Under Iowa's new law:

Exercising one's religion includes the ability to refuse to do anything "substantially motivated by one's sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief", as defined in the bill, allowing for a broad legal interpretation.

Just sent my sophomore (no pics) at the University of Iowa a form letter to give to her professors. Reads something like this: "I sincerely believe that only God possesses the right to judge people's actions, including my actions. Therefore, your grading system violates my sincerely held religious beliefs. I hereby demand that you refrain from grading my performance in class. I will attend classes and you will give me the requisite hours of credit for my attendance."

Sounds crazy?

Before answering . . . please tell me how individuals can use "religious exemptions" to avoid becoming vaccinated.

I would absolutely love to read stories of people "flipping the coin" and taking advantage of the legislature's broad statute in ways that will infuriate the legislature.

Thought I posted about this when it happened, but couldn't find anything. My bad if so.

I spoke with Trey Buchanan -- son of Indiana Pacers GM, Chad Buchanan -- about his decision to walk on at Iowa a couple days ago. Trey shared his thoughts on how he believes he can carve out a role at Iowa, why the staff likes him, his relationship with Connor McCaffery and more.

STORY:

The home of a local pizza icon is being considered for historic landmark designation despite the building owner's pleas to abandon the campaign.

The Iowa City City Council on Tuesday, April 2 chose to consult with the Planning and Zoning Commission before adding a historic preservation overlay district to 302-316 Bloomington Street.

The address is home to Pagliai’s Pizza, several apartments, and a laundromat.

City staff and the Historic Preservation Commission Chair cited the property’s long-standing, integral presence in the northside neighborhood. They also referenced the structure's "unique character" and "one-of-a-kind architecture."

E. Bloomington property is nearly 150 years old​

First built in 1875, the primary building at 302. E. Bloomington Street was used for a Czech dance club. The adjacent laundromat was initially a horse stable. The building's interior was renovated through the years into an apartment-type building that also included a market.







The building and laundromat are considered one property and would be rezoned under the historic preservation district designation.

Pagliai’s Pizza opened in 1969 and eventually became its most iconic tenant, having served residents for more than 50 years.

Building owner Gary Skarda put the E. Bloomington property up for sale for $5 million in October 2023.

From October:Pagliai's Pizza building hits the real estate market at $5 million, business will stay open

Teague, Salih have minor concerns, shelving vote​

The April 2 council meeting was met with broad community support for the building. A group of people passed out stickers that urged the council to “Save the Pagliai’s Building.”

Building owner Gary Skarda filed a protest of the commission’s historic landmark recommendation just hours before the council meeting, meaning a “supermajority” of the council, six of the seven members, would need to approve the historic designation. A typical, uncontested vote would require only a simple majority of four councilors.


Councilor Laura Bergus was absent at Tuesday’s meeting and thus, a unanimous vote was needed.

Skarda believes a historic landmark designation would make the building more difficult to sell.

A protective rezoning would force owners to consult the Historic Preservation Commission before making physical changes to the building.

Marx recognized the value of labor in producing things, and further acknowledged the ownership of that labor by the worker. He believed that workers had common (class) interests so that, for example, it didn't make sense for workers to go to war to defend the unshared profits of capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Pretty straightforward notions that the rich and powerful don't want people thinking about too much.

I don't get why so many Americans are scared about Marxism and use "Marxist" and "Marxism" to vilify some people and scare others.

Can someone explain that to me?

Sick of hearing about how difficult of a season they've had. They lose one five star, they just put another in. Since 2020 they have had 11 top 30 high school recruits according to hoop gurlzs and 5 In the top ten. Iowa 1 in each category. CC Geno was saying if you want to find the top player in the country, just look at the best player on a championship team. What Iowa has done in the past two years is way more impressive that what Uconn has even if they win it all. The talent level is not comparable. I would say a player that can elevate her teammates to play at a five star level is on a different plane than the best player from all star teams like Lsu, Uconn , and South Carolina

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...fooled a few folks hahaha

And, do you like it? How expensive is it?

I have Norton. I've been using it for a couple of years and I like it. But it's expensive, and there are additional add-on's I could buy to add to the cost.

