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Virginia Democrat Says He Understands Rural America Because He Grew Up Watching the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’

A Democrat state senator in Virginia named Lamont Bagby recently said that he understands rural America because he grew up watching TV shows like the Dukes of Hazard and the Waltons.

Does this line of thinking apply to other TV shows? Does watching Law & Order make one qualified to be a cop or a district attorney?

It’s fun to imagine how the liberal media would treat this if it was said by a conservative Republican.

The Daily Caller reported:

Democrat Says He Understands Rural America Because He Watched Classic Shows Like ‘Waltons,’ ‘Dukes Of Hazzard’

Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lamont Bagby claimed Thursday that watching “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “The Andy Griffith Show” and “The Waltons” as a child taught him about rural America.

A judge in Tazewell County, Virginia, declared Virginia’s redistricting referendum that passed with just 51.5% of the vote Tuesday was unconstitutional, citing both procedural violations and ruling that the state’s Democratically-controlled Legislature exceeded its authority. Bagby, who represents parts of Henrico County and the state capital, Richmond, argued during a floor debate on the referendum that he understood rural Virginians because he had watched classic TV shows depicting rural culture.

“And listen, I almost took issue with the other side saying that we don’t understand [rural America],” Bagby said during the floor debate. “But I grew up watching ‘The Waltons,’ I grew up with Opie [the son of a sheriff played by Andy Griffith], I even watched the ‘Dukes of Hazzard.’ I think I know a little bit about rural America.”

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MHRA study on covid vaccine injuries: The numbers buried inside it deserved rather more attention

One in seven. That is the proportion of people in the MHRA’s own actively recruited surveillance cohort who reported a medically serious adverse reaction following covid vaccination. Over half reported at least one reaction of any kind. The data were collected between 2020 and 2022. They were not published until September 2025, and only then because Cheryl Grainger, through a Freedom of Information  (“FoI”) request and subsequent Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) appeal, forced it out.

The paper that eventually appeared, in the journal Drug Safety, was not written as a safety paper. It was written as a description of the digital platform used to collect the data – a methods paper published five months after Dame June Raine left as chief executive, nearly three years after the data were locked. The actual adverse reaction rates are reported but not analysed. The one stratification that could determine whether those rates are real was not performed.

The numbers buried inside it deserved rather more attention.

What the Data Show

The Yellow Card Vaccine Monitor (“YCVM”) was the MHRA’s premium data source. It was one of four pillars of its covid vaccine safety surveillance strategy. Unlike the passive Yellow Card scheme, where people report voluntarily and sporadically, the YCVM actively recruited people and followed them up at set intervals. The MHRA itself described it as a tool to “rapidly detect, confirm, characterise and quantify new risks.”

Of the 30,281 individuals who reported receiving a vaccination, 15,764 (52.1%) reported at least one adverse reaction. 4,134 (13.7%) reported a reaction classified as medically serious under the MedDRA system. This is a regulatory classification that includes events deemed medically significant by an internal MHRA panel and is broader than the lay meaning of “serious,” but not a trivial threshold. It encompasses hospitalisation, disability, life-threatening outcomes and death, but also other events judged clinically important.

However, the 13.7% might include people who volunteered for the monitor becausethey had been injured. The MHRA did not exclude people signing up afterthey had their vaccine.

The key question is how representative this cohort was. Any voluntary cohort, even an actively recruited one, may over-represent people who experienced problems. Other active surveillance systems internationally have reported lower rates, though none has been free of similar methodological limitations. The true rate is unknown – which is precisely the problem.

The YCVM was meant to be designed to quantify risk in a way passive surveillance could not because of reporting bias. However, the key simple analysis to enable interpretation was not done. The question is not whether 13.7% is the true rate of serious harm. The question is why the MHRA did not do the work to find out what the true rate is.

The Cohort It Did Not Analyse

The paper reports 35.6% registered before vaccination and 47.5% after. A further group registered on the same day, but the paper does not quantify it. Even allowing for this, the categories as presented account for only 83.1% of the cohort, leaving 16.9%, over 5,000 people, unclassified. The paper does not explain the gap.

