Billy Mitchell was convicted of all eight chargers of insubordination at his court-martial. He was suspended without pay for five years.
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Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Friday, December 7, 1945. Command Responsibility.
Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita was found guilty of war crimes in a Manila court and sentenced to death, resulting in the legal principle set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1946 of command responsibility in which a commander can be held accountable before the law for the crimes committed by his troops even if he did not order them.
Hmmm. . . wonder how that might work out today?
Tomoyuki Yamashita. . . who would like to have a word with Pete Hegseth.
The State Department announced plans to resettle 6,600,000 Germans from Eastern Europe in the US and Soviet occupied zones of Germany within eight months.
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Wednesday, December 5, 1945. Flight 19.
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 110th Edition. Ballooning ballrooms and murder on the sea.
The Autocrat and the Architect.
Reports are leaking out that Trump's architect and Trump are now at odds over the ever expanding ballroom, with McCreey having told Trump that the building, which now will hold over 1,000 people, is getting too big and is going to engulf the White House itself. McCreery is no longer taking a day to day role in the vandalization.
It frankly is looking more and more like this project will never get built. Trump's dementia is racing through his cerebellum now and the clock on his illegitimate occupancy of the Presidency is likely winding down.
The ballroom, which nobody other than Trump wants, and has not been wanted for 150 years like Trump likes to claim, is a major focus for Trump. He's desperately looking for a physical monument to himself.
Looking for somebody to blame for murder.
Over the last few days, since the Washington Post broke the news that survivors of the first illegal Venezuelan boat sinking were subsequently murdered on the water, the Trump administration has been bouncing off the walls to get ahead of the story.
On the Weekend shows, Noem slandered the newspaper, saying she wouldn't believe the story. Since then it's gone from Hegseth ordered everyone killed, but that was before the first illegal act, and the Navy commander of the operation acted independently, apparently interpreting his orders in that fashion.
The irony is that, of course, the same group of people were having a fit about a collection of Senators who are veterans urging service members not to follow illegal orders. Now it turns out that a major illegal order was just given. In fact, the entire boat sinking campaign off of Venezuela is illegal, so the first strike was itself murder. Killing the survivors is definitely illegal.
Gray complaining about Gordon.
Chuck Gray is complaining about the Governor not granting him extra money to publicize a moronic initiative to completely destroy the state's finances by cutting property taxes 50%.
Gray will take off before the chickens ever come home to roost on this. He's still aligned with the Freedom Caucus but it's pretty this legislative session, where they are going to loom large, is going to be their high water mark. Gray wants to be governor, but he's not going to get that position. I'd guess that Barlow will, although its quite early. When that effort fails, Gray might take a run at the Senate, if he's still around, and then depart, or just depart.
Postscript:
The official position is that the Admiral in charge of the operation ordered the second strike, with Hegseth saying he had left by the time it occurred. He also cited the fog of war as the reason for the killing, which would presuppose there being a war, which there isn't.
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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 109th Edition. Lost love. Painting Targets. Piggy. Articles of Surrender. Voting in opposition of something that isn't going on.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Wednesday, November 25, 1925. Hats.
The Turkish Hat Law, banning non Western headgear, took effect.
Beijing's Forbidden City was opened to the public for the first time.
Last edition:
Tuesday, November 24, 1925. William F. Buckley born
Monday, November 24, 2025
Trump’s pardon of crypto king makes case for constitutional reform
Trump’s pardon of crypto king makes case for constitutional reform: A constitutional amendment first proposed after Watergate would address questionable pardons, writes guest columnist David Adler.
Sunday, November 23, 2025
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 109th Edition. Lost love. Painting Targets. Piggy. Articles of Surrender. Voting in opposition of something that isn't going on.
Lost love
The big news this past week is that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came to prominence as one of the most notable and frankly disagreeable figures on the far right, and then who moved away from Trump, is leaving the 119th Congress in January after her pension vests.
What's exactly going on here is really unclear, but Green's transformation was remarkable. She used to come across like an ignorant howler monkey. If Eva_Vlaardingerbroek is the "Shieldmaiden of the far right", she was more like an buffoonish bouncer.
All of a sudden, however, she really came around to opposing Trump and in fact suddenly sounded like a different person completely. That suggests her antics were always an act put on for her constituents.
