Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

He really is that stupid.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

In my day, never was longer.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Friday Night Open Thread

Friday Night Open Thread

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Some good news from SCOTUS:

The Trump administration will not be allowed to deport a group of Venezuelan detainees accused of being members of a violent gang under a rarely invoked wartime law while the matter is litigated in the courts, the Supreme Court said on Friday.

The justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court, directing it to examine claims by the migrants that they could not be legally deported under the Alien Enemies Act, the centuries-old wartime law invoked by the Trump administration. The justices said the appeals court should also examine what kind of notice the government be required to provide that would allow migrants the opportunity to challenge their deportations.

Anyone want to take a guess how Alito and Roberts Thomas voted? Fucking sociopaths.

***

It’s been a very busy few weeks and I am closing in on a lull, and I am ready for that.

Finished the Pitt, and I liked it. Really grew on me. I’d give it a solid recommend.

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  1. 1.

    Suzanne

    Anyone want to take a guess how Alito and Roberts voted? Fucking sociopaths.

    Think you mean Thomas? Even more sociopathic.

  3. 3.

    Steve LaBonne

    If four of the Sinister Six have decided they don’t actually want to be reduced to powerless drones in an authoritarian regime, I guess that’s what passes for good news these days.

  4. 4.

    SpaceUnit

    Somehow I don’t think an administration willing to arrest judges is going to be deterred.

  6. 6.

    Jackie

    Reposting from earlier thread:

    Kinda amusing (and surprising) that all three of FFOTUS’s Supreme Court appointees – Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – went against his demands to allow him to deport/disappear migrants without due process. Interestingly, MAGA seems only incensed about Amy Coney Barrett. Why is that?

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    [cross-posted from LG&M]
    I think it’s premature to celebrate more than, y’know, just a teeny bit: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/16/supreme-court-alien-enemies-venezuela-deportation.html

    The justices did not rule on whether the Alien Enemies Act, which the Trump administration invoked in mid-April to deport the detainees, had been applied correctly. “To be clear, we decide today only that the detainees are entitled to more notice than was given on April 18,” their ruling said. They noted they were granting only temporary relief while the case returns to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to sort out the question of how much notice is due to those being targeted for removal. “We recognize the significance of the Government’s national security interests as well as the necessity that such interests be pursued in a manner consistent with the Constitution,” the majority wrote.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    Anyone want to take a guess how Alito and Roberts voted?

    Roberts was a part of the majority of 7.

  15. 15.

    Jackie

    @WaterGirl: I kinda thought it must be along those lines.

    @Baud: A sin, I’m sure!

    Makes me wonder if FFOTUS is getting concerned about Thomas or Alito retiring – their replacements could show disloyalty, too!

  16. 16.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Thanks for the nuance.

    That ruling is soooooo like the Robert’s Court: find some squeaky thin way to avoid making a real decision until there’s no other choice…then rule the way you expected them to in the first place.

    Uncle Clarence.  I remember when “my” Senator, Chuck Fucking Robb helped him thru confirmation, then voted for him.

    I had to hold my nose so goddamned hard to vote for that bastard when he ran for reelection only cuz his opponent was Ollie Fucking Fucking North.

    Hope you’re happy now Chuckles, Uncle Clarence has been the gift that keeps on giving…not unlike a virulent venereal disease.

  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    @Jackie: I noted on the last thread…. it’s such a hilarious/terrifying tell when people only get enraged at or blame women.

  18. 18.

    sab

    Yay! Dave Yost dropped out of the Ohio governor’s race.

    Ramaswamy has the Trump blessing.

    No political experience in office anywhere. Not at all white. But has the Trump endorsement, so that drove off Yost. One bright spot with otherwise dark clouds.

    All we have is Amy Acton, who I deeply admire. But also no political experience and is also a girl. Hoping Tim Ryan jumps in, but he is making a fortune as a lobbyist, and still thinks there is a place in Ohio for moderatrly left centrists. That scares the hell out of anyone to the left of Woodrow Wilson, which is pretty much the whole Democratic base.

  19. 19.

    Jay

    Wesley Morgan
    ‪@wesleymorgan.bsky.social‬

    Follow
    Although relatively little ground combat has been going on since the ceasefire ended, the IDF has been busy demolishing the emptied city of Rafah building by building.

    “We will replicate the model implemented in Rafah in other areas of the Strip as well,” the IDF said this week.

  23. 23.

