It's None of Your Business
Conservatives are putting gender identity at the center of their message now. They are passing laws punishing trans people, they want to eradicate "transgenderism," which, first, it isn't an "ism." Some people are mislabeled at birth, that's all. The doctor holds them up, looks them over, checks the M or the F on the birth certificate, and the new person sets out on a new life. Mom and Dad paint the nursery blue or pink, they buy dresses or jeans -- did you ever look at the boys' aisle versus the girls' aisle at a toy store? They are like two different planets. If the M was checked the kid gets treated one way, a different way if the F was checked. You might think it's sexist or whatever and maybe it'll change someday but that's how we do it now.
In the meantime, the baby doesn't know who they are or how they got here, they learn from the people around them and from the sensations of embodiment, and some small number of children discover that the people around them are making a mistake. It isn't an "ism," a belief system, there is just a matter of maturing into your own subjective experience and knowing who you are, including the fact that you might not be who you were told you are.
Conservatives like to make fun of the concept of identity, like the Fox host who said he was going to start identifying as Chinese for the benefits it would bring him, ah ha ha ha. Identity is a unique kind of word. Where most words refer to a thing or event in the environment, the word identity means "the thing itself." Identity is not what a thing is called, its identity is it, itself. The identity of this rock is this rock. For people, identity is the answer to the question, who are you? You can ask the hilarious Fox host, are you Chinese? and he will say, of course not. You don't decide to identify as something-or-other, it is just what you are. Identity is not a label, it is essence. And a thing or a person may have essential qualities that are not apparent to an external observer.
When a majority of people share a culture they may not be aware of having an identity at all. They simply see themselves as normal or ordinary, and so white conservatives accuse other groups of practicing "identity politics." But take a white American and drop them into a city or village in Asia, or Turkey, or Africa, and you will find them suddenly extremely aware of their identity. "I don't eat that, I'm an American." "I'm sorry, I don't really 'get' that kind of music." "I am only wearing this strange outfit to fit in." Fact is, only 4.25 percent of the world's population lives in the US, and only about 75 percent of those identify as white, meaning about 3.1 percent of human beings are white Americans. And they are only normal or ordinary when they can bunch together.
Well there is no sense getting academic about it. There is only one relevant thing to keep in mind here:
It's none of your business.
If somebody is transgender or not, if they are gay or not, if they are Black or Christian or Asian or short or tall or speak with an accent -- it's none of your business. It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion.
posted by JimK at 1:06 PM
161 Comments:
An Alabama recreation center is facing criticism after a basketball team of 10-year-old girls beat their all-male opponents for the league championship, but the center awarded the losing boys the winner’s trophy.
The rec center in Hoover, Alabama, invited the victorious girls to the awards ceremony, according to Jayme Mashayekh, one of the girls’ moms. But it consisted of watching the boys they had just beaten get the championship trophy.
“These 5th grade girls played their hearts out, left it all on the floor and battled their male counterparts only to be told, ‘No, I’m sorry you don’t count,’” Mashayekh wrote on Facebook.
She wrote in an update that the city and the rec center have since offered to “make things right for the girls,” but didn’t provide details.
Mashayekh explained on Facebook, in a post dated Feb. 28, that her daughter Rylie had played with other girls for three years in a competitive girl’s league representing a Birmingham suburb called Spain Park, which is in the Hoover School District.
“Half way through their season they were told they could not use the Hoover gyms for their practices unless they paid to play in the Hoover rec league,” Mashayekh wrote. She said the girls were told that “to stay together as a team they had to play up a level in competition,” which pitted them against 5th-grade boys.
Through the season, Mashayekh said, the girls were “middle of the pack,” though they lost several games by 1 point.
“Playing the boys was a challenge they rose to meet,” the mom wrote. “It made them better players and a better team.”
Right before the championship, the girls team was informed they could play, but wouldn’t receive the championship trophy if they won.
“‘Excuse me? What?’” Mashayekh wrote. “What did they do to get disqualified? Did they not pay their dues? Did they not play up a level in competition? Oh, it’s because they’re GIRLS?!?!”
The girls ended up winning the whole tournament. As promised, they didn’t get the trophy.
A Facebook user commenting on Mashayekh’s post explained that the rec center has limited gym space and high demand, so teams that have played together are asked to join a rec league for practice time.
“Most coaches want to keep their [elite] team together and play them in the rec league,” the user wrote. “Since this would be an unfair advantage because most of the... teams are comprised of the best players, they are required to play ‘up’ by two grade levels. In this case, the girls are in 5th grade and there is no 7th grade girls rec league so they had to play against the 5th grade boys.”
On Monday, the city said in a statement that its parks and recreation department is reviewing youth athletic league policies “to ensure that all competition and recognition procedures are fair to all participants and that those procedures are more clearly understood.”
The Conservative Political Action Conference, the New York Times reported on Saturday, is not what it used to be. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis skipped out on what has for years been the conservative movement’s premier cattle call. Mike Pence will be at a donor retreat instead. Fox News will not be streaming the event, nor will its popular hosts be speaking from the stage. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the event, was recently accused by a Republican campaign aide of groping, and his star is, it’s fair to say, somewhat diminished.
But if CPAC has fallen from its pedestal, it remains a useful barometer for gauging where the conservative base is, and where it is headed. And the future, right now, looks grim as hell.
Here’s Michael Knowles, a commentator at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, receiving a loud cheer for saying that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.”
Knowles is a replacement-level conservative pundit, whose name I know only because he co-hosted Ted Cruz’s podcast for two years. But that is sort of the point. The call for transgender identity to be “eradicated” is chilling; it is not a word normal people use, unless they are describing a pestilence. But this is not at all out of step with much of the Republican party. DeSantis has weaponized his state government against trans kids. So has Texas Gov. Greg Abbot. As David Weigel reported in Semafor last month, Donald Trump, too is proposing to establish “that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth”—that is, erasing the category from existence.
Conservatives don’t really talk about abortion like they used to, because they’ve largely won that battle, and perhaps out of some self-awareness how unpopular that victory ultimately was. But they’re speaking about the lives of transgender kids and adults in increasingly apocalyptic terms.
If parents want to protect their children from transgenderism, it's none of your business.
It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion.
Florida iis leading the way to parental rights. HB 1223 in Florida is a bill that will bar instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity through eighth grade, expanding the ground-breaking 2022 law that prohibited such instruction in earlier grades.
The eight-page bill also would prevent school employees from telling students their preferred pronouns if those pronouns “do not correspond to his or her sex” or asking students about their preferred pronouns.
The bill is certain to pass on March 7.
The 2022 law prohibited instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and required it to be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in in higher grades.
Under the enhanced bill, the “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” test would continue to apply in ninth through 12th grades.
The bill goes beyond the instruction issues to address personal pronouns. The bill says that it “shall be the policy” of all public-schools “that a person's sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex.”
"It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion."
Which is EXACTLY why you should leave trans people alone. Some people are trans. That's the just the way the world is. It can be detected in their brain scans as teenagers. Trans kids will get bullied in school for being "too masculine" or "too feminine" (sometimes to the point of suicide) even before they know what being trans is. Somehow other kids pick up on this and start harassing them just for fun.
In safe environments, trans kids can thrive and enjoy school, learn well and go on and do great things.
In unsafe environments, trans kids, if they are lucky, will learn how to pretend to be "more masculine" or "more feminine" to avoid the harassment and maybe they'll get through school without to much abuse and damage.
For the unlucky ones, they may be tormented mercilessly until they try (or "succeed") to commit suicide.
The fact that kids know that some trans kids exist doesn't harm them any more than knowing some kids with other medical conditions exist, whether it be missing limbs, peanut allergies or cerebral palsy.
Using the chosen pronouns for these kids helps them survive school and grow up to be normal, functioning adults with a rare medical condition.
There is simply nothing wrong with that.
I could agree with most of what you said but:
if they have a "rare medical condition," how to handle it should be under the purview of their parents
and, while you generalize, it may be a medical condition for some and a psychological condition for others
also, the term "'bullying" is too widely interpreted
violent behavior is wrong, regardless, of course
and teachers should intervene in situation of mockery and teasing
on the other hand, I think you also mean, by "bullying", any viewpoint such as that of JK Rowling
normal kids should not be forced by teachers to acknowledge transgenderism
and, let's face it, that's the actual situation right now
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis positioned himself as the architect of a new conservative vision for the nation during a State of the State address on Tuesday that championed his groundbreaking stances through the pandemic and culture wars as a blueprint for Republican leadership.
The address came at the outset of a 60-day legislative session that has added political significance because it is expected to serve as a platform for DeSantis' highly expected presidential campaign.
“We defied the experts. We bucked the elites. We ignored the chatter. We did it our way, the Florida way," DeSantis told lawmakers in Tallahassee. "And the result is that we are the number one destination for our fellow Americans who are looking for a better life.”
The Legislature's Republican supermajority is eager to promote DeSantis’ political prospects and is expected to rubber stamp virtually all of his agenda, which is packed with issues, such as gender, that could prove popular in a GOP presidential primary.
DeSantis kicked off a session where the GOP will push issues like telling teachers which pronouns they can use for students, making guns more available to Floridians, keeping immigrants that are in the country illegally out of the state, and criminalizing some drag shows, as Tennessee recently did.
In his speech, DeSantis ran through the conservative accomplishments of his tenure thus far and highlighted upcoming measures that will be popular with some Republican primary voters, such as a proposal to eliminate concealed firearms permits.
In the 1960s, there was a professor and business analyst named Laurence J. Peter. He became famous for coming up with something called the Peter Principle. The informal way to describe it was this: In a business hierarchy, an employee does well and is promoted. He does well in his new, higher-level job and is promoted again. He does well in that position and is promoted yet again. Finally, he rises to a job that is beyond his abilities. He is no longer promoted and stays in the job he does not do well.
"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence," Peter wrote. "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."
It was bitterly funny and true. And now, we are seeing the Peter Principle in action, fittingly in a person named Peter, at the Biden administration Department of Transportation.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg has mishandled several crises that have come into his area of responsibility. One was the supply-chain crisis. The other was the Southwest Airlines meltdown. And most recently has been the disastrous train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio. In response, Buttigieg has received the most intense criticism of his career. He is not reacting well.
Over the weekend, Buttigieg unburdened himself to CNN. He "admits he got it wrong on the Ohio train derailment response," CNN reported, and even concedes that his critics have a point. "But while the criticism is fair, he says, the critics are mostly not," the CNN article continued.
Buttigieg then launched into a tirade of anger, self-pity, and sheer non sequitur that one might not have expected from a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar. But out it came. "It's really rich to see some of these folks — the former president, these Fox hosts — who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite," Buttigieg told CNN, "whose top economic policy priority has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn't know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country. You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl's?"
Huh? Faced with criticism of his botching the extraordinarily serious matter of the East Palestine derailment, after the Southwest debacle, after the supply-chain mess — after all that, Buttigieg's response is to ask: "You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl's?" It simply made no sense. You know that saying about living rent-free in someone's head? It appears some at Fox News have taken up residence inside the Buttigieg cranium.
His poor performance in office is especially damaging to Buttigieg because he wants to become president of the United States. Indeed, most people first heard of Buttigieg in 2020 when, as the 37-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, having served in no other public office, he ran for the Democratic nomination for president. He sort of won the Iowa caucuses ("sort of" because state Democrats made a hash of the vote counting) but later faltered before the rise of Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic nomination.
