Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Letitia
2. Assault
3. Property
4. Rare Earths
5. Alaska
6. Chat
7. Falcon 9
1. Letitia. The case against NY Attorney General Letitia James heated up nicely last week, becoming more interesting and louder. A prosecutor working in the office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia since 2010 (an O’Bama hire) was accused of sending sensitive information relating to the case to her personal e-mail. Once we wade through her kneejerk denials, I suspect she will have some ‘splainin’ to do. As for James, it appears she was running a sanctuary for wayward relatives. The first home purchased in 2010 was home for a grand niece since at least 2020. This is the woman who is accused of being an absconder, leaving NC before her probation was complete. Her rap sheet is at least 20 years long, starting when she was around 16. The second home, purchased in 2023 is home to a niece and her two daughters, who are models on porn site OnlyFans. One of the porn stars got popped for lying about her criminal record when trying to purchase a gun in Suffolk, VA. One of the things the court will have to figure out is whether these ladies ever paid rent. If they didn’t and James reported it as income, as alleged by the prosecutors, she is toast for tax evasion. OTOH, if they did, and she claimed both rentals as primary residences, she is toast for mortgage fraud. On the third hand, if none of the women ever paid rent and James reported it as income, where did that money come from? There is speculation it was from a disadvantaged housing program for minorities which is yet another chunk of fraud. Now, her fraud didn’t gain her much additional cash, something in the neighborhood of $19,000 in advantage when she took out the loan. Still, in most states, the threshold for committing felony theft runs $500 – $2,500, so she is well over the limit. James responded to the indictment clutching her ample pearls and claiming racial animus, political prosecution, and lawfare targeting her. The irony here is thick. It is difficult to put my mind around the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the State of NY harboring fugitives. Perhaps they have different standards there. Final story has federal prosecutor Beth Yusi sending investigative files about the James case to her private e-mail addy, something she vociferously denies. Yusi authored an internal memo finding there was no probable cause to prosecute James, which was used as justification not to bring charges, a decision that quickly got her fired. Another reason for the firing was mishandling case information. No word about what she did with the internal information. Leaking it to the media in order to help James dodge prosecution would be a good first guess.
2. Assault. When you tolerate and encourage by refusing to punish feral teens, you will get more feral teens. Last week’s example comes out of Washington DC where a juvenile court sentenced two 15-year olds involved in the attack and beating of DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine to probation. The beating took place near Dupont Circle in DC at 0300 Aug 3. A gang approached him and his girlfriend in a carjacking attempt. He shoved the girl into the vehicle, closed and locked the door and defended it. He was severely beaten for his efforts. Although there were more than 10 involved, only two have been in front of a court as yet. The two 15-year-olds charged were given 12 months for the boy and 9 months for the girl. In federal juvenile prosecutions, minors cannot be held in jail if convicted after age of 21. The sentence led to public outrage, getting DC Prosecutor Jeanine Pirro involved. She responded charging two other participants, a 19 and 18-year-old with assault. There are other names involved and known to the feds. I expect them to be indicted and charged also. The attack on Coristine was the second assault in minutes by the group. One of the pair was a career criminal with multiple assault and robbery charges this year alone. The attack on Coristine was one of the triggers for Trump’s decision to assert federal control of criminal response in DC.
3. Property. What better example of the truism that first the government takes your guns, then they turn right around and take everything you own than the soon to be failed nation-state of Canada? The BC Supreme Court in what could be described as a completely insane ruling decided that a nomadic tribe that fished in the location of the town of Richmond, Vancouver BC 200 years ago, holds title to a substantial portion of the city. The 6-year-long case was brought by the Cowichan tribe six years ago claiming that the waterfront and an island making up a substantial part of downtown Richmond were illegally taken from them and needed to be returned. The claim was made despite the tribe being nomadic and never establishing a settlement in the area. A BC Supreme Court judge ended up agreeing with them, handing over title to some 1,846 acres on Lulu Island in a mind-numbing opinion 800+ pages long. The judge held that Aboriginal title is a prior and senior right to land, completely ignoring the past 200 years of history and the tens of thousands of years before that. The local mayor is holding a meeting this week to inform residents who are in the danger zone, and residents who may be at future risk because the tribe is not finished by a long shot. The growing authoritarian stance of Canadian governments at all levels is on full display with the BC Provincial government attempting to start secret negotiations with the tribe over what happens next. The provincial and local governments are in no small amount of trouble for recent kowtowing to Indigenous rights at the expense of the rights of every other citizen. Holding the rights of this tribe above those of residents and vacating their property rights will (and should) trigger a backlash. How bloody that backlash ends up being is entirely up the cowardly, thieving skunks in the provincial and local governments and the courts who are busily pouring gasoline on a fast-moving fire. There is another interesting angle to this story. About half of Richmond residents identify as having Chinese ancestry. Richmond was described a decade ago as North America’s most Asian city. East Asian immigrants are a majority of Richmond’s population. Most of them immigrated in the late 1980s, mostly from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China (response to the Tiananmen massacre). These were added to Japanese immigrants that arrived a century earlier. These immigrants are already less than pleased with the establishment of a narco gambling operation in their midst via tribal casinos. The final player in this little passion play is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which wields no small amount of local influence among the immigrants from mainland China. How happy will they be when everything they have been working hard to establish gets handed over to a group of local fishermen active two centuries ago? The opinion will be appealed to the Canadian Supreme court by provincial and local governments. There are also at least two other local tribes who did not get their place at the public trough expected to join those appeals. If the politicians and judicial system doesn’t do the right thing, I predict the Canadian version of Vigilance Committees or an explosion in accidental deaths and disappearances, for this legal theft will not be tolerated.
