Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I know, I am a day late. And frankly, St. Patrick’s Day is not something that I celebrate. Especially when it falls on a Sunday. Still, we are all familiar with the holiday, and if someone stands up in a crowd to talk about St. Patrick’s Day and Ireland, and speaks incoherently, slurring his words, it is normally safe to assume that he has celebrated too enthusiastically. Unless, of course, he is Joe Biden, who slurs his words and talks incoherently even when (I assume) cold sober:


To paraphrase a well-known bit of good advice: Sit down, Joe. You’re senile.

Clown Cars In Ohio

This year’s Senate race in Ohio could be pivotal to who controls that body in 2025. Incumbent Sherrod Brown, while not unpopular, should be beatable by a strong candidate in increasingly-red Ohio. But here, as so often happens, the question is whether the GOP can come up with a good nominee.

The principal candidates in the Republican primary, which is tomorrow, are Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno and state senator Matt Dolan. As of today, Moreno holds a nine-point lead in at least one poll.

Four days ago the Associated Press, presumably pursuant to its anti-MAGA mania, released a story accusing Moreno of having created a gay account on the Adult Friend Finder web site in 2008:

Moreno — who has shifted from a public supporter of LGBTQ rights to a hardline opponent — is confronting questions about the existence of a 2008 profile seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex” on a casual sexual encounters website called Adult Friend Finder.
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The AP review confirmed that someone with access to Moreno’s email account created the profile, though the AP could not definitively confirm whether it was created by Moreno himself.

A man named Dan Ricci, who was working as an intern for Moreno in 2008, has said publicly that he created the account, using Moreno’s email address as a joke:

On Thursday evening, two days after the AP first asked Moreno’s campaign about the account, the candidate’s lawyer said a former intern created the account as a prank. The lawyer provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a juvenile prank.”

“I am thoroughly embarrassed by an aborted prank I pulled on my friend, and former boss, Bernie Moreno, nearly two decades ago,” Ricci said.

You might wonder whether this is all worth an 11th-hour Associated Press story, but the AP tried to shore up the claim that Moreno created the profile with a scientific-sounding claim:

Beyond the work email, the profile lists Moreno’s correct date of birth, while geolocation data indicates that the account was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where property records show Moreno’s parents owned a home at the time.

The AP has now admitted, however, that its claim about “geolocation data” is false; all it means is that the person who created the profile entered a Fort Lauderdale zip code.

Enter Andrew Conru, the founder of Adult Friend Finder, who brought a little sanity to the story:

That is the world we live in: the founder of an adult dating site brings more coherence and integrity to the story than the Associated Press.

But that still leaves the question, how good a candidate is Bernie Moreno? Check this out:


Moreno is being abused for thinking that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington signed the Declaration. Actually, none of the people he mentioned were signers. I think he meant that if you go to Heaven, you will get to meet the 55 signers of the Declaration, and also men like Lincoln et al. I hope that is what he meant, anyway. I still yearn for the day when the Republicans can nominate candidates about whom we don’t have to discuss things like Adult Friend Finder and whether Abraham Lincoln signed the Declaration of Independence.

A lift too far: The Court of Appeals decision [With Comment by John]

On the local front, I have sought to draw attention to the case of JaycCee Cooper v. USA Powerlifting in several posts accessible here. Filed in Ramsey County District Court and assigned to Judge Patrick Diamond, the case raises the question whether USAP’s separation of men from women in USAP’s Minnesota competitions must yield to Cooper’s self-identification as a woman.

Although a biological male, Cooper seeks to compete with the ladies. Cooper alleges that USAP’s refusal to yield to his self-identification as a woman violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act and Judge Diamond agreed.

Physical strength lies at the core of weightlifting. Men are stronger than women. Treating men as women destroys the competition. It is absurd.

Ramsey County District Judge Patrick Diamond disagreed. Judge Diamond — he is no gem. He held that USA Powerlifting mistreated Cooper under the terms of the Minnesota Human Rights Act. All that remained to be determined were damages. He granted injunctive relief of his own accord.

USA Powerlifting filed an interlocutory appeal of Judge Diamond’s injunction and determination of liability under the MHRA. Today the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed Judge Diamond, holding that “there are genuine issues of material fact with respect to Cooper’s claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation (which is defined by statute to include transgender status)” and “that there are genuine issues of material fact with respect to USAPL’s statutory legitimate-business-purpose defense to Cooper’s claims of discrimination in business.”

