Whoever would have thought that chopping off the healthy breast tissue of 14-year-old girls could mean you end up in court?

Well, anyone, actually, who has been paying any attention to the gender madness of the last decade. In the US, where the practice of medicine is particularly connected to the practice of law, I predict a deluge of court cases over what has been done to children in the name of “gender affirming care”.

Last week, 20-year-old Clementine Breen filed a medical negligence claim against a Los Angeles-based doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, claiming she was rushed into irreversible treatment when she was 12. Olson-Kennedy is the medical director of the Centre for Transyouth Health and Development at the Children’s Hospital in LA.

This is, after all, the script, isn’t it? That without mutilating the bodies of teenagers, these kids will all kill themselves. That there is no evidence for this doesn’t appear to matter. Until it gets to court and then it does.

This is where Britain and many other European countries are far ahead of America. When evidence of the harmful effects of puberty blockers began to come in via longitudinal studies, the NHS stopped routinely prescribing them to under 18s. Finland, Sweden, Norway and Holland have also stopped prescribing blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors.  Trump’s America has to catch up and fast.

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On Monday (12/09), Daniel Penny was found Not Guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the choking death of Jordan Neely.

In May of 2023, Neely boarded a New York City subway train and began to threaten other passengers. Penny and a few others subdued Neely until police arrived. Neely ultimately died, and Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter in addition to criminally negligent homicide.  For most Americans, Penny was seen as a hero, a good Samaritan jumping in to help his fellow citizens in a dangerous situation.

Of course, like clockwork, Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists, a.k.a. agitators, showed up outside the courthouse, declaring the incident a racial one and demanding "justice." BLM leader Walter “Hawk” Newsome called for “black vigilantes” to enact revenge.

But something is different now. The BLM activists jumped up and down and yelled and screamed about being oppressed and had the prerequisite number of people standing behind them nodding their heads, but you could still hear their voices. Hundreds of other protesters had not drowned them out. Has BLM lost their 2020 black magic?

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Vladimir Putin’s loss of a key regional ally in Bashar al-Assad has weakened Moscow at a crucial moment.

For while the war in Ukraine reges on the battlefield, Russia is losing the economic conflict. The Kremlin’s oil export revenues are too low to sustain a high-intensity war and nobody will lend Vladimir Putin a kopeck.

Putin’s strategic victory in Ukraine was far from inevitable a fortnight ago and it is less inevitable now after the Assad regime collapsed like a house of cards, shattering Putin’s credibility in the Middle East and the Sahel. He could do nothing to save his sole state ally in the Arab world.

“The limits of Russian military power have been revealed,” said Tim Ash, a regional expert at Bluebay Asset Management. “Putin now goes into Ukraine peace talks with Trump from a position of weakness,” said Mr. Ash.

And as bad as that military weakness is, Putin’s economic weakness is far worse.  Following are examples of just how weak that is.

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Donald Trump couldn’t be clearer. He intends to abolish the Department of Education.  Good for him.

Indeed, for decades, ordinary Americans have sat back and watched a small radical fringe take over their public education system and academia. They did nothing as “woke” professors promoted a self-flagellating ideology that sees everything in terms of race, gender and oppression.

What started as “political correctness” 30 years ago has morphed into an explicitly anti-Western, anti-white, anti-heterosexual belief system. Middle America has had enough of it.

Team Trump is targeting the Department of Education not primarily to reduce government waste, but to end government “woke”.   That means  important implications for what happens to the federal government more broadly.

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The most shocking aspect of President Biden pardoning his own son, Hunter, may be that it was not in the least shocking, given the history of the Biden family.

This abuse of the pardon power was widely anticipated even by his allies as the president repeatedly denied that he would ever do such a thing as he ran for reelection. Indeed, it may be the single most premeditated unethical act in political history. However, it may not achieve what President Biden most hopes for: a clean slate for his son and himself in this massive corruption scandal.

Biden has recreated a sweeping immunity grant through his own powers by pardoning his son not only for the crimes of which he was convicted, but of any crimes committed between Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.  Think on that. It would cover anything from perjury to murder.

But it is not the absolute “get-out-of-jail-free” card that President Biden would like, for the pardon has that sell-by date.  Any crime he commits after then, such as being made to testify under oath to Congress and caught lying, is jailable.

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Astolphe de Custine, Letters From Russia - 1839

Russia has a long history with alcoholism. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, drinking was in decline. Now, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, official figures show alcohol addiction is surging again for the first time in a decade.

Vodka sales this year surged to a record high and policymakers are scrambling to halt a rise in alcohol-related deaths. What has changed is the war. It is becoming increasingly clear that the fabric of Russian society is falling apart.

As in the 1980s, Russian soldiers are returning from the frontline wounded and traumatized. Thousands more are dying, leaving grieving families at home.

But what is happening today is on a completely different scale. Around 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan. The Russian death toll in Ukraine is at least ten or more times that already.

Between Feb 24 2022 and Nov 19 this year, there have been at least 120,000 Russian military deaths in the war in Ukraine, according to analysis of probate records by Mediazona, a site that works in collaboration with BBC’s Russian service.

As many as 728,000 more have been injured, according to analysis by The Economist, based on leaked documents from America’s defense department.  Vast numbers of them have turned to vodka to drown their pain and trauma.

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