U.S. Government seizes 54-pound Martian meteorite sold at auction last year

nytimes.com

23 points·bookofjoe··9 comments

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-...

“We wasted no time,” Pirro said in her video. “The thing came from Mars. Everybody says they own it. Customs has no record of it ever coming into the United States. So guess what? The United States government owns it now. So eat that all you guys who tried to do a corrupt deal.”

You don't beat corruption by being the most corrupt. My full opinions are not printable on a family website.

If anything, given how poorly the US Attorney for DC has flubbed previous investigations, this is more of a waste of resources for litigation rather than a credible threat to seizing and maintaining control over the meteorite.

Yes you do. That's how we ended up with governments. They beat out all of their competitors in the protection money racket.

Governments have a monopoly on taking peoples money and kidnapping them if they don't agree to pay up. When they don't have that monopoly, they cease to be the government, and whoever is running the new monopoly is the new government.

Gov has a monopoly on violence. Everything else derives from that.

It's the only explanation I could find for why a fist fight between consenting adults is illegal. It encroaches on the government's monopoly on violence.

Also martial arts of all sorts. And hockey. And really any fights in a professional sports capacity gets overlooked. At least a few states have "mutual combat" laws which would theoretically enable you to consentually fight someone as long as it's not also breaking some other law they could hit you with like public disorder.

http://archive.today/fAnl3

Does this help end the wars ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com