This is a 2-1 decision. Judge Jennifer Frisch concurred in part and dissented in part from the panel decision by Judge Matthew Johnson. Judge Frisch agrees with Cooper on the merits of his claims. I think she is out to lunch in a world of her own.

The panel opinions are posted here. I can only say I hope the Minnesota Supreme Court lets the Court of Appeals decision stand.

Ansis Viksnins represents USA Powerlifting. He is an old acquaintance who has patiently answered my questions about this unreal case along the way. I asked him for a statement on the Court of Appeals decision today. Ansis responded:

We are pleased that the appellate court corrected the serious mistakes made in the lower court and has provided us an opportunity to tell our side of the story to a Ramsey County jury. USA Powerlifting did not exclude JayCee Cooper from the women’s category because of her gender identity. USA Powerlifting excluded her from competing in the women’s division because of her physiology: she was born biologically male and USAPL does not allow athletes who went through male puberty to compete in the women’s division.

Maintaining separate categories based on sex, age, and weight is necessary so that similarly situated athletes are competing in appropriate categories and have fair opportunities of success. Scientific studies show that athletes who have gone through male puberty enjoy a large strength advantage over athletes who go through puberty as a female. The scientific studies also show that suppressing testosterone only reduces the strength advantage by a very minimal amount. Because powerlifting is a strength sport, the strength differences between competitors who were born male and those who were born female are significant. Today’s decision is a victory for fairness in sports.

Even before the Star Tribune got around to reporting Judge Diamond’s decision last year, it published Minnesota Lynx president Cheryl Reeve’s op-ed column celebrating it. Reeve omitted any discussion of the possible participation of male trans athletes in the WNBA.

It wouldn’t take many JayCee Coopers to render the WNBA a farce. Reeve could have made a contribution if she had taken up that possibility. As it is, she mostly proved that the welcome mat is out in the Star Tribune’s Opinion Exchange (as they call it) to columns lacking in either evidence or argument. Under certain circumstances, the correct attitude will suffice. In this case it serves to let us know where Cheryl Reeve and the Lynx stand on the issue. I would like to say that Reeve is hardest hit by the Court of Appeals decision today if only I could be sure it was the last word on the issue under Minnesota law.

JOHN adds: I just want to amplify Scott’s point about Cheryl Reeve’s op-ed supporting trans women, i.e. men, competing in women’s sports. Reeve coaches a WNBA team. As she must know, there are thousands of men who are better basketball players than any woman in the world. Only around 450 of them play in the NBA. The others are playing in other countries, in the NBA’s developmental league, for college teams, or doing something else entirely–earning, in most cases, a small fraction of what NBA players make. If men could play in the “Women’s” National Basketball League, there wouldn’t be a woman left in professional basketball. Reeve must know this, so her subscribing to “trans” ideology is doubly contemptible.

The Daily Chart: COVIDiocy Confirmed

One of my favorite exchanges from “Yes, Minister” between Jim Hacker and the subversive career bureaucrat Sir Humphrey Appleby is when Hacker, the junior minister for administrative affairs, asks Sir Humphrey about whether he (Sir Humphrey) believes government policy should be carried out “even if it is wrong.” Sir Humphrey responds

“Well, almost all government policy is wrong. . . but frightfully well carried out!”

This came back to mind when seeing the results of a PNAS study that shows that excess deaths in the United States, which adopted the COVIDiocy with great relish, were among the highest in the world, while Sweden, which has the least mindlessly restrictive policy, had the fewest.

Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity have produced a fine report on these findings that offer ten key lessons for policymakers. Highly recommended.

A bloodbath in the Supreme Court

This morning the Supreme Court held oral argument in the case that is now styled Murthy v. Missouri. C-SPAN has posted audio of the oral argument here.

The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. We (I) have been pulling for the plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court has already entered an order staying the narrowed preliminary injunction that had been fashioned by the Fifth Circuit while the case is pending before the Court. Justices Alito dissented from the stay. In his dissent he was joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. I thought the Supreme Court stay was a bad sign of the likely outcome of the case.

In the event this morning, the plaintiff/respondents complaining of the government’s encouragement of censorship on social media platforms suffered a bloodbath, if I may use that word in its colloquial sense. If I am not allowed to use that word in its colloquial sense, I would say that the plaintiff/respondents had a bad day in Court.

I listened to the oral argument in order to assess the likely outcome of this interlocutory appeal. I think it is likely that the preliminary injunction stayed by the Supreme Court will be vacated and that the Fifth Circuit decision will be reversed. I am rashly reading the omens of the give-and-take in the argument like a Roman soothsayer examining entrails.