4. Rare Earths. President Trump is in East Asia this week signing rare earth trade agreements with multiple nations starting with Oz. The administration takes the CCP cornering of the world market in rare earths quite seriously and is busily boxing them into what is starting to appear to be a massive strategic mistake. The new deals are based on the notion that you can either trade with us or you can trade with them, but you can’t do both. Which market do you want access to? Which nation will treat you better in the long run? Part of this has been relaxing environmental restrictions to mining here in the US, something they would have done regardless. The rare earths simply add to the importance of mining our own minerals. As of this writing, the Trump administration has yet to reverse the EPA preemptive veto over the proposed Pebble mine here in Alaska, but many of us expect that to happen in the not so distant future.
5. Alaska. Trump has not forgotten Alaska in reopening the development spigot. Last week the Department of the Interior announced a package of actions to boost energy development, modernize land and resource development in Alaska and improve public health. These actions include opening the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and natural gas exploration, reopening parts of NPR-A the Biden regime closed for oil and natural gas exploration, and restoring leases cancelled by the previous regime. Right of way permits for the Ambler Road cancelled by the previous regime were reissued. They finally approved a land swap with the State of Alaska for a 30-km road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge connecting the village of King Cove to a 10,000’ long runway. This road has been a contentious issue for half a century. Final action was aggressively allowing Alaska Natives who served in Vietnam to apply for a long-promised 160-acre allotment promised at the time they signed up to serve. All the Usual Suspects are outraged by the actions. Best of all, they are being done early enough in Trump’s second term so that construction will be well underway on all projects before the next leftist speed bump is ensconced in the WH.
6. Chat. One of the things that young men do while growing up is dabble in the outrageous side, the more shocking, the more outrageous, the bigger the reaction by friends and others, the better. This is why shows like Jacka$$, Beavis and Butthead and movies like Animal House and Caddy Shack work. Over time, the participants move away from dabbling on the outrage side, learning where the Foul Line of life is located. Some of us learn it better than others and younger than others. Others, not so much and are still working on it. Politico dropped seven months of text messages between Young Republican leaders two weeks ago. The texts were precisely what you would expect from a group of young men, completely Not Safe for Work (NSFW), with references to all sorts of things you don’t say out loud in polite company these days. Politico and their cheerleaders used the leak as an example of how racist, misogynist, and Nazi loving Republicans were. A Good Time Was Had by All on the left, that is until VP Vance got himself involved. Vance pointed out that the real problem is the notion that an offensive joke can ruin a young man’s life, noting that he didn’t want to live in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke is cause (or an excuse) to ruin his life. In commenting, he made it a national story. Why? Sio he could pivot to democrat Jay Jones calling for murder of the children of his political opponent. Jones wrote his texts as a full-grown man, no longer having the young and dumb excuse. In hist texts, Jones demonstrated that not only was he old and dumb, but a democrat, completely untethered from the rules of political combat. Vance refused to join pearl clutching over young Republicans while powerful people (Jones was a democrat in the VA legislature at the time) call for political violence. He used the manufactured outrage over the Young Republicans to shine a spotlight on the Jay Jones scandal brewing in VA. We will see if democrats are smart enough not to take the bait.
7. Falcon 9. As we take a break in test flights of Starship, SpaceX continues to pay close attention to their core business, Starlink. Last week, they launched the 135th flight of the partly (75%) reusable Falcon 9. This is more than all the Space Shuttle flights through its 30-year-long operation 1981 – 2011. With this launch, they also launched their 10,000th Starlink satellite, perhaps 90% of everything in orbit today. Around 1,400 of them are no longer operational, some of which have been deorbited. Finally, the Falcon 9 used was in its 31st flight, approaching the reusability of the Discovery orbiter which flew 39 times. They also celebrated 5 years since the first paying customer signed up for Starlink. Expect the Falcon 9 to continue to fly even after Starship becomes operational. It will continue to be a valuable part of the launch infrastructure of this nation for years to come.
More later –
- AG