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Sunday, February 22, 2026

Post #7575 Social Media Digest

 Facebook


X/Twitter

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Post #7574 M: U.S. Citizen Sues Federal Gov't For Unlawful Detention; Epstein Crony Andrew Faces Consequences; Presidential Power Rankings

 Quote of the Day

Drink nothing without seeing it; 
sign nothing without reading it.
Spanish Proverb  

Press Conference: U.S. Citizen Sues Federal Gov't For Unlawful Detention

Epstein Crony Andrew Faces Consequences

Presidential Power Rankings

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Nick Anderson via US News

Musical Interlude: 1963 Top 100 Hits

If You Wanna Be Happy - Jimmy Soul

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Saturday, February 21, 2026

Post #7573 J

 Pandemic Report

Note: In future posts, I'll likely retitle this section "Endemic Report". We still haven't seen an update on the 4 megastats since early January. We see the virus growing in a dozen states scattered among the continental US and Alaska.


The Sick Times



The latest COVID-19/other news items over the past week:

  • "US leads world in long COVID-19 brain fog"
  • Legal/political issues:
    • "Vet schools caught up in students’ COVID-19 legal claim"
    • "Moderna says FDA will now consider its new mRNA flu shot after initial refusal"
    • "NIH's Bhattacharya will also run the CDC while Trump administration looks for a permanent director"
  • Prosecutors are pursuing COVID relief fraud or other crimes:

Other Notes

The blog finally seemed to establish a long-term trend in pageviews, with most posts reaching double digits. I finally wrote my first essay of the month, a contrary opinion on the voter ID act. Given a short month, I may push out another essay--probably the overdue one on the Alex Pretti murder. I also intend to write essays on Venezuela and/or Iran, and another referencing the recent SCOTUS decision on tariffs. But reaching 40 posts seems unlikely as I write this month. X/Twitter for the most part really isn't promoting my content, many of which are supplemented by relevant AI summaries of facts. For instance, I compared the Trump record on economic and job growth vs that of Reagan and Clinton. But my followers seem to be drifting lower to near 200. It could be that my negative comments on Trump are turning off some followers.

I saw an old friend on Facebook from my PhD student days. I sent him a friends link but no response yet. It doesn't look like he's that active on Facebook, so I can't read too much into it. I don't want to use his name without his knowledge. But he was a good friend. I don't want to give broad details that would easily identify him (by his university or research interests, for instance). But, for instance, he was an IT manager for an oil company, and he got several questionnaires I needed for my dissertation research. I've been out of academia since the early 90's, and people get caught up in their own lives. I tried to get in touch a few times over the years. Maybe he was afraid I was hoping to get another academic job through him. Not really. Maybe I offended him for some reason I'm not aware of. Maybe he disagrees with my political views.I haven't heard from any UH contact in years. I think the last was when my officemate Bruce Breeding lost his life, and I contacted Dr. Scamell (who chaired our dissertation committees). Richard probably knew before I did. I had heard about it from a BIL: Bruce was involved in Scouts, and had met my 5 Eagle Scout nephews.

Then there was my Navy buddy Joe. I had met Joe and Lynn as fellow math instructors at the Navy Nuclear Power School. Lynn was originally married to a fellow Jew (an odd dude; I recall he once locked Lynn out of their apartment or house). I had a mad crush on Lynn, she had these gorgeous dark curls and a sweet personality. Joe sort of adopted me as his project; we had to go up before the CEO of the nuclear power school for our certification lectures. And apparently the CEO hadn't liked Joe's lecture and chewed our supervisor Wayne's ass. Wayne really wasn't going to go through a similar story with me. Anyway, getting back to Lynn, Joe could tell I liked her and said, "Cool it, dude. She's married." Still, Joe was a unique friend. We went out to dinner, and I thought he was going to drop me off at my apartment. Nope. He decided we were going to a strip bar. When I told him I didn't want to go, he threatened to dump me off in the middle of Orlando. (I have other Joe stories which I won't repeat here.) Anyway, back to Lynn. One day, she shows up with straight black hair.. I express my preference for her former curls. Then Joe says to Lynn, "Don't listen to Ron! Your hairstyle is perfect as it is." I think Lynn is absolutely thrilled with the attention she's getting. So, I'm pissed at Joe. "Why are you scoring points at my expense with Lynn? You yourself told me she was taken!" Joe said. referencing the estranged husband, "You never know what's going to happen." Long story short, the Navy decided to give me an honorable discharge earlier than expected; I spent my last few weeks working at the JAG office. I eventually moved to San Antonio, starting my IT career as a programmer/analyst at an insurance company. So over the next year, I got a wedding invitation--for Joe and Lynn! I also brought a date: Anne, the lovely yeoman I had met at the JAG office. I still feel bad about one thing: Lynn's pride was this beautiful black Mustang; some moron pranked them with limburger in the venting system. 

