April 1, 2025

THIS JUST IN: Hunter Biden agrees to give up law license in Washington DC. Just the News is reporting that:

“Former first son Hunter Biden has agreed to give up his law license in Washington, D.C., according to an affidavit that was unsealed by the Board on Professional Responsibility on Tuesday.”

The DC Bar docs can be found here.

Posted at 6:38 pm by Charles Glasser 119

DOGE RAISED THREE QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE ANSWERED: In my latest Substack column, I ask the questions nobody else seems to be asking about why multiple Congresses, Inspectors-General and Chief Executives failed to expose the deep-rooted waste, fraud and corruption now being made public.

Posted at 6:34 pm by Mark Tapscott 85

WOOF! Scott Jennings Drops Leslie Stahl for Asking Jewish Hostage If He Thinks Hamas Meant to Starve Him:

60 Minutes prominently featured in Richard Landes 2005 Pallywood video about how the Palestinians run a propaganda factory to supply material for useful idiots in the western media, and Stahl’s question is a reminder that nothing has changed in the news division of the now badly tarnished “Tiffany Network:”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 45

“REMEMBER THE WHIGS!” IS AN UNUSUAL RALLYING CRY:

I dunno. The Occam’s Razor answer is probably that they are just that stupid.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Stephen Green 87

COVID, FIVE YEARS ON: How It Started: “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”

How it’s going: Make America Healthy Again:

The mass culling of the labor force of the Department of Health and Human Services began on Tuesday morning. And early indications are that it’s a bloodbath.

Multiple officials who work in the department told The Bulwark that entire offices were being eliminated. Much of the focus appeared to be on the administrative side of things. But not all of it. We were sent an email, for instance, that Vence Bonham, the acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, told colleagues this morning that he had been “unexpectedly” placed on administrative leave. He had a 20-year career as a researcher and leader at NIH. Within a few moments, it was gone.

To get a fuller sense of the despair, head over to the NIH’s Reddit forum; or the HHS forum. It’s bleak. That’s what happens, we suppose, when a weeks-old administration decides that it will eliminate 10,000 full-time employees from one of its most critical departments.

Elsewhere in HHS, another email we were sent shows that people put on leave were told they would no longer have access to their buildings starting today. That today happened to be April Fools was treated as a nice little sadistic touch. Was this a ruse?

Of course not. In fact, quite the opposite. Colleagues said they were spending their mornings fielding distraught emails and calls from friends whose lives had been upended, while simultaneously checking their own inbox to see if the ax would drop on them.

This news may not be generating the same level of sympathy it’s receiving at Bill Kristol’s Bulkwark:

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 151

THE NEW SPACE RACE: GITAI finalizes robotic arm study for Japan’s crewed lunar rover. “The rover is being designed to support crewed exploration of the Moon’s polar regions as part of Japan’s contribution to NASA’s Artemis program, providing astronauts with a mobile, pressurized habitat that allows them to travel, live and work on the lunar surface for up to 30 days.”

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green 5

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Tesla Owners Not Connected to DOGE or Musk Are Acceptable Victims, According to 31% of Democrats.

A surprising number of Americans approve of the rash of violence against Teslas amid Elon Musk’s work helping President Donald Trump with the Department of Government Efficiency.

Self-identified atheists, Democrats, young people, and supporters of the policies of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt*., are the most likely to approve of the violence and the least likely to consider it “domestic terrorism.”

Arsonists have hurled Molotov cocktails into Teslas and Tesla dealerships—not just in the U.S. but also in European countries like France and Germany—as protesters hold banners reading, “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy.” Activists have also published a map claiming to show the location of every Tesla owner across the U.S. The website with this map turns the user’s cursor into a Molotov cocktail icon.

“Earth Day” is April 22nd. The cognitive dissonance that will be on display from the same people who demand we “save the earth” while wanting to burn electric cars, and at a minimum make their ownership as toxic as possible, will be astonishing to watch.