But Buttigieg had created a national image for himself. Before, who knew this guy, this former mayor of a town of 103,353 people? Afterward, he was something of a Democratic star. He was smart, from the heartland, had served in the military in a deployment to Afghanistan, was gay, had a husband named Chasten, and, once in Washington, adopted two infant boys and went on a long parental leave. What was not for a Democrat to like?
Buttigieg was widely known to harbor presidential ambitions still. Indeed, when President Joe Biden's job approval dipped, when he messed up one thing or another, and when Democrats focused on the president's advanced age, Buttigieg was waiting in the wings, ready to step in should Biden decide not to run.
Ready, at least, until his recent troubles. Taking the transportation secretary job might have seemed like a good resume-builder for Buttigieg, giving him some national experience and allowing him to prove his ability to run a large organization, in this case, the 58,622-employee Department of Transportation. But now, the job has done just the opposite — it has shown Buttigieg to be unable to handle running a large organization when faced with the sort of crises that happen on an unfortunately regular basis.
The Peter Principle suggests that Peter Buttigieg, at just 41 years of age, has already risen to his level of incompetence. It's fair to say many national Democrats did not expect a rising star to peak so soon, and Buttigieg himself certainly did not. But moving up has its risks, and unfortunately for himself and for the nation, Buttigieg has found a job he cannot do.
"and, while you generalize, it may be a medical condition for some and a psychological condition for others"
Gender dysphoria IS a medical condition, that's why it's in the DSM and has a specified treatment regime.
Whatever you want to call a "psychological condition" is just something you made up for the sake of argument, but has no legal or medical standing.
"on the other hand, I think you also mean, by "bullying", any viewpoint such as that of JK Rowling"
One can easily disagree with JKR without bullying, and she doesn't deserve any harassment any more than trans people do.
The problem is that some people, under the guise of "free speech" say all sorts sickening, dangerous, inaccurate, slanderous, and harmful things against trans people. That is hate speech, not free speech, and it is dangerous - it should be discouraged as a matter of public safety.
"normal kids should not be forced by teachers to acknowledge transgenderism"
Not sure exactly what you mean by "transgenderism," but acknowledging basic facts like trans people exist, and the correct way to address them if you are confused, doesn't harm anyone.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A military veteran accused of telling an undercover FBI agent about a plan to “wipe out” the nation’s Jewish population was convicted on Tuesday of storming the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
A federal judge heard trial testimony without a jury before convicting Virginia resident Hatchet Speed, a former U.S. Naval reservist who was assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is scheduled to sentence Speed on May 8 for his role in a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
McFadden convicted Speed of all five charges in his indictment, including a felony count of obstructing an official proceeding, the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying the Electoral College vote. The judge also convicted Speed of four misdemeanors.
The FBI recorded Speed’s conversations with the undercover agent more than a year after the riot. Speed told the agent that he marched to the Capitol with members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group, authorities said. The Proud Boys are the extremist right-wing group that Trump told to "stand back and stand by" during his presidential debate with Joe Biden:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHhB1ZMV_o
Speed also spewed antisemitic rhetoric linked to his dislike for government, according to prosecutors. They argued that Speed’s hateful ideology helps explain why he joined the Capitol attack.
Speed was “deeply worried about a Biden presidency” and believed false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent, prosecutors wrote in a court filing. They said Speed expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler and told the undercover agent that he believes Jewish people control Biden, a Democrat.
“Speed saw the Jews as ‘everywhere,’ fighting to destroy Christians, and he was not willing to sit by,” prosecutors wrote.
McFadden said the limited trial testimony about Speed’s antisemitism wasn’t a factor in his verdict. But the judge cited statements that Speed made about Jan. 6 in support of his conviction on the obstruction charge.
“His own words show the defendant’s actions were knowing and willful,” the judge said.
Speed was arrested in June 2022 on riot-related misdemeanor charges. A grand jury later indicted him on the felony obstruction charge.
On Jan. 6, Speed drove to Washington, D.C, from his home in Vienna, Virginia. After attending the “Stop the Steal” rally, where Trump addressed a crowd of supporters, Speed joined the mob that attacked the Capitol.
Around 3 p.m., Speed entered the building through a door to the Senate wing of the Capitol after other rioters breached it. He remained inside the Capitol for roughly 40 minutes.
After leaving, he texted another rioter that he had “backed out” after hearing that the “vote had been postponed.”
“In other words,” prosecutors wrote, “because Speed thought he succeeded in obstructing the certification, he left the U.S. Capitol Building.”
An undercover FBI agent, posing as “a like-minded individual,” met with Speed at least three times in March 2022 and April 2022. The FBI recorded their discussions of his motives and actions on Jan. 6.
“Speed wanted to stop that certification. He left the U.S. Capitol only because he believed he succeeded in that effort,” prosecutors wrote.
During the recorded conversations, Speed also “outlined a plan to enlist Christians to wipe out the country’s entire Jewish population.”
To defeat the Jewish threat and topple the government, Speed told the (agent) that a violent response was necessary — and that the Jews stood in the way,” prosecutors wrote.
Speed began “panic buying” thousands of dollars worth of firearms and silencers in February 2021, prosecutors wrote. They said Speed later told the agent that he had a plan “to kidnap and disappear his enemies after mock trials, and he thought the silencers could come in useful for the effort.”
The undercover agent testified under a pseudonym at a separate trial for Speed in Virginia on gun charges. After a retrial in January, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia convicted Speed of three counts of unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm silencer. He is [scheduled] to be sentenced for those convictions on April 13.
Speed was a petty officer first class in the U.S. Naval Reserves and was assigned to the Naval Warfare Space Field Activity at the National Reconnaissance Office, the FBI said. The National Reconnaissance Office operates U.S. spy satellites used by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The agency said Speed was not part of the reserve unit at the time of the Jan. 6 riot.
Hello TTFers!
I've been too busy to post recently so I'm sorry for not responding to any comments aimed at me since my last post. I expect to make a substantial post within the next few weeks. If you're relatively new to TTF and don't remember me posting prior to my return from a long abscence just prior to Crismas, I've been setting straight the opponents of fairness like W/R/BA on this blog for around two decades. If you'd like to read more of what I've written, please check the TTF archives. I posted for the first several years under my former name, Randy Schimnosky. I hope to be back soon,
XXOO,
Priya
"Hello TTFers!"
Well, hello, stranger!!!!
"I've been too busy to post recently so I'm sorry for not responding"
Apology accepted. But, all that's not what's important. The important thing is for you to get better. Take as long as you need. Miracles don't happen overnight!
"I expect to make a substantial post within the next few weeks"
That's great. We will all look forward to hearing from Randy again and hear a mea culpa...
"If you're relatively new to TTF"
You must be addressing those hordes of "relative" newsters that continually flock to this fascinating blog.
LOL!
"If you'd like to read more of what I've written"
Yeah, I think we'll all pass
"I hope to be back soon,"
well, faint hopes are still hopes
"XXOO"
this is like close encounters of the third kind
I'll try
ZZQQ
At the government level, pandemic preparedness is as much about protecting critical supply chains as it is about administering medical treatments. What the COVID-19 pandemic showed is that the flow of information, which may be the single most vital resource in the supply chain, is utterly broken. In many cases, it was actively undermined by senior public health officials including the former chief medical adviser to the president, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
New emails released in a congressional probe show that Fauci helped direct the publication of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” an influential scientific paper published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, that claimed COVID-19 could not have leaked from a laboratory. Fauci then cited the paper—in effect quoting himself, since he coordinated the article behind the scenes and was given final approval before it published—as if it was an independent source corroborating his assertions that COVID could only have come from a bat and not from a lab.
“There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve,” Fauci said at a presidential briefing on April 17, 2020, exactly one month after “Proximal Origin” was published. “And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
But why would Fauci go to so much trouble to control the information surrounding the origins of the virus while sending the message to Americans that the idea that COVID had come from a lab was a conspiracy theory? And why would science journalists and peer-reviewed science publications go along with the effort?
Fauci, it appears, may have been trying to hide his connections to the Wuhan Laboratory of Virology (WIV). For years, according to a report at The Intercept, the National Institutes of Health (where Fauci served as a director) directed government grants to the Chinese facility where multiple investigations by federal agencies have now concluded the virus likely originated—specifically to fund the controversial gain of function (GoF) research that intentionally engineers deadly viruses in order to study them. Even if this was all merely a coincidence, it certainly looked bad. Fauci seemed so alarmed by the optics that in January 2020, he sent an email to his deputy, Hugh Auchincloss, with the single-word, all-caps subject line “IMPORTANT”—something he does not do in the hundreds of pages of other emails released to the public via FOIA requests. The email Fauci sent contained a link to a scientific study that was then spreading across the internet, which had originally been published in 2015 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by the WIV’s Shi Zhengli and pioneering American GoF researcher Ralph Baric. In the body of the email, Fauci wrote to Auchincloss, “It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on …You will have tasks today that must be done.”
What were those tasks? It’s impossible to know from the email but one can speculate that if Fauci wanted to control the narrative about the outbreak of COVID-19 it would have been a monumental and near impossible task. Reporters could find public records showing the connections between his office at the NIH and China’s WIV. Fauci might be able to find a few journalists credulous enough to simply dismiss the fact that COVID was first reported in the city containing China’s largest facility for producing coronaviruses, but surely there was no way he could get the entire media to go along. If he had, he may have revealed just how dysfunctional and bought-off science journalism has become, a reality that Americans would be well advised to confront before the next pandemic.
The deeper phenomenon at work, however, is that in the U.S. a large number of professionals who cover science for general readers and for news publications like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal are not—and do not pretend to be—journalists per se. They are science writers whose field is science communications—a distinction with a huge difference. They see their role as translating the lofty work of pure science for a general audience, rather than as professional skeptics whose job is to investigate the competing interests, claims, and billion-dollar funding streams in the messy world of all-too-human scientists.
From the beginning of the pandemic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other leading mainstream outlets were taking their cues—including their facts and their seemingly unflappable certainties—from peer-reviewed publications with authoritative professional reputations like Nature, Science, and The Lancet.
It was this small handful of peer-reviewed science and medical journals—and to a shocking extent just these three—on which the consumer media based key narratives, like the idea that SARS-CoV-2 could not possibly have come from a lab. Boiled down, “the science” on a given issue was often conclusively reduced to whatever these journals published.
But for the establishment science publishing community, the pandemic also had an unintended consequence. Through journalistic investigations, often powered by FOIA requests that ensnared hundreds of email exchanges with scientists and science writers, a spotlight was turned on science journalism itself. Writers like Paul Thacker, a contributor to The BMJ, Emily Kopp, a reporter for the watchdog group U.S. Right to Know, Michael Balter, who has contributed dozens of pieces to Science magazine, and the powerful decentralized group of COVID investigators called DRASTIC, exposed the inner workings of an industry that claims to speak for science but often works for political and corporate interests.
