Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 26, 2025: shabbos for Jewish cats and International Lime Day. The best are key limes, which can be used to make one of the world’s best pies. Below: ZESTING A LIME! (It’s probably the normal, or “Persian” lime.
Villy Fink Isaksen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
F.B.I. agents arrested a county judge in Milwaukee on Friday on charges of obstructing immigration agents by steering an undocumented immigrant through a side door in her courtroom while the agents waited in a public hallway to apprehend him.
The arrest of a sitting state court judge is a major escalation in the Trump administration’s battle with local authorities over deportations. The administration has demanded, under threat of investigation or prosecution, that local officials assist federal efforts to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Charging documents describe a confrontation last Friday at Judge Dugan’s courthouse, in which federal agents say she was “visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor” when a group of immigration, D.E.A. and F.B.I. agents came to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a citizen of Mexico who was in her courtroom to face misdemeanor criminal charges.
According to the criminal complaint, the judge confronted the agents and told them to go talk to the chief judge of the courthouse. She then returned to her courtroom.
“Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge Dugan then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the ‘jury door,’ which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse,” said the complaint, which was written by an F.B.I. agent.
The judge was charged with obstructing a proceeding of a federal agency and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.
After a brief appearance as a defendant in federal court in Milwaukee, about a mile from her own courthouse, the judge was released on her own recognizance.
Here’s the complaint against the judge (h/t Matthew); I’m not sure if they should have used a grand jury. These are both felonies, but I don’t know the rules about grand juries.
I don’t know what is going to happen now; are they going to convict a judge? Would any jury find her guilty? If so, could she go to jail? Would she lose her judgeship? If she did violate the law, and they can prove that, then yes, she should be convicted. But there’s always jury nullification, and if any “crime” is ripe for that, it’s this one. We’ll just have to wait and see.
*The big news is that Nellie Bowles is back writing her weekly news & snark summary at The Free Press (I was going to unsubscribe if she stopped). But there’s a piece today, “TGIF: Vladimir, STOP!“, and I’ll steal three bits from it. Welcome back, Nellie!
→ About that approval rating: It’s not going well.
And Trump, who has been quite confident he can fix this Ukraine situation, was caught flat-footed after Russia bombed several districts in Kyiv, killing at least 12 people. The president posted a Truth Social missive, writing: “Vladimir, STOP!” We finally have a president who leads with strength. A president who calls it like he sees it. “Vladimir, STOP!” he posts on a niche social media site called Truth Social. That’ll do it. Now Vladimir Putin will know to fear American greatness. Otherwise, it’s time-out for him, possibly no dessert.
→ Everything America has ever done is fake and gay: Candace Owens this week took aim at NASA and the moon landing, which, according to her, did not happen. Here’s Candace: “You must come to terms with the fact that NASA and space missions have always been this fake and gay. You just weren’t alive for the original ones, and you need to learn the history of NASA, of the Apollo programs, which were occult and satanic. It was literally meant to be an Antichrist movement to make people believe in man. It’s a fact.” She concluded, “Space has always been exceedingly fake and gay.” Candace is a lot like Luigi Mangione fangirl Taylor Lorenz. Even when they are directly criticizing me (Candace once called me a “hysterical lesbian”), even when they are saying things I know are insane (Brigitte Macron, please), I just can’t stop watching. I want more. Yell at me, Candace! I won’t fight back!
I’ve put the “fake and gay” video in the tweets below so you can see the loon for yourselves. One more from Nellie:
→ Ivy update: Students at Yale University briefly set up a new pro-Hamas encampment, where they chanted a call-and-response: We will honor all our martyrs / Mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. And no, they are not talking about their parents and siblings who sacrificed so much to get them to Yale (I’m guessing they screen calls from their actual mothers). They said the quiet part out loud by wearing Hamas headbands, the hottest new campus accessory. So again, to reiterate, they are wearing Hamas headbands and chanting to honor their martyrs. If anyone buys the line that these are just anti-war protesters, or that they’re protesting some specific Israeli policy, you’re deluding yourself. They are Hamas supporters, plain and simple.
The Hamasniks also did pretty aggro things like throwing water at Jewish students exiting an event with Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli politician. As I say to my daughter when she does that: Not funny.
Elsewhere, hip-looking protesters in London chanted One struggle, one fight / Palestine, trans rights. Which really is very curious. And at Coachella last Friday, the Irish hip-hop group Kneecap projected “Fuck Israel / Free Palestine” on the screen behind them as their show ended, with the crowd breaking out into a “Free Palestine” chant.
My sense is that the great majority of my colleagues don’t care for campus political activism. As an out-of-the-closet conservative, I often find myself playing the confidant to my liberal colleagues. They sidle up and say, sotto voce, “Please don’t tell anyone I said this,” then proceed to unload their disgust with the latest activist outrages. They might have identified as leftists in their college years, but a frequent refrain I hear from them now is “this is not what the left used to stand for.”
