Category: Gummint

Constitutional Lesson

Rights, Sports

All those English people who came over here and swooned about the United States — the freedom, the politeness, the hospitality, Buc-ees (and did I mention the freedom?) had a somewhat rude awakening after their team got beaten by the Argies in the semi-finals.

Seems as though some things are not easily forgotten, among them being the Margaret Thatcher-era beating dished out to the Argies when the latter tried to invade the Falkland Islands (a.k.a. the Malvinas).

So after beating England at their own game last week, the Argie football team had a little celebration in their dressing room, waving a banner which said “Malvinas are Argentina” (or something like that).

Well, the response was an outburst of “How dare they?” from the UKgov:

“It prompted a fierce response in London as Business Secretary Peter Kyle demanded a FIFA investigation into the matter before (then-BritPM) Sir Keir Starmer publicly backed those calls.”
A FIFA spokesman said: “As is standard procedure, FIFA’s independent Disciplinary Committee is currently assessing the match reports and considering the relevant circumstances before deciding on potential further steps based on the FIFA Disciplinary Code.'”

Yeah, well fuck FIFA, their disciplinary code and the UKgov.

You see, this particular World Cup match was played in the United States of America, where we have a First Amendment — basically guaranteeing the right of the Argies to be as rude and disrespectful as they want.  (I should point out that the Brits still mock the Krauts for having lost the last pair of World Wars, so their peevishness is somewhat ironic.)

So here’s the lesson for the Brits:  freedom of speech sometimes means putting up with stuff that you find offensive.  I know that BritLaw seems to have overridden that simple precept recently — where people can get arrested just for posting naughty things on Teh Intarwebz — but there ya go.  Deal with it.

As for FIFA:  your little disciplinary code doesn’t supersede our laws, so if you don’t want stuff like this to happen during your precious tournaments, feel free to hold your future World Cups in countries that don’t have a First Amendment.

Good luck in North Korea.

Footnote:  The Argies lost the final to Spain (0-1), in the most boring football match ever played.

Stifling Dissent

Big Brother, Foreign Affairs, Government Thugs

I see with extreme displeasure that the foul UKgov has finally managed to suffocate the brilliant Kathy Gyngell and her wonderful newspaper, The Conservative Woman.

Did they do it by an outright ban?  Noooo that would have been the manly thing to do, and would have caused a massive backlash — and rightly so.

Instead, they did it by stealth:

TCW is closing as a daily site because the British state and its allies have made honest dissent increasingly impossible to sustain. The cowardice began under a Conservative government. During covid, lawful doubt was treated as a public danger. Citizens who questioned lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates, school closures and the destruction of livelihoods were smeared as cranks or extremists. Platforms were encouraged to police opinion. The MSM supinely obeyed. The BBC was, as usual, complicit. Conservative ministers talked about liberty while presiding over one of the greatest assaults on free speech in modern British history.

Then the Tories put the machinery on the statute book.

The Online Safety Act was driven through under a Conservative government and received Royal Assent in October 2023. The Act passed into law on October 26, 2023, and made Ofcom responsible for implementing the new online safety regime. It was sold as ‘protection for children’. In reality, it created a vast regulatory structure for online speech and made Ofcom the policeman of the internet. Platforms were pushed into permanent risk-avoidance. Lawful speech became a compliance problem. ‘Safety’ became the master word. Once that word rules, freedom withers. Free speech has never been ‘safe’.

This was one of the great betrayals of modern Conservatism. The party that should have defended liberty built the legal runway for censorship. It handed power to Ofcom, trained platforms to fear liability, and wrapped the whole operation in the language of harm prevention. The result was predictable. Companies do not defend free speech when regulators are watching. They protect themselves. They over-remove, over-block, over-filter and over-comply.

That is how dissent gets buried.

The same Act reinforced Ofcom’s media literacy role. That matters. Media literacy sounds harmless. It is not harmless when the regulator, the Government, public broadcasters and tech platforms are all marching in the same direction. It becomes the polite name for teaching the public which sources to trust and which to distrust.

This is the bridge to the next phase. First the state regulates platforms in the name of safety. Then it works with broadcasters, tech companies, charities and public bodies to shape what citizens are taught to regard as reliable. Then it proposes to promote ‘trusted news’ above rival voices.

That is the censorship escalator. Labour is now riding it with enthusiasm.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s 2026-2029 Media Literacy Action Plan, A Safe, Informed Digital Nation, dresses control in the language of confidence, safety, critical thinking and resilience. Published on March 16, 2026, it sets out the steps departments across government are taking to strengthen media literacy over the next three years, including helping people ‘think critically about online content’ and ‘find trustworthy information’. The state wants to shape how citizens consume information online. It says it wants people to find trustworthy information. That sounds innocent until you ask the only question that matters: trustworthy according to whom?

Well, there you have it.  If the above doesn’t make your blood boil, we can’t be friends.

And this, children, is why we have a First Amendment Over ere, despite the many efforts by Gummint, the Left and their lickspittle allies to undermine or bypass it.

Am I angry about this?  You bet your ass I am.  It’s bullshit like this which moves people from:

…to:

And note that had I published this post in the UK, I would have been shut down and/or arrested for “inciting violence” or some such twaddle.

It’s also another reason why I have eschewed any form of advertising on this particular website:  I’m not going to hand the cocksuckers a means to shut me up.

Range time?  What do you think?  I had planned on doing some .22 plinking anyway, but now I think I may have to expend something of a somewhat larger caliber.

