April 25, 2025

FASTER, PLEASE:

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 3

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: ‘Gone Off The Rails’: Colorado Dems Stir Up Hornet’s Nest After Passing One Of America’s Most Extreme Anti-Gun Laws.

The law, SB25-003, bans the sale, transfer and manufacture of most semiautomatic firearms unless prospective gun owners obey a range of new requirements, including training mandates, tests and sheriff-issued eligibility cards. Republicans, like state Rep. Ty Winter, say it’s a deliberate effort to choke off lawful gun ownership through bureaucracy and paperwork — a view increasingly shared by Second Amendment organizations now mobilizing to fight the law in court. (RELATED: Two Blue States Launch ‘Tip Lines’ To Snitch On Gun Owners)

“This bill is putting a paywall in front of a God-given, unalienable right — and that’s the right to self-defense and the right to keep a free nation,” Winter, assistant minority leader in the Colorado House, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Gun rights aren’t a red or blue issue. Gun rights are an American issue. We forget what the Constitution is for — it’s not to go hunting. It’s not to go target shooting. It’s to keep a nation free. It’s to keep a government in check. And I think that’s the first thing our colleagues across the aisle don’t realize.”

Oh, they realize it.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Stephen Green 83

I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: Andor Creator Explains That Shocking Assault Scene: “We’re All the Product of Rape.”

Disney+’s acclaimed Andor has stretched the creative boundaries of Star Wars in countless ways, bringing a grown-up sensibility to a galaxy far, far away.

Yet even by Andor standards, a scene from the second season is leaving fans shocked: An Imperial officer tries to violently rape a Rebel fugitive, Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), who is hiding out in a farming settlement while Imperial troops are rounding up “undocumented” citizens (read some sample reactions below).

The sequence plays out over the course of the show’s third episode (the first three episodes were released all at once on Tuesday) with the officer’s flirtation with Bix turning growing increasingly persistent and eventually cumulating with a brutal life-and-death struggle. Bix eventually gets the upper hand and the officer is killed. But Andorboldly leaves zero ambiguity as to what viewers just witnessed as Bix screams, “He tried to rape me!”

Star Wars is a franchise that has never — in film form — shown even consensual sex. During its first season, Andor pushed the envelope with scenes that suggested sex was about to take place, or just had (much like old Hollywood films during the Hays Code censorship era).

When asked about the Bix scene, Andor creator Tony Gilroy explained to The Hollywood Reporter that when telling a story about a war, shying away from sexual assault didn’t feel truthful.

“I get one shot to tell everything I know — or can discover, or that I’ve learned — about revolution, about battles, with as many incidents and as many colors as I can get in there, without having [the story] tip over,” says Gilroy. “I mean, let’s be honest, man: The history of civilization, there’s a huge arterial component of it that’s rape. All of us who are here — we are all the product of rape. I mean armies and power throughout history [have committed rape]. So to not touch on it, in some way … It just was organic and it felt right, coming about as a power trip for this guy. I was really trying to make a path for Bix that would ultimately lead to clarity — but a difficult path to get back to clarity.”

We’ve come a long way (baby) from 1977, when George Lucas was promoting his then-new film called Star Wars and telling interviewers:

“When I did [American] Graffiti, I discovered that making a positive film is exhilarating,” he said. “I thought, Maybe I should make a film like this for even younger kids. Graffiti was for sixteen-year-olds; this [Star Wars] is for ten- and twelve-year-olds, who have lost something even more significant than the teenager. I saw that kids today don’t have any fantasy life the way we had—they don’t have Westerns, they don’t have pirate movies…. the real Errol Flynn, John Wayne kind of adventures. Disney had abdicated its reign over the children’s market, and nothing had replaced it.”

If Lucas had thought that “Disney had abdicated its reign over the children’s market,” he had no idea what they would do to his franchise after acquiring the rights to it:

UPDATE: The Critical Drinker on Andor Season 2: A Rough Start.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 277

KAROL MARKOWICZ: Quit gaslighting us — elite groupthink drove the COVID disaster.

Toward the end of President Trump’s first term, groupthink on the left had become overwhelming, as virtue-signalers policed one another to make sure no one stepped out of line.

The COVID era collided with cancel culture and created a uniquely poisonous herd mentality.

In his new book “Abundance of Caution,” David Zweig lays out how one narrative developed to enforce the liberal line on COVID policies.

On June 29, 2020, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement to support reopening schools in the fall. The group “strongly advocate[d] that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.”

But when conservatives cheered, the AAP realized that opening schools was becoming a Republican-coded ideal — and, to its horror, Trump started citing the AAP statement to push local political officials into following its recommendation.

Just two weeks later, on July 10, the AAP issued a coded about-face: “Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics.”

That statement was joined by three powerful special-interest groups that don’t normally act in concert with the AAP — Weingarten’s AFT, the National Education Association, and the School Superintendents Association.

Which is why earlier this week, Weingarten tried to deflect from her central role in keeping schools closed with a massive case of smug condescension: ‘Don’t Call Me Sweetheart:’ Martha MacCallum Blasts Teachers’ Boss Randi Weingarten Over Sexist Comment.

Fox News host Martha MacCallum blasted teachers’ union boss Randi Weingarten for the sexist comment she made to the anchor, calling her “sweetheart” several times.

