A lesbian* couple decided to try to “co-parent” a kid with another couple.

For us, the ideal parenting setup would consist of three or four of us sharing responsibility for a child (the others involved would also be responsible for providing the sperm).

The others? Not one of the others, but both of them? Really?

The way we see it, why not use the implicit obstacles we face as a same-sex couple to become parents in a way that works for us and redefines the family unit completely?

Ah. There’s actually an answer to that question. Or several answers, but one in particular is very basic. It’s because biological parents have a stake in the child that non-biological parents lack. This of course doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t adopt children, but it does suggest that parents shouldn’t casually swap kids with other couples just to “redefine the family unit completely.” Sharing a kid with another couple is a different thing, but still, it’s as well to understand the realities before trying to redefine them.

Our first real contact with this world was last year at the Modern Family Show in London, an annual event for LGBTQ+ people looking to start families. One of the events was a talk on the legal side of co-parenting. Before this event, the room had been packed out for a talk on surrogacy. Then, the room cleared. Just a handful of us turned up to hear the co-parenting talk; mostly women.

See, surrogacy is cool, because it’s just renting a woman. Co-parenting is more complicated, and suggests some work is involved.

It has been energising to see that – niche as it may be – there is a call for this kind of family structure, but the eggs-to-sperm ratio remains an issue. In our experience, co-parenting seems to overwhelmingly appeal to cis women, trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth.

In other words, women. You don’t say.

Without any exhaustive studies on this, I can only guess why.

Let me help. It’s because they’re all women. Women are supposed to do the child stuff. All of it.

*Or at least a couple of women. The other one is called “Leo” so maybe there’s a luxury identity involved.

Brendan O’Neill on the idiocy of the atheist bros:

We are living through a great showdown between hysteria and reason. On one side stand the adherents to the cult of transgenderism, hawking their hocus pocus about gendered souls and self-authentication through castration. On the other side stand those of us who know that biology is real…

Not just castration of course. Genital mutilation on both sides, bilateral mastectomies, hysterectomies, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers.

You’ll never guess which side some New Atheists are taking in this clash between delusion and truth. The crazy side. The side that says a bloke with a beard and balls can literally be a lesbian. Which is infinitely more cranky than the idea that a bloke with a beard and balls can literally be the Son of God. How did rationalist bros, those secularists on steroids, those Dawkins acolytes whose hobby for years was to make fun of the faithful, become devotees of such a strange, post-truth sect?

One answer is massive social pressure. but what the roots of that are I will never understand.

This week a Twitterfeed called The New Atheists slammed Richard Dawkins for becoming a TERF. Dawkins is a rarity in the new rationalist ranks: he thinks people with penises are men, not women, just as bread is bread, not the body of Christ. He is ‘utterly confused’, decreed his angry apostates. Biology ‘isn’t black and white, it’s a full spectrum of colour just like a rainbow’, they said.

And just like a tub of sprinkles.

We’ve witnessed Neil deGrasse Tyson, America’s best-known scientist, bow to the creed of gender-as-feeling. In a TikTok video he said ‘XX/XY chromosomes are insufficient’ when it comes to reading someone’s sex, because what people feel matters along with their biology. So someone might feel mostly female one day but ‘80 per cent male’ the next, which means they’ll ‘remove the make-up’ and ‘wear a muscle shirt’.

What people feel matters, but it doesn’t change certain basic realities about them. What people feel can change their mood, their thinking, their behavior, their politics, many things, but it can’t change their sex any more than it can change their species.

We’ve seen Matt Dillahunty, a leading American atheist, promote the mystic cry that there’s a difference between ‘what your chromosomes are’ and your ‘gender identity’. ‘Transwomen are women’, he piously declares, perhaps keen to prove that while he might be fond of bashing the old religions, he has not one cross or blasphemous word to say about the new religion.

More to do with his significant other, from what I’ve seen in Twitter commentary.

Stephen Fry is another godless lover of science who appears to have converted to the trans belief. Phillip Pullman, Stewart Lee and others who were once noisy cheerleaders for rationalism are likewise strikingly reserved on this new ideology…

I wish. Phillip Pullman isn’t reserved on the subject, he’s all too mouthy on it.