I use the password manager and the PC system cleaner in addition to the threat detection tools.

Is it worth it? What is out there that is better or less expensive? Or both?

Now that "he who shall not be named" is gone from the program, how do you project the starting lineup in 2024?

Begging for $$$

LOL

"Oh Hill Yeah" ad by Hillshire Farms has their panties in wads...

Via email from hate group leader Monica Cole:

Hillshire Farm’s smoked sausage and lunchmeat commercials include a double entendre that is inappropriate and unnecessary. Foul language (or the implication of it) is not needed in this or any commercial, but that is obviously what Hillshire Farm intended with their play on words.
The ad praises their food, of course, bragging on how delicious it is, Then, the commercial ends right after the insinuated but obvious profane ending, “Oh, Hill Yeah.”
Hillshire Farm chose to include phrases that sound just like curse words and to end the ad with viewers understanding exactly what was implied.
This type of advertising is entirely unnecessary. Hillshire Farm has deliberately decided to produce controversial advertisements instead of wholesome ones. One Million Moms finds this highly inappropriate.

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Well?

He’s in the transfer portal. Where does he end up. Is he someone we would consider?

125-Drake
133- Schriever
141- Kale Petersen? Can Victor V make 141?
149- Rathjen or Block
157- ? Can Kennedy make 157?
165-Candy
174- Gabe
184-Riggins
197- Glazier
HWT-Kueter or Hill

We are by now largely inured to Donald Trump’s more extreme observations about the world, having spent nearly nine years immersed in them. This is particularly true when he’s discussing the U.S.-Mexico border, the subject of his first exaggerations and fearmongering back when he announced his 2016 candidacy and an acute point of commentary as the 2024 contest approaches.


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It is with that baseline, then, that we must point out that Trump’s comments about the border Thursday are unusually alarmist (if not unusually exaggerated) — even by his standards.
Trump was speaking with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt brought up a segment that had aired on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program Wednesday evening, centered on immigrants from China.

Ingraham and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, Hewitt said, “went over the numbers, and it’s really startling. In the last year that you were president, 342 Chinese nationals crossed our southern border. Last year, 24,000 did, and this year thus far, 22,200 — 46,000 Chinese nationals in 18 months. What do you think they’re up to?”


Trump riffed about border security and immigrants from Congo for a while before Hewitt refocused him. What did the former president think the “Chinese nationals” were doing?

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“They’re probably building an army,” Trump replied. “They’re probably building an army from within. I mean, you look at what’s happening, because they’re very healthy young men for the most part. And it’s up to over 30,000 now. That’s a lot of people. It’s up to over 30,000.”

It is true that the number of immigrants from China that have arrived at the southern border is up since Trump’s last year in office — a year in which immigration was exceptionally low thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. But there is no reason to think that they are coming to the United States to “build an army.”
Before we explore that point, though, let’s go back to the Ingraham-Pompeo conversation itself, one that Trump probably saw, given his loyalty to Fox News.


Ingraham began by showing a clip of National Security Council spokesman John Kirby speaking to reporters this week about a conversation between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“The two leaders held a candid and constructive discussion on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues, including … continuing efforts on climate change and people-to-people exchanges,” Kirby was shown saying.
“Climate change!” Ingraham remarked, then introducing Pompeo.
“You know,” Pompeo began, “it’s very interesting — if you read the Chinese readout, what they say took place? Very different than what Admiral Kirby described.”
Particularly in the video snippet Ingraham aired. It clipped out most of what Kirby said about the call, that the two presidents discussed “areas of cooperation and areas of differences. They encouraged continued progress on issues discussed at the Woodside Summit, including counternarcotics cooperation, ongoing military-to-military communications, talks to address artificial-intelligence-related risks” — and climate change.



Pompeo quickly transitioned into this question about immigrants from China.
“It doesn’t sound like [Biden] made a single statement about them coming across our southern border,” he said to Ingraham. “There’s no chance that this is accidental, that these folks are actually seeking asylum. The Chinese Communist Party has enormous control over who gets to leave their country. And so, there’s something afoot here when we now having more come across the border in the last two years than the previous decade combined.”
He went on for a bit, with Ingraham marveling at his observations. Then he offered that we did know some things about those arriving.
“We know for sure that we don’t have any idea who they are,” Pompeo said. “Not only are they mostly got-aways, but even the vetting that we’re doing with them is just a handful of simple questions and then we release them.”