Given her change, she was drawing the direct opposition of Trump who was opposing her in next year's Congressional election. She already had stout opposition and may just be taking off because she doesn't want to spend the next year dealing with a pack of extremists. Her transformation did not cause her to be loved by moderates who were baffled on her transformation, save perhaps for Thomas Massie, whom Trump also hates. Trump is vicious to all who oppose him.
Well, as W. E. B. Dubois famously said, only a food never changes their mind.
The Seditionist accuses others of Sedition.
Oh horse shit. No "great legal scholars" are venturing that opinion. Pam Bondi probably would, if told to do so, but her sycophantry disqualifies her from being a great anything.
Donald Trump is a seditionist insurrectionist. He has not had his act of sedition excused by Congress, so he's actually ineligible to be President of the United States, and legally, isn't.
So that makes it all the more ironic and hypocritical that he's gone after a collection of Congressmen and Senators, all veterans, who reminded service members that they can, and must, obey an illegal order, under certain circumstances (they can't for instance, just assume an order may be illegal).
Some of this has actually already been happening. Resignations of senior officers, and some firings, have hit the news, usually with a "gosh, I wonder why this is happening" sort of commentary. It's happening because they're opposing illegal orders. It's also the case that National Guardsmen have started a backchannel internet communication discussion that includes the same topic.
Trump seems to be in a full blown panic about this, and probably for good reason. The US is currently murdering people on the seas in extrajudicial killings using military force that some regard as being on the edge of illegality. Trump has sent National Guardsmen to cities with Courts repeatedly intervening to stop the deployments. Trump is constantly rumored to be on the edge of using the Insurrection Act. But as time goes on he gets more and more erratic.
The majority of American people already disapprove of Trump's presidency. There's no national stomach at all for using the military against the population, but the administration has constantly flirted with it, and to some extent, already done it. The legality of Trump's actions on all levels are in the Courts. There's a reviving movement to impeach him, and his behind the scenes support may well be reaching the breaking point. We still don't know what was in the Epstein files, other than that rich and powerful men feel they can get away with whatever they want, including screwing teenage girls.
Declaring the politicians who spoke to be seditionist is absurd. They were no such thing. But it does paint a target on their backs. This was reprehensible.
It's also a sign of extreme desperation. We'll note that below.
Piggy
One of the increased signs of Trump's dementia is his inability to hold his tongue. Last week he called a reporter who asked a question he didn't like "Piggy". It was a female reporter.
He's demented.
Any other politicians in the US who said such a thing would be howled down to the point they'd offer an apology. Not Trump, of course. The fact that he hasn't been is evidence of what redneck trash this country has become. It's appalling.
It's also a sign that at this point Trump is so stressed by something that the wheels are really coming off of his psyche.
Articles of Surrender
One of the most notable things about Donald Trump is the degree to which he truly seems to abhor war.
Or does he?
It's actually a bit difficult to tell.
Regarding the Russo Ukrainian War, Trump has repeatedly issues statements that approach being homo erotic about the war and how it needs to end, due to all the "beautiful" young men it kills. At the same time, of course, he doesn't mind killing South American men very much.
Going back to that, however, Trump has being trying and promising to end the Russo Ukrainian War for well over a year now. He's flip flopped on positions, but one of those that he periodically occupies is acting as an agent for Russia. We're back at that point again.
The West promised to secure Ukraine's sovereignty when it gave up its nuclear weapons. The West has not fulfilled that promise fully. President Biden did a good job of helping Ukraine right from the onset, but didn't go as far as he should have. The various European nations have done far, far more than they've gotten credit for.
Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and although he may have convinced himself that he ended "eight wars", so far, he's not really ended any, if we consider that the only real claim he could have made to that effect was the war in Gaza, where Israel conducted a bombing raid yesterday. Most people who have really looked at the situation in Gaza don't expect the peace to hold permanently.
A real peace between Ukraine and Russia would be a major accomplishment, however. The thing is, however, that the "peace plan" that Trump presented was basically that Ukraine surrender. Indeed, it resembles the treaty that ended the Great War to some extent, in that Ukraine gives up land and limits the size of its army, which are two of the things Germany did at the end of World War One.
That worked out oh so well.
Of course, to realize that would require a sense of history, which Trump lacks. That the plan smacks of the Munich Accords also would require that.
So, back to a couple of things .Why is Trump the only Western leader outside of Viktor Orban who likes Putin? It isn't because he's on the populist right. Giorgia Meloni is on the populist right and she's not a Putin fan.
