A Short History of the Coverup

Two Journalists Sue ChatGPT Over Plagiarism

My fellow Americans, show me a “house divided” problem, where “We, the People” are losing ground, where we are failing — and not for want of dollars — and I’ll show you a violation of equality properly understood and constitutionally pursued.Understanding what equality means and doesn’t mean, and coloring within constitutional lines, is not the answer to all our nation’s challenges, just most of them.Equality properly understood is not at odds with excellence and human flourishing. Equality wrongly understood is the deadly enemy of those things.The men and women who lead what I call the “brother’s keeper” vanguard are birthing an idea of equality wrongly understood and unconstitutionally, illiberally pursued. It’s a notion that embraces all of equality’s passionate downsides.What should we expect to come of it? A Disunited States of America characterized by a leveling equality and its logical fruits of servitude, barbarism, poverty, and misery. This is not progress but regress.It is not what rank-and-file Democrats, adjacent liberals, conservative Democrats, and independents think they are voting for, but sadly, it’s what they’re going to get until we wake up to the woke.Fortunately, there is another path open to us, one where equality shows its best self.It is a social state, where equality and liberty are not foes but family and where equality for all means liberty for all.A place where “We, the People” are citizens and not subjects kept by our “brother’s keepers.”A private and public life that pursues individual and collective happiness without coercion. A “shining city on the hill” whose products are freedom, enlightenment, and prosperity, and not despotism, ignorance, and poverty.Let’s all come together — independents, Democrats, and Republicans — and save this experiment in self-government of ours by getting behind this simple, self-evident idea that has been the cause of American exceptionalism.We need to get our American mojo back and equality properly understood and constitutional pursued is how to do it. It works for everybody.But the rub is in “properly understood.” Comprehending that part is crucial. Sadly, it’s easier to get equality wrong than right. Fortunately, getting equality right is not as hard as it may sound. In fact, it’s quite simple.It’s just that we’ve lost sight of how simple it really is.It begins with reacquainting ourselves with the Declaration of Independence’s understanding of equality. That understanding stands in harsh judgment of what is considered “equality” in the marketplace today — and allowed by our silence to stand as gospel.In effect, the Declaration was our press release announcing a “new order for the ages” on July 4, 1776. It took a little over a decade to produce its initial public offering — the Constitution of the United States — which offered to the American people and the watching world “a republic, if you can keep it.”Our Declaration’s equality principle overturned the premodern exchange table that valued and ran on human inequality. Our Declaration called out the Old World as obsolete and changed the course of human history. That’s something to be proud of.But it’s only part of the recipe. Equality comes with a birthright to freedom — to live a life of individual and political self-government.Equality is not a privilege and natural liberty is unalienable. Equality and liberty cannot legitimately be given, sold, or taken away.Equality is humanity’s title to be its own keeper, not one's brother’s. “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,” Jefferson wrote, “nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” In truth, each of us is born not to be a master or a slave but rather a self-governing citizen. That’s a self-evident, unalienable truth.Notice here that equality and liberty, rather than being at odds with each other, are really joined at the hip. It isn’t either-or. It’s both-and. Liberty at scale is derivative of equality at scale. Understand this: It is only because all are created equal that all are free.Actual self-government may be difficult, but these concepts are not. Or they don’t need to be.Equality, properly understood, is the unum that allows for and directs the pursuit of a genuine pluribus. This is how a genuinely diverse society can survive and thrive.Equality is not a privilege and natural liberty is unalienable. Equality and liberty cannot legitimately be given, sold, or taken away.If you have been dispossessed of your equality and your liberty, you have been wronged. If you’ve purposely given up your birthright, you have wronged yourself. You have chosen to be less than your created intention.Now, pay close attention to what the Declaration of Independence does not say about equality.It doesn’t say everyone is equal under every circumstance and across the board.Equality properly understood recognizes and respects the obvious ways that we are not equal.We are not equal in height. Basketball is not for everyone. We are not equal in looks. Modeling is not for everyone. We are not equal when it comes to intelligence. MENSA membership is not for everyone. We are not equal in strength or courage. Deadly, dangerous, and dirty work is not for everyone.Equality, in short, is not homogeneous.Here, then, is what “created equal” really means: Every human being is born for self-government, politically and personally. Equality extends the franchise of political liberty and its free pursuits to the human family. That’s it. And, it turns out, that’s a pretty big, new-order-of-the-ages deal.In other words, equality properly understood is not at odds with excellence and human flourishing.Equality wrongly understood, and unbound from constitutional limits, is the deadly enemy of those things. Alongside natural equality, there are natural inequalities. I’ve already mentioned a few of them. Not everyone can be Kobe Bryant, or Steve Jobs, or Eddie Van Halen, or Bella Hadid, or ... name your role model.This is a notion of national self that the American people still want and desperately need. And the good news is, it’s within our reach to give it to ourselves.“We, the People” deserve a two-party system, policies, and civic education that prepares our present citizens for freedom, enlightenment, and prosperity. We need a system with an independent check that keeps itself within the sane lane. A system where the partisan differences between us are ones of degree and not differences of kind.Equality properly understood and constitutionally pursued is the prescription to what ails “We, the People.”

