Utopia, you are standing in it!

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said that abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — and thus all immigration enforcement — should be the “first thing” Democrats do if they win back the House and Senate in the upcoming midterm elections. Well, she said “When we flip the House and When we flip the Senate,” but with the increased radicalization of the Democratic-Socialist party that may not be an inevitability.

Republicans and Democrats just see things differently, at base. Democrats operate on feelings. It makes them feel good about themselves when they are compassionate and caring. It makes them “good people.”

At Front Page Magazine, Michael Cutler agrees:

Pro law-and-order immigration advocates in America whine about the emotional arguments and unhinged publicity stunts used by the open borders/abolish-ICE anarchists to sway public opinion.

But, when they use these emotional arguments, the abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) crowd are merely playing to…

CNN landed a major news coup with the airing of one of the conversations that Michael Cohen secretly taped with President Donald Trump.  The tape is not the best in terms of the audio quality but it contains some troubling portions.  Notably, this was clearly not a telephone conversation but sounds like an actual meeting where Cohen is sitting and meeting with Trump. I just posted a column on the implications of this secret recording by an attorney.  While Rudy Giuliani insists that the tape is clearly exculpatory, the tape could prove more damaging than beneficial to a defense.  Clearly, both sides can read negative or positive elements into this tape.  While some have insisted that Trump sounds like a mobster, there is not a clear crime being discussed on this tape. There are reportedly more tapes, but this tape has good and bad elements for the Trump…

Tobacco for the pipes of Englishmen, rum to temper the squalor of life between decks on British warships, coffee for the fashionable society of London’s clubs, sugar to sweeten the miserable diet of working people – these and other tropical products spilled forth from the cornucopia that was the slave colonies of the Americas. (Introduction)

James Walvin

James Walvin is Professor of History Emeritus at University of York. He is the author or editor of thirty books, most of which have been about the history of slavery and the slave trade. In 2007 he was curator for the Parliamentary Exhibition on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and was also advisor to the Equiano Exhibition held in the Birmingham Art Gallery.

A thematic approach

Black Ivory isn’t a chronological history – as you realise when only two chapters into it you find yourself reading about the famous legal case, Somerset versus…

Life next to industrial wind turbines is a living hell for all too many rural residents.

Practically incessant turbine-generated low-frequency noise and infra-sound drives neighbours nuts, preventing them from sleeping in – and otherwise enjoying the comforts of – their very own homes.

An Australian Court found long-term exposure to wind turbine noise to be a pathway to disease: Australian Court Finds Wind Turbine Noise Exposure a ‘Pathway to Disease’: Waubra Foundation Vindicated

And that decision only adds to the wind industry’s greatest fear that, one day soon, the unvarnished law will be applied in favour of their thousands of victims.

The common law tort of nuisance protects property rights by preventing the unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of land by, among other things, excessive noise: Judge finds case to answer in Falmouth Nuisance Claim

Wind power outfits alive to the risk of multi-million-dollar payouts bully and coerce neighbours into…

The Bicentennial of the English Regency, that is.

This coming Sunday, 6 February 2011, marks the 200th anniversary of the day on which the Prince of Wales took the oaths which made him Regent of Great Britain. The day on which the English Regency officially began. And, in large part, thanks to Georgette Heyer, for many of us, our favorite period in English history. Certainly, it is mine.

Briefly, why a regency was needed, some of the notable events which preceded its implementation and some details about the solemn ceremonies which took place on that very important day, two hundred years ago, this Sunday …

A Mark Sadowski post

On May 28, Paul Krugman exclaimed:

 “Back in 2013, when Olivier Blanchard presented a paper on Latvia at the Brookings Panel, many of the participants were bemused: why was the august panel devoting so much time to a country with the population of Brooklyn? But Latvia was, for a time, the great poster child for austerity….And now, as Frances Coppola notes, the era of rapid bounce back has stalled out.”

Krugman proceeds to compare the Real GDP performance of Latvia with that of Iceland. If one clicks on through to Coppola’s post, they learn that Latvia “embarked on a brutal front-loaded fiscal consolidation in 2009, sacking public sector workers, slashing public sector salaries, cutting benefits and raising taxes.”

Then on June 9, Krugman states:

 “I was, I think, one of the first commentators to notice that a funny thing was happening in Iceland: the nation…