I think Joe and Lynn eventually served out the rest of their terminal 4-year appointments, and the last I heard Joe was working at a naval yard in Maine. They had 2 daughters and apparently got divorced. Joe has never written to me. I think Lynn and I exchanged a few holiday cards, which probably stopped during my doctoral studies. Maybe she thought it became awkward after the divorce. One of my other Navy buddies, Bill, reached out a few years back over Facebook. I think he may have told me about the divorce, but he has never discussed what happened to them after the divorce.

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Post #7572 M: License Plate Cameras Are Targeting Normal; Trump Launches Prescription Drug Website; The Impact of Trump’s Trade War with Alex Durante

 Quote of the Day

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners 
usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. 
They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
B. C. Forbes 

License Plate Cameras Are Targeting Normal

Trump Launches Prescription Drug Website

The Impact of Trump’s Trade War with Alex Durante

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Jack Ohman via smerconish

Musical Interlude: 1963 Top 100 Hits

Walk Right In - Rooftop Singers

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Friday, February 20, 2026

Post #7571 M: Don Boudreaux | Socialism and its History of Failure; Bondi Spins Out Over Epstein Questions; McClanahan on Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee

 Quote of the Day

For every minute you are angry 
you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Don Boudreaux | Socialism and its History of Failure

Bondi Spins Out Over Epstein Questions

McClanahan on Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Jack Ohman via smerconish

Musical Interlude: 1963 Top 100 Hits

Denise - Randy & the Rainbows

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Thursday, February 19, 2026

Post #7570 M: Zoning Retaliation, Official Immunity, and a Shocking 72‑Hour Lock Up; California’s Billionaire Tax and State-to-State Flight; Congress should get rid of the GSEs

 Quote of the Day

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, 
but in deserving them.
Aristotle  

Zoning Retaliation, Official Immunity, and a Shocking 72‑Hour Lock Up

California’s Billionaire Tax and State-to-State Flight

Congress should get rid of the GSEs

Choose Life

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of KAL via Politico

Musical Interlude: 1963 Top 100 Hits

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas ~ Heat Wave

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Post #7569 Rant of the Day: The Phony Voter ID Kerfuffle

I have voted or at least registered to vote in 9 states sequentially (I may have moved from Florida before a general election). I don't recall deregistering; I assumed it occurred automatically when I filed a change of address with USPS or the DMV or surrendered my old driver's license, or registered to vote at my new state address. I never tried to vote at a former address. That's why I was confused when Arizona sent me a couple of mailings suggesting how to cast an out-of-state ballot after I had moved back to Maryland.

Elon Musk, who is obsessed with this issue, puts up all the usual arguments: voting should require at least a secure ID, as it might take to cash a check at a bank or to verify a minimum drinking age at a bar, or to access a porn site. (Never mind the notorious issues with IDs. For example, when I took my first MIS class. I learned that some Social Security numbers were not as unique. One particular number had been associated with over 1000 identities.) Via Google AI:

When I was a 16-year-old college student, there were fake IDs. (Paying my own way through college, I was never tempted to drink alcoholic beverages. I am not a teetotaler; I may occasionally have a beer or glass of wine at a social event or visiting relatives, but the last time I can recall it was at a company Xmas party in 2023). A final example is my driver's ID. When I renewed after 8 years with the usual vision certification, they used my old picture, which showed me looking younger and weighing 70+ lbs. more. There are other issues with IDs; they can get lost or misplaced, and marital status/name may have changed. You really don't want your vote being cancelled by bureaucrats raising issues with your credentials, versus the fact that you are a USC by birth or naturalization.

