Dept. Of Righteous Stabbings

Okay, it wasn’t actually a shooting, but I think everyone will agree with my bending the rules in this case.  Here’s the headline:

Schoolchildren disarm robber and stab him to death after being held at gunpoint

The 40-year-old man reportedly approached the two schoolchildren, a girl and a boy, on a bike. They reported that he was armed with a gun and knife and tried to steal their phones. The Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the victims got into a struggle with the man, with one of them snatching the knife off him. The man was stabbed two or three times but managed to get away on his bike. Shortly after he was found lying in the road.

I guess the moral of the story is:  Don’t mess with Chilean teenagers.

And this last item will come as a surprise to exactly nobody:

The prosecutor also confirmed that the deceased had previous criminal records.

…which ended right there, on a dusty street somewhere in Chile. [/Hemingway]

Be Still, My Beating Heart

From the Trump Administration:

Attorney General Pam Bondi warned against committing acts of vandalism or terrorism against Tesla products or other Elon Musk-owned properties.

Bondi said those committing those acts would face the full brunt of federal law enforcement without the possibility of plea agreements.

That thumping noise you hear is that of my heart, having burst right out of my ribcage, doing a

around the house.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

When a crime report contains the following, you just know that things turned out righteously:

Initial evidence and investigative information caused detectives to suspect the deceased subject in this case was actively involved in attempted armed assaults on potential victims when he encountered an armed citizen who protected himself.

And:

HPD believes the deceased alleged assaulter was “a suspected multiple offender.”

Not anymore, he ain’t.

Quote Of The Day

From La Bella d’Italia, responding to requests from France and UK to send troops to Ukraine:

“You can go — not with my soldiers.”

Could I love Giorgia Meloni any more?

 

Augean Stables

From Jeff Tucker:

For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too. Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut.

The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller. Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured. No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control.

This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue.

All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all.

But now we have a chance.  It may be our last, because right now, in the paraphrased words of John Adams, we have men worthy of the time:  a president who has a burning desire to make the changes necessary, an associate of towering intellect and inherent power who may be able to execute that change, and the subordinates who are just as willing to make those changes with the necessary authority (in the shape of presidential appointees), and others (the twenty-something hackers and geeks) who have the knowledge, skills and the tools to be able to root out the corruption and deadweight of accumulated bureaucracy and perverted, un-American policy.