Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 12/10

[SVPete]

Supreme Court Vacates Ruling That Upheld New York School Vaccine Mandate

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/supreme-court-vacates-ruling-that-upheld-new-york-school-vaccine-mandate-5955708?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport&src_src=partner&src_cmp=BonginoReport

The Supreme Court on Dec. 8 vacated a ruling upholding New York’s ban on religious exemptions to its school vaccine mandate and ordered a lower court to review its stance on the ban. The case is known as Miller v. McDonald.

Justices vacated the March decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had found the legislation banning religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was “neutral on its face” and did not “target or affirmatively prohibit religious practices.”
The justices directed the appeals court to reconsider its ruling in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor, a Supreme Court ruling in June that sided with parents who wanted the ability to opt their children out of interacting with books in school that promote lesbian, gay, and similar lifestyles. Justices did not say how the appeals court should ultimately rule after reviewing Mahmoud v. Taylor.

[SVPete]

Hamas hid tons of baby formula to damage Israel with starvation claims, Palestinian activist says

https://nypost.com/2025/12/09/world-news/hamas-hid-tons-of-baby-formula-to-damage-israel-with-starvation-claims-palestinian-activist-says/

Hamas hid tons of baby formula and nutritional shakes meant for kids inside a warehouse to allow Gazans to starve and further its claims of widespread famine to undermine Israel, a US-based Palestinian activist claimed.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an anti-Hamas activist, accused the terror group of hoarding food meant for infants and young children to purposefully increase starvation in Gaza and damage the public perception of Israel.
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“The goal, as I said then, was to worsen the hunger crisis and initiate a disaster as part of the terror group’s famine narrative in a desperate effort to stop Israel’s onslaught against Gaza and force the return of the UN’s aid distribution mechanism, and away from the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF),” he added.

Has the UN and UNRWA denied this and blamed Israel yet?

[enslaved1]

Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against RFK Jr.

A House Democrat said she had introduced articles of impeachment against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a move unlikely to succeed under the current Republican majority.

"RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and the safety of the American people," said Representative Haley Stevens, the Michigan Democrat moving to impeach Kennedy Jr, in a statement posted to X.

The impeachment effort isn't likely to succeed given the Republicans have a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

High end virtue signalling there.  No chance of accomplishing anything, but "hey, lookie what we did!!!111!!!!!" 

[SVPete]

While this shampeachment would fail utterly in the Senate, what are the Las Vegas odds the resolution will get laughed out of the House?

[SVPete]

Oldest evidence of human fire-making discovered at site in England

https://srnnews.com/oldest-evidence-of-human-fire-making-discovered-at-site-in-england/

Dec 10 (Reuters) – Scientists have discovered the oldest-known evidence of fire-making by prehistoric humans in the English county of Suffolk – a hearth apparently made by Neanderthals about 415,000 years ago – revealing that this milestone for our evolutionary lineage occurred far earlier than previously known.

At an old clay pit for making bricks near the village of Barnham, the researchers found a patch of heated clay, some heat-shattered flint handaxes and two pieces of iron pyrite – a mineral that creates sparks when struck against flint to ignite tinder – that they identified as a repeatedly used campfire.

It was situated near a watering hole where these humans encamped.

“We think humans brought pyrite to the site with the intention of making fire. And this has huge implications pushing back the earliest fire-making,” said archaeologist Nick Ashton, curator of Palaeolithic Collections at the British Museum in London and leader of the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Until now, the earliest-known evidence of fire-making was from about 50,000 years ago at a site in northern France, also attributed to Neanderthals.

The controlled use of fire was a landmark event for the human evolutionary lineage, not only for cooking and providing protection from predators but for providing warmth that enabled hunter-gatherers to thrive in areas with colder environs.

It's amazing and wryly amusing how the settled science of a century ago - e.g. Piltdown Man had not yet been exposed as a planned fraud - has been overturned. In this case, the once believed to be apelike Neanderthals are shown to have used fire and tools for starting fires 400K years earlier than previously thought. Somewhat less recently, It has also been discovered that Neanderthals were inter-fertile with supposedly more modern humans. Maybe (Gasp!) Neanderthals were just a sub-population of humans.

Regardless of how accurate that opinion might be, it would be very healthy for people in sciences to qualify their studies and conclusions with statements along the line of, "This is what we know currently." IOW, remind readers that future discoveries might utterly overturn what is currently "known".

[SVPete]

U.S. bank regulator says large banks engaged in ‘debanking’ of disfavored industries

https://srnnews.com/u-s-bank-regulator-says-large-banks-engaged-in-debanking-of-disfavored-industries/

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) – The U.S. banking regulator overseeing large national banks said the nation’s nine largest firms had in the past placed restrictions on providing financial services to some controversial industries in a practice commonly described as “debanking.”

... It said banks had restricted access to industries including oil and gas, coal mining, tobacco and e-cigarettes, and crypto products.

... the firms examined were JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank and BMO Bank.

An investigation into the debanking of political and activist organizations is also warranted. It was done, https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/how-democrats-debanked-political-opponents-shocking-attack-american , and a similar Lib/Prog activist pattern would be found.

[enslaved1]

Kamala Harris declares herself a 'historic' figure: 'There will be a marble bust of me'

Former Vice President Kamala Harris declared herself to be a "historic figure" on Tuesday and touted that there will be a marble bust of her constructed in Congress.

Harris made the statement during an interview with The New York Times regarding her upcoming book, "107 Days," telling the newspaper that she no longer feels "burdened" by the need to achieve a place in history.

"I understand the focus on ’28 and all that," she told the Times. "But there will be a marble bust of me in Congress. I am a historic figure like any Vice President of the United States ever was."

