Prime Minister Frederiksen may not have left the call motivated to divest herself of Greenland, but she wasn't laughing about the seriousness of the situation.

Many European officials had hoped Trump's comments about seeking control of Greenland for national security reasons were a negotiating ploy to gain more control over an increasingly vital area as nuclear-powered ice breakers are making the fabled Northwest viable and Russia and China are both also jostling for position there. Greenland is sparsely populated and would be an ideal target for China's "elite capture" strategy, which they have aggressively pursued in suborning island nations in the Pacific. Quite honestly, Denmark is only a little less vulnerable than Greenland to China buying it outright. //

The Euros and the New York Times have concluded that Trump is deadly serious.

I think Trump is largely right in his assessment. //

Quite honestly, I don't see how Greenland could sustain independence in the face of a concerted Chinese effort to establish control (Vitkor Orban's Hungary allows uniformed Chinese police in Budapest). Our free association model is also showing weakness as China exerts influence there. The best arrangement would seem to be declaring Greenland to be a commonwealth (like Puerto Rico) or a territory (like Guam and the Virgin Islands). But no matter how it arrives, I think Greenland's internal politics, which has had the right to declare independence since 2009 and that option is favored by 64 percent of the population, and the geopolitics of our competition with China indicate that Greenland becoming US territory is inevitable. //

j. o. lantern
4 hours ago
I think one of Trump's least appreciated abilities is his awareness of strategic considerations in our national interest. Even here in Red State forums, he was being roundly derided for being distracted and off course when he began speaking about Greenland and the Panama Canal. I maintained then and still do that he was seeing the Big Picture, that hardly anyone else did.

anon-tk7z j. o. lantern
2 hours ago
he IS the Big Picture. We each think a piece of what he is thinking. He pulls them all together into the American Flag. He is helping us to weave the New Glory. //

surfcat50
4 hours ago
“The Guardian cites former Obama administration climate adviser Alice Hill, who observes: “It’s ironic that we are getting a president who famously called climate change a hoax but is now expressing interest in taking over areas gaining greater importance because of climate change.””

What’s ironic is a “climate advisor” who thinks America’s strategic interest in Greenland is because of climate change when we occupied the place in WWII to keep the NAZIs from controlling it, protected it during the Cold War to keep the Soviets from controlling it, and now want to keep the ChiComs from controlling it!

j. o. lantern
4 hours ago
The guy is a billionaire and still relates to average Americans as one normal human being talking with another. There isn't a Democrat in the whole country, that I am aware of at least, who can even come close to doing that. And even more damning, I don't see any Democrats who are even aware of their inability to relate to the guy and gal on the street. And better yet, from what I am seeing, Melania Trump seems to have the same ability, and is going to use it far more than she did the first term.

Citing President Trump's executive order Ending The Weaponization Of The Federal Government, Donald Trump's Department of Justice ordered all federal prosecution under the Free Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act be dropped immediately. "[F]uture abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage." In addition to invoking a new set of rules, the memo titled "FACE ACT CHARGING POLICY" orders a moratorium on any future FACE Act prosecutions without the permission of the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

This is an incredible volte-face by a Justice Department that only a month ago was happily slamming pro-life activists with felony convictions and prison time for minor infractions of the FACE Act. According to reports, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged approximately 60 individuals with FACE Act violations, a sharp rise compared to fewer than 100 cases in the law's first 26 years. Only five of these prosecutions were directed against pro-abortion terrorists and groups. As the memo states: "This is not the even-handed administration of justice." //

This follows up on President Trump's pardon of 23 pro-life activists Thursday;

President Trump summarily dismissed 17 agency inspectors general Friday night in a move that caught official Washington by surprise.

The inspectors general were dismissed via emails from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, with no notice sent to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have pledged bipartisan support for the watchdogs, in advance of the firings, the person said. The emails gave no substantive explanation for the dismissals, with at least one citing “changing priorities” for the move, the person added. //

I'm sure this is heading to court, and it is a good bet that the Supreme Court will eventually decide that Congress can't put that kind of leash on the president's ability to fire a presidential appointee.