The pre-vaccination and same-day registrants are the key group. They signed up before or at the point of vaccination, not in response to a bad reaction. Their data is substantially less vulnerable to post-event selection bias, which is the main challenge to the headline figures. The criticism that people with bad reactions were more motivated to register does not apply to them. They were already in the system.

The obvious analytical step is to separate these registrants and compare their Adverse Drug Reaction (“ADR”) rates to those who registered afterwards. If the prospective cohort shows substantially lower rates, the selection bias interpretation is supported and you would want to say so. If the rates are similar, the overall figures are validated and you would want to say that too. If the rates are lower, then that is the rate that is of interest and should be published. In any case, the comparison is critical and should have been presented.

The MHRA did not present the comparison. In a 21-page paper with 13 tables, this stratification – the single most important analysis for interpreting the headline findings – does not appear. I have submitted an FoI request for this data.

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SAY WHAT? Los Angeles Proposes New TAX to Pay to Fix Street Lights Broken by Copper Wire Thieves

The city of Los Angeles has a major street light problem. Thousands of the lights are out because thieves strip them of copper wire which they then turn around and sell for cash.

To deal with this problem and fix the lights, the city government is proposing a new TAX on the law abiding citizens who did not steal the copper wire. Can you even believe this?

The city wants to punish the people who didn’t ruin the street lights and make them pay to fix it. Unreal.

FOX 11 in Los Angeles reports:

Los Angeles voters to weigh fee increase for streetlight repairs amid copper theft concerns

A citywide plan to replace thousands of broken streetlights across Los Angeles could come with a cost increase for property owners under a proposed Proposition 218 assessment.

Mayor Karen Bass is urging voters to approve the measure, which would raise property-owner fees by an estimated 120% to help fund a $125 million program aimed at replacing more than 200,000 streetlights citywide. City officials say the current system generates roughly $45 million and has not been significantly updated since the 1990s, when Proposition 218 was adopted by California voters to require property-owner approval for new or increased local assessments.

Under the law, the city cannot raise streetlighting fees without a majority vote from affected property owners, a process that has kept much of the funding system largely unchanged for decades.

Ballots are expected to be mailed this week.

Across Los Angeles, officials say copper theft continues to worsen infrastructure problems, with thieves stripping wire from underground fiber lines and disabling streetlights in neighborhoods across the city. More than 32,000 streetlight repair requests remain pending.

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National Parental Rights Group Founder: Homeschooling ‘One Of The Last Remaining Spaces Where Parents Maintain Full Autonomy Over Children’s Education

Connecticut Democrats’ attempt to gain control of homeschooling reveals a desire to “force homeschoolers into alignment with the same ideological materials and standardized assessments that have already sparked controversy in government schools,” Sheri Few, founder and president of United States Parents Involved in Education, wrote in an op-ed at The Hill last week.

The national parental rights leader observed that Connecticut’s HB 5468 represents “a troubling pattern emerging whereby government agencies fail in their most basic responsibilities and lawmakers find someone else to blame.”

Few referred to state Democrats’ attempt to regulate homeschooling after their own government systems failed to attend to “repeated warnings in tragic child-abuse cases.”

“It is hard not to see this as a political sleight of hand,” she asserted. “A crisis exposes government negligence, yet instead of holding those agencies accountable, lawmakers pivot to regulate an entirely unrelated group.”

Rather than celebrate the Connecticut parents who choose to homeschool, sacrificing, for their children, their time and perhaps an opportunity for additional employment income, Democrat lawmakers want to require them to notify the government of their curriculum and be subjected to screening by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Education.

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The Dollar Lifeline in War – Currency Swaps

I have said for years that people misunderstand the global monetary system. It is not driven by trade balances. It is driven by capital flows and access to dollar liquidity. The discussion of a currency swap between the United States and the United Arab Emirates shows how the system actually works under stress.

The United States is now considering a currency swap with the UAE as tensions around Iran rise. This is not about trade policy. It is about liquidity. When uncertainty increases, capital begins to move. Countries need dollars to stabilize their financial systems and maintain confidence.

Currency swaps are often presented as technical tools. In reality, they are lifelines. They allow a foreign central bank to access U.S. dollars directly. This bypasses stressed markets and helps prevent a liquidity crisis that could trigger capital flight.

