Just a Merciful Father

Plus: Ehrlichposting, pivot to Nevada, Syrian civil war, and more...

Let's examine Biden's innermost feelings: The digital front page of The New York Times this morning leads with a piece titled "How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter."

"The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son's looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden's legal problems," reads the subheading—the type of sympathetic portrayal I have a hard time imagining would be extended to Donald Trump if he did something similar.

To back up: On Sunday night, Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon for his son, Hunter, legally letting him off the hook not just for the kinda-silly gun charges of late but for all crimes he may have committed between January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024. ("For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth," wrote Biden, who I don't think intended to be funny, in the statement announcing the pardon. "They'll be fair-minded.")

There are two issues here: The first is that the pardon does not encompass just the stupid charges—lying about drug use when purchasing a gun, a crime libertarians don't really believe should be a crime, and owning a firearm despite being an "unlawful user" of a "controlled substance"—but that it also covers Hunter's influence-peddling business dealings in Ukraine. (He started doing business consulting/serving on the board for the Ukrainian company Burisma in 2014, the date the pardon starts, for keen observers.) The second is that Joe Biden repeatedly lied about this pardon, claiming over and over again that he did not believe anyone, let alone his own son, to be above the law.

Here's a beautiful supercut of both Biden's own words and the fawning media's credulousness:

SUPERCUT!

Corporate media: Obviously Biden would never pardon Hunter pic.twitter.com/gJRhASCAUs

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 2, 2024

"It was Hunter Biden's looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push," write sympathetic-seeming Katie Rogers and Glenn Thrush, for The New York Times. "A pardon was one thing he could do for a troubled son, a recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain.…Several people close to Mr. Biden said the decision created a conflict between two core identities: the anguished father trying to protect his son, and the president who takes pride in standing on principle."

"Hunter Biden's decision to plead guilty on the tax charges—after a weeklong gun trial in Delaware in June that rehashed the family's darkest days—had further embittered Mr. Biden and several of his family members, who believed that Hunter was targeted only because of his last name. At that time, the anger within the family pushed the idea of a pardon from the notional to the plausible, according to several people familiar with the president's thinking.

It was at that point Mr. Biden, who was, among other things, deeply concerned that the pressure of the trials would push his son into a relapse after years of sobriety, began to realize there might not be any way out beyond issuing a pardon. It appears that there was never serious consideration of anything short of a full pardon, such as a commutation of his sentence, they said."

It's not a stretch to say that mainstream publications would not extend nearly the same amount of understanding and benefit of the doubt to Trump if he did the same. And Biden, who much of the press somehow believes is just a good guy trying his very best, has made a decision that has sacrificed norms and trust in the system for the sake of his screw-up kid. It's all a fitting end to an administration that frequently deceived the American people.

At least now Hunter can focus on his art.

Supreme Court tackles Tennessee law on gender transitions: Tomorrow, the court will hear a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans medical providers from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery for gender-transitioning minors. Crucially, the law allows minors to receive some of those treatments if the underlying condition being treated is not gender dysphoria.

The question the judges are dealing with is "whether the law makes distinctions based on sex," per a Times write-up. "If it does, a demanding form of judicial review—'heightened scrutiny'—kicks in. If it does not, the Tennessee law will almost certainly survive." Interestingly, "the justices refused to consider a question that might have appealed to some of its conservative members: whether parents have a constitutional right to make medical decisions on behalf of their children." In other words, the justices have only chosen to consider the Equal Protection Clause claim.

"If, for example, a State prohibits an adolescent assigned female at birth from receiving testosterone to live as a male, but allows an adolescent assigned male at birth to receive the same treatment, the State has relied on a sex-based classification—and thus must justify its law under heightened scrutiny," writes the U.S. Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, in the brief before the Court. (The Biden administration has intervened in the case, taking the side of the three families and doctor who are suing the state of Tennessee.)

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Scenes from New York: Took my son to the American Museum of Natural History over the holiday and stumbled across this absurdity. It's crazy to me that Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 work The Population Bomb warned about all the terrible things that would come our way with population growth, isn't seen by literally all people as a total idiot, not to mention a real bummer.

(Liz Wolfe)

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• Pivot to Nevada?

It used to be automatic for startups to incorporate in Delaware. That will stop being the case if activist judges start overruling shareholders. https://t.co/Z5cb1wn8tN

— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 3, 2024

• The Syrian civil war is raging again, after a roughly four-year break in the fighting. "Rebel forces have launched their largest offensive against the Syrian government in years," reports the BBC. "They have captured a swathe of land across the north-west of the country, including most of the second city of Aleppo, after the Syrian military rapidly withdrew its troops. The rebels are now battling the military near the central city of Hama, while the government's key ally Russia is carrying out air strikes against them."
• British members of Parliament just voted to legalize assisted suicide for people with six months or less left to live. The bill still needs to clear the House of Lords, but it looks very likely to pass. This is a travesty for people who are concerned about preserving a culture of life, and also for those who are concerned about the ways the incentives inherent within socialized medicine will make the state have a vested interest in getting people to off themselves.
• Watch the latest Just Asking Questions featuring Vinay Prasad. We talk seed oils, vaccines, raw milk, COVID policy, and more.

• I cannot believe there are still people like Lorenz out there doing whatever this is, acting like it's unreasonable for the rest of us to have moved on from COVID-era masking:

What you call "breathing like a normal person" she calls "raw-dogging the air." pic.twitter.com/Rc1tUwATuY

— Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) December 2, 2024

• "SpaceX is in discussions to sell insider shares that could boost the value of Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company to around $350 billion, according to people familiar with the matter," reports Bloomberg. "That would be a significant premium to a previously mulled valuation of $255 billion as reported by Bloomberg News and other media outlets just last month. It would also cement SpaceX's status as the most valuable private startup in the world. SpaceX was last valued at about $210 billion in a tender offer earlier this year."
• Fascinating thread on identity theft, government benefits, and homelessness:

I volunteer a few times a week at NSCChurch which primarily serves the homeless & or addicted / formerly addicted population of Brooklyn, New York.

The desk I work at helps people get government funded phone service, emails, food stamps, social security, rehab, housing, etc.

— nicole ruiz (@nwilliams030) December 2, 2024

• lol

Hunter Biden going 120 down the freeway blasting 'Jesus Etc.' in his lincoln navigator right now while a 19 year old he picked up on tumblr sits in the passenger seat spoonfeeding him mythic-grade neo-Shanghai Dragon Percocet 1,000,000 dissolved inside oreo mcflurry

— donald boat (@laserboat999) December 2, 2024