Matt Robare

Jonathan the oldest tortoise is alive and well - and enjoying some bananas today on St. Helena 🐢🍌 🎥 @sthelenatourism @GO_ASHT

My warm take on birthright citizenship: Wholly defensible to be against it as policy and wholly reasonable to want to reform it in some way. Also intellectually defensible to say that the 14th amendment is being misinterpreted. Doesn't mean I agree, but I don't think it's crazy either. But even if you win that argument, you still need to deal with century+ of precedent and statutory language that codifies it and has created massive reliance interests. I consider it an open question whether Congress can repeal or modify birthright citizenship. I think it is absolutely nuts and dangerous to think a president can repeal it through executive order, and defending the E.O. because you agree with the underlying policy is itself indefensible. That's it. That's my take.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." When it comes to abandoning the plain speech of the Constitution and trying to turn it into a "living document," we've reached the point where, yes, both sides do it. And we should reject both sides when they try to do it.

Now that Artemis II has launched we have 10 days to get everyone on Earth a Planet of the Apes costume so we can do something hilarious when the astronauts return 😁

Fun fact: The new Elizabeth line in London moved more people in 2025 than Highway 401, the busiest freeway in North America.

Britain needs to reckon with the fact that it is not just a developing country economically, but also in political culture. - There are widespread perceptions of corruption. - Governments are not capable of pulling off large projects without enormous consent generation schemes through established interest groups (NGOs) and massive side payments - The government is not trusted with expropriation tools - Even left-wing governments cannot raise broad-based taxes (and the far left opposition don’t make the case for broad-based taxes, but that they can extract loads of money from the rich and other scapegoats) - Even right-wing governments cannot take away state welfare entitlements - There is a dizzying array of inconsistent privileges - Parties are becoming less ideological and more tribal. There are explicit ethnoreligious parties standing, and bloc voting is becoming more and more common. - Everyone thinks that all politicians are liars - Almost no one is willing to take a hit in the interests of the country, and no one is expected to. I think all of these things are connected, and I also think it’s foolish and self defeating to pretend we are Britain of the 1950s, or Denmark, and that we can simply implement the most efficient policies by deciding to — we just need more political will! Instead, we need to be realistic about what a country in our situation can achieve. We need to come up with ways to steadily build state legitimacy and state capacity, by stigmatising dishonesty and using the tools of the past, which worked when we were last in this situation. The government can’t be trusted to spend money, so taxes need to be hypothecated to things voters want if we want to raise more. Large projects need to involve more specific deals with losers, overriding objectors with local support not (nonexistent) national fiat. Anything controversial needs to be approved in a party’s manifesto, or in a referendum. If it can’t be voted through, it cannot be implemented. If the voter doesn’t want it, they need to be convinced, or it can’t be done.

a library is the most radical institution in america and nobody treats it that way. anyone can walk in. no purchase necessary. free internet, free books, free air conditioning, free notary services for some reason. if someone proposed it today it'd be killed as socialism

The United States was never a “dead and crippled country,” Donald. When you took office, our economy was the envy of the world. This was the Economist cover in October 2024. Don’t lie.

Set the antisemitism question aside: isn't it a real problem that academia seems to attract a glut of clinically insane people?

Several Arab countries invited 100s of Nazis after WWII (far more than just von Leers) to continue their extermination campaign against Jews and now the Jewish state. Some examples: Alois Brunner (SS-Hauptsturmführer, Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man, and the "Butcher of Salonica” who personally deported ~128,000 Jews to death camps and ran the Drancy camp) was welcomed to Syria where he trained security forces in Gestapo torture and interrogation methods and helped build the regime’s repressive apparatus that targeted Jews and political enemies. He lived comfortably in Damascus for three decades as a free man. Leopold Gleim (Gestapo chief in Warsaw and head of Jewish Affairs in occupied Poland) was welcomed to Egypt where he converted to Islam and then organized Egypt’s secret police and internal security in the Nazi model and was also directly involved in pogroms against Egyptian Jews. Bernhard Bender (Gestapo special section chief for clandestine Jewish movements and deportations in Poland and the Soviet Union) was welcomed to Egypt where he worked in Egyptian security services' political prisoners section and helped craft anti-Jewish policies and strategy while also contributing to repression and later the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands. Otto Skorzeny (SS-Obersturmbannführer and Hitler's favorite commando leader) was welcomed to Egypt where he acted as a military advisor directly to President Nasser and helped build Egypt's intelligence and special forces. He even helped train Palestinian Arab fedayeen terrorists in sabotage and guerrilla tactics.

THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE NEXT DOOR While the world fixates on Gaza, few dare to look east of me - where a true genocide has been ongoing for over 60 years. WHO ARE THE VICTIMS? West Papua - once Dutch New Guinea - is home to over 300 distinct Melanesian tribes. Ethnically, culturally, and linguistically unique, they’ve faced decades of systematic violence under Indonesian rule. Since the 1960s, estimates suggest 100,000 to over 500,000 indigenous Papuans have been killed. Entire villages burned. Children starved. Women raped. Life expectancy in some areas is 30–40 years. THE SHAM OF "DEMOCRACY" In 1969, under the UN-brokered “Act of Free Choice”, just 1,025 handpicked Papuans voted - under intimidation - for integration with Indonesia. Critics call it the “Act of No Choice.” Dissent was crushed with bombings, arrests, and executions. The UN endorsed it anyway. DECADES OF ATROCITIES Mass Killings: Operations like Clean Sweep (1981) killed up to 13,000. The 1998 Biak massacre saw over 200 shot and dumped at sea. Recent drone strikes continue to kill civilians, including children. Torture & Extrajudicial Executions: Beatings, electric shocks, mutilations, and targeted assassinations like Theys Eluay (2001). Rape & Sexual Violence: Used systematically to terrorize, including girls as young as 3 years old. Forced Displacement & Starvation: Over 100,000 Papuans have fled into jungles or across borders to escape violence. CULTURAL ERASURE Indonesia’s transmigration program brought millions from Java and Sumatra, diluting Papuan culture and power. Indigenous Papuans went from 96% of the population in 1971 to barely 40–50% today, while corporate and military interests exploit land, forests, and rivers. WHY THE SILENCE? The UN calls abuses “shocking,” yet international governments remain quiet. Resource interests, geopolitics, and fear of challenging Indonesia’s sovereignty keep this genocide invisible to the world. THE BOTTOM LINE This is not history. This is ongoing genocide, systematic cultural erasure, and state-sanctioned violence. While headlines scream from Gaza, West Papua bleeds in silence. Awareness is justice. Ignorance is complicity. If you didn't know, now you know.....

Most criticism of Zionism can be summarized as: "Stop defending yourself! Can't you see it's hurting the people trying to kill you!"

Conservatism in America, if it's anything, is constitutionalism, originalism, traditionalism, federalism, capitalism, etc. So yeah, I don't give a flying flip if those who have departed each and every one of these things goes on and on about how I'm supposedly not a conservative...they're all full of it. It's them that have become something else while I refuse to budge on the tried and true principles of American conservatism.

Not sure if you know this, Martina, but for nearly 5 decades the UN has promised Israel that southern Lebanon would be kept free of terror orgs (PLO then, Hezbollah now) threatening northern Israel. That promise has been repeatedly broken. UN Resolution 425 was passed in 1978 after the PLO attacked civilians in northern Israel and deployed UNIFIL to secure the area south of the Litani River. The PLO returned under UNIFIL's watch and kept attacking northern Israel. In 2006, after a devastating war that Hezbollah started, the UN passed Resolution 1701 explicitly demanding Hezbollah withdraw north of the Litani River, which the Lebanese government even signed onto. Hezbollah ignored all of it and over the next two decades built thousands of rocket positions, tunnels, and bunkers right under UNIFIL's nose. UNIFIL did nothing. Lebanon did nothing. The UN documented the violations and did nothing. Hezbollah started attacking Israel on October 8, 2023 and for two years kept launching rockets, paralyzing all of northern Israel, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis (many of them Arab and Druze) seeking shelter, and turning cities like Metula and Kiryat Shmona into ghost towns. At the end of 2024, another ceasefire agreement made the same demand for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani river. Hezbollah violated it again, joining the Iran War. Multiple guarantees. Multiple violations. All by these terror orgs. And Israeli civilians paid the price. Israel has had enough: neither the Lebanese government nor the UN have the capability nor the will to enforce these commitments. Israel is now justly taking matters into their hands, and anyone who's clutching their pearls about it needs to explain exactly what it is Israel should do instead. Otherwise, they're being either willfully ignorant or dishonest.

I support the end of birthright citizenship because it’s time for criminals to stop moving here, stealing from the government, taking drugs, and fathering dozens of children out of wedlock. by Elon Musk

President Trump can sign whatever the hell he wants to, but it won’t change the Constitution. The authority to set our election rules belongs to the states — and as Governor, I will protect your right to vote. That includes your right to vote by mail.

It is impossible for states to “disobey” an executive order. An executive order is a vehicle by which a president directs executive-branch officials how to administer existing law. Trump cannot “mandate” how states administer their absentee-ballot laws. Insofar as the EO will threaten to withhold federal funds, Trump will need a statutory basis for imposing that condition. (And if he has one, why hasn’t he acted before now?)

I bet most have never seen this. It is a document dated a January 5th, 2021 that contains all coordinated false narrative talking points for Republicans the day before January 6th. This alone should have put Trump and others in jail given the attack on the Capitol the next day.

BREAKING: 🇬🇧 Britain slams “antisemitic and inflammatory comments” by UN special rapporteurs—after calling for urgent investigation of Francesca Albanese for violating UN Code of Conduct. “This behavior undermines the objectivity and impartiality expected by all mandate holders.”