In many instances, pandemic-related science journalism smacks of questionable motives. The most high-profile example of this was the now infamous letter by 27 scientists published in The Lancet on March 7, 2020, asserting that they “overwhelmingly conclude” that the pandemic had a natural origin, and condemning the suggestion that the virus emerged in a lab as “conspiracy theories” that put scientists lives at risk. What the 27 scientists neglected to mention is that their statement was organized by Peter Daszak, a co-author of the letter who is also the president of the NGO that facilitated U.S. government funding to the lab in Wuhan that the FBI and Department of Energy have concluded is the likely source of the pandemic.
While Daszak’s Lancet letter resembled a partly savvy (and partly clumsy) effort at PR-style crisis management, a paper published in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals would be both more significant in its impact and possibly more compromised in its creation. That paper, the aforementioned “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” published in Nature Medicine, a peer-reviewed (and less prestigious) sister publication of Nature, in March of 2020, was authored by a distinguished but relatively young evolutionary biologist named Kristian Andersen, along with a number of equally accomplished virologists. The paper is filled with complex analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, but in its short abstract it stated the upshot in language even a harried consumer journalist could easily grasp: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Putting aside problems with that claim (for example, a wave-making preprint last year pointed to indications that SARS-CoV-2 was indeed made in a lab), the origins of this paper, which became a touchstone for those arguing against the lab-leak theory, were deeply unethical.
Most of the questions surrounding “Proximal Origin” concern a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference called by Fauci and joined by his boss, NIH then-Director Francis Collins, and other top scientists, including Andersen and a number of his “Proximal Origin” co-authors.
As emails obtained from Freedom of Information requests revealed, Fauci arranged the call just days after receiving an email from Andersen expressing concerns he shared with several other prominent virologists that parts of the virus looked engineered. Andersen wrote that he and a few fellow researchers “all find the [SARS-CoV-2] genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”
If that claim ever reached the public, it might have permanently altered the discourse surrounding the origins of the pandemic. But after the conversation with Fauci, it never did get out. Instead, Andersen, Holmes, and Gary (in addition to Andrew Rambaut) began circulating a draft of “Proximal Origin” three days later, making claims that contradicted the findings Andersen had presented to Fauci in his initial email less than a week prior. In a Feb. 4 email to Peter Daszak, Andersen communicated that he and his co-authors had already begun circulating drafts of a paper proposing the exact opposite—that COVID-19 had emerged naturally—which would become “Proximal Origin.”
Andersen would later explain to The New York Times that his initial conclusions were made “in a matter of days, while we worked around the clock” and the subsequent revised position was the result of “more extensive analyses, significant additional data, and thorough investigations to compare genomic diversity more broadly.” Despite this claim, however, “Proximal Origin” was written “in a matter of days,” with a draft complete by Feb. 4 and the paper accepted by Nature Medicine by March 6.
“Thank you for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 ‘origins’ paper,” Andersen wrote to Fauci and Collins. “We’re happy to say that the paper was just accepted by Nature Medicine and should be published shortly (not quite sure when).”
The question about what, exactly, happened on that crucial conference call has remained a subject of intense speculation. Virtually all the sections of FOIA-released emails related to the call were redacted by the NIH, leaving large blocks of blacked-out text that remind one of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Just as suggestive, however, was the chain of events that set the conference call in motion. On the evening of Friday, Jan. 31, 2020, Fauci received an email from an NIH communications officer that contained, copied in full, a Science article published that day. The article, written by one of the magazine’s senior correspondents, Jon Cohen, explored various theories concerning the origin of the pandemic. The article made mention of the aforementioned 2015 scientific study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by the WIV’s Shi Zhengli and pioneering American GoF researcher Ralph Baric. This might very well have triggered the email that Fauci sent to his deputy, Hugh Auchincloss, with the subject line “IMPORTANT.”
That paper, which would later be described by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as providing a “prototype” for making SARS-CoV-2 in the Wuhan lab, evidently alarmed Fauci. In response to emails received from Fauci, Auchincloss wrote back on the evening of Feb. 1. “The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what that means since [NIAID official] Emily [Erbelding] is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 [Potential Pandemic Pathogens] framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.” And, as it turns out, they did: The NIAID/NIH had funded the study in question.
Today, the 2015 paper resulting from that study resembles a kind of publishing Frankenstein, with a series of amendments, including an editor’s note, author correction, “Corrigendum,” and update, all stitched onto the original version. On its own, any one of these features would be noteworthy. Together, they are almost comical.
Among the amendments is a revelation that the genome produced by the study was never uploaded to GenBank, the NIH’s global database for genetic sequences. The paper also mislabeled the name of the virus created by the study, part of a pattern of oddly mislabeled papers, or of missing genomes and viruses in WIV studies related to COVID-19.
The editor’s note, published less than two weeks after “Proximal Origin” was originally published in Nature Medicine, offered readers a stern warning: “We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.” As we now have good reason to assume, it only appeared that they did because journals like Nature and The Lancet acted as gatekeepers of “the science,” while taking direction and performing public relations for Fauci, Collins, and other members of the U.S. government.
Furthermore, Nature Medicine had failed to note that the 2015 study had received U.S. government funding allocated to the WIV by EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO run then as now by Peter Daszak, the organizer of the Lancet letter.
While Fauci’s discovery of Jon Cohen’s article set off the flurry of events that would lead to “Proximal Origin,” it would be Cohen who—inadvertently, and, seemingly, involuntarily—provided the most insight into what had taken place on the decisive Feb. 1 conference call with Fauci, Andersen, and other key scientists.
In July 2020, Cohen received an email from an anonymous source, which was revealed in one of the NIH FOIA releases. In the first line of the email, the anonymous source wrote, “Hello Jon, Given your recent mentions of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 I thought you might be interested to hear the bizarre back-story of the paper ‘The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.’”
Noting the “incredibly” strange history of the “Proximal Origin” paper and the Fauci-led conference call, the anonymous source alleged that Andersen and the other writers of the paper were not its true authors. “[A]sk yourself how this group of authors, none of whom work on coronaviruses, could have such detailed arguments about why SARS-CoV-2 was not human-engineered,” the anonymous source wrote. “The answer is that they couldn’t (and didn’t)—they were schooled by the coronavirus experts on the call.”
The coronavirus experts that the anonymous source alluded to include Dutch virus researcher Ron Fouchier and his boss, Marion Koopmans, and German virologist Christian Drosten. These scientists were named in a letter issued by House Republicans, and all have ties to the lab in Wuhan. Marion Koopmans, Fouchier’s boss, is director of Erasmus University’s viroscience department, which lists EcoHealth Alliance—the funding vehicle that funneled NIH money to the lab in Wuhan—as first on its list of collaborators. According to U.S. Right to Know, the public accountability nonprofit, Christian Drosten “served on a bat conference advisory committee with the Ecohealth Alliance and Dr. Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” More importantly, they have all had a hand in developing some of the world’s most deadly lab-engineered viruses.
It was a grenade of an allegation—that the claims in the most important paper concerning the origin of the pandemic were shaped by GoF researchers who had, in some instances, partnered with the Wuhan lab. Moreover, those arguments were formulated on a call with Fauci, who had overseen NIAID, which is one of the world’s largest funders of risky virus research. This would be a conflict of interest of massive proportions.
Cohen was handed an opportunity that most journalists can only dream of—a potentially career-making scoop dropped in his inbox by a seemingly knowledgeable anonymous source—and a scoop, it turns out, that was in many ways correct. But he never pursued the story. Additionally, he forwarded the anonymous email to Kristian Andersen, writing: “Here’s what one person who claims to have inside knowledge is saying behind your backs …” (The use of the plural “backs” is interesting, as it indicates that Cohen was referring to other people mentioned in the anonymous source’s email, possibly including Fauci.)
Asked about this decision, Cohen told Tablet: “The people who have exaggerated the significance of the anonymous email—which, I will reiterate, offers no insights whatsoever about the origin of this pandemic—have used my decision to not write about the credit dispute as a cudgel, manufacturing wildly inaccurate and unfair assertions about my motives and my credibility. It speaks to the mob mentality that Twitter encourages, to the certainty some people have about the lab leak, and to the deep emotions that surround the origin debate, which too often has led to speculations pretending to be evidence.”
Nevertheless, it was Cohen’s decision to send this email to Andersen that ultimately made the email public since Andersen promptly forwarded it to Fauci, making it susceptible to a future FOIA request. Around the time that the NIH was going to remove the redactions from the anonymous source’s email, Cohen published a blog post titled “Obtain but verify,” which included the full text of the email. (Cohen told Tablet he published the post “in sync with this panel I helped organize about media coverage of origins.”)
In the post, Cohen defended his actions, and claimed that the foreboding message he sent to Andersen was a “cheeky” way of asking for a reply. However, in the original version of the “Obtain but verify” apologia, Cohen left three critical paragraphs out of the anonymous source’s email. In these paragraphs, the anonymous source claims that “Proximal Origin” was initially submitted to Nature—not its more specifically focused (and less prestigious) subsidiary, Nature Medicine. This makes sense. Given that this was a group of the world’s foremost virus researchers issuing a key paper on the origin of the worst pandemic in generations, one would expect it to appear in the largest possible outlet.
According to the anonymous source, the editor at Nature responsible for handling the submission had heard about what went on during the teleconference and had also found that the “Proximal Origin” authors had been “schooled” by scientists whose names weren’t on the paper. She, according to the tipster, then rejected the paper. When contacted for comment as to whether they would be adding Anthony Fauci to the list of contributors to the “Proximal Origins” paper, a spokesperson from Nature Medicine told Tablet:
“I hope it’s helpful to note that the publication you are referring to is a correspondence published in Nature Medicine. The correspondence section provides a forum for discussion or to present a point of view on issues that are of interest to the readership of Nature Medicine. We work with the manuscript and accompanying information as it is presented to us and all authors are expected to fulfil the criteria laid out in our authorship policy. The responsibility for reflecting substantive contributions to manuscripts through authorship lists lies with the authors themselves and we have received no communications from any researchers suggesting that their contributions have not been appropriately recognised.”
Cohen, for his part, told Tablet that he never took a position on the origins of COVID-19, and points to his publications at Science, which he says covered the “lab origin possibility and also question [the] role of the Huanan market.”
The same FOIA dump that revealed Cohen’s letter to Andersen also reveals that The New York Times’ former lead pandemic reporter, Donald McNeil, wrote a ponderous Feb. 25, 2020, email (in which he also accuses Americans of acting like “selfish pigs”) to Fauci in which he flatters the pandemic czar’s performance at a press conference. “[The] only time the tone was right [was] when you were the third to take the mike and explain things …” In another email, McNeil confesses that he has purchased not one but two Fauci bobbleheads, one for himself and one for someone whose name is, weirdly, redacted.
Fauci was not immune to the flattery, and returned it in kind. At one point he dashed off a missive to McNeil about an interview the Times reporter had conducted. “Donald: Your interview with [WHO official] Bruce Aylward was the best discussion of COVID-19 that I have seen thus far. Great job!” Fauci signed the email “Tony.”
As a product of its own hype, the science media has been granted a kind of epistemological special status on science-related issues. On matters related to science, the thinking among consumer journalists goes, surely the science writers will have more, and better, things to say. That might be true, but on issues where science, money, power and crisis collide, it almost certainly is not. And no issue brought together those four horsemen of enlightened corruption more dramatically than the COVID-19 pandemic.
JK Rowling is explaining herself. It's time her detractors listen.