Faculty at Harvard for the most part are serious scholars and scientists who just want to get on with their work. They have books to write and papers to publish. They want to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. They resent it when activists create turbulence at department meetings and waste everyone’s time.
The biggest time-waster at the moment is dealing with the budget cuts and hiring freezes set off by the Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal funding. Many of my colleagues can see clearly enough that this crisis has been triggered by progressive activists, who are predominantly graduate students or members of the university’s vast diversity bureaucracy. Many faculty wish that the fanatics would just shut up and take the target off Harvard’s back.
. . .The message is clear and bold: The current Harvard administration wants to be a leader in restoring the historic principles of higher education in America. But the Trump administration’s actions have weakened internal support for reform at Harvard and hardened its resolve to resist White House pressure. On Monday, Harvard announced that it was escalating the conflict by suing the government for violation of its civil rights. Right now, most of the university is hoping that the courts will stop the Trump administration’s threatened funding cuts, until such time as Harvard can reattach its umbilical cord to a federal government under Democratic control.
That, in my view, would be a mistake. Even if the courts do succeed in restoring Harvard’s federal funding, which is by no means certain, the university should think carefully about the hazards of accepting federal funding in an age of populism. My progressive colleagues were fine with federal influence on Harvard so long as it furthered what they saw as just causes, such as diversity and equity. Now that their research budgets are being held hostage to the demands of an unfriendly White House, left-leaning faculty are starting to appreciate anew the value of freedom from government mandates.
In the short term, unwinding the university’s dependence on federal funding risks creating a substantial deficit. But that funding itself comes at a steep price, not all of which can be measured in dollars and cents. It changes how the university operates and how power is distributed within it. Federal funding tends to increase the number and power of administrators, to turn faculty into their supplicants and to insulate the university from alumni opinion.
Given the need for somebody to support at least scientific research, that that has been the federal government (NIH, NSF, and DEA), and “strings” for that money have been merit and not much political, AND that university research is the lifeblood of scientific progress, I’m not sure what alternative Hankins proposes. Could he be unfamiliar with the generally good system of federally funding at least scientific research? His substitute, given below, seems inadequate: “The alumni will fund that research.” I seriously doubt it.
. . . . There are very good reasons for Harvard (and other universities) to reduce our financial dependence on the federal government. Instead, we should strengthen ties with loyal alumni who know and love Harvard. Alumni are loyal in part because they remember with gratitude the teaching they received as undergraduates. That makes them more closely aligned with the university’s real mission: to teach and to produce high-quality, unpoliticized research. Empowering alumni would carry its own risks, no doubt, but in my experience, they have a much sounder sense than politicians and government bureaucrats of what Harvard should be doing to help the country and itself.
*Luigi Mangione, accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has pleaded “not guilty.” As far as I can see, the evidence points to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but of course I’m not on the jury. And what else could he do? If he’s convicted, whether he pleaded “guilty” or “not guilty” won’t affect the “plea tax”: the idea that by pleading guilty you may get a lighter sentence. Not in his case!:
Mangione, 26, walked into court just before 1pm. He was wearing tan jail garb with a white long-sleeved undershirt. He chatted with his lawyers, who sat alongside him, and at one point appeared to smile; he could be seen flipping through papers on the table.
Mangione could face the death penalty in a case that shocked America for the killing of a top business executive on New York’s streets but also triggered an outpouring of anger against America’s for-profit healthcare industry.
As with prior proceedings, throngs of supporters of Mangione queued up outside to secure a much-coveted seat in court. Many sported medical masks or sunglasses, or both, and were reticent about speaking to media but did attack the healthcare system.
“I am a chronically ill person. I live in chronic pain,” one woman told the Guardian in explaining why she was at court. She said that she had never been in “that much medical debt” compared to others, but “when I say not that much I mean like $30,000.”
Even if it were proved that Mangione killed Thompson, she said, she believes his guilt embodies an ethical grey area. The healthcare industry kills thousands and Mangione was one man, she said. “One life [versus] like a thousand lives, that moral dilemma,” she said.
Ah, there’s the rub. Many people actually thought it was great that Mangione assassinated Thompson, even though Thompson didn’t make any of those healthcare decisions. Never mind–he was the boss. But it’s never right to kill someone unless it’s in self-defense. But of course this goes for the state, too, or so I think. If he’s guilty, life without parole, but no executions.
*And from the AP’s “oddities” section, an unusual National Anthem before a hockey game:
The Los Angeles Kings have brought back the harmonica-playing senior citizens whose rendition of the U.S. national anthem caused a sensation before their playoff opener.