“It’s hard to lose, even with a bad team, when you’ve got no opponent.” Lee Edwards said that to me Wednesday night when I visited his Arlington home to talk life and politics. In his 91 years, he’s lived a lot of both those subjects. His career kicked off in 1964, when he served as Sen. Barry Goldwater’s press director on the way to their glorious defeat. What he meant Wednesday night was that if they want to topple Joe Biden, the Democrats need an actual alternative. The reality is that Kamala is the only potential replacement, in terms of logistics, money, appearances, and the rest, but even George Clooney couldn’t bring himself to name her. Take George Clooney’s big Obama-blessed (?) New York Times op-ed, for example. Clooney savaged the president, saying he is not “the Biden of 2010” or even “the Joe Biden of 2020.” “I love Joe Biden,” the headline read, “but we need a new nominee.” Even with Democrats’ devotion to not checking IDs at the voting booth, “a new nominee” won’t cut it for president. They need an actual person — and one Democrat whom dissidents are virtually united behind. In the absence of unified and effective resistance, even a damaged alternative holds the momentum. That's finally changing. The first inklings of this shift began to appear Thursday night. Vice President Kamala Harris’ name came up time and time again as horrified Democrat-aligned broadcasters watched the president introduce Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “Putin.” The angry campaign speech Biden gave two hours late from the NATO conference in Washington, D.C., didn’t change that narrative, nor did his answers at the “big boy press conference” that followed. A stellar performance might have offered some reprieve, but calling Harris “Vice President Trump” and fading halfway through his sentences and whispering about his accomplishments was not it. His biggest resource now isn’t himself — it’s the vice president waiting eagerly in his shadow. If Kamala Harris actually had the goods, it would be over already. The marching and shrieks outside the White House fence would long since have toppled its walls. “How dare an old white man stand in the way of the first black female nominee? The first Indian and Jamaican chief executive? The first president with two immigrant parents since that estranged grandfather of the Democratic Party, Gen. Andrew Jackson?” But you don’t hear any of that because no one likes Kamala Harris, and that’s not just projection. When California Gov. Gavin Newsom was calling in all the reinforcements during his recall, no one rang for the vice president and former Golden State senator. Since the debate disaster, far from manning the ramparts to bolster the weakening ticket, she’s been sent to collect checks from top donors. Her calendar over the past two weeks has included four campaign events: Las Vegas, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Park City, Utah. The vice presidency of the United States has essentially one job requirement: being able to replace the president. Well, Democrats ignored that and went for a diversity hire instead. They’re reaping it, while Biden has been lapping it up. There’s now reporting that even the Biden re-election campaign is quietly polling her head-to-head chances against Trump. You’ll likely see those results leaked, no matter who they help. The reality is that Kamala is the only actual potential replacement, in terms of logistics, money, appearances, and the rest, but even George Clooney couldn’t bring himself to name her. And Clooney is the guy who hosted the star-studded Biden fundraiser that coined the 1984-esque phrase “cheap fakes” when the White House press secretary tried to deny that Biden was gently led off the stage by former President Barack Obama. He kept his silence for three weeks. Campaign donations are in free fall, people are angry, and the feeling in D.C. is as strong as ever that Biden’s days are numbered. The last remaining elected Democrats will flee the city on Friday, trailed through the nearby airports by the first hostile press they’ve ever encountered. They’ve got a merciful week off while Republicans meet to officially nominate their ticket in Milwaukee. But while they’re away, the phone calls and text messages between them will continue. They’re done with Joe Biden for president. To make that happen, they’ll have to force the old man overboard and unite behind Harris. It’s hard to see it saving them in November, but they’ll do their darndest. Blaze News: Donations to Biden campaign are imploding, sources tell NBC News: 'The money has absolutely shut off' Blaze News: What Obama chose not to do about George Clooney's essay speaks louder than any words could: 'Eye-popping revelation' Glenn Beck: Are Democrats done with Joe Biden? Glenn and Piers Morgan debate The Beltway Brief: ‘The new candidate’s’ money problem The Daily Caller: This Man, ‘The Voice Of The Silent Majority’ For A Half-Century, Has Lived Conservative History Like None Other Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter. IN OTHER NEWS We launched ‘Blaze News Tonight,’ and it’s excellent That’s right. For those of you who don’t know, we launched “Blaze News Tonight” in prime time on Thursday and will be back at it tonight. Anchored by the illustrious and glamorous Jill Savage and co-hosted by our very own editor in chief, Matthew Peterson, we’ll be on the air every weeknight on BlazeTV, YouTube, and X. I’ll be chiming in from the Swamp nearly every night as the D.C. correspondent, so you know it will be great. Except for next week, when I’ll be heading to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, live to you from the home of Pabst Blue Ribbon, on all the ups, downs, and ins and outs of the Republican National Convention. We hope you’ll tune in! The fire rises: The New York Times: America’s new Catholic priests: Young, confident, and conservative The Catholic Church took a hard-left shift in the United States and elsewhere in the 1960s. The results speak for themselves: plummeting attendance, falling donations, declining ordinations, and skyrocketing scandals. And secular society has merrily led the way, attacking life, marriage, morality, religiosity, and even the basics of gender. Thanks to both an increasingly hostile culture and the scandals within the church, joining the priesthood is no longer an automatic promotion in society. Because of that, the only men taking holy orders are ones who are prepared for battle. And in them lies the future. Ruth Graham reports: ... More than 80 percent of priests ordained since 2020 describe themselves as theologically “conservative/orthodox” or “very conservative/orthodox,” according to a nationally representative survey of 3,500 priests published by the Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America. Foreign-born priests in the United States, a significant presence as ordination rates remain below replacement levels, are less conservative theologically than their American-born peers. But still, not a single surveyed priest who was ordained after 2020 described himself as “very progressive.” Politically, the trend is similar, with almost all priests ordained in 2020 or later describing themselves as moderate or conservative. That represents a sharp contrast with priests ordained in the 1960s, about half of whom describe themselves as politically liberal, and an even greater share as theologically progressive. In the near future, in other words, the liberal Catholic priest could essentially be extinct in the United States. The shift toward more uniform conservatism puts the rising generations of priests increasingly at odds with secular culture, which has broadly moved to the left on questions of gender, sexuality, reproductive issues and roles for women …

Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of "The Shining" is clearly Jack Nicholson's movie. The part of Jack Torrance seems tailor-made for Nicholson, allowing him to take his crowd-pleasing, devilish charm and turn it into something much darker. In fact, this is why Stephen King famously disliked Nicholson in the role. A less charismatic actor would have made the character's transformation more shocking; with Jack you could see that murderous breakdown coming from a mile away. What's often forgotten in such discussions is how much the movie is really a two-hander. Think of the scene when Jack smashes through the locked bathroom door to get to his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny. What first comes to mind is probably the iconic image of Nicholson's leering face pressed up against the jagged hole he's just made: "Heeere's Johnny!" But it's Shelley Duvall as Wendy, cowering in the corner and shrieking at each at axe blow, pathetically wielding a knife as if to ward off the inevitable, who really sells the horror. It's easy enough, especially for an actor of Nicholson's talent and temperament, to play a madman. How much harder is it to demonstrate, in take after take, under hot lights and surrounded by crew, plausible fear of that madman? Duvall, who died yesterday at 75, was frank about the difficulty of the shoot. “After a while, your body rebels," she told the Hollywood Reporter's Seth Abramovitch in 2021: It says: "Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day." And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry. To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying. I’d be like, "Oh no, I can’t, I can’t." And yet I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me, too. He said, "I don’t know how you do it." But she did do it, and she ended up creating one of the rawest and most disturbing depictions of sheer, desperate terror and despair ever committed to celluloid. Steven Spielberg is a fan, noting to author Lee Unkrich that it's Wendy's realistic psychological and physical frailty that makes "The Shining" so gripping: "All the suspense for me is, will Wendy be strong enough to stand up to Jack and save her son? And that’s why Shelley Duvall’s performance is, I think, equal to Jack Nicholson’s."

Take the ship-building of No Man’s Sky and Starfield, add in the tactical combat and roguelike structure of FTL, and supplement it with a card system reminiscent of Slay the Spire or the recently released Zet Zillions, and you have Breachway. One of my most-wanted indies of 2024, the space game has already shot up into the higher echelons of the Steam rankings with over 150,000 wishlists, but developer Edgeflow Studio and publisher Hooded Horse made the decision to push it back from its original launch date to ensure a strong debut. Now, it’s finally almost ready to go. Continue reading Highly wishlisted space roguelike Breachway confirms new launch date MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best space games, Best strategy games, Best roguelike games

Kinetic Games has finally set a release date for the console version of its popular horror title, Phasmophobia. According to a new blog post on the game's Steam page, Phasmophobia will be coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in October as part of the game's Halloween event for 2024.

Biden Team Gets Dunked Into Next Week After What May Be the Most Delusional Remark on Biden Presser

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Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge The FCC’s new broadband labels make it easier to compare internet plans, if you’re lucky enough to have options. Continue reading…