Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Very disappointing. I imagine they waited to let this drop til after the midterms. Kind of disillusioning as well. I didn't think I had any political illusions left.

U.S. Backs Immunity for Saudi Leader in Lawsuit Over Khashoggi Murder

Quote:

The State Department said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, should have legal immunity as the head of the Saudi government.

I guess oil talks?

Maybe so. But Biden sure talked like we could force some kind of accountability on him on the campaign trail. We got some low level folks, but that's it.

MBS was only appointed Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia three weeks ago. That is when the International law kicked in. Before that, it made sense to speak of holding him to accountability.

Quote:

MBS was only appointed Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia three weeks ago. That is when the International law kicked in. Before that, it made sense to speak of holding him to accountability.

Oh, well, as bad as that it is, I suppose they had no choice. A lot of different changes and things seem to be happening with those countries over there.

Ron DeSantis boasts that Florida is “where woke goes to die.” (Of course, it’s where everybody goes to die.) He also likes to call it “the free state of Florida.” If you think carefully about these slogans, which DeSantis’s supporters generally don’t, you might detect a wee contradiction. If Florida is “free,” then all ideas, including “woke” ones, ought to thrive there.

The answer to the contradiction is that DeSantis doesn’t care about freedom at all unless it’s the freedom to express ideas he believes in. That contradiction was exposed in especially clear fashion Thursday by a federal judge who struck down DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act,” his centerpiece attack on progressive academia, as a prima facie violation of the First Amendment.

The law forbids schools, universities, and even private businesses from espousing a series of concepts, including the idea that any person is oppressed or privileged because of their race or that anybody should “be discriminated against” in order “to achieve diversity, equity or inclusion.” The court struck down the higher-education portion of this law on the obvious grounds that it prohibits a professor from espousing a certain class of ideas.

The judge noted that if a professor invited Sonia Sotomayor to speak to a law-school class and she shared the following belief (which she wrote in her autobiography):

“I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.”

… it would be in violation of Florida law.

Indeed, the only way Florida can defend its clumsy prohibition on expressing forbidden beliefs about racism is to assert the state has a blanket right to control ideas expressed in public-university classrooms. The law relies on “the notion that anything professors utter in a state university classroom during ‘in-class instruction’ is government speech, and thus, the government can both determine the content of that speech and prohibit the expression of certain viewpoints,” the court noted, which flies in the face of precedent.

There is a strong liberal argument to be made that essentialist ideas about race help justify illiberal restrictions on speech. The liberal response is to defend free speech. DeSantis’s response, by contrast, is to attempt to ban left-wing ideas about race.

This isn’t some accidental slipup on DeSantis’s part. He genuinely believes he possesses the legal and moral right to censor ideas expressed by academics. And while the Stop WOKE law has been struck down, DeSantis has succeeded in a more limited effort along the same lines: He has stacked the university system with political cronies and intimidated professors from giving testimony to the legislature that contradicts his positions.

At the National Conservatism Conference, representatives of Florida’s government and Hungary’s competitive-authoritarian regime were sharing notes in public. Hungary has cracked down on the higher-education sector, and DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw admiringly cited its slashing attacks on the media. There was little pretense of any attachment to a marketplace of ideas. The model DeSantis wishes to follow is Viktor Orbán, not John Stuart Mill.

Notably, the organization that fought and defeated DeSantis, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is not a progressive group. FIRE is dedicated to free-speech norms and has fought tirelessly for campus free expression. It has stood up against speech restriction from both the right and the left, but given its longtime focus on academia, much of its work has been undertaken in opposition to illiberalism from the left. That the most effective opponent of left-wing political correctness took down his signature campus law ought to indicate that DeSantis is the furthest thing from a champion of free speech.

It would have to be pretty drastic.

He's a member of the Saudi Royal family, a descendent of the prophet Mohammed and guardian of the forbidden city.

He ain't going anywhere.

Just logged into twitter and judging by tweets from a LOT of regular users, it seems that Musk might have killed the site. I've been using twitter for about 15 years and refer to it multiple times each day. For me, it's been incredibly useful as I follow many very bright people (and almost never view comments). What a **** up.

Garland said he was “confident” that the appointment of the special counsel would not slow down either investigation — and emphasized that he will ultimately make the decision on whether or not to prosecute.

The special counsel will take over two major criminal investigations into former President Trump.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel on Friday to take over two major criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump, including his role in events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his handling of sensitive government documents.

John L. Smith, the former head of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, will oversee the investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of sensitive government documents at his home in Florida, and “key” aspects of the separate inquiry into the former president’s actions before the Jan. 6 attack, Mr. Garland said in a news conference.

Nov. 18, 2022, 2:30 p.m. ET18 minutes ago
18 minutes ago
Glenn Thrush

Garland said he was “confident” that the appointment of the special counsel would not slow down either investigation — and emphasized that he will ultimately make the decision on whether or not to prosecute.