Climate Change: no, we shouldn’t trust the science
“The science” we were supposed to trust was always a lie.

Do you remember Global Warming? It was going to melt the polar ice caps, all the glaciers, and pretty much everything other than mountainous parts of Colorado and the Grand Tetons of Wyoming would be underwater in, oh, ten years or so, until ten years had passed and then it would be another ten years, and this time they meant it! The election of Barack Obama was the moment the planet healed and the rise of the seas stopped, except no healing was necessary and the seas weren’t rising.

Then some annoying, actually replicable, science with data and everything came along that proved global warming and the “science” backing it was falsified, so our existential, certain—in ten years or so—doom became “Climate Change.” Of course, the climate changes all the time and always has, and there was that nasty Medieval Warm Period where there was no man-made pollution that was as warm or warmer than now, but what are you anyway, a science denier?!

Graphic: X Post (See why he’s canceled?)

Oh, we had warnings. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth among them, but like every other bit of climate hysteria, those predictions of imminent—in ten years—doom didn’t happen, though they made Gore and others multimillionaires. And right up until the second term of Donald Trump—how could anyone not understand that Kamala Harris was an Obama-like savior (cackle, cackle)?—our climate-caused doom was certain…in ten years or so, and then just like that, it wasn’t: 

And now, it seems they are admitting it was BS all along.

It’s nice when something you knew was a fraud all along turns out to be a fraud, but it’s even nicer when the people perpetrating the fraud admit it was a fraud all along.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios,” science policy analyst Roger Pielke Jr wrote late last week, and in what he called “big news,” the new framework “eliminated the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades.”

So the oceans aren’t about to boil off or freeze over or whatever the current scare story is?
Exactly: “The IPCC and broader research community has now admitted that the scenarios that have dominated climate research, assessment and policy during the past two cycles of the IPCC assessment process are implausible. They describe impossible futures.”

This is important because the IPCC’s changes resulted in “an update to the Science Based Targets initiative’s rules eliminates the need for steep emission cuts by 2030,” Trellis reported on Friday. In other words, even the people committed to radically reduced carbon emissions now say we don’t need to radically reduce carbon emissions to save the world or whatever.

Interestingly, the IPCC, long ago, quietly admitted that even if climate alarmists got all the trillions they demanded to save the planet, the global temperature might be reduced by about 1° centigrade, give or take, by the end of the century. It was always about the money, which is ironic in that if the world was ending in ten years, wouldn’t money be superfluous? After all, only so many people can live on the top of Mt. Everest, and they’d be a bit short of breath.

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‘An open secret’: New records reveal officials failed to act on fraud warnings

Newly obtained FBI interviews show regulators raised concerns about Feeding Our Future long before the meals program lost millions to fraud.
By Jeffrey Meitrodt The Minnesota Star Tribune
State education officials repeatedly raised concerns about possible fraud in the federally funded meals program during the pandemic, but their supervisors stopped them from taking more aggressive action, according to law enforcement interviews and other investigative records newly obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Frontline regulators said that they questioned soaring reimbursement claims and suspicious food distribution operations to their supervisors long before prosecutors uncovered what became one of the nation’s largest pandemic fraud schemes.
Three state employees told investigators that their managers discouraged aggressive oversight because they were afraid of lawsuits. One believed the department’s leadership feared accusations of racism from Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of the fraud case, which largely served Minnesota’s East African community.
The interviews provide a rare inside account of the state’s botched response to early warning signs of fraud — and how legal concerns and delayed enforcement allowed the scheme to grow, ultimately siphoning more than $250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program overseen by the state education department.
The records include FBI interviews with Jenny Butcher, a 25-year veteran of the Minnesota Department of Education who retired in 2024. Butcher told federal investigators in May 2022 that abuse in the meals program was an “open secret.”
She said that her supervisors repeatedly stopped her from digging into suspicious reimbursement claims and discouraged her from visiting sites that seemed “unbelievable” to her.
“No one at our agency was allowed to go to the sites — not even a drive-by,” Butcher said in an interview with the Star Tribune.
At least two other state officials echoed Butcher’s characterization of the education department’s timid regulatory approach, according to the records. One of Butcher’s colleagues told the FBI that Butcher was the first regulator to raise internal concerns about fraud in the meals program.