Then there’s Humanists UK. Even Britain’s most influential God-free organisation has thrown its lot in with the Flat Earthism of the post-sex ideology. It entreated the British government not to change the definition of sex in the Equality Act to mean ‘biological sex’. Why? Because some people have a mysterious inner gender – soul? – which apparently counts for more than their biological sex when it comes to the question of which social spaces they should be allowed to enter.

Aka mind-body dualism, which as many have pointed out, humanists should be wise to.

Some women resigned from Humanists UK over what they viewed as its abandonment of ‘compassionate, scientific [and] rational’ principles in favour of the unreality of gender subjectivity.

The link is to Joan Smith.

O’Neill goes on to draw grand (and silly) conclusions about Dawkins and selfish genes and “the soulless technocracy of the New Atheism,” whatever that might be. He’s right about Team-Dillahunty though.

Meanwhile the “activists” work hard at messing up Sharron Davies’s life:

Olympian Sharron Davies said activists call her children’s school and abuse her kids over her views on trans women’s participation in sport.

The Olympic swimmer, former Gladiator and sports commentator, who attended 12 consecutive Olympic Games, was vilified after speaking out against biological males competing in women’s sport.

She also said she has not received enough support from fellow athletes who are too scared to speak up and lose “revenue”.

Ms Davies, 60, told the Off Air podcast she is inundated by trolls who try to stop her “debating and presenting the science”.

She said “Activists [ring] every single job I have, ringing every single charity, ringing my children’s schools, abusing my kids, calling me every name under the sun.”

So progressive, right? The most progressive social justice movement ever, right?

“It feels like it is totally and utterly a men’s rights movement. Historically, women get hit over the head with this ‘be kind’ slogan. Yet if you turn around to men and you said, ‘Well, let’s be kind to Lance Armstrong. He was only cheating a little bit – it’s not going to matter. He’s only got a one per cent advantage on us – let him carry on’.

“They would just laugh in your face.”

There certainly doesn’t seem to be any current flourishing social justice movement to defend Lance Armstrong’s cheating. I wonder why that might be.

Poor Steve Wardlaw. All he did was insult women he disagrees with and now look – he’s being laughed at all over the shop. Can’t a guy air his misogyny in peace any more?

There’s this article from The Guardian in 2019, see, that’s Steve Wardle saying how rich he is and how he spends it.

I worked as a senior oil and gas lawyer in Moscow for eight years and was on a low tax rate of about 13% which allowed me to save and invest in small businesses and build a seven-figure investment portfolio that now produces about £150,000 a year.

Ah yes an oil and gas lawyer. So altruistic and self-denying compared to those horrible women in their shaker kitchens refusing to agree that men can be women.

Ian and I live in both Kent and London. Our Kent property is a converted oast house, which has three chimneys and looks like a cross between a hobbit house and a Disney princess’s castle. It’s lovely, you open the back door and you see nothing but fields. I bought it for £610,000 and it’s probably worth north of £1m now. We spent about £200,000 renovating it, which involved moving a few walls, adding a dog-friendly shower room, and a new staircase.

But no shaker kitchen, I take it.

The Daily Mail tells us:

A lesbian speed-dating event is at the centre of a transphobia row after the organiser insisted that only ‘adult human females’ can attend. It follows outrage from attendees at the popular weekly £15-a-head event, held in Bloomsbury in London, after trans women tried to join. 

Lesbian means lesbian; it doesn’t mean man playing pretend-lesbian.

Last week, Jenny Watson, a town planner who runs the nights, posted on her website: ‘If you are male, please refrain from coming to the events, you are not a lesbian.’ 

Ms Watson told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Last year, a person turned up sporting a purple latex outfit… and an erection. Another time, a trans woman came into the female toilet and pushed their body at a woman who was upset and told me after. It got me thinking that this isn’t fair on women.’

