Welcome to the tail end of the work week: Friday, December 5, 2025, and National Repeal Day, marking the glorious day in 1933 when the 18th Amendment, banning the importation and sale of booze into every American state, was finally repealed by the ratification of the 21st Amendment. (That remains the only amendment, I think, that nullifies a previous one.)
Here’s a short video about that dark (and dry) period in American history.
It’s also National Blue Jeans Day (what would we do without them?), National Sachertorte Day, Bartender Appreciation Day, National Comfort Food Day, and Krampusnacht in Europe, when the Krampus monster comes out and punishes bad kids. Below: my idea of comfort food: “smoked meat”: Montreal’s equivalent of corned beef, photographed in 2016:
And comfort for Matthew, who spoke about his book at Oxford yesterday. Here he is having a half pint of Tim Taylor’s Landlord (my favorite ale) in a pub called the Grapes. He notes “it tastes good! Pub was full. Drosophila funebris on the lampshades (you can just make one out on the nearest one in the pic).”
I have an appointment this morning, and so posting will be light; in fact, it will be light for a week as there is a ton of stuff to do. Bear with me; I do my best.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT is still trying to find out who’s responsible for ordering the murder of two survivors of a U.S. military strike on a boat presumed to be carrying drugs. Does the blame fall on Hegseth, or on his underlings?:
Before the Trump administration began attacking people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors, according to multiple U.S. officials.
The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked and out of what the administration considered a fight. But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be a hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members, the officials said.
After the smoke cleared from a first strike on Sept. 2, there were two survivors, and one of them radioed for help, the U.S. officials said. Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the operation, ordered a follow-up strike and both were killed.
The military’s contingency plans have taken on new significance as Admiral Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to go to Capitol Hill on Thursday to answer questions about the attack amid an uproar over the killing of the survivors.
The men plan to present a vigorous defense, officials said, of what they will assert was a lawful follow-up strike on the survivors. That moment is just a small part of Mr. Trump’s legally disputed campaign of killing people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea as if they were combatants in a war, but it is now the focus of intense congressional scrutiny.
The details of the contingency planning could raise more questions about who was responsible for the second strike — the commander who ordered it or the defense secretary who approved the overall operation. Many critics, including some lawmakers, have said the follow-up attack could be a war crime.
I’ll report on what happen if it’s available today (I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon), but in my book “calling for help” doesn’t count as “communicating with suspected cartel members.” These guys were helpless, probably injured and needing rescue in the open ocean. Yes, they may have been drug smugglers, but they posed no danger to the U.S. military after the strike and should have been picked up and, if guilty, tried in a U.S. court. And again, I still have seen know evidence that any of the 80-odd people killed were smuggling drugs. I’m sure some of them were, but you don’t impose a death sentence without evidence, and usually a trial.
UPDATE: From the NYT:
Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the Sept. 2 operation, on Thursday showed lawmakers a video of the attack. The briefing was part of a congressional effort to understand his decision to order a second strike and determine whether the survivors of the first one remained “in the fight” or were technically shipwrecked, making it a war crime to kill them.
There have been shifting narratives emerging from the Pentagon, each resetting the analysis. But all of the scenarios consist of analogizing the actions of suspected drug runners to traditional combat activities. The comparisons are strained at best, legal experts say, because the laws of war were not written for and do not fit a drug smuggling situation.
“Debate over when a shipwrecked crew member loses protection from attack misses the point,” said Geoffrey S. Corn, who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues. “The real problem here is the dubious and legally overbroad assertion that the United States is justified in using wartime authority against a criminal problem.”
*And speaking of Hegseth, the second most dangerous man in Trump’s cabinet (after RFK Jr.), Republicans en masse are beginning to question his abilities.
As exasperation among Republicans over the lack of transparency grows, Adm. Frank M. Bradley is set to meet with lawmakers Thursday to discuss a Sept. 2 missile strike on a boat that killed 11 people, including two survivors who died in a follow-up attack as they clung to the wreckage. He oversaw the mission and is expected to tell them that he considered the survivors viable targets, not shipwrecked, defenseless mariners, said a person familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private or otherwise sensitive conversations.
That strike has intensified scrutiny of the Pentagon, and key lawmakers have questioned their confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. GOP-led committees have embarked on the most aggressive oversight campaign so far in the former Fox News host’s tumultuous 10 months on the job.
As the morning newsletter said, “Several said GOP support for Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials is rapidly weakening.” Furthere, there’s this: “And yesterday, a watchdog found [Hegseth] endangered U.S. troops with his use of Signal.”:
Hegseth shared specifics about the strikes before they began March 15 in a Signal group labeled “Houthi PC small group,” referencing the Yemeni rebel fighters and using an acronym for the principals committee at the White House that includes other senior officials.
But the Secretary has an out:
One official familiar with Hegseth’s thinking acknowledged that the information he sent on Signal had previously been classified. But as defense secretary, Hegseth is considered an “original classification authority,” meaning he has the ability to declassify virtually anything involving the department at his discretion.