This move is curious. If it isn't simply an impulsive act, the Trump White House may be using this court case to audition arguments that can be used on another Congressional "permission" case, like a challenge to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. //

NavyVet
7 hours ago
If IGs "are supposed to root out fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking" they were an abysmal failure during Biden's term. Fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking were rampant and they did nothing of note to stop it.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”
Oh, that's rich. After four years of the brazen fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking of the Biden Crime Family, and his entire "administration", she wants to claim it's Trump? Classic!

It wasnt me NavyVet
6 hours ago
IG's need to be their own Department.
An IG can't start a prosecution. They have to go to the DOJ. The DOJ requires the FBI to also investigate.

So no real prosecutions can happen to the DOJ or the FBI.

They need their own prosecutors and able to empanel their own Grand Juries.

It's already difficult enough with Qualified Immunity and the Thin Blue Line.

Musicman
6 hours ago
The whole idea of an inspector general is constitutionally suspect. Whose job is it to investigate malfeasance by the executive branch? Congress! The reason IG’s have been created is a combination of the failure of Congress and the refusal by executive offices to provide evidence requested, sometimes even subpoenaed, by Congress. And the refusal of the DOJ to enforce Congressional subpoenas, and punish those who disobey them.

We don’t need IG’s, we need Congress to do it’s job and have the power to appoint investigators who have unfettered access to Executive Branch materials, computer systems and documents so that no Administration of either Party can stonewall investigations.

The Department of Education announced Friday that it had eliminated the Biden-created office of "book ban coordinator" and the supporting office. This office was created in June 2023 in response to many school districts removing age-inappropriate and sexually explicit books from school libraries. //

The director of the "book ban coordinator" office, a gay progressive activist, solicited complaints from activists and threatened school districts with lawsuits by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. That all ended on Friday.

On January 17, 1961, in this farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the establishment of a "military-industrial complex."

In a speech of less than 10 minutes, on January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his political farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. Those who expected the military leader and hero of World War II to depart his Presidency with a nostalgic, "old soldier" speech like Gen. Douglas MacArthur's, were surprised at his strong warnings about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

As President of the United States for two terms, Eisenhower had slowed the push for increased defense spending despite pressure to build more military equipment during the Cold War’s arms race. Nonetheless, the American military services and the defense industry had expanded a great deal in the 1950s. Eisenhower thought this growth was needed to counter the Soviet Union, but it confounded him. Though he did not say so explicitly, his standing as a military leader helped give him the credibility to stand up to the pressures of this new, powerful interest group. He eventually described it as a necessary evil.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

The decision to move troops to the border is superb, both in adding resources to an overstretched Border Patrol and in the symbolic message it sends. To make this deployment truly effective, it must work under a headquarters equipped to carry out the mission. Dumping yet another mission on a headquarters with a vast area of operations and a law enforcement focus doesn't seem like the best way to go. //

Laocoön of Troy
13 hours ago edited
"... Former RedStater Colonel (ret.) Mike Ford has an excellent solution to the problem. The US Army already has a logistics headquarters that is battle-tested, structured, and staffed for precisely this mission.

A Theater Sustainment Command (TSC) is an Army logistics headquarters commanded by a 2-Star General. When augmented with the appropriate subordinate commands, it is capable of providing logistical support to over 300,000 personnel. ..."

You sold me. Col Ford is on his game as always. TSC it is.

HOMAN: We're gonna take a lot of hate, we're going to be sued. Every day, numerous times.

I think you'll see the left try to control the media. They're going to show the first crying female, the first crying child. Say how inhumane we are. But, they won't talk about the 340,000 children that they've failed to take care of. They're not gonna talk about the young women who've been murdered in this country at the hands of criminal cartels.

Although much of the buzz around ‘Wicked’ has focused on ‘queering,’ it is the concepts of propaganda and tyranny that drive the film. //

Not everything is hunky-dory in Oz. Here, animals are persecuted for their differences and put in cages to prevent them from learning to speak. Elphaba has a strong sense of justice to speak for the voiceless and decides to visit the one and only Wizard of Oz to fix the problem.

To her dismay, the Wizard (played brilliantly by Jeff Goldblum) is a fraud. Elphaba is invited to his castle to create flying monkeys that will be perfect “spies in the sky.” Scheming together with Morrible, the Wizard tells Elphaba that dissent will not be tolerated.