This is perhaps the most important point: The numbers being cited are numbers of immigrants being stopped at the border. These are not “got-aways,” people who enter the United States without being detained. Pompeo knows this, since he immediately follows up that claim by saying that we ask them questions. (Try asking a question of someone who is not in your presence and see how successful that is.) It means, too, that we do know who they are. Because most are, in fact, single adults, they are also less likely to be released from custody.
None of this is a mystery, despite the collective presentation of Ingraham, Pompeo, Hewitt and Trump. In March, Meredith Oyen, an associate professor of history and Asian studies at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, wrote an essay for the Conversation exploring the increase in southern-border arrivals.
“The dramatic uptick is the result of a confluence of factors,” Oyen wrote, “that range from a slowing Chinese economy and tightening political control by President Xi Jinping to the easy access to online information on Chinese social media about how to make the trip.”



Those arriving are largely members of China’s middle class, she noted, “not rich enough to use education or work opportunities as a means of entry, but they can afford to fly across the world.”
A large percentage of those arriving in the United States over the southern border do so to claim asylum. For immigrants from China, Oyen notes, those claims are more likely to be successful, given the oppression and religious intolerance in their home country.
In other words, there’s every indication that the increase in immigrants from China is a function of their seeking to live in the United States and enjoy its freedoms and economy — not that they are here to “build an army.” (The logistics of arming and aggregating a fighting force of thousands of people within a foreign country would seem to make that idea incorrect from the outset, but again, this is Trump theorizing.)



The point is obvious, just as it is obvious when Trump and others describe immigrants as “military-aged males”: People coming to the United States seeking work or safety are inherent threats to public safety or elections or, apparently, national security. It isn’t that anyone could realistically assume that 3,500 people from China coming into the United States in February — 680 of whom were members of families with kids, mind you — were preparing for a fourth-column assault on the country. It’s that it is politically beneficial for Trump and his allies (including Pompeo, Ingraham and Hewitt) to pretend that Biden’s border policies are indisputably dangerous to American voters.
It’s just caravans all over again.

I understand that the Men's basketball season is at the same time as the NBA season, but that's not true with NBA/WNBA.

How is the Indiana Fever paying a player to represent their brand on the court (Or the Big 3 league) different than State Farm paying a player to represent their brand off of it? Why should that impact college eligibility?

WNBA is just another NIL deal that doesn't interfere with the college season.

Special counsel Jack Smith warned the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case that she is pursuing a legal premise that “is wrong” and said he would probably appeal to a higher court if she rules that a federal records law can protect the former president from prosecution.


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In a near-midnight legal filing, Smith’s office pushed back hard against an unusual instruction from U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon — one that veteran national security lawyers and former judges have said badly misinterprets the Presidential Records Act and laws related to classified documents.
Smith’s filing represents the most stark and high-stakes confrontation yet between the judge and the prosecutor, illustrating the extent to which a ruling by Cannon that legitimizes the PRA as a defense could eviscerate the historic case. It sets up the possibility that a government appeal of such a ruling could delay the trial well beyond November’s presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.



Last month, Cannon ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors in the case to submit hypothetical jury instructions based on two different, and very much contested, readings of the PRA.

In response, Smith said Cannon was pursuing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that the law somehow overrides Section 793 of the Espionage Act, which Trump is accused of violating by stashing hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club, after his presidency ended.
“That legal premise is wrong, and a jury instruction for Section 793 that reflects that premise would distort the trial,” Smith wrote. The Presidential Records Act, he said, “should not play any role at trial at all.”
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How Cannon, a Trump nominee who has been on the bench since late 2020, responds to Smith’s proverbial shot across the bow will be critical. If she rules against the prosecutor, he could appeal. If she retreats from the disputed legal premise, the issue could fade into the background as she decides a pretrial hearing schedule and sets a trial date.
Cannon has been slow to make a number of decisions, even as prosecutors have urged her to move quickly, and it’s possible that on this issue too, she simply takes time to make her next move. In the meantime, Trump is scheduled to stand trial starting April 15 in a New York state case accusing him of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment during the 2016 election. Two other criminal cases, related to Trump’s alleged efforts to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, are mired in pretrial proceedings and appeals.


