We’ll get to the rose-without-thorns story. It’s a Valentine’s special you won’t want to miss. But first:
Number 5. Breitbart. Let Hell Break Out. Trump demands Hamas free hostages by Saturday noon.
You may recall that in December President-Elect Trump declared categorically that all the October 7 Israeli hostages held by Hamas must be released before his inauguration, or there would “be hell to pay.”
Many observers were therefore surprised when Trump seemed to accept a January deal for their phased release over a 6-week period, beginning January 20. The arrangement also called for a 30-to-1 swap: Israel to release 30 Palestinian prisoners for every single Israeli. This seemed a lot like a recalcitrant child pushing the limits to see how far Mom would bend.
We have become so accustomed to Trumpian outbursts that I was frankly a little disappointed in his lack of thunder.
Now, it seems, Mom has run out of patience.
When Hamas waffled on the deal this week, claiming that Israel had violated conditions of the agreement, Trump was suddenly back. The new deadline is now this weekend, Saturday. All 73 remaining hostages, an unknown number of whom are believed to be already dead, must be returned by noon that day. Otherwise, said the President, the notional “hell to pay” consequence is back on the table.
What exactly that might mean is unclear, which is probably the point. One thing seems obvious, however: Trump does not mean to interfere with whatever steps Israel takes, if they don’t get their people back.
As a footnote to this story, I wonder about the Palestinians released from prison. The somewhat bizarre 30-to-1 ratio was established for civilian Israelis. Every Israeli soldier released required 50 Palestinians, which is why the 4 female Israeli soldiers released on January 25 saw 200 Palestinians loaded onto buses for their return to Gaza.
This particular one-sided swap has caused expected outrage among Israelis. One Jewish man’s cousin was killed in a bus bombing in 2002 by one of the terrorists just turned loose in January as part of this exchange. Time, says the man who himself escaped death in that instance by only seconds, does not heal all wounds.
Where is the justice?
I think it was in Tai-Pan, the James Clavell novel of Hong Kong in the 19th century, where the Englishman hero — the “Tai-Pan” — makes good on a promise to give his commercial enemy a fully equipped, armed sailing ship — a pirate raider, if you will. Once the bad guy sails it away, the promise thus fulfilled, the Tai-Pan sends two of his own warships after the prize, attacks it and sinks it the same afternoon.
Given the Israeli propensity for exacting unexpected justice, the released Palestinians might want to keep an eye on their six. For a long time.
Number 4. ESPN. Trump bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Using another executive order that flexes the muscle of the federal purse, Trump signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” declaration this week.
Federal funds will be withheld from schools and athletic associations which permit biological men inside women’s locker rooms.
The order, like his others, reflects a growing mood of the country toward a return to what most Americans thought was the way nature intended things anyway. A New York Times poll found, no doubt to the chagrin of a shrinking number of people, that fully 79% of Americans agreed that boys need to stay outside while the girls are changing.
There was a fairly delicious interchange in a House committee meeting between U.S. Representatives Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Gerald Connolly (D-VA) over the issue of transgender language. I would recap the conversation, but this is a family publication and I will resist. Nothing would keep you from clicking on the YouTube video, however. (The relevant piece is at 6:51 in the link.)
As far as the signing itself, Andrew Klavan of Daily Wire fame observed in a recent monolog that the official photograph of the event was more telling than the order itself. The shot is of scores of women and their pre-teen daughters surrounding the President with smiles and laughter, watching as he signs.
Klavan’s point is that this scene illustrates a quintessential truth of nature: Women cannot help but adore a strong man who takes action to protect them.
Number 3. RedState dot com. The US Treasury Spent HOW MUCH Illegally?
The Congressional Budget Office this week released their final report on government spending for 2024. CBO identified $516 billion in appropriations that were made without legal authorization.
Given a federal budget of over $6 trillion — at that level, who cares about the rounding — this is about 15% of all federal spending last year.
The illegality comes about because every dollar spent is, in theory, authorized by law. The authorization for these billions were expired. No fewer than 1,264 authorizations expired prior to January 1, 2024, and another 251 expired during the year.
The money flowed anyway. The article shows a portion of the line-item expenditures, and most of the programs funded have titles that Americans would support: Veteran’s Health Care, Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Improving Head Start, FAA Reauthorization, on and on.
What is not so clear from the titles, however, is how the funds are actually routed once released. The article makes a point of the “shadow funding stream” within many of those legitimate initiatives. Other journalism — none of it mainstream — has pointed out how much of the cash makes its way to entrenched left-wing initiatives within government. Not to mention to individual lawmakers.
I expect there will be much more to come on this.