“When I first got here,” says the Wizard, “there was discord. There was discontent. And back where I come from, everybody knows that the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”

“We’re doing this to keep people safe,” Morrible says, in turn. We’ve heard that one before. Many things have been done “for the security of the state,” and they are never good.

Although slightly bumbling (in a very Jeff Goldblum way), the Wizard is nevertheless manipulative. Goldblum’s Wizard oscillates between a P.T. Barnum figure and a dictator with Morrible at his side. It is Morrible who is responsible for spreading lies about Elphaba. It is Morrible who names her the Wicked Witch and says she must be destroyed. Morrible effectively begins the propaganda campaign against Elphaba, exploiting her physical differences with the intent of crushing her free will.

The people of Oz accept it because they’ve already been living in a society that has kept them artificially happy, as long as they don’t ask questions. They are living in an illusion, in Plato’s cave, and the shadows are their reality. They are weak and would rather blame an external factor for their problems rather than take responsibility for their actions (or lack thereof). In other words, they have made themselves into slaves and require a dictator to exist.

Propaganda is a powerful tool, and we have seen this phenomenon throughout many totalitarian systems, even in soft, shape-shifting totalitarian impulses in the United States. In some ways, the ideological lie becomes worse in nations that fundamentally and foundationally resist tyranny. But it is precisely this contrast between freedom and small acts of tyranny that are insidious. People can be “asleep” through many different means, but it always includes a refusal to see the truth because then one must act. In “Wicked,” Glinda opts for an existential blindfold. The alleged goodness she embodies is nothing more than an affectation.

“Wicked” is not an excellent film. At times, it meanders and is sensory overload by virtue of being a musical. But in the final moments of the film, the larger idea is revealed: What is reality? Do we possess free will to choose truth over a lie?

In the final song, “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba sings that if she’s “flying solo,” then “at least, [she’s] flying free.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has identified “the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation” as “a personal nonparticipation in lies!” Elphaba could have chosen to be part of the Wizard’s machine, but that means she would be living by lies.

Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that Facebook pushed back on the Biden regime’s censorship demands. The Facebook Files say otherwise. //

Zuckerberg purported in his JRE [Joe Rogan Experience] appearance that Facebook resisted Biden administration bids like these. Instead, the Big Tech company’s censors fulfilled Flaherty’s dreams that it would “play ball” by “demoting” posts casting doubts on the Covid-19 jab. Covid content that couldn’t be easily or justifiably removed under Facebook’s terms and conditions would be “contained” and sent to the company’s third-party “fact-checkers” for further false impugnment.

Zuckerberg wants the millions of people who tuned into his conversation with Rogan to believe that Facebook was a heroic middle-man who told off the government when it tried to throttle dissenters. In reality, Facebook was a willing accomplice in the Democrat-fueled war on free speech. No amount of Zuckerberg’s revisionist retelling can erase the evidence that Facebook eagerly participated in the Biden administration’s scheme to silence its political enemies, dissenters, and publications like The Federalist.

Following Mark Zuckerberg’s putative mea culpa for having made Meta complicit in the largest censorship regime in American history, and his vow to restore free expression on his platforms, the CEO made perhaps his most consequential statement of all in an interview with Joe Rogan.

There, after describing the pressure campaign the Biden administration waged against his company to suppress disfavored speech, primarily regarding Covid-19, Zuckerberg told Rogan: “I don’t think that the pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal.”

The Meta CEO’s silence as this very issue was being litigated all the way up to the Supreme Court was as deafening then as it is maddening now. But in making this assertion, he has inadvertently highlighted one of the Roberts Court’s gravest derelictions of duty — one that emphasizes the necessity of vigorous executive and legislative actions in defense of our rights, actions like those promised by the Trump administration and some in Congress.

The dereliction of duty came in the Supreme Court’s punting of the case of Murthy v. Missouri, previously known as Missouri v. Biden.

Plaintiffs in the case obtained and marshaled voluminous evidence demonstrating that senior Biden White House officials and federal agencies coerced, cajoled, and colluded directly and indirectly with social media companies to purge disfavored news and views en masse on matters ranging from the Hunter Biden laptop story to election integrity and Covid-19. The defendants did so on ostensible grounds of combatting dangerous “mis-, dis-, and mal-information.” In deputizing non-governmental actors as its speech police, the plaintiffs argued, the feds engaged in a conspiracy to violate the First Amendment by proxy.