Her message, as she says in the fourth episode of 'The Witch Trials of JK Rowling' podcast: Transgender identity is real. She is sympathetic.
You'd think this would generate headlines — JK Rowling, public enemy number one of the trans community, countering her critics. But no.
Rowling offers her nuanced thoughts in this podcast, informed by voluminous reading and research and her own past as well: an abused wife, pregnant and in fear for her life, her baby, and her first Potter manuscript, which she says was held hostage by her then-husband.
As a tortured teenager who questioned her own femininity and sexuality. As a woman worried for other women who feel they are being systematically marginalized, threatened, and silenced, but who cannot afford — literally, financially — to speak up.
'Did I want to join the public conversation?' she asks. 'Yes... because I was watching women being shut down. And it was as though there was no woman perfect enough to say her piece.'
She knew well what would happen.
'There were people close to me,' she says, 'who were BEGGING me not to do it . . . they'd watched what had happened to other public figures and there was certainly a feeling of, 'This is not a wise thing to do; don't do it.'
We've never heard Rowling reveal so much of herself and her thought processes, and it's fascinating. What she has to say can't be boiled down to a tweet or a like on Instagram, and hallelujah — someone in the public square courageously demanding conversation and debate. As grown-ups should.
Apparently, the Potter books are no longer regarded as proof, so it must be said: Rowling possesses a sharp, unique, provocative mind. She is all too self-aware. She deserves much more than being treated as a caricature in much of mainstream and social media. Yet even this podcast, a valuable addition to what should be respectful and informed debate, has been dismissed in the usual outlets.
Her message, as she says in the fourth episode of 'The Witch Trials of JK Rowling' podcast: Transgender identity is real. She is sympathetic.
'Exhausting,' said Monica Hesse in the Washington Post. Hesse couldn't point to any one thing Rowling has ever said that's transphobic, but the author, Hesse wrote, nonetheless has 'a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric.'
New York magazine, Vulture: 'Can Anyone Trust the Witch Trials of JK Rowling?' Podcast critic Nicholas Quah, after listening to just the first two episodes, decried the concept of actually letting Rowling explain herself: 'That Rowling's perspective so utterly dominates the podcast's opening stages is incredibly frustrating,' Quah writes.
Wow. The whole point of this podcast is to examine how the most beloved author of our era has become the subject — I doubt Rowling would ever use the word 'victim' — of an international witch hunt, online and off.
Would Quah have written the same sentence about a complicated, misunderstood man? Displayed — ostensibly anathema to a critic — an already closed mind?
Episode four delves into the surging rates of tweens and teens transitioning — a sudden surge in biological girls identifying as boys especially — and a medical community all too willing to put these children on puberty blockers or remove breasts or alter genitalia without comprehensive psychological evaluations.
Teenagers who later decide to de-transition face very real consequences: Biological girls face infertility. Biological boys may never experience an orgasm. But to investigate social contagion, the valorization some parents take in having a trans child, the phenomenon of detransitioning — the numbers, the reasons why, the ages at which this is most common — is to be transphobic.
Frankly, that's insane. Rowling's not alone here, and there's no doubt her outspokenness is encouraging others.
Take Jamie Reed, a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
To investigate social contagion, the valorization some parents take in having a trans child, the phenomenon of detransitioning — the numbers, the reasons why, the ages at which this is most common — is to be transphobic. Frankly, that's insane.
'I could no longer participate in what was happening there,' Reed wrote in the Free Press. 'By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to 'do no harm.' Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.'
Then there's former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, speaking out about the essential unfairness of competing against those born biologically male and biological female athletes no longer having their own locker rooms — their own safe space. She said last month that she has received multiple private messages of thanks and endorsement from elite male and female athletes, but is disheartened by their reluctance to go public.
'Now I realize these private thanks,' Gaines said, 'make them responsible for this continuing and advancing as it has.'
You only need to look at the faces of any female swimmer competing against Lia Thomas, a trans female, as they lose and lose again to someone with greater wingspan and lung capacity and upper body strength: The futility, the pain, the utter disconsolation at never having a chance in their chosen sport, one that required enormous personal and financial sacrifice, afraid to express their anger because the mainstream media is cheering this on as a heartwarming story.
JK Rowling is shifting the conversation. The BBC, which airs the series 'Strike' based on Rowling's adult detective novels (published under her pen name Robert Galbraith), apologized twice to the author last month for not defending her against charges of transphobia. They have renewed 'Strike' for a sixth season and have made it clear: The BBC stands with her.
In Finland, Sweden and the UK, there has been a sharp pullback on medical interventions for kids who identify as trans. Last July, Britain's National Health announced Tavistock, the UK's only clinic for transgender youth, would close in favor of new, smaller centers and protocols. Too many children, said Dr. Hilary Cass, head of the Tavistock review, are 'at considerable risk' of depression and impaired mental health. One clinic alone, Cass said, is not 'a safe or viable long-term option.'
Even The New York Times is coming around, recently publishing an op-ed titled 'In Defense of JK Rowling.'
'The campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd,' columnist Pamela Paul wrote last month. 'The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling's case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn't square with her actual views.'
Take Jamie Reed (above), a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
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Take Jamie Reed (above), a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
The notion that the Times would publish such a defense, rather than fold to woke junior staffers having philosophical seizures on Slack, would have been unthinkable a year ago. Now, top editors at the Times, it seems, have begun regenerating their spinal columns, telling staff that there is now zero tolerance for its own journalists protesting the way the Times covers this issue in all its complexity.
Thank JK Rowling. She's not just encouraging others to summon their courage. She's forcing them to admit -- she has some valid points
In this podcast episode, Rowling addresses the costs not just to biological women but to young kids. Here she shares her own private torment as a confused young girl and adolescent:
'I grew up in what I would say was quite a misogynistic household,' Rowling says. 'Like all young girls, I grew up with certain standards of beauty and ideas of femininity, and I felt I didn't fit into either of those groups. I didn't feel particularly feminine . . . I looked very androgynous at 11 and 12. I had short hair.'
She says she felt the very common anxiety young girls do as their bodies change, as they develop and get their periods, as their bodies become something boys and men observe in new ways — ways that can carry shame or ambivalence, a wish to stop what's happening.
'It's very difficult to cope with that,' Rowling says. 'I questioned my sexuality. I'm thinking, 'Well, I can tell my friends are pretty — does that mean I'm gay?' Which I think is very common. I grew up to be a straight woman, but I've never forgotten that feeling of anxiety around my body . . . Having felt like an outsider in several different ways in my life, I have a real feeling for the underdog. And I have a real feeling for people who feel that they don't fit. And I see that, hugely, particularly, among younger trans people. I can understand that feeling only too well.'
JK Rowling is speaking. The tide is turning. Will her most vehement critics begin to admit fault?
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A bill that would have prohibited minors from getting married in West Virginia was defeated Wednesday night in a legislative committee.
The Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill on a 9-8 vote, a week after it passed the House of Delegates.
The vote came shortly after the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, testified briefly before the committee. She said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.
Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.
“For now, there will be no floor for the age of marriage in WV, endangering our kids,” Young wrote on Twitter after the vote.
In a rebuke, Cabell County Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel reminded the committee after the vote that Wednesday was International Women’s Day.
Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia.
Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart, a former federal prosecutor who sided with the majority, said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
The bill would have established that 18 is the age of consent and removed the ability of a minor to obtain consent through their parents, legal guardians, or by court petition. Existing legal marriages, including those done in other states, would have been unaffected.
According to the nonprofit group Unchained At Last, which seeks to end forced and child marriage, seven states have set the minimum age for marriage at 18, all since 2018. Supporters of such legislation say it reduces domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies and improves the lives of teens.
Although recent figures are unavailable, according to the Pew Research Center, West Virginia had the highest rate of child marriages among the states in 2014, when the state’s five-year average was 7.1 marriages for every 1,000 children ages 15 to 17.
Author: Matt Pusatory (WUSA9)
Published: 12:27 PM EST March 8, 2023
Updated: 6:53 PM EST March 8, 2023
TAKOMA PARK, Md. — A Takoma Park man previously charged for vandalizing two Prince George's County libraries is now charged with possessing child pornography. Charles Sutherland faces at least seven charges of possessing child pornography, according to a charging document.
Sutherland was arrested back in June for spray painting the word "Groomer" on the front door of the Greenbelt library and the New Carrolton library during Capitol Pride Week. He faced vandalism and hate crime charges after he was arrested. Sutherland worked as a school librarian at Northview Elementary School in Bowie at the time. He has been on administrative leave since his arrest in June.
At the time, Sutherland reportedly admitted to the vandalism and allowed a search of his home, according to charging documents.
During the search, the document says officers found numerous diapers, children's dolls, and a child-sized doll in Sutherland's bed. According to Sutherland, he has no children or nieces or nephews, the documents say. He also admitted he had child pornography on a laptop in his home.
In January, a digital forensics examination of the laptop was completed and found seven files of child pornography.
It is not clear yet when Sutherland will appear in court for these charges. The investigation is ongoing.
Remember Barney Frank, gay Congressman extraordinaire, who had a homosexual prostitution ring running out of his house? Remember when he cause the collapse of several financial institutions in 2008? He's at it again:
Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) sat on the board for Signature Bank which collapsed in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) implosion.
In a speech at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington on Saturday, Pence cleverly said Pete Buttigieg, the first and worst openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history, took "maternity leave" while Americans faced airline problems in 2021.
"Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression," Pence said.
Amid the national showdown over drag performances and transgender rights, a storytelling event in a city park in northern Ohio became the latest flashpoint, fueled by demonstrators who waved swastika flags and shouted "Seig heil" before a melee that led to two arrests.
Hundreds of protesters, including armed white supremacists, members of several extremist groups and LGBTQ-community supporters descended on Wadsworth, Ohio, a small town outside Akron, for a drag queen storytelling show that had been moved from a private venue.
White supremacist protestors shouted "Heil Hitler" and made Nazi salutes outside the event while pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters chanted, confronted the far-right agitators and wielded rainbow-colored parasols as a sort of shield for attendees.
Toward the end of the four-hour event Saturday, two people were arrested after a series of scuffles involving pepper spray, the use of a flag pole as a weapon and a protester who, according to a witness and a video posted on social media, allegedly pulled a gun twice.
Wadsworth Police Chief Dan Chafin said Sunday he's aware of the footage of the alleged handgun but that he couldn't comment further pending an investigation.
The face-off fits within a larger national pattern of rhetoric and threats surrounding drag events. They start with unfounded or unproven allegations that drag shows "groom" children for sex abuse, and have led to escalating violence and clashes in communities nationwide.
Extremist far-right groups including the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, White Lives Matter and other white supremacists have glommed onto the anti-drag cause over the last couple of years. The weekend's event in Ohio featured a full range of these groups.
"Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression," Pence said.
From Twitter:
Chasten Buttigieg
@Chasten
An honest question for you, @Mike_Pence after your attempted joke this weekend. If your grandchild was born prematurely and placed on a ventilator at two months old - their tiny fingers wrapped around yours as the monitors beep in the background - where would you be?
---------------------
Buttigieg and his husband welcomed twins Gus and Penelope in September 2021. The Cabinet official took parental leave at the time to be with his newborns. The couple later revealed that the babies had overcome serious health struggles after contracting a respiratory virus. Gus was placed on a ventilator in a pediatric intensive care unit.
