Trump debunking Al Gore’s climate fears has made the world a better place

Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine

“Ding dong, the climate hoax is dead. Twenty years after Al Gore’s apocalyptic movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ the Trump administration has put the final nail in the coffin of the lie that scared a generation into believing the planet was about to explode in flames if they kept using fossil fuels. In what the White House calls ‘the largest deregulatory action in American history,’ the EPA on Thursday will repeal an Obama-era proclamation that has mandated greenhouse-gas regulations for 17 years. The 2009 ‘endangerment finding’ has been the primary climate handbrake on American industry, forming the legal justification for increasingly punitive greenhouse-gas regulations. Rescinding it ‘would save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week, with the EPA projecting an average saving of $2,400 per vehicle and further savings on farm machinery, soon to be freed from the complex extra circuitry required to restrict emissions.” (02/11/25)

https://nypost.com/2026/02/11/opinion/trump-administration-debunking-al-gores-climate-fears-made-the-world-a-better-place/

Steve Trinward

North Korea: Kim Jong Un chooses teen daughter as heir, says Seoul

Source: BBC News [UK State Media]

“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has selected his daughter as his heir, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday. Kim Ju Ae — who is believed to be 13 — has in recent months been pictured beside her father in high-profile events like a visit to Beijing in September, her first known trip abroad. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it took ‘a range of circumstances’ into account including her ‘increasingly prominent public presence at official events’ in making this assessment. The NIS also said it would keep close tabs on whether she will attend the North’s party congress later this month — its largest political event that is held once every five years. The party Congress is where Pyongyang is expected to give more details about priorities like foreign policy, war planning and nuclear ambitions for the next five years.” (02/12/25)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0e1g7kwglo

Steve Trinward

South Korea: Former interior minister gets seven-year sentence for aiding martial law

Source: ABC News

“South Korea’s former interior minister was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison for abetting then-President Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief declaration of martial law in 2024. The verdict for Lee Sang-min came a week before a different judge at the same Seoul court rules on whether Yoon’s actions amounted to rebellion, a crime for which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Lee, who led the ministry of interior and safety, was convicted for helping carry out the declaration and passing along Yoon’s orders to the country’s police and fire chiefs to cut water and electricity to news organizations that were critical of his policies. The instructions weren’t carried out since martial law was lifted quickly after lawmakers broke through a military and police blockade at the National Assembly and unanimously voted to lift it.” (02/12/26)

https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/south-koreas-former-interior-minister-gets-7-year-130089701

Thomas L. Knapp

Capitalism’s Paradox

Source: Quillette
by Sarah Wooten

“In some of the most beautiful and prosperous places in America, a curious paradox has taken hold: the people who benefit most from capitalism increasingly appear to resent it. They live in high-amenity cities and mountain towns with preserved open space, reliable infrastructure, advanced healthcare, abundant leisure, and the freedom to choose where and how they live. These conditions did not arise spontaneously. They are the cumulative result of markets, private investment, innovation, and long-term economic growth. Yet in these same environments, it has become socially fashionable to describe capitalism as immoral, exploitative, or fundamentally broken. This is often dismissed as hypocrisy. That framing is too simple. What we are witnessing is not merely individual inconsistency, but a structural paradox produced by success itself. Capitalism generates abundance, and abundance reshapes human priorities.” (02/11/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/02/11/capitalisms-paradox-prosperity-guilt-moral-performance/

Thomas L. Knapp

Trump administration’s Venezuela approach gets murkier

Source: Semafor
by Eleanor Mueller & Shelby Talcott

“Nearly six weeks after the Trump administration ousted Venezuela’s leader with plans to effectively run the country, its manner of doing so is increasingly opaque. The first US sale of Venezuelan oil took place 11 days after President Donald Trump’s declaration that the US would rely on Caracas’ oil revenues to control its future. But one month after Semafor reported that proceeds from an initial $500 million sale were held in a Qatari account, there is no sign of a second successful sale. There’s also no clarity on when future proceeds will shift to a US-based Treasury Department account from the Qatari account, which was used to help shield the oil proceeds from Venezuela’s creditors.” (02/11/26)

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/11/2026/trump-administrations-approach-in-venezuela-gets-murkier

Thomas L. Knapp

The Autism Epidemic Is a Myth

Source: Cato Institute
by Adam Omary

“For years, public health debate has often fixated on a supposed rise in the prevalence of autism. Various culprits have been named, including the well-investigated but unsubstantiated claim that vaccines cause autism. More recently, additional risk factors have been proposed — many by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — including maternal Tylenol use, food dyes and additives, chemical manufacturing agents and other possible stressors affecting perinatal development. Concerns about autism have been spotlighted within the larger Make America Healthy Again movement, motivated by a well-founded alarm over the nation’s devastatingly high burden of chronic disease and psychiatric illness. But there is a bigger problem with the autism epidemic: It doesn’t exist. Autism diagnoses have indeed risen dramatically in recent decades. However, diagnostic criteria can change even when the underlying health phenomenon remains unchanged.” (02/11/26)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/autism-epidemic-myth

Thomas L. Knapp

Judge halts transfer of former federal death row inmates to “supermax” prison

Source: Politico

“A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 former death row inmates to a notorious maximum-security prison in Colorado, concluding that President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi had dictated the decision before the men had a chance to contest it. ‘The Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,’ U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly wrote in a 35-page opinion requiring the men to remain in their current prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Kelly, a Trump appointee, emphasized that he was not ordering the release of any of the convicts, who were convicted of ‘some of the most horrific crimes imaginable.'” (02/11/26)

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/11/trump-bondi-supermax-prison-00777782

Thomas L. Knapp