The Kings welcomed back the Harmonica Class from the Koreatown Senior and Community Center for a second performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Game 2 of their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night.
The harmonica players became a viral sensation two days earlier when they played the anthem before Game 1. Fans in the Kings’ downtown arena loved the surprising performance and loudly sang along to the plaintive harmonica rendition, which was viewed millions of times on social media.
After wearing traditional Korean garb for Game 1, the harmonica players sported black Kings jerseys for Game 2. They received huge cheers before and after their performance.
Here you go. It’s funny and touching at the same time.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is guilt-tripping Andrzej into handing out noms:
Hili: Don’t you have any conscience?
A: You are my conscience.
Hili: So I say to you: it’s time to eat something.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ty sumienia nie masz?
Ja: Ty jesteś moim sumieniem.
Hili: Więc mówię ci, że pora coś zjeść.
And a photo of the affectionate Szaron:
*******************
Masih’s back, and she found a bit of stupidity: Iranians saying that she’s PAYING Iranian women to remove their hijabs. Note that the English subtitles move towards the very bottom of the screen as the video proceeds.
The regime in Iran claims that the reason more and more women are removing their hijab in the streets is because I’m secretly paying their fines in Bitcoin.
Watch the video. This isn’t just my response, it’s the response of Iranian women risking everything to say: This is how we… pic.twitter.com/qgLLXVQffr
From the insane Candace Owens, who says that all the Moon landings were “fake and gay”. Why does anybody listen to her?
Candace Owens calls out Matt Walsh
“You must come to terms with the fact that NASA and ‘space’ missions have always been this fake and gay and you need do learn the history of NASA and the Apollo program which were occult and satanic.
— ▄︻デʀօɮօȶ քօʟɨֆɦɛʀ═══━一 (@RobotPolisher) April 17, 2025
From Luana. There were TEN ethnically- or vocationally-themed graduations at Harvard last year:
Last year, Harvard’s DEI office cynically added inaugural affinity group graduation celebrations for Jewish students and veterans, bringing the total number to ten.
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, some very rare footage of a wild Pallas’s cat hunting:
It's #InternationalPallasCatDay! Finding wild Pallas's cat was one of the most amazing experiences of the last year. It was hunting voles on a Himalayan plain, wriggling its tail – the only part of its body that isn't camouflaged – presumably to distract the voles. #MammalWatching #WildIndia #Ladakh
A list of the rudest “rude words” used in the UK. I had never heard the third one being used, and neither had Matthew:
Which swear words do Britons find the most offensive?C*nt: 82% say very or fairly offensiveMotherf*cker: 70%Fatherf*cker: 62%B*tch: 55%F*ck: 53%W*nker: 53%B*stard: 45%P*ssy: 44%Pr*ck: 42%Tw*t: 40%A*sehole: 39%D*ckhead: 39%Son of b*tch: 36%C*ck: 34%Full list in the chart 👇
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (26 Apr 1889-1951)
Do you ever feel as though you are surrounded by morons—followers of “influencer” Candace Owens, valorizers of murderer Luigi Mangione, believers in the righteous cause of Hamas against oppressor Israel, the rebirth of racial (and now cultural) segregation in the form of affinity group college graduation ceremonies, and more? I do.
Indeed, everyone else is a moron. I’m just glad I’m right about everything.
Naw. Not really. After decades of dealing with or reading about religious fundamentalism, sophisticated theology, postmodernism, alternative medicine, the paranormal, New Age, Noble Savage, conspiracy theories, social contagions, moral panics, and general What-the-F*ckery, it just seems like different versions of the same human weaknesses, impulses, and intuitions. Everything old is new again.
Admittedly it’s coming from some sources that surprise me, but I really shouldn’t be surprised — or surprised that I’m surprised, for that matter.
I thought this one was new and rather bizarre:
“One struggle, one fight / Palestine, trans rights”
Is Palestine noted for trans rights?
Does Candace Owens believe in Jewish Space Lasers?
Yes. I was wondering if Owens doesn’t believe in the moon landings, but does in the JSL. I was wondering how consistent her skepticism about space stuff is.
Re Mangione fandom, I’m not surprised. Resentment and revenge are the sprits of the age, no? I wish I knew how that came to be.
Seek and ye shall find (or at least thou shalt then notice if thou trippeth over it).
Coincidentally I just encountered a well-reasoned economic insight into my resentment question: How the Economic Machine Works, at https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0 .
James Hankins wrote a longer piece on higher education reform two years ago in which he cautions red states to tread carefully.
The arrest of Judge Dugan appears to be proper and her crime obvious. This is clearly not an escalation in Trump’s relationship with the Judiciary, but the case of a person who has so far lost the plot that they forgot their position as an officer of the court to help a lawbreaker. The question people should be asking is, Why is the Left so committed to illegal immigration and especially to defending illegals who are criminals? What Dugan did had nothing to do with due process; it was the opposite of that. It becomes easier to believe that judges who are blocking Administration purposes are doing it on spurious, partisan grounds, rather than sound law, when you see things like this.
