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The New Neo Posted on by

Katy Tur of MSNOW:

Katy Tur: What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government? They come from you, our creator and heavenly father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?

McKay Coppins: I actually think that that idea is not wholly uncommon. I mean, the idea that we have certain inalienable rights that come from god can be read in a fairly benign way, which is basically that we have innate human rights, that our constitution and our government, our democratic government are meant to codify. Right. That idea is not totally abnormal.

Good to know it’s not “totally abnormal” (Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic). Tur is 42 years old and Coppins is 39. Do they know anything about the text of the Declaration of Independence? Back in the ancient times of my own youthful education, we were required to memorize a couple of paragraphs, including the relevant passage “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

It reminds me that it was often Obama;s habit to leave out the “Creator” part (from 2010):

At a Democratic fundraiser on Monday night, President Obama once again misquoted the Declaration of Independence’s most famous sentence and once again omitted its reference to our “Creator.” According to the text of his remarks published on the official White House website, he said: “[W]hat makes this place [America] special is not something physical. It has to do with this idea that was started by 13 colonies that decided to throw off the yoke of an empire, and said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”

The first time that something happens and is met with publicity and criticism, it could well be an accident or part of the learning curve — like the first time one bows down to foreign royalty when other U.S. presidents haven’t; or the first time one issues a public apology abroad for past (real or imagined) American sins in a way that other presidents haven’t. But the second time, the assumption must be that it’s probably deliberate — and that makes it all the more appalling. Other presidents didn’t deliberately misquote the Declaration, and they didn’t leave out (or rewrite) the words about our rights being endowed by our Creator.

NOTE Some of what is going on with Tur et al. is that she suffers from a lack of cultural literacy (see this).

NOTE II: I know I’ve already written a lot about the abominable Kristof article, but here’s a link to a good essay about it, by Judge Roy K. Altman.

Trump endorses Ken Paxton for Texas senator

The New Neo Posted on by

CNN characterizes the endorsement as “upending Senate GOP plans”:

Cornyn has spent over a year courting Trump’s support, while Paxton has run to Cornyn’s right and pitched himself as a stronger ally of the president. Cornyn and Senate GOP leaders argued that he is a stronger general-election candidate as Democrats look to win statewide office in Texas for the first time since 1994.

The runoff is a week away, and early voting began Monday.

True that Cornyn would be stronger in the general? False? I am no expert on Texas politics, but it seems to me a tossup: Paxton appeals more to the base and Cornyn to the middle and is disliked by the base as a RINO. But Paxton is described as “scandal-plagued.” Then again, Lisa Murkowski supports Cornyn and says “she was ‘supremely disappointed’ and echoed leadership concerns that Paxton could have a harder time keeping the seat in GOP hands.” I suppose “leadership” means Thune? And of course, it’s Murkowski saying this, and I do not trust her to act in the GOP’s best interests..

The whole things seems like a mess:

Despite promising to intervene quickly after March 3, when Cornyn finished narrowly ahead of Paxton, Trump kept both campaigns on edge for months. He initially said he would ask his non-endorsed candidate to drop out, but his neutral stance meant the opportunity to do so came and went.

Instead, the two camps and their allies have spent nearly $25 million on advertising in the runoff, much of it used for the two candidates to bash each other in intensely personal terms. It brings the total ad cost of the Republican primary to nearly $125 million, most of which has come from the pro-Cornyn side.

Apparently Trump thinks that Talarico, the Democrat opponent, will be a weak candidate. I hope he’s correct. For what it’s worth (probably not all that much), polls indicate that both Republicans are more or less tied with Talarico at present.

The Platner files

The New Neo Posted on by

After spending a decade calling Trump a coarse and vulgar misogynist, bigot, and Nazi, it’s somewhat ironic that Democrats are about to nominate a truly coarse and vulgar misogynist, bigot, and Nazi – in Maine. Also a self-described Communist, although that hardly rates much controversy these days.

I wonder what the Democrat voters of Maine will decide to do. So far, Democrats are defending him with the argument that he’s changed since he wrote charming things like this:

Among the newly unearthed posts from Platner’s now-deleted “P-Hustle” Reddit account, one from March 2017 in the r/Military forum addressed what he considers a favorite pastime in the portapotty:

“I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a porta-s***ter… that blue water smell conditioned me.”

And then there was this:

… using the same “P-Hustle” account, [Platner] mocked U.S. Army Pfc. Ted Daniels who was seen in a video being shot by the Taliban.

“This video never gets old. Dumb motherf***er didn’t deserve to live,” he allegedly wrote of Daniels, a father of two and Purple Heart recipient who had deliberately drawn enemy fire to protect his squad.