One telling fact is that when Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy first began to make noise of their suspicions about the direction of these funds in November, outlets like CBS News and The Hill were quick to point out that there was no “there” there. The spending appropriations that were supposedly “illegal,” they said, were long-standing arrangements that had been duly authorized in the past. The failure to reauthorize such reasonable and expected expenses was merely an oversight and could easily be corrected.
I’m not sure why I should be reassured by this. One of the jobs of the Congress is to authorize spending. If they cannot authorize things that we all should agree are good and pure, how are we to trust them to handle controversial disbursements?
Having just submitted my tax return, I look somewhat wistfully at half a trillion dollars in an unrestrained firehose of spending. How much of that was mine?
This is not the only spending issue to come to light this week. Musk also identified $100 billion in payments to individuals who lacked social security numbers. This is an annual number, not a one-time event.
Most of the payments appear to be related to fraud.
We will probably also, in coming weeks, discuss the blood-letting at USAID, where much of the budget is apparently spread to what we could very delicately call questionable projects: $1.5 million to LGBTQ efforts in Serbia; $2.5 million to support electric vehicles in Vietnam; $6 million for the tourism industry in Egypt.
Reports vary how much U.S. taxpayer money USAID dispenses, but it seems to be around $50 billion a year.
If Elon Musk continues to identify what most of us would certainly call superfluous, if not downright unrighteous, spending, he will come very close to finding the $2 trillion in overspending that he promised late last year.
We could go further here, but the subject makes me a little… well… upset. One must remember one’s delicate condition.
Number 2. National Criminal Justice Association. Wave of California Political Corruption Cases.
But while we’re on a roll, we had just as well keep going.
This bright spot of happy news is from California. It seems that one Jose Huizar, a former Los Angeles City Council member, was convicted this week in a case of bribery and corruption. The highly accomplished lawyer who had graduated from Berkeley, Princeton and UCLA was engaged in overseeing widespread commercial development projects in the City of Angels.
If it weren’t for receiving $1.8 million in gifted casino chips, hotel stays, cash and prostitutes, he still could be. Federal prosecutors made the case, and local jurors agreed, that the money and the in-kind awards, amounted to bribery, mostly from Chinese developers.
The former councilman now faces 13 years in prison for tax evasion and racketeering. In beginning his incarceration, Mr. Huizar joins 50 other high-profile political and business figures from Los Angeles and San Francisco who have been convicted since 2019.
In all, 576 public officials in California have been convicted of federal corruption charges in the last 10 years. That’s convicted, not merely accused.
I hope they were paid well. It makes me think I may have wasted all the opportunities afforded by my decade on the City Council here in Benton, Kansas.
Number 1. CNN. Scientists trace roses’ thorny origins.
Those sharp, unpleasant things on a rose stem are not actually thorns. Thorns are long, solid pointy objects like those found on locust and citrus trees. The thorns on locusts are downright deadly to your tires.
Rather, the spiky things on rose stems are like similar protective growths on other plants such as raspberries and blackberries. Scientists refer to these objects as prickles. They are unpleasant, and if ignored, will occasionally draw blood.
The usefulness of the prickles is that they keep predators away from the sweet parts.
The rose stands alone — other than perhaps the much more rare black orchid — as the symbol of love on this Valentine’s Day. (Never mind the diamonds or the new Lexus… we are dealing with a more blue-collar crowd here at the ANR.)
Now, researchers at various universities have combined to study where the prickles came from, and have concluded, unsurprisingly, that they resulted from evolutionary biology, tracing back about 400 million years. The prickles apparently developed as mutations to prevent ancient critters from eating the plant fruit, and thus became essential survival mechanisms.
The article goes into much more detail than I care to read about plant DNA, something called the Lonely Guy Gene, and how a technique called CRISPR is used to non-destructively alter the genomes of a living organism.
The point seems to be that we now have the capability to grow a rose without the prickles.
Which is a sad metaphor for a failed Valentine’s love affair, if I’ve ever heard one.
The pursuit of love, which approximately 100% of the human population is, has been, or will be engaged in, is all about finding, acquiring and nourishing that perfect rose.
Removing the thorns (okay… the prickles) removes the risk of hurt. Without the risk of hurt, of what value is the love? Avoiding the certainty of pain requires forethought, careful consideration and extreme gentleness.
Hoping that you and your Valentine enjoy your day.
And… I do like the way a Lonely Guy Gene entered into a Valentine’s story of roses and thorns.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, February 14, 2025. You have two months left to file your taxes. The clock is running and there are no timeouts left. Sign your return with a kiss and a prayer that your tax dollars might be used to good effect by a bureaucratic government showing generosity that only a $6 trillion spending plan could display.
Have a good weekend!
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