If Mike Pence ever tries to tell you he's "pro-life" again, remind him of his little "joke."
A federal manhunt is underway for Roy McGrath, once the chief of staff to ex-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, after he failed to appear in court Monday for the first day of his trial on wire fraud and embezzlement charges.
The U.S. Marshals Service launched an interstate fugitive search after a federal judge issued a warrant for McGrath's arrest. McGrath's face is plastered on a U.S. Marshals poster, which highlights charges against him for wire fraud, theft in programs receiving federal funds and falsification of records in federal investigations.
A law enforcement source tells CBS News that McGrath's family was at his home in Florida when FBI visited the house Tuesday morning. The source said his high profile and the widely circulating photos will make it difficult for him to remain at large.
McGrath was scheduled to appear in federal court in Baltimore on charges related to his tenure running the Maryland Environmental Service before joining Hogan's office as chief of staff in 2020. The 2021 indictment against McGrath says he sought to enrich himself personally by using his position as executive director of the agency and his role as chief of staff to the governor to engineer a payment from the agency he shouldn't have received. Prosecutors also allege that McGrath falsified his time sheets while he took a vacation to Europe and that he stole money for classes at Harvard. McGrath resigned from Hogan's office weeks after assuming the chief-of-staff job after an investigation found he wasn't forthcoming about the $230,000 severance package he had received for leaving the quasi-government agency, according to court filings.
McGrath, 53, has been living in Naples, Florida, and was supposed to travel to Maryland for the trial, according to court records. It's possible Hogan could testify in the trial. He was Maryland's governor from 2015 until earlier this year; he has denied knowing about or approving McGrath's severance payment.
McGrath has pleaded not guilty on all charges. His attorney, Joseph Murtha, said he doesn't know where his client is.
"Unfortunately, I have no idea of Roys's whereabouts," Murtha said. "I hope that he is safe, and that we will soon have an opportunity to speak with one another."
Murtha told CBS Baltimore's WJZ on Tuesday he has yet to hear from his client. He confirmed McGrath's wife spoke to law enforcement at the couple's home in Naples, Florida. And he said she is cooperating with the investigation and has no idea of her husband's whereabouts.
— Rob Legare, Scott McFarlane and Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.
USA Today Exclusive: Social media threats exploded after Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 claims, analysis finds
Tucker Carlson's portrayal of the deadly Jan. 6 attack as a largely peaceful event on his prime-time Fox News show set off a dangerous new wave of social media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders, according to experts who monitor extremism and a report from Advance Democracy shared exclusively with USA TODAY.
The segment that aired last week downplayed the violence at the Capitol two years ago, recasting the Washington mob that breached the Capitol as an “orderly and meek” gathering of “sightseers.”
Carlson’s claims, which accompanied clips of Capitol security footage, drew an angry reaction from right-wing users who fired off threats on Twitter and in pro-Trump forums directed at politicians who have made public inquiries into the violence, especially the congressional Jan. 6 committee.
Those threats came in far greater numbers than before the broadcast, according to the Advance Democracy report.
On Twitter, posts relating to Jan. 6 using violent rhetoric increased fivefold from the previous week, the report shows.
The outpouring of violence concerns extremism experts, who said Carlson and Fox News are playing with fire by spreading disinformation that could inspire violence against the targets of their coverage.
"If there were an attack right now on one of the groups or individuals that was mentioned in Tucker's report – one of the dumping grounds for his ire – I would not be surprised at all," said Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "I mean, that's basically what we're expecting right now."
Threats posted online
On pro-Trump forum Patriots.win, users called for violence, with one commenting: “SOLUTION HAS NEVER CHANGED.” He added, “GALLOWS. FOR ALL OF THEM.”
Incendiary comments spread on other social media platforms such as Gab, Getter, 4chan and Trump’s own Truth Social, according to the Advance Democracy report. Violent threats included calls to lynch Jan. 6 Committee members and Democratic lawmakers such as "hang them high" and "hang 'em all."
“God does not sleep,” a Gettr user wrote. “Every one of them in the January 6 committee will have to pay for what they did.”
Streaming platforms Rumble and TikTok were also rife with incendiary talk including claims that Jan. 6 was a so-called false flag operation. (In such a case, conspiracy theorists allege, a destructive event is actually faked to pin blame on the opposite side.)
Users called for mass arrests and charges of treason against Jan. 6 Committee members, Advance Democracy found.
“Nuremberg 2.0 for the Commies and their propagandists,” one Rumble user wrote. "If not a single person is arrested for the immense corruption then there are no more peaceful solutions," another wrote.
One TikTok commenter threatened mainstream media outlets: "It’s time to burn these media outlets to the ground."
Squire said Advance Democracy's findings mirror what she and her team at SPLC are seeing on social media in the wake of Carlson's reports.
Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an expert on domestic extremism, said he also noted a significant uptick in violent and hateful rhetoric online after the Carlson piece aired.
Holt said a quick analysis showed Carlson's name, and referenced to the Jan. 6 riot increased 15-fold in the days after the segment. He said the coverage is a deliberate attempt to distort the truth and convince Fox News watchers the insurrection was not as serious as it was.
"Disagreements are at the heart of politics," Holt said. "The political process is about resolving those disagreements. But if one party of that conversation is attempting to erase what, objectively, was an attack on the democratic process itself – it's just appalling."
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.
Fox News is 'promoting dangerous false narratives for ratings'
Daniel Jones, president of nonprofit research organization Advance Democracy, accused Fox News of “promoting dangerous false narratives for ratings.”
Carlson’s show last week was the highest-rated program on cable TV, reeling in nearly 3.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
“Fox News is knowingly misleading its viewers again by cherry-picking footage to suggest the events of Jan. 6 were largely nonviolent. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is telling his viewers that they have been misled," Jones told USA TODAY. "Our research found that these comments have directly led to violent threats being made against the January 6th Committee members, federal judges and others."
Carlson's report was unscrupulous by the standards of any journalist, said Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute.
"It is unethical and immoral to lie to people, period. And when you have as large of a platform as Fox News does, that lie causes a lot of harm," McBride said. "It is antithetical to journalism."
But what Carlson does should not be considered journalism, McBride said. As recent revelations from the Dominion Voting Machines defamation lawsuit against Fox News have shown, Carlson and many of his colleagues at Fox are engaged in a deeply cynical disinformation effort, she said.
"There's no way you can look at his (Carlson's) Jan. 6 special and conclude that he has any interest in doing journalism," McBride said.
Tucker Carlson aired Jan. 6 claims using Capitol security footage
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Carlson exclusive access to Capitol security footage from Jan. 6.
Carlson, who has spread conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack, opened the broadcast with the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump and was "a grave betrayal of American democracy."
He showed clips of rioters in the Capitol not engaged in violent activities. The released footage “demolishes the claim” that an insurrection occurred, Carlson said.
House GOP leaders promoted the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” segment. On Tuesday, the House Republican Conference tweeted: “MUST WATCH” and four siren emojis.
Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger condemned the segment as “offensive and misleading.”
Republicans split in reaction to Tucker Carlson segment
The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, criticized Fox News for depicting the Jan. 6 attack “in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.” Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Carlson’s broadcast was “dangerous and disgusting.”
The Biden administration criticized Carlson for his “false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our Constitution and the rule of law – which cost police officers their lives.”
“We also agree with what Fox News’s own attorneys and executives have now repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law: that Tucker Carlson is not credible,” deputy White House press secretary Andrew J. Bates said in a statement.
Bates was referring to the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems.
In a deposition released Tuesday, David Clark, who oversaw Fox News’ weekend programming, said he did not consider Carlson’s program a credible source of news.
According to court documents, Carlson admitted that the voter fraud claims were false.
"Tucker Carlson is not credible"
whether he is or not is nit relevant
he presented evidence and it speaks for itself
"Tucker Carlson's portrayal of the deadly Jan. 6 attack as a largely peaceful event"
there were several hundred lunatics who engaged in unacceptable violence
notably, however, no one was killed or even seriously harmed by these lunatics
the damage was to property
and, more to the point, the majority of protesters weren't violent
"The segment that aired last week downplayed the violence at the Capitol two years ago, recasting the Washington mob that breached the Capitol as an “orderly and meek” gathering of “sightseers.”"
as is always the case with any group, they weren't all on the same page
those who committed violence were in the minority
"Carlson’s claims, which accompanied clips of Capitol security footage, drew an angry reaction from right-wing users"
well, it's clear some of those convicted were set up and evidence that likely would acquitted them was withheld
that should make all Americans angry
that being said, obviously, the remedy should be through legal action, not violence
"whether he is or not is nit (sic) relevant"
Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... because when there's a 5-fold increase in "media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders", well, that's just fine with conservatives. "Freedom of speech," right?
"he presented evidence and it speaks for itself"
Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... Just like when Fox News said on Monday that it “mistakenly” cropped President Trump out of a photograph that featured the accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Nothing to see here folks... just a nice picture of Donald all by himself!
"those who committed violence were in the minority"
So were the guys flying airplanes into buildings on 9/11.
Did you actually have a point?
"well, it's clear some of those convicted were set up and evidence that likely would acquitted them was withheld"
Yeah, just like it was "clear" that Trump actually won in 2020 and there was massive amounts of voter fraud.
Maybe you should check for excess lead in your water pipes... it has been known to drop IQ points off people.
"Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... because when there's a 5-fold increase in "media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders", well, that's just fine with conservatives. "Freedom of speech," right?"
you don't forsake truth just because it makes certain fringe elements angry
law enforcement can deal with death threats, which have been made by fringe actors on all sides
the fringe on the left have issued death threats against Senators and SC justices
"Riiiiiiiggghhhtt... Just like when Fox News said on Monday that it “mistakenly” cropped"
are you saying Tucker Carlson altered the video?
So you want to reclaim the frontier? Secure the few states left that are still safe for families? Preserve the prairies those wicked coastal elites scorn as “flyover county” and “Jesus Land”? You want to return to a mythical Main Street, U.S.A., where homemade apple pies cool on every windowsill and American flags fly on every porch?
Such places still exist, but there’s a new sheriff in town—and he’s wearing size 12 Lucite pleasers and a bulging spandex g-string.
If you google any small town in “red” America and the phrase “drag brunch,” you’ll find them everywhere. The plague of low cut-top-wearing locusts is devouring the dust bowl and raiding the ranchlands.
“Drag” is of course not what it used to be. The term “drag queens” no longer refers to jovial, harmless gay men in evening wear performing what used to basically be an adult clown act. They’ve been replaced by full-blown transgender women performing raunchy, X-rated stripshows as moms, grandmas, and little kids stuff dollar bills into their leather thongs.
Of course, there have always been strippers, hookers, and dirty movie theaters in every cow town on Earth—but this is something new. They never used to let little kids into regular strip clubs, first of all. And the moms never wanted to bring their kids to regular strip clubs.
Even the “Drag Brunch” craze is new—drag has officially left its traditional setting of smoky nightclubs and moved out into the daylight, for all to see.
From Helena, Montana to Des Moines, Iowa, there are hundreds of venues that can satisfy your toddler’s urge to watch men imitating women in sexually explicit ways.
One infamous 2022 “Drag a Kid to Brunch” event took place in Dallas. In it, a mortified, confused little boy is forced to walk the runway holding hands with a towering trans woman as the charming neon sign behind him screams “IT’S NOT GONNA SUCK ITSELF.” They mean lollipops, right, Mom? Right?!