“At least his stupidity and fat a** wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt,” he continued. “Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible s*** decision possible when it comes to small unit combat.”

More at the link, including:

He’s engaged in victim-blaming of sexual assault survivors. Posted homophobic jokes. Called rural white Americans racist and stupid. Oh, and referred to himself as a card-carrying Communist.

That’s in addition to the Nazi tattoo. And yet the Democrats are faced with defending him and needing to vote for him to defeat the evil Republicans.

I am left wondering whether most Maine Democrats will hold their noses and vote for him, and what Independents will do. If polls are any indication, Platner could end up gracing the US Senate; however, there haven’t been any polls taken since late March, according to RealClearPolling. All the polls on their list show Platner ahead of Collins, but none show him cracking 50%.

Then again, look at this from Collins’ last Senate run, which took place in 2020 [emphasis mine]:

The race became the most expensive in Maine history, with Collins spending $23 million and [her opponent] Gideon nearly $48 million. It also had national implications, as defeating Collins was a key part of the Democrats’ strategy to achieve a Senate majority. Gideon led Collins in nearly every public poll of the race. Nevertheless, Collins defeated Gideon, 50.98%-42.39%, on election day. Collins outperformed Republican President Donald Trump, who lost the state to Democratic nominee Joe Biden by more than nine percent. Maine was the only state to elect a senator of a different party than the winner of its presidential contest in the November 3 election.

Maine used a ranked choice voting system in the 2020 U.S. Senate election, as established by a 2016 referendum. Because Collins won a majority of the first-place votes cast, no additional vote tabulation rounds were needed.

That was six years ago, and a lot can change in six years. Also, Gideon – a woman – was a more conventional politician than Platner (not a difficult bar to clear). However, note that the 2020 polls were consistently wrong, and that the final result wasn’t even close, despite the fact that – just as today – the race was seen as key to the Democrats’ hopes of a Senate majority. Note also that Collins’ victory was achieved despite Biden winning the state by nine percent, and that she got more than 50% and therefore avoided a runoff.

The fact that Platner is highly likely to be the Democrats’ nominee in a state such as Maine – which, though quite blue, is not entirely so – would be shocking if I still had the capacity to be shocked by something like that. His election would be even more shocking, although I believe it is definitely possible. The Overton Window has moved that far, and what was inconceivable just a short while ago is no longer beyond belief, although it remains both mind-boggling and depressing.

Trump: about to strike Iran, or not?

The New Neo Posted on by

The answer is “yes” – one or the other.

Here’s the NY Post on the subject, for what it’s worth:

Gen. Jack Keane — acting Army chief of staff at the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — told Fox News Channel that after the Islamic Republic’s latest rebuff of President Trump’s peace proposals, the US and Israel were ready to restart attacks using intelligence collected since the cease-fire went into effect April 8.

“It’ll be a combined operation with the United States and Israel going full-throttle, all-out, no half-measures here whatsoever,” Keane said on FNC’s “America’s Newsroom.”

If that’s the case, what would it look like? This war is against the regime and not the people, and so there is a limit to the number and type of targets that the US and Israel are willing to destroy.

According to Keane, the war has until now left about 30% of the slated targets remaining, and obliterating them will be the goal:

It’ll be those targets that the US and Israel wipe out next, including facilities tied to Iran’s missile and nuclear program, continued.

Along with military targets, Keane also suggested the US would take out Iran’s revenue sources, a threat Trump has repeatedly levied against Tehran.

Does he mean oil fields? I don’t know, but that’s what comes to mind.

The left and the isolationist right keep alternating between calling Trump a heinous criminal committing war crimes, and yelling “TACO” at him – which means “Trump always chickens out”. That way they’ve covered all the anti-Trump bases. It seems to me, though, that the “TACO” charge gives the Iranian regime the possibly false hope that if they wait Trump out he will never attack. It would serve them right for trusting the US MSM.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) This is one of the reasons why states should not automatically mail ballots to all registered voters:

A Marina Del Ray woman has admitted to bombshell charges that she paid homeless people on Skid Row to register to vote in a 20-year scheme tied to illegal petition signature collection.

She even let homeless people use her own address to register to vote — meaning mail-in ballots could be sent to her home, a plea agreement obtained by The California Post states.

(2) And speaking of elections, they’re investigating 2020 (again? still?):

[Todd] Blanche didn’t hedge. He didn’t offer the usual bureaucratic non-answer. He said it directly: “Well, there’s a ton of evidence that the [2020] election was rigged. That’s not something the DOJ needs to tell you about. There’s been evidence about that for many, many years. What I can tell you is that we have multiple investigations going on in Arizona, in Georgia, in Fulton County, Georgia.”