This is exactly what happens during geopolitical conflict. The Iran situation has raised concerns about the Strait of Hormuz. That region is critical for global energy flows. When energy is threatened, markets react immediately. Currency volatility rises and capital seeks safety.

The UAE is a strong economy, but it is still exposed. Its currency is pegged to the U.S. dollar, meaning it must maintain sufficient dollar reserves to function properly. When global stress increases, even strong economies seek direct dollar access. That is why a swap line becomes important.

There is also a geopolitical layer. Currency swaps are tools of influence. When the United States provides dollar liquidity, it reinforces alignment. If access is restricted, countries look for alternatives. That can include increasing use of other currencies like the Chinese yuan. The UAE has stated it would consider using the yuan if the U.S. denies them the opportunity to swap, but the issue has become polarizing.

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Obama-Appointed Judge Denise J. Casper Blocks Trump Administration’s Efforts to Stop ‘Green New Scam’

A federal judge in Boston issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of several federal policies affecting wind and solar energy development, siding with industry groups that argued the measures unlawfully delayed projects across the country.

Chief U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration could not enforce a series of permitting requirements and related policies that renewable energy advocates said had stalled or canceled projects nationwide. Casper concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claims that agencies including the Department of the Interior adopted unlawful procedures that created bottlenecks in the approval process.

The ruling applies to members of nine advocacy organizations and trade groups, including RENEW Northeast and the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. Those groups had challenged a policy requiring multiple levels of approval from senior political appointees for nearly every step in the permitting process for wind and solar projects. The judge found that the administration had not adequately justified the additional review structure.

The decision represents one of several recent judicial setbacks for President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to reshape federal energy policy. The administration has emphasized expanding fossil fuel production, promoting oil, coal, and natural gas output while reducing support for renewable energy sources. On Monday, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and signed memorandums aimed at increasing domestic energy production, citing national defense concerns.

According to court filings, the challenged Department of the Interior memorandum implemented directives aimed at eliminating what the administration called “preferences” for “expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.” The policy required nearly every step in the permitting process for wind and solar projects to receive approval from three senior political appointees, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The judge also blocked the Department’s “adoption of an interpretation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that ​imposes stricter standards for offshore wind projects,” Reuters reported. Plaintiffs argued the policy created a bottleneck that ground permitting to a halt and was adopted without explanation for why it was needed, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Casper agreed with those arguments, stating that the directives cited by the administration did not sufficiently justify the added review process or the stricter standards applied to renewable energy projects. Her order blocks enforcement of those policies while the case proceeds.

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Genocide Doesn’t Happen Without Language to Incite It

How is information made legitimate, and when is it appropriate for journalists to introduce skepticism? What happens when only one side of a conflict is given the legitimate voice, always repeated and rarely questioned, even when those sources have proven many times to have promulgated lies?

Military studies scholars and analysts understand that there is always a long genesis of historical, political and economic factors that can eventually erupt into conflict. In many ways, US establishment media seemed unwilling or unable (but likely both) to narrate a more complex, historically accurate account of the war on Gaza.

The Intercept (4/15/24) reported that editorial directives at the New York Times and CNN, two of the most important news sources in the US, advised reporters to avoid certain “taboo” words, such as “genocide” and “massacre.” Yet between October 7 and November 24, 2023, the Times used the word “massacre” 53 times—referring to Israelis killed by Palestinians, but only once to refer to a Palestinian killed by Israel (Intercept, 1/9/24).

From November onward, as deaths in Gaza piled up, the Times habitually avoided using emotionally fraught terms for Palestinians. Another term, “ethnic cleansing,” was also barred from use, along with “refugee camps” and “occupied territories.”

As the Times source who leaked the directives said, “You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict.”

US news outlets were crippled by these verbal restrictions, incapable of offering an accurate explanation of what was happening in Gaza by imposing such constraints on humanitarian language, and international principles and laws.

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The Surveillance Accountability Act Demands Warrants for Data

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have introduced the Surveillance Accountability Act, a bill that feels like someone took the Fourth Amendment and actually meant it.

