The Dead Not Only Vote...

They also cash checks.  7/21/26 New York Post:

The Treasury Department has blocked nearly $100 million in taxpayer money from going to dead people since implementing a government-wide payment verification process last year, The Post has learned. 

The department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service discovered the money set to go to ghosts after a review of an eye-popping 885 million payments worth a total of nearly $2.7 trillion.

Weird Al

 I have always enjoyed his music. Seeing this 6/23/26 Variety article makes me respect him more. He explained that he was offered seven figures to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival:

"But I’m doing enough that I don’t need to take any amount of money if it makes me feel icky, and that kind of did.”

Saudi Arabia is slowly inching towards the 16th century. It still needs to sign the Abraham Accords and treat women as equals. 

Boxes

I found that Home Depot's Heavy Duty Large was big enough for the absurdly large Canon PRO-300 and a much more modest Canon MG2522 with lots of bubble wrap. We are almost done packing and I will be glad to be done 

Real Unobvious

7/23/26 ABC News:

According to victim and witness statements, the suspect yelled "Allahu Akbar" during both attacks, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The NYPD is currently evaluating whether this is a potential hate crime, she said....

While the perpetrator has no known mental health history with the NYPD, the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor, the commissioner said.

Google Earth is Amazing

 

California Switchblade Law

 Knife Rights v. Bonta (9th Cir. 2026). This being the 9th Circuit, they upheld California's ban on concealed carry of switchblade knives. I am disappointed that I was not asked to provide expert declarations or rebut the other side's expert declarations. I am not sure how much difference it would have made. At the core of this decision is the concept of how and why:

In assessing whether a law is "relevantly similar under the Second Amendment," courts are instructed to compare modern and historical regulations in terms of "how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen's right to armed self-defense."...

Other states and territories continued to adopt concealed carry restrictions on Bowie knives and other dangerous knives and weapons during and after the Civil War. These states punished unlawful concealed carry with imprisonment, fines, or both.^[10] In addition, the record includes prohibitions on the concealed carry of knives from several cities in the post-Civil War period.^[11]

The record also includes evidence as to why jurisdictions prohibited the concealed carry of Bowie knives and other knives. One of California's experts, Dr. Robert Spitzer, explained that "Bowie knives were widely used in fights and duels," and were known to be "fighting knives" intended for "[interpersonal] combat." Another expert, Dr. Brennan Rivas, explained that "[a]s rates of violence rose during the nineteenth century, people were more likely to carry and use large knives; the increased presence of knives . . . had the regrettable consequence of exacerbating the problem." This problem was "especially notable in southern areas, where Bowie knives were quite common and known to be associated with needless bloodshed." 

The problem here is why those laws were adopted. The decision acknowledges that these laws adopted in the 1950s because of criminal use.(Perhaps largely in West Side Story.) The why for the antebellum period was not members of the criminal class but the people who would become legislators, judges, and militia officers. My book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic examines this odd situation in more detail.

 

It Is Always Good to Introspect

 I am planning disaster against this people,

from which you cannot save yourselves.
You will no longer walk proudly,
for it will be a time of calamity.
In that day people will ridicule you;
they will taunt you with this mournful song:
"We are utterly ruined;
my people’s possession is divided up.
He takes it from me!
He assigns our fields to traitors."
Therefore you will have no one in the assembly of the Lord
To divide the land by lot." (2:3-5)

What goes around comes around: You defraud your fellow Israelites out of land with no remorse. "Your" (you took it from the poor) land will now be taken from you. Who will do this? The Assyrians. You will be as to them what the poor has been to you.

God is warning His people that their callous injustice has blinded them to the storm clouds that are gathering around them. They are so busy scheming that they do not see nor care that there are other people who are scheming against them.

There is a message here for many. Steal from the taxpayers and do not be surprised when it is taken back. Ignore the legitimate needs of those in whose names those frauds took place and it will not go well for you.