There is a huge contradiction in the witness' testimony!

And now: Libertommunists!

I trust you’ve heard about the new "GDPR" edict recently pronounced by the savages in Brussels. In case you haven’t, here’s the skinny: it stands for "General Data Protection Regulation," which means that it’s exactly as communist as the acronym "GDPR" makes you think it is. The long and short is that the European Union — read: a bunch of feckless bureaucrats in Brussels — now asserts that it has the authority to control exactly what data literally every entity in the world collects and what is done with it. Because, you know, safety and that.

Apparently, the level of monstrous totalitarianism on display here just isn’t sufficiently obvious to disabuse fashionable libertarians of the notion that arrogating huge amounts of power to a tiny cabal of criminals will be just aces for freedom and liberty.

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In two years of Last Week in Weird, I have never talked about this guy. My bad.

Last Week in Weird

Public service

It’s been only a few short weeks since the eight-year horror that was the Obama administration gave way to the new and exciting horror of the Trump administration, but I bet you’d already forgotten about Joe Biden. No, admit it, you forgot. Well, uncle Joe’s been a busy man, starting a new career for himself at the University of Pennsylvania, where he’s been named the "Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor," a gigantic mouthful of syntax stew with no clear meaning. What does it mean to be a professor of "presidential practice?" Does the University of Pennsylvania have a "Being the President" major? Was Benjamin Franklin ever president? These questions, and many more, are in need of answer.

Don’t ask the university, though; they’re as clueless as we are.

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Quick, Gary! To the Johnsoncave! Wait...

Last Week in Weird

Trash talk

Former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson won the Libertarian Party presidential nomination last week, beating out John McAfee, Austin Petersen, and a host of other people, most of whom were vastly more libertarian and all of whom were vastly more entertaining than Gary Johnson. I’ve had unkind words for Austin Petersen in the past — and no doubt will again in the future — but in the aftermath of Johnson’s victory, he was all class, pledging to support the nominee anyhow, and presenting him with a fine gift: a replica of George Washington’s personal flintlock. A clearly emotional Petersen informed Johnson that "you have my sword, and you have my gun" as he delivered the gift, in a touching moment no doubt intended to unify a Libertarian Party fractured by an unusually acrimonious primary season.

Gary Johnson then threw the flintlock in the trash.

Apparently, Johnson was "frustrated" that Petersen only pledged him unconditional support and also gave him a valuable and symbolically-charged keepsake and also clearly attempted to unite the party behind the nominee. This, in Johnson’s eyes, was insufficient penance for Petersen’s great sin: he is skeptical of Johnson’s hilariously unlibertarian running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld.

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