Interesting development

"FBI agents raid former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s home".

Officials said the search of Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home involved a national security case that began under the Biden administration but wasn’t aggressively pursued until Patel took over earlier this year. They declined to be more specific.

I have always considered Bolton to be a bad-tempered blowhard whose primary loyalty is to John Bolton. The ease with which people like this allow personal animus to put them on the side of politicians and ideologies they previously excoriated offers the truest insights into their real character.

Happy 80th anniversary

"Animal Farm Turns 80".

Orwell is widely read and rarely heeded. His death at a relatively early age and the slow dissolution of the liberal anti-Communist movements that were launched by, among others, his publisher Warburg, in the early days of the Cold War, also made it all too easy to hijack his legacy, but the stark satirical novels he wrote toward the end of his life remain sharp rebukes.

80 years later, Animal Farm mocks not only the Soviet Union, but the idea that liberation movements concentrating and clinging to power would ever amount to more than totalitarian farces. It offers a warning to contemporary American and European liberals who, like their counterparts in Orwell’s day, allowed themselves to be hijacked by Communism, of how it all ends, not in Obama’s ‘Right Side of History’ but in terror, tyranny and mass death.

Alas, many people never seem to learn except through hard, direct experience, when, more often than not, it is too late.

Related I have always been struck by this dramatic scene from the 1999 film version of Animal Farm, depicting the apotheosis of Napoleon the Pig. The music has an undeniably Soviet vibe.

Here's what you pommie bastards don't understand

America ain't the UK: "Tulsi Stares Down UK, Scoring Another Big Win for American Consumers".

"Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with our partners in the U.K., alongside POTUS and VPOTUS," Gabbard posted to X yesterday, "to ensure Americans' private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected."

"As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a 'back door' that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties."

 

Happy Feet Friday

Here's Amos Milburn, playing the jump blues tune, "Rocky Mountain".

Glad to see Trump catching a break on one of the civil lawsuits against him

"In Huge Blow to Letitia James, New York Appeals Courts Throws Out $515+ Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump – Trump Responds".

I hope this sticks. Both the verdict and the financial penalties were absurd, especially given the fact that the supposed victims denied that they had been harmed at all.

Gettin' harder to hide the decline

 Of western civilization, that is. Joey B Toonz is on the case.

Dude, droit du seigneur went out with the Middle Ages...

...if it ever really existed at all: "Son Of Norway's Crown Princess Charged With Rape, Other Sexual Offenses".