Former President Donald Trump (R) revived the use of the death penalty after a hiatus of some duration, and President Joe Biden (D) has moved to deprecate the death penalty anew, even if inconsistently so.
I confess to being conflicted regarding the death penalty. There are some crimes so heinous that they cry out for execution of the criminal. Rape, especially of children, and premeditated murder come to mind for me, along with mass and serial murder.
Newly elected Argentina President Javier Milei was invited to the World Economic Forum. He had some things to say while he was there.
Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have defended the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inevitably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty[.]
And
In the aftermath of the 2020 election confusions in Georgia (both general and runoff), that State passed its Election Integrity Act that, among other things, shortened Georgia’s early voting period from nine weeks to four, reduced the window for mail-in ballots, and moved the deadline for registering to vote to 29 days before an election.
The Sixth Dist. of the Afr. Methodist Episcopal Church, the Ga. State Conf. of the NAACP, and The Concerned Black Clergy of Metro. Atlanta Inc., joined by the Federal government’s DoJ, sued to strike the law as voter suppressing—the stricter voting period unfairly discriminates against Black voters, among other complaints.
A Florida man was charged by the Feds for possessing a firearm in a US Post Office facility. A Federal district judge ruled the law governing his arrest to be unconstitutional.
US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, an appointee of former President Trump, cited a 2022 landmark US Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights when she handed down her ruling Friday that dismissed part of an indictment charging a postal worker with illegally possessing a gun in a federal facility.
So far, so good. But:
[T]he judge declined to dismiss a separate charge for forcibly resisting arrest.
Progressive-Democratic Party politicians insist that illegal aliens should be allowed to go anywhere they want as they wait—months to years—for their court dates.
But they want travel documents on those Americans who are transporting them by bus.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is demanding that nearly two dozen charter bus companies sending New York City-bound migrants to “transit” stops in the Garden State provide advance notice.
And this:
For each migrant bus, Murphy is asking the companies to disclose the number of single adults traveling alone; the number of passengers traveling as part of a family, including the number of families with children under 18; the number of children under 18; and the number of chaperones (other than family members) for otherwise unaccompanied minors.
Navy sailor Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao was caught passing classified information concerning an Okinawa radar system, along with plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre, to a spy for the People’s Republic of China. [OPSEC note: the exercise plans would allow, among other things, the PRC to watch the radar system in action during the exercise.] Zhao has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. A whole 27 months. A wrist slap.
Meanwhile, the 6 January rioters—those who have actually had trials three years(!) after the event and whose trials have actually run to completion—have been sentenced to 3-6 years, and some have been sentenced to as many as 20 years.
Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has vetoed the SAFE Act, which would have barred biological males from women’s sports and protected Ohio’s children from mutilation in the form of sex hormone…treatments…and related sex change surgeries until those children reached 18 years old. DeWine had had this bill on his desk since 15 December, yet he waited until the last moment to veto it.
DeWine called the debate over transgender youth a “very contentious issue….”
Riley Gaines was direct on the matter during those two weeks:
He hasn’t signed it yet. He has 2 more days to sign before it becomes law without his signature. Why the hesitation, [Governor DeWine]?
…gets one right.
Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, through organs of his administration, is moving to expand Title IX’s definition of sex and sexual discrimination to include “gender identity” and to bar schools, colleges, and universities from banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.
Even an agency of the UN sees this as…foolish.
Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on the right track. In his Christmas Wall Street Journal op-ed, he laid out Israel’s three criteria for achieving real peace in the Gaza Strip:
Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized. These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.
Netanyahu is well down the right track, but I disagree with him to a slight extent.
The SEC is looking at allowing a new class of enterprises, Natural Asset Companies, to be listed on the NYSE. NACs are companies that would raise capital via the Exchange and ultimately purchase land to prevent its use for natural resource extraction. That is, their sole purpose would be not to make money for their owners, vis., by developing that land or any minerals or other wealth in/below that land, but rather by simply sequestering the land and sitting on it, preventing any wealth creation from it.