Worthwhile Largesse

Good News, Subsidies

When I think of how much of our taxpayer money has been frittered away on useless crap like eco-lunacy, supporting Commie insurrections and delivering government benefits to illegal immigrants [156 more examples omitted for reasons of space], here at least is one I can get behind (via Reader John C., thankee):

The Department of War has given $10 million to TV host Mike Rowe’s Foundation that encourages Americans to enter the skilled trade industry.
The former “Dirty Jobs” star started the program that aims to offer Americans careers in the skilled trades like plumbing, electrical, and other hands-on work that won’t be made obsolete by artificial intelligence.

Wow… government money being spent on a civilian program that actually helps citizens and provides strategic benefit to the nation.

Here’s the enormity of the thing:

The foundation has helped over 2,600 people so far train as welders, HVAC technicians, pipefitters, and diesel mechanics who command a six-figure salary without requiring a four-year degree and massive amounts of student loan debt.

However:

The foundation says that America will need 320,000 welders, 250,000 shipbuilders, and 81,000 electricians over the next decade.

I bet the Lefties are totally pissed off about this — ironic, really, considering that they’ve always proclaimed themselves as the “Workers’ Party”, but really aren’t.  Then again, they are the “Party Of Lies”, and always have been.

Congrats to the Pentagon, and of course likewise to Mike Rowe (a true patriot if ever there was one).  If I have a single quibble, it’s that they should have given more than ten million dollars to this most worthy cause.

No Great Loss

Legal Stuff, Rights

So DJT lost his Birthright Citizenship case at the Supremes.

I for one am neither surprised nor even that upset about it.  Here’s why.

I agree that the whole idea is fatally flawed:  that the principle of just being born on U.S. soil makes one an automatic citizen is without equal in just about every other country in the world, where the nationality of one or both parents (if one, usually that of the mother) is the sole determinant of the baby’s citizenship.

And yes, I also know that the 14th Amendment had an entirely different purpose when it was originally passed, and has no proper justification today.  But it’s still a Constitutional Amendment, and said document gives very explicit terms under which an Amendment can be altered or abolished;  and that process has nothing to do with the sitting President.  It remains, quite rightly, the proper preserve of the Congress and of the states, with those pesky two-thirds majorities required at every step of the way.

As such, I’m not comfortable with any POTUS trying to abolish parts of the Constitution by fiat or executive order, for obvious reasons, and that’s why I’m not upset about the Supremes’ decision.  We have enough trouble with tinpot politicians deciding that the Constitution — or the part(s) they don’t agree with, anyway (hello, Second Amendment) — can be bypassed with some local law or regulation, and I’m of the firm belief that these people and/or governments need to have their pee-pees whacked, and hard, every time they try to do that.

If we want to end birthright citizenship, we need to do it the difficult way, the way the Founders intended it.  That may make it impossible — I hope not — but sometimes the principle is just more important than the action.

Not News

Morons & Idiots, Taxes and Theft, Wealth Envy

Apparently, champagne socialist & CalGov Newsom wants to tax billionaires, to the general amusement of those of us waiting to see just how these shitforbrains Californians can find still more creative ways to cut their own economic throats (when they’re not defrauding the FedGov, that is).

Am I the only one who doesn’t give a rat’s ass what Newsom thinks, says or does?

I know, I know:  “O but Kim, he might one day become President!” goes the lament.

Yeah, and I’ll start supporting gun control.

He’s only powerful in his own mind, and in what passes for the minds of his deluded supporters.  And (you heard it here first), Hair Gel Boy isn’t radical enough for the AOC/Mamdani Wing of the Socialist Party, so his higher political aspirations are going to be fucked from two directions.

Irrelevancy, thy name is Gavin.

Petty Tyrants

Bureaucracy

We’ve all seen stories about homeowners’ associations (HOAs) setting themselves up as mini-fiefdoms, and holding people accountable for stuff like “maintaining community standards” and “keeping property values healthy”.  The stories are legion, and I can bear witness to some of them myself — the best one being that when we were encouraged by the Plano authorities to start collecting rainwater in large storage barrels (a Good Thing, in semi-desert north Texas), we went off and bought from the city one of said barrels — i.e. the thing was city-approved.

So I installed the blessed thing at the side of the house and attached a drip hose system so that the lawn at the side of the house could get watered.  Two weeks later some dickless wonder knocked on my door and said that the barrel was “unsightly” and we had two days to remove it, or face “consequences”.  When I asked if any of my neighbors had complained (they hadn’t), he said that their “inspection team” had made the determination.

My response should not be repeated in polite company, but it did contain the words “fuck” and “off”, as well as a few choice words of a personal nature and a warning that any attempt to force “consequences” on me would be met with, shall we say, strong opposition.  He left, never to be seen again, and the barrel stayed (it’s still there, some twelve years later).

One could only imagine my response, then, if I lived in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and was faced with an HOA ruling that forbade carrying of guns.

And the local cops feel about the same way as I would:

Breitbart News reported on the HOA’s gun ban May 18, 2026, noting that the St. Lucie Police Department made clear they would not enforce it.

AG Uthmeier contacted the HOA and gave them a deadline to cease enforcement or face legal action.

In a post to X, Uthmeier wrote: “Enforcement of its discriminatory policy against anyone for exercising the constitutional right to keep and bear arms will be met with legal action by my office.”

Needless to say, the HOA has backed down.

And these little gauleiters  thought they could get away with this bullshit… in Florida?