The case, alongside congressional investigations and reportage including the “Twitter Files,” helped expose the size, scope, and nature of the censorship-industrial complex. //

The defendants appealed. But Judge Doughty’s counterparts on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld his ruling.

So the feds took their argument to the Supreme Court. There, shockingly, as I observed while attending oral arguments, far too many of the justices showed they held a perversely narrow view of the First Amendment, and they gave substantial deference to the feds that had so imperiled it. Some also seemed remarkably ignorant of the expansive factual record supporting the plaintiffs’ claims.

Last summer, the high court dismissed the plaintiffs’ concerns and Americans’ free speech rights on a technicality. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supremes held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek injunctive relief, refusing to rule on the merits of the case.

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, rebuked the court for straining to create “new” and “heightened” standards to find that the plaintiffs lacked standing and warned that the court’s refusal to rule on the merits of the case could result in dire consequences.

“[W]e are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents,” Alito asserted. “The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.”

The dissent concluded that what transpired in Murthy “was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

By not ruling that the censorship-industrial complex’s acts were unconstitutional — by avoiding the question entirely — the Supremes signaled that it was open season on free speech in America. //

The courts simply cannot be seen as a reliable backstop for protecting our First Amendment rights against the censorship-industrial complex.

What’s more, if Republicans allow the fed-led censorship regime to persist, there will be no deterrent to Democrat efforts to create analogous regimes going forward, targeting rights beyond those enshrined in the First Amendment.

Somali-born Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar decided to lecture Americans on Wednesday about what it means to be “American,” calling an immigration law signed by President John Adams “un-American.” But her comments only prove why some foreigners should never hold office in the United States.

President Donald Trump said during his inaugural address that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to protect Americans from “foreign gangs and criminal networks.” The act allows the president to deport foreigners of an enemy nation. But Omar condemned the act as “un-American.” Yes, a Somali immigrant is telling Americans that one of America’s founders, John Adams, was acting in a way that was “un-American.”

Omar also claimed Trump’s immigration agenda is “a threat to immigrants” and that we must “restore basic humanity to our immigration system.”

Here’s the thing, however: Being “American” isn’t about making foreigners feel comfortable — it’s about protecting our sovereignty, our values, and our people. But Omar’s remarks prove she has no grasp of what it means to be “American” and therefore should be disqualified from holding American office.

But why does Omar not understand what it actually means to be American? Because she’s not an American. She’s a citizen of America, but her complete and total allegiance will never be just to America. It’s why she told supporters in her district that she would use her position of power to help benefit her homeland.

But the survival of our republic depends on national unity, and the admission of foreigners — both legal and illegal — threatens to undermine that. Alexander Hamilton explained as much in 1802 when discussing the “consequences that must result from a too unqualified admission of foreigners, to an equal participation in our civil, and political rights.”

“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”

Hamilton further noted how it is “extremely unlikely” that foreigners “will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism” and that foreigners will “entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived.” //

Members of the Constitutional Convention debated on Aug. 13, 1787, about how long an immigrant needs to be a citizen before he could become a member of the House of Representatives. Elderbridge Gerry “wished that in future the eligibility might be confined to Natives. Foreign powers will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expense to influence them. Persons having foreign attachments will be sent among us and insinuated into our councils, in order to be made instruments for their purpose.”

But what that Constitution means is being determined just east of the rotunda, in the marble halls of the Supreme Court, where a group of pornographers claiming the mantle of free speech are attempting to ensure that the president’s oath includes defending their ability to peddle obscene materials to children.

They call themselves the “Free Speech Coalition,” but they’re just a trade association created to lobby for the porn industry. This month, they took Texas to the Supreme Court because the Lone Star State passed a law requiring obscene platforms to verify the age of their users before providing access. In oral arguments before the court last Wednesday, they contested that this somehow violates free speech.

Their claim is a ridiculous, bad-faith argument made by those who stand to profit from selling sex. The notion of First Amendment protection for obscenity offends anyone with common sense and makes a mockery of the Constitution.

