Legal feminist gets to the core of it, as good legal minds are so skilled at doing.

The question I find interesting here isn’t really a legal question. It is this: what is it that’s special about treatment with puberty blockers that makes the Tavistock think that parental consent isn’t good enough? If a child needs a vaccination to reduce the risk of a potentially serious childhood disease, parental consent is good enough. If a child needs a filling to deal with tooth decay, or an extraction to deal with an overcrowded mouth, the same. If a child needs surgery to pin a broken bone, the same again. 

I remember strongly dissenting to treatments of that kind as a … Read the rest

Child poverty, we have it.

Even prior to the pandemic, the United States lagged other developed nations in child poverty levels. More than one out of every five American children lives in poverty, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data. As the pandemic continues to exacerbate the underlying crisis of American poverty, 45 percent of all children now live in households that have recently struggled with routine expenses, according to a report out this month from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP. Black and Latino households have been especially impacted by the economic starvation that the mishandling of this pandemic has wrought, and these populations were already disproportionately likely to grow up poor.

… Read the rest

Archaeologists in Pompeii have found an ancient fast food shop.

Known as a termopolium, Latin for hot drinks counter, the shop was discovered in the archaeological park’s Regio V site, which is not yet open the public, and unveiled on Saturday.

Traces of nearly 2,000-year-old food were found in some of the deep terra cotta jars containing hot food which the shop keeper lowered into a counter with circular holes.

Like the big metal pots you have on steam tables now.

The front of the counter was decorated with brightly coloured frescoes, some depicting animals that were part of the ingredients in the food sold, such as a chicken and two ducks hanging upside down.

The golden arches of … Read the rest

We at least have some hope that the people who worked for Trump won’t be able to land the usual hotshot jobs.

Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state under President George W Bush, is now director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, which also gave safe harbour to Trump alumni Jim Mattis and HR McMaster.

White House press secretaries can prosper in the media or corporate world. Jay Carney, who was Barack Obama’s spokesman from 2011 to 2014, is a senior vice-president and head of public relations for Amazon. His successor, Josh Earnest, who had a spell as an NBC News and MSNBC analyst, is now senior vice-president and chief communications officer at United

… Read the rest

Los Angeles is being hammered the way New York was last spring.

LA county has faced an onslaught of terrifying Covid developments in recent days, including a surge in deaths, dire shortages of hospital resources, and fears that doctors will have to make agonizing choices to ration care.

…

Heading into the darkest holiday season some have ever endured, there were grim reminders across the LA region that the virus is spreading uncontrolled. The city’s mayor briefed the public while in quarantine after his daughter became infected. Hospitals were setting up triage tents. Residents waited in line for hours for Covid tests at Dodger stadium. The region recently ordered more body bags.

Outbreaks were afflicting grocery

… Read the rest

And justify the ways of God to men…

Fuz Rana wrote, “The COVID-19 outbreak happened precisely at the time that advances in mRNA vaccines would allow for a rapid response” & that this is “a reflection of God’s providential timing and faithful provision to humanity.” You can read more here: https://t.co/MtwHdwc3hJ

— Hugh Ross (@RTB_HRoss) December 26, 2020

Ah yes, very excellent integration of science and faith. What a kind and careful and scientifically alert god it is, to wait to inflict a new virus on us until…um…there were plenty of ICUs to handle the cases? No. There were enough hospitals everywhere in the world to handle the cases? No. There were responsible governments everywhere in the world that knew … Read the rest

Hey about that whole pardons thing.

https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1342191004883939328

Funny how it’s always Republicans. Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich was disgusting, but it didn’t open all the doors to criminality the way Ford’s and Bush’s did, let alone the way Trump’s are.

https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1342191361827606529

Upon discovering this secret aid, Congress outlawed it, in amendments attached to annual defense appropriations bills and therefore known after their sponsor as the Boland Amendments.

So haha, Reagan wasn’t having that.

https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1342192119218282496 https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1342192617153425413

North was convicted of obstruction instead; an appeals court threw out the conviction 2-1 because the jury might have been influenced by North’s televised testimony to Congress. Walsh prosecuted former national security adviser John Poindexter for similar offenses next, obtaining a conviction that was thrown

… Read the rest

Interesting.

Donald Trump’s longtime banker at Deutsche Bank AG will be stepping down from the German lender, with the move coming as the bank looks for ways to cut its relations with the U.S. president.

Cut its relations and maybe get its money back? He’s stiffed them for millions.

Rosemary Vrablic, a managing director and senior banker in the lender’s wealth management division, recently handed in her resignation, which the bank accepted effective as of year-end, Deutsche Bank spokesman Dan Hunter said in an emailed statement.

According to the New York Times, which first reported Vrablic’s resignation, she arranged for the lender to grant hundreds of millions of dollars of loans to Trump’s company.

Well you can see why … Read the rest

Maya makes an important point about all this.

There is so much wrong with this article by Grace Lavery.

Jesse Singal gets at much of the detail

The biggest point for me though is captured in the framing by @ForeignPolicy

Their headline: https://t.co/ly9SSsgYXy pic.twitter.com/SGjbstvGps

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) December 18, 2020

The case of Bell v Tavistock is a judicial review about the welfare and rights of children under 18 with gender dysphoria in England

– is it right that they can consent to take puberty blockers?

(I.e. the Q of Gillick competence)

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) December 18, 2020

I’ll just quote the rest (with Twitter shortcuts and formatting removed).

You could argue that the court got it wrong;

… Read the rest

A bit of good news.