The questions driving those investigations are fundamental ones that, frankly, should have been asked and answered years ago. Why is it taking so long? Blanche addressed that head-on, too. “They’re very good at hiding misconduct and hiding — hiding what they’re doing,” he said. “And so that’s why we’re very focused on finding out whether the right people voted, whether people who were supposed to vote voted, whether there was one vote cast per voter.”

I doubt anything will come of this – not necessarily because there wasn’t fraud (although it’s certainly possible that there wasn’t), but because election fraud is indeed very difficult to prove except in very isolated cases in which a person is caught red-handed (as in example #1 above). I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, but with universal mail-in voting as well as machine in-person voting, there simply aren’t enough built-in safeguards. The perception of fraud being relatively easy to pull off and relatively hard to find is in itself toxic to election trust. Election security and trust in the validity of elections are exceedingly important and have been tremendously undermined in recent years.

(3) And speaking of elections – again – Cassidy is toast:

Cassidy, who has represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate since 2015, did not finish in the top two of the Republican primary. He will not advance to the June 27 runoff. His Senate career is over.

The two candidates who did advance, Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and State Treasurer John Fleming, now face each other in a runoff that will determine which of them represents the Louisiana Republican Party against the Democratic nominee in November. In Louisiana, that general election is a formality.

Trump advocated against Cassidy, and understandably so: Senator Cassidy voted with seven other GOP members for Trump’s conviction in the impeachment effort that followed J6. But that wasn’t all Cassidy did – or tried to do – to Trump:

In 2023, after Trump was indicted for mishandling classified documents, Cassidy called for Trump to drop out of the 2024 presidential election. When Trump won the Republican nomination, Cassidy declined to endorse him.

(4) Cuba has obtained drones:

Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and recently began discussing plans to use them to attack the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels and possibly Key West, Fla., 90 miles north of Havana, according to classified intelligence shared with Axios.

Why it matters: The intelligence — which could become a pretext for U.S. military action — shows the degree to which the Trump administration sees Cuba as a threat because of developments in drone warfare and the presence of Iranian military advisers in Havana, a senior U.S. official said.

I would have thought it shows the degree to which Cuba is a threat.

(5) On Trump and China:

At their joint press conference on Thursday, President Trump said that he and Xi were “united” when it came to Iran: no nukes, open the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian blackmail, and no Chinese weapons sales.

And while President Trump said before the summit he didn’t need Chinese help with Iran, after their initial meeting, he told Sean Hannity that China will help “in any way it can.”

If all of this comes true, it is very bad news for Tehran.

That’s a pretty big “if.”

Stone Age dentists

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s not some sort of metaphor or epithet. Apparently, there really were Stone Age dentists:

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities almost 60,000 years ago in what is the earliest known evidence of dental treatment.

The single molar, which was unearthed in a cave in southern Siberia, features a deep hole that appears to have been created using a sharp, thin stone tool during the lifetime of the tooth’s owner.

While the prospect of stone age root canal treatment may be excruciating to even contemplate, archaeologists say the discovery provides remarkable insights into Neanderthals’ advanced behaviours – and possibly their gritty disposition.

Dr Kseniya Kolobova, an archaeologist at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, said: “This discovery powerfully reinforces the now well-supported view that Neanderthals were not the brutish, inferior cousins of outdated stereotypes but a sophisticated human population with complex cognitive and cultural capacities. [It] adds an entirely new dimension – invasive medical treatment – to the growing list of advanced Neanderthal behaviours.”

The dentist was pretty good, too:

A dental professor, who reviewed images of the tooth but was not part of the research, rated the Neanderthal’s work as “a decent job”.

“If I was marking this for a dental student, I wouldn’t give it an A, but given the circumstances it’s pretty impressive,” said Justin Durham, a professor of orofacial pain at Newcastle University and the British Dental Association’s chief scientific adviser.

The smoothed edges of the drilled cavity, and wear patterns inside it, suggested the individual survived and continued to chew with the tooth for some time after the procedure.

The tooth, which has been dated to be 59,000 years old, was found in Chagyrskaya, where the remains of Neanderthals and thousands of stone tools have been excavated. The lower molar features a deep hole in the centre of the tooth extending into the pulp cavity. Microscopic X-ray imaging revealed changes in mineralisation that indicated severe tooth decay.

The researchers conducted experiments on three modern human teeth to demonstrate that a hole of the same shape and same patterns of microscopic grooves could be created by manually rotating a narrow, elongated tool made from local jasper, between two fingers.