The crime seems less obvious than some imagine. But let us see how the case turns out.
I also don’t see this as a clash between the Judiciary and the Executive, because the court wasn’t involved. The judge hadn’t made a ruling and was simply acting as an individual. Whether a judge, a bailiff, a spectator, or the janitor hurried a fugitive to safety doesn’t matter.
Sanctions and possible penalties might involve her being a judge, but in the same way chaining herself to a tree or driving drunk would.
I don’t think that the government should be paying for scientific research, and I don’t think that, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be possible. The Federal government, after all, is only using funds collected from individuals. Surely Harvard could do the same? It might be more difficult than get lump sums via the Federal government. However, Harvard already raises money for large projects routinely. And what is the point of that enormous endowment? Perhaps, if Harvard had to do this on its own, they would start trimming the absurd administrative overhead that has emerged in the last two decades. Maybe we’d see fewer intersectional studies on animals. Who knows, research might even wind up being cheaper, if they didn’t have to count on pork from the government?
I think I have posted this before, but it always fascinates me that so many people refer to President Eisenhower’s farewell address and his warning about the “military industrial complex”. In that address he also wrote:
“Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity… The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. “
The old guy might have been on to something.
At what age does one become “an old guy”? He was born in 1890, heading into his 71st year at the time of his “Military-Industrial-CONGRESSIONAL Complex” speech. He certainly crammed a lot of living into his 79 years, Army career officer, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during WW II, President of Columbia University, POTUS.
And, AIUI, a life-threatening infection in the days before antibiotics.
It’s always more complicated. Imagine a system where research is funded by donations, but like university endowments, those donations will likely be ear-marked for specific projects according to the wishes of the benefactor. Of course money will go to research with practical applications like cancer research, or to computer science research. But who would fund research on fruit fly speciation, or the breeding patterns of Muscovy ducks? These projects are important as modeling systems for broader areas, and they support faculty salaries and the salaries of grad students and pos-docs. Some people just want to discover for discoveries’ sake.
Mallard Cam: Minnesota DNR Eagle Cam installed new cameras that spooked the resident eagles, who moved to a new nest. A mallard has taken over the old nest and is visible on the camera:
The arrest of the judge is not part of the conflict of the federal executive with the judiciary. That conflict is about the executive defying, sidestepping, or slow-walking court orders.
Although there is boldness in arresting a judge, the alleged violation of law could have been performed by a bailiff, county clerk, janitor, lawyer, HVAC technician, or anyone else, for that matter.
There is no defiance of a court order, or clash between state and federal orders (states rights, anyone?), in this case; it is almost incidental that a judge was involved.
GCM
Damn. I wrote my comment before I saw Greg’s. Needn’t have bothered.
Comment by Greg Mayer
I think the stone-user might be a raven. Either way, corvids are wicked smart!
GCM
Yes, there is at least a difference in the shape of the bill.
Maybe affectionate by nature, but Sharon looks rather menacing in that photo, that stare and claws out ready to strike.
The ICE agents entered Judge Dugan’s courtroom without a warrant. I’m no legal expert but that sounds fishy.
According to the complaint, there was a warrant and the judge knew that.
I read that the agents had an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, and the judge asked the agents to produce a judicial warrant.
Since the public is apparently reasonably entitled to enter a courtroom to observe a given trial, I don’t know why federal agents shouldn’t also. However, by what right do such agents interrupt a court proceeding on an unrelated separate matter or otherwise impose themselves on a judge?
That said, the judge should have transacted the business of the court, adjourned and said and done nothing regarding the separate immigration matter.
(Or so it seems, if I correctly and fully understand what happened.)
The moon landing started in 1969. The USSR had vast incentives to show that the moon landings were fake. They did not do so. It is reasonable to presume that a small number of NASA employees were working for the USSR back then. They would have reported any ‘fake’ program to the USSR immediately. The US moon landings were very real (even if the results were a bit dull). As for “One struggle, one fight / Palestine, trans rights”… I thought that “queers for Palestine” was pretty crazy. What did I know?
I heard an interesting comment from a skeptic who had extensively researched Area 51, alien autopsy, and claims of a NASA coverup:
“I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of the people at NASA who would have had to be involved in the conspiracy. Believe me — just please believe me — but these guys couldn’t keep a secret for 2 minutes if their life depended on it.”
Nerds.
I am inclined to agree. Keep a secret? A supposed secret shared by thousands of people? Not very likely. I would offer one exception, even nerds can probably keep a secret in wartime. Note how long it took for the Enigma secret to be revealed. Even in peacetime (a tense peace to be sure), it took quite a while for the Venona secret to be revealed.
