Thursday, June 18, 2026
Another 2nd Amendment Victory
6/17/26 Fox News reports that Florida Court of Aopeals has ruled that 18-20-year-olds have a right to carry concealed and the Florida AG will not challenge the decision. This surprised me not in the least. A Florida Deputy A-G called me several weeks ago for expert opinion on the law's constitutionnality.
Why Academia Is Increasingly Held in Contempt
An historian at Boston University both praises a couple robber barons (Carnegie and Rockefeller) and then compares the UFC event at the White House to lynching.
She said during the Gilded Age there was no “open display of denigration of American symbols and American values” like there supposedly is now.
She then praised people like JD Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie for saying they were “offering a way forward for the United States.”
Richardson then said Trump “is deliberately tear that apart and he is doing so on the same cultural argument of course that people used to back the first Gilded age that is these cultural wars that turn white Americans against marginalized people of color.”
UFC does not appeal to me. I would not have hosted it at my home. But this comparison is just absurdly stupid. If there is anyone tearing apart our culture today and denigrating American symbols and values, look at the Poison Ivy League universities and the Democratic Party.
Lynching usually involved dragging men out of jails, frequently castrating them, hanging them or burning them to death.
9-0 Second Amendment Decision
Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a Texas man who challenged a federal law that bars certain drug users from having firearms.
In a unanimous decision in the case U.S. v. Hemani, the justices found that Ali Hemani's prosecution for having a firearm while he was an unlawful drug user is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Hemani allegedly was only an occasional user of marijuana when the FBI found a handgun at his Texas home in 2022.
9-0. Language in decision emphasizes that disarming someone requires some sort of due process (criminal conviction, involuntary commitment).
The decision is here. Interestingly enough; Hemani's house was searched out of concern that he might be terrorist-adjacent. The government found nothing of that nature so file some charge, any charge
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Google Maps Compass is Magnetic
I assumed that since it had access to GPS that the little magnet symbol pointed true north. No. I should have realized this when trying to use it next to my Losmandy mount whose electric motors confused it horribly.
The last couple times I have tried to use the goto feature, the first alignment star was a good ten degrees off. Because my polar axis was aimed at magnetic north, not true north; the 11 degree difference meant that sewing to Vega was about 10 degrees off. Unfortunately, Polaris is simply not visible at any hour for which I have to energy for which to stay up. Tomorrow i will make a North marker out front with a compass and a protractor.
No. Digital Compass app shows both magnetic and true north.
Why is DOJ Investigating Gov. Newsom?
A second probe reportedly relates to an investigation into Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, that had been opened during the Biden Administration. Williamson was indicted last year on federal charges that she was involved in a scheme to steal $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to former U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, who is now the Democratic nominee to succeed Newsom as California governor. Williamson pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and making false statements to federal investigators.[emphasis added]
So dirty that even Biden started looking.
Prepare for Cheap Gasoline Next Year
The oil supply shock caused by the Iran war has eroded global demand for crude — but a lasting resolution to the conflict could drive a surge in supply volumes and trigger a major oil overhang next year, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.
Free markets are amazing things: capable of adjusting demand to changes in supply in a way that government bureaucrats can only wish to do
New York Times Sinks Trump as Epstein Client Claim
6/16/26 New York Times Magazine examines evidence concerning Epstein's suicide including this interesting piece of evidence:
We obtained about a dozen pages of other notes handwritten by Epstein in jail that were also previously unseen — including some in which he tried and failed to come up with significant information he might have on Donald Trump to offer to prosecutors....
His attorneys discussed with federal prosecutors the prospect of a proffer: giving them information that might be useful in other cases in exchange for the possibility of some leniency in his own. Epstein was particularly preoccupied with what he might have on Donald Trump, who was then serving his first term in office. Jotting on a legal pad, he returned to the president again and again, trying to dredge up anything to offer prosecutors. But his scribblings — “Trump is a total con artist — smoke & mirrors” and “Never had money”— suggest that he could come up with little that wasn’t already known.
Epstein had nothing to give to prosecutors to implicate Trump, something that would have led to a devastating and probably unsurvivable indictment.
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