    Jay

    Don Moynihan
    ‪@donmoyn.bsky.social‬

    Follow
    JFC – the people sending the pizzas are not just telling judges they know where they live. They are using the name of a a family member of a Judge who was murdered.
    In about two dozen cases nationwide, judges have gotten unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the late son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, the New Jersey judge told CBS News. Anderl was killed at the family’s New Jersey home in 2020 by a disgruntled gunman who was targeting Salas.
    ALT

    ‪Erin Fogg‬
    ‪@criminalerin.bsky.social‬
    · 2d
    Can we get one fucking normal thing like a teeny tiny normal fucking thing

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pizza-d...

    Federal judges targeted nationwide by “pizza doxxings”
    As federal judges face a rise in threats, some have faced a spate of strange, unnerving incidents in which an unknown person orders a pizza to their home.

  25. 25.

    Jackie

    @Suzanne:

    it’s such a hilarious/terrifying tell when people only get enraged at or blame women.

    It’s not hilarious this day and age. MAGAts really don’t like women – other than staying barefoot and pregnant and being submissive. Even MAGA darling MTG is being put in her place, and she doesn’t quite “get it.” Yet.

  26. 26.

    sab

    @schrodingers_cat: I like him ( Ryan) a lot. I have followed him for two decades since he was my congressman. He is presenting himself as well to the right of where he has voted.

    When you have a weak quasi- Republican we will go for the real one every time.

    I despise Ramaswamy. I can’t believe I am hoping Ohio racism stops him since common sense won’t.

    I cannot believe I even just wrote that.

    I think Tim Ryan would be a good governor, but Ohio voters probably won’t agree.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    @sab:

    Moshe Dayan infamously said to Journalists when they took Gaza in 1967, “Look what a garden we will make out of this place”.

  29. 29.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @sab:

    I’d rather it be someone else other than Tim Ryan. That guy tried to go Republican-lite and ran away from the party only to lose in 2022 against JV Vance

  30. 30.

    Suzanne

    @Jackie: It’s definitely a tell, and it isn’t limited to MAGA, either. There’s plenty of hatred and blame for uppity women on the left and center, too.

  31. 31.

    sab

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I know.

    Who else is there? Sherrod Brown is old and ran Biden off for being old.

    David Pepper cannot win any election higher than Cincy City Council, which says a lot more against Ohio than against David Pepper.

    Everyone else is female, and they never win statewide unless running against another female.

    Where is Rich Cordray?

  32. 32.

    Baud

    God, I’m seeing 86 all over reddit. If Comey started a viral meme, I’m just going to shoot myself.

  33. 33.

    Jay

    Kye
    ‪@gxldsociety.bsky.social‬

    Follow
    BREAKING: Jacksonville Airport is on fucking fire.

    The parking garage is engulfed in flames and sources are pointing at a Tesla explosion as the ignition point.

    You can’t make this shit up.

    0:03

    0:07 / 0:11

    May 16, 2025 at 3:53 PM

    Everybody can reply
    984 reposts
    608 quotes
    2.6K likes

    Yeah, it was a Tesla.

  35. 35.

    Jackie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I’d rather it be someone else other than Tim Ryan. That guy tried to go Republican-lite

    Unfortunately, that’s probably the only chance of getting a Democratic governor in Ohio at this point. Whoever runs as D has to win over moderate republicans, moderate Independents, along with Democrats.

  38. 38.

    Jackie

    @Suzanne: Yah. We learned that AGAIN last election. It’s maddening how other countries can embrace women leaders, but the USA can’t.

  39. 39.

    scav

    Oh GSD, now airports aren’t even safe on the ground!

     

    spontaneous meme overload?

  42. 42.

    Gretchen

    @Jay: It seems like it should be pretty easy to track down the pizza-orderers – credit cards, phone numbers, IP addresses used?

  43. 43.

    Suzanne

    @Jackie: Not just leaders. Lots of men just…. hate women, especially the kind who have their own money, power, and respect. Simone de Beauvoir pointed out that many men struggle with hating women while simultaneously desiring them. So.

  45. 45.

    sab

    @Gretchen: That is if anyone with the connections cared. Pam Biondi’s DOJ likes domestic terrorists on their side. Rule of law is for chumps.

  46. 46.

    Jay

    @Gretchen:

    So, you don’t have to give a card number to order a pizza.

    VPN’s hide your IP.

    Spoofing software allows you to mimic any phone number.

    Whom ever is doing this (duh) is experienced at digital harassment.

  47. 47.

    different-church-lady

    ROBERTS, 2024: “It’s important to establish the President can do whatever he wants.”