The Ultra secret was never blabbed. So far as anyone knows, the Germans never rumbled that the Allies could, with practice and a little luck from harried German message coders making shortcuts under fire, read their radio messages as quickly as the intended recipient. The secret held until the British Government disclosed all, 30 years after the war ended. Even Winston Churchill was bound for life by the Official Secrets Act and couldn’t even hint at it in his memoirs.
(Should be free but you’ll have to scroll past some promo material.)
Not only did no Briton blab, nor did the anonymous and courageous Polish intelligence officers reveal under what must have been exquisite Gestapo torture that they had managed to steal an Enigma machine and smuggle it out of the country just before the Germans invaded. It has to be said that some inexplicable errors in judgment by a senior Canadian general during the Normandy breakout are even more troubling when one realizes that being Ultra-cleared he had to have known what the Germans were up to, and still blundered. At least it preserved the secret!
Wikipedia has the following information about the revelation of the “Ultra Secret” in 1974
“Ultra remained secret even after the war. Then in 1974, Winterbotham’s book, The Ultra Secret, was published. This was the first book in English about Ultra, and it explained what Ultra was, and revealed Winterbotham’s role, particularly with regard to the dissemination and use of Ultra.
There had been mentions of Enigma decryption in earlier books by Władysław Kozaczuk, Ladislas Farago and Gustave Bertrand. However, Winterbotham’s book was the first extensive account of the uses to which the massive volumes of Enigma-derived intelligence were put by the Allies, on the western and eastern European fronts, in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and perhaps most crucially, in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Winterbotham’s account has been criticised[by whom?] for inaccuracies and self-aggrandizement. Winterbotham acknowledged in the book that he was no cryptologist, had only slight understanding of the cryptologic side of the multi-faceted and strictly compartmentalised Ultra operation, and had no access to official records so was written from memory.[9] His description of the pioneering work done by Poland’s Cipher Bureau before the war is minimal. Winterbotham later responded that he had simply passed on the story that he had been given at the time. He erroneously suggested that Japan’s PURPLE cipher machine was a version of the German Enigma and confused “Dilly” Knox with a different person. “
Some Germans claimed that they suspected that the Enigma secret had been broken (see the memoirs of Hans Von Luck). This may be 20-20 hindsight.
Candace Owens is the very definition of crackpot.
Amazing and sad that she has such a sizeable following.
Cheers, FK. The sometimes utterly HUGE followings of a lot of wild crazies is something I think a lot about – without answers.
Of course, many looking are people like us – “WTF is this person anyway?” type curiosity, but to get us to that question they have to have big numbers in the first place.
I have no idea why they’re so popular.
But then I was taken aback at the post Oct 7 pro-terror marches in dozens of western cities. Relevant to that is the network effects of social media but that’s all I got.
Douglas Murray’s 2018?-ish book The Madness of Crowds takes on some of this and our modern problems. Good book.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
If you discover any insights into this rampant weirdness please do share. Maybe it’s some chemicals in the water? Maybe it’s that most “Influencers” (apparently the most desired job among Gen-Zers) have marginal contact with reality in the first place? I’m lost for words.
This has been my first exposure to her. OMG. Re NASA, not a few innovators have had a screw loose somewhere: E. Musk; the renowned physicist Brian Josephson (who later became a full-bore mystic nut-bar); and many others. Sometimes thinking far outside the box leads one to misplace the box.
But Satanism was never a problem at NASA (unless of course a Vast Conspiracy successfully hushed that up or rewrote history). She implies that any activity that promotes outstanding human achievement is of the devil. I wonder what she thinks of the Olympics (named for the home of pagan gods, no less).
As a Boomer, I did participate in some very weird stuff, including an amateur exorcism, and did develop a liking for “spirituality”. But I and the vast majority of my comrades outgrew such childish things; yes we sold out, but we got a good price. If I may be excused for bending the rulez, IMO Ms. Owens is completely and unreservedly full of shit, and unless it’s an intentional grift she really needs a mental health evaluation.
I don’t know much about her. She used to work for The Daily Wire (conservative podcasts) but she was fired for antisemitism.
Like Tucker Carlson after being fired by Fox, she’s only become worse since striking out on her own (no “guardrails”).
Yes Musk is also strange. That WSJ article on him was an eye-opener.
As is sometimes the case, the protesters are not entirely off base. Iran supports Hamas in Israel, and at home actively promotes transsexuality (in their usually thuggish manner), since it helps them claim that there are zero homosexuals in Iran. Go figure. Maybe “Go, go, go away / Nothing could be worse than gay.”
I see your Koreatown senior ladies with harmonicas, and raise you Edmonton senior ladies with kazoos.