I have written numerous tweets/posts on this issue (many in response to Musk's obsession with the topic), and you can access them at my feed (@raguillemette), However, I'll try to summarize the basic discussion and motivation. Federal law (1996) restricts voters for federal offices to US citizens. The 1993 NVRA requires attestation (signing one is a USC under the risk of perjury by birth, parents' status{e.g., a nephew was born while my baby brother (accompanied with family) was stationed at a West German AFB), or naturalization) for federal office voting (state/local office voting may be subject to different restrictions). Note that legal foreign workers. students, visitors or immigrants, short of naturalization, are ineligible. to vote federal races; neither are unauthorized aliens. [There are state waivers from NVRA for certain states that do not register voters or allow same-day registration.]

"At the federal level, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires a voter ID for all new voters in federal elections who registered by mail and who did not provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number that was matched against government records."

Via Google AI:
For naturalized citizens and legal residents, there are alternative requirements, but only the former can vote. Some states (e.g., California) will issue licenses without immigration status, but these are ineligible for voter registration.

Part of my distaste for government photo IDs in general dealt with WV's DMV, which was a stickler for evidence of local residency, and I published an earlier rant on that. They really wanted to review my apartment lease. which I didn't bring with me, and when I retrieved it they wouldn't accept it because it didn't have the landlady's contact information on it. (I had contact information, but that wasn't good enough.)  The landlady was usually at another property, so it was a hassle getting a new lease copy generated to satisfy the DMV.

I think for military brats like me, the folks kept good records because it was not unusual for military personnel to be assigned in one or more accompanied tours overseas; my dad was assigned to France and later to Germany while I was in college. My baby brother was assigned to Italy and Germany. So we all had child passports. And of course, my folks applied for my SSN with my birth certificate paperwork.

Here's the basic issue: according to some surveys, up to 10% of American citizens do not have readily available citizenship documentation:
  
Why do American citizens lack proof of citizenship? Via Google AI:

It's not an issue for me. I've got original copies of my birth certificate, SSN card, and passport in a safe, plus encrypted copies on disk and online; I've had multiple federal background checks as a naval officer and as a federal contractor for agencies and the defense sector. I've tweeted that I may have set a record for most I-9s completed during my work career. I remember being nervous about a REAL ID deadline, not realizing my MD driver's license already had the marking. The issue isn't whether I will be personally affected by the certification requirement (although I oppose Trump's hypocritical attempt to ban mail-in voting by states). In theory, federal race voting should be restricted to US citizens, who should be authenticated..

First, let's provide Ballotpedia's summary of the argument:

 
SCOTUS in 2013 denied AZ and KS to unilaterally require documentary evidence of citizenship. This blocked over 30K voters from registering in KS. It creates disparate problems in registration among certain less mobile low-income, rural, racial or ethnic groups; for example, 
The Department of Justice blocked over 700 voting changes they found to be discriminatory from 1982 through the VRA’s 2006 reauthorization. Since the Shelby County v. Holder decision, many states have enacted new voting restrictions centered around voter photo IDs.

For example, Texas didn’t even sleep on it — they moved to introduce a strict voter ID law at midnight after the Supreme Court decision was handed down in 2013. That law resulted in the ineligibility of an estimated 608,470 registered voters in Texas, representing a total of about 4.5% of registered voters in the state at the time. 
7% lack suitable picture ID, never mind the budget to secure a no-cost right to vote. ACLU  points out only 31 errors detected via voter ID check over 12 years, most involving user error, including election officials with enforcement costs in the millions of dollars.  As the League of Women Voters points out:
Voter fraud is so extremely rare. Out of 250,000,000 votes cast by mail between 2000 and 2020, there were 193 criminal convictions. By those numbers, a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to commit voter fraud. 
Via Google AI:
  • We found that nearly 21 million Americans do not have a driver’s license. 2.6 million Americans lack government issued photo ID of any kind
  • 34.5 million Americans do not have a any license or state ID card or do not have one with their current address or name. Even more are confused about what ID they need to vote.
  • Over half of Americans are at risk of being disenfranchised as a result of confusion about voter ID laws.
  • Support for Voter ID laws is not the same thing as support for ID based disenfranchisement. We found supermajority support for policies that address this problem.
From the Revolving Door Project:
The idea that these suppressive laws would prevent supposedly widespread voter fraud is so off-base. Here’s the reality: widespread voter fraud in the United States is as close to a non-issue as possible. As the Brennan Center notes, the amount of in-person voter impersonation is  so infinitesimally small and as such, likely to have zero impact on  national  elections. To put a number on it, between 2000 and 2020, there were only 193 convictions of voter fraud. In the 2020 presidential election there were only 475 potential cases out of the 158,481,688 that turned out to the polls. 