My own predication is that Hegseth, who was never qualified at the outset, will be gone when the dust settles. He’s simply screwed up too many times, and who among us feels secure with him as Secretary of Defense/War?
*An editorial-board op-ed in the WSJ, of all places (“The Republican clock is ticking“), suggests that a Republican victory in Tennessee may harbinger the end of the GOP as a force in making legislation in Congress.
Republicans avoided disaster by winning a special U.S. House election in Tennessee on Tuesday, but the warning from the voter swing toward Democrats is clear: The GOP majority is on borrowed time and has less than a year to accomplish whatever it wants to do.
Matt Van Epps, an Army veteran, rallied to win by nine points in a reliably safe GOP district. His predecessor won the seat that includes part of Nashville by 21 points in 2024, and President Trump won it by 22. But this time Republicans had to spend heavily to defeat a leftwing Democrat with a long record of supporting causes way out of the mainstream.
The result echoed other special elections this year with a big voter swing to Democrats even when the GOP candidate won. Democratic voters are eager to paste a defeat on President Trump, and independents have moved against Republicans. In the six special elections so far this year, the average voter swing has been 15.2 points toward Democrats, according to Daniel Clifton of Strategas Research Partners.
History says a 15-point swing next November would be consistent with a Democratic gain of 43 House seats. The current GOP margin is three. The U.S. partisan divide and gerrymandering would probably reduce the Democratic gain, but on present trend Democratic progressive Hakeem Jeffries will be the next House Speaker.
Mr. Trump’s second-term domestic agenda would be all but over, even if Republicans hold the Senate, which also isn’t a certainty given the President’s low approval rating from voters.
It’s typical for big swings in votes to take place during the midterm, but a Democratic gain of 43 seats, plus the loss of the Senate, would completely deflate the GOP’s ability to make laws. For Trump, the only silver linings are that he can still issue executive orders and he has veto power, so he could overturn any Congressional legislation without fear that his veto would be overriden.
*The New Yorker has a say about “The undermining of the C.D.C.” (archived link) by physician and writer Dhruv Khullar (h/t Barry). It agrees with my view that RFK Jr. is perhaps the most dangerous of all Trump’s Cabinet appointments.
Two weeks ago, by inserting what must be the most notorious asterisk in modern public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caveated its long-standing position that vaccines do not cause autism. Under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a C.D.C. web page now contends that this is “not an evidence-based claim” and that research linking vaccines to autism has been “ignored by health authorities.” The fact that the original statement remains at all is due to an agreement with Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and the chair of the Senate health committee, who disregarded decades of Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism to advance his confirmation after extracting a set of flimsy commitments that Kennedy is now betraying. The Autism Science Foundation said that it is “appalled” by the C.D.C.’s new stance; the American Medical Association warned of “dangerous consequences.”
The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that it is hewing to “gold standard, evidence-based science”—a piece of doublespeak so thick that it might unsettle Orwell. Discounting dozens of rigorous studies that have analyzed millions of patients and failed to connect vaccines to autism, the C.D.C. website claims that about half of parents of children with autism believe vaccines contributed to that autism. It cited a decades-old paper that surveyed a few dozen parents who strongly embraced alternative medicine, at two private practices in the Northeast. The web page points out that autism rates have risen in recent decades and so has the number of infant vaccinations—an observation that might also be made about prestige TV shows and pumpkin-spice lattes. The H.H.S. will now provide “appropriate funding” for studies on vaccines and autism, and last week it appointed a physician with a history of vaccine skepticism as the second-in-command at the C.D.C. The episode puts to rest any doubts about whether Americans can still trust information from the nation’s top health agency.
At stake is a question of the quality of information that should be taken seriously in public discourse and how that information should be communicated. Science may be the most powerful engine for grasping reality, but it suffers a rhetorical disadvantage. In science, the burden of proof falls on the one aiming to overturn the “null hypothesis”—the default position that one thing doesn’t cause another. But conspiratorial thinking is fuelled by the inverse: self-assured conjecture that demands a level of refutation no amount of evidence can offer. Proving the absence of a connection will always be harder than speculating about its existence. The language of science is measured and provisional; the language of politics is declarative and bombastic. In September, President Donald Trump told pregnant women to “fight like hell” not to take Tylenol, because of a potentially increased risk of autism in children; his Food and Drug Administration clarified that “a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature.” Tylenol, the agency wrote, remains “the safest over-the-counter” option for treating fever or pain.