    TRUMP 2025: [ATTACKS JUDGES]

    ROBERTS 2025: “Hey hey hey now wait a second…”

  48. 48.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @sab:

    Nobody comes to mind. I wish Cordray had beaten DeWine.

    Do you have any opinion on Jim Tressel? I don’t much about him beyond being the OS football coach and former YSU president.

    Anybody who willingly joins the GOP these days is not a great person in my eyes. My county sheriff became a Republican in 2023 so he could keep his job and is just over the moon to work with the Trump administration’s efforts to ethnically cleanse the US deport migrants, holding over 90 migrants at the county jail

    @Jackie:

    If it ends up being Tim Ryan, I’ll vote for him. He’ll be better than Vivek for sure

  52. 52.

    different-church-lady

    @sab:

    A generation from now Israelis will wonder why the world despises Israelis.

    No they won’t. They won’t give a shit. Just like today.

  53. 53.

    currawong

    I watching Ken Burns Vietnam War at the moment, I hadn’t seen it before.

    I grew up with the war going on and constantly on the news. I never really understood the background but had heard the domino theorygiven as a reason. I’m also rereading one of my favourite books, Up Country by Nelson de Mille which prompted me to watch the documentary. I’ve read it a few times before, this is the first time it’s seemed a bit dated.

    Anyway, I’m up to the Tet Offensive in ’68. At no point up to here in the doco have I seen anything that remotely justifies America’s entry into the war. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to see anything in the remaining episodes. The closest to an excuse is that it will hurt someone in the polls. What a clusterfuck.

  54. 54.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: Asking b/c I don’t know: how can you order pizza remotely without giving a CC# ?  I’m asking seriously.  Maybe you mean using Venmo?  Can’t believe any pizzerias take crypto directly.  Sure there are companies that allow you to convert the crypto into dollars, but those companies should be bound by KYC regulations.

  55. 55.

    New Deal democrat

    This is from Steve Vladeck’s “One First,” making much more eloquently a point I made on an earlier thread today:
     https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/151-the-supreme-courts-alien-enemies

    “I continue to be fascinated by the eroding ‘presumption of regularity,’ and where it is (and isn’t) showing up in Supreme Court decisions in Trump-related cases. That erosion shows up in A.A.R.P. II in spades. Indeed, although the majority never quite brings itself to say the quiet part out loud, the point animating most of its disagreement with the dissent is its unwillingness to rest its analysis on the government’s representations rather than on the plaintiffs’ allegations. We’ll see if this skepticism remains limited to the removal context, or whether it starts showing up in other rulings in Trump-related cases. But it’s clearly the elephant in the room here.”

  56. 56.

    sab

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Jim Tressel is a rock solid Republican.

    My sister (retired OSU professor) liked him because he protected his team kids at great personal cost.

    AkronU liked him.

    You would know more than me about Youngstown State.

    But he is still a Republican and they are beyond nuts these days.

  58. 58.

    sab

    @Chetan Murthy: Mostly in most of America you order the pizza and the delivery guy shows up at your door expecting cash. It is not a financially sophisticated customer base.

    We have been ordering pizza for thirty years and never had to give any credit card info. Just a phone number.

  60. 60.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sab: Oh, I get it now.  So the people ordering weren’t even paying for the pizzas!  Sorry, I guess you can tell it’s been a while since I ordered Domino’s.  The places I order pizza (here in SF) all demand payment up-front.

    Thank you for the clarification!

  61. 61.

    sab

    @currawong: I am of an age where I knew a lot of Vietnam vets. The ones I knew said they learned so much from Burns series. They were fightling in the war and knew nothing outside their own immediate perspective. Burns show gave them a much broader picture and context. Very informative and to some extent healing.

  63. 63.

    Jay

    @sab:

    I would go with complex,

    “We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing… a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat – in the place of Jibta, Sarid – in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua – in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”[97]

  65. 65.

    sab

    @Professor Bigfoot: I live in Akron and Tim Ryan has been very popular always. The Sykes (Emilia, Vernon and Barbara) like him. But he was congressman for only half of Akron.

    My dad’s nurse’s aide from the other side of town only saw him for the first time in the Senate race and she was appalled. Just could not bring herself to vote for him. Another Irish Italian Catholic  white guy going to betray her and hers.

    I don’t know if he could overcome that, but I haven’t seen that he even realizes it is a problem, and that speaks volumes.

  66. 66.

    dnfree

    @sab: I suggested the Burns Vietnam series to a neighbor who served in Vietnam (nearly died there and suffers from Agent Orange after effects).  As we talked about it, he said even hearing a helicopter triggers PTSD for him, and I said that sadly, in that case the series would be unwatchable for him.