Ms Watson, 31, added: ‘Transgender individuals deserve respect. But there is a need for protection of sex-segregated spaces for lesbian women.’

I’m not sure transgender people do particularly deserve respect. Forbearance, maybe, but respect, not so much. They’ve fallen for a ridiculous fad which is at least as silly as religion. I don’t have a lot of respect for credulity, especially when it’s accompanied by bullying and shunning.

Members of an activists’ group reported Jenny to her London council employers as transphobic for insisting on social media that only ‘adult human females’ should attend and ‘lesbians don’t have penises’. 

An inquiry into the get-togethers was last night under way by Stonegate Group, the owners of the College Arms, the pub where the event is held.

Another reason not to respect trans people: this refusal to just leave women alone.

Women must not be allowed to have anything. Not. one. thing.

I’d share more beautiful thoughts from Sandy Ally She/Her but she has me blocked (I’ve never heard of her) so I can’t.

Originally a comment by Cluecat on No further action.

Here is a fantastic example of the issue that a lot of Normies – including the police – are much more comfortable with the “Self-Diagnosed” “I’m so very quirky and speshul!” version of autism and other conditions, the kind of thing that is something to put into a social media bio, that gives the individual the right to interrupt and condesplain about “As a Neurodiverse person…”

You know, the kind of thing that doesn’t actually make day-to-day life particularly difficult. The kind of thing that can provide quite a nice living as a “Diversity Consultant” if you’re from the right background, once you age-out of being obnoxious on the internet (or should have done, anyway).

Most people aren’t comfortable at all with the reality. They seem to have no interest in understanding someone who genuinely thinks differently from the Normies, doesn’t fully comprehend their social rules, and is behaving perfectly logically in response to the situation they are in, it’s just that they are operating by different standards to that of the Normie World – which is confusing, overwhelming, and frequently terrifying.

A lot of people aren’t comfortable with genuine difference. This includes the Police, who should bloody well know better, and yet they keep refusing to do so. It can only be deliberate at this point.

The fact that they were only called to get a vulnerable child home safely, and this is how they chose to behave, is utterly disgraceful. They knew that she was autistic from the start. Their training should cover that autistic individuals may well behave differently from what the officers might expect, but they are generally not being “difficult” or “non-compliant” on purpose – many of us have to carry information cards to that effect (which, unfortunately, a lot of officers ignore, because they think they know everything, as if half an hour of powerpoint slides gives them greater knowledge than a lifetime of living with the conditions in question).

This is especially egregious given repeated recent reports regarding their institutional behaviour towards female victims and witnesses, along with previous reminders about their failures towards disabled people generally, and autistic individuals specifically.#

This is the organisation that actually wonders why disabled women and girls especially (and their loved ones) do not trust the police to maintain even a minimum standard of professionalism. So now, there are a whole lot of people and their families who know that they shouldn’t call the police to help them in any way if they or their vulnerable loved-one needs help, or goes missing. Or worse, if they’re a victim of an actual crime, which is pretty common, because if there’s one thing predators of all sorts really like, it’s a vulnerable victim. Not to mention the rise in crimes committed against disabled victims because of their disabilities. It’s so much easier to take your frustration out on someone less likely to put up a fight, you see. Many don’t bother reporting it, because we know that the police don’t care. They keep demonstrating it.

Great job there! That’ll free up loads of time to look for “offensive” tweets! Such a fantastic display of public service!

Perhaps if they’d spent a little more time on the actual practical policing stuff, rather than the latest obsessions of middle management (and extremely-online activists), they might have managed to do their job. Maybe the basic humanity of disabled people was skipped over for a trendier, more exciting training session, again. The police generally might have considerable amends to make regarding their previous behaviour towards Gay, Lesbian and Bi individuals, but what the hell was this about? Apparently, some animals really are more equal than others.

A basic understanding of the law is, in fact, required in order to be a police officer. The law as it actually is, not as certain officers would evidently like it to be (and this force has been told about this problem before).

