Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I was promised a recession.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

We still have time to mess this up!

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Bark louder, little dog.

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I Suppose Now People Will Be Able to Have Their Horse Visit Them in the Hospital

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Good move by President Obama:

Respecting the Rights of Hospital Patients to Receive Visitors and to Designate Surrogate Decision Makers for Medical Emergencies

There are few moments in our lives that call for greater compassion and companionship than when a loved one is admitted to the hospital. In these hours of need and moments of pain and anxiety, all of us would hope to have a hand to hold, a shoulder on which to lean — a loved one to be there for us, as we would be there for them.

Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides — whether in a sudden medical emergency or a rolonged hospital stay. Often, a widow or widower with no children is denied the support and comfort of a good friend. Members of religious orders are sometimes unable to choose someone other than an immediate family member to visit them and make medical decisions on their behalf. Also uniquely affected are gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives — unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated.

***

Many States have taken steps to try to put an end to these problems. North Carolina recently amended its Patients’ Bill of Rights to give each patient “the right to designate visitors who shall receive the same visitation privileges as the patient’s immediate family members, regardless of whether the visitors are legally related to the patient” — a right that applies in every hospital in the State. Delaware, Nebraska, and Minnesota have adopted similar laws.

My Administration can expand on these important steps to ensure that patients can receive compassionate care and equal treatment during their hospital stays. By this memorandum, I request that you take the following steps…

This is great news, this is common sense, and there really is no reason why anyone should be opposed to this. This puts the power with the patient- where it should be. I suppose the usual suspects at Focus on the Family and the scum Tony Perkins pals around with will be upset, and Rick Santorum and J.D. Hayworth will probably be apoplectic, but this really is a no-brainer.

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Profiles in Successful Law Enforcement

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Idiots:

Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place: the police and court system of Memphis, Tenn.

Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that both guns were once seized in criminal cases in Memphis. The officials described how the weapons made their separate ways from an evidence vault to gun dealers and to the shooters.

The use of guns that once were in police custody and were later involved in attacks on police officers highlights a little-known divide in gun policy in the United States: Many cities and states destroy guns gathered in criminal probes, but others sell or trade the weapons in order to get other guns or buy equipment such as bulletproof vests.

Are we going to have to create a federal grant so that wingnut states will destroy guns seized in crimes?

Good grief.

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Spawn of Zombie Reagan XIII: The Horror Never Ends

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Shorter Edwin “Durty Pichurs Is Icky” Meese: How dare Judge Walker and his anti-Prop-Hate minions try to get all up & judge-y in other peoples’ personal business!

No, seriously:

“Most troubling, Judge Walker has also ruled that the trial will investigate the Proposition 8 sponsors’ personal beliefs regarding marriage and sexuality. No doubt, the plaintiffs will aggressively exploit this opportunity to assert that the sponsors exhibited bigotry toward homosexuals, or that religious views motivated the adoption of Proposition 8. They’ll argue that prohibiting gay marriage is akin to racial discrimination.

To top it all off, Judge Walker has determined that this case will be the first in the Ninth Circuit to allow cameras in the courtroom, with the proceedings posted on YouTube. This will expose supporters of Proposition 8 who appear in the courtroom to the type of vandalism, harassment and bullying attacks already used by some of those who oppose the proposition.”

As long as The Right People were running the courts, Edwin Meese has always been in favor of judicial overreach.

U.S News & World Report: You criticize the Miranda ruling, which gives suspects the right to have a lawyer present before police questioning. Shouldn’t people, who may be innocent, have such protection?
Meese: Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.

I know, I know, beating a dead Grey Lady horse…

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Welcome to Judge Arpaio’s Police State

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This is insane:

Freelance journalist Nick Martin has an update on Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Stoddard, who last October was caught on video swiping a file in open court from defense attorney defense attorney Joanne Cuccia.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe held a hearing on the matter, and on Tuesday ordered Stoddard to hold a press conference to apologize. It’s a weak and odd way of admonishing Stoddard for such a brazen trespass on attorney-client privilege (not to mention Stoddard’s arguable violation of a number of other laws, rights, and rules of procedure).

You really have to watch the video. The cop just walks up, starts snooping through her notes, calls over another deputy, pulls stuff out of her folder, hands it to another cop, and he walks out with it.

And, he will most likely get away with it. Time to break out the foam USA fingers. You can’t get justice like that in a Banana Republic! Oh, wait.

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Obligatory Sarah Palin

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I suspect good progressives are too hip ever to have watched Judging Amy, but the new infotainment-friendly Sarah Palin strikes me as the runaway offspring that Tyne Daly was too embarrassed to tell Amy Brenneman and her siblings about…

Andrew Sullivan complains “She wants to be a celebrity, not a politician. And if she could get to be a politician using the prerogatives of a celebrity – and a propaganda channel like Fox News – she would be happy. That’s what’s at stake here – beneath this farce.” Which is a pretty good summary, assuming that the nouns in the second sentence got swapped in the heat of live-blogging: Palin wants to be a celebrity, and was willing to act out what she understood to be a politician’s role to get the prerogatives of celebrity. When Bill Kristol’s Cruise Ship of Fools Neocons breezed into Juneau, Palin had aged out of the beauty-queen pageantry competitions that seem to have been her formative social training, her unwillingness or inability to handle the tedium of actual governance had her underlings trembling on the edge of revolt, and her attempts to reclaim Modern Supermom status on her own or by proxy weren’t going so well. It was… providential!… that Someone should send unto her a Messenger, trailing clouds of astroturfing calculation, proclaiming that Sarah Palin could be chosen to stand among the Elect. For lo, all her life she had been journaling, recording both the firewood-stacking and the prayers that were the Aleph and Omega of her Real American(tm) small-town red-state life — and at last her determined piety was rewarded! Prosperity Gospel, unbelievers!

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