Now that sounds good, but, first of all, science doesn’t deal in “proof”. And both vaccine skeptics and proponents must buttress their position with evidence. The problem is not an asymmetry in how science works (see Bayes’s Theorem), but in the openness of scientists versus ideologues like RFK Jr. and his cronies. Nobody with any brains would accept the statement “a causal relationship has not been established” when in fact there are studies showing no causal relationship between vaccines and autism. The real problem is not an asymmetry between proponents of and detractors of a hypothesis, but the interference of the government with science:
The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. With few exceptions, both Republicans and Democrats have supported independent science, understanding that the nation benefits from research that promotes health, innovation, and economic growth. But since Trump returned to office his Administration has fired or muzzled government scientists with disfavored views on nutrition and climate change; cancelled funding for long-running surveys on food insecurity and global health; dismissed independent committees focussed on air pollution, health-care disparities, and hospital infections; and pulled support for research into vaccines. This month, leading members of the National Institutes of Health, who ascended to their roles in large part based on their criticism of COVID-era mandates, published an article arguing that we should plan for the next pandemic not by trying to identify dangerous pathogens or by developing vaccines and medications to mitigate their damage but by encouraging people to be healthier: by abstaining from smoking, by eating nutritious food, and by “getting up and walking more.”
“The best pandemic preparedness playbook,” the authors wrote, unironically, “is making America healthy again.” Leaving aside that mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the covid pandemic, and that a society might like to prepare both by promoting healthy habits and by investing in biotechnology, this ignores the fact that, in some outbreaks, young and healthy people have had among the highest rates of death, and that with any infectious disease many people will remain vulnerable no matter what they do. (This year, a variant of the H3N2 influenza virus, known as subclade K, has caused a surge in cases in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan, and appears to be most perilous for children and older adults.) The unpredictability of pathogens is precisely why a broad-based strategy is needed. Pushups won’t save you from Ebola.
Of course the article is correct, but really says nothing new. And its characterization of science is flawed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the New Yorker doesn’t just give short shrift ot science, but doesn’t understand science.
*Finally, there’s a provocative column in the Free Press that confirms what some of us have long suspected: “‘We’re all just winging it’: What the gender doctors say in private.” The article begins with a rise in the number of surgeries on adolescents and a general advocacy that goes along with the notion of “affirmative care.” One of the main organizations pushing this agenda is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Some distressing WPATH actions and statements were obtained by discovery in a federal court case in Alabama, which had restricted
For example, The Free Press and other publications have documented how families are pressured into approving the transition of minors with the unsubstantiated threat that a child will commit suicide otherwise. Or how false assurances are made about the safety and necessity of life-changing gender interventions, treatments that can cause many serious side effects, including infertility.
Last June, in another case that turned out poorly for the transgender advocacy groups, the Supreme Court ruled that state laws limiting youth transition were constitutional—thus ensuring a legal victory for Alabama. As the case by the plaintiffs against the Alabama law was coming to an end, representatives of WPATH urged the court to keep the videos under seal. They lost.
. . . One of the biggest revelations from the recordings is how these clinicians acknowledge performing unproven, seemingly experimental treatments—only it appears there is often no protocol being followed, no formal research being conducted, and no ethics-board approval being sought. These practitioners say their goal is to fulfill the “embodiment” desires of their patients, whatever these may be, and doing this may require “deviat[ing] from guidelines.”
From a WPATH conference in Montreal:
[British endocrinology consultant Leighton] Seal acknowledged that interventions are based on little to no evidence of efficacy. He said, “[W]e are doing procedures here where we don’t have outcome data. So unless you want to go to individual ethics boards in each hospital to get ethics permission to do those surgeries because they’re on the edge of the field of medicine, you need to have a mechanism around you to support you. Otherwise, you could be vulnerable. That’s our feeling.”
. . . .At the end of Seal’s session, a clinician from Utah said that she, too, was seeing people seek nonbinary interventions at a “dramatically increased” rate. And she wasn’t sure what to offer them.
The clinician emphasized that she had no problem with the novelty of nonbinary procedures. She even liked the idea of making a kind of “Pinterest board” of gender procedures that could be offered, according to the video.
She said that she sometimes felt like saying that both she and other WPATH clinicians were making it up as they went along: “Because I feel like we’re all just winging it, you know? And which is okay, you’re winging it too. But maybe we can just, like, wing it together.”
. . . and a bit of history:
The origin of pediatric gender transition began in the late 20th century as a cosmetic solution to a psychological problem. Until then, the entire field of gender medicine was tiny and primarily focused on “adult transsexuals.” These were largely middle-aged men seeking to pass as women.
The Dutch clinicians who first proposed medical transition for minors did so after observing that although the adult males said they were mostly satisfied with their decision to undergo procedures, their life circumstances had not always improved. The Dutch clinicians theorized that that was partly because of the difficulty of passing as female after experiencing the effects of male puberty, which left them with features such as broad shoulders and deep voices.
So the Dutch clinicians came up with a solution. What if they identified so-called “juvenile transsexuals” early in life, before the “wrong” puberty permanently altered them? What if they blocked a boy’s puberty, then put him on estrogen, followed by genital surgery, so that he could cosmetically pass as female as he entered adulthood?
In the 1990s, they put this idea into practice in what became known as the Dutch Protocol. Though never subjected to rigorous testing, it spread rapidly throughout the Western world. The word transsexual was discarded, and transgender became a catchall term for anyone whose “inner sense of gender” was at odds with the sex they were “assigned at birth.”
