The Conservative Cave

I think the Germans like their nazis.

9th Circuit Panel Overturns Ruling on Oregon Trans Prisoners

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/09/21/9th-circuit-panel-overturns-ruling-on-trans-prisoners-n3819198

Last month I pointed out that there was an ongoing battle over the status of trans prisoners in Oregon. A pair of trans women prisoners had sued because they were being housed in a male prison. And back in April, Judge Mark D. Clarke ruled in favor of two trans women prisoners. He ordered that prisoners be housed with the gender they identify with absent extenuating circumstances.

But here's the obvious catch. The two prisoners who filed the lawsuit arguably represented a danger to other inmates if placed in a women's prison. The class action lawsuit included one plaintiff convicted of rape and another who beat his then-girlfriend to death. Another plaintiff was convicted of molesting a female child. But Judge Clarke apparently didn't consider any of these circumstances worthy of note.

Last week, a panel from the 9th Circuit reversed Judge Clarke's decision.

Quote

A federal appellate court Thursday threw out a lower court order that had directed the Oregon Department of Corrections to stop housing transgender women in men’s prisons.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke improperly concluded that the state corrections department had a default policy of placing all transgender prisoners in men’s prisons without individual evaluations or that officials were “deliberately indifferent” to the safety of transgender women.

“The district court improperly disregarded the overwhelming contrary evidence presented by Defendants in favor of baseless speculation,” 9th Circuit Judge Eric C. Tung wrote for the three-judge panel after hearing argument last month.

Judge Tung being ethnic Chinese, it's all but obvious he was appointed by Trump, FWIW, in 2025.

It has everything to do with the city of Fremont wanting to force people to go through educational channels which politicians can control.

So true. Why would a government-run entity ever teach people to think independently?

Now it makes sense why he made these comments. He must have seen the internal pollng...

Far-right AfD wins again as Germany's Merz slides

Germany's ruling center-right party, Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union, was shut out of a state parliament for the first time Sunday as the far-right Alternative for Germany scored its second victory this month.

Why it matters: The result marks the third state election AfD has won -- and its second this month -- underscoring its growing strength even as Germany's other major parties refuse to govern with it.

Driving the news: Merz, who has low approval ratings, told reporters that "reforms have to come."

...

AfD won about 38% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the CDU recorded its worst result in any German state election since World War II. The CDU fell from 13% to 4.9% and lost all representation.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/21/germany-election-results-afd-merz


"Democracy can't survive people being allowed to vote however they want!"

City Tells Volunteer Fireman He's Unqualified Because of His Homeschool Diploma

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/09/21/city-tells-volunteer-fireman-hes-unqualified-because-of-homeschool-diploma-n4957476

Andrew Coates has a state EMT license in Nebraska and is a volunteer firefighter who wanted to turn that volunteer work into a profession. But while the state of Nebraska simply says firemen have to be high school graduates, the city is claiming that it will only accept diplomas from accredited high schools, excluding homeschoolers like him.

My mother homeschooled me from kindergarten through 12th grade, and we used a program that does have official accreditation. But most homeschoolers use a much more individualized and unofficial curriculum, and since public officials usually despise parents as educational authorities, many of them refuse to recognize the validity of homeschool education, even though homeschoolers overall consistently score higher on standardized tests.

This rejection of Coates has nothing to do with competency, given the disastrous scores and increasing incompetence of many public school students, and Coates’ own state EMT license. It has everything to do with the city of Fremont wanting to force people to go through educational channels which politicians can control.

If you watch the video below, you will notice that the written requirements for the position did not match what the city’s Karen of an HR director, Jennifer McDuffee, told Coates. To complete the ridiculous persecution, the city then added the word “accredited” to its job description specifically to exclude Coates.

Discriminating against homeschool graduates is so 1980s-1990s. Hopefully, Coates contacts Home School Legal Defense Association about this silliness.

When our munchkins approached graduation age, we did a couple of things that would bypass an issue like this. First, all three took advantage of our local JC's concurrent enrollment program, Thus, they were college students before graduating. Second, around the same time we graduated them, we had our munchkins take and pass the California High School Proficiency Exam. In California, by law, a CHSPE certificate is the legal equivalent of a high school diploma. Their high school diplomas were never challenged, but they were prepared had that happened.

That was the late 1990s and early 2000s, and things have improved for homeschool grads since then. This case is pretty much an outlier.