In Plano, Texas last fall, an “all-ages” drag brunch attracted some unwanted attention from people who thought they lived in a conservative state. At the brunch—which was held at Ebb & Flow, an eatery in an upscale strip mall—a buffoonish man in a dress wearing cat ears sings, “My p*ssy good, p*ssy sweet, p*ssy good enough to eat,” while flashing his underwear.
In the video from the event, a four-year old girl stares in shock as the “drag” performer twerks and grinds for the ladies in attendance.
Attending Drag Brunches is only the most visible sign of how deeply the postmodern, anti-human gender ideology has penetrated into what we used to call “middle America.” The gender studies train derailment may have happened hundreds of miles away in the universities, but the toxins that were released are now pumping through the veins of all who live there.
"are you saying Tucker Carlson altered the video?"
No, I'm saying Carlson edited the videos down to the point that he showed none of the violence we all saw happen live on our televisions that day.
No one is being prosecuted for just milling around, or simply walking to the Capitol. It wasn't as if those involved in the insurrection advanced from the White House to the Capitol like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil, growling, spitting and spinning. They're being prosecuted over those moments of violence or vandalism that led to loss of life, injury and property damage.
Carlson's edited video showing no violence was broadcast to boost Murdock's bottom line by feeding lies even Carlson doesn't believe to FOX News fans who eat up FOX News lies daily.
FOX is about as far from NEWS as is possible, We know they don't believe what they preach to their audience but they keep on preaching it anyway.
Blessings for Honesty, just a few to get you started
Proverbs 12:22 - The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
Luke 16:10 - Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
Proverbs 10:9 - Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.
"No, I'm saying Carlson edited the videos down to the point that he showed none of the violence we all saw happen live on our televisions that day."
the violence has already been widely viewed
the story was what the Dems have been hiding from us
they have made us a wild mob broke into the House chamber
it's hard to square that view with the scenes shown last week with the police opening the door for him
the Shaman guy said that's what happened and the Dems called him a liar
any Dem footage of this guy doing anything violent?
btw, I agree with you that those who vandalized or assaulted should have been prosecuted
but, even then, the sentences are stiff
they didn't kill anyone, and contrary to your assertion, didn't cause anyone to die
try this Bible verse:
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him.
Democrats have long portrayed themselves as the great guardians of the children. In truth, they are destroying the young. The harm they’ve done to children, teens and young adults has spiked in recent years, from scaremongering about global warming to pandemic lockdowns that have unnerved a generation to teaching them a divisive, politically charged curriculum.
According to an online medical journal, the University of Calgary has determined there was a spike “in emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicide ideation among children and adolescents” during the period of “social isolation” that coincides with the pandemic lockdowns. The university conducted a meta-analysis of 42 studies representing more than 11 million pediatric emergency department visits in 18 countries, and compared “the data on visits prior to the pandemic with those that took place during the pandemic, up to July 2021.”
Researchers found “a 22% increase in children and adolescents going to emergency departments for suicide attempts, and an 8% increase in visits for suicide ideation,” even though there was “a 32% reduction in pediatric emergency department visits for any health-related reasons during the pandemic.”
And which party was almost fully responsible for forcing the young into isolation? It was the Democrats in this country and their ideological kin in others, with the encouragement and approval of their media department, who placed the young under virtual house arrest and closed schools, houses of worship, playgrounds and other settings where social interaction takes place. No wonder so many lost hope.
It’s the same side of the political spectrum that has unconscionably stunted the speech, language, social and emotional development of small children through its obsession with mask mandates.
Not everyone agrees that this is the case. There is some debate among the experts. But common sense strongly suggests that forcing an entire population to appear less human – a masked population looks like a swarm of angry monsters – and interfering with basic verbal communication will have long-lasting negative consequences on society’s youngest and most vulnerable.
Before the pandemic, the political left was busy grinding down children, their own and others, with exaggerated tales of a climate doomsday. The literal poster child for this consuming phobia is Greta Thunberg, whose parents have indulged and exploited her fear of global warming.
But she is only one of millions of young Westerners who are panicked over the climate. EdWeek reported last fall that “37% of teenagers feel anxious when they think about climate change and its effects, and more than a third feel afraid. Many also said they feel helpless and overwhelmed.” A National Public Radio guest has said that “research with children and young people around the world” found “they were distressed, that they were finding climate change terrifying.”
“We didn’t realize the depth of the feeling,” said Caroline Hickman, a lecturer at the University of Bath, told NPR. “And we didn’t realize how that was impacting on their thinking and their daily functioning.”
This is sad: A large portion of the next generation is paralyzed for no reason. Their heads have been filled with stories concocted by hysterics.
Again, who is driving the narrative that warming caused by man’s use of fossil fuels has created an existential threat? It’s not the Republicans.
The Democrats, and again we include the dominant media as well as the many institutions now under control of the left, are also responsible for changing teens’ and pre-teens names and pronouns without their parents’ knowledge, and pushing confused kids into gender changes that they’ll later regret.
They have forced a woke indoctrination on students that is intended to elicit guilt from the “privileged” who are taught to feel convicted for their “whiteness,” pursued with Marxist vigor legislation that will burden future generations with crushing debt, sexualized children too young to understand, and used them as human shields to protect and validate their lust for ever-greater political power.
President Biden has announced his support for federal legislation requiring states to allow hormone treatments and sex change operations for “transgender kids.” He blasted recent restrictions on such practices in Florida as “close to sin” and said that access to transgender medical procedures should qualify as a basic civil right.
The president’s message is dystopian on its face, but, at a deeper level of analysis, reveals the disturbing new metaphysics of the American Left, which has elevated the “transgender child” into a totem. In primitive societies, tribal cultures would use totems to connect with nature, mediate their relationship with the spirit world, and honor the categories of the masculine and the feminine. In modern America, by contrast, political activists use the “transgender child” as a post-modern totem to connect with a utopian, technologically-perfected future and to create a new category beyond man and woman. Through chemical and surgical intervention, they believe, they can smash the patriarchy and transcend the limitations of human nature.
In truth, however, these procedures will not usher in a utopia. As we are beginning to see with the first cohort of “detransitioners,” so-called “gender-affirming care” denies biological reality and often results in horrific complications and regrets. The American doctors who are performing mastectomies on healthy young girls and penectomies on healthy young boys are not the saviors of the future—they are the butchers of the present, enacting a post-modern form of child sacrifice.
Joe Biden recently proposed in an interview that he would support federal legislation to force states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee to allow doctors to perform hormone therapies and sex change operations on children. This is all under the rubric of a deeply misleading term, “trans-affirming care,” that has become a deep conviction on the political Left. I’d like to analyze the clip in which Biden is talking about this and show that, for the Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a religious totem. Let’s take a listen.
[President Biden:] Transgender kids is a really harder thing. What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, “close to sinful.” It’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, “You know, I decided I want to become a man” or “I want to become a woman” or “I want to change.” I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are, I mean, just to me is, I don’t know. It’s cruel. And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.
Let’s break that down. In a certain sense, Biden’s comment sounds reasonable, it sounds humane, it sounds fairly rational. But this is all based on manipulative language and a hidden ideology that operates under the surface.
First, the category “transgender kids”: that’s the first thing he says and he lays down the marker that that’s the category we’re talking about. But as my friend and colleague Colin Wright has pointed out, there’s no such thing as a “transgender kid.” And what Wright means by that is that a child is not innately transgender, but becomes transgender once the child enters the process of medicalization—hormones, surgeries, and other medical interventions. It’s not that they cannot have feelings of discomfort or dysphoria—that’s certainly true—but they only become transgender when adults intervene. These are parents, doctors, and psychotherapists, and then that child is put on Lupron, put on testosterone or estrogen, has the double mastectomy, or gets the penile inversion surgery.
Second, Biden then says it’s not as if kids wake up one morning and decide that they’re transgender or decide that their identity is different than their sex at biological birth. This is preposterous. That’s exactly what’s happening. We have reams of data that show this is a classic social contagion. If you look at the graph of young people identifying as transgender, it’s like the tulip bulb mania, it’s like a stock market bubble. And this has to crash. This is not sustainable. It’s not driven by a deeper reality. It’s driven by these contagious social factors. Look: for most kids, if you listen to what Biden calls their “feelings” and “inclinations,” these are fleeting. They resolve on their own, especially as they’re discovering perhaps new gender identities while they’re going through the very difficult period of puberty.
All of this boils down to the third component where Biden says that this is “close to sinful.” He’s providing a religious judgment. He says that preventing kids from undergoing hormone therapies and surgeries is the sinful act. So, any prohibition against forcing kids on the path of medicalization is considered a violation of the basic worldview of the Left. And, again, this is a moral inversion. He has it exactly backwards. In reality, it’s sinful to put kids on the path to permanent medicalization, to put kids on the path to irreversible surgeries, especially at a moment when other nations are starting to turn against that kind of unproven and deeply destructive medicine. But Biden says no, we’re going to double-down, because the people who are running policy for the president—who showed no passion for these issues in the past—are telling him that this is how you put together the coalition. This is where the energy is. This is what you have to say and what you have to commit to.
Let’s look at this. What is actually happening under the surface? What does this phenomenon mean? What does the ontological category of the “transgender child” suggest?
I think that what it means at a deeper level, at an archetypal level, is that for the political Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a totem for their political ideology. In primitive civilizations, the tribes of North America or the Aboriginal tribes in Australia used totems to connect with nature, to connect with past ancestors. They had actual totems for male and female, for the masculine and the feminine, to create these basic categories of “man” and “woman.” In our modern civilization, we’ve turned this on its head. The political Left is now using the totem of the “trans child” to connect with a metaphysics of the future, to say that any holding back from this scientific and medical future is a violation of our deepest principles.
They’re creating a new totem beyond the categories of “man” and “woman,” beyond the categories of the masculine and the feminine. Because in this new metaphysics, they believe in an ideology against Genesis. They believe in an ideology against the idea that we’ve created a world in God’s image, male and female. They believe that they can actually transcend all of this. They believe that there is a gender utopia beyond the basis of reality, beyond the basis of human nature. They believe that if we can only harness scientific progress and apply it to the repressive categories of the patriarchy, we can unleash a trans utopia beyond the world of necessity.
But in truth, of course, this is a lie. Beyond the realm of the masculine and the feminine is not a utopia. It’s a dystopia in which man is stripped from his nature and forced into these brutal medical procedures, then, as we’re already seeing with “detransitioners,” stripped of the basic building blocks of reality and human dignity.
At the end of this road, what we’re seeing is that the political Left is willing to engage in child sacrifice—removing the breasts of healthy young women, and, as we know from the medical literature, castrating young boys, removing their penis, and then transforming it into what they call a “neo-vagina,” or an artificial vaginal cavity, which has just horrific medical consequences, in a way, almost reminiscent of the Aztec child sacrifice rituals. We’re castrating kids in service of a political ideology that uses them as totems to move humanity into the new left-wing metaphysics. It’s something that we’re going to see in the next few years yielding horrific consequences, dystopian consequences, because it’s fundamentally at war with the reality of the universe, the reality of human nature. It cannot stand.