But Meloni also is very intelligent and not trying to suck up unwarranted praise all the time.
It might be just because the Russians know that Trump is demented and a narcissist, and they play into that. But it's hard to wonder if it isn't something else.
At any rate, member of the Administration are already attempting to walk the document back. That's interesting, as Trump seemed very solidly behind it. That suggest that there are some forces behind the scenes that can operate a bit independently of Trump.
Voting no on Socialism while Trump cozies up to it.
The House voted on a resolution to disapprove Socialism, which is just about as stupid of thing as they could done. What on earth was that exactly supposed to prove?
The GOP has really gone off the rails on this topic in that it now asserts routinely that Socialism=Communism. It doesn't. All Communists are Socialist, but not all Socialists are Communists, and those who maintain the opposite need to go back to school.
Ronald Reagan's big French buddy Francois Mitterrand was a Socialist. He was also completely democratic.
Of course, Donald Trump isn't completely democratic, but interestingly, some of his policies are socialist, and now he's had a fawning meeting with the new Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City. He declared that they had a lot of views in common.
Look for the GOP to now propose joining the Comintern.
Turning Point at CC
One of the things that the assassination of Charlie Kirk seemed to do was to boost the creation of Turning Point USA chapters. There's one at one of the local high schools now, and one at the local community college.
At that one, there was just an event at which the far right Secretary of State and a far right politician who wants less government but who is a major landlord, thereby occupying a role in society that only exists due the major support of the government, or else people would ignore your claim to property rights, spoke.
Wyoming's far right is sounding more and more irrelevant, so its interesting how these things are a bit behind the curve. Of course the Secretary of State, in order to try to keep ahead of the curve, has been sounding like a member of Greenpeace recently. I thought this would have generated some news, but it doesn't seem to.
Interesting.
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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. Lost love.
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Monday ,November 22, 1875. The death of Vice President Henry Wilson.
Ardent opponent of slavery and career politician Vice President Henry Wilson died in office at age 63.
GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 97
WAR DEPARTMENT,
ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE
I. The following order announces the decease of Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States:
EXECUTIVE MANSION,
Washington, November 22, 1875.
It is with profound sorrow that the President has to announce to the people of the United States the death of the Vice-President, Henry Wilson, who died in the Capitol of the nation this morning.
The eminent station of the deceased, his high character, his long career in the service of his State and of the Union, his devotion to the cause of freedom, and the ability which he brought to the discharge of every duty stand conspicuous and are indelibly impressed on the hearts and affections of the American people.
In testimony of respect for this distinguished citizen and faithful public servant the various Departments of the Government will be closed on the day of the funeral, and the Executive Mansion and all the Executive Departments in Washington will be draped with badges of mourning for thirty days.
The Secretaries of War and of the Navy will issue orders that appropriate military and naval honors be rendered to the memory of one whose virtues and services will long be borne in recollection by a grateful nation.
U. S. GRANT
By the President:
HAMILTON FISH,
Secretary of State.
II. On the day next succeeding the receipt of this order at each military post the troops will be paraded at 10 o'clock a. m. and this order read to them.
The national flag will be displayed at half-staff.
At dawn of day thirteen guns will be fired. Commencing at 12 o'clock noon seventeen minute guns will be fired, and at the close of the day the national salute of thirty-seven guns.
The usual badge of mourning will be worn by officers of the Army and the colors of the several regiments will be put in mourning for the period of three months.
By order of the Secretary of War:
E. D. TOWNSEND, Adjutant-General.
He had been born Jeremiah Jones Colbath and born to extremely impoverished circumstances, growing up partially as an indentured servant to a farmer in his region. At age 21 he changed his name, although the reasons really aren't known. He became a shoemaker, and then entered politics as a Whig. He was one of the organizers of the Free Soil Party in 1852 and became a U.S. Senator in 1855. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and exited the war back into politics as an advocate of the rights of freed slaves.
On the same day:
Executive Order—Expansion of Ute Indian Reservation TerritoryNovember 22, 1875EXECUTIVE MANSION, November 22, 1875.It is hereby ordered that the tract of country in the Territory of Colorado lying within the following-described boundaries, viz: Commencing at the northeast corner of the present Ute Indian Reservation, as defined in the treaty of March 2, 1868 (Stats, at Large, vol. 15, p. 619); thence running north on the 107th degree of longitude to the first standard parallel north; thence west on said first standard parallel to the boundary line between Colorado and Utah; thence south with said boundary to the northwest corner of the Ute Indian Reservation; thence east with the north boundary of the said reservation to the place of beginning, be, and the same hereby is, withdrawn from sale and set apart for the use of the several tribes of Ute Indians, as an addition to the present reservation in said Territory.U. S. GRANT.