 

deeeeep breath

   

[SVPete]

Kammie's relevance complex is pretty ludicrous. What interested me at the time, in 2021 shortly after LIEden was inaugurated, he gave Kammie on a silver platter an opportunity to make herself very significant in his Administration. He appointed her "Border Czar". Has she actually done something, anything, meaningful to secure US borders, she could have made herself LIEden's heir apparent. But Kammie has several defining characteristics, two of which are stupidity and laziness. She was to stupid to recognize the opportunity handed her (if even I recognized it but she did not, that's monumental stooooooopidity!), and to lazy to simply do something.

[SVPete]

University Votes Down TPUSA Chapter on 'Comfort' Grounds

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2025/12/10/university-votes-down-tpusa-chapter-on-comfort-grounds-n3809736

California Lutheran University is located in Thousand Oaks, California. It has about 3,500 students. Back in 2021, the school briefly had a TPUSA chapter but it was quickly disbanded after it created controversy on campus with a series of posters opposing socialism and supporting gun rights.
...
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, TPUSA approached the school about starting a new chapter. That effort was voted down after students decided they weren't convinced they would be comfortable with TPUSA on campus.

In a 2-11-1 secret-ballot vote, Associated Students of California Lutheran University Senate failed to approve the reestablishment of a Turning Point USA chapter on Monday, Dec. 1. The meeting, attended by over 50 Cal Lutheran students, was standing room only.

“I wasn’t personally surprised by the outcome,” said Carlos Daniel Zaragosa, ASCLU Commuter senator. “At the end of the day, we do try to be fair, impartial and we want to see all clubs succeed. But we will notice when a club is trying to push a certain rhetoric, and the last thing we need is controversy here on this campus.”

The thrust of the opposition was over whether or not TPUSA could adopt DEI or not and whether people who disagreed would feel "validated" and "safe."
...

Tristan Quezada, the TPUSA chapter’s prospective president, told Campus Reform that “the biggest flaw the senate had was that they couldn’t distinguish between students feeling uncomfortable because their ideologies don’t align, with students feeling unsafe, it is that simple.”...

The article doesn't go into this, but Cal Lutheran is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) denomination, which is very Lib/Prog. When a current social trend contradicts Scripture, ELCA goes with the social trend. HOWEVER, while ELCA is the largest Lutheran denomination in the US, the two next largest are theologically very conservative.

[SVPete]

Charlotte Sheriff Gripes That Iryna’s Law Is Likely to Overcrowd Jails

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/12/10/charlotte-sheriff-gripes-stabbings-likely-to-overcrowd-jails-n4946892

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden complained that Iryna’s Law will overcrowd the jails. He said this days after another train stabbing. So it would seem he has no issue with criminals sticking knives into innocent victims, so long as they don’t fill up his jail. Talk about a sheriff unfit for duty. To make the situation even more shameful, the sheriff whined about how many people saw the video of Iryna getting stabbed and acted as if the judges that social media users criticized were more worthy of pity than Iryna.

Sheriff McFadden acted as if Iryna’s grisly death at the hands of serial criminal Decarlos Brown Jr. — simply because she was white — were somehow a plot to make his life difficult. “And we believe that the only reason that this caught national attention is because it was caught on video and it was displayed across the United States, and our local politicians at that time saw it was a political agenda, or they could highlight her as a refugee and not an immigrant,” he griped at a press conference. “This is why they created Iryna's Law.”

And boy, is he angry that criminals will be sent to jail instead of being allowed to roam free and commit crimes over and over and over. You see, Iryna’s Law imposes stricter penalties for violent offenders and repeat offenders before pre-trial release, in some cases preventing them from pre-trial release altogether.

I see McFadden doen't - and probably won't - admit that catch-and-release of violent criminals engenders increased violent crime.

[SVPete]

Bari Weiss Named a New CBS News Anchor, and the Response Is the Funniest News Ever

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/12/10/bari-weiss-named-a-new-cbs-news-anchor-and-the-response-is-the-funniest-news-ever-n4946890

New CBS News chief Bari Weiss, whose center-left ideology is too far to the right for many of her employees, has done it again by naming a "mediocre straight white man" to anchor the division's flagship CBS Evening News.

A report late Tuesday in the UK Independent claims that "many staffers at CBS News are not thrilled" with Weiss picking CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil to sit in the anchor chair. “It’s an insult to the storied news giants who came before him,” one CBS News reporter told the paper.
...
This is the same network that had to show Evening News anchor Dan Rather the door in 2005 for using laughable forgeries to "prove" that then-President George W. Bush repeatedly went AWOL during his service with the Texas Air National Guard as a fighter pilot.
...
I don't mean to pick on Dan Rather [Yes, you do, Steve —Editor], but that CBS Evening News anchor chair has seated some seriously unworthy butts since Rather's walk of shame out the door two decades ago.

Longtime Sunday show talking head Bob Schieffer was supposed to be Rather's temporary replacement, but the news division's bench was so thin that they kept him on longer than planned, until finally settling on chirpy morning show host Katie Couric.

The less said about Couric, the better. But I would like to take a moment to remind you that as a "journalist," she's so unbiased that she appeared as herself on an episode of Will & Grace, long after the once-funny show had descended into partisan mockery.

Couric was a ratings disaster, but still stuck around for about five years before being replaced by Scott Pelley, who at least stanched the ratings losses. Jeff Glor and then Norah O'Donnell followed Pelley. None of the three managed to improve CBS's reputation for bias.

I've not heard of Dokoupil, nor some others who have been in that position. Looking over his W'pedia bio, he's at least as experienced and talented as anyone else at SeeBS (not a high standard, admittedly). I suspect that the "mediocre straight white man" denigration simply means, "We are not sure he's Prog enough to faithfully parrot the Dem Party line straight out of the Fax machine."