Conservatives have to be tough and, with our friends on the Left who are revolted by this ideology, must have the strength of conviction to know that this metaphysics is ultimately going to backfire. And we cannot back down one inch because we have the moral high ground, we have the metaphysical high ground. I know that, in the future, despite the folksy rhetoric of people like Joe Biden, we’ll have the political high ground as well, as long as we fight this fight on principle. If we protect these kids from these experiments, then we will ultimately conform our politics to the basic nature of reality.
The above diatribe was brought to you by an eloquent but deluded conservative desperately looking for a justification to ignore the past 70 years of medical science in the treatment of trans people.
My conservative father had a quote printed on business cards: "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."
This will take a couple of shovels.
Trans kids have nothing to do with metaphysics, native totems, or even left vs. right. This is about parents being allowed to get the best medical treatment known to modern science.
The problem is that the Christian right has never believed in science, and they'll twist any argument, rule, judge, or politician any way necessary to get their pre-determined outcome.
Their war on trans children won't end with children either, just like ending Roe v. Wade hasn't ended with "the states deciding." Once they eliminate trans children, adults will be next.
With a Manhattan grand jury indictment likely but its timing unclear, Donald J. Trump sought to rally supporters to his side, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday and calling for protests.
Mr. Trump made the declaration on his site, Truth Social, at 7:26 a.m. on Saturday in a post that ended with, “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
"With a Manhattan grand jury indictment likely but its timing unclear, Donald J. Trump sought to rally supporters to his side, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday"
to Dems have a need to fail?
doing this will make him a martyr to his supporters
Trump is currently leading polls for the 2024 GOP nomination
arresting and trying the opponent of the party in power is something that happens in Russia
his crime? paying an affair to stay quiet
not exactly a threat to society
let the voters weigh in at the ballot box
Sex education is failing to reduce adolescent birthrates in conservative states, according to a new study.
Perhaps paradoxically, states with a majority conservative population and higher degree of religiosity tend to have higher teen birthrates. The findings suggest that the social structure of the state, such as the degree of conservatism, can undermine the effect of the sex curricula.
The researchers, from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL), do not recommend abstinence-based education, but rather crafting sex education curricula that take into account the influences of a state's sociopolitical composition. The study appears today (Feb. 6) in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
The U.S. adolescent birthrate is by far the highest among industrialized nations. The birthrate among girls ages 15 to 19 was 39.1 per 1,000 teens in this age group in 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The rate in Western Europe ranges from about 24 per 1,000 teens in the U.K. (slightly lower than the U.S. white non-Hispanic rate) to four in the Netherlands.
Broken down by race, the U.S. rate ranges from 70.1 among Hispanic Americans to 14.6 among Asian Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The rate is falling, however, and is at its lowest point since recordkeeping began 70 years ago. Health experts cannot fully explain the cause for the decline after a recent peak in the 1980s, nor do they know the reason for disparity from state to state. Thus, there is an ongoing debate over the efficacy of comprehensive sexuality-based programs, which teach about both abstinence and condom use to reduce the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, compared with abstinence-based programs, which exclude information about birth control and safe sex.
Researchers led by Patricia Cavazos-Rehg of WUSL narrowed their analysis to birthrates among girls ages 15 to 17 in 24 U.S. states during years of steady decline from 1997 to 2005. (The national birthrates climbed slightly in 2006 and 2007 before declining again in 2008 and 2009.) They found what many researchers have stated previously — that an increase in comprehensive sex education in school is associated with lower adolescent birthrates. [ 10 Surprising Sex Statistics ]
The association disappears, however, when the researchers controlled for state characteristics, such as religiosity and abortion policies. The apparent irony is that states with higher religiosity rankings and greater political conservatism had higher adolescent birthrates.
That much was not a total surprise. Researchers at Drexel University reported a similar finding in 2009 in the journal Reproductive Health. The latest findings provide the added twist that a state's level of conservatism might compromise the value or quality of sex education.
The WUSL researchers postulate that girls living in conservative states or counties either get a watered-down version of the sex education curriculum, disregard the lesson, or are less willing or able to have an abortion, all leading to higher statewide teen birthrates...
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A formerly well-connected Republican donor, accused of plying petite, vulnerable teenage girls with cash, liquor and gifts, goes on trial Tuesday on federal charges of sex trafficking minors.
Anton “Tony” Lazzaro is charged with seven counts involving “commercial sex acts" with five minors ages 15 and 16 in 2020, when he was 30 years old. His indictment touched off a political firestorm that led to the downfall of Jennifer Carnahan as chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota.
His co-defendant, Gisela Castro Medina, who formerly led the College Republicans chapter at the University of St. Thomas, pleaded guilty to two counts last year. She is cooperating with prosecutors and will testify against him. She faces sentencing in August.
Lazzaro denies the sex-trafficking allegations. He says the government targeted him for political reasons and because of his wealth.
Prosecutors say it's simply a sex-trafficking case. They have not signaled any intent to call political figures as witnesses, nor has the defense. U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz has already rejected Lazzaro's claims of selective prosecution.
But Lazzaro insists he's innocent and that the charges are politically motivated.
“Mr. Lazzaro believes he is being targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice for his political activities," spokeswoman Stacy Bettison said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The unusual application of the federal sex trafficking statute to the facts in Mr. Lazzaro’s case supports his beliefs. He is not alone in his view that the U.S. Department of Justice is politicizing prosecutions. Many other individuals, including many members of Congress and most recently the Senate Judiciary Committee, have recently raised legitimate and credible concerns that Attorney General (Merrick) Garland is politicizing the department by aggressively investigating Republicans and conservative activists, like Mr. Lazzaro.”
Carnahan is the widow of U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who died of kidney cancer in February 2022. She denied knowing of any wrongdoing by Lazzaro before the charges were unsealed in August 2021, and she condemned his alleged crimes. But his arrest fueled outrage among party activists. Allegations surfaced that she created a toxic work environment and abused nondisclosure agreements to silence her critics. She resigned a week later...
Prosecutors alleged in their trial brief earlier this month that Lazzaro conspired with Castro Medina and others to recruit 15- and 16-year-old girls to have sex with him in exchange for cash and valuable items. They met in May 2020 on a “sugar daddy” website when she was 18 years old and finishing high school, prosecutors wrote.
According to the brief, Lazzaro had “a stated sexual preference for young, tiny girls” and liked them "broken” and vulnerable — but without tattoos. Prosecutors say he paid Castro Medina “well over $50,000,” including money for her tuition, her off-campus apartment and her Mini Cooper.
He often sent cars to take the girls to his luxury penthouse condo at the Hotel Ivy in downtown Minneapolis, prosecutors said.
“Once the girls Castro Medina recruited arrived at Lazzaro’s apartment, a similar pattern ensued," the brief alleges. "Lazzaro would brag about his wealth and connections. He would give the girls — small and young — hard liquor. Lazzaro would take out stacks of cash and offer the girls precise sums of money to perform certain sex acts with him, and with each other. $100 to kiss. $400 for sex. And so forth. He would send them home with cash, vapes, alcohol, Plan B, cell phones, and other items of value.” Plan B is a form of emergency birth control.
Wyoming has become the 19th state to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls or women's sports teams after the Republican governor opted not to veto the legislation.
Gov. Mark Gordon allowed the bill to become law without his signature Friday, saying he supports and agrees with the overall goal of fairness in competitive female sports.
The law, which takes effect July 1, will prohibit “students of the male sex from competing on a team designated for students of the female sex.” It's among dozens of Republican proposals pushing back against transgender infringement on the underaged. in statehouses across the U.S., including measures to ban gender-affirming care for minors, restrict drag shows, and prevent transgender people from using restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities associated with their gender identities.
Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis censured in Colorado for false election claims
Jenna Ellis, the Colorado attorney who was former President Donald Trump’s senior legal advisor as he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss, has been censured by a Colorado judge for misconduct.
The public censure order was signed Wednesday by Presiding Disciplinary Judge Bryon M. Large, who oversees lawyer discipline cases in Colorado.
As part of an agreement in the case, Ellis admits that multiple statements she made in late 2020 about the presidential election being stolen were “misrepresentations.”
Those statements were part of an effort by Trump to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory, and they helped fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. A majority of Republicans, including those running to chair the Colorado Republican Party, continue to doubt the 2020 election results.
Ellis had been under scrutiny by the Colorado Attorney Regulation Counsel Jessica Yates, who investigates allegations of lawyer misconduct, since at least last year when a nonprofit alleged Ellis violated multiple professional rules.
In an opinion accepting a censure agreement between Yates and Ellis, Large noted that Ellis has agreed that her statements about the election being stolen were misrepresentations, which he said were made “with at least a reckless state of mind.” Ellis also agreed that she, “through her conduct, undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election, violating her duty of candor to the public,” Large wrote, adding that “a selfish motive” and “a pattern of misconduct” were aggravating factors in the case.
Yates’ complaint cited 10 misrepresentations by Ellis. On Nov. 20, 2020, for example, Ellis made stolen-election claims on Maria Bartiromo’s show on Fox Business and Sean Spicer’s “Spicer & Co.” show.
“We have affidavits from witnesses, we have voter intimidation, we have the ballots that were manipulated, we have all kinds of statistics that show that this was a coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret,” Ellis falsely said on Bartiromo’s show.
Referring to contested states Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia, she falsely said on Spicer’s show, “With all those states … combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove that.”
One of the false statements cited in the complaint was made by Ellis on her Twitter account, referring to her appearance on a show hosted by Colorado radio personality Dan Caplis: “I spent an hour with @DanCaplis for an in-depth discussion about President @realDonaldTrump’s fight for election integrity, the overwhelming evidence proving this was stolen, and why fact-finding and truth—not politics—matters!”
A statement from Yates’ office said, “The public censure in this matter reinforces that even if engaged in political speech, there is a line attorneys cannot cross, particularly when they are speaking in a representative capacity.”
The statement said the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel is not currently pursuing any other charges against Ellis.
Ellis appears among key Trump-aligned figures in the final report of the U.S. House panel that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection, which concluded that the attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of a Trump-led “multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.”
Her public censure is effective immediately.
A former Republican speaker of Ohio's House of Representatives was convicted by a federal jury Thursday on racketeering conspiracy charges in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme.
Former Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Mathew Borges, who was also convicted Thursday, could face up to 20 years in prison for orchestrating the scheme to accept bribes in exchange for ensuring the passage of a billion-dollar bailout for a nuclear energy company.
"As presented by the trial team, Larry Householder illegally sold the statehouse, and thus he ultimately betrayed the great people of Ohio he was elected to serve," said US Attorney Kenneth Parker.
Steven Bradley, an attorney for Householder, expressed disappointment with the verdict.
"We will take some time to discuss and evaluate our legal options moving forward and will most certainly pursue an appeal," he said. "Larry is looking forward to going home and spending time with his family after what has been an exhausting seven week trial."
The release did not explicitly identify the nuclear energy company involved in the scheme but noted that utility company FirstEnergy Corp. previously agreed to pay a $230 million penalty for "conspiring to bribe public officials and others" as part of a deferred prosecution settlement.
Jennifer Young, a manager for external communications at FirstEnergy Corp., said that "while it would be inappropriate to comment on the verdict, FirstEnergy has taken decisive actions over the past several years to strengthen our leadership team and ensure a culture of strong ethics, integrity and accountability across the company."