As has already been pointed out, it’s not actually a “Public Order” offense if it does not take place in public – it says so right there in the text (specifically that the offence does not apply in a private dwelling). I’m still slightly confused, given the amount of genuine abuse that gets directed at officers by the various people they have to deal with, as to how there was anything actually offensive here in the first place.

Why totally overreact to that, of all things? From a vulnerable child?

(I’ve had similar observations from students, and it’s often either entirely neutral – “you look like this other person I know”, or even a slightly complicated compliment – “you look like this person I really like”. Surely Occam’s Razor could be applied here? That’s probably too logical, isn’t it?)

# There was an incident a few years ago – with a different force, I think, but still – where an autistic man was physically restrained, thrown to the ground resulting in injury, then sat on by several officers for some time. His “offence”? He just wanted to get back to his house, and so he went around an officer that was restricting access to a particular street. He told them he was a resident, but they were unhappy about him being unable to read their minds, apparently. He kept telling them that he was Autistic, and he needed to get home, but they’d already decided that he was a “problem”, which had to be “dealt with”. The force was made to apologise, which they eventually did, possibly after legal threats had to be made. No “lessons” appear to have been “learned” here.

Also the incident of the autistic young man slapped with a Hate Crime label for asking a fairly innocent question in a (admittedly rather awkward) manner which a particularly sensitive Normie police officer found “sooo offensive” – then maybe this isn’t the career for them, given the abuse I’ve heard directed at officers who are just trying to stop some idiot injuring himself.

It’s always amazing how officers can have so much patience with an adult male who is clearly intoxicated and causing serious damage (and inevitably screaming abuse and obscenities at all and sundry), but what they flip out over is one autistic child. Almost like girls are held to a different standard. Or are easier to bully. One of those.

How they see us:

He might as well have just typed “YOU ARE DISGUSTING” as many times as the character limit would allow.

The “you” in question is Hadley Freeman by the way.

Judge tells Trump to be cautious about the mouthing off.

A federal judge has warned former US President Donald Trump against making “inflammatory” statements which could taint the jury pool ahead of his trial for conspiring to overturn the result of the 2020 election.

But Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that Mr Trump can publicly share some of the non-sensitive evidence which prosecutors disclose to his legal team.

…

At a 90-minute hearing in Washington DC, the judge said the historic case was proceeding as normal. “He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have restrictions like every single other defendant,” she said. “The fact that the defendant is engaged in a political campaign is not going to allow him any greater or lesser latitude than any defendant in a criminal case.”

Nor, I take it, is the fact that he’s an ex-president. He’s just another fella around here.

NPR reported on July 25:

A jury has ordered anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy and associates to pay more than $50 million in damages to Idaho’s largest hospital in connection with armed protests last year that led to a security lockdown.

Remember him? The violent lunatic who invaded a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, and violently stayed there for a couple of weeks, and got one of his followers killed, all because he thinks he should be allowed to graze his cattle on federal land for free?

The decision handed down late Monday follows a ten day civil trial in which Bundy was a no show and where attorneys with St. Luke’s Hospital outlined what they called an extensive campaign of bullying, intimidation and disinformation directed at doctors and medical staff that they say continues today.

…

The drama goes back to March of 2022 when Bundy led a series of tense protests against the hospitalization of one of his associate’s infant grand[children] who state social workers said was malnourished. According to court documents, protesters, some armed, tried to force their way into the hospital’s locked exits. Some held “wanted” signs naming individual doctors and nurses and even blocked an ambulance entrance as car horns blared.

…

Ammon Bundy, who ran for governor in Idaho in 2022, receiving some 90,000 votes, routinely attacks the state’s Republican leaders, including its conservative governor, on social media. Bundy and his followers frequently spread Q Anon conspiracy theories that St. Luke’s and its staff who cared for the infant grandson were part of a global child sex trafficking cabal.

Well never mind all that, let’s talk about the real fascists: feminist women who know that men are not women.

Bundy of course has no intention of paying.

Yesterday:

 In a new lawsuit, St. Luke’s Health System has accused Ammon Bundy of fraudulently transferring his assets to other people in order to avoid paying damages owed to the hospital following the anti-government activist’s jury trial.

