Alarming news from Finland

The Supreme Court of Finland on Thursday (March 26) found a former government minister guilty of “hate speech” for her biblical views on marriage following two prior acquittals by lower courts.

In a 3-2 decision, the court ruled against Päivi Räsänen for expressing her beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics in a 20-year-old church pamphlet. The court also criminally convicted Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing the 2004 pamphlet, according to legal rights group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.

The court levied fines of several thousand euros on both Räsänen and Pohjola and ordered the removal and destruction of the impugned statements. Räsänen has been sentenced to a fine equivalent to 20 days’ wages (in her case, 1,800 euros) and she will also have to pay her own legal costs, according to Evangelical Focus. Pohjola was also given a 20-day fine, and his publishing house, Finnish Lutheran Foundation, must pay a fine of 5,000 euros.

The convictions were based on “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group,” the court ruled.

Read the rest here.

cf: This

On a positive note; summer is coming

From here.

At CPAC a Generational Divide Over Iran

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — A generational divide over the Iran war surfaced Thursday between older attendees and their political heirs at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, as the group’s leaders pleaded for unity in a challenging midterm election year for Republicans.

Younger conservatives spoke of disappointment and even “betrayal” over President Donald Trump’s launch of strikes against Iran, saying in interviews with The Associated Press that the president’s actions run counter to his many pledges to oppose foreign entanglements.

Meanwhile, older conservatives were looking past Trump’s campaign criticism of military action to topple foreign regimes, arguing the war in Iran is a pragmatic act forced by threats to the United States.

The bright dividing line emerged in conversations with a dozen participants on either end of the age spectrum who gathered for the annual meeting of conservatives, being held outside Dallas. That split could reflect flagging enthusiasm for Trump among some younger voters, a potentially troubling sign for Republicans heading into midterm elections and for the conservative movement as it looks to build beyond Trump’s tenure.

“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America-first policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” said Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”

Read the rest here.

Illegal Immigration and Crime

What the stats actually say.

US Shipbuilding and the Jones Act

Last month, I had the chance to sit down with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for a piece on the moribund state of US commercial shipbuilding. That story, “Turning the Ship Around,” aired last weekend, and having now seen it, I’d like to offer a few thoughts.

The segment opens with Stahl describing the US commercial shipbuilding industry as “nearly extinct.” The numbers back her up. As she points out, US shipyards produce around three ships per year. That’s less than what South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha produces in a month. But even that may be too charitable. Three is the US average over the last 25 years. This decade, US shipyards are on track to average roughly one per year.

But that’s just oceangoing cargo ships. Widening the aperture to include other vessel types does little to improve the picture. The most recent data show that the United States, the world’s second-largest manufacturing country, accounts for just 0.04 percent of global commercial shipbuilding output—good enough for 19th place. Over the past decade, the US has averaged 0.24 percent of global output. And it’s trending down.

South Korean firm Hanwha, however, says it will reverse the matter. According to the CEO of its Philly Shipyard, which the company purchased in 2024 for $100 million, the yard is set to transform into a 21st-century enterprise...

Read the rest here.

A war of regression: How Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m a day, Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow, with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq.

This regression is proving to be perplexing for the American high command. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, recently said that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping”, but this was not quite right. Iran has not been shooting at shipping that much in recent weeks. Instead, it is the fear of Iran shooting at shipping that is scaring off insurers and tanker owners.

Still worse from the US perspective, Iran has set up a waterside stall whereby prime ministers and tanker owners can bargain with the Iranian navy over the toll they are willing to pay for their tankers to be given “free passage”. Iran plans to turn the strait into a money spinner, just as Egypt charges for access to the Suez canal. By some calculations, given the massive scale of the traffic that passes through the strait each year, Iran could raise $80bn a year. If a law currently being rushed through the Iranian parliament passes, tankers carrying oil from favoured non-hostile nations such as India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and China will be waved through or offered cheaper rates.

Little wonder Trump is thrashing around. The US along with Israel continues to bomb Iran, but he has now twice put back the date of threatened strikes on Iran’s civilian power stations – an action that would constitute a war crime. He continues to insist Iran has been defeated and yet Iran continues to behave as if it is not.

Read the rest here.

Trump 24-karat gold coin approved by hand-picked federal panel

A commemorative gold coin bearing the image of US President Donald Trump has been approved by a federal arts commission.

The 24-karat gold coin is intended to mark America's 250th birthday this 4 July and portrays Trump with his fists pressed against a desk.

After a presentation by the US Mint, the US Commission of Fine Arts voted unanimously to approve the design, despite questions over its legality.