The legislation aims “to ensure that all searches that significantly impinge on the privacy or security of a person require a warrant based on probable cause” and to create “a right of action for violations of Fourth Amendment rights.” That covers the kinds of searches federal agencies currently conduct without judicial oversight: pulling your financial records from banks, requesting your browsing history from ISPs, buying your location data from brokers, and harvesting your biometric information from surveillance cameras.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The bill lands in the middle of a brutal Congressional fight over FISA Section 702, the surveillance authority that currently lets the FBI search Americans’ communications.

The new legislation goes much further than the various reform bills circulating around that debate. Where the SAFE Act and the Government Surveillance Reform Act target specific loopholes in FISA, the Surveillance Accountability Act tries to close all of them at once by rewriting the baseline rule: if the government wants your data, it needs a judge’s permission.

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Bill introduced to allow physician-assisted death in Ohio

Addie O’Neil didn’t have a choice about how she would die.

After being diagnosed with stage 4 endometrial cancer in 2018, O’Neil was in hospice care for two years. Her final week of life was spent in a drug-induced coma to alleviate her pain. Through it all, Addie’s husband of 40 years, Jim, and their children were there.

“We stood vigil, watching the woman we love slowly waste away until thankfully, her heart finally gave out,” said Jim O’Neil, of Lucas County, at the Ohio Statehouse on April 23. Next to him, his daughter Rochelle held a picture of Addie, who died in 2020.

O’Neil is asking Ohio to join 13 states and Washington, D.C., that allow physician-assisted death. A new bill from Rep. Eric Synenberg, D-Beachwood, would legalize the option, but it could face a mountain of opposition in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

“This bill is about choice, a choice only the terminally ill can make for themselves,” O’Neil said.

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Trump’s Embrace of Psychedelic Therapy Leaves Most Users on the Wrong Side of the Law

On Saturday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at “accelerating medical treatments for serious mental illness” by facilitating regulatory approval of ibogaine and other psychedelics that have shown promise as psychotherapeutic catalysts. Although the case for doing that is compelling, the medical model embraced by the president excludes most psychedelic use, which will remain illegal even if the “historic reforms” that Trump announced work as planned.

Trump takes it for granted that Americans should be allowed to use psychedelics only for reasons that the government recognizes as legitimate. Otherwise, they are criminals rather than patients, subject to arrest, prosecution, and potentially severe penalties for daring to assert sovereignty over their own bodies and minds.

The injustice of that policy is readily apparent when people use psychedelics in ways that manifestly improve their lives. Many combat veterans, for example, have found that ibogaine, which is derived from the root of an African shrub, provides dramatic relief from the constellation of problems known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“It absolutely changed my life for the better,” former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, whose Afghanistan memoir inspired the 2013 movie Lone Survivor, remarked as Trump signed his executive order. “I was reborn,” says Luttrell’s twin brother, Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R–Texas), also a former Navy SEAL. “It is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.”

Because ibogaine is banned in the United States, the Luttrell brothers had those transformational experiences at a clinic in Mexico. So did the 30 subjects of a recent Nature Mental Health study, which found that ibogaine, combined with magnesium as a safeguard against the drug’s cardiac side effects, “safely and effectively reduces PTSD, anxiety and depression and improves functioning in veterans” with traumatic brain injuries.

Research on ibogaine, which also is reputed to be remarkably useful for people struggling with drug addiction, is relatively limited so far. But the evidence supporting the use of MDMA (for PTSD) and psilocybin (for depression), both of which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated as “breakthrough” therapies, is strong enough that they may soon be approved as prescription medications.

If that happens, some people who could benefit from these drugs will be able to use them legally, provided they can obtain a diagnosis and a prescription. But where does that leave all the psychedelic users who can’t meet those requirements?

In a 2023 survey of psilocybin users, the RAND Corporation found that the most common motivations included “fun” (59 percent), “improved mental health” (49 percent), “personal development” (45 percent), “curiosity” (43 percent), and “spiritual growth” (41 percent). Although very few of those people would qualify for the medical exception that Trump advocates, that does not mean their reasons for using psilocybin should be dismissed as frivolous, let alone that they should be treated as criminals.

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