Re Commonwealth Day (originally Empire Day), since 1977 it has been celebrated on the second Monday in March, but the date differs in some former colonies (🙂).
The U.S. is polarized. One group holds that ‘trans women are women’ (TWAW), ‘no one is illegal’, merit does not exist, sex is not binary, and that race is purely a social construct, etc. The opposing group reverses all of those positions. Since these are religious views, no compromise is possible. To use a (bad) example, the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal uses the word ‘undocumented’ in the first sentence about the arrest.
Just to pick a nit, if an undocumented asylum seeker has been paroled into the community pending a hearing on their asylum claim (which was the common procedure until recently), aren’t they then in the US legally pending their hearing? They can not legally be employed, but ISTM they can legally be present, so “illegal migrant” would be a misnomer for them. Right? IANAL.
I can find no evidence that Eduardo Flores-Ruiz ever applied for asylum. He did enter the US illegally back in 2013 and was deported. He was arrested (recently) for battery and domestic abuse. Flores-Ruiz is charged with three counts of of battery and domestic abuse.
FWIW, I didn’t read the Sentinel Journal article. My nit question was re the use of “undocumented” v “illegal” migrant in general.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (26 Apr 1889-1951)
Do you ever feel as though you are surrounded by morons—followers of “influencer” Candace Owens, valorizers of murderer Luigi Mangione, believers in the righteous cause of Hamas against oppressor Israel, the rebirth of racial (and now cultural) segregation in the form of affinity group college graduation ceremonies, and more? I do.
Indeed, everyone else is a moron. I’m just glad I’m right about everything.
Naw. Not really. After decades of dealing with or reading about religious fundamentalism, sophisticated theology, postmodernism, alternative medicine, the paranormal, New Age, Noble Savage, conspiracy theories, social contagions, moral panics, and general What-the-F*ckery, it just seems like different versions of the same human weaknesses, impulses, and intuitions. Everything old is new again.
Admittedly it’s coming from some sources that surprise me, but I really shouldn’t be surprised — or surprised that I’m surprised, for that matter.
I thought this one was new and rather bizarre:
“One struggle, one fight / Palestine, trans rights”
Is Palestine noted for trans rights?
Does Candace Owens believe in Jewish Space Lasers?
That was Marjorie Taylor Green.
But the ADL has problems with Owens too.
https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/candace-owens
Yes. I was wondering if Owens doesn’t believe in the moon landings, but does in the JSL. I was wondering how consistent her skepticism about space stuff is.
Re Mangione fandom, I’m not surprised. Resentment and revenge are the sprits of the age, no? I wish I knew how that came to be.
Seek and ye shall find (or at least thou shalt then notice if thou trippeth over it).
Coincidentally I just encountered a well-reasoned economic insight into my resentment question: How the Economic Machine Works, at https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0 .
James Hankins wrote a longer piece on higher education reform two years ago in which he cautions red states to tread carefully.
https://lawliberty.org/a-centrist-strategy-for-higher-education-reform/
The arrest of Judge Dugan appears to be proper and her crime obvious. This is clearly not an escalation in Trump’s relationship with the Judiciary, but the case of a person who has so far lost the plot that they forgot their position as an officer of the court to help a lawbreaker. The question people should be asking is, Why is the Left so committed to illegal immigration and especially to defending illegals who are criminals? What Dugan did had nothing to do with due process; it was the opposite of that. It becomes easier to believe that judges who are blocking Administration purposes are doing it on spurious, partisan grounds, rather than sound law, when you see things like this.
The crime seems less obvious than some imagine. But let us see how the case turns out.
I also don’t see this as a clash between the Judiciary and the Executive, because the court wasn’t involved. The judge hadn’t made a ruling and was simply acting as an individual. Whether a judge, a bailiff, a spectator, or the janitor hurried a fugitive to safety doesn’t matter.
Sanctions and possible penalties might involve her being a judge, but in the same way chaining herself to a tree or driving drunk would.
I don’t think that the government should be paying for scientific research, and I don’t think that, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be possible. The Federal government, after all, is only using funds collected from individuals. Surely Harvard could do the same? It might be more difficult than get lump sums via the Federal government. However, Harvard already raises money for large projects routinely. And what is the point of that enormous endowment? Perhaps, if Harvard had to do this on its own, they would start trimming the absurd administrative overhead that has emerged in the last two decades. Maybe we’d see fewer intersectional studies on animals. Who knows, research might even wind up being cheaper, if they didn’t have to count on pork from the government?
I think I have posted this before, but it always fascinates me that so many people refer to President Eisenhower’s farewell address and his warning about the “military industrial complex”. In that address he also wrote:
“Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity… The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. “
The old guy might have been on to something.
