Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall partisanship

Gerrymandered Hypocrisy 

Virginia, referendum, fairness, voting, democracy

“Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy,” declared Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger . . . back in 2019.

“Let voters decide, not politicians,” former President Barack Obama offered just last month. 

The problem? They’re correct!

And Republicans are now sharing the statements by these two high-ranking Democrats with Virginia voters. Why? They oppose the April 21 constitutional referendum that, if passed, would allow the legislature to gerrymander the state’s congressional district lines to likely turn the federal delegation from its current six- to five-seat Democratic majority into a ten to one Democratic majority.

How dare opponents repeat the precise words previously uttered by Spanberger and Obama as Virginians go to the polls!

WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., headlined its report: “Anti-redistricting mailers in Virginia are misleading, critics warn.”

“This has been misconstrued,” explained Gaylene Kanoyton, the Political Action Chair for the Virginia NAACP. “This does not pertain to these unusual, unprecedented times that we are in right now.”

“It is true they made these statements years ago,” a fellow from my hometown was quoted, “but the situation has changed.”

“They don’t like it because we’re exposing their leaders for their hypocrisy,” argues former Republican Delegate A.C. Cordoza with Justice for Democracy PAC. 

Democrats can of course blame Republican gerrymandering efforts in other states to justify their own, but it is a race to the bottom for voters. 

But, as I pointed out last week, Democrats deserve all the blame. The language on the ballot is completely slanted, telling voters the measure will “restore fairness.” This is so outrageous that even the liberal Washington Post editorialized last month that “Democratic politicians are presenting the proposed amendment to voters in the most brazenly dishonest way imaginable.”

Partisans will always be self-serving. But can’t they even try not to appear blatantly hypocritical?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Heinlein

How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?

Robert A. Heinlein, “Life-Line,” Astounding Science-Fiction (August 1939).

Categories
Today

Prohibition Begins to End

On April 7, 1933, Prohibition in the United States was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight — eight months before the ratification of the 21st amendment, which repealed the 18th (or Prohibition) Amendment.

The enabling legislation was the Cullen-Harrison Act, which figured the low alcohol content as the excuse to get around the 18th Amendment’s prohibition of intoxicating beverages. The act passed Congress on March 21, 1933, and was signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt the next day.

Categories
judiciary litigation regulation

Justice Delayed Forever

Boeing, justice, liability, crony

In 2023, the families of persons who had died because of Boeing’s lies about safety were told that it was too early to challenge the Justice Department’s deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with Boeing. Now, in 2026, the same Fifth Circuit says that their challenge is too late.

When was the perfect Goldilocks moment? When was lawyer Paul Cassell supposed to challenge, on behalf of his clients, “the Justice Department’s 2021 deferred prosecution agreement and 2025 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with Boeing”?

Cassell reports that several years ago, Boeing “lied to the FAA about the safety of its new 737 MAX aircraft.” After Justice investigated, it charged Boeing with a criminal conspiracy — yet immediately signed a “sweetheart DPA” that let Boeing avoid a criminal conviction so long as it paid penalties and compensation to the families. 

And promised to do better.

In court, the families proved that the Justice Department had hidden the agreement from them even though legally obliged to consult with them. The same judge who acknowledged this in 2022 went on to rule, in 2023, that there was nothing he could do.

Appealing that decision, Cassell was next foiled by the Fifth Circuit, which ruled in December 2023 that any relief for the families was “premature.” Now, many complications later, the Fifth Circuit has “simply ignored its previous promises.”

With Boeing suffering no proportionate consequences for its incompetence and dishonesty about safety, it is just a matter of time before similar cases are repeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

William Hamilton

The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.

Sir William Hamilton, Ninth Baronet, as quoted by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 573.

Categories
Today

Salt Rebel

On April 6, 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of mud and salt, declaring, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”

Thus began the Salt Satyagraha.

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Update

How Weird Can It Get?

Yesterday’s update was about what we are now supposed to call the “UAP” question, but which in times past was known popularly as “UFO” for “Unidentified Flying Object.” The coiner of the term, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, wanted it pronounced “you-foe,” not “you eff oh,” but that stalled at lift-off.

And it wasn’t the only term that had trouble at the beginning. Its replacement term, “UAP,” started life as “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” but because no small part of UFO lore had objects going into and out of bodies of water, the term was expanded to mean “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.” Not a few people who are known as “ufologists” suspect that the name change wasn’t for accuracy but as part of some propagandistic effort to hoodwink the masses, to pretend that the phenomena are new, not very, very old.

