Jen the Libertarian

It's weekly roundup time, so its time to talk about the Odessa - Midland shooting (and what we do and do not know), the CIS rule change for children of US servicepeople who are born abroad (it's not as bad as it seems but it's complicated!), and the upcoming slate of Democratic primary debates both DNC sanctioned and not

Ah yes, the infamous 1619 Project. I have read a good chunk of it (even past the first two essays) and have some thoughts on it and the reactions to it and the topic of discussing racism in America.

Spolier alert - there are some good pieces in there you just have to make it past the crappy ones and not all conversations about racism are bad

Bernie has got A Plan for reform all the criminal justice things, the Trump administration tries to "fix" the Flores agreement, and hold on to your butts because here come the 15% tariffs 

In my quest to reach out to the politically homeless I made a response to Bridget Phetasy's piece on the topic with (hopefully) helpful suggestions as to how libertarians can reach out to the ever increasing  numbers of people leaving or being pushed out of their political parties

Link to Bridget's piece - https://spectator.us/battle-cry-politically-homeless/

Time to talk about all the immigration stories, from the ICE workplaces raids from a week ago that got overshadowed to the new public charge rule and why it's really not OK to the ever evolving rules on who can and cannot apply for asylum in the US 

Picking up on the topic of red flag laws from the last episode, the idea of adding mental health history to the federal firearms background database, and the suicide heard 'round the world

I discuss the Dayton shooting and what we do and do not know, how I am so insanely disappointed in the reactions to both the Dayton and El Paso shootings, and the awful no good horrible Castro tweet that named and shamed Trump donors 

*warning - I do name the shooter and read / discuss the manifesto*

After the mass shooting in El Paso I think its a good idea to have a discussion about motive, ideology, how everyone focuses on the wrong thing, and on how we need to look at ugly things to understand them

In another installment of "I consume content so you don't have to" I did indeed watch both (!) nights of Round 2 of the democratic debates.  

I discuss some of what was discussed each night, my overall thoughts on the whole production, and what the DNC is doing to keep these from being a total cluster going forward. 

Lots of things happened this week, none of them particularly good (except for one!) - I talk about Mueller's much hyped yet very boring congressional testimony, ICE's shiny new mandate, the asylum ban that thankfully wasn't, our safe third country agreement (?) with Guatemala and the upcoming Democratic debates