.
One hardly knows what to do with this. There is no food in Heaven, so why do you care about it here? And yet, one of the Christian Corporal Works of Mercy is feeding the hungry. There is no marriage in Heaven (Matthew 22:30), but it is a significant religious rite on Earth. //
What Ms. Schumann loses track of, along with a crap-ton of other things, is that the gun is nothing more than a value-free tool. It is much like a hammer or a wheel, or a screwdriver. What you do with the tool makes the difference. Murder was forbidden long before the invention of gunpowder. In Schumann’s view, owning a gun means that you, by definition, place gun ownership above being a Christian.
I don’t come from whatever religious tradition that spawned Ms. Schumann. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in very strong terms that protecting others from harm is part of the Golden Rule. That extends to the use of deadly force if there is no other way. //
In Exodus, we are told we can kill a home invader at night. In Nehemiah, we are told to fight to defend our families. In Esther, Jews take up arms against an unjust ruler (sort of the main purpose of the Second Amendment). Jesus frequently uses the metaphor of a shepherd protecting his flock from thieves and robbers. Because a shepherd killed marauding animals (see David and his sling), one can assume He is not talking about hugging it out.
No matter how you come down on guns, we should be able to agree that murder is wrong, that self-defense is a right, that defending the helpless is an obligation, and that gun regulation is a secular policy argument and not theology.
We may be on the brink of a new paradigm for nuclear power, a group of nuclear specialists suggested recently in The Bridge, the journal of the National Academy of Engineering. Much as large, expensive, and centralized computers gave way to the widely distributed PCs of today, a new generation of relatively tiny and inexpensive factory-built reactors, designed for autonomous plug-and-play operation similar to plugging in an oversized battery, is on the horizon, they say.
These proposed systems could provide heat for industrial processes or electricity for a military base or a neighborhood, run unattended for five to 10 years, and then be trucked back to the factory for refurbishment. The authors—Jacopo Buongiorno, MIT's TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering; Robert Frida, a founder of GenH; Steven Aumeier of the Idaho National Laboratory; and Kevin Chilton, retired commander of the U.S. Strategic Command—have dubbed these small power plants "nuclear batteries."
KLM ultimately elected for 10 of its 747-200s to have a stretched upper deck. //
Last year, KLM retired its last Boeing 747 aircraft. This brought the curtain down on nearly half a century of jumbo jet operations at the Dutch flag carrier. The first variant of the ‘Queen of the skies’ that KLM operated was the 747-200, which initially had the same short upper deck as the original 747-100. However, several examples of KLM’s 747-200s ended up having a stretched upper deck, which would eventually become a standard feature on later 747s. //
The result of this change, Boeing proclaimed, was “a 10% increase in capacity with only a 2% change in operating empty weight.” The stretch was a complex, multi-step procedure that required work on more than just the upper deck crown itself. Indeed, engineers also had to remove the roof behind the original upper deck, and the cab crown. //
Indeed, when the next variant of the family was launched, the 747-300, the stretched upper deck came as standard. Aerotime reports that Boeing claimed, thanks to the aforementioned minimal increase in weight despite the 10% capacity increase, this feature decreased fuel consumption by 5% per seat-mile. All in all, it made sense from a financial point of view.
While the 747-300 sold fairly poorly (81 examples), the stretched upper deck was retained by the 747-400 that followed. This quickly outsold its predecessor (694 examples), thanks to factors like its increased range and two-person glass cockpit. The stretched upper deck’s story came to an end when the 747-8 came into being, with an even longer second floor.
jelgator The Original John Doe
15 hours ago
"if this country remains a democracy or not."
Not to be mean or anything but we're a republic, not a democracy. But I know what you meant. :) //
The Original John Doe jelgator
14 hours ago edited
Yes I read the article on RedState a few days or weeks back pointing out that difference and making the same point you did. The thing is I believe that while the USA was formed as a republic but when FDR was elected in 1932 the DNC began slowly changing this country from a republic to a democracy and although we can stand and scream this country was founded as a republic and we want it to be a republic the facts on the ground state otherwise. I will use a chart I found on keydifferences dot com to illustrate.
In a republic a minorities rights are inalienable (ignoring slavery for a minute which blows up everything and is the exception) and in a democracy they can be overridden by a majority. The DNC has time and time again taken away minority rights by claiming they are passing the law protecting minority rights.
In a republic revenue is generated through legitimate taxes and fees. A democracy is funded through illegitimate taxes, fees, fines and licenses. Since 1933 we have our share of fines and licenses and most of the additional taxes I would argue are illegitimate and in place only to fund the large government that was created since 1933 and has not been stopped by anyone. (The large gov't that is)
In a republic mobocracy (rule by a mob) does not prevail. In a democracy it prevails. Only only needs to look at Twitter, cancel culture and riots of BLM and Antifa to realize that in democrat states mobocracy prevails.
And the last one is the clincher. In a republic we are ruled by laws. In a democracy we are ruled by the "majority". Since 1933, blue states, liberal judges and even the supreme court have decided that because the "majority" feels a certain way certain laws should be given brand new definiens out of thin air or ignored.
The USA is no longer the country that our founding fathers had envisioned. Democrats controlled both chambers of congress nearly uninterrupted since 1933 until Regan was elected. Then Clinton, Obama and now Biden are continuing. This country has been perverted beyond our founding fathers dreams. The only saving grace was that each state was established as its own entity within the larger country which has allowed 23 states currently to remain free while the remaining 27 are not due to democrat control of all or part of the government.
The first step towards recovery is conservatives need to realize this is the case in order to take it back. We are sliding to the point where we will not even be able to fairly elect who we want and we will be right back where the colonies started with rulers who don't care what we think, are not accountable to us and can do what they want. We need governors of red states to realize this and organize. But our governors are not going to do that unless the people rise up and demand the red states use the second amendment to protect what original shreds are left of this country.
That’s right, you should NOT charge your electric vehicles during a heat wave in California. Why? Because, like the power supply system in many developing countries, California’s electric power generators can’t deliver enough electricity to CAISO to meet demand. //
Meanwhile, in Sacramento the governor, legislators, and regulators still think electric vehicles are vital to California’s plan to reduce emissions over the next two decades. In 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, by executive fiat, set 2035 as a target date for ending the sale of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles as a way to fight “climate change” in the state. //
California suffers from an electric grid problem, because the state has eschewed reliable fossil fuels in favor of unreliable green energy, such as wind and solar power. This presents a problem, because such sources don’t work when the wind stagnates during heat waves or at night. when there’s no sunlight. Simultaneously, the state is exacerbating this problem, creating ever more demand for electricity by promoting electric vehicles and shutting down access to natural gas appliances. //
In 2020, California’s electric grid came within minutes of collapse due to heavy loads at the same time solar power slumped at sunset. On August 17, during the CAISO Board of Governors Meeting, CAISO President Steve Berber let loose with this bit of reality.
According to the transcript, Berber said, “You are trading the loss of 3,000 megawatts for the collapse of the entire system of California and perhaps the entire West. … When you’re at the very edge and you have a contingency and you have no operating reserves, you risk entire system collapse.”