Federal law does not allow a living president to appear on US currency. But the coin is being issued in accordance with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's authority and discretion to mint and issue proof gold coins.

Bessent is expected to order the coin to be struck once the US Mint produces final dimensions.

The commission's vice-chairman, James McCrery, said: "I motion to approve this [coin] as presented, and with the strong encouragement that you make it as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter."

For comparison, a US quarter dollar is less than an inch wide. Trump last year fired the Commission of Fine Arts' members, replacing them with allies.

Read the rest here.

The Shocking State of Britain's Navy 2026

Underestimating the Potential Energy Shock

It is hard to decide which is the bigger disaster: the unfolding car crash in the global gas market or the mounting danger that entire countries will run out of oil.

The benchmark TTF contract for gas in Europe was €29 (£25) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in mid-February. Bank of America says it could reach €500 this winter if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for 10 weeks, as it may well do.

That would blow through the record high seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amount to a full-blown economic emergency for Europe, the UK, Japan, South Korea and South Asia.

The picture is dramatically worse after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, adding upstream gas and oil infrastructure to the menu of targets on both sides of the Gulf.

Iran’s missile retaliation on Qatar’s Ras Laffan has inflicted serious damage to the giant complex, which alone produces a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It will be months before shipments start again. Qatar Energy says 17pc of production is lost for three to five years. It will have to declare force majeure on LNG supplies to Italy, Korea, China and Belgium.

It is just as bad for oil. The paper market that we all follow does not capture the drama. Physical deliveries are under far greater stress than Brent futures, at about $113, would suggest.

Actual barrels of the Dubai basket and Oman’s Murban are fetching close to $170 a barrel as Asian refiners scramble to buy anything they can. Jet fuel deliveries have hit $210 in Rotterdam and $240 in Singapore.

Kurt Barrow, the vice-president of oil at S&P Global Energy, says it may become physically impossible to obtain supplies. “If the Strait stays closed for two months, you’ll have plants without feedstock and we’ll get real rationing. We’ll have panic buying and hoarding,” he said.

“This is the largest supply disruption ever. Net, we’re around 15 million barrels a day (b/d) short in the market. Crude gets the headline but the actual impact is further downstream in refined products, diesel, jet, fuel or naphtha. There are 68 refineries in the war zone.”

Read the rest here.

Wealth Taxes & Flight... It's Complicated

This is a very good examination of a hot button topic.

Early Color Film Footage from the 1930s Including Pan Am Flying Boats

Meanwhile...

Trump threatens to cut off HIV medication to Zambia unless they cede mineral rights to the US

Trump says he thinks he will have the ‘honor’ of ‘taking Cuba’

Two from CATO

5 Reasons the US Should Not Spend Another Penny on the War with Iran

FCC Threats and the Fog of War: The Government Cannot Be the Arbiter of Truth

Quote of the day...

“You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.” 

- US Federal District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi to the US Prosecutor 3/16/2026

Anarchists, Political Violence, and Legal Isonomia

The anarchist as a figure in crime is distinct. His goals are not financial, and the terrorist acts committed under the heading of anarchism have ranged from assassinations of public figures to bombings of random civilians. He has also slid far enough into history to seem quaint, or vaguely romantic, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. 

The anarchist “movement” (if we could apply such a concept to a decentralized group) was the beginning of modern global terrorism. The idea that killing, bombing, were a tactic to bring adversaries to the negotiating table, in the age of mass media, was a novel concept, in the late nineteenth century. It would be a model followed by various political sects to come. But anarchists did not want negotiations. 

Their nihilism marks them out against groups like the Fenians (roughly contemporary, and operating mostly in Britain, with some activities in North America), who had a clear political goal. The Fenians wanted Ireland to be independent from Britain. Whether one agreed with their tactics, the motive was coherent (if alarming to the British authorities). 

Meanwhile, the anarchists (unlike socialists) tended to offer vague ideals as their results. They did not participate in elections or seek to gain support through normal political means. “Burn it all down” was their message. One that was resonant for disaffected young men - as it always has been. There’s a reason terrorist groups and street gangs alike all recruit from this particular demographic.

Read the rest here.

And the Oscar goes to...

Iran: My thoughts...

Any fool with a military can unilaterally start a war. But ending one, short of total and absolute destruction of your enemy (i.e. Germany 1945) is much harder. This war is likely to last a long time because Trump has completely misunderstood who he is dealing with. Religious fanatics who are unafraid of death, and who have highly developed plans to run a decentralized war, involving low tech weapons like drones and mines. To win this war, Trump needs to break the regime's willingness to fight and humiliate them on a level that leaves no doubt who won. For Iran to win, all they need to do is endure, and continue to inflict pain, primarily economic but also some military, until the American people have had enough of a war that is already deeply unpopular. The US is further hamstrung by poor planning and a reluctance to go "all in" by invading with ground forces. Additionally there is a finite supply of ordinance and high tech munitions which cannot be replaced either quickly or cheaply and which we are burning through at an alarming rate. (A fact that both China and Russia are paying very close attention to.) As of right now, I'd be a little surprised if this war ends before the November mid-term elections because the Iranians have zero interest in ending hostilities before then.