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NSSF Funds Lawsuit Against Virginia for Unconstitutional Firearm Bans

WASHINGTON, D.C.  — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, is funding a lawsuit filed today against the Commonwealth of Virginia for violating both the U.S. Constitution and the Virginia Constitution. Virginia’s expansive new law, HB 217 / SB 749, bans the sale and transfer of firearms that are expressly protected for private ownership by both the federal and state constitutions.

“Governor Abigail Spanberger, and the Virginia General Assembly, are grossly violating rights held by the citizens of the Commonwealth. The constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia expressly prohibit the government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Further, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that firearms in common use are protected from radical gun control. Denying law-abiding citizens the ability to protect themselves with the firearms of their choosing does nothing to make Virginia safer. The only thing this unconstitutional law does is surrender the freedoms that the Founding Fathers, including Virginians George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — who authored the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment — so wisely fought for and sought to protect to ensure freedom from tyranny.”

The NSSF-funded complaint, filed by Erick Black, Britton Condon, Clark’s Gun Shop, Inc., Optimus Arms, LLC and Hexmag USA, LLC, in Virginia’s Circuit Court of Fauquier County, details that HB 217 / SB 749 criminalizes not just the sale or transfer of commonly-owned Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and standard capacity magazines, but also commonly owned handguns and shotguns Virginians regularly use for self-defense and hunting. The overly broad definitions of what is wrongfully defined as an “assault firearm” disenfranchise Virginians of their right to keep and bear arms, which are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment and Article I of the Virginia Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision held that firearms in common use are protected by the Second Amendment. That holding precludes bans on the legal sale of MSRs, which number over 32 million in circulation. Likewise, there are a conservatively estimated nearly 1 billion detachable magazines in private possession and hundreds of millions with a capacity exceeding 15 rounds. Many commonly owned pistols are equipped with 17-round magazines, which HB 217 / SB 749 now criminalizes. The law’s expansive definition of “assault firearm” wraps in many commonly owned semiautomatic shotguns and handguns, which will be unlawful to purchase or bear in Virginia.

Virginia’s HB 217 / SB 749 fails the Supreme Court’s Bruen “history and tradition” test, as there were no analogous laws banning the lawful acquisition or bearing of firearms at the Nation’s founding. In fact, it is well documented that rifles with a capacity greater than 15 rounds were available and possessed by Americans when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791.

Additionally, because HB 217 / SB 749 bans rifles, pistols and shotguns commonly used for hunting, it violates Article XI, Section 4 of the Virginia Constitution.

DeSantis Signs Law Arming Trained College, University Faculty After FSU Shooting

A year after a gunman opened fire on Florida State University, trained college and university faculty can carry guns onto campus under a bill Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Friday.

“It puts the bad guys on the defense — they don’t know who’s going to be able to offer them resistance,” DeSantis said during a Miami press conference. “We’ve taken this more seriously than probably anyone else has … in our state’s history.”

He referred to Florida’s guardian program, a state initiative allowing schools to train certain staff or hire security to wield firearms for self-defense. It was created for public K-12 schools in 2018 following shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead. The tragedy unfolded while a sheriff’s deputy delayed confronting the gunman for nearly five minutes.

DeSantis later removed him from office.

Under the new law, HB 757, the program will be extended to colleges and universities. Staff hoping to become guardians must complete 144 hours of training — 132 hours with firearms. Although the program isn’t mandatory, college and university presidents have the power to appoint their school guardians.

“Sadly but undeniably, institutions of learning have become targets of violence in our state and other states,” Senate sponsor Don Gaetz, a Republican from Crestview, said in a written statement.

“As parents and grandparents, we want our students to be safe and secure when they are on campus. This legislation ensures our institutions will use commonsense safeguards as well as high-tech systems to prevent violence where possible and respond quickly and effectively when needed.”

The measure comes 13 months after 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner shot to death two and wounded five others outside FSU’s busy Student Union in the middle of final exams. Police shot him in the jaw three minutes after he opened fire, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Despite the speedy response from law enforcement, lawmakers agreed new reinforcements were needed. This included funding for more locks on classroom doors — after some students reported that they couldn’t lock themselves away from the shooter — and increased security measures.