Free speech protections are exactly what they sound like: protections for speech. They are not designed for obscene videos that don’t have literary or political merit. That’s not what our Founding Fathers, or hundreds of years of common law tradition, intended to protect. Our ancestors fought and died so the American people could offer political opinions, even controversial ones, at town meetings, not so Americans could freely engage in obscene acts in the public square, much less put today’s hardcore pornography in front of children.

This view was held by almost everyone for 200 years of American history. In People v. Ruggles, a case before the New York Supreme Court in 1811, Chief Justice James Kent outlined this position clearly, writing: “Things which corrupt moral sentiment, as obscene actions, prints, and writings … are punishable because they strike at the root of moral obligation and weaken the security of the social ties.” //

This content is not only horrifying, but repeated exposure to pornography makes children far more likely to exhibit problematic and unhealthy sexual behaviors later in life. Our founders understood that obscenity like this is not just immoral but harmful to the formation of a civic society that aims to produce strong and stable families, loving husbands, and duly respected mothers.

To make America great again, we must be bold and brave enough to go on offense against obscenity. If Texas wins, Trump and conservative leaders across the country should work to make age verification a reality in every state. Additionally, Congress should take up similar legislation at the federal level.

The administration should also task the Department of Justice with prosecuting porn producers and distributors, starting with foreign porn producers that flout our laws. Finally, the federal government should fully enforce laws against obscenity that are already on the books and work diligently to remove obscenity from the internet altogether.

If Texas loses, it would be only a small setback. This movement is just getting started. The American people are with us on this issue. A recent American Principles Project poll found that 83 percent of registered voters favor common-sense age verification. They clearly want us to take a stand and go on offense. The well-being of our children and the destiny of our great nation depend on it.

But beyond the legal arguments there is a pressing moral argument about citizenship and nationhood that lies at the heart of our current debates about the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. The moral argument engages a different and arguably more important set of questions. What is an American? Who is America for? What is the purpose of immigration? What do immigrants or would-be immigrants owe to the native-born population? //

Contrary to what has been drilled into most of us since grade school, not everyone can really become an American. Being an American means more than simply assenting to live by our laws and paying taxes, because America is more than an idea. (As others have noted, if America is just an idea we can write it down and send it overseas, and foreigners need not come here at all.)

Simply put, America is a nation. We have a common language and a shared history. We have a certain way of life and customs. We have a distinctly American identity. Our system of government is founded explicitly on Christian claims about God and man. For most of our history, Christian morality has been the basis of our civic life. We are bound together by family ties, by our connections to the land, by shared experience, by what Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address called the “mystic chords of memory.”

Every foreigner who comes here understands what this means as it applies to their own homeland. It has been a grave error that we have insisted for so long that none of it applies to us. Making a case against birthright citizenship will mean making a case against the pernicious ideology of multiculturalism, which we have been taught makes us strong but in reality makes us weaker and poorer.

It will also mean asserting that it’s not actually the case that someone whose parents emigrated to America from a foreign country, and whose family has only been here a single generation, is “just as American” as someone who traces their ancestry to the American Revolution. It will mean admitting that America would be much better off not only with zero illegal immigration but with only a very low level of legal immigration, which would help preserve our cultural and community cohesion, and encourage the complete assimilation of all newcomers.

We have to get comfortable saying these things and defending them. Yes, the legal and constitutional arguments against birthright citizenship are very strong, and they might in the end win the day. But regardless of the outcome of the legal battle over the 14th Amendment, we have to insist, without apology, on a fuller understanding of the American nation and the American people. An American is not just someone who happens to be born here. For a foreign national to become an American, he has to thoroughly adopt our culture, language, and way of life — and resolve to pass all of those habits and customs onto his posterity, here in his adopted homeland. Nothing less than his complete allegiance and complete assimilation will do.

Why do I say this? Because America itself is first and foremost for native-born Americans. It’s the only homeland we will ever have or ever can have. As such, our immigration policy should exist solely to benefit us, the American people. Indeed, because the only legitimate purpose of immigration is to create new Americans, our immigration regime should be narrowly tailored to serve the interests of our people. Businesses, especially multinational corporations, should have no say in it whatsoever, nor should legal resident noncitizens or family members of immigrants, whether legal or illegal.

All of these arguments are not really about immigration policy, but about what a nation is and how to preserve it.