This is honestly a miracle. Stopping Covid-19 in the confines of Dharavi is literally one of the most difficult things in the world. Salute to all the doctors, health workers & administration. And most importantly, the people of Dharavi! https://t.co/KnbdfYZdHU

— Joy Bhattacharjya (@joybhattacharj) December 25, 2020

The Times of India:

Dharavi slum colony in Mumbai did not report a single Covid-19 case in the last 24 hours.

This is the first time since April 1, when the first coronavirus case was reported in Dharavi, that Asia’s largest slum has reported no new case in a single day.

According to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) data, so far Dharavi has reported 3,788 cases of which

… Read the rest

If you've never seen a reindeer posing under an aurora before, today is your day. https://t.co/QGzgIW34oi pic.twitter.com/XxAtvAQHG0

— Meredith Frost (@MeredithFrost) December 24, 2020

… Read the rest

I see I’m not the only one.

How predictably tacky.

Posting your own promo of doing charity work is really gross.

"Look daddy, I'm charitying."

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) December 24, 2020

She’s shared it like 5 different times between yesterday and today. Truly an inspiration!

— Andrew Kimmel (@andrewkimmel) December 24, 2020

One that is posturing for ron desantis' job and a 2024 run at the whitehouse

— DmMartin (@DmMarti00585674) December 24, 2020

There are a lot more like that. A lot more.… Read the rest

Remember: Pence thinks, and says, that it’s a bad thing that Democrats (or the left more broadly) “want to make poverty comfortable.”

Meanwhile…

Pence’s Colorado vacation — defying the national pandemic he was assigned to help thwart — is your tax dollars at work.

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) December 24, 2020

Uncomfortable poverty for them, publicly funded flights to Vail for him. Lockdown for them, vacations in Vail for him.

54,000,000 Americans are going hungry right now and Mike Pence is scandalized by the very concept of "making poor people more comfortable." https://t.co/Ej1sCjAgC6

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 22, 2020

… Read the rest

The cops are waiting at the exit.

Come noon on 20 January 2021, Trump and his inner circle will be private citizens again. Devoid of legal immunity, stripped of the air of invincibility, they become fair game for federal and local law enforcement alike. The potential for prison hovers over them like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Cyrus Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney, is circling Trump and his business. Eric Trump has testified at a court-ordered deposition conducted by New York’s attorney general. As for federal prosecutors in the southern district of New York, they labeled Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in the case of Michael Cohen. The statute of limitations has not expired.

So the Trumps have to … Read the rest

The princess wants us to know that she really really cares about poor people.

https://t.co/0Bco2gxIcw

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 24, 2020

.@IvankaTrump helps load food into cars of drivers in need https://t.co/EaHaUeFohY

— CBS 58 News (@CBS58) December 23, 2020

https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1341769710480871425

Ivanka Trump Takes Part in South Florida Food Distribution Ahead of Christmas – NBC 6 South Florida https://t.co/MZlVemnU5g

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 23, 2020

Remember that story her friend from school told about her (cough) lack of interest in poor people?

In the most scathing passage, Ohrstrom claimed that in their mid-20s she recommended to her friend the book Empire Falls, a Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Richard Russo about working-class characters in a small town in

… Read the rest

The latest gotcha – ooooooh Obama pardoned lots more.

The issue isn’t quantity – although lots of a bad thing is worse than a little, so quantity is part of the issue in that sense. But in the rest of the senses it isn’t.

What a Maroon directed us to Politifact from last February.

The latest round of clemency grants from President Donald Trump sparked new criticism that he was abusing his expansive pardon powers by skirting the normal review process and favoring white-collar criminals who were prominent and well-connected.

But two days after the Feb. 18 announcements, a Facebook post implied that it was Barack Obama, not Trump, who had abused the largely unchecked pardon power.

The post

… Read the rest

In today’s round of disgusting pardons –

President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including ones for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

The pardons extend Trump’s streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office.

Appears to be? He either is or isn’t. It’s a matter of fact, not speculation. He’s already … Read the rest

Business advice: don’t insure the Catholic church. Really, don’t do that.

The Catholic Church’s private insurer spent more than $58 million paying out the victims of sexual abuse last year and the company is being forced to raise fresh capital and liquidate investments to cover a future compensation bill worth at least another $238 million.

Not profitable.

Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) has posted nearly a $250 million loss as it struggles to meet a wave of new claims in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

More business advice: don’t invest in their stock.

CCI, which insures Catholic parishes, religious institutions, welfare groups, aged care facilities and schools across Australia for incidents of

… Read the rest

Trump has been casually ruining the lives of people who administer elections. One guy is suing.

An election systems worker driven into hiding by death threats has filed a defamation lawsuit against “President” Donald Trump’s campaign, two of its lawyers and some conservative media figures and outlets.

Eric Coomer, security director at the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false charges as a key actor in “rigging” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged.

His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway

… Read the rest

The Ego-Pardons:

Every president’s pardon list contains some self-serving or controversial picks—think of Clinton’s pardon for Marc Rich, or Barack Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence to time served.

But every other president in American history has chosen some worthy recipients of executive clemency as well, some reformed souls whose cases sang out for pardons. That’s because every other American president has been a more or less normal human being. And normal human beings have some concept of justice.

I don’t think that’s true about the more or less normal human being, actually. Nixon wasn’t normal. Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t all that normal. Lincoln wasn’t. Coolidge wasn’t. Andrew Johnson wasn’t. Kennedy wasn’t. Most are, probably, but there are definitely some … Read the rest