Or as Charles Cooke writes: Burn the Planet to Spite Elon Musk. “From a purely chemical perspective, I have never been of the view that mankind can do literally anything to the earth and yield no consequences. But, equally, I have always considered the catastrophism to be uniformly silly, frequently pretextual, and, above all, unduly pessimistic about the prospect of human innovation. Watching the speed and fervor with which so many American progressives have subordinated their environmentalism to their dislike of Elon Musk has done nothing to change my mind. There is no such thing as an optional cataclysm.”

*Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.

Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 68

AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?:  In “How Trump Can Ensure Fair Admissions,” Kristen Shapiro has an excellent suggestion:  Require schools to publish and report admissions data in a way that would make it much easier for the federal government to detect race discrimination.

My colleagues and I had a number of similar (but not identical) ideas when I first joined the Commission on Civil Rights.  But it was around the tail-end of the GWBush Administration and the beginnings of the Obama Administration.  And it was pre-SFFA. Our ideas didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell then.  But maybe things are different now.

Posted at 4:26 pm by Gail Heriot 18

DISNEY ACTORS SURE MAKE AUDIENCES WANT TO FLOCK TO THE BIG SCREEN THESE DAYS: John Boyega Says Star Wars Is ‘So White That a Black Person Existing in It’ Is a Big Deal: Toxic Fans Are ‘Okay With Us Playing the Friend’ but We ‘Cant Touch Their Heroes.’

John Boyega called out “Star Wars” for being “so white” during an interview as part of the new Apple TV+ original documentary “Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood” (via Entertainment Weekly). Boyega debuted as Finn in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and reprised the character in “The Last Jedi” and “The Rise of Skywalker.” His role in the sequel trilogy led to online harassment from racist and toxic “Star Wars” fans upset with a Black actor playing a lead hero in the space franchise.

“Lemme tell ya, ‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something,” Boyega said in the documentary. “You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough. It’s like, they just scattered that in there, bro!”

“They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering,’” the actor added, while also acknowledging that being cast in the franchise was a “fundamental moment” in his career.

Evergreen: The Critical Drinker: Why Modern Movies Suck — They Hate Their Own Fans (Video; NSFW language):

In addition to trashing his fans, Boyega makes Disney sound like an extremely toxic environment in his Variety profile. With all of the company’s myriad ongoing woes, it may be best to boycott all of their products, just to be on the safe side.

Related: As Snow Woke Crashes and Burns, Hollywood Scrambles to Cancel Woke Projects In “Crisis Mode Panic.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 128

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Firearm Due Process Protection Act Will Proceed To The House Floor. “H.R. 2184 is sponsored by Republican Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota’s 6th District, who also serves as House Majority Whip. The bill seeks to provide law-abiding Americans, improperly denied their right to legally purchase a firearm due to administrative errors during a background check, with legal recourse, for which there is shockingly no provision at this time. It is designed to enforce accountability within the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) by mandating finalized decisions on record correction requests within 60 days.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 15

PROMISE KEPT: Trump administration has arrested 113K migrants, deported over 100K since taking office. “Illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border have also fallen to levels not seen in decades — hitting a stunning new low in March — with DHS sources calling it ‘the Trump effect.'”

No word on self-deportations, not that there’s any reliable way to keep track of those. But you have to guess those are way up, too, as the crackdown continues.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green 73

CYNICAL PUBLIUS: Grifterism: The Economic Engine of Democrats.

It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?

It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)

Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.

(Before I explain these classes, I realize that there are some readers who will jump all over these categories and tell me I am being too absolute in describing them. Yes, Elon Musk is a good Billionaire. Yes, there are bad Productives who exploit the powerless. Yes, there are many entirely productive people in government who are not Grifters. Yes, the nice old blind lady down the street deserves the support given to the Dependent class. Yet, as the saying goes, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

On to the four classes of Grifterism.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green 107