Trump isn’t rewriting the 14th Amendment; he’s applying the law as it is, based on its plain language and the Supreme Court’s existing precedent. //

The 14th Amendment — ratified after the Civil War and ensuring that former slaves were U.S. citizens — provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The plaintiffs focus on the first part, but barely glance at the second, arguing that, with few exceptions (such as the children of foreign diplomats in the United States), anyone born in the United States is “subject to its jurisdiction,” simply by virtue of being within its borders.

They do this by relying almost entirely on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that the plaintiffs get hopelessly wrong. In Wong, the court held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. Omitting some key facts, the plaintiffs argue this means that all children born in the United States of all immigrant parents, with the aforementioned very rare exceptions, automatically are U.S. citizens. Even a cursory read of the opinion, however, shows that the Supreme Court ruled nothing of the sort.

Wong was born in California and lived his entire life in the United States, until he took two trips to China to visit family as an adult. The first time he returned to the United States, he was admitted through customs as a U.S. citizen. A few years later, after visiting China a second time, he was denied reentry after a customs official concluded that he was not a citizen, because his parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born here.

SCOTUS sided with Wong, but for a very important reason the plaintiffs fail to mention: Wong’s parents were legal immigrants to the United States. The entire foundation of the plaintiffs’ argument — that SCOTUS has already upheld birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants by this decision — is therefore completely and obviously wrong.

In rendering its opinion, SCOTUS dove deep into the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” What they found, tracing back hundreds of years through English common law, is that the phrase is rooted in a mutual relationship of “allegiance and protection” between the individual and the sovereign (historically a king, but the nation here). Children “born in the allegiance,” and therefore citizens entitled to “protection” at birth, included children born to subjects of the king, as well as children born to “aliens in amity” — that is, aliens lawfully “domiciled” there with the king’s consent. Notably, the court found that this did not extend to the children of aliens in “hostile occupation of part of our territory.”

Consent is the operative word. In ruling for Wong, the Supreme Court made clear that the United States has a say in who is subject to its jurisdiction, noting that noncitizens like Wong’s parents are “entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here” (emphasis added). In Wong’s case, this meant that the 14th Amendment granted him citizenship because he was: (1) born in the United States; and (2) subject to its jurisdiction, due to the fact that his parents were lawful immigrants permitted by the United States to reside here at the time he was born.

In Tuesday X post, Musk's DOGE wrote that the U.S. spends about 3 cents to mint each penny, which, of course, is only valued at 1 cent.

"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost U.S. taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced."

In pointing out the penny's costliness, DOGE is taking aim at an issue that has sparked debate for years, although the price of manufacturing the cent has only grown over the past several years. In 2016, for instance, the U.S. was spending about 1.5 cents to mint each penny, or less than half of its current manufacturing cost. //

The only question remains this: Will we have to start offering our pensive friends and acquaintances a nickel for their thoughts? And are they worth it?

Removing this garbage from the military—and I'm under no illusion that the Air Force is unique in having commands that are surreptitiously telling the Commander-in-Chief to get lost—will require diligent effort and ruthlessness. Anyone involved in rebranding USAF DEI programs must be terminated if civilian or administratively separated if military. What we are seeing here is really nothing less than a mutiny.

On inauguration day, President Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the approximately 1,550 defendants convicted for their involvement with the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. He also ordered DOJ to dismiss all other pending indictments. Most of them, about 900, were for non-violent misdemeanors such as trespass and disorderly conduct. He granted the clemency all at once, and did not begin with pardoning the non-violent misdemeanor defendants first and then examining the remaining defendants on a case-by-case basis as he and others previously had suggested.

Meanwhile, on the very same day, just 15 minutes before he left office, President Biden issued the last set of his own pardons. He granted them to members of his family, most notably his brothers, sister, and in-laws, as well as to members of his administration such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and General Mark Milley, and even to political supporters like the congressional January 6 committee members. Biden's pardons followed thousands of pardons he issued this month to what he claimed were non-violent federal offenders and commutations of virtually all federal death penalties.

Many Democrats and media outlets have criticized Trump's mass clemency for the January 6 defendants, even as they casually ignored President Biden's. But let's put aside the hypocrisy for a moment to examine the real differences between the two sets of pardons, regardless of one's views of their merits.

