Extinguishing the possibility that Texas could be placed back under federal electoral supervision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday pushed aside claims that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against voters of color when they enacted the state’s congressional and state House maps.
In a 5-4 vote, the high court threw out a lower court ruling that had found that lawmakers intentionally undercut the voting power of Hispanic and black voters, oftentimes to keep white incumbents in office. The Supreme Court found that the evidence was “plainly insufficient” to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in “bad faith.”
The Supreme Court also ruled that all but one of the 11 congressional and state House districts that had been flagged as problematic could remain intact. The one exception was Fort Worth-based House District 90, which is occupied by Democratic Rep. Ramon Romero and was deemed an impermissible racial gerrymander because lawmakers illegally used race as the predominant factor in deciding its boundaries.
The decision also means that “preclearance” (i.e., Texas having to have all redistricting cleared by the federal government) is finally well and truly dead.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, with concurrences from justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Gorsuch.
As for House District 90, the text of the decision states that “On remand, the District Court will have to consider what if any remedy is appropriate at this time.” Since it’s already held by a democrat, expect the lower court’s enthusiasm for an immediate remedy to the issue to be tempered, and this late in the game, they might merely order that the issue be addressed following the 2020 census, which would fall to the 87th Texas legislature in 2021.
This morning, the EU’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted in favor of the legislation, called the Copyright Directive. Although most of the directive simply updates technical language for copyright law in the age of the internet, it includes two highly controversial provisions. These are Article 11, a “link tax,” which would force online platforms like Facebook and Google to buy licenses from media companies before linking to their stories; and Article 13, an “upload filter,” which would require that everything uploaded online in the EU is checked for copyright infringement. (Think of it like YouTube’s Content ID system but for the whole internet.)
EU lawmakers critical of the legislation say these Articles may have been proposed with good intentions — like protecting copyright owners — but are vaguely worded and ripe for abuse. “The methods to address the issue are catastrophic and will hurt the people they want to protect,” Green MEP Julia Reda told journalists earlier this week. After this morning’s vote, Reda told The Verge: “It’s a sad day for the internet … but the fight is not over yet.”
Both Article 11 and Article 13 were approved by the JURI committee this morning but won’t become official legislation until passed by the entire European Parliament in a plenary vote. There’s no definite timetable for when such a vote might take place, but it would likely happen sometime between December of this year and the first half of 2019.
“Vaguely worded and ripe for abuse.” Music to a bureaucrat’s ears!
Both those provisions fly in the face basic structure of the Internet, where linking is free and censorship is damage to be routed around. And make no mistake, once they have an “upload filter” in place, there’s no way it will be limited to “copyright infringement.” Expect them to start by censoring “hate speech” (such as videos critical of unassimilated Muslim immigration into Europe) and anything else sufficiently critical of sacred European goals. Calls for Italy to quit the Euro? Sorry, those have to be banned in the interest of “economic stability.”
Set aside, for now, the impossibility of implementing this for all but the biggest sites in Europe, much less the world. Merely attempting it would no doubt do a lot of damange and have that fabled “chilling effect” on free speech.
Let’s hope this legislation gets killed by Eurocratic inertia…
LABOUR Live – the troubled Glastonbury-style festival where the party was hoping to recreate the success of their rousing General Election rallies – has been mercilessly slammed for its dwindling crowds and lack of interest.
The event, dubbed ‘Jezfest’, is taking place at the 20,000-capacity White Hart Lane recreation ground in north London today.
It features appearances from music acts including Clean Bandit and the Magic, alongside a speech from Jeremy Corbyn himself, who appeared in front of tens of thousands of people at the Glastonbury Festival last summer to give a rousing speech prior to the General Election.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and left-wing activist Owen Jones were also billed to speak.
It was meant to be a money-spinner for Labour but a reported 3,000 tickets had only been sold and according to insiders, the party could lose more than £1 million as a result.
This is getting silly: with so few socialists attending and so many conservative journalists turning up, #LabourLive is at risk of turning into a Spectator garden party. https://t.co/M6x3r7x3rj
If you're one of the lucky ones who got a ticket for #LabourLive – Get yourself over to the WT Tent……it's absolutely banging!! pic.twitter.com/0VAvhwDi8c
Like a dog returning to its own vomit, Republican congressional leaders just can’t stay away from illegal alien amnesty. Evidently because they love creating new Democratic voters, ignoring the rule of law and depressing their base.
A leaked draft of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) amnesty deal could lead to the “biggest” amnesty for illegal aliens in United States history, experts tell Breitbart News.
Ryan’s immigration deal would go beyond giving amnesty to only the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who are enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
According to a leaked draft of the amnesty deal, obtained by Breitbart News, Ryan’s plan would allow the entire “DACA population” to be eligible for amnesty so long as they meet low educational, work and criminal requirements, prompting the amnesty to explode in size.