Doug Wilson Explains the Future American Christian Theocracy

Pete Hegseth's pastor and mentor says the United States should ban public Masses, Marian processions, and Corpus Christi devotions. Hegseth invited the anti-Catholic preacher to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon on February 14.

From here.

Video here.

The Good Old Days

Discontent fueled the 2025 New York City mayoral election and Zohran Mamdani’s victory. A common theme echoed across the five boroughs: New York is a hard place to live. “We are overwhelmed by housing costs,” said Santiago, a 69-year-old retiree, outside a Mamdani rally. Those opposed to Mamdani had their own complaints. María Moreno, a first-time voter from the Bronx who supported Andrew Cuomo, lamented, “Now everything’s dirty, and our neighborhood does not feel safe.”

Today’s voters have legitimate grievances. The city’s housing costs, quality-of-life issues, and perceptions of disorder weigh heavily on residents’ minds. But it’s important to keep things in perspective. Different voters may romanticize different eras, but many seem to share a sense that if they could travel back far enough in time, they’d find a New York that was once clean, safe, and affordable. When Americans were polled in 2023, almost 20 percent said that it was easier to “have a thriving and fulfilling life” hundreds of years ago. Across the country, as one writer put it, people are engaged in an “endless debate around whether the pre-industrial past was clearly better than what we have now.” In fact, Mamdani’s politics are grounded in an ideology that first arose from the frustrations of the early industrial era.

If Americans could go back in time to preindustrial New York City, however, they’d likely be horrified and possibly traumatized. Despite today’s real challenges, most New Yorkers would not trade places with their predecessors.

Long before the rise of factories and industry, New York City was a bustling port, founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam in order to trade furs in the early seventeenth century. As early as 1650, local authorities enacted an ordinance against animals roaming the streets to protect local infrastructure—but to no avail. Then, in 1657, according to the Dutch scholar Jaap Harskamp:

New Amsterdam’s council attempted to ban the common practice of throwing rubbish, ashes, oyster-shells or dead animals in the street and leave the filth there to be consumed by droves of pigs on the loose. When the English took over the colony from the Dutch, pigs and goats stayed put. . . . Pollution persisted. The streets of Manhattan were a stinking mass. Inhabitants hurled carcasses and the contents of loaded chamber pots into the street and rivers. Runoff from tanneries where skins were turned into leather flowed into the waters that supplied the shallow wells. The (salty) natural springs and ponds in the region became contaminated with animal and human waste. For some considerable time, access to clean water remained an urgent problem for the city. . . . The penetrating smell of decomposing flesh was everywhere.

Into the early twentieth century, urban living in the United States felt surprisingly rural and agrarian, with an omnipresent reek to match. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, pigs roamed freely through New York City streets, acting as scavengers, and nearly every household maintained a vegetable garden, often fertilized with animal manure.

Indoor air quality was no better. A drawing from Mary L. Booth’s History of the City of New York depicts a seventeenth-century New Amsterdam home with smoke from the fireplace swirling through the room. Indoor air pollution remains a serious problem today in the poorest parts of the world, as smoke from hearths can cause cancer and acute respiratory infections that often prove deadly in children. One preindustrial writer railed against the “pernicious smoke [from fireplaces] superinducing a sooty Crust or furr upon all that it lights, spoyling the moveables, tarnishing the Plate, Gildings and Furniture, and Corroding the very Iron-bars and hardest stone with those piercing and acrimonious Spirits which accompany its Sulphur.”

Read the rest here.

The Making of a Forever War in Iran

President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into an open-ended war with Iran, lacking clearly defined and achievable objectives, a discernible endgame, or a viable exit plan. This is a war of choice—Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and the White House is now scrambling to devise a strategy for a war already underway and proving more difficult than anticipated.

The war will likely escalate as Iran digs in and hawkish voices push Trump toward maximalist—and largely unachievable—aims. By setting this crisis in motion, the Trump administration is repeating the same failures that have long defined US Middle East policy. Absent a course correction, the United States is on the path to another forever war.

Trump’s ostensible justifications for this war have shifted repeatedly, as have the stated objectives.