Other provisions in the package signed Friday include:

  • Makes it a second-degree felony to fire a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school.
  • Promotes the use of a mobile suspicious activity reporting tool, like FortifyFL, to quickly alert law enforcement to dangerous circumstances.
  • Requires a student’s threat assessment reports and psychological evaluations to be transferred from a K-12 school to their college or university upon enrollment.
  • Mandates schools create family reunification plans, active assailant response plans, and threat-management teams.
  • Requires schools to annually conduct security risk assessments.
  • Increases training for faculty and staff to identify and respond to mental health problems.
  • Further connects students with mental health services.

Letter to the Editor in Connecticut Asks Question No One Seems Interested in Answering

Connecticut passed its Glock ban, which doesn’t just impact Glocks. They did it, as per usual, in the name of public safety, all while failing to ignore the facts that criminals aren’t supposed to have guns in the first place and that the full-auto switches are illegal to buy, own, or possess without very specific licenses that most people will never have.

They passed it just the same.

In Connecticut, though, one letter to the editor took issue with a bit of hate thrown at a state lawmaker because of a simple question that no one seems interested in answering.

I was disappointed to see criticism of Representative Mitch Bolinsky for voting against Connecticut’s proposed Glock ban. Whether someone supports or opposes gun control generally, this particular proposal deserves honest scrutiny.

Connecticut already has a 10-round magazine limit. Supporters of the bill argue the ban improves public safety because certain pistols could theoretically be converted to automatic fire with illegal aftermarket devices. But those conversion devices are already illegal under federal law, and automatic weapons themselves are already heavily prohibited.

The practical question is simple: how much additional safety is actually gained?

With a 10-round limit already in place, the difference in discharging 10 rounds between rapid semiautomatic fire and illegal automatic fire is often only a fraction of a second. Even supporters of the bill acknowledge the focus is largely on the possibility of illegal modification, not on the firearm’s normal lawful operation. Given Brandon Moore’s background as a West Point graduate, Army officer, combat veteran, and Apache pilot, one would expect an understanding of the technical distinction between lawful semiautomatic firearms and illegally converted automatic weapons, which makes the practical effectiveness of this proposal a fair subject for public debate.

Like it or not, the Second Amendment to the Constitution states that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” People may disagree on how that should be interpreted, but constitutional rights are not supposed to be selectively respected only when politically convenient.

The practical question itself is an interesting one, because while we can all make the constitutional arguments in our sleep, most likely, the reality is that many people don’t really seem to understand that “shall not be infringed” means that our rights shall not be infringed at all. So, you need to frame commentary based on where people are, mentally, rather than rely purely on the (completely valid) constitutional arguments.

And here, the letter writer asks a simple question that it seems people are offended by it even being asked.

If Connecticut’s laws work as they are, then how much additional safety would be obtained by banning an entire category of handguns that might be illegally modified with a device that’s already illegal to buy, sell, or own?

If the magazine limits work, does the gun taking a half-second longer to empty a magazine actually matter in any appreciable way?

No? Then why ban the guns at all?

If you argue that the magazine ban isn’t respected by criminals, then I have to ask why you think they won’t get striker-fired handguns to modify just as easily?

Seriously, these bans are probably the most ridiculous bits of gun control I’ve ever seen, especially when Glock has actually tried to modify their design. Some people are just really good at finding ways around stuff like that.

Interesting

Experimental drug shrinks advanced kidney tumors, clears cancer in one patient.

A new Phase I clinical trial provides proof of concept for a potential therapy for treatment-resistant cancers, particularly kidney cancer. In the new study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, researchers tested a novel kind of immunotherapy in individuals with different types of cancer.

In a subset of patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma, the most common and an aggressive form of kidney cancer, the drug successfully reduced—and in one patient completely cleared—the cancer in a subset of patients.

“We studied a very hard-to-treat population,” says David Braun, MD, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology), of pathology, and of urology, the Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman Yale Scholar, and the study’s lead author. “The fact that this drug was clinically active and leading to some responses is really encouraging.”

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