. . .De Vries [Annelou de Vries, “the leading figure behind the original Dutch Protocol”] and her co-authors cited the work of Florence Ashley, a Canadian jurist who identifies as transgender and who has put the matter even more emphatically. The goal of treatment, Ashley wrote, should be achievement of “gender euphoria” and “creative transfiguration,” which means “see[ing] the body as a gendered art piece that can be made ours through transition-related interventions.”
This new paradigm means that clinicians no longer understand themselves to be treating a mental-health condition, even if they tell insurance companies for billing purposes that’s what they’re doing. And even if they tell parents of minors and the public at large that the medical interventions they propose are “lifesaving.”
This is the only area of medicine I know if in which a patient can tell a physician not only what kind of treatment he/she wants, but a whole segment of the medical community urges the doctor to administer what the patient wants, even if there’s no evidence that it ameliorates the condition it’s supposed to help. “We’re just winging it” is a very damning admission, especially when it comes to completely changing someone’s body in ways that they may not understand, as well as rendering them sterile and usually unable to have an orgasm.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili rebukes Andrzej for messiness:
Hili: You’ve got a terrible mess behind the screen too.
Andrzej: I know, I’ll clean it up someday.
In Polish:
Hili: Za ekranem też masz straszny bałagan.
Ja: Wiem, kiedyś to posprzątam.
*******************
From Now That’s Wild:
From The Dodo Pet:
From Give Me a Sign:
Masih relates the tale of what can happen to a woman who doesn’t wear her hijab in public:
This happened yesterday , Watch this video and understand what hijab and “law enforcement” looks like under the Islamic Republic.
A young Iranian woman was waiting next to her furniture during a move.
Two “law enforcement” officers dragged her into the woods and beat her for… pic.twitter.com/qkT4jMx3Pn— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 3, 2025
From Luana: Coleman Hughes analyzes the persona and strategy of the odious Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, antisemite, misogynist, racist, and what else have you got?
This response to Nick Fuentes by @coldxman is a masterclass.
Level-headed clarity rather than hysterical pearl-clutching, addressing Fuentes in context, armed with the facts – this has it all. Well done. pic.twitter.com/f63LEO6gxE
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) December 4, 2025
Two from my feed. First, a roll call with cows!!!
A Brazilian farmer playfully calls out each cow’s name from his notebook, and the cows answer with distinct moos proof that daily routines have taught them to recognize their names.
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 4, 2025
Here’s an osprey that caught a huge pompano. The fish probably weighs more than the bird PLUS the bird is wet and underwater!
This eagle caught a fish almost heavier than itself. The weight plus water on its wings is insanepic.twitter.com/4tMPHLUWoC
— Epic Clip Vault (@EpicClipVault) December 3, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was murdered with Zyklon B immediately after arriving at Auschwitz. She was two years old and would be 86 today had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-05T11:30:38.367Z
Two from Dr. Cobb, who’s on the lecture circuit (see above). This is a repost of an original that Matthew found; I’m fascinated by the evolution and development of asymmetry in animals:
Look at the asymmetrical eyes! I wonder if they're directionally asymmetrical: that is, is the right eye always either the bigger or smaller one, or does the asymmetry fluctuate from individual to individual?
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-04T17:42:39.277Z
Linnaeus’s pet raccoon (it must have been imported):
Carl Linnaeus's beloved pet raccoon, Sjupp, was a gift from the King of Sweden, and regularly stole snacks from Linnaeus's students. This drawing is thought to be Sjupp. (LM/PF/ALS/1) #EYAPets
— The Linnean Society of London (@linneansociety.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T13:30:38.240Z
Paul Offitt and Vincent Racaniello have a good discussion of the latest junior/cdc mess on the 15-minute video version of Paul’s latest substack, Beyond the Noise, at url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHpg1lLI3-s
One of my friends is a retired opthamologist and he remarked that he was just finishing residency at the time mmrv came out and had seen the awful cases of diseased children (congenital rubella syndrome which can lead to autism) during his time in the hospital. He was so thankful that his wife could be vaccinated as they were about to start their family. I think he pointed out that now that is something that can cause autism…not getting your vaccination.
Yes it’s all awful. But it does little good for The Free Press to cite the American Medical Association as a reason why RFKJr is wrong. The AMA blew up its own credibility as a public health advocate. Their web site still says that “[banning] medically necessary gender transition-related care for minor patients [is] a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine [and] can have tragic health consequences, both mental and physical.”
https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-releases/ama-states-stop-interfering-health-care-transgender-children
Of course lots of what the AMA has to say on less controversial topics is helpful, but these kinds of own goals on “trans” give an easy out to any crank who wants to claim that vaccines cause autism.
I had dropped TFP as a trusted resource several months ago..but I still highly trust Vincent and Paul and their material. Besides, they are true subject matter experts in the areas they comment on.