A draft of the leaked GOP amnesty deal
That DACA population could include the nearly 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and DACA-eligible illegal aliens, and even more illegal aliens who arrive in the U.S. to fraudulently obtain the amnesty.
NumbersUSA Governmental Affairs Director Rosemary Jenks told Breitbart News that Ryan’s amnesty will — at the least — allow 1.8 million illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.
“This has the potential to turn into the biggest amnesty we’ve ever had,” Jenks said.
The leaked amnesty deal reveals that Ryan and the Republican establishment may even be considering going beyond giving amnesty to DACA illegal aliens.
A second amnesty is included in the leaked draft, one that would allow the children of temporary foreign guest workers and “anyone who has a ‘contingent nonimmigrant status’” to apply for the amnesty.
How about “No”? Does “No” work for you? How about “Hell No!”?
What needs to be done is:
Increased border enforcement
Implement E-Verify
Build the wall
All that needs to be done before any sort of amnesty is even considered.
Why is this message so hard for congressional Republicans to understand?
I wasn’t going to write any more on Bourdain’s suicide because I haven’t actually read any of his books (just excerpts) or watched his shows (just clips).
But this is a pretty interesting essay from one of Bourdain’s fellow ex-heroin users.
Lets look at who Bourdain was – at least to me. To me, he was “one of us.” By that I mean those of us who were misfits who succeeded in spite of ourselves. Bourdain was very open about his prior drug use – not shy at all about it, in fact. He regularly dropped references to his prior heroin habit. I loved that about him. “Yeah, I used to shoot smack, and look at me now.” He was not a “say no to drugs” guy. He was a keep-on-raging guy, even if he did gain a high degree of responsibility in his older age. He let that flag fly, and in doing so, he sent signals to some of us who understood him on that level.
Bourdain was not the kind of guy to get an honorary degree and then give a speech extolling the virtues of studying hard and working hard. Bourdain was a pirate. I can think of no higher praise than to call him that.
After he died, a wise man (Julian Sanchez) wrote: “Very successful people often become successful because they are unhappy.” And that makes sense when you look at Bourdain. Nobody shoots heroin because they are happy. A demon chases you into that place. That demon talks to you. He lies to you. He tells you to go ahead and jam that needle into your arm, because you are different. It won’t hurt you because you’re different – and that difference makes you alone, and that heroin makes you forget about being alone. Not the “alone” like being in the house all by yourself. The “alone” someone feels while they are the center of attention in a huge crowd. That alone. That cold-alone that is more alone and cold than you’d be if you were strapped to Voyager One like a dark frosty vacuum-dried interplanetary hood ornament of freezer-burned meat. That alone that isn’t even black – because at least you can lose yourself in blackness. Blackness and darkness at least has quiet and tranquility. The real evil aloneness is grainy. T.V.-static-alone. That alone of “did I just hear something?” And you didn’t hear anything. You wanted to. You wanted to hear something so badly that your ears start creating sounds that make sense out of the static.
It seems that noted Tweeter GayPatriot, who has 70,000+ Twitter followers, has been suspended for stating the obvious: That Bradley Manning is a traitor.
.@GayPatriot suspended from twitter for calling Chelsea Manning a traitor. In January. An objectively true statement. No swearing or anything.
You will hold the opinions @Twitter wants you to hold, or else.
If @GayPatriot was suspended for rightfully calling Manning a traitor, you should probably suspend me (a veteran) too, @Twitter. Because I agree with and stand by his factual statement.
— Krystle Schoonveld (@TarheelKrystle) May 29, 2018
It seems a little odd that right in the midst of this apocalyptic hand wringing over WikiLeaks, the president would choose to commute the sentence of a guy who went into a war zone, stole reams of classified files, and gave them to WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning didn’t merely release email correspondences between DNC officials where they complain about Bernie Sanders and talk about spirit cooking. These weren’t embarrassing revelations about a political party. These were hundreds of thousands of secret documents relating to national security, appropriated during a time of war, and “leaked” indiscriminately with no regard to how it would undermine our war efforts and even less regard for the lives it put at risk. The Democrats apparently want us to believe that humiliating Hillary Clinton is a far worse crime than jeopardizing the safety of our troops, intelligence officers, and allies. The word “outrageous” does not even begin to describe what’s going on here.
Snip.
Bradley Manning, a traitor to the United States who gave assistance to the enemy, a convicted spy who would have been put in front of a firing squad not too long ago, will now be a free and celebrated man for one single reason: he pretends he’s not a man. Because Manning “came out” as “transgender” after committing his act of treachery, he became a hero to the Left. A trans hero, specifically, which is the most heroic kind of hero. That’s why he will be getting out of prison. For that reason and no other.
