More Evidence That There Is So Little Rqcisn in America That it Needs Subsidies

4/21/26 NPR:

 WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups for inside information, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with more than $3 million paid to informants through a now-defunct program to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist groups. Prosecutors allege some of the money was used by extremists to carry out other crimes, but court papers did not include specific examples.

SPLC claims they were just getting information. Racism is so rare compared to my youth that this looks like funding groups that might otherwise wither on the vine. Remember the racist rally in Charlottesville in 2017? Guess who helped fund it,

PM Starmer is in Trouble

 When even the Guardian goes after him. 4/21/26 Guardian:

Well, what would you do? You’re a top civil servant with more than 25 years of government service. You’ve worked for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. You went through Brexit hell as a lead negotiator. You were sacked by Boris Johnson and were then brought back by Keir Starmer.

You land a plum job as permanent undersecretary in the Foreign Office and do your boss a favour by appointing his man as ambassador to the US. You’ve already got a knighthood; that peerage is only a matter of time away. Then it all blows up in your face and the prime minister sacks you and trashes your reputation in parliament.

Call it the revenge of the nerd. On Monday we had the case for the prosecution during Keir Starmer’s statement to the Commons. On Tuesday, we got Olly Robbins giving his defence before the foreign affairs select committee. And, in its way, it was quietly damning. Mostly of the government, occasionally – if inadvertently – of himself.

Throughout, Robbins presented himself as a fundamentally decent man. Someone who lived and breathed public service. The sort of man Starmer believes himself to be yet somehow isn’t. An ingenu for whom process is everything. A man governed by ritual. You would guess his sock drawer is pristine and numbered. Someone crushed by his recent sacking. Heartbroken at losing a job he loved.

At one point, he insisted that the two books he knew by heart were the civil service manual and the Book of Common Prayer. Blessed are the geeks. For they shall inherit the Earth. Just a shame that Olly never got to the bit in the prayer book about anything to do with Peter Mandelson always ending in a vale of tears. A shadow of darkness. And unlike previous misdemeanours, this time there shall be no resurrection for him. Possibly not even for Olly or Keir.

A Gay Friend Shared This Video With Me About Trans Security Issues

 

Which of These Methods of Execution is Worse?

I am enjoying Jonathan Healey's The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England: 1603-1689. You doubtless know because you read this blog that treason in England was punished by drawing and quartering, of which castration was probably the least unpleasant part. So in reading the first sentence of chapter 3, I found myself wondering if the Gunpowder Plotters would have preferred execution by Ursus Horribilis:

I wish there was a way to rotate pictures on my phone.  I can rotate and save them in Photos but they stay upside from blogger app 

Letters of Marque and Reprisal

 
Instapundit was keen on using letters of marque and reprisal during the War on Terror. I am grading rough drafts of student papers. One awesome one by, unsurprisingly, an engineering major, makers the point that letters of marque were a force multiplier against a numerically superior Royal Navy during the Revolution and War of 1812. I think we should seriously consider whether there would be time to use such in the worrisomely likely war of Taiwanese Independence. Imagine the resale value to privateers of capturing a VLCC (very large crude carrier): about $100 million worth of oil. Are there Americans with the courage to seize a Chinese-bound VLCC in the Straits of Malacca to split the value of that much oil and the ship? Yes there are.

This is Stupid Crimes in California Week, I Guess

4/18/26 KABC:

IRVINE, Calif. (KABC) -- Irvine police arrested a man accused of purchasing Lego sets from Target, removing some of the valuable pieces and replacing them with dried pasta.

"You read that correctly, we are talking about durum wheat semolina pasta, and what we are calling a pasta-tively terrible plan," the Irvine Police Department said in a post on Instagram.

Target reported at least 70 thefts across the country allegedly tied to 28-year-old Jarrelle Augustine, of Paramount, police said. The thefts totaled about $34,000 in losses.

Not being part of Legoverse, I find myself wondering what are the "valuable pieces"? 

Another Snakeoil Remedy Fails

4/17/26 SciTechDaily:

 A sweeping new analysis published in The Lancet Psychiatry challenges one of the fastest-growing trends in modern medicine: the use of cannabis-based treatments for mental health. After reviewing a vast body of clinical evidence, researchers found no reliable support for using medicinal cannabis to treat anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This should surprise no one. I am convinced Soros has been funding decriminalization efforts everywhere in the West to destroy the West