Mike Hart — yes regarding erosion of the credibility of generally trusted sources due to capture by gender ideology. I file it under Helen Joyce’s general comment: Gender ideology breaks medicine, science, and society.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I don’t believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn’t treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. -Walt Disney, entrepreneur and animator (5 Dec 1901-1966)
Weather today : 100% chance of Dialectic, with Reflexivity in the early evening. Extended negation possible, with Aufheben accumulation to last until The Last Man at the End of History.
“The NYT is still trying to find out who’s responsible for ordering the murder of two survivors of a U.S. military strike on a boat presumed to be carrying drugs.”
It is not quite a liberal value to presume a man is guilty of murder rather than first establishing that fact beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, is it? I hope we haven’t digressed to a system of conviction by public opinion and partisan wrangling.
“Debate over when a shipwrecked crew member loses protection from attack misses the point,” said Geoffrey S. Corn, who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues. “The real problem here is the dubious and legally overbroad assertion that the United States is justified in using wartime authority against a criminal problem.”
I agree with Mr. Corn, but I would caution people not to conflate that larger issue with the narrow one about operational responsibility for the strike on a specific boat. The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has ruled that the broader campaign against drug-runners is legal. It is for Congress and the courts to wrangle over that with the executive branch if they disagree—not for military members to overrule the Commander-in-Chief. The unresolved issues regarding the specific strike in September remain even if the overall campaign were undeniably legal (and wise), but unless we want to truly become one of those banana republics we so like to deride, it would be best to remember that people in this country are still innocent until proven guilty—even when you don’t like them—and especially when they haven’t even been charged.
I agree. Until there is a conviction of murder, it does not sacrifice clarity to refer to this business as the killing of two survivors. Indeed it makes things more clear, because it is has not even been established yet that the killing was even unlawful. Calling it murder not only presupposes that it was murder, but forecloses the possibility that it may have been justified in the circumstances.
Geoffrey Corn says, “The real problem here is the dubious and legally overbroad assertion that the United States is justified in using wartime authority against a criminal problem.”
Can anyone enlighten me as to what legal or Constitutional limits exist to prevent an American President from ordering the Navy (or Air Force) to attack and sink any boat he chooses for any reason at all in international waters? Under the Law of the Sea, the world’s maritime nations are supposed to refrain from interfering with free innocent passage except under a declaration of war, which changes everything. Under free passage, the U.S. would have no authority to so much as stop a ship, much less search it, seize it and cargo, and arrest its crew. (This was the casus belli for the War of 1812.) No authority but the writ of its guns.
International Law, as Natasha Hausdorff reminds us, is a set of conventions that most countries observe most of the time in their mutual self-interest. The best reason for not interdicting maritime traffic is that the molested ship’s country of registry might retaliate, or declare war on you. If President Trump is not worried about those possibilities, I’d like to know what guardrails currently exist to keep him from doing that. If guardrails exist, why aren’t they currently effective?
Is it possible that any head of government can attack a ship in international waters if he is willing to face the consequences?
Sure, Congress could deem this a high crime or misdemeanor and impeach him, but this is a drastic step to take (and would just replace the current President with a like-minded VP who will pick another like-minded VP to cover the risk that he himself is impeached.) But is there any existing law on this matter?
In Parliaments there are unwritten centuries-old conventions in the relationship between the Monarch (who is the C-in-C of the military, to whom members swear allegiance) and the Cabinet drawn from the elected Parliament. But America hasn’t been around long enough to have reliable conventions. Your rules have to be written down somewhere and Separation of Powers is written down.
Appreciate the comment, Leslie.
I care little about violations of “international law” that aren’t incorporated in US statutes. (The critics of the international “rules-based order” are not wrong in seeing it as a form of colonialism and Western self-interest.) One might incur reputational risk, but strong countries can bear it. My hesitation on the drug-boat strikes isn’t moral or international-legal—it’s institutional. Who decides?
People can dress up their preferences and assumptions in all sorts of theories, historical examples, moral claims of universality, etc. I find it mostly to be the type of self-serving bunk on which educated people thrive, so I’ll spare you the “arguments.” I default toward suspicion of concentrated power, especially when far removed from the people it governs. That disposition leads me to favor national sovereignty over international constructs; state and local governance over national; legislative branches over executive. To shift from the more local or dispersed, I require reasons: a national government is more suited to effective military operations than is a state or loose confederation of states; a president can more quickly decide and act when time is of the essence and risk is high than can a deliberative political body; and so on.
I don’t believe the drug-boat campaign falls into the category of requiring rapid response. We can deliberate about the proper path forward—military, law enforcement, diplomacy. Should Congress choose to authorize the current campaign—or should they decline to restrain the President’s expansive claims—then I am fine (procedurally) with interdicting alleged drug-boats on the high seas.