That was in the Old Stone Age, the Paleolithic. The surgical technique thought till now to be oldest is trepanning – drilling holes in skulls – from the New Stone Age (Neolithic). It apparently was quite widespread:

Trepanation is a worldwide practice that was extremely common during the Neolithic era. The main pieces of archaeological evidence are in the forms of human remains. At one burial site in France dated to 6500 BCE, 40 out of 120 prehistoric skulls found had trepanation holes. At the time only around 40% of people survived the procedure.[13] A skull of a child in an Harappan burial at Lothal dated to 2200 BCE shows signs of trepanation.

More than 1,500 trephined skulls from the Neolithic period (representing 5–10% of all cranial remains from that era) have been uncovered throughout the world – from Europe, Siberia, China and the Americas. Most of the trephined crania belong to adult males, but women and children are also represented.

More and more of the findings these days about ancient humans indicate that they were more sophisticated than previously thought. And perhaps even more stoic.

Israel’s defamation lawsuit against the NY Times for publishing the Kristof piece

The New Neo Posted on by

From Alan Dershowitz; very instructive:

As I thought, he says the lawsuit won’t work in the US. One reason is that an entity like Israel can’t sue under US law; it has to be a person who was harmed. Plus, the standard is very high in the US when suing a newspaper for defamation, due to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (ironic, isn’t it, that the case involved the Times?).

Nevertheless, Dershowitz makes the point that Israel could sue in other countries that make it easier to win against media outlets, such as in Britain.

Dershowitz also points out that the NY Times’ printing of these particular allegations – which already had been floating around online for ages – gives the stories a kind of gravitas they didn’t have before, and could convince credulous readers who were neutral on the Israel question to turn against Israel because they trust that the Times wouldn’t print mere online rumors or mere Palestinian propaganda. Those who follow the Times more closely know that of course the paper would do that – and already has, many times. But lots of people aren’t that tuned in to these topics and can be persuaded by the Times’ high reputation of old.

Dershowitz also points out that the article was careful not just to be published as opinion – which doesn’t really protect it legally, although that’s the goal – but to not name any of the persons being accused of these crimes. Naming a person falsely would give that person a viable causer of action in the United States.

Plus, Dershowitz says that journalists are the most unethical group of people he’s ever dealt with; I can well believe it.

This National Review article describes what the advantages would be of a defamation lawsuit in Israel, even if the defamation case would basically go nowhere if brought in the US:

Which brings us to the real mechanism: 28 U.S.C. § 1782.

Once an Israeli proceeding is in reasonable contemplation, an interested person can apply in the Southern District of New York (where the New York Times is headquartered) to compel evidence production from a U.S. entity for use in foreign litigation. A properly framed § 1782 application does not ask the court to adjudicate the case; it simply asks the court to order the Times to produce the factual basis for one published allegation.

The subpoena categories write themselves: documents identifying the source and evidentiary basis for the dog allegation; fact-checking notes and editorial review records; communications with cited human rights organizations about this specific claim; internal discussions of reliability or corroboration. The Times will obviously raise reporter’s privilege. That is expected. But the answer here is a measured response: Nobody is asking for every source on every story. The request is for the factual foundation for one allegation the Times has publicly called corroborated and extensively fact-checked and “deeply reported.” Either show the corroboration or explain why you cannot. Both answers are informative.

None of this is a technical defamation case, but the critics declaring the claim dead on arrival are focusing on the colloquial use of the word “defamation” expressed in a spokesperson’s tweet and missing the tree for the forest. The real question is whether there exists a narrow, disciplined legal theory that forces the Times to produce the evidentiary basis for one of the most inflammatory factual allegations it has ever published. And there is.

Of course, many many more people have paid attention to the Kristof piece (many of whom might believe it) than would pay attention to any legal findings delegitimizing it. The Times and Kristof are well aware of that. They want their lies to get all the way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.

Steve Cohen of Tennessee’s 9th won’t be seeking re-election – plus, Virginia’s recent redistricting history

The New Neo Posted on by

I confess I was unaware of Steve Cohen before a couple of days ago, despite the fact that he’s been representing Tennesse’s 9th district in the US House for 19 years. The 9th has been a majority-minority district, but now that the state is being redistricted, he’s announced he’s not seeking re-election.

Cohen’s a few days short of his 77th birthday. Not a bad time to retire – but until the redistricting was announced, he wasn’t retiring; he was running for re-election. He’s also a white man who has represented a gerrymandered black district for all those years, with no serious challenges.

But even before dropping out, this year Cohen faced a Democrat challenger who might have threatened him: Justin Pearson, who is young, black, and to the left of Cohen (see this).