Prior to the initiation of Operation Epic Fury, the stated casus belli for military action provided by the Trump administration was fluid and contradictory. They oscillated between targeting Iran’s nuclear program (which Trump insisted he had destroyed last year during Operation Midnight Hammer), destroying its ballistic missile program, and liberating the Iranian people. Despite polling showing that the vast majority of Americans opposed and still oppose such a war, Trump proceeded undeterred.

The stated rationales have been no less fluid and contradictory since the war began. When announcing the war, Trump claimed Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the United States and openly embraced regime-change in Tehran as his objective, urging the Iranian people to “take back” their country. Since then, the Trump administration initially walked back its intentions, rhetorically distancing itself from regime-change—even after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but recently claimed Trump needed to be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader.

Read the rest here.

DOJ seeks tighter grasp on state bar ethics probes

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is turning its focus to state bar associations in its quest to clamp down on the weaponization of the justice system. 

As DOJ lawyers face piling complaints, the government is seeking greater control over the ethics probes that can result in disciplinary actions including disbarment.  

It has prompted a firestorm of questions about the agency’s bid for a tighter grasp on the consequential investigations. 

“It is a DOJ power grab,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics scholar at New York University School of Law. 

In a notice posted online in the Federal Register, the Justice Department proposed a new regulation that would let it intervene in state bars’ disciplinary investigations, including with the authority to review any allegations against DOJ lawyers first.  

It would amount to a request for state bar authorities to suspend their probes until Attorney General Pam Bondi completes her own, though DOJ itself could not force the state bars to halt their reviews. DOJ declined to comment on the matter Thursday.   

Such investigations can eventually lead to disbarment, but the process can take years to complete.    

The Justice Department casts the proposed rule as an extension of President Trump’s day-one directive to end perceived weaponization of the federal government.  

The notice suggests that “political activists” have used bar complaints and probes to target DOJ lawyers, and that state bars’ willingness to investigate those complaints are “troubling.” Trump’s “broad pronouncements” necessitate a review of how Bondi manages and disciplines DOJ lawyers, it says. 

“This unprecedented weaponization of the State bar complaint process risks chilling the zealous advocacy by Department attorneys on behalf of the United States, its agencies, and its officers,” read DOJ’s submitted overview of the proposed rule. “That chilling effect, in turn, would interfere with the broad statutory authority of the Attorney General to manage and supervise Department attorneys.” 

Since Trump’s return to the White House, several of his top Justice Department officials have faced such complaints from watchdog groups, including Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, the former No. 3 DOJ official who is now a federal appellate judge. Rank-and-file prosecutors have also faced complaints.  

Read the rest here.

The UK is a Warning to the Rest of the World

HT Blog reader Kurt.

I had never heard of this guy before but found the arguments presented to be cogent and well backed by sources and statistics. 

Yes, it's a 'War of Choice,' and a Bad One

"The war on Iran is not a war of choice," huffs New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, who since President Donald Trump launched massive airstrikes on the Islamic Republic last week has had it up here with the "Democrats and their media handmaidens" describing the conflict as anything other than strictly defensive (leave aside for the moment the high-profile conservative critics of the war).

Goodwin's umbrage is widespread among those supporting the war as not only justified but initiated just in the nick of time. Eschewing any defensible definition of imminent, the Harvard-educated Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) avers "the president was right to act" because "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) echoes those thoughts, announcing, "The United States has been in a forever war with Iran since the late 1970s" and thanking Trump for "taking decisive action to defend America from the Iranian terroristic regime."

These are ridiculous, nonsensical formulations—especially the notion that Iran was mere hours or days away from turning the American homeland into a nuked-over parking lot. Even President Donald Trump declared last June that "Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated—and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News." Similarly, a Defense Intelligence Agency report from last year concluded Iran wouldn't have missiles capable of reaching America until 2035. Recall also that U.S. officials were in active negotiations with Iran and that administration officials "told congressional staff in private briefings…that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S."

So prior to last Saturday, Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, was years away from possessing missiles that could reach the United States, and wasn't about to launch a sneak attack. Such basic facts completely undercut the whole idea that the president needed to act immediately and, not uncoincidentally, without any sort of congressional authorization.

Read the rest here.

In the News 03/06/26

Trump says no deal with Iran to end war without ‘unconditional surrender’

U.S. crude oil tops $90 per barrel

Withheld Epstein files with accusations against Trump released 

Miami Republicans, university rocked by report of racist group chat

GOP anxieties rise in Texas after Talarico victory

Noem’s answer on ‘sexual relations’ with Lewandowski was ‘final straw’ for Trump

Massive war price tag could be a problem

Trump hints U.S. will turn to Cuba after Iran

The Implications of the Convert Surge in American Orthodoxy