And one of the problems with all the disclosure talk in Congress is they never seem to ask pertinent historical questions, say about the infamous “Twining Memo.”

As yesterday’s update was published, a new story broke. Shane Galvin produced another article for the New York Post, “Congress demands Dept of War release 46 secret UFO videos: ‘You’re gonna see some weird f–king s–t’.”

“Those with knowledge of the long list of videos — which include titles like ‘Several UAP in vicinity of Columbus OH airport” and “UFOs in formation over Persian Gulf’ — said the clips are shocking,” Galvin’s article explained. “‘You’re gonna see some weird f–king s–t,’ a source who has viewed the videos told The Post.”

To ramp up to X-Files levels of paranoia, the article concluded that “Congress is not going into this request blind — with two sources telling The Post moles within the intelligence community have eyes on the files being requested and they’ll blow the whistle if the videos are moved, altered, or deleted by anyone.

“The Department of War is expected to hand over the clips by April 14, according to the letter.”

It may be worth noting that last year’s “drones” panic, while no longer making the news, continues. That is, mysterious drones continue to be seen on the eastern seaboard and over military bases, and the several debunking articles devoted to the “drones” subject, heavily promoted last year, seem to be quite off point. 

In February the President had instructed the Pentagon to prepare to release UFO files. We’ll see if that happens. President James Earl Carter, Jr., had promised UFO disclosure, and did next to nothing; Hillary Clinton ran on disclosure and somehow failed to be elected. UFOs have been subjected to official denials, curious silences, and contradictory psy-op affirmations over seven decades. Many people have no hope for government to come clean. Events, they think, must force a disclosure. 

But amidst all the contradictions, what of substance could be said? For most of us, it is all guesswork. But note: if this is all a big nothing, some folks behind the scenes have been cooking up a lot of something about nothing.

Categories
Thought

Descartes

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

René Descartes, Discourse on the Method (1637).

Categories
Today

Veto No. 1

On April 5, 1792, George Washington exercised the first presidential veto of a congressional bill, a new plan for dividing seats in the House of Representatives, which would have increased the number of seats for northern states.

Washington vetoed only one other bill during his two terms in office, an act that would have reduced the number of cavalry units in the army.

Categories
Today

UFOs in Orbit

UFOs exist. Not just hearsay or fuzzy photos of unidentified, apparent aerial phenomena — and not mere testimony from government officials, as in the case of but actual scientific evidence of artificial shiny objects in orbit around Earth.

In the 1950s. Before Sputnik.

So, more accurately, it appears that, at the very least, UFOs existed!

In orbit, before the Soviets sent up the first satellite (as we have read in the history books and what some of us remember from the news when we were young).

“The studies by Dr. Beatriz Villarroel and her colleagues have identified bright ‘transient’ objects that appeared in photographs but were not present in photographs taken soon thereafter,” explains The Washington Examiner. “The transient nature of these lights strongly suggests they are not stars.” Indeed, Dr. Villarroel and her colleagues go much further, weeding out any natural explanations. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples of these transients not only appear on photographic plates from the 1950s taken from the Palomar Observatory.

Since these studies hit the news a few years ago, we haven’t heard much on it from major news sources despite its obvious news value and historic importance. But Dr. Villarroel has not stopped working on the project, and has maintained a fairly heavy podcast presence.

Now a new paper from Ivo Busko, late of NASA, appears to confirm Villarroel’s results, using plates from a different astronomical observatory.

Meanwhile, Representatives Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) have made news regarding their work in Congress investigating UFOs (the Deep State calls them “UAPs” now). When Rep. Luna called for defunding AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, because she says it keeps lying to Congress, Burchett leaped quickly on board.

And Burchett said this to Ross Coulthart:

I’ve been briefed by just about every alphabet agency there is, and I’ll just tell you this: if they would release the things that I’ve seen, you would stay up — you’d be up at night worrying about or thinking about this stuff.

We just need to disclose it all. I’m sick of it. Well, I was briefed — I’ll just tell you this — I was briefed last week on an issue, or excuse me, two weeks ago, and it would have set the earth on fire.

This country would have come unglued, I think, if they would have heard all that I heard. They would demand answers.

And we need to — but you know, it’s never going to get — unfortunately, it just keeps getting covered up and covered up, and the people that know are dying or disappearing, as the case may be.

Paul Jacob has been covering the ongoing UFO disclosure story for some time, demanding transparency: