Chimps have Free Will, but Humans do not

Some animal rights activists have sued to free some chimpanzees, and they actually got a dissenting appeals judge to argue:

Plaintiff, its expert witnesses, and supporting amici present considerable and seemingly undisputed scientific evidence that chimpanzees possess autonomy, self determination, and numerous advanced cognitive abilities.1 The evidence demonstrates that chimpanzees are remarkably intelligent, that they are self-aware, that they plan for the future, that they exhibit empathy and compassion toward other living beings, and that they grieve the loss of loved ones. Based on the evidence presented, chimpanzees appear unsuited for confinement.

He seems to accept that chimps have free will.

The famous philosopher Peter Singer describes this as "When a Chimpanzee Asks to Be Free". He has the typical philosopher view that humans do not truly have free will. Our actions are determined, but we have an illusion of free will that is compatible with determinism.

Biology professor Jerry Coyne is a hard-core determinist who says we have no free will, and yet he supports the above dissent and a petition to free seven chimps in a zoo.

For centuries, the prevailing view has been the opposite. Most people believe that they have free will, but that animals do not. I hear dog lovers say that dogs should never be blamed for something like a dog bite, because dogs have no free will, and if a dog misbehaves, it could only be because the dog was poorly trained.

The Foolish Opinion on Birthright Citizenship

Pres. Trump wants the Supreme Court to reconsider its birthright citizenship opinion.

I would say that the Roberts interpretation of jurisdiction does not make any sense in the light of:

1. USA claims jurisdiction over the Venezuela head of state.

2. the Consitution uses "within the Jurisdiction" and "subject to the jurisdiction" to mean different things.

Also, no one ever determined that the 14A entitles the kids of sojourners and illegals to be citizens. We had opinions saying that domicile was required, but lazy bureaucrats accepted birth certificates as proof of citizenship.

Even if comments of Reconstruction Senators imply a broad citizenship rule, we now have millions of kids of sojourners and illegals. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. It is crazy to say that a 1868 sentence cannot have any common sense exceptions. This decision cripples USA sovereignty.

If this decision stands, the President may be forced to deny all visas to women of child-bearing age in order to control sovereignty. Then the Roberts decision will be considered terrible.

Trying to Stop Whites from Living with other Whites

The NY Times is on the warpath against Return to the Land, a small private Arkansas community. It just podcast a very favorable interview of a woman suing because she was not admitted.

Michelle considers herself white. If you look at her, she looks white. She is a practicing Christian, but by blood, she’s Jewish. Her mom’s family is Jewish. According to the “Return of the Land,” she is not a Christian, she’s a Jew. And in addition, Michelle is married to a Black man, and they share three biracial children. ...

Yeah, she saw it as a real estate investment, pure and simple. ...

They also asked questions about things like gay marriage. They asked her what her thoughts are on the COVID vaccine. They asked her how she feels about abortion. ... They even asked her what her thoughts are on the Roman Empire. ...

The legal experts that I’ve spoken to say that her case is extremely strong for a number of reasons.

It is funny how these leftist Jews are so much against freedom of association. Jews have survived as a distinct ethnic identity for centuries largely because they have been allowed to associate with other Jews.

It is hard for me to understand why anyone would be offended at a very small community that chooses to live with like-minded people on an undeveloped Arkansas plot of land.

The NYT interviewer, Debra Kamin, used to live in Tel Aviv, so I assume she is a Jew.

Meanwhile the Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted again, with more facts supporting the charge that the Klu Klux Klan, American Nazis, and other supposedly racist groups were really just fund-raising fronts for rich Jewish leftists:

[The National Socialist Party of America leader] used [SPLC] donors' money to, among other things, travel to extremist rallies, host extremist rallies, donate money to leaders of other extremist organizations, recruit new members into his extremist organization, publish racist and extremist material for the purpose of recruiting new members, both inside and outside of prison, and create racist paraphernalia to sell at rallies to raise more money for his extremist organization.

Chicago Sends Black Dads to Jail

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

For parents navigating family court in Cook County, falling behind on child support and other court-ordered payments can carry consequences that extend far beyond mounting debt.

It can mean going to jail.

Over the past decade, more than 2,500 people — nearly all of them men — have been locked up after Cook County judges found them in what’s called indirect civil contempt.

Most were detained for failing to comply with court-ordered payments to children or former spouses, according to Cook County sheriff’s records.

Those jailed spent an average of eight days in custody. But about 100 people were held for 50 days or longer. Of them, about 25 were locked up for more than 100 days, according to sheriff’s data from April 2016 to the end of March 2026.

One man, Steve Fanady, has been in jail for nearly four years.

A Chicago Sun-Times analysis of sheriff’s records exposes what some say is a punitive side of a system that civil rights advocates and some court observers say offers little legal help to those unable to afford a lawyer.

Unlike criminal defendants, people accused of violating support orders in civil court aren’t automatically entitled to legal representation even though they might face incarceration.

In Cook County’s sprawling domestic relations court system — which handles roughly 40,000 divorce and child-support cases each year — advocates estimate that at least half of the litigants come to court without a lawyer. Most are Black.

For nearly add debts, jail is not a possibility. A debtor can declare bankruptcy.

It is not so well known that child support is not required to be spent on the child. The mom can spend it as she pleases. In many or even most of these cases, the debt is not even to the mom, but to a welfare agency.

RIP Mark Fuhrman

Mark Fuhrman has died. He was the cop famous for finding the OJ Simpson bloody glove, and then denying under oath having used the N-word in the past ten years. The trial popularized that euphemism. A recorded interviewed proved that he had used it 9.5 years earlier.

During his closing argument, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran called Fuhrman "a lying, perjuring, genocidal racist", likening him to Adolf Hitler. He argued that Fuhrman had planted the bloody glove on Simpson's estate as part of a racially motivated plot against Simpson, which could be traced back to Fuhrman's first encounter with the interracial couple in 1985.

I thought that he would be allowed to explain that use in a Hollywood role-playing interview was harmless, but he was prosecuted for perjury. Some say that his use of the N-word was the main reason OJ was acquitted.

The blood evidence against OJ was overwhelming. His blood was found at the scene of the crime, and his victims' blood was found on his possessions. Complaining about the N-word was just a way of rationalizing the acquittal. Fuhrman was the only one convicted.

A 2020 court case found:

Not only is the word "nigger" undoubtedly the most hateful and inflammatory racial slur in the contemporary American lexicon; …; but it is probably the single most offensive word in the English language. See, e.g., Ayissi-Etoh v. Fannie Mae (D.C. Cir. 2013) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) ("[The] epithet ['nigger'] has been labeled, variously, a term that 'sums up … all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America,' [L. Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobiography], 'pure anathema to African-Americans,' Spriggs v. Diamond Auto Glass (4th Cir. 2001), and 'probably the most offensive word in English.' [Random House Webster's College Dictionary]. See generally [A. Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family]; [H. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird]…. No other word in the English language so powerfully or instantly calls to mind our country's long and brutal struggle to overcome racism and discrimination against African-Americans."); R. Kennedy, The David C. Baum Lecture: 'Nigger!' as a Problem in the Law, 2001 U. Ill. L. Rev. 935 (although "[t]he American language is (and has long been) rife with terms of ethnic, racial, and national insult: kike, mick, wop, nip, gook, honkie, wetback, chink, [etc.] … 'nigger is now probably the most offensive word in English'"); Dictionary.com, available at https://www.dictionary.com/browse/nigger?s=t ("The term nigger is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, although it has been used in a derogatory manner since at least the Revolutionary War.").

The word is not really a 'pure anathema to African-Americans,' as they use the word all the time. I suspect that 99% of usage today is not actually offensive.

Kars4Kids is a Jewish Scam

News:

f you’ve ever heard the “1-8-7-7-KARS-4-KIDS” jingle, you’ve probably heard it a million times. In states where this car-donation charity operates, it’s been running obnoxiously repetitive singing-kids ads for decades with the intensity of a shock-and-awe military campaign. But after all those years of operation, one disgruntled donor took it to court and got a judge to kick Kars4Kids off California airwaves for practicing “an actionable strategy of deception.”

From the court ruling:

The Defendant’s case included the testimony of Kars4Kids’ Chief Operating Officer (COO), Esti Landau’s strikingly candid testimony. She admitted that the 30-second advertisement, which has been running for two decades, “does not say anything” about the charity’s specific nature. She confirmed: that Kars4Kids is a Jewish organization, yet the word “Jewish” is absent from the ad.; that the primary function of Kars4Kids is to fund Oorah, an organization dedicated to Jewish heritage and summer camps in New York and New Jersey; that while 25% of revenue is derived from California, Kars4Kids has no functional programs in California beyond a “backpack giveaway” characterized as a branding exercise;  over 60% of the funds of Kars4kids go to Oorah, approximately 30% is spent on further advertising, and another 6% on administrative expenses; that the website states, “Because kids are our future. Learn how you can make a difference in the life of a child” as a central element of the Kars4Kids advertising campaign, but it is not found in the 30-second jingle.

You should not have to hear that dishonest jingle again.

Weinstein Accuser Testifies

Harvey Weinstein has about a hundred accusers, so surely one can tell a convincing story to convict him. Nope. AP reports on his third trial:

Mann met Weinstein at a Los Angeles-area party around early 2013. She had done some acting work but was hoping for a big break.

Their subsequent get-togethers bounced between professional advice, invites to glitzy industry events and advances that Mann said made her uncomfortable but that she didn’t refuse, though she had an emotional “meltdown” during an episode involving Weinstein and another woman.

Still, Mann decided to have a consensual sexual liaison with the then-married producer.

She explained Tuesday that she had been taught to expect such behavior from men and thought she might feel better about it if she was in a relationship with Weinstein.

Among many consensual encounters, she said that one was not.

Mann told no one at the time. She went through with the planned breakfast, accepted Weinstein’s invitation to extend her trip, attend a movie screening and have tea with him and his daughter.

“I just wanted everyone to act like everything was normal,” she said.

She continued consensual sexual encounters and friendly email exchanges with Weinstein. He helped the financially struggling Mann get hired at a hair salon, though she declined an envelope from him that she believed contained $1,000 in cash: “It felt wrong,” she told jurors.

I am wondering how any of this would convince a jury. If he really committed a crime against her, she would not have continued the relationship.

California Schools Overruled

Some conservatives announce:

U.S. Supreme Court Delivers Historic, Groundbreaking Victory for Parental Rights, Dismantles California’s Secret Gender Transition Regime

Supreme Court rules that California cannot hide children’s gender transitions from parents; landmark decision protects parental rights nationwide

It was amazing that California had a policy of secretly transgendering minor students, and concealing it from the parents.

The 6-3 Supreme Court decision is here.

Courts Reconsider Ten Commandments

The US Supreme Court once ruled 5-4 that displaying the Ten Commandments were unconstitutional in public schools. Now a couple of states are trying again, and it is back in the courts.

This is a story of the rise and fall of the Lemon Test. The LT was concocted from judicial supremacist thinking and then applied to neutralize anything Christians wanted to do. It meant that if Christians favored something, then it did not have a secular purpose, so it failed the LT and was unconstitional.

The peak was this case. The crux of the case was that a book had to be banned from the school library because the lawsuit discovered that an unpublished draft used some terminology that indicated some religious beliefs, and the author subsequently edited the book to make it more secular. But by the LT, the religious purpose could not be removed, so the book was hopelessly contaminated.

Supposedly the LT is dead. If so, good riddance. If not, this 10C case should clarify the issue.

George Floyd Video killed 10,000

Publicity about the death of George Floyd led to a huge spike in Black murders. The murder is only now returning to normal.

Derek Chauvin has an appeal pending, but he has no chance. He has a good argument that he was just following standard police procedure, and did not contribute to Floyd's death. But freeing him might lead to riots, so he will stay in prison.

Someday people will be asking about how the world went mad around 2010-20. Floyd's death had a huge impact, but it is impossible for any rational person to believe that the cops had any intent to kill Floyd, or that the incident somehow proves systemic racism against Blacks. And yet that is what most people said.

The Child Abuse Pediatricians

The NY Times announces a new podcast:

this doctor’s controversial career paralleled the rise of a new subspecialty: child abuse pediatrics, a field devoted to detecting — and preventing — child abuse.

The Preventionist charts this doctor’s path to Pennsylvania, as well as the profound damage that can result from separating parents and children; the final episode is the unvarnished story of one mother’s struggle to reunite her family after it was torn apart

Apparently this new child abuse pediatricians are like crooked lawyers for hire. If you have a messy divoce or child custody case, they can be paid to produce bogus affidavits creating suspicion of the other parent committing child abuse.

Religion-haters Opposed to Free Speech

I posted about a pending Supreme Court case, so here is a contary view, from a woman presenting as non-binary lesbian:

Instead, the tenor of the oral argument was one of “if you’re speaking, it’s speech, regardless of the context.” ...

I want to be very clear here that we are talking about children being subjected to a form of “care” that has been consistently debunked as pseudoscience, and is most frequently religious preaching that can be billed to insurance companies. The Alliance Defending Freedom made great hay out of the fact that counseling is an evidence-based practice, which it is, without mentioning the inconvenient fact that the specific type of counseling Chiles seeks to provide is not evidence-based. There is no reputable study, no mainstream medical organization, that endorses conversion therapy. In fact, the general medical consensus on the topic is that it is deeply harmful to those who fall victim to it, which is why more than 20 states have banned its use for minors. ...

Conversion therapy is fundamentally different from other forms of youth-focused psychology and psychiatry. Pediatric psychiatry can be life-saving, evidence-based, scientifically sound medical care. Conversion therapy is not that. It is also fundamentally different from its mainstream converse, gender-affirming care, because gender-affirming care is evidence-based and backed by reputable medical organizations, despite the concerted misinformation campaign to the contrary.

The terminology is confusing. What she calls "conversion therapy" is actually affirming sex, and teaching kids to learn to live with their innate sexual identities.

And "gender-affirming care" is teaching kids to adopt a gender identity opposite to their actual sex.

The fact that reputable medical organizations are on one side of this issue is scary.

This is a larger pattern, primarily pushed by the religious right, to ensure that misinformation, pseudoscience and fearmongering rule the day. Truth is one of our greatest defenses against fascism, something that the Christian nationalist movement knows it cannot withstand. LGBTQIA+ rights have provided it with a convenient foothold to test the limits and boundaries, and to drop stones in the constitutional pond that will ripple out to everyone, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

It is funny to hear her talk of truth. The Bible says in John 8:31-32:

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

She stands in favor of laws to stop kids from learning the truth.

Free Speech Right to Align Identity to Sex

The US Supreme Court just heard oral argument on Chiles v. Salazar

Chiles v. Salazar, Docket No. 24-539, is a pending United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of Colorado's Minor Conversion Therapy Law (MCTL), which bans conversion therapy for minors by licensed mental health professionals. The ban was challenged on violating the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, though the state had constrained the ban to licensed professionals and only as with respect to their professional duties. The ban was upheld in lower courts.

Many briefs are posted.

Here is the argument against the law:

This law harms gender dysphoric kids 1:40:41 because the statistics that we've cited in our verified complaint as well as in 1:40:46 the uh brief that we cited with this court indicate that 90% of young people who are struggling with gender dysphoria 1:40:53 before puberty work their way through it and realign their identity with their sex. But if one of those children go to 1:41:00 a counselor and they specifically say that is the help I want realigning my identity with their sex, they cannot 1:41:07 receive that help from someone like my client. Moreover, if they're continuing 1:41:12 down the path of transition, then unfortunately they get locked into that path and eventually it leads over 90% of 1:41:21 the time once they start down the path of social transition. It will lead to the route of medicalized transition 1:41:27 which the Cass report tells us comes with a lot of harm and devastation.

Conversion therapy applies to homosexuality, and has become more controversial when it is applied to transgender identity. About half the states have similar laws, so a psychotherapist can counsel a patient to go homosexual, but not to go straight.

I am struck by all the bogus language in this case.

The argument in favor of the law is that there is a "medical consensus" on the "standard of care" that "conversion therapy" is not supported by "evidence-based practice". The therapy is "ineffective" and "potentially harmful". Changing sexual preferences is impossible because they are "innate" and "immutable". Homosexuality and transgenderism have been determined to be not pathological, so there can be no legitimate treatment to change them. Any such effort is harmful because, among other things, it can cause "family alienation". No reputable medical society or expert testimonty supports such therapy.

This is all so crazy I don't know where to stert. All psychotherapies are ineffective and potentially harmful. Say you go to a shrink or any other medical professional because you are obese and want advice getting to a healthier weight. The vast majority of people getting such advice do not lose weight. That means the advice is ineffective. Many patients get angry or depressed or develop other unhealthy habits. That means the advice is potentially harmful.

The easy way out for the therapist is the affirm the fatness, and tell the patient to stay fat. Perhaps the studies would categorize such therapy as more successful, because the patient is happier in the short term, by avoid the struggle to lose weight.

All the medical societies need to do is the announce that fatness is not pathological. Maybe also that it is innate and immutable.

This might seem like an artificial example, but it is not. People see psychotherapy for all sorts of problems, including depression, alcoholism, and personality disorders. All of these are heritable, and cannot be changed without a lot of hard work. Most psychotherapy does not work. Some people do change, with help and motivation.

Our medical societies have been corrupted to where they refuse to help kids who need help. Saying that there is a consensus is just proof of how the system has been politicized. The field of Psychology hardly ever has a consensus on anything. For something as controversial as transgenderism, a healthy profession would have a diversity of opinions on what to do about it. Maybe they would accept scientific evidence, but there is no proof that affirming transgenderism has ever benefited anyone.

I think the Supreme Court ducked the issue of conversion therapy for homosexuals, but required licensed psychotherapists to tell small kids to change gender identity is too much. I expect the Colorado law to be struck down. Such laws should have been struck down ten years ago.

Update: The strange thing is that the whole idea of conversion therapy harm is that it can be frustrating to change what you really are. But the approved transgender affirmation therapy does exactly that.

What if an Orangutan is Driving the Train

This is one of the great quotes in US Supreme Court history.

ABC News reports

The Court's senior conservative suggested that some members of the Court over the years have blindly followed prior judgments, comparing them to passengers on a train.

"We never go to the front see who's driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it's an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it's a train," Thomas said.

Sometimes we need an unreconstructed conservate to call a spade a spade.

Firing Black Woman has Dire Repercussions

Yahoo reports:

Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook urged the Supreme Court Thursday to reject President Trump’s effort to fire her, arguing it would harm central bank independence and disrupt financial markets.

“Granting the President’s request for immediate relief to alter the status quo would sound the death knell for the central-bank independence that has helped make the United States’ economy the strongest in the world,” Cook’s lawyers argued in a new filing. ...

Cook's lawyers also make the argument that if the Supreme Court sides with Trump, it could have “dire repercussions” for financial markets while risking "chaos and disruption."

Really? Pres. Biden appointed Cook because she is a Black woman. She wrote some dopey academic on African colonialism, or some such nonsense, and had no banking expertise. Maybe Biden somehow confirmed that she would do what the Jews want.

The idea that our economy depends on the employment stability of an appointed Black woman banker is absurd.

The Federal Reserve Bank as a whole has been a big failure for a century. Academic research indicate the USA would have been better off without it.

The argument is often made that these bankers should be sheltered from public accountability. The best evidence for this is that Latin American dictators have sometimes used central banks to manipulate the money supply unfavorably. Yes, that's right, but I think the USA is better than that.

The other argument is that Jews have controlled the Federal Reserve Bank for the last few decades, and Jews are good with money if we do not watch them too closely. Jews have a reputation for moneylending that goes back centuries. Okay, I am sure Jews do make better bankers than Black women.

Trump's Secretary of the Treasury is not Jewish but he is gay. Maybe that is just as good.

It is funny to see Kamala Harris say in her book that she did not pick the previous gay cabinet secretary because he is gay, and then try to deny it:

Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man,” but he was “too big of a risk,” Harris continued.

Maddow, who is gay, pushed Harris to “elaborate,” adding: “To say that he couldn’t be on the ticket effectively because he was gay, it’s hard to hear.”

Harris quickly jumped in.

“No, no, no, that’s not what I said, that he couldn’t be on the ticket because he is gay,” the former vice president said as she shook her head.

“My point is, as I write in the book, is that I was clear that in 107 days, in one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor — to be a black woman running for president of United States and as a vice presidential running mate a gay man, with the stakes being so high — it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk,” she continued.

The real problem with Buttigieg is not that he is gay, but that Blacks hate him.

Supreme Court to reverse Same-sex Marriage

Axios reports:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicted that the Supreme Court will "do to gay marriage what they did to abortion" and send it back to states to decide.

That is not likely anytime soon. But in the long run, having the Supreme Court interfere in marriage law in this way is indefensible.

Marriage has had a crucial role in the development of civilization for thousands of years. When the Court mandated same-sex marriage in 2015, it ignored this, and reasoned instead about applying Civil War Reconstruction laws to getting a copy of an out-of-state AIDS-related death certificate. That got extrapolated to everyone, without considering what it would do to civilization.

You might say that the decision has been widely accepted, and it expressly gave dignity to personal choices and beliefs. Who could be against that?

Maybe, but I am not so sure.

Fine Against Donald Trump Erased

Ms. James brought the case against the Trumps for fraudulently misstating valuations of their properties in violation of New York’s Executive Law. That law (as I’ve written in these pages) defines fraud in terms of untruths without requiring proof of deceptive intent, negligence or harm. The statute doesn’t even require proof that the untrue information is material. The statute thus lets government target mere untruths.

Trump just won the appeal, but the five judges could not agree on the reasoning, and there will have to more appeals.

Trump does tend to exaggerate, but that should be his constitutional right. Usually businessmen are allowed to do that, as long as they are not deliberately lying to cheat someone out of money.

This continues the Trump pattern of losing in the lower courts, and winning on appeal.

It would be nice if some appeals court struck down that NY law. I hate to think that NY might prosecute me for making a factual mistake on this blog.

Pro-transgender Lawsuit from Dem States

A lot of leftist states have filed a lawsuit against Trump's anti-transgender orders.

Since taking office on January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump and his administration have relentlessly, cruelly, and unlawfully targeted transgender individuals. The Trump administration has sought to deny their very existence, banish transgender residents from the public square, and refuse them medically necessary healthcare through unlawful Executive Orders (EOs) and a raft of federal agency actions implementing those EOs. What’s more, the Attorney General has not minced words that she will use the Department of Justice to “bring [] an end” to gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents. The result is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation experienced by transgender individuals, their families and caregivers, and the medical professionals who seek only to provide necessary, lawful care to their patients.

Nearly all of that is false. Nobody is denying anyone's existence, or withholding necessary medical care, or banishing anyone.

Trump said that sex is binary, which is a scientific fact. He also opposed the sexual mutilation of minors. He is trying to enforce federal laws that were supposed to protect womens sports.

I wonder how 17 states got such radical transgender governments. It would be one thing to say that adults should be allowed to make personal choices, but it is something else to force everyone to accept them, or to impose bizarre medical experiments on children.

100 Years since Scopes Monkey Trial

This is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The closest modern equivalent was this 2005 trial:

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005)[1] was the first case brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school policy requiring the teaching of intelligent design (ID). The court found intelligent design to be not science.[2][3] In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book.[4] The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial,[5][6] a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The judge applied the Lemon Test, in which a school book could be banned if the authors could be shown to have religion motivations.

What is not so well known is that the US Supreme Court has since repudiated the Lemon Test.

I am not sure which was more absurd, the 1925 or 2005 trial. The 2005 judge was deciding the scientific merit of a textbook based finding some unpublished manuscripts of the authors indicating that they had some religious motivations, and removed religious references in order to comply with requirements of secular schools. The judge said that under the Lemon Test, the book could not be used in a public school. I think it was just put in the library, and the science teachers did not even use it.

The judge's opinion had been ghost-written by the ACLU.

Canada Hockey Players Acquitted

Quillette reports:

On Thursday 24 July, five former World Junior Hockey players were acquitted by Ontario Superior Court Judge Maria Carroccia following an eight-week sexual-assault trial that should never have seen the inside of a courtroom. In Canada, the trial rapidly became a prurient media circus, so all Canadians—including those, like me, who felt only fremdschämen for all concerned—have been privy to the lurid details of a consensual group-sex session in a hotel room back in 2018. And how do we know that the sex was was consensual? Because the young female complainant, known only as E.M., recorded a video on the night she had sex with all five defendants, in which she laughed: “It was all consensual. Are you recording me? ’K, good. You are so paranoid. Holy. I enjoyed it. It was fine. I’m so sober—that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

So it was all a hoax. But this incident happened in 2018, and the boys got banned from hockey. Now 7 years later, they can try to resume normal lives.