Bundy and his associate, Diego Rodriguez, were ordered by a jury to pay over $52 million in damages to the hospital and doctors due to a days-long protest over a child protective services case outside the St. Luke’s Boise and Meridian locations in March of 2022. 

Today:

Ammon Bundy, the anti-government provocateur, has been arrested according to the Gem County dispatch service.

Bundy has had an active arrest warrant since mid-April after an Ada County judge found him in contempt of court for refusing to show up to legal proceedings for nearly a year over a civil lawsuit filed by St. Luke’s Health System.

He should run for president.

Is Willoughby immortal?

The BBC “reports”:

A teenage girl arrested on suspicion of a homophobic public order offence will face no further action, police said.

A video uploaded to TikTok by her mother showed the autistic 16-year-old being detained outside her home in Leeds in the early hours of Monday.

The hell it does. The police detained her inside her home, as we’ve all seen from the video. Bare feet on carpeted stairs; the police tromping all over the carpeted floor of the hall; the 16-year-old cowering at the end of a short corridor; inside.

It’s possible that she said the shock-horror thing about the cop looking like a lesbian like her aunty outside the door; we don’t know, because that bit isn’t on tape; but the aggressive excessive furious detaining happened inside.

West Yorkshire Police said it had reviewed the evidence and closed the criminal investigation.

The force’s professional standards department is carrying out a review after it received a complaint.

A complaint? I rather think it was more than one.

Reactions to the West Yorks Police “oops” are not uniformly admiring.

Replies are turned off, as they were on yesterday’s now-memory-holed “there’s more to it than you know” – which at least one person points out is silly because quote tweets can’t be turned off so why admit you want us to shut up without being able to shut us up?

Oh look, West Yorks Police have admitted it was a mistake. They haven’t actually apologized, yet, but they have dropped the charge.

The NZ Herald on the puncher:

A young LGBTQ rights activist who was filmed punching a 71-year-old woman in the head during the heated Posie Parker counter-protest in Auckland this year has pleaded guilty to assault.

A young male activist. They just can’t stop themselves trying to defend the aggressors and accuse the victims when it comes to trans ideology, can they. It’s a young man who punched an elderly woman in the head, and that fact belongs in the lede.

The victim, who did not attend today’s hearing, told the Herald she was pleased to hear about the guilty plea.

“I am feeling very good today,” said the grandmother of six, who suffered a concussion and facial bruising as a result of the attack. “I’m glad he has pleaded guilty. That made me feel a lot better.”

A young man’s fist did that.

“About 11am an unknown person began pulling out pegs placed in the ground to separate the two groups,” police noted in the summary of facts for the case. “The group protesting against the speaker Posie Parker pushed over a metal fence and began approaching the group supporting her.

“The victim put her hands out to stop the group and made contact with a female from the opposing group, the same one that had been removing the pegs.”

The defendant approached the victim after noticing the physical contact, court documents state.

“The victim turned towards the defendant who responded by punching the victim three times in the head area,” police noted.

“In explanation, the defendant stated he believed the victim had assaulted a fellow protester and that the victim was going to assault him next.”

Did he also believe that she would cause him a lot of damage if she did “assault” him? So much damage that he needed to punch her in the eye three times with his youthful male fist?

Assault carries a maximum possible sentence of one year’s imprisonment. The man’s lawyer indicated today that she intends to seek a discharge without conviction. She also requested a referral for restorative justice, in which the defendant and the victim could meet in a controlled setting if the victim agreed.

The victim told the Herald today she is ready for the meeting.

“I want to meet up and have my say with him, but the thing which sticks in my craw is even before we have had that face-to-face restorative meeting his lawyer is making submissions for dismissal without conviction and permanent name suppression,” she said.

“He hasn’t said sorry and I feel the rights of victims are not upheld.

“It’s like the victim has totally been forgotten out of the justice system.”

The victim said she would look her attacker in the eye and ask him why he attacked an old lady who was not causing him any grief.

“I will let him have his say and then go from there,” she said.

Maybe she can persuade him to consider the possibility that women should have some rights too.