Military perspective: we like clear lines of authority and accountability. Several elements of this debate can make some military officers uneasy: the blurriness of the line between executive and legislative authority on drug-boat interdiction; the heated public debate about whether it is primarily a military, law enforcement, or diplomatic matter; the gray zone between legitimate target and extrajudicial killing; the long-standing nature of the drug trafficking problem and the lack of an “imminent” threat.
A ruling by the highest court or affirmative action in Congress would place people at ease; without that, the campaign can come across as lethal force directed at the whim of one man. One could argue—and I have—that any number of US military actions over the last decades were misguided and should have been explicitly authorized by Congress. What makes this matter different is that the military can readily accept killing those who are armed and can retaliate—or even killing those who are unarmed but directly support those who are armed. But killing those who are doing “harm” but do not and cannot engage in a military manner is a different beast. Ultimately, engaging Congress can help ensure order and discipline in the ranks and provide the captain confidence that the nation has his back when he pulls the trigger.
I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtful response, Doug. You have identified what I was having a hard time getting to: the institutional control is exactly it. Without resolving that locus, it will never be possible to be clear that the generalities or the specifics of any operation such as this are or aren’t legal. It is conceivable that the President as Commander-in-Chief can order the military under his command to do anything not prohibited by (Congressional) law. Any order he gives, including, “Take no prisoners,” or “Shoot that wounded guy floating in a life belt,” would be consistent with the serviceman’s obligation to 1) obey orders and 2) defend the Constitution, since the President is, under the Constitution, the C-in-C.
Any order he gives must take precedence over any other orders, such as the written general orders in training manuals about how to deal with shipwrecked mariners, wounded hors de combat soldiers, aviators in parachutes having bailed out, and troublesome non-combatant civilians encountered during the mission. (AIUI, these instructions amount to Executive regulations, which the appropriate Executive Dept, in this case the Dept. of Defence, can modify as it sees fit. They aren’t laws which only Congress can amend.)
As you’ve pointed out about the Mark Kelly video, it is not so clear that an enlisted person or junior officer can decide that an order is so obviously illegal that he will go to prison if he obeys it, and will be excused if he refuses it. For all the junior sailor knows, with his finger on the trigger, “that wounded guy floating” is a person so dangerous to the Republic that he must be killed even if helpless. When Osama bin Laden fell, did anyone say, “Hold your fire, he’s down,” or did the SEALs shoot him enough times to be sure he was really dead? (I don’t know in fact.)
And the MSM will probably agree and want to rush past this incident. However, we shouldn’t ignore another point: Once again the MSM pushed out a hit-piece based on anonymous sources for the political value of the story without any concern for so-called journalistic standards. Half the country has stopped paying attention to what they write or say, but in the meantime a large minority undoubtedly miss the follow-up (if there is one) and are convinced that our leaders are crazed villains. For some reason, though, when Obama killed a U.S. citizen with a drone-strike, there wasn’t a problem. The MSM is out to get Trump, still, and they cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
Who specifically are you referring to? Anwar al-Awlaki?
To mis-quote the Sopranos: “That [Anwar al Awkaki] guy.. he’s gotta go.”
I’d have launched the done myself if Obama had let me.
My enemy’s life has negative moral value to me.
D.A.
NYC
Right. There is a huge difference between an identified targeted combatant and two non-specifically-named guys who may arguably have been combatants at one time but who now have been removed from any ability to be combatants. Seems to me that there were only two rational courses: 1) Fish them out of the drink and take them in for questioning, or 2) let them be for the moment, since they seem to be calling for help, find out who shows up, and collect further people to gain intelligence from. I think that’s what a police force manual would recommend.
For sure Mr. Hemperstein – and Leslie: there is a large legal difference.
“Don’t ya know that you can count me … out!” (Beatles)… for blowing up drug runners. There’s a lot of drugs….about (so I’ve heard), even in NYC. Maritime murder isn’t the way to go about tackling that problem.
Yemini-American terrorists that pose civilizational risk however … that’s different matter.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Luana, thanks for bringing the Coleman Hughes clip on Fuentes. I was not aware of the very clear two basis vectors which form the plane of Fuente’s existence and methodology. Had never heard of Rumble, but better armed now from this video.
I’d only heard of rumble b/c gender realist TERF “ttExulansic” had some of her videos kind of shunted there bc youtube is/was quite “gender affirming”. It is a pretty right wing, silly outfit I think. But like her, there is some talent there.
all the best Jim,
D.A.
NYC
Thanks (I think) for the brief trip down memory lane — “orthhonormal basis vectors” and my struggles with matrix algebra.
You think right, Barbara. Have found the basis vector concept to age well since I first saw it in sophomore linear algebra in 1967. Gram-schmidt orthogonalization and the like if memory serves.
In my opinion, the end of Prohibition should not be celebrated. I would argue that the benefits of recreational drinking (which are quite real) need to be weighed against the costs of alcoholism and DUI deaths. A third very important factor, is that Prohibition (in the US) led to considerable increase in crime (including murder). In the end, with all of these considerations, I oppose Prohibition as a practical matter, while supporting it in abstract. I should say that I have consumed limited quantities of alcohol, so I am hardly innocent.
