Monthly Archives: January 2026

Maybe this will Prod

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Maybe it’ll prod us both. The People’s Republic of China has cut off export of rare earths and the magnets made from them to Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent commentary about Japan’s strengthening resolve to assist the Republic of China in the event of a PRC invasion.

China has begun choking off exports of rare earths and rare-earth magnets to Japan, a potential blow to Japanese companies that use them to produce components for global chip makers, car companies and defense firms.

It really is getting time, and urgently so, for Japan to pull all of its supply chains out of the PRC. Doing so would eliminate nearly all of the PRC’s economic leverage over Japan short of going to war over the sea lines of communication on which Japan depends.

The PRC’s move also should be a serious prod for us to get off the dime and move all of our supply chains out of the PRC. It’s time we proofed ourselves against PRC economic pressure, along with Japan. Nearly half of our economy’s imports flow through portions of those same SLOCs to our west coast.

Once Again, a State Court Fails

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The Wyoming Supreme Court has struck down the State’s ban on abortion pills. Whether or not abortion pills are reasonable or safe or ought to be banned or not, the Court’s “reasoning” is deficient.

The court found that the state “failed to prove the 2023 laws were ‘reasonable and necessary restrictions’ on the right to make one’s own health care decisions.”

In so ruling, the court in the main relied on the Wyoming Constitution‘s Article 1, Section 38, which says,

a) Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions. The parent, guardian or legal representative of any other natural person shall have the right to make health care decisions for that person.
(b) Any person may pay, and a health care provider may accept, direct payment for health care without imposition of penalties or fines for doing so.
(c) The legislature may determine reasonable and necessary restrictions on the rights granted under this section to protect the health and general welfare of the people or to accomplish the other purposes set forth in the Wyoming Constitution.
(d) The state of Wyoming shall act to preserve these rights from undue governmental infringement.

At that point, they stopped their thinking, though. They chose not to consider the baby’s intrinsic right to its own health—its own life. That the State’s constitution is silent on the baby’s right to life should not be allowed to free up judges, even State Supreme Court Justices, to rule as they wish. Where the law is silent on a matter, no court should be ruling on the matter since by entering that silence it is unavoidably making law in its own name, and that is the sole province of the political arms, the arms elected by the people, to do.

Justice Jo Gray implied as much when, in her dissent, she used to same Article and Section to argue the definition of “reasonable and necessary restrictions” is too vague and so the matter should have been returned to the legislature for clarification. Sadly, Gray also chose to elide any consideration of the baby’s welfare, also.

The court’s ruling can be read here.

Violations of International Law

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors rightly ask the question.

Has international law become a tyrant’s best friend? Democrats and foreign leaders are claiming that President Trump’s arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is illegal—at least as international law is interpreted by the reigning complex of professors, NGOs, and multilateral bureaucrats.

Never mind that none of these nay-sayers—not a single one—are willing to cite the “international law” that the US violated in the arrest of Maduro and his wife. The closest they come is the single UN law, which as no applicability to the current situation, as the editors explain in words so plain that even Leftists should be able to understand them.

I expect such cynicism and dishonest out of our enemies and our fair weather friends and acquaintances. But to get this drivel from American politicians—in the main, Progressive-Democratic Party politicians—is decidedly shameful. This sub rosa hatred of America by those who claim to be our own should be remembered at the ballot box this fall.

A Quick Thought on Tariffs

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The lede sets the table for my thought, even while mixing similes or metaphors or somethings.

The highest tariffs in almost a century haven’t caused the massive surge in inflation many economists feared. But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, according to two new studies.

Begin with the understanding that today’s economy, both domestic and as we interact and intertwine with other nations’ economies, is far more complex than it was during the 19th and early 20th century heydays of tariffs.

Within that understanding, we don’t know the lags, if any, between tariff implementation and domestic price increases. That’s true whether the tariffs are implemented in specific economic areas or across the domestic board. Nor do we understand the mechanisms by which tariffs on foreign goods and services have their effect on domestic goods and services or on our economy in general. Nor do we understand the pathways by which those mechanisms might work their effects.

Each of these must be determined empirically, and that takes time. Presently, we’re in a nation-wide experiment that will provide the data that will let us understand each of these unknowns.

For how long must this experiment run before we can say reasonably definitively that tariffs are not having more than a minor effect on prices? That’s also unknown, but I suspect an outer bound on that is a couple of years.

Disruptive in the near term the Trump tariffs—or at least his rhetoric about them—might seem to be, it’s much to soon to assess their disruptiveness or lack in the intermediate and longer terms.

This Says It All

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Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Tim Walz has said he’ll not seek reelection as Minnesota’s governor. His rationale for that decision is both instructive of his priorities and illustrative of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s priorities.

As I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all.
Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences.

“His own political interests.” Not the interests or weal of the good citizens of Minnesota. He puts his own political interests on a par with “defending the people of Minnesota,” when that should have been his first and only focus. No, it’s all about his political gain, and beyond that, the political gain of Party. Not the interests or weal of us average Americans in general, either.

And never mind the years of time he spent not defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity, as demonstrated by the breadth, depth, and duration of the multi-billion dollar (and growing) social services fraud that’s engulfed his State during his first two terms while he worried first and primarily about his own political interests.

Unfortunately, much more house cleaning is necessary in the Party-run Governor’s Mansion and State Senate than just the removal of Walz. This affaire is much too large for him to have been acting, or even merely derelict, alone.