The Left admitted upfront that it wants Manning out of prison solely because he cross dresses. Before his commutation was announced, the media wrote story after story describing the “bleak life” of a “woman” in a men’s prison. They insisted that it’s an injustice to force a woman to remain incarcerated with men. And they’re right, that would be an injustice; but no such injustice had actually occurred. Bradley Manning was a man when he entered prison. He’s a man now. He’ll be a man when he leaves. He’ll be a man until he dies and even still afterwards. Complaining that a “transgender woman” wasn’t transferred to a women’s prison is like complaining that a lunatic who thinks he’s a polar bear won’t be transferred to the local zoo.
It seems that Twitter’s social justice warrior contingent isn’t satisfied with just targeting conservatives: they’re at war with reality itself.
And speaking of the Tranny Traitor, he’s running for the Senate from Maryland. In fact, Bradley’s doing so badly that he’s declared “voting isn’t working.” Well, I guess it isn’t “working” when voters hate you… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The attack on April 13th went up against a 21st-century Russian superweapon–the S-400 Triumf air-defense system, a mobile state-of-the-art anti-aircraft and missile network featuring four distinct missile types targeting aircraft in any performance envelope from treetop level to high altitude – including stealth aircraft (at a range of 150 miles, yet). For a decade we have been assured by military analysts that the S-400 is a game-changer – a system that could rend the heavens in twain and call into question the very concept of air power under battlefield conditions.
And yet, last Friday, the epoch-making Triumf failed to let out so much as a peep as 105 cruise missiles trashed Bashar Assad’s chemical warfare plants. Not a single SAM left the rack while the attack was proceeding. (The Syrians did fire over 40 missiles at nothing, but only after the attack was completed. This is standard behavior among Arab armed forces – the Libyans and Iraqis did the same thing.) The Russians claim to have shot down over 70 of the attacking cruise missiles. How do we know this isn’t true? First, because the targets were utterly destroyed, and second, because the French were involved. If the Russians had shot down any U.S. missiles at all we would be hearing from Paris that American “missiles de croisière” are useless, and that’s why we had to turn to the French, who invented the cruise missile in 1689. (This is scarcely an exaggeration – Emmanuel Macron has gone on record to state that it was he, le président de la France, who persuaded Donald Trump to carry out the strike.)
Some might argue that the new AGM-158 JASSM stealth missile foxed the S-400, but half the missiles launched were actually thirty-year-old BGM-109 Tomahawks, the equivalent of Colt Peacemakers as far as the world of missile development is concerned. If the mighty S-400 can’t shoot down a thirty-year-old missile, what can it do?
Also this: “Russia today is what it always was – a Potemkin village hiding a nation in a state of suspended collapse.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
President Donald Trump’s approval ratings hit 51%.
Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network’s platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of shady activities, including spamming, wire fraud, account takeovers, phony tax refunds, 419 scams, denial-of-service attack-for-hire services and botnet creation tools. The average age of these groups on Facebook’s platform was two years.
Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin owes his former campaign staff members tens of thousands of dollars and most believe he has no intention of ever paying them, a former campaign worker tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Right before McMullin’s failed bid for president in 2016 as the conservative alternative to President Donald Trump, the campaign was inundated with debt. The disastrous fiscal situation was a combination of frivolous spending by McMullin and his campaign manager Joel Searby, according to the former staffer.
McMullin received news weeks before Election Day 2016 about how dire the campaign’s finances were, and he had “no remorse” and said “I have qualms about this thing ending badly in debt,” the former staffer claimed. McMullin’s cavalier attitude towards the campaign’s spending struck many as a surprise, particularly because he billed himself as a fiscal conservative, he added.
The staffer also claims the campaign never paid him somewhere between 12-15 thousand dollars on top of a few thousand dollars in reimbursements. While he has since recovered, he expressed concern about former staffers with “families and children.”
I’ll never forget the first time I went to a steakhouse here. I thought I’d eaten steak before. I was expecting this small, flat circle of meat, maybe a couple of fries on the side. Fine. C’est bon.
So in Texas, steak is a different thing. I’m at this restaurant and they put this plate in front of me, and, well, there was barely any plate visible — all I saw was this was this big, big piece of meat. I look around, maybe I had been mistaken in what I ordered. Maybe this waiter was playing a prank on me. It looked like a whole farm animal in front of me. But everyone with me laughed and nodded and told me that in Texas, this is a steak.
Then I was introduced to these other foods I’d never seen before but were totally amazing. Mac and cheese, man. Guys, you are blessed for having mac and cheese here. It’s a work of art. Bravo, guys.
And that was the first time I thought, O.K. O.K., I think I can get used to this place.
But if he really wants to be “King of Books,” he should know that road runs through me…