That’s a reasonable balancing as far as it goes, but it does not go into the main effects (not moral intentions) of Prohibition — the entrenching of the Sicilian Mafia into American life, and the subsequent boom in gambling addiction, protection rackets, other extortion, official corruption, etc. etc. Even today, 0.5%–3% of the overall cost of construction in NYC is LCN rake-off.¹
And we still have the equally damaging “War on Drugs”. In more charitable moments I like to think that if the religious fanatics (e.g. the WCTU) could have seen the future then they would at least have hesitated a bit in their moral crusade.
. . . . .
¹ According to GPT-5 data.
Cheers Barbara. As a new atty once I had a choice of fighting the war on drugs as a defense atty (for the reasons you cite) – and doing other things. I chose to counter the war on drugs.
Legislating morality, what people do with/to their bodies (abortion, drugs, etc.), is a personal matter.
D.A.
NYC
Nancy Reagan got castigated for her “Just Say No” stance. Perhaps one should say “Just Say Yes” and let the chips fall where they may and let private philanthropy assist addicts as they may wish. (Hoping innocent third parties are not killed due to the consequences of drug addiction.)
Personally, “Just Say No” has worked fine for me.
Considering the heat China has gotten from Western moralists about manufacturing Fentanyl precursors (more cheaply than the West does/can), I suggest China simply stop manufacturing the precursors. Then the West can complain about China no longer cheaply manufacturing the precursors and complain about the West having to manufacturing the precursors more expensively.
Another externality to place on the balancing scale, inspired by the opening frame of the embedded video showing a crowd of men (and just one shit-faced-looking woman) celebrating in the tavern.
The principal driver of Prohibition was women’s suffrage. Married women and their children were (and are) the principal victims of alcohol-induced violence and penury inflicted on them by heavy-drinking husbands in all walks of life. Men drank until their money was gone, and women earned no money they could call their own. As Mencken observed, “Broad is the smile on the face of the tavern-keeper when the working man gets more time off to spend with his family.” The proliferation of machines that become very dangerous when operated by drunks, whose deaths would impoverish their widows and orphans, forced some kind of cultural reckoning as we have today, but it took a long time. Old movies that depict friendly cops advising intoxicated motorists to head straight home and sleep it off jar me more than scenes of pickaninnies in the cotton fields.
Deaths due to cirrhosis of the liver declined during the decade of Prohibition, so clearly not all drinkers, even dependent ones, switched to speakeasies, whiskey by medical prescription, and Al Capone’s network. Barriers do deter consumption. But what we can’t measure are fewer ruined families. As with the modern drug trade, most of the crime victims were criminals themselves.
First wave feminism championed temperance, eugenics, sanitarianism, curbs on “yellow-peril” immigration, and human perfectibility. It saw the franchise as the means to get there. Like many socialist-progressive movements it originated in the Christian churches against the Demon Rum.
Prohibition is an object lesson into how little of our guilty pleasures we will sacrifice to benefit innocent others. What blind-sided the Temperance movement was the large number of young women who took to drinking in public and the resulting licentiousness with great enthusiasm after the Great War.
At least to me, the lady does not look like she has consumed alcohol in excess
Another factor (other than women’s suffrage) was the need for Ethyl alcohol for war. Quote from Wikipedia.
“You couldn’t easily make powerful military explosives like TNT or picric acid from just alcohol during WWI; alcohol (ethanol/ether) was a
solvent or plasticizer in making smokeless powders (nitrocellulose), while main ingredients were nitric/sulfuric acids and benzene/toluene, but simple incendiaries like Molotov cocktails used alcohol as fuel, and sailors sometimes purified alcohol from toxic additives. The real story involves industrial chemical processes, not simple home chemistry from alcohol. “
Re the recommendations on the cat’s antibiotic: several medications I’ve had for my cats over the years have had such warning labels, noting the drugs could cause dizziness and stating that one should not drive while taking the medication! The prescribers must just use generic labels, regardless of what being is involved, as there are all sorts of cautions that apply only to adult humans.
I can see a lawsuit in the making: “But it didn’t SAY not to let my cat drive!”
Love those warnings – I’ve seen some on meds in the process of transferring most of my wealth to my local vet … these many years.
I just disregard them now because “Aussie”* is too old to drive anyway at 15. We had to take the car keys away a few years ago.
D.A.
NYC
*identifies as an Australian shepherd.
😂
There is discussion now about putting obese cats on Ozempic.
Oy. Aren’t they already vain enough?
Love the cow roll call. That’s amazing (if it’s real)!
Not so much love for RFK, Jr. Even after he leaves office, the CDC will have been hollowed out. Everyone who can find somewhere else to do actual science or scientifically sound health advocacy will leave the agency. It will take a decade or more to recover.
Not so sure what will happen to Hegseth. He may be run out of office, but probably not by this specific incident. There’s just too much vagueness about whether the two surviving sailors were (i) trying to get back into the boat to save themselves or whether they were (ii) trying to get back into the boat in order to go back to the fight. They can’t be interrogated.
