In 1990, a teenage girl told Congress she watched Iraqi soldiers remove babies from incubators in Kuwait and leave them to die. The story helped build support for the Gulf War. She was the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter, and the whole appearance had been arranged by a private PR firm hired by Kuwait.
A lot of specific Americans are dancing on Eric’s grave right now.
In Swalwell v. Trump, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia considered whether former President Donald Trump is entitled to absolute presidential immunity from damages liability for allegedly inciting a riot at the U.S. Capitol. www.theusconstitution.org/litigatio…
What saving pagan babies looks like in 2026
When my mom was in Catholic girls school they had little boxes in church: donate your coins to save the pagan babies. Actual boxes. Printed label. Handed to eight-year-olds as a virtue exercise.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s the ideology made physical.
Nobody defends that framing anymore. Missionary colonialism, white man’s burden, noblesse oblige—we recognize those as paternalism dressed as generosity. The hierarchy was explicit: we have the truth, you don’t, your job is to receive salvation gratefully and not have inconvenient opinions about it.
The secular progressive version runs the same transaction with better branding. The Catholics became atheists but kept the bone structure. We care more about people than you do. We want things on your behalf because you don’t fully understand your own situation. It’s self-sealing—if you agree, you’re enlightened; if you disagree, that just proves you need saving.
Pagan babies got older. The box got bigger. The coins are now policy.
Noblesse oblige used to be recognized as the racist paternalism it is. Secularize it, rebrand it as allyship, and suddenly it’s a virtue. Same skeleton. The pagan babies just got older.
She’s the most Karen pca.st/episode/3…
Virginia votes April 21 on whether to let the legislature redraw congressional maps mid-decade. The ballot language sounds tidy. The actual question is whether you fight partisan gerrymandering by doing it back. I voted no.
Painfully beautifully written and read. Lovely lilt.
Douglas Stuart reads his story “A Private View,” from the April 20, 2026, issue of the magazine. pca.st/episode/1…
You can always hack and adapt your tools to best work with your process. This is kludgy. I superglued the chopped top onto the shaft of the aluminum Bic.
I simply have always called this moral adaptation to local cultures. Seems simple & self-evident to me.
Today we talk about the book Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry by Alasdair Macintyre. pca.st/episode/4…
The Second Amendment doesn't grant you the right to bear arms. It prohibits the government from infringing on a right you already had. That's not a technicality—that's the entire point.
Here’s what the “your gun right is imaginary” crowd consistently gets wrong: they treat the Second Amendment as if it’s a permission slip. As if Congress sat down, invented a right out of nothing, and handed it to you. That’s not what the Bill of Rights is. That’s not what any of the first ten amendments are.
The Bill of Rights doesn’t grant rights. It restrains government from infringing on rights that already exist—rights that the founders understood to be natural, pre-political, given by God or inherent in human nature. The First Amendment doesn’t give you free speech. The Fourth doesn’t give you privacy. And the Second doesn’t give you the right to keep and bear arms.
What it does is tell the government: hands off.
The militia clause—“a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”—is prefatory. It provides context and rationale. It does not condition the right. The operative clause is what follows: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
That’s the command. That’s the prohibition. The comma between those clauses has been doing a lot of heavy lifting for people who want to read a limitation that isn’t there.
I’m a gun owner. I don’t carry because the government said I could. I carry because the right to defend myself and my family is mine by nature, and the Second Amendment exists specifically to stop the government from touching it.
You can disagree with that philosophy. But don’t tell me the right is imaginary. The infringement is the crime—not the ownership.
The Second Amendment doesn’t grant you the right to bear arms. It prohibits the government from infringing on a right you already had. That’s not a technicality—that’s the entire point. davisvanguard.org/2026/04/s…
Lena Dunham Is Still Trying to Figure Out Why People Hated Her So Much pca.st/episode/7…
Announcer pronounced omnipotence as omni-potence. What do you think about that?
NPR News: 04-11-2026 3PM EDT pca.st/episode/e…
I love paranoid hyperbole. As if Liberty and Freedom weren’t equally compromised during COVID and under Biden as well. And under Obama. That’s exactly why the kaiju Donald J Trump rose from the ocean. It’s a “freedom from” versus “freedom to” dichotomy.
I had a full double-take. I was sure New York had moved the age of consent to 18, and finding out it’s still 17 scrambled my wiring. Then I remembered I grew up in Hawaii, where it was 14 until 2001 and is now 16, and suddenly my sense of what’s “normal” felt completely unreliable.
Nobody convinced society of anything. Competition over collaboration is emergent—it bubbles up, not down. The moment trust becomes the norm, exploitation attacks it. The pickpocket and the Ponzi schemer are the same person at different zoom levels. It’s a Mandelbrot.
They’re so committed to the Hitler bit they won’t even take the free Napoleon joke. It’s right there. Nobody pivoted.
Is this happening? My mail-in vote in America did have a “no” option.
Virginia County REMOVED “NO” Option from Referendum Ballot. Sheriff Is Investigating. youtube.com/watch