Now Cohen’s seat is also threatened for the first time by someone from the right – a black Republican woman named Charlotte Bergmann.

Black Republican woman? Isn’t that an oxymoron, according to Democrats? After all, black Republicans are just white supremacists.

In addition, as was virtually inevitable, SCOTUS has refused to hear the Democrats’ appeal of the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling that its recent referendum on redistricting was held in violation of the Virginia state constitution. That’s because SCOTUS ordinarily doesn’t have jurisdiction over cases that involve state courts interpreting state law – which explains the fact that the SCOTUS decision was unanimous. The Virginia lawyers and AG who were in charge of the appeal knew that (it’s really quite elementary), so they probably filed the appeal in order to use the SCOTUS ruling to rail against SCOTUS as an “undemocratic” institution and to support the Democrats’ fight to pack the Court if they gain power. To wit:

In a statement following the Supreme Court’s denial, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones went on offense. He framed the decision as part of a broader national effort by Republicans and conservative courts to consolidate political power ahead of the 2026 midterms. Jones accused President Donald Trump, Republican-led legislatures, and the judiciary of systematically undermining voting rights, particularly for black voters and communities of color, arguing that recent redistricting battles across multiple states reflected a coordinated strategy to entrench Republican control in Congress. He characterized both the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling and the nation’s highest court’s refusal to intervene as direct assaults on democratic representation and the will of Virginia voters.

The decision in the Virginia court rested on the Virginia constitution, in particular an amendment passed in 2020 to ensure that the state didn’t gerrymander. The 6-5 map that controls at present – the one the Democrats tried to overturn – was constructed in order to not be partisan, as the 2020 amendment dictated (the article is from 2020):

As votes for the 2020 General Election continue to get counted, it is clear that Virginia’s amendment to reform gerrymandering has passed. Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has been a leading national advocate for the passage of this amendment, supporting local partner OneVirginia 2021 throughout the process.

“Voters have said loud and clear that they are ready to move past Virginia’s long history of gerrymandering,” said Paul Smith, vice president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “After a sustained effort by a diverse coalition of national and in-state groups, legislators and the electorate have both proven that bipartisan solutions are possible when democratic principles are placed over partisanship. Paired with strong enabling legislation, the amendment will help Virginia adopt fair maps and a more inclusive process.”

Virginia will have a new 16-member commission, made up of eight legislators and eight citizens, divided evenly between the two parties. There will be measures in place to ensure public feedback and transparency.

It turned out, however, that the commission members ended up unable to agree on the new maps in a timely fashion, so the Virginia Supreme Court took over and appointed two masters to draw the maps. Those are the ones in operation now, the ones the Democrats tried to gerrymander again. They would have been successful, too, had they had enough time to comply with the constitutional requirements for holding the referendum.

Why was the Harvey Weinstein jury hopelessly deadlocked in his third NYC sex crimes trial?

The New Neo Posted on by

This is why. The accusation was that he had raped actress Jessica Mann in 2013. However:

Mann, now 40, broke down several times during her painful testimony as she faced off against her abuser for the third time after a jury at last year’s retrial could not convict the ex-powerhouse producer of rape.

“I said, ‘No’ over and over and I tried to leave,” Mann said through sobs, shortly before she demonstrated to jurors how Weinstein allegedly pinned both of her wrists above her head during the sex attack.

Mann had testified that she did have a consensual relationship at one point because she felt it could lead to a “loving relationship” — while also acknowledging she knew about Weinstein’s power in Tinseltown and how it affected her decision to get involved with him.

At what point did that consensual relationship end, how clearly was that communicated to Weinstein, and why were they alone together at the time of the alleged rape? Did the jury factor into their deliberations the fact that Mann is an actress and that her tears could be performative?

Most important of all, probably, was this piece of evidence [my emphasis]:

Weinstein’s attorney Teny Geragos held Mann on the ropes during a brutal, multi-day cross-examination when she was pressed repeatedly about her relationship with Weinstein and a so-called love note — written by Mann just two days after the alleged New York City attack — which was introduced for the first time at any trial.

“Do I love him or the idea of him? With him — easy. The idea of expanding that — fulfilling,” Mann mused — two days after she said she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in a room at the DoubleTree hotel in Manhattan.

Based on that note, I think he should have been acquitted – not because he didn’t rape her (that is unknown and at this point unknowable), but because the note introduces very strong reasonable doubt that he did.

Sexual relationships are often fraught with miscommunication and/or misperception, plus failures of memory and ex post facto revisions of memory. The year 2013 is also a long long time ago.