First, Biden granted pardons and commutations to more than 8,000 individuals, which is more than any other modern president. Thousands of Biden's clemency grants were to serious criminals, including murderers, child killers, child abusers, and the biggest municipal embezzler in history, Rita Crundwell. Several of the grants benefitted well-connected Democrats. In both 2022 and 2024, Biden abused his pardon power to achieve mass sentencing reductions that Congress refused to pass by law. President Obama did the same thing when he issued mass commutations of drug sentences. //

Second, it's obviously not principle but politics that drove Biden's pardons; Biden's post-election mass death row commutations did not follow his self-proclaimed opposition to the death penalty. He left three men on death row whose commutations would have politically harmed Democrats. He did not commute the sentences of Dzhokar Tsarnaev (Boston Marathon bomber), Dylann Roof (murderer of nine black churchgoers in Charleston), and Robert Bowers (murderer of 11 worshippers a synagogue in Squirrel Hill, PA). Biden's alleged opposition to the death penalty also did not prevent DOJ from filing capital murder charges against Luigi Mangione.

Third, President Biden needs to pardon his family, officials, and allies only because he fears the very lawfare that he invented. Biden's DOJ broke more than two centuries of history to prosecute a former president and the candidate of the major opposition political party. He is like an arsonist who demands more spending on fire departments. Because of his stated fear of retaliation, Biden pardoned his family and associates before prosecutors ever launched investigations. These pardons were to Biden's own benefit, as their reciipients are much less likely to disclose any information that directly implicate President Biden to the family's alleged "pay to play, 10 percent for the Big Guy" schemes.

Contrast that with Trump's clemency, which did not directly benefit him or his family, and covered defendants who were actually convicted or charged, unlike Biden's preemptive pardons that covered up to 10 years' worth of potential and actual criminal activity for his family and allies. //

Democrats have resorted to pardons because they appear to expect lawfare to continue. DOJ released Jack Smith's special counsel J6 report even though Trump had won the election and DOJ could no longer pursue charges. It is even trying to release the special counsel report about the Florida classified documents case, even though Trump's co-defendants are entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Both President Trump and Attorney General–designate Pam Bondi are positioned to stop the lawfare, but only if the Democrats abjure their politicization of criminal justice. Lawfare can descend on Democrats as easily as on Republicans.

This book contains 7 easy ways to motivate someone with Asperger's to do daily tasks and take charge of their own life... without arguing, manipulation or stress. It's a quick, actionable read that is based in our own experiences of living & growing up being diagnosed with Asperger's and contains tools, communication strategies and step-by-step advice you can put to work immediately.

Red-Line motivation is by far the most commonly used kind of motivation out there. A Red-Line Motivator’s go-to question is, “What can I do, give, or take away that will produce a result (a change in behavior) now?” Red-Liners love carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments; it’s all about control.

If a Red-Liner wants you to do something, then they will find the sweetest carrot they are willing to give and dangle it in front of you until you start chasing after it (money, video games, love and acceptance, etc.) Alternatively, they will find the scariest punishment they can and throw it at you until you move (losing privileges, yelling, withholding love and affection, etc.) They will bribe, manipulate, control, and coerce you to try to get you to do what they want.

Basically, Red-Liners seek to reduce human motivation to its most basic elements. They assume that people avoid pain and effort, and that they will only work hard if moved upon by an outside force or a biological urge (hunger, sleep, sex, etc.) Red-Liners see human beings as little more than animals responding to stimuli. Trained rats in a cage will press a lever over and over if you give them food. A yappy dog with a shock collar can be conditioned to stop barking. Similarly, a Red-Liner believes that you can motivate humans by tapping into that same desire to avoid pain and seek out pleasure. //

Psychologists have known for nearly a century that people will respond to the right rewards and punishments (they call it conditioning). Meanwhile, kings and rulers have understood this basic truth for millennia. You have to admit, it’s a rather elegant idea. If you want more of a particular behavior, reward it. If you want less, punish it.

However, nowadays we have decades of scientific research showing that the carrot-and-stick philosophy we hold dear actually has quite a few holes. Parents, teachers, and managers are gradually discovering that people, particularly people with Asperger’s, don’t always respond to external influences in the ways we would hope or expect. //

In a classic 1978 study, three psychologists investigated and measured the happiness levels of paraplegics and lottery winners. They found that less than a year after experiencing one of these life-changing events both the lottery winners and the paraplegics had mostly returned to their baseline levels of happiness. We would normally expect lottery winners to be much happier than regular folks. However, they were, on average, only slightly happier. Similarly, the paraplegics were only slightly less happy than others. For the most part, they were just as content with life as they had been before that fateful tragedy befell them.