    The interviews with the North Vietnamese in the series gave a whole new perspective I hadn’t seen in any other coverage.

  68. 68.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I just phone the local pizza shop, place my order for pick up or delivery. Give them a name. Pay when I pick up or delivery arrives. Cash, debit or credit.

  69. 69.

    sab

    @dnfree: Both sides have huge regrets for the huge price paid by letting things get out of hand.

    I hate Trump blowing up American hegemony, but we did a lot of damage in the world in the last fifty years stumbling around when we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing.

    And we aren’t any more informed now.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @sab

    If it’s the kind of thing which appeals to you, recommend the book Where Is Vietnam? American Poets Respond.. An anthology of 87 poets, first published at the end of 1966.

  71. 71.

    Jay

    @different-church-lady:

    Moshe was “complex”.

    He was a kibbutzim turned swamps into farmland.

    Joined Hagenah,

    Joined British Forces when WWII broke out.

    When in command of Jerusalem, turned control of the Temple Mount over to the Al Asqua Mosque.

    He resisted the conquest of the Golan.

    He honestly believed that under Israeli control, Gaza would become a fertile paradise for all.

    He was a key player in the Camp David Accords and the peace with Egypt and Jordan.

  72. 72.

    Quaker in a Basement

    In his dissent, Alito said there was “no evidence in the record” at the time of the restraining order to indicate the detainees were subject to immenent removal.

    The men were shackled and on a bus headed to the airport. I suppose it’s possible they were on their way to Disneyworld, but I don’t think so.

  73. 73.

    Chetan Murthy

    @dnfree: The interviews with the North Vietnamese

    Decades ago I read a Parade Magazine article of McNamara going to Vietnam for a conference about the war, with (of course) the Vietnamese.  He asked them “we were killing so many of you, and you knew that.  Why did you keep fighting?  Why?”

    The response of these Vietnamese was simple: “We were fighting a war of national liberation”.

    Americans think of our adversaries (at least when they’re nonwhite) as having no agency; they’re just NPCs.  I saw this again with Bin Laden: He resolved to hit us back in 1982 when we were busy funding Israel to collapse the apartment towers of Beirut:

    God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the US Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.

    It doesn’t change that he was our (and my) enemy, to say that he saw his cause as just.

  74. 74.

    sab

    @sab: We were suposed to be this huge superpower, but really we were just anothet country with good troops on the ground.

    The vets I knew found it really helpful to see how committed the other side was. Their wives were driving convoys of arms trucks through the nights to deliver supplies. Wives being blown up delivering supplies.

    I don’t think most of our guys had any concept of the degree of committment on their side.

    We didn’t lose to a tiny country. We lost to many really committed brave patriots.  Our guys needed to know how committed the other side was. We didn’t lose. They sort of won ( at a huge price.)

  76. 76.

    Jackie

    This is CRAZY STUPID!

    The Trump administration has decided to permit the sale of devices that enable standard firearms to fire like machine guns, a move that one person familiar with the matter said was “by far the most dangerous thing this administration has done” on gun policy, NBC News reports.

    The Justice Department on Friday announced a settlement in a lawsuit brought by the National Association for Gun Rights. The lawsuit challenged an ATF rule banning “forced reset triggers” — devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapid bursts of bullets.

    “This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety.”

    The move comes after a majority of judges on the conservative 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals appeared to side with the gun rights group during oral arguments in the case in December. The judges cited a Supreme Court decision last year finding that another rapid-fire device, called a bump stock, did not convert firearms into illegal machine guns.

    *snip*

    The gunman in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting killed 58 people while firing from his hotel room window using bump stocks.

    Uh, WHO was president in 2017???

  77. 77.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sab: We didn’t lose.

    No, we did lose, and we were on the wrong side in that war.  The side of the bad guys.  It is what it is.

  80. 80.

    frosty

    @dnfree: ​
     Two others: “Dispatches” and “Chance and Circumstance.” The second one is about the draft and who went and who didn’t.

  81. 81.

    cain

    @currawong: ​
     
    I was explaining to my daughter about how Iran went from democratic, liberal society to an Islamic supporter of terrorism. Describing how their democratic govt got upended because of the CIA, who put the Shah in power which led to an Islamic revolution that put the Ayatollah in charge.

    The thing is they did it all because BP didn’t want the oil nationalized. In the end, it backfired badly and now they didn’t get the oil and at the same time created a political foe.

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