@ericowens.bsky.social Did you see this? Excellent critique of Cardinal Dolan’s assertion by the National Catholic Reporter . www.ncronline.org/opinion/card...

Not quite sure how to evaluate the claims of this article. @ericowens.bsky.social www.sciencealert.com/meditation-a...

New recall of another brand of radioactive shrimp. @ericowens.bsky.social www.newsweek.com/kroger-aquas...

This may explain why there’s an aggressive response to people who merely post Kirk’s own words. It threatens the existence of the alternate Kirk - the motivational speaker that had been marketed to young kids and white Christian groups through selective quotation & clips.

Your First Amendment right to personal political speech does not protect your speech from your employer unless your employer is the government. There are rare statutes that might protect you from a private employer firing you but not the First Amendment.

Laugh at Trump’s ridiculous innumeracy, sure. But the commander of the world’s most powerful military is responding to relevant questions about the laws of armed conflict by claiming that the existence of drug deaths in general permits him to kill anyone he feels like, which is very serious.

Every single person on the show noted how the things Kirk said were awful. I noted his smiling persona as an innovation that made him popular with MAGA folks and even his opponents - not because I approved of it. But I realize we're all supposed to be shouting partisans.

Just because I saw someone mention it: There’s no reason to think that TPUSA/Kirk had a significant effect on the 2024 election. The turnout operation was non-existent and claims that they/he are the central (or even a major) cause of young voters moving right aren’t backed by any actual evidence.

Kirk advocated for public executions and said (among many things) that Biden should be shot. That's not a chuckle and a dog-whistle. Some of you have serious internet brain poisoning.

Yes, these are just like things Charlie Kirk said. Reagan pandering with corn syrup are just like calling for public executions of public figures. (Also, Carter gave you deregulation.) Look, I get that you all think all things came from the 1980s, butr many of you are, how you say, bonkers

No, but it's surprising that the party of Ike, George HW Bush, Mitt Romney, Chuck Percy, John Heinz (my former boss), Jeane Kirkpatrick (also someone I worked for as a grad student) and many other good public servants ended up with a NYC oligarch.

I remember those fascist moments in the 80s when Reagan granted amnesty to millions of immigrants, eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, and left office telling America to embrace *more* immigrants. You could feel the SS marching in the streets.

In fairness, growing up in the 70s and 80s, I knew people on the right who blamed FDR for EVERYTHING. A guy got mugged in Boston? Fuckin' FDR and his welfare state and tax withholding and liberal judges and hurr durr durr

@endtheidiocracy.bsky.social There were lots of things Reagan did that I didn't agree with but those were primarily policy disagreements. He was surrounded by normies. If you think the current republican party insanity is anywhere close to Reagan, you are not seeing clearly.

one of the clearest signs you're dealing with a strong and principled political movement is when they want to make it illegal to make fun of them

This is extrajudicial execution, without any clear threat to the US, no authorization from Congress, and far beyond even Article II. The military is not the president's personal hit squad. Or wasn't, until now.

More importantly, it is clear as day that Trump and MAGA want to use his murder - as awful as it is - as an excuse to criminalize entire categories of speech and beliefs they object to, or just find annoying. This must be fought with every ounce of energy we can muster.

We're well past the point where if it were a foreign country, US media correspondents would be reporting on it in a way that would get them detained and/or expelled by the regime. This makes it sounds like it's infrastructure week.

The president is intentionally killing non-combatants who pose no direct threat in violation of domestic, international and military law and his VP and chief policy adviser are promising an authoritarian crackdown on his political opponents. Just today. Democracy and the rule of law are on the line

Have no fear, Republicans will bail you out at some point with a huge chunk of taxpayer money to pay you for not being able to sell your products because of their policies. Then you can post on social media that you’re voting for them because you are against socialism.

The president is boasting about how he has shut down boating and fishing in the Caribbean because everyone is afraid that he’ll murder them.

This is not at all some kind of emotional problem

Yes, yes, it's always voter suppression, which seems to magically disappear whenever Democrats win and then magically reappears when Democrats lose. Suppression can work in marginal elections. People sitting on their hands (as they did in 2024) is not suppression.

You can't defame the dead. That's drummed into you on almost the first day of law school. We'll see what happens, but any judge who doesn't throw the book at a lawyer who argues otherwise is playing with a stacked deck.

Kash Patel is really disproving all the people who insist he's an incompetent ideologue in way over his head.

It is genuinely humiliating as an America to have this sour, cowardly, narcissistic lout represent us and to know that so many Americans applaud conduct like this. Just deeply embarrassing.

“The folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions,” Mr. Jentleson said, citing a series of positions Kamala Harris took in 2019 before walking back many of them once she became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024."

KAMLAGER-DOVE: Dylan Roof, who followed white supremacist propaganda, murdered 9 Black parishioners in 2015. Do you deny this? PATEL: I'm sorry. Dylan Roof? Can you give me more information? KAMLAGER-DOVE: You're head of the FBI

Hillary Clinton's loss had nothing to do with her positions on anything, which were in the mainstream and likely acceptable to most voters - if advocated by someone not named Hillary Clinton.

"It's indefensible to blame us when the other team scored more points"

Democrats lost ground from 2020 to 2024 with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters, many of whom shifted to the right. But whistling past the graveyard is a strategy too, I guess

Kamala Harris’ “first choice” for running mate in 2024 was Pete Buttigieg But Harris believed “we were asking too much of America” to accept a ticket with “a Black woman married to a Jewish man” with a gay man It was “too big of a risk,” she wrote www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Because it's a teachable moment

And the proof is how seriously people now take the word "fascism," especially when deployed by self-described "patriarchy destroyers." ("Why can't we connect with ordinary people and get them to see the threat," they wonder.)

Because what works for them will not work for you, and because the main enemy of the United States for a half century had the word "socialist" in its name, and when people hear "fascist" they think of Europe in the 1930s. Not fair, perhaps, but that's how it went.

The first part is not a fallacy: Part of the reason no one is reacting to the word "fascism" is that it's been used to describe everyone to the right of Nelson Rockefeller for decades. The second part is just me noting that wearing a silly hat (or name) does not help you convince people :)

Yes. The ownership cap relaxation in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is what people should be bitching about. (But since it happened after Jan 20, 1989 it doesn’t fit the narrative.)

This was never the point of the Fairness Doctrine, and if the last 24 hours don't convince you why the government should have *less* control over the media, then I can't keep explaining it to you

The danger of calling all things by one name is the same danger as calling all diseases “cancer” Juntas and other authoritarian regimes are not fascist. Fascist regimes are fascist.

Indeed, I am a political scientist with multiple degrees that required me to pass exams to show I knew the difference between fascism and other forms of oppressive regimes and then prove that I could teach the differences among them

Do people even read history books anymore

Respectfully disagree: 1) in fact it is unusual for a democracy w/ this level of GDP to turn authoritarian & so quickly; 2) the weakness of both institutions (congress & courts) and individuals (Schumer etc) is shocking. Would take less than 10 people in congress or 2 SC justices to stop all this.

This is excellent news for our students. Spread this around to your friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors. Finding reliable information is getting harder to come by. I count The Atlantic as a reliable source. Great news, indeed.

Interesting idea actually

Literal! And also, the answer to this was more government repression

Stupid constitution, prohibiting things like this

Yes, by all means let’s have the government decide what constitutes “news”

It's almost like the First Amendment and "speech" are not the same thing as selling fish

This is who’s actually writing my posts