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Thursday, November 20, 2025
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Wyoming hemp vendors reel from Delta-8 court loss, new federal ban
Wyoming hemp vendors reel from Delta-8 court loss, new federal ban: On the heels of a failed lawsuit to stop a prohibition on some cannabis products in Wyoming, hemp vendors confront a sudden federal ban on most products.
Monday, November 17, 2025
Marijuana users upset Trump will harsh their national park mellow, prosecute for possession
Marijuana users upset Trump will harsh their national park mellow, prosecute for possession: U.S. attorney for Wyoming says detrimental effects of marijuana are "undeniable" and he will "rigorously" enforce the law.
Monday, November 10, 2025
Courthouses of the West: "President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes."
Courthouses of the West: "President Donald Trump is using the law for parti...: In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest ...
"President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes"
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved.
My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.
Mark L. Wolf, U.S. District Court Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Sunday, November 9, 2025
Going Feral: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.
Going Feral: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyom...: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G... : China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict ...
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G...: China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins. The Chinese Civil War w...
Linked over from Lex Anteinternet, which also discussed the Chinese Civil War.
Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, Game Wardens Killed.
China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins.
The Chinese Civil War was the topic of a political cartoon as well.
The murdered Game Wardens were Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson who were killed by ardent Nazi sympathizer and German immigrant Johann Malten. The same Game Wardens had arrested Malten for game violations when investigating, interestingly enough, claims that Malten had been involved in espionage and was relaying weather reports on shortwave, something that was illegal during the war when there was a blackout on weather reporting as the information was useful to submarines. Upon visiting Malten's cabin in the Sierra Madres they found he had committed numerous game violations.
On this occasion they were stopping by to see if Malten had continued to ignore the law. They were shot down out of hand when they arrived.
Malten burned his cabin down and it was officially reported that he'd died within it, although the evidence of that is very poor. There were reported sightings of him for years thereafter.
And a selection of 1945 cartoons.
I knew about this story because former Wyoming Game Warden David Bragonier wrote about it in his book about Wyoming Game Wardens, Wild Journey: On the Trail With a Wyoming Game Warden in Yellowstone Country. It's a good book, and I recommend it.
Bragonier discusses this event, although I clearly don't remember everything I read in his account. That's probably not too surprising as I read the book in 1999. What I recall but didn't see in the accounts on the murder you can find here is that the investigation was associated not only with the killer's German nationality and his strong Nazi sympathies, but also with shortwave radio transmissions that could not be pinned down.
There's a bunch of interesting things that could, and if a person had time, should be explored here as the story raises all sorts of undeveloped oddities.
One of them is that Lakanen and Simpson are two out of the three Wyoming Game Wardens who were murdered by immigrants (to the extent I know why the various ones who lost their lives in the line of duty did). I'm not saying that immigrants murder game wardens, but this is an interesting fact. The other one is John Buxton, who was murdered by a youthful Austrian immigrant in 1919. In that instance he had taken a .30-30 Savage rifle from a 17 year old who drew a revolver and killed him. The reasons that Buxton was checking the boys is unclear. Stories frequently claim they were hunting out of season, but that seems incorrect. They were certainly overarmed for rabbits, however, with a .30-30 being way too large for that pursuit. Buxton might have been checking them as their activities seems suspicious, which frankly they do, or because there was a state law at the time that prohibited aliens from carrying firearms.
The killers handgun, we might note, was concealed.
I only note this as its odd. Hunting is common in Germany and Austria, and indeed there's a strong hunting culture there, but it's highly regulated. As a result, poaching is fairly common as well, even though its highly criminal. Indeed, one of the SS's units during World War Two, the Dirlewanger Brigade, was originally made up of convicted poachers, although it moved on to other criminals over time.
Anyhow, I wonder if these people were just hugely out of sink with any culture at all.
In the earlier murder, it's been noted that the young men had been in run-ins apparently with Italian immigrants in the same location. Austro Hungaria and Italy had been on opposite sides of World War One. Again, I'm not saying that caused the murder, but I do wonder if they conceived of themselves as being very much on the outside of things.
Another interesting thing, although having nothing to do with the focus on this page, is the lingering Nazi sympathies in some quarters amongst German immigrants who chose to continue to live in the country. That carried on, quietly, well after the war, even after the news of the Holocaust became known.
Odd.
If Malten was actually a spy, that may explain the killing in and of itself.
Another thing this story oddly brings up is the extent to which trapping remained economically viable.
Trapping was pretty common in Wyoming up into the 1970s, when there was a fur market price collapse. I had, well still have, traps, although I haven't set them for decades. In the 1970s high school kids like myself supplemented our incomes by trapping or hunting coyotes for their furs. The market was so lucrative at the time that there were people who flew in from out of state and hunted coyotes near Miracle Miles, something we didn't appreciate very much as we didn't have those sorts of resources available to us. The Federal Government was also big into predator control at the time which we also didn't appreciate much for the same reason.
Furs are, fwiw, an actual renewable resource fabric, one of the few.
Fur coats were a big deal for women at this time and would, again, be throughout the 1950s. They were not nearly as much of a luxury item as people like to remember. My mother had a heavy mink coat that she brought down from Montreal that she wore on really cold days. As a kid I loved it when she brought it out, due to the feel of the soft minks.
It was, in spite of Donald Trump and the Sweet Home Alabama crowe dof the GOP may believe, colder then.
I've never looked into it but I suspect that synthetic fabrics had as much to do with the decline in furs as anything else. That started during World War Two and is well evidenced by the Air Force's switch from sheepskin flight altitude flight jackets to synthetic ones. That trend continue into the 1950s and I suspect it just generally caught up with fur coats by the 1980s. Indeed, the association of fur with luxury somewhat increased in that time, with it generally being the case that things are regarded as luxurious not only for their scarcity, but because they really aren't needed.
More on fur clothing some other time.
I guess the final thing I'll note is how dangerous of job being a game warden is. A lot of the crimes you investigate are, by default, armed crimes.
Given that, it's amazing to look back and realize that when I was a kid wardens didn't carry sidearms. They weren't allowed to. I recall when that changed and many did not take up what was then the option to carry them. Now they're required to.
Indeed, I was recently stopped by a warden and frankly he wasn't very nice. That's a new trend as well. I don't like it. But not only was he not nice, he was extremely intimidating carrying a government issued handgun on a government issued gunbelt and wearing a government issued flak jacket.
I've really hated the militarization of the policy and this is all part of it. Everytime I see a policeman anymore, including a game warden, they're dressed like they're going into Hue in 1968. All policemen of every type are civilians. They're simply deputized civilians. They shouldn't look like an occupying army. And if the treat people rudely, and many do, and are standing their armed treating you like you are a detained Vietnamese villager, it's scary.
A little of that comes across, I'd note, in Bragonier's book, in spite of my recommendation of it. It's a good book, but he displayed an element of contempt for the public he served in it.
David Bragonier must be, I'd suspect, gone to his reward by now His biography indicates that he was born in Iowa in 1937 and moved to Wyoming after graduating high school. He became a game warden over twenty years later, in 1958, something that would be extremely difficult to do now due to the education requirements. He briefly worked for the Forest Service before that.
A man becoming a Game Warden at 39, which he did, would be really unusual now. Probably impossible.
I actually have twice tried to plow that field myself, rejecting it once as I just go engaged. I would have been about 30 at the time. It'd be completely impossible for me to become a Game Warden now as I not have a wildlife management degree. I suppose that requiring that specific degree is a good thing, but I do miss the days when a lot of Game Wardens were basically from ranching families. Even when I was that age, many of them fit that category. My cohort was probably about the last one that would meet that description.
I went on, of course, to a successful career in the law, and I was already a lawyer, of course at age 30, and had been for a few years. I took one fork in the road. You aren't supposed to look back. Luke tells us, in a different context, that "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God". I'll confess I've looked back a lot.
Having said all of that, I spoke the same warden (turns out he's very green) as I found a poached elk about two weeks later. I had to guide him in, by phone, to the location. He was very nice on that occasion, and that's how things should be.
Monday, November 3, 2025
Tuesday, November 3, 1925. Mitchell's Witness Demands Upheld, New Jersey Ballot, and the evolution of word meaning.
Mitchell was having some success with his witness list.
And Cowboys Out Our Way illustrated the evolution of a word in a somewhat ironic way.