Human beings are truly incredible at adapting to almost anything. Given enough time, both positive and negative changes in our lives can quickly become our new “normal.” When this happens they no longer have a significant impact on our day-to-day emotions. Scientists call this phenomenon hedonic adaptation. It crops up everywhere. //

The more Margaret uses this Red-Line approach, the more Johnny goes into Defense Mode and lives in a state of fear. He’s shut down and angry. Any semblance of trust or mutual understanding in their relationship has been destroyed. In fact, he might even start missing school just to assert his independence and regain a feeling of control.

As shown in the Red-Line graph, each new attempt to motivate will produce fewer results, and, in the long-term, will continually require a sweeter carrot or a scarier stick in order to maintain its original effectiveness. //

Contrary to what we would expect, introducing an expectation with a contingent reward attached actually decreased the rewarded behavior instead of increasing it. Why? Because human beings are incredibly adaptive. When this new drawing experience taught the children that drawing a picture=compensation, they got the message loud and clear. The children used to draw because they enjoyed it for its own sake (intrinsic motivation). Now they will only draw if they’re expecting to receive some kind of reward. //

What does hedonic adaptation have to do with motivation? Well, it means that any reward or punishment consistently used to motivate your child will quickly be adapted to and thus rendered ineffective. //

Choosing to use Red-Line carrots, sticks, and other if/then methods of motivation is not inherently bad and wrong, nor is it always good and right. Red-Line is simply a tool that is uniquely suited for specific kinds of situations.

A hammer is great if you need to drive a nail into wood. It’s less than ideal if you’re trying to perform surgery. The problems arise when you encounter a situation that requires a tool, you look into your toolbox, and you discover nothing but a single, lonely hammer. You’ll probably end up using the hammer because, after all, it’s better than nothing, right? //

Blue-Line Motivation is all about holistic influence. This means that a Blue-Liner recognizes people as whole, complex human beings who are often intrinsically motivated. They know that people are so much more than animals that simply avoid pain and seek out pleasure.

A Blue-Liner will tap into this innate drive by approaching people and situations from a place of trust and love. They sincerely believe you can and will make good choices for yourself and others. They assume that you’re not necessarily unmotivated. Rather, they are open to the possibility that you might just be scared, stressed, missing resources, or lacking understanding, etc. A Blue-Liner will not try to “force” things to happen, or control you from the outside with carrots and sticks. They will work with and catalyze the natural, intrinsic motivation processes that already exist inside you and within the situation.

However, the Blue-Line path comes with one costly trade-off. A Blue-Liner will need to put in most of the work on the front end, and they will see few (if any) results for the first while. That’s just how the organic process of intrinsic motivation works. Blue-Liners are 100% okay with that because they understand that once you hit the tipping point (i.e. the point where you’re intrinsically motivated and you truly choose it for yourself), then the whole system will become largely self-sustaining.

Blue-Line is essentially the opposite of Red-Line. As more time passes Red-Line requires more and more work, whereas Blue-Line requires less and less. In the end, both approaches to motivation require work and effort. There’s no getting around that. The trap of Red Line is that it looks so easy in the beginning, while it’s actually the more difficult out of the two. The work is still there, it’s just hidden. A Red-liner will undoubtedly find more and more of it as time passes and they slide further down the slope. They have to keep working endlessly and putting in more effort as they attempt to produce the same result. Blue-Line motivation, on the other hand, can get to a point where the parent (or teacher, therapist, whomever) can step back and watch their child soar. //

When you’re looking to cultivate the “Blue,” intrinsic, self-sustaining kind of motivation, then there’s three key ingredients you need. They are as follows:

• Capability
• Belief
• Desire

//

A Red-Liner is a like a carpenter using their tools to shape, manipulate, and polish an inanimate block of wood in order to produce a specific result. A Blue-Liner is more like a gardener, using their tools to adapt the environment and add the necessary resources in order to give the living plant what it needs to grow and flourish on its own.