During Tuesday’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” the host was talking to Weingarten about the major parental rights case being heard in the United States Supreme Court against the Maryland public school system that forces students to participate in “instruction” that includes LGBTQ readings and other LGBTQ-themed “education.”

“Martha, Martha, Martha, sweetheart, sweetheart, listen to me,” the teachers’ union boss said when MacCallum was winning the argument against the LGBTQ push by teachers in schools.

“Please, don’t call me sweetheart,” MacCallum interjected, as she shook her head and looked down furiously.

Flashback: The Smug Liars’ “Screw-You” Party.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 28

MESSAGE SENT: DON’T WALK AWAY FROM THESE TALKS. Trump: Prepared to Attack Iran ‘Willingly’ With No Nuclear Deal. “Negotiations between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program will return Saturday to the secluded sultanate of Oman, where experts on both sides will start hammering the technical details of any possible deal.”

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green 81

EXCLUSIVE: ‘The Mississippi Miracle Is Real,’ Gov. Tate Reeves Says Of Soaring Educational Outcomes.

The Associated Press in 2023 referred to the state’s skyrocketing test scores for fourth graders as the “Mississippi Miracle,” explaining, “Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022.”

An updated National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report card from 2024 shows Mississippi leading the nation in demographic-adjusted 4th- and 8th-grade scores and it went viral on social media.

The chart also caught the attention of Vice President JD Vance, who tweeted, “This is pretty incredible. Smart education reform drastically improved Mississippi’s schools.”

“It’s truly remarkable, and it’s something I’m very, very proud of, and it’s something that even Vice President Vance has started tweeting about a time or two, and so it’s been kind of interesting,” Reeves told the Caller.

Much more like this, please.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green 145

OH, MY:

The usual suspects say the arrest is a sign of Trump’s lawlessness because of course they do.

Developing…

Posted at 2:42 pm by Stephen Green 182

GOOD NEWS: SOMEONE’S STILL DOING ACTUAL COLLEGE. In an abortion discussion, “the students exceeded my expectations. They were willing to share their own positions, admit when they weren’t sure of things, and disagree without rancor.” The fact that it is entirely reasonable for this to exceed expectations is a grave condemnation of campus life today. Glad that UNC is giving the old ways a shot at its School of Civic Life and Leadership.

Posted at 2:39 pm by Robert Shibley 6

THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: New analysis casts doubt on ‘biosignatures’ found on planet K2-18b.

Jake Taylor of the University of Oxford, who studies the atmospheres of far-away planets with the James Webb Space Telescope, did a quick reanalysis of the starlight filtering through K2-18b’s atmosphere. He used a simple method to look for the tell-tale signals of gas molecules of any kind.

He was “agnostic” in his approach, and did not look specifically for the exciting sulfur-based gases that, on Earth, are primarily associated with life-forms such as marine microbes.

“I wanted to not ‘assume’ what molecules would be in the atmosphere,” Taylor told NPR in an email. “I directly analysed the transmission spectrum that they analysed, in order to have a similar comparison.”

The results he got suggested that there’s too much noise in the data to draw any conclusions.

“Agnostic” seems like the wise approach for pretty much any scientist to use, yes?

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green 26

JOHNNY CAB CONFESSIONS: Tom Friedman Ditches Cabbies, Embraces Our Robot Overlords.

Friedman has always seen the future — this is a man who once revealed the world to be flat, but not before accurately predicting that McDonald’s would end armed conflict. And he is sounding the alarm bell once again with his newest shift: he’s moved on from cabs to the post-human future. Yes, Friedman has thrown in with the bots and declared himself a “Waymo Democrat,” adopting the name of the driverless cars that he claims are the bellwether technology of a better, more sensibly centrist future.

While respecting Friedman’s dogged adherence to the one successful rhetorical framework he has ever properly known — he will forever be the Man in the Backseat— we should be at least mildly amused and/or alarmed that he has cast his lot with our robot overlords. His answer to the question “How do we get more Americans making stuff again” is to become the country of “advanced manufacturing and AI.”

By this he means that a productive new generation of American manufacturing would see the United States winning the race to replace ourselves with machines that no longer require the use of human beings at all, save for mechanical upkeep or oversight. Why? Because Friedman drove in robo-taxis in China, Phoenix, and San Francisco and is convinced that this represents the automated future of all mankind.

From his point of view, that might be for the best, considering his rather misanthropic view of mankind: Benjamin Kerstein: Thomas Friedman is decadent and depraved.

There is a stunning amount that is wrong about this rant. In fact, there is everything wrong with it. But the key phrase is: “Ours is, for now, still a free country*, and if people aren’t engaging in violent acts, or harassing other students in or out of class, they should be free to say whatever they want, including advocating a Palestinian state of whatever size they want.”

But these people are universally engaging in violence, harassing students, and advocating for a Palestinian state not just of any size but one that replaces Israel entirely while slaughtering and/or expelling its Jewish population. Friedman, with the walls of privilege around him, feels free to ignore all of this, and this is a terrible and unforgivable dereliction. The reason is the human cost of his apologetics.

* Often much to Friedman’s chagrin: “Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.”

 

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 76