On August 1, the ban against incandescent light bulbs took effect. That LEDs (light emitting diodes) now cost little more than Thomas Edison's creation of the late 1800s, last years longer than incandescents, and require far less power such that $3 billion a year is expected to vanish from American consumers' utility bills — none of that holds weight among conservatives who were appalled that
Farewell to an historic invention
with the stroke of a pen President Biden had simply decreed the end of incandescents by executive order.

"No law was actually passed anywhere…Congress did not vote. There was no consensus for any such thing. A staple consumer item has disappeared from store shelves everywhere",

wrote David Lanza at "American Thinker". But if the progressives' green dream wins out, the loss of “that ineffable and as yet irreplaceable glow” produced by incandescent bulbs, as Tom Scocca rhapsodized in New York magazine, is only a modest beginning. The crusade to do away with fossil fuels has a long list of sacrifices planned for our future.

Foremost is the nearly-mandated conversion to electric vehicles. As with light bulbs, the Biden administration has set pollution standards for new cars and trucks so high that as soon as 2027 67% of a carmaker's production will need to be EVs for the overall gas consumption of its fleet to meet the standards. Biden's goal is net-zero emissions by 2050.
For that to happen, research outfit BloombergNEF says the last internal combustion vehicle must roll off the assembly line by 2038. California Governor Gavin Newsome is ahead of even that, having banned the sale of gasoline-powered cars in California starting in 2035.

Conservatives seethe at the notion that choice can simply be taken away from we the people. They can perhaps take heart that a multitude of logistical challenges stand in the way —… Read More »

Almost three years on, as many as two-thirds of Republicans still believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

In spite of that, in the first Republican debate just concluded, the question wasn't even asked whether the candidates agree or disagree. Fox News, which conducted the debate, was protecting them from having to answer.

A television reporter said this week she had met people "all the time on the road
throughout Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire" and in every conversation found that "it comes down to the central kernel which is that they believe that Trump won the 2020 election". They believe it because Donald Trump told them so and right-wing media had no compunctions about promoting the Big Lie to engender the worst schism in the American republic since the Civil War.

The believers typically cited one or another anecdote as proof (for them) of a conspiracy to subvert the election in Biden's favor: What about the suitcase of ballots brought out from under a table in Atlanta to be counted at night after other election workers had gone home? Why did an 18-wheeler filled with ballots travel from Long Island into Pennsylvania? How to explain another ballot-filled truck pulling into the Detroit counting center in the pre-dawn hours after the election? Three of several stories traded around social media as somehow proving a fraudulent election. The conspiracy-minded looked no further and locked onto these tales. They of course assumed, however nonsensically, that all such ballots, if they existed at all, had to be votes for Biden, none for Trump. It seemed never to have occurred to the millions who fell for this that these random anecdotes failed to cohere into any sort of consistent plot… Read More »

To anyone who followed the events between the 2020 election and January 6, 2021, the notion that it would be difficult to prove Donald J. Trump guilty of multiple crimes against the country is ludicrous. The story teems with plots to overthrow the election of Joe Biden. The man attempted to end American constitutional democracy in the most treasonous act against the United States since secession.

And yet the three statutes that Special Counsel Jack Smith enumerated in his target letter to Trump — conspiracy, witness tampering, deprivation of rights — seem timid. But as attorneys speculate on what events they likely refer to, they take on some gravity, so it's wait and see. In the meantime, below we spin out the back stories behind each.

There is some agreement that "conspiracy" will expand to "conspiracy against the United States" and that Smith has shown particular interest in the "fake elector" scheme.

The state legislatures were to send "slates" of electors to Congress on… Read More »