At what age does one become “an old guy”? He was born in 1890, heading into his 71st year at the time of his “Military-Industrial-CONGRESSIONAL Complex” speech. He certainly crammed a lot of living into his 79 years, Army career officer, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during WW II, President of Columbia University, POTUS.
And, AIUI, a life-threatening infection in the days before antibiotics.
It’s always more complicated. Imagine a system where research is funded by donations, but like university endowments, those donations will likely be ear-marked for specific projects according to the wishes of the benefactor. Of course money will go to research with practical applications like cancer research, or to computer science research. But who would fund research on fruit fly speciation, or the breeding patterns of Muscovy ducks? These projects are important as modeling systems for broader areas, and they support faculty salaries and the salaries of grad students and pos-docs. Some people just want to discover for discoveries’ sake.
Mallard Cam: Minnesota DNR Eagle Cam installed new cameras that spooked the resident eagles, who moved to a new nest. A mallard has taken over the old nest and is visible on the camera:
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/features/webcams/eaglecam/index.html
Comment by Greg Mayer
The arrest of the judge is not part of the conflict of the federal executive with the judiciary. That conflict is about the executive defying, sidestepping, or slow-walking court orders.
Although there is boldness in arresting a judge, the alleged violation of law could have been performed by a bailiff, county clerk, janitor, lawyer, HVAC technician, or anyone else, for that matter.
There is no defiance of a court order, or clash between state and federal orders (states rights, anyone?), in this case; it is almost incidental that a judge was involved.
GCM
Damn. I wrote my comment before I saw Greg’s. Needn’t have bothered.
Comment by Greg Mayer
I think the stone-user might be a raven. Either way, corvids are wicked smart!
GCM
Yes, there is at least a difference in the shape of the bill.
Maybe affectionate by nature, but Sharon looks rather menacing in that photo, that stare and claws out ready to strike.
The ICE agents entered Judge Dugan’s courtroom without a warrant. I’m no legal expert but that sounds fishy.
According to the complaint, there was a warrant and the judge knew that.
I read that the agents had an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, and the judge asked the agents to produce a judicial warrant.
Since the public is apparently reasonably entitled to enter a courtroom to observe a given trial, I don’t know why federal agents shouldn’t also. However, by what right do such agents interrupt a court proceeding on an unrelated separate matter or otherwise impose themselves on a judge?
That said, the judge should have transacted the business of the court, adjourned and said and done nothing regarding the separate immigration matter.
(Or so it seems, if I correctly and fully understand what happened.)
The moon landing started in 1969. The USSR had vast incentives to show that the moon landings were fake. They did not do so. It is reasonable to presume that a small number of NASA employees were working for the USSR back then. They would have reported any ‘fake’ program to the USSR immediately. The US moon landings were very real (even if the results were a bit dull). As for “One struggle, one fight / Palestine, trans rights”… I thought that “queers for Palestine” was pretty crazy. What did I know?
I heard an interesting comment from a skeptic who had extensively researched Area 51, alien autopsy, and claims of a NASA coverup:
“I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of the people at NASA who would have had to be involved in the conspiracy. Believe me — just please believe me — but these guys couldn’t keep a secret for 2 minutes if their life depended on it.”
Nerds.
I am inclined to agree. Keep a secret? A supposed secret shared by thousands of people? Not very likely. I would offer one exception, even nerds can probably keep a secret in wartime. Note how long it took for the Enigma secret to be revealed. Even in peacetime (a tense peace to be sure), it took quite a while for the Venona secret to be revealed.
The Ultra secret was never blabbed. So far as anyone knows, the Germans never rumbled that the Allies could, with practice and a little luck from harried German message coders making shortcuts under fire, read their radio messages as quickly as the intended recipient. The secret held until the British Government disclosed all, 30 years after the war ended. Even Winston Churchill was bound for life by the Official Secrets Act and couldn’t even hint at it in his memoirs.
A truly charming obituary of the last surviving Bletchley Park girl, who died this month at 101, is here.
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2025/04/10/betty-webb-never-spoke-about-her-work-until-she-had-to
(Should be free but you’ll have to scroll past some promo material.)
Not only did no Briton blab, nor did the anonymous and courageous Polish intelligence officers reveal under what must have been exquisite Gestapo torture that they had managed to steal an Enigma machine and smuggle it out of the country just before the Germans invaded. It has to be said that some inexplicable errors in judgment by a senior Canadian general during the Normandy breakout are even more troubling when one realizes that being Ultra-cleared he had to have known what the Germans were up to, and still blundered. At least it preserved the secret!
Wikipedia has the following information about the revelation of the “Ultra Secret” in 1974
“Ultra remained secret even after the war. Then in 1974, Winterbotham’s book, The Ultra Secret, was published. This was the first book in English about Ultra, and it explained what Ultra was, and revealed Winterbotham’s role, particularly with regard to the dissemination and use of Ultra.
