Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is under attack — disguised as a cry for “reform” — from politicians on both sides of the “major party” aisle. To what purpose? Well, let’s look at Section 230’s key provision: “No provider or user of an interactive computer ser…

The Crazy Mountains proposed wilderness by Livingston Montana George Wuerthner. With the election of Joe Biden, we have a leader who recognizes that we need to use science to effectively deal with the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. To address these twin threats to the planet’s st…

The 2020 election will have enormous consequences for the pandemic, the planet, the economy, our democracy and people’s lives. And that will be true even before the next Congress and administration take office. After the vote, the current Congress will have another six weeks or so in office. For s…

+ US CPI overall and core CPI were both flat in October, up 1.2 percent and 1.6 percent year over year, respectively. A sharp drop in energy prices lowered overall US CPI, with the core being held down by a drop in medical care prices by 0.4 percent. + Rental inflation remains low; rent proper and o…

(to the music of Beatles ‘The Taxman’) On the lighter side, I was recently asked by a twitter friend why the US stock market is at record high levels and now more than fully recovered from its lows in March. I explained it was because the Fed so far this year has pumped this more than $7 trilli…

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair A friend, who is an intelligent person with no science background, asked me to explain simply what the concern expressed with alarm by many scientists and (anti) climate change activists is about the increasing rate of methane gas emissions in the Arctic. That attem…

Donald Trump’s efforts to litigate himself to a second term are effectively done.  Hastening the end are two things.  One, the reality that the voter fraud claims on which  he stakes his litigation strategy are baseless.  Two,  something that every first-year law student knows, the ethical an…

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair In the recently released The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History, David Roediger floats the Marxist-driven notion that the American Middle Class is a misery-filled achievement, producing more Bartleby the Scriveners than East up-moving Jeffersons, and is not w…

Photograph Source: Matt Brown – CC BY 2.0 It is probably no exaggeration to say that Donald Trump in all likelihood views BoJo Johnson as his sidekick. They have their birthplace in common, and when they meet it won’t be a surprise if they always began by congratulating each other on this. BoJo…

Photograph Source: jlhervàs – CC BY 2.0 One of the most consequential appointments that a new president must make is director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Unfortunately, this appointment is usually made late in the transition process, getting insufficient attention and typically en…

“The president is an elected king. The fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance in the course of political evolution than the fact that he is pragmatically a king.” – Randolph Bourne, “The State.” Are we having fun folks? Are we there yet? On a recent edition of th…

Is China a sovereign country? The question may seem ludicrous. But it must be asked of the US and other Western politicians and media objecting loudly to Beijing’s disqualification of four opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong. That act has sparked the resignation of 15 other “pro-democracy” legis…

Whatever will he do next? The cable newscasters cry, eager to ply their audiences with more of the drip, drip that keeps advertisers hooked. If you’re feeling withdrawal from Disaster Don’s tweets, there are pictures of his golf cart and non-news of his non-lawsuits. And Joe, oh Joe, and the nex…

Large gatherings do not find favor, during this plague-haunted time, with regulatory and administrative officials. However, increasing consciousness of indigenous peoples’ rights, recognition that the land management practices of the dominant culture are failing, and their own deep desires for th…

November 13, 2020 Stephen Dickson, Administrator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) U.S. Department of Transportation 800 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20591 Dear Mr. Dickson, It is now abundantly clear that instead of clearing out top Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) operatives who…

Clearcutting is a crime against nature. Many people believe wrongly that the U.S. Forest Service no longer clearcuts our public forest. The Lolo National Forest has planned 114 acres of clear-cut logging in the proposed Soldier-Butler logging project in the Nine-Mile drainage just West of Missoula…

In an emergency press conference on November 10, 2020, Gyeonggi Vice Governor for Peace Lee Jae-gang protested against the UNC Command’s rejection of his request to set up a peace office in a 6-person tent in front of Dora Observatory, which overlooks the Kaesong Industrial Complex from South Kore…

BILLINGS, Mont. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) approved a plan today for excavating – physically digging up – 6.7 million cubic yards of coal ash stored outside the Colstrip Power Plants in southeastern Montana. Coal ash is the waste product of coal-fired power plants and…

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair One dogma that is likely to persist in US foreign policy during a Biden presidency will be the sanctions regime adopted towards Iran.  Every messianic state craves clearly scripted enemies, and the demonology about the Islamic Republic is not going to go begging. …

Photograph Source: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres – Iran Talks – CC BY 2.0 “President-elect Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal,” writes Tom O’Connor at Newsweek. “But a return is set to face challenges on both sides as they attempt to rebuil…

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair In the United States, when catastrophes happen, one of the first public reactions is to blame the schools. A recent headline in Mother Jones typifies this: “Why Teaching Civics in America’s Classrooms Must Be a Trump-Era Priority.” Surely, the logic goes, if c…

Photograph Source: Mohamed Nanabhay – CC BY 2.0 Robert Fisk and I often used to discuss the merits and demerits of responding in print to personal attacks on us filled with provable falsehoods. The temptation to refute such falsehood is hard to resist, but we recognised that therein lies a trap be…