Last edition:
Saturday, October 31, 1925. Subpoena for Coolidge?
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Wednesday, October 28, 1925 Mitchell challenges Jurisdiction.
Billy Mitchell questioned the Army's jurisdiction to try him.
The Casper paper ran Out Our Way.
Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: October 28, 1925: What sort of monster...: Since the French Cabinet can’t force Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux to resign when he rejects a capital levy, the whole Cabinet resigns i...
The age 25 year thing on marriage permission is really interesting. That's surprisingly high.
Last edition:
Tuesday, October 27, 1925. Ethel: Then and Now.
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
A question. What authority does a President have over Federal property?
Can, for instance, a President just order Hoover Dam blown down as he doesn't like it?
Can he have the White House demolished for sport?
Addendum
It turns out that King Donny does not have approval for the project from the National Capital Planning Commission. By doing this, he's basically forcing its hand.
It also means this may be flat out illegal.
Somebody should challenge it and seek an injunction on further operations until the question can be determined. If it is illegal, it's outside Presidential authority, and Trump should be held accountable for the damages.
This really is outrageous. Trump is, quite frankly, a horrible person.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Kiddie Porn and the library.
People reading my comments on the illegitimate claimant to the Oval Office and the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, and indeed the general drift of Republican politics in this state, all of which are causing the ghosts of Mussolini and Franco to wonder "aren't they a little extreme?", may simply assume I'm a liberal, and that I oppose everything conservatives are doing.
They're wrong, I'm a social conservative, but anyhow. . .
For those holding that view, this post will surprise.
October 14, 2025
Panel advances legislation restricting sexual content in Wyoming library books: The Judiciary Committee voted 11-2 in support of the measure, and the issue unified Wyoming Freedom Caucus lawmakers with Republicans not always aligned with them.Committee Adopts Bill Greenlighting Lawsuits Over 'Sexually Explicit' Library Books
Here's the bill:
I have my doubts about the constitutionality of this effort, but I think this effort is worth it.
In spite of what people might say, some of these books are absolutely horrific. Without detailing how I know it, two of the books that keep coming up in this discussion, Gender Queer and This Books Is Gay do not belong in the children's section of any library and frankly should only be in a limited adult section at that. I don't overall object to them being in a library, but frankly the common assumption that they are aimed at "young adults" is correct.
Gender Queer is a "graphic" book, i.e., cartoon. It depicts a scene in which a friend instructs another teenage friend how to stick a finger up a vagina, and that's not all. This Book Is Gay is basically a homosexual sex manual for young people, complete with badly done illustrations.
Seriously?
This gets right to the roots of the culture wars. Basically, the authors of these books believe that you are a homosexual from the second you are born, if you become one later, or even really if a person ever ponders such activity. This is to "help" them get past what the authors regard unfortunate mental roadblocks.
The psychological support for such a view is basically nonexistent. Homosexuality itself, while it occurs in all cultures, is particularly prevalent in the cultural West, so much so that in China its regarded as a Western thing. At one time it was so associated with English public (that is to say private) boy's schools that it was called "the English disease". We really don't grasp it all that well.
And frankly what we don't need to do is to push teenagers who might be pondering it, outright into it, which as a society is exactly what we are in fact doing. Books like this help to do that. They're Gender Queer is practically designed to do that.
Libraries have always restricted sexual content to the young. . . until recently. I remember years ago reading an article in the Denver Post about how the Denver Public Library kept Playboy and a Buddhist sex manual in an area where you had to ask for them, with those publications being the two most requested in that section. The point is, they didn't keep bound volumes of Playboy down in the children's sections for teenage boys to peruse, even though a person could argue that it was just as instructive as those struggling with their sexuality as these texts. And, moreover, any teen asking for either one of them would have been told to pound sand.
All this comes, as these articles make plain, against the background of a lawsuit over the topic that was just settled. Not "won", but settled. One ironic element is that the librarian spoke out hoping that her settlement, which is a settlement (i.e., she didn't win, or lose, the suit) would discourage the legislature from passing this bill.
Really? It ought to encourage them to pass it.
Monday, October 13, 2025
Abortion ruling not expected until year’s end, Wyoming chief justice says
Abortion ruling not expected until year’s end, Wyoming chief justice says: “I can't tell you when the opinion will be out,” Lynne Boomgaarden told WyoFile, “but it is my best guess that probably by the end of the year, in that timeframe.”
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