Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

We’re not going back!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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This Should be a Bigger Deal

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You would think:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials under then-President Donald Trump compiled intelligence dossiers on people who were arrested at Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, according to a newly unredacted internal review.

The 76-page report is an internal review by DHS of actions carried out by its Office of Intelligence and Analysis in June and July 2020, when militarized federal agents were deployed to Portland against people protesting police abuses in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

When the dossiers were being compiled, some DHS analysts voiced concerns over the legality of collecting intelligence “on protestors arrested for trivial criminal infractions having little to no connection to domestic terrorism,” the DHS report said. Some of the employees even refused to participate.

Doesn’t seem to have gotten much coverage, but then again, there is just soo much shit going on.

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Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: Bill Barr Drops His Figleaf

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… Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to impanel a grand jury and to file criminal charges…

Mr. Trump has made clear that he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. That view factors into the impeachment investigation against him, as does his long obsession with the origins of the Russia inquiry. House Democrats are examining in part whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.

The move also creates an unusual situation in which the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into itself…

It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment…

Revelations so far about Mr. Durham’s investigation have shown that he has focused in his first months on the accusations that Mr. Trump’s conservative allies have made about the origins of the Russia inquiry in their efforts to undermine it. Mr. Durham’s efforts have prompted criticism that he and Mr. Barr are trying to deliver the president a political victory, though investigators would typically run down all aspects of a case to complete a review of it…

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Today In America’s Concentration Camps for Children

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I want to refocus a bit on this:

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.

All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.

“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?’” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher also questioned the government’s interpretation of the settlement agreement.

“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”

The settlement at issue came out of Jenny Lisette Flores v. Edwin Meese, filed in 1985 on behalf of a class of unaccompanied minors fleeing torture and abuse in Central America.

Finally agreed upon in 1997, the settlement established guidelines for the humane detention, treatment and release of minors taken into federal immigration custody. The guidelines include the right to a bond hearing and requirements that immigration authorities timely release children to parents or guardians and place those not released in facilities that meet certain standards. The facilities are supposed to be “safe and sanitary.”

I spent about 45 minutes this afternoon looking for a picture of me, from August or September 2008, handing out toothpaste, tooth brushes, floss, soap, shampoo, other sundries, and toys to Iraqi children during a Humanitarian Assistance (HA) operation with the Command Sergeant Major* of the 4th Battalion/27th Field Artillery Regiment – Iron Thunder.** The Command Sergeant Major was handing out small, portable water purifiers, and dry consumables like bags of legumes that wouldn’t spoil, to the women in the village we were visiting. I’ll never forget watching and hearing a 6’6 inch tall, African American Command Sergeant Major, bend over and tell little old Iraqi women through his interpreter: “Mother, I know things aren’t great right now and I’m sorry about that. But on behalf of my battalion commander, my brigade commander, the Soldiers of the US Army, and the American people may I give you some things to try to make your life a little easier?” You can’t teach or train that. He didn’t just give them something. He didn’t hand it to them and walk away. He asked them. He gave them some of their dignity back by making them subjects to be interacted with, not objects to be manipulated. He got it without having to even be taught, not by sitting through hours of cultural engagement classes.

The reason for this reminiscence is that we CANNOT EVEN BE BOTHERED TO DO THE SAME THING FOR CHILDREN WHO WE HAVE SEPARATED FROM THEIR PARENTS AND REFUSE TO RELEASE TO THERE PARENTS !!!!!!! Not in some foreign country, not some place where everyone has to actually go around armed for their own safety, but here in the US!

They’re concentration camps. Their purpose is to concentrate these children, and in other cases adults, in miserable conditions in the perverse belief that word of the immiseration will get back to others in Central America, which will stop those considering fleeing to the US to seek asylum. It won’t. It is also a violation of US Federal law and Senate ratified US treaty obligations that have the force of US Federal law. It is immoral. It is unethical. And anyone who claims to be a devout, believing, and practicing member of any religion that supports this is a fraud, a liar, and a hypocrite!

Home of the brave my ass!

Open thread!

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But her emails…

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Seriously, nothing matters — via The Times:

Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

By all means, let’s haul these specimens before a congressional committee and examine the concerns that were raised about Kushner. And speaking of hearings, looks like Trump Org CFO Weisselberg will be compelled to appear, and Ivanka and Don Jr. will be interviewed. (Gums is the new Tiffany!)

Scratch the opening sentence: elections matter. Open thread!

