Heather Cox Richardson, December 17, 2021... former governor Rick Perry fingered by the J6 committee as having sent a text to 45 the day after the election suggesting they appoint their own electors in three states, before the results are in, and throw the election to SCOTUS... gun smoking much?... Mitch McConnel is beginning to hedge his bets?... supporting the work of the committee on Spectrum News... Rodger Stone pleads the Fifth all the way down... 90% of adult Dems are vaccinated, only 60% of adult Republicans are... wondering if that will lead to a voting numbers advantage for the Dems due to higher number of deaths among Republicans... i won't cry too much... #politics #january6 #pandemic

Denounce Julian Assange. Don't Extradite Him... making the case that Assange is a schmuck of the highest order, but that espionage charges against him undermine freedom of speech and the press... the Biden administration is still pursuing the espionage charge and seeks to extradite Assange to the US to stand trial... #politics #firstamendment #julianassange

Global Freedom Is on the Decline... unfortunately, not many surprises in this article from Reason.com...
As _Reason_ [noted last month](https://reason.com/2021/11/23/covid-19-made-democracies-more-authoritarian-and-authoritarianism-even-worse/), the twin threats of political populism and the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered an erosion in democratic values across the globe. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a nonprofit based in Sweden that has been tracking democracies around the globe since 1975, [warns in a new report](https://www.idea.int/gsod/global-report#chapter-2-democracy-health-check:-an-overview-of-global-trends) that the number of countries that are becoming "more authoritarian" by the group's calculus is three times the number of countries that are moving toward democracy. This year is the fifth consecutive year in which the trend has been moving in that direction.

Who Is A Woman for Purposes of Women's Only Spaces?... at the beginning of this year i was reading Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex and learned that gender is a social construct... i myself have what i consider to be feminine traits, though i have never sought to be trans-gender... i have always identified as male and don't expect to change in that regard in this lifetime... still, of all the alternative sexual preference/gender positions that can be taken, i can most readily imagnine myself occupying the trans-woman space... in fact, none of the other sexual preference/gender spaces appeal to me at all... this article discusses when it is appropriate to declare a "space" as women (identified by sex) only spaces... for the most part, it concludes that there are relatively few spaces that should be declared women (by sex) only... professional sports being one of them... #gender #transexual

What Will 'Build Back Better' Buy? Inflation.... an argument supporting Manchin... i tend to be willing to hear Manchin's arguments on spending and the economy... i worry myself about too much spending... this article discusses why he might be right...