Paragraph one sets the scene…with a sudden plot twist at the end.

When she woke up on July 14, Chelsea Wolfe’s life was—in her own words—perfect. Her tickets were booked for Scotland, her registration for Freestyle BMX as part of Team USA was confirmed, her bags were partially packed, her training was going according to plan. She sat down to a bowl of cereal before heading to the bike park for a training session, and opened up Instagram. That’s where she learned that the UCI had just instituted a ban on trans athletes, starting in three days.

It’s not subtle. Eight iterations of “she” or “her” before getting to the trans part. Chelsea Wolfe is a man.

“My world crumbled in that moment,” she recalls, speaking to me on Zoom from her apartment in San Diego three weeks later—at the exact same time that the event she was supposed to compete in, Women’s Freestyle BMX, played out at Worlds. (American BMXer Hannah Roberts took her fifth title as we said goodbye.)

It’s his world that matters, you see. Not the world of the woman he would have displaced.

No matter where you currently stand in the debate over the right of trans women to compete, here’s the thing: It’s tempting to try to keep the debate in the realm of the academic, the esoteric. But it’s not. It’s about humans. When you’re discussing with your friends whether or not trans women should be able to compete in sport, you’re not talking about an abstract concept. You’re talking about a 30-year-old woman who’s currently on suicide watch. There isn’t a big bad wolf out there; there’s a small-boned, frankly adorable Wolfe out there, and she just had her life turned upside down.

No shit, but Wolfe is not the only human affected here, to put it mildly. Of course it’s about humans, and women are the humans who are being harmed by men like Wolfe. How stupid and captured and blinded do you have to be to overlook that? Especially by telling us he’s “frankly adorable”?

“It’s already been a rough life, and then they’re like, ‘Hey you know what’s a good idea? Let’s kick her while she’s down,’” Wolfe says with an ironic smile.

Uh huh. Now think about the women.

Before the UCI’s July 14 announcement that effectively banned trans women from competition starting July 17, Wolfe had been on top of the world. Not only was she part of Team USA, everything else was finally going her way. 

At the expense of the women he would be racing against. Maybe too much was going his way.

Vacillating between anger and sadness has become the norm for Wolfe. “Right now, I’m in a crisis and having urges to harm myself that feel uncontrollable. I am mourning the loss of this life that was just stolen from me,” she says. “But then I’m also thinking about how we need to fix this. The rage that I rightly feel having my life stolen from me is huge.”

Stolen from him. What about what he wanted to steal from women? What about their lives?

While Wolfe is working towards a legal resolution to the UCI’s ban—essentially, working on suing the UCI for the right to race—she recognizes that at 30 years old, even if she wins the case, it will likely be too late. The odds of a resolution before the 2024 Olympics are slim, and the average age of Freestyle BMX racers is getting younger and younger. It’s unlikely that if she does win, a return to racing at the level she’s at now will be possible. “They are stealing these years from me,” she says. “Regardless of whether or not we win in the long run, they are harming us now, and that harm can never be undone.”

He says, over and over and over, ignoring everything he is stealing from women.

Regardless of where you stand in the trans athlete debate, the mid-season abrupt shift in rules with a three day warning can only be considered cruel.

No, you’re wrong about that. I don’t consider it cruel to Wolfe, I consider it ending his sustained cruelty to his women rivals.

If it feels like a political move, that’s because it’s almost impossible to reject the idea that it is one. “Every single review of the rules around trans women competing has come immediately after a trans woman reaching any modicum of success within competition. So in 2018, it was Dr. Veronica Ivy winning a Masters World Championship track race.”

That’s because it’s not fair. It’s hard to believe the level of obstinate determined denial in this article.

Stuff New Zealand reports:

A man has admitted assaulting an elderly woman during a protest against an anti-transgender speaker.

That’s a misnomer. It implies that the issue is just “transgender” in general, when it’s the way trans ideology erodes women’s rights. Letting women speak is not inherently “anti-transgender” and it’s certainly not an attack on trans people.