Although the appeal before the Court is interlocutory, meaning the case has not yet been fully litigated, it is not clear if anything will be left of the case when it is returned to the lower courts by the Court’s decision (by June 30). Interested observers are “encouraged” to make their own assessment by reviewing the parties’ briefs filed and listening to the oral argument.

Annals of Failed Intelligence

The Wall Street Journal has a feature news story in today’s edition detailing a fact long known about the success Cuban intelligence has enjoyed penetrating American government over the years, in particular their sophisticated and widespread recruitment efforts. “Cuba has ‘the best damn intelligence service in the world’ for cultivating agents, said Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who led the agency’s Latin America division,” the story notes.

There is one new detail in the story, however, worth dwelling on:

Cuba recruited Americans, in part, by looking for potential sympathizers. Cuban intelligence officers routinely target young people, often in academia, with an ideological pitch about Cuba suffering under the U.S. economic embargo and other policies, current and former officials say.

“The Cubans didn’t pay big and didn’t need to pay big,” said Stuart Hoyt Jr., a former FBI agent who worked Cuban counterintelligence cases. “Because they could find people that sympathize.” . .

Ana Belén Montes, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst considered Havana’s most damaging spy in the U.S. government, was recruited by Cuban intelligence while a student.

Yet another reason to view large portions of our universities as enemies of our country.—full stop. This is a clear case of double intelligence failure.

Shady Grove, Act III

The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It is the dominant voice of conventional wisdom that relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and in its editorial positions.

It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial amount of money churning out its product. According to a 2019 Traffic Magazine story posted by the Star Tribune: “The paper has been solidly profitable each of the last 10 years.”

Taylor identifies as a Republican, but he has not altered the orientation of the newspaper. He suffers from two obvious limitations. He has a high tolerance for mediocrity and he gets his news from the Star Tribune.

Last year Taylor hired former Walz administration commissioner of economic development Steve Grove to run the newspaper. Grove is the chief executive officer and publisher of the Star Tribune. In a sense it is good to have a Democrat at the top of the organization. It should make things clear for those slow on the uptake.

In my opinion, Minnesota would be better off without the Star Tribune. Its performance adversely affects the state’s politics and public policy as well as its major institutions, generally pushing them ever further to the left. It facilitates the suppression and dissemination of relevant news affecting the left. In 2018 I summed up my observations in “The role of the Star Tribune.”

All in all, it should be difficult to imagine a worse object of philanthropy than the Star Tribune. However, that’s not how Grove sees it. In his 2024 report to readers, he advised (link in original): “We are…positioning ourselves to access funding from philanthropic sources, a growing trend in journalism. To that end, we’re hiring a development director to spearhead this new effort for the Star Tribune.”

Yesterday Grove updated readers in “We’re growing for Minnesota.” He reported: “[W]e’re bringing on a new philanthropy leader, Melissa Wind, whose many years of experience will help us kick-start this new effort for the Star Tribune. We’re positioning ourselves to benefit from philanthropic support for journalism — a growing movement and important aspect of any media business model today. More on that soon.” Grove’s update is headlined “Star Tribune is growing for Minnesota.”

It’s not entirely clear what “this new effort” is. These are the immediately preceding paragraphs:

On Thursday, we announced that Scott Gillespie, the longtime editor of our Opinion section, is retiring in June. That means we’re looking for a new Opinion editor, who will play a critical role in shaping the future of the Star Tribune. We’re looking for a dynamic leader to expand our vibrant editorial and commentary sections — a key aspect of our service to the state.

To that end, we’ll also have news soon on the hiring of a commentary and engagement director, whose job will include proactively soliciting compelling commentary pieces from a much broader group of Minnesotans across the geographic, political, and demographic spectrum. The goal is to make our opinion pages the most lively and important water cooler in the state.

The Star Tribune needs charitable contributions to support the employment of “a commentary and engagement director, whose job will include proactively [sic] soliciting compelling commentary pieces from a much broader group of Minnesotans across the geographic, political, and demographic spectrum”?

You have got to be kidding me. In the words of the William Holden character in Network, I implore potential contributors: “Don’t do it, buddy!”

As I say, this is the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. The Star Tribune “positions itself” to imitate the big players elsewhere, holding out a tin cup to divert money from potentially worthy causes. Some inspired editorial cartoonist could aim his pen at these people and inflict a moment’s embarrassment, assuming they are capable of shame. Ridicule is in any event warranted.