Rick Wojcik

Conservatives on the Supreme Court want to allow legislators to restrict what teachers can say in a classroom and how doctors can advise and treat patients. Now they seem seem to want to block legal bans on conversion therapy. How will they thread that needle? Should be interesting.

The verb 'should' is literally the past tense form of 'shall'. When you say "I should eat healthy food, but..." you are talking about an imagined situation (irrealis frame) in which your good intention is prior to contrary behavior.

If intention is a semantic component of agency, then 'want' is not really an agentive verb. The verb 'choose' is. People experience moods and emotions, but they don't necessarily act on them. What is interesting about 'should' is that sometimes you shouldn't.

When she mentioned Trump's unhinged performance before the generals, Johnson said "I didn't see it" almost before the words were out of her mouth. He was ready for the question because he very much did see it.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh and racial proxies Immigration Matters is a recurring series by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández that analyzes the court’s immigration docket, highlighting emerging legal questions about new policy and enforcement prac...

Supreme Court has made racial profiling legal. The justification was left unsaid, but it was ostensibly to allow Trump's ICE police to randomly detain people they feel look like illegal immigrants. The result, of course, is that a lot of actual US citizens are being harassed and detained.

Sinclair brings Jimmy Kimmel's show back to its ABC-affiliated stations, ending blackout Sinclair Broadcast Group has decided to bring Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show back to its ABC affiliate stations.

The CEO at Sinclair has suddenly discovered that censoring shows for political reasons isn't the best business strategy.

The title page of our monograph. It says: Cambridge Elements Cognitive Linguistics Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution Michael Pleyer and Stefan Hartmann

Hello new followers! If you're interested in what I do why not have a look at @stefanhartmann.bsky.social and my little #openaccess monograph on Cognitive #Linguistics and #Language Evolution!
As a colleague said: "I really liked it, because it's very short!"
www.cambridge.org/core/element...

What is Acoustic Phonetics? Acoustic phonetics is a subfield of phonetics that studies the sound waves produced when we speak, analysing how vocal vibrations travel through the air.

Did you know that investigators can use spectrograms (visual displays of speech) to help identify speakers or verify audio recordings in legal cases?

This is thanks to acoustic phonetics: https://aboutlinguistics.com/explore/what-is-acoustic-phonetics

#Phonetics #Linguistics #Languages #Forensics

Trump administration rehires hundreds of federal employees laid off by DOGE | CNN Politics Hundreds of federal employees who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.

The Trump administration is being forced to clean up some of the expensive mess left behind by the DOGE job massacres. Those returning will have had a long paid vacation at taxpayer expense.
www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/p...

It will be interesting to see whether Trump tries to make good on the regulatory threats in retaliation for letting Kimmel back on the air.

Trump Border Czar Caught on Camera Taking Cash in FBI Sting The Trump DOJ shut down the investigation.

The MAGA regime is arguably the most corrupt administration in US history. When it comes to criticizing other countries for corruption, we now hold the moral underground.

White House tries to tamp down corporate panic for high-skill visa holders after last-minute overhaul The Trump administration announced Friday that H-1B visas will now come with a $100,000 annual fee, but the White House says it will only apply to new visa applicants.

Confusion and chaos are normal for an administration that issues decrees without any apparent foresight, planning, or feedback. The inexperienced lackeys running government departments don't know what it will take to implement the decrees, but they know the consequences of disobeying orders.

I agree that he should sue, but it is going to be very expensive. Trump is experienced at drawing out lawsuits and could easily afford to tie this up for a long time. Trump also has the full services of the DoJ to deploy against Kimmel. This lawsuit won't be that easy to win.

Linguistic usage has always been political. Here is an excellent example of politicians fighting over the usage of linguistic gender. In an attempt to legislate preferred gender pronoun and title usage, Republicans accidentally tried to ban their own preferred pronouns and titles. Er...what? 🤔

Russian jets over Estonia ignored signals from NATO pilots, officials say A senior Estonian military official said Russian pilots ignored signals from Italian jets during a 12-minute violation of Estonian airspace.