The protester, who has name suppression, appeared at the Auckland District Court on Thursday and pleaded guilty to a charge of assault, his lawyer Emma Priest confirmed to Stuff.

Why does the man who attacked a woman have name suppression?

The man hit the woman during a heated clash between supporters of Keen-Minshull and those who support transgender rights.

The man hit the woman while he and others were violently invading and trying to shut down supporters of women’s rights. It wasn’t a “clash,” it was a one-sided attack. By the way he fractured her eye socket.

Videos of the protest showed heated scenes between the protesters, with a man hitting a woman twice in the face.

Videos of the protest showed people violently attacking the protesters.

H/t Rob

Credit where it’s due – Peter gets it right for a change.

Clarence Thomas has been cashing in even more than we knew.

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.

Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

And it’s a problem because all this could be, to put it bluntly, bribery.

It doesn’t have to be “We’ll treat you to this luxury vacation on the Riviera if you rule in our favor” to be corrupt. Lavish gifts—>debt. Thomas owes all these people something.

…the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”

Largesse=obligation.

Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the senior ethics official in the executive branch, said, “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire.” Taxpayers, he added, have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not living on the dime of others.

Fox, who worked under both Democrat and Republican administrations, said he advised every new political appointee the same thing: Your wealthy friends are the ones you had before you were appointed. “You don’t get to acquire any new ones,” he told them.

If you want the big bucks, work for a corporation, not for the people.

West Yorkshire Police have issued a statement.

West Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Oz Khan said: “We are aware of a video circulating on social media which, as is often the case, only provides a very limited snapshot of the circumstances of this incident.

“Officers had their body-worn video cameras activated during their wider involvement with this young girl which provides additional context to their actions.”

Ok so it could be that she was verbally abusive as the police were taking her home along with her older sister. But we know she wasn’t arrest-level abusive on the way home because the police didn’t arrest her, they took her home. They presumably didn’t take her home in order to show her to her mother before they dragged her off to the cells.

But anyway they say themselves that she didn’t say anything to annoy them until the lesbian remark.

“We have received a complaint in relation to this incident which is currently being assessed by West Yorkshire Professional Standards Directorate. While that ongoing process and the active criminal investigation limit our ability to fully discuss the incident in detail, we feel it is important for people to have some context about the circumstances.

“From 12.12am on Monday, August 7, police received calls from a family member of a 16-year-old girl who was reportedly intoxicated and putting herself at risk in Leeds city centre. Officers attended at about 1am and drove the teenager to her home so she could be appropriately looked after. Upon returning her to the address, comments were made which resulted in the girl being arrested on suspicion of a homophobic public order offence. The nature of the comments made was fully captured on body-worn video.”

The office staffer who wrote this flubbed the most important item. “Comments were made.” BY WHOM? Staffer doesn’t even have the brains to remember that the issue is this particular girl making these alleged comments. It could be the Angel Gabriel suddenly popping in to make comments, which resulted in the girl being arrested, which makes no sense. What the staffer needed to type was “the girl made comments, and the police arrested her because of the comments.”

But anyway. The girl made comments. So what??? These are grown-ass adult non-autistic adults who are trained to deal with disruptive people because that’s much of what their job is. A teenage autistic girl, even a rude or sweary one, is not the equivalent of a massive drunk man threatening violence.

Anyway what is a “homophobic public order offence” when it’s in her own house? (And she’s a minor, and autistic?) They were inside her front door; it wasn’t public.

“When the girl was eventually fit to be interviewed, that interview took place with an appropriate adult. She was later released on bail pending further enquiries and advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.

“West Yorkshire Police takes its responsibilities around the welfare of young people taken into custody and around neurodiversity very seriously. We also maintain that our officers and staff should not have to face abuse while working to keep our communities safe.”

Nope, I just can’t see it. Of course officers shouldn’t have to face abuse, but they also shouldn’t over-react to one autistic 16-year-old girl. Even if she had shouted “That’s one fugly bull-dyke right there!” they should have risen above. They could urge the mother to teach her better manners, but I cannot see the need to assault and arrest the daughter.