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Derp State

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That we have a scabrous, demented swine thrashing around the Oval Office causing untold domestic and international turmoil is on the American people, the Republican Party, and the Russian Federation (in no particular order). But assuming our little experiment in democracy survives and committees are impaneled to study what the fuck happened in the detail such a calamitous clusterfuck warrants, should the role of our national security organizations and their political apparatuses be scrutinized too?

Hell yes, they should. It’s already clear Trump is a Russian asset. The only remaining question is how long and actively he’s been in on Putin’s con. That such a destructive, incompetent, addled and compromised fool got within a country mile of the fucking White House points to national security failures as vast as those that allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen and enabled Cheney & Co. to falsely portray Saddam Hussein’s Potemkin nukes as an existential threat.

Like those monumental fuck-ups, I suspect the lapse that allowed a malignant orange clown to seize personal control of the world’s most fearsome nuclear arsenal was more a failure of imagination than a lack of dedication or skill, particularly on the part of the people doing the actual work. In other words, it was a strategic cock-up rather than a tactical one. But yeah, we’re gonna need a truth and reconciliation panel on national security too.

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Open Thread: Fake Wall, Real Suffering

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Floriduh! Woman and Man: All That Glitter is not Gold Edition

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Miami Herald take it away (emphasis mine)!

Miami-Dade police is on the hook for legal bills after cops illegally seized a cache of guns — and nearly $20,000 in stripper cash.

The department has agreed to pay more than $3,000 to defense lawyers hired by Ras Cates, 33, and his wife, Lizmixell Batista, a 20-year-old stripper at Cheetah Gentleman’s Club in Hallandale Beach.

Presumably, the legal bills won’t be paid in singles.

Back on May 15, an officer pulled over Cates and Batista, his passenger, when their car cut off a patrol car in Miami’s West Little River neighborhood. From the car, patrol officers seized six guns, three of them assault-style rifles, plus the cash, suspected marijuana oil and several bottles of powerful codeine cough syrup without a valid prescription.

Miami-Dade police touted the arrest to a local TV station, showing off photos of the guns. “It’s amazing how something as simple as a traffic stop can lead us to crack a lot of cases,” a police spokesman told WFOR-CBS4. “A lot of serial killers are behind bars because of traffic stops.”

The couple was charged with armed drug dealing, among other felony charges. But defense lawyers immediately challenged the arrest.

“What is most disturbing is that immediately following the arrest, the department went on TV and engaged in incendiary speculation without knowing the facts or even acknowledging the rampant violations of my clients’ constitutional rights,” said defense attorney Jude Faccidomo.

Faced with defense evidence, prosecutors moved quickly to dismiss the case.

Cates told cops he legally owned the weapons, and also had a valid concealed-weapons permit. His story checked out. And body-camera footage showed that an officer, while friendly with Cates, never got permission to search the trunk but instead “commanded defendant to pop the trunk,” prosecutors wrote.

“Search of the trunk was illegal,” prosecutor Johnathan Nobile said in a memo explaining why the state declined to press charges.

Who possessed the drugs or possibly illegal codeine syrup was never clear either, prosecutors said. Neither Cates nor Batista admitted who owned the marijuana. And whether the syrup was actually codeine was also unclear — Miami-Dade police never took the liquid to the forensics lab for testing.

Lawyers for Cates are still trying to get the guns back.

As for the money, the bills were discovered in Batista’s purse. Body-camera footage obtained by the Miami Herald showed she immediately told cops about her cash-only job. “I was supposed to go the bank to deposit the money. We got bills to pay, sweetie,” she told police.

The Miami-Dade police department’s legal bureau, suspecting it was dope money, asked a civil-court judge to allow the department to keep the $19,934 seized in the car. The department said a Miami-Dade police dog, Roxie, alerted that the cash had been “in close proximity” to large amounts of narcotics.

But at the hearing, a fellow stripper named Haley Heath testified that her friend, Batista, earned “significant cash tips” at the Cheetah club.

“I felt that the glitter on the seized cash was compelling evidence, but apparently the police department disagreed,” said defense lawyer Faccidomo.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Rodney Smith agreed there was no probable cause for the seizure and ordered the money returning to the couple.

This is my favorite part:

“I felt that the glitter on the seized cash was compelling evidence, but apparently the police department disagreed,” said defense lawyer Faccidomo.

Ya think?

Stay supple!

Open thread.

 

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