My guess is that this particular incident will fade into the mists. But it will have the broader effect of providing another point of criticism. At least two of the reports on TV I saw last night had Democratic spokesmen pivot from discussing the not-so-clear boat attacks to the earlier incident where Hegseth misused a consumer phone app to convey war plans. In other words, there are signs that Hegseth’s opponents are giving up on the boats and moving their criticisms of Hegseth elsewhere. We’ll see. The pressure from multiple sources may indeed push him out.
Yep, the cow video was great.
Meanwhile, this may soon be of greater interest (harvested summaries):
Leqembi (lecanemab) is an antibody treatment for Alzheimer’s that targets amyloid plaques but faces challenges crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB), relying on intravenous delivery to get enough drug into the brain, leading to side effects like brain swelling (ARIA) and prompting research into technologies like focused ultrasound to temporarily open the BBB for better delivery and safety.
Patients receiving Leqembi are required to undergo a specific schedule of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to monitor for Amyloid-Related Imaging Abnormalities (ARIA), a potential side effect.
“We’re all just winging it”.
They are, and they know it. I’ve seen the results of many phalloplasty results on women and there is no consistency at all. One had her skin tube attached to her stomach rather than her groyne. There’s no set procedure, or best practice, not even protocols about whether to remove leg or arm skin. One woman, Scott Newgent, had such a disaster when they took flesh off her arm to create a skin tube for her crotch, that she is concerned that she may not be able to continue her job because it involves typing, and the nerves in her wrist have been so badly damaged.
One of the Frankenstein doctors, Dr Crane, is on video telling his target audience (including children) that “breasts can grow back”. He followed it up saying that that can happen if you gain a lot of weight. No, you just grow a lot of fatty tissue if you gain weight 😡
Another thing to note is that these surgeons usually get away with mutilating people as their contracts are so vague and hard to fight against.
Dr Sidhbh Gallagher, one of the worst butchers, doesn’t even carry insurance now. One woman died after Gallagher operated on her, and she regularly removes the breasts of women who are above the BMI limit for surgery. When they have complications from being overweight, like stitches breaking and infections, then she washes her hands of them. She recently moved her practice to another state, another thing they do to dodge accountability.
I’d better stop now or I will rant for the next two hours 😡
I’m so past my limit, Joolz, tempting the editor to spank me…. but I’ll just loudmouth myself in again…
YES!
D.A.
NYC – signing out.
If you hadn’t commented, I would be blissfully ignorant of the fact but my dictation software can’t spell ‘groin’. I usually read stuff over and pick up mistakes, but I missed that one. 🤦♀️ 😂
Re science doesn’t deal in ‘proof’ — of course it doesn’t, in the abstract mathematical sense. But in the New Yorker piece, “the burden of proof” clearly refers to legal and common-sense notions of empirical evidential proof — the balance of probabilities, beyond all reasonable doubt, etc. I’m fully with the New Yorker on this one, despite its many other failings w.r.t. science.
Re De Vries’ “creative transfiguration” — in my adamant opinion (‘IMAO’?), anyone promoting “transfiguration” outside of an explicitly religious context is a serious danger to themselves and others.
WPATH — Who’s Profiting from All the Transgender Harm
(With excellent help from GPT-5. Honestly, it’s snarkier than I am. Glad I’m retired.)
Re the replacement for elves on shelves — “an iguana on a ciabatta”.
(Thanks again to GPT-5.)
A croc on a rock?
Yup. Yours is clearly the intended one. Again, I’m glad I’m retired. Once you’ve seen one reptile….
I thought it might be a gator on a tater.
As we say in the Southern Appalachians, “Hold on to yore tater!” Well, Doggies!
Even better! Sho’nuff.
It does look a lot more like a potato or bread roll than a rock.
GPT-5: “A type of reptile that rhymes with ‘potato’ is ‘gator’, short for ‘alligator’.”
But, is that archosaur an alligator, or a different family of crocodilian?
Gator on a tater
The osprey video was quite something. It came out of the water with the fish head-forward, and it looked to me that it was doing a bit more to turn the fish to a more aerodynamic configuration as it flew away. I’ve seen an osprey reposition a large fish to head-forward, belly down (I was impressed.) I’m guessing others here have, too. The cow video was very cool, too.
Other topics: RFK Jr. has been a crank and a menace for a long time. Him as head of HHS — many of us are simply at a loss for polite language at this point. Already we have an increase of morbidity and mortality from vaccine preventable diseases. No cogent response for the on the continuing measles outbreak, for example.
WPATH — the should be reckoning and consequences for this ongoing medical scandal.
Prohibition — glad to see commentary on why Prohibition seemed to be a good idea. But, then, I’m not a teetotaler, either.
Regarding other news, the great guitarist Steve Cropper died. (Yes, this happened 12/3, so I’m a couple days late)