The US is run by an increasingly unpopular tyrant who has seriously weakened the Western alliance of countries. Now is a time to expect both Russia and China to increase tests of their military defenses with incidents like this.

Kennedy's vaccine advisers change COVID shot guidance, calling them an individual choice Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new vaccine advisers added confusion Friday to this fall's COVID-19 vaccinations.

Voodoo medicine replaces science. These people clearly don't know what they are doing, and they are a danger to the health of Americans.

Trump says TV networks 'against' him should 'maybe' lose licence after Kimmel suspension "Maybe their licence should be taken away," Trump said of broadcasters that he argued covered him unfairly.

ABC's cowardice or complicity is undermining the principle of free speech. This is exactly the kind of thing that happened in Russia when Putin consolidated his dictatorship and in Hungary when Orban did the same.
bbc.com/news/article...

The complaint about "cancel culture" has always been pure hypocrisy. Trump has risen to power primarily on his ability to cancel Republicans. The use of regulatory powers to stifle political opposition just copies a tactic that has worked for authoritarians in other countries.

I just wanted to point out that Kimmel's remark did not actually say that the kid who shot Kirk was one of them. It said that MAGA was using the claim he was not one of them to score political points. Too many reporters are buying the spin and not looking at what Kimmel actually said.

Even liberal commentators are going with the idea that Kimmel said the shooter was affiliated with MAGA. Wrong! Kimmel said that MAGA was using the excuse that the kid was "anything other than one of them" to score political points. Kimmel was just talking about how MAGA was using the story.

Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” Is this a claim Robinson was MAGA? I don't think so.

Kimmel's quote: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” IMO, not the same as saying that Robinson was MAGA.

‘Censoring you in real time’: suspension of Jimmy Kimmel show sparks shock and fears for free speech ABC decision over Kimmel comments about Charlie Kirk’s killing comes hours after Trump-appointed chair of US media regulator threatened broadcaster’s license

It is a hallmark of censorship in authoritarian regimes that media outlets censor themselves. The Trump regime is moving quickly now to shut down freedom of expression in the US. First Colbert, now Kimmel.
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Perhaps it would look better for the administration, if we just calculated the average number of felonies per world leader and said that Trump only caused a small increase in that average. Just trying to imagine how one could use statistics to make the ugly look prettier.

Trump cannot fire Fed's Lisa Cook before FOMC meeting, appeals court rules Trump's attorneys wanted a lower-court ruling, which temporarily barred Cook's firing, stayed ahead of the Fed's upcoming meeting on interest rates.

This is all well and good, but every member of the board now knows that Donald Trump will try to fire members he disagrees with and replace them with political loyalists. That is bound to be on their minds when they make decisions.
www.cnbc.com/2025/09/15/t...

Stephen Miller Vows to Target Left-wing Groups Over Kirk’s Murder In a podcast appearance with Vice-President Vance, Miller cast blame on amorphous “terrorist networks.”

The Trump administration appears to see the Charlie Kirk assassination as a pretext for taking action against opposition groups. Kirk is to be treated as a political martyr that was the victim of an organized conspiracy rather than a loner.
nymag.com/intelligence...

Judge orders Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard "There is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism," U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs said in a ruling Wednesday.

But is this OK with the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court? It seems like such an obvious ruling, but...

A couple of million more Americans voted for Trump and got the president they deserved. Unfortunately, the rest of us got the president they deserved.

Trump lays out his redistricting endgame: A 100 seat Republican majority "STOP MAIL-IN VOTING, a total fraud that has no bounds," Trump said.

Trump pulls out the stops for one-party rule. Republicans are all in. Can he be stopped? Blue states have systems in place to block unfair election gerrymandering. It may take years to mount an effective counteroffensive.