Penna Dexter
A rule has been added to the federal register that will make it  nearly impossible for an incoming president to fire certain federal employees.
The Office of Personnel Management issued the new rule which will shield employees appointed by the executive branch from being terminated for opposing the policies and agenda of a president.
The rule is to go into effect next month. It concerns employment protections in place for career civil servants that do not apply to political appointees.
The rule is based upon the idea that career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees — should not be subject to termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
But, as past presidents have learned, career civil servants often fill “policy-making and policy-influencing roles.”  They can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies.
National Review’s James Lynch explains that, toward the end of his administration, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new category, “Schedule F,” for policy-making employees. These employees would not be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule states: “Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Joe Biden repealed the Trump executive order upon entering office.”
According to Family Research Council’s Washington Stand, the new rule protects “those that the Biden administration has entrenched in the federal government from a possible Trump presidency.” FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez, says this new rule “undermines the authority of the American people by tying the hands of an elected president.” He says it “undermines presidential elections.”
This issue goes beyond dueling executive orders.
Though employees with experience and expertise are valuable to a federal workforce, their role is not to undermine a president or impede his effectiveness. Any rule that perpetuates a permanent ruling class should be jettisoned.

Kerby Anderson
Summer is months away but there is already news of an energy shortage on the Texas power grid. Most people would not think Texas would have an energy scare. But officials asked power generators to postpone scheduled maintenance “to help alleviate potential tight conditions.”
Usually the grid has excess power-generation capacity in the Spring, especially given that the temperatures are in the 80s. One reason for the shortage is population growth, but others have to do with the electricity needed for new data centers.
Data centers need power 24/7 and cannot be shut off in the way that manufacturing plants or even bitcoin mining can be shut down when there is peak energy demand. Although we need data servers in this cyber age, it is worth mentioning that one significant amount of energy is merely used for pornography. Internet usage accounts for 10 percent of the world’s total energy consumption and is estimated to reach 20 percent in a few years. One study estimated that 35 percent of the Internet bandwidth is pornography.
Data centers already account for about 2.5 percent of US electricity but are expected to use more than 20 percent by the end of this decade. The reason for that is artificial intelligence. A typical web search uses less than one watt of power. An AI-powered search requires 100 watts. Training an AI search uses 1,000 watts.
A decade ago, The Guardian warned that “viral cat videos are warming the planet.” We now know more about what sectors of the Internet use electricity. We also know that we have more electric vehicles on the road than any other time in history.
Before we get to hot summers that demand even more electricity, we need to have a serious conversation about energy use and energy demands.

Kerby Anderson
Jean Twenge begins her essay by suggesting a thought experiment. “Imagine that a company began mass-producing a new toy. This was not a toy for little kids; instead, it appealed most to adolescents. The toy became wildly popular, first with teens and eventually with younger children as well. The toy was so engaging that some teens stayed up until 2 a.m. just to play with it. Before long, teens spent so much time using the toy that they cut back on socializing in person.”
As you can probably guess, she is talking about the smartphone that began to change the lives of teenagers beginning around 2012. She argues that “the growing popularity of smartphones and social media over the past decade and a half has fundamentally changed the lives of teenagers.”
I would encourage parents and grandparents to read her article linked to this commentary. She provides graphs showing in-person socializing decreasing and an increasing number of sleep-deprived teens who are sleeping less than seven hours a night. There are graphs showing a significant increase in major depression and loneliness. Also, she documents teens decrease in adult activities (getting a driver’s license, going on a date).
She also takes the time to eliminate other possible explanations. Could the increase in depression be due to school shootings or the opioid crisis? She reminds us that these (and other) explanations are specific to the US. We see a similar uptick in other countries.
She concludes with specific recommendations that might strike some as radical. But she then explains the cost-benefit analysis for keeping children and young teens off social media. She makes a compelling case.