Now let’s talk about the actual process of obtaining an ID. In 2012, the Brennan Center looked at 10 states (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin) with rigid voter ID requirements. To the credit of these state governments, these IDs were at least free to obtain. However, there were other major logistical issues. These included but were not limited to: not owning a vehicle to be able to travel to an ID issue office, being more than 10 miles away from an ID issuing office, and not being able to come during the office hours of these issuing offices. This leads to the disenfranchisement of predominantly low income voters, voters of color, and rural voters. There’s no reason for Democrats or any true believers of the promise of American democracy to support these laws.  
From PolitiFact, on the allegation that opposition to voter ID is motivated by fraud:
Research shows that voter fraud is uncommon in American elections. An investigation conducted by Loyola Law School, Los Angeles professor Justin Levitt found 31 credible incidents of voter fraud in over 1 billion ballots cast during general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014.
In 2006, the Brennan Center commissioned a survey that found that an estimated 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens didn’t have government-issued photo IDs. Of those 21 million, 15% of citizens who earned less than $35,000 a year, 18% age 65 or older, and 25% of African Americans didn’t have a current government-issued photo ID.
Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, for example, in describing her effort to re-establish the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, noted in an interview with The Atlantic that before her father, who was wheelchair-bound, died in 2017, he "didn’t have a driver’s license but he had been voting — until Alabama changed its law in 2014 — with a validly issued federal ID called a Social Security card."
From Vox:
But a new study suggests that the laws, which require certain IDs to vote, may do neither.The study, from Enrico Cantoni at the University of Bologna and Vincent Pons at Harvard Business School, found that voter ID laws don’t decrease voter turnout, including that of minority voters. Nor do they have a detectable effect on voter fraud — which is extremely rare in the US, anyway.
What do those 68 cases tell us? First, it demonstrates that proven cases of noncitizen voting are incredibly rare. Even an organization engaged in a major effort to document voter fraud produced fewer than 70 proven cases of noncitizens who voted in elections in the last 40 years. Given that over one billion votes have been cast over that period in thousands of elections, the incidence of proven noncitizen voting is below 0.0001%.

This is in line with other analysis carried out following recent elections. For example, a 2017 Brennan Center analysis of 42 jurisdictions which tabulated 23.5 million votes in the 2016 election found that noncitizens were referred for investigation in just 30 cases—or 0.0001% of votes.

Second, the data also tells us that proven cases of undocumented immigrants voting in elections are even rarer. Just 10 undocumented immigrants in total appear in the Heritage database for unlawful voting. Further investigation outside the database has uncovered one other instance; an elderly Cuban man with a work permit but no permanent lawful status, who was encouraged to vote by a poll worker in 2016. Several of the other 10 cases involve a person living under an assumed name and identity of a U.S. citizen or obtaining citizenship through fraudulent documentation. In those circumstances, the person voted under the identity of U.S. citizen with valid evidence of status—even though they were not the person they claimed to be.

Third, the data tells us that most cases of noncitizen voting involve lawful permanent residents—people with green cards who have been in the community for years, many who end up voting due to bad information given by government officials themselves.

The most common scenario in the cases included in Heritage’s database includes a lawful permanent resident who was encouraged by a government official to vote or falsely told that they were eligible.


Let me summarize here:

As a libertarian, I oppose federal IDs. I don't like tracking of citizens. This is consistent with the Fourth Amendment over due process.
I don't want anything to do with any centralized or Trump's unconstitutional wet dream of a nationalized election system. GOP voter ID reforms make it difficult for many naturally born voters to qualify, something they have a right to do as much as me. If you look at what it takes,  e,g., for someone with documentation issues to qualify for a social security card or to procure a delayed certificate, e.g., after getting a notice of no birth record by the state, substantiating evidence from personal sources (Bible, family announcements or correspondence, medical. payment history, church, school, government (tax forms, exemptions. census data), etc), it can take weeks to a couple of months to over a year depending on the quality of evidence. It is technically illegal in modern America not to register a child's birth.


What I find is unacceptable is denying voting rights because of a birth certificate, passport, or government document that does not specify a marital surname. It's hard for me to imagine someone who has gone through life without knowing their birthday, when I routinely am asked for birth dates by pharmacies or doctors/nurses, paying payroll taxes while working, or my driver's license, but no voter should be deprived of their rights, because of poor recordkeeping by adults at the time of birth. 
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