There had been mentions of Enigma decryption in earlier books by Władysław Kozaczuk, Ladislas Farago and Gustave Bertrand. However, Winterbotham’s book was the first extensive account of the uses to which the massive volumes of Enigma-derived intelligence were put by the Allies, on the western and eastern European fronts, in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and perhaps most crucially, in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Winterbotham’s account has been criticised[by whom?] for inaccuracies and self-aggrandizement. Winterbotham acknowledged in the book that he was no cryptologist, had only slight understanding of the cryptologic side of the multi-faceted and strictly compartmentalised Ultra operation, and had no access to official records so was written from memory.[9] His description of the pioneering work done by Poland’s Cipher Bureau before the war is minimal. Winterbotham later responded that he had simply passed on the story that he had been given at the time. He erroneously suggested that Japan’s PURPLE cipher machine was a version of the German Enigma and confused “Dilly” Knox with a different person. “
Some Germans claimed that they suspected that the Enigma secret had been broken (see the memoirs of Hans Von Luck). This may be 20-20 hindsight.
Candace Owens is the very definition of crackpot.
Amazing and sad that she has such a sizeable following.
Cheers, FK. The sometimes utterly HUGE followings of a lot of wild crazies is something I think a lot about – without answers.
Of course, many looking are people like us – “WTF is this person anyway?” type curiosity, but to get us to that question they have to have big numbers in the first place.
I have no idea why they’re so popular.
But then I was taken aback at the post Oct 7 pro-terror marches in dozens of western cities. Relevant to that is the network effects of social media but that’s all I got.
Douglas Murray’s 2018?-ish book The Madness of Crowds takes on some of this and our modern problems. Good book.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
If you discover any insights into this rampant weirdness please do share. Maybe it’s some chemicals in the water? Maybe it’s that most “Influencers” (apparently the most desired job among Gen-Zers) have marginal contact with reality in the first place? I’m lost for words.
This has been my first exposure to her. OMG. Re NASA, not a few innovators have had a screw loose somewhere: E. Musk; the renowned physicist Brian Josephson (who later became a full-bore mystic nut-bar); and many others. Sometimes thinking far outside the box leads one to misplace the box.
But Satanism was never a problem at NASA (unless of course a Vast Conspiracy successfully hushed that up or rewrote history). She implies that any activity that promotes outstanding human achievement is of the devil. I wonder what she thinks of the Olympics (named for the home of pagan gods, no less).
As a Boomer, I did participate in some very weird stuff, including an amateur exorcism, and did develop a liking for “spirituality”. But I and the vast majority of my comrades outgrew such childish things; yes we sold out, but we got a good price. If I may be excused for bending the rulez, IMO Ms. Owens is completely and unreservedly full of shit, and unless it’s an intentional grift she really needs a mental health evaluation.
I don’t know much about her. She used to work for The Daily Wire (conservative podcasts) but she was fired for antisemitism.
Like Tucker Carlson after being fired by Fox, she’s only become worse since striking out on her own (no “guardrails”).
Here’s a bit more about her:
https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-814865
Yes Musk is also strange. That WSJ article on him was an eye-opener.
As is sometimes the case, the protesters are not entirely off base. Iran supports Hamas in Israel, and at home actively promotes transsexuality (in their usually thuggish manner), since it helps them claim that there are zero homosexuals in Iran. Go figure. Maybe “Go, go, go away / Nothing could be worse than gay.”
I see your Koreatown senior ladies with harmonicas, and raise you Edmonton senior ladies with kazoos.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/edmonton-area-seniors-play-o-canada-on-the-kazoo-in-response-to-harmonica-anthem/
Re Commonwealth Day (originally Empire Day), since 1977 it has been celebrated on the second Monday in March, but the date differs in some former colonies (🙂).
The U.S. is polarized. One group holds that ‘trans women are women’ (TWAW), ‘no one is illegal’, merit does not exist, sex is not binary, and that race is purely a social construct, etc. The opposing group reverses all of those positions. Since these are religious views, no compromise is possible. To use a (bad) example, the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal uses the word ‘undocumented’ in the first sentence about the arrest.
Just to pick a nit, if an undocumented asylum seeker has been paroled into the community pending a hearing on their asylum claim (which was the common procedure until recently), aren’t they then in the US legally pending their hearing? They can not legally be employed, but ISTM they can legally be present, so “illegal migrant” would be a misnomer for them. Right? IANAL.
I can find no evidence that Eduardo Flores-Ruiz ever applied for asylum. He did enter the US illegally back in 2013 and was deported. He was arrested (recently) for battery and domestic abuse. Flores-Ruiz is charged with three counts of of battery and domestic abuse.
FWIW, I didn’t read the Sentinel Journal article. My nit question was re the use of “undocumented” v “illegal” migrant in general.