Tuesday night’s filing urged Cannon to rule quickly on whether the Presidential Records Act is relevant to the case, so that prosecutors can appeal any such determination to a higher court before the Florida trial, which is delayed from its original late May start date but has not yet been rescheduled.



Smith, who like many legal scholars has said the records act has nothing to do with the national security crimes Trump is accused of committing, warned that waiting until the trial is underway to rule on the issue could doom the prosecution case before it ever gets to a jury.
“If the Court were to defer a decision on that fundamental legal question it would inject substantial delay into the trial and, worse, prevent the government from seeking review before jeopardy attaches,” he wrote.
Even as he questioned the premise of Cannon’s order, Smith complied with it, offering proposed jury instructions for the two legal scenarios she outlined. Smith’s proffered language, however, was couched in a kind of lawyerly attack on Cannon’s legal analysis.


“[E]ven if an individual holds a security clearance and has a need to know classified information, the individual’s possession of the classified information is unauthorized if the individual removes the classified information from a secure facility or possesses the information outside of a secure facility,” Smith wrote in the proposed jury instruction.



“I instruct you, however, that, as to a former President, even if he lacks a security clearance, lacks a need to know classified information, and stores information outside of a secure facility, he is authorized to do so if the classified information is contained within a ‘personal record,’ within the meaning of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 32 charges of violating the Espionage Act, with each count corresponding to a specific classified document that he is alleged to have retained after leaving office, as well as eight additional charges of obstructing government efforts to retrieve the materials. His lawyers argue that the former president had the authority under the PRA to declare even highly classified documents to be his personal records and property.
Prosecutors and legal experts have said such claims badly misstate the law, which says that presidential records belong to the public and are to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a presidency.

that's really cool that they are doing that, did they do it last final four?

Psssssst....this little honey is up 28% over the last 3 months > https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/MGY Thanks, jo!!

Washington’s blanket support for Israel will change if Israel doesn’t start listening to U.S. demands about protecting civilians in Gaza and allowing aid into the Palestinian enclave, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested Thursday.
The top U.S. diplomat spoke to reporters after President Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The warning lacked specifics and came as the Biden administration continued to approve the transfer of thousands of bombs to Israel, despite calls to condition aid in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity.
“If we don’t see the changes we need to see, there will be changes in our policy,” Blinken said.
Blinken’s remarks echoed the substance of a readout of Biden’s call with Netanyahu. According to the readout, Biden called on Israel to implement “specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” adding that “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

First off: Molly Davis is getting shots up at the open practice. Knee is still bandaged, and a I've said before, not expecting more than a few minutes.

Caitlin told me they're going to try to run and push on UConn just like they did to LSU. They look at their conditioning as a major asset.

Working on a Caitlin/Paige story now. Bluder said she didn't want that angle to define the game, but there's a way to talk about that matchup without making it The Whole Thing.

From Shams. Good for Luka.
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Today was a really big day for Dix. He's always had the goods physically and mentally but the ISU game was a setback psychologically for him. He became much more tentative after that and I was beginning to wonder how he'd get right. Nebraska was big and tonight could have gone either way for him in yet another start. The first few minutes looked like an ISU replay. Thank God Fran left him in there, something he didn't do against ISU and Josh found a way to pull it together and play another superb game. He needed it. This right now is the best set of guards by far that Fran has had. I hope he continues to give them the minutes.

I’m starting to hear some rumblings regarding Fran’s future at Iowa. Nothing definitive, but it makes since considering Pat’s departure and Jack’s decision not to play at Iowa. We aren’t talking retirement, but an offer to coach elsewhere(possibly Jack playing for him)

I’ll keep my ear to the ground to see if there’s anything at all to this rumor. It would probably be in everyone’s best interest if this change did come to fruition.

56 years ago today MLK was assassinated.

Also, on this day in 1949 NATO was formed.

I would say that those are two huge historical moments that changed the world