Jeffrey Longstreth, Householder's longtime campaign and political strategist, and Juan Cespedes, a lobbyist, previously pleaded guilty to their roles in the racketeering conspiracy.
Following the news of Householder's conviction, Ohio's Attorney General Dave Yost announced Friday that the state had filed a request to resume its civil racketeering suit against FirstEnergy Corp., which had been paused during the criminal proceedings
"Other wrongdoers in this scandal -- especially and including the First Energy executives who funded the corrupt Householder Enterprise -- cannot be permitted to escape scot-free," Yost said in a statement.
The convictions, along with FirstEnergy Corp.'s deferred prosecution agreement and its settlement of multiple civil issues, justified lifting the stay, Yost argued in a filing in Franklin County's Court of Common Pleas.
"Criminal justice has been had. Civil justice for the State of Ohio should commence," Yost said in the filing.
Bailout worth $1 billion
The scheme centered on House Bill 6, a $1 billion dollar bailout that saved two nuclear plants operated by FirstEnergy Corp.
In March 2017, FirstEnergy began making quarterly $250,000 payments to Householder's tax-exempt social welfare account named Generation Now, US attorneys in Ohio's southern district laid out in their case.
Householder's team then used that money to support HB 6's passage and stop a ballot effort to overturn the law, the implementation of which has since been blocked.
Millions of those dollars went to Householder's bid for speaker, to other state House candidates likely to support him and to his team's own pockets.
Householder spent over $500,000 of those funds to "pay off his credit card balances, repair his Florida home and settle a business lawsuit," according to federal prosecutors.
Borges used about $366,000 for his own benefit and used another $15,000 to bribe an Ohio Republican operative for information on the number of signatures collected on the ballot referendum opposing HB 6, the news release said.
1. “If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it’ll be the last car he’ll ever lay down in front of.”
2. “The average citizen in this county has more intelligence and sense in his little finger than the editor of The New York Times has in his whole head.”
3. “They’re trying to change the population of the United States, and they hate it when you say that because it’s true.”
4. “We must not be misled by left-wing incompetent news media that, day after day, feed us a diet of fantasy telling us we are bigots, racists, and hate-mongers.”
5. “Here’s a news flash from The New York Times preparing yet another story about how [we’re] racist because we support national borders.”
6. “I love Black people, I love white people, I love yellow people.”
7. “I’m not against the immigrants, I’m just for Americans. And nobody cares about them.”
8. “The American people have been pushed around long enough that they, like you and I, are fed up with the continuing trend toward a socialist state.”
9. “Anti-white racism is exploding across the country.”
10. “Western civilization is our birthright. It makes all good things possible.”
Transgender women who "have gone through male puberty" will be excluded from female world ranking track events while athletes with differences in sex development will face new regulations, World Athletics announced Thursday.
During a press conference, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe described the decision as "decisive action to protect the female category in our sport."
"We're not saying no forever," Coe said.
In June of last year, FINA rolled out similar rules restricting the participation of transgender swimmers in women's events.
The decision notably impacted Penn swimmer Lia Thomas, who became the first transgender NCAA champion in Division I history in March. Thomas met NCAA standards for competition after undergoing testosterone suppression therapy for more than two years and expressed hopes to compete professionally.
Even if Thomas had not graduated in May, he would not have been allowed to continue at the collegiate level since the NCAA said in January it would defer to the national and international bodies' rulings.
World Athletics also reduced its testosterone threshold for all events, which will impact athletes with differences in sex development (DSD). According to the council, 13 athletes will be impacted by this change. Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters, is part of that group. He was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman. His naturally higher testosterone levels have barred him from the 800 since 2019.
A former Florida state representative known for sponsoring legislation prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state's primary schools pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraudulently obtaining tens of thousands of dollars from a federal Covid relief program.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida, Republican Joseph Harding entered a guilty plea to a single count each of wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements stemming from a six-count indictment a federal grand jury returned in December.
The guilty plea, before Judge Allen Winsor, was a reversal of an earlier not guilty plea from Harding, who resigned from his House seat after he was indicted.
According to a new court filing, Harding, 35, acknowledged making materially false statements when he submitted an application for an economic injury disaster loan in December 2020 for a company that had no business activity and was dormant at the time.
Harding fraudulently obtained $150,000 in Covid relief funds from the Small Business Administration and subsequently made three transfers each involving more than $10,000 to his joint bank account, to pay his credit card, and into a bank account linked to a business entity, court documents show.
Harding sponsored a measure in the Florida House prohibiting “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in the state’s primary schools. The legislation, known to its critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Harding faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for the wire fraud charge, 10 years for money laundering and five more years for making false statements.
Sentencing was scheduled for July 25 in Gainesville.
DeSantis’ Own Undercover Cops Find No Wrongdoing at Orlando Drag Show
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is willing to disregard his own undercover agents in his crusade against drag shows, according to the Miami Herald. In a very efficient use of state resources, a group of undercover cops from Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation sat in on “A Very Drag Queen Christmas” at Orlando’s Plaza Live Theater in December, eyes peeled for “lewd or lascivious” acts that cannot be performed in front of minors, according to Florida’s state decency law.
What was their verdict? “Besides some of the outfits being provocative [bikinis and short shorts], agents did not witness any lewd acts such as exposure of genital organs,” the officers said in a report. Yet the state of Florida is still going after the historic venue, seeking to repeal its liquor license in a move that would likely force it out of business.
DeSantis, who is expected to seek the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, has made his war on drag a centerpiece of his policy agenda, courting the anti-LGBT vote by openly seeking to financially hurt venues that allow children to see drag performances.
We’ve said it too many times now. It’s the guns.
They’ll come back and say it’s “CRT” or “woke politics” that’s dangerous for our kids.
But we’ll say it again — it’s the guns.
They’ll come back and say it’s “gender ideology.”
But again — it’s the guns.
A dozen times, a hundred times, a thousand times.
It’s the guns that are killing our kids.
The shooter in Nashville carried two assault rifles into that school today. These are weapons of war.
America has six new families with an empty seat at the dinner table tonight.
A 28-year-old suspect who police say identified as a transgender woman opened fire at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, killing three 9-year-old children and three adults before being killed by responding officers, officials say.
We’ve said it too many times now. It was a guy who pretended he was a girl.
They’ll come back and say it’s “the guns” or “straights” or "funded police" that are dangerous for our kids.
But we’ll say it again — it was a guy who pretended he was a girl.
They’ll come back and say it’s intolerance.
But again — it was a guy who pretended he was a girl..
A dozen times, a hundred times, a thousand times.
It’s the nuts that are killing our kids, a gun can't shot itself.
The shooter in Nashville carried mental illness into that school today. The mentally ill are as unpredictably dangerous as war.
America has six new families with an empty seat at the dinner table tonight.
Because a mental case was indulged by the woke community.....
"We’ve said it too many times now. It was a guy who pretended he was a girl."
Of course you will, because that conveniently fits your narrative.
The latest news though is that it this person was born female and was a transgender man.
That doesn't fit your "dangerous men pretending they're women" narrative though. What a shame - it almost fit your propaganda so perfectly!
"Because a mental case was indulged by the woke community....."
The United States has faced at least 128 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023.
Mass shootings are defined as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed, according to the archive.
Yes, America does indulge mental cases - gun nuts on the conservative right who think their fears of government coercion trump everyone else's rights to reasonable safety.
Conservatives will be pounding the "dangerous transgenders" drum as loud as they can to continue to ostracize, demonize, and even "eradicate" them.
But America has been suffering mass shootings for decades. How many of them have been committed by straight white men?
How many of them have been committed by transgender persons of any type?
If you don't think guns are the problem, then clearly, straight white men - usually in their late teens to early 20s - are the biggest problem.
While Democrats have been trying to ban assault weapons, Republicans have been trying to ban books and drag queens.
Someone has their priorities wrong.
In a database of 172 U.S. shootings involving at least four victims over the last five and a half decades, all but 4 of the perpetrators were male.
Most assailants in mass shootings in the United States are male, according to the Violence Project, which maintains a national database of mass shootings dating to 1966.
In a data set of 172 mass shootings, which the group defines as involving four or more victims, only four assailants were women or girls. In two cases, women acted alongside a man.
None of the shootings at K-12 schools in the nonprofit’s database involved a female shooter.
There was confusion about the gender identity of the assailant in Nashville. Kristin Mumford, a police spokeswoman, said the suspect was born female but listed male pronouns on a LinkedIn profile, which suggested that the suspect was a transgender man. That profile had been active in recent months, reacting to two posts about other people’s career updates.
A transgender this week killed six people, probably because of the propaganda she assimilated from the gay agenda with its bias against Christianity. Now, remarkably, radical fringe lunatic gay advocates are turning Audrey Hale into a victim:
Audrey Hale attended the Covenant School in Nashville as a child before returning Monday morning as Aiden Hale to murder three 9-year-olds, the principal, a substitute teacher, and a custodian.
In some dark but loud corners of the internet, it’s not about the children, the teachers, or the janitor. It’s about them — they/thems to be precise. More significantly, this multiple-victim public shooting, like all multiple-victim public shootings, becomes about blaming them. Who are they? Not us, not our side, not our tribe.
“Another day, another mass shooting,” Spencer Bergstedt, a he/him “gender diversity consultant,” tweets. “The shooter has been identified by his deadname. It appears he used he/him pronouns & was a former student at the school. Of course, MSM & the LEO’s discussing the issue are misgendering the murderer. I’m sad & angry on so many levels.”
The Trans Resistance Network called the events at the Presbyterian grade school “not one tragedy but two.” The group’s news release reads: “The second and more complex tragedy is that of Aiden or Aubrey Hale, who felt he had no other way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, himself.”
One Twitterican opined, “It’s so infuriating that the media gets to both misgender Aiden Hale as a ‘rare female mass killer’ *AND* misidentify him as a trans fem whose status as mass killer proves trans women are men because women don’t do that.”
"A transgender this week killed six people, probably because of the propaganda she assimilated from the gay agenda with its bias against Christianity."
More likely probably because Christians at this school made his life absolutely miserable for decades. The bullying of gender non-conforming children by Christians has been a favorite pastime of theirs for many, many decades, often leading to suicide attempts and PTSD.
Quite frankly it's a bit surprising that more of these bullied children don't lash out like this.
For the past 70 years, science has shown a better way to deal with and treat gender dysphoria, but like so many other issues addressed by science, Christians adamantly refuse to recognize the science and instead treat these kids like pariahs and harass, abuse, and insult them until they conform to their "biblical standards," because of their "faith," which is simply an excuse to justify their deplorable behavior.
I'm curious to see what's in this person's "manifesto." I'd like to know whether the abuse they suffered at this school was the standard physical and emotional variety, or, unfortunately as happens at many religious institutions, also included sexual abuse.
I also find it ironic that Christians are complaining about someone shooting up one of their schools. After all it was a Andy Ogles the representative from this district in Tennessee that put out a Christmas picture of his family sporting a bunch of assault rifles.
Because, you know, there is nothing that screams Jesus' love and "the reason for the season" more than you and your kids in front of the Christmas tree with a bunch of assault rifles:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tennessee-andy-ogles-responds-critics-christmas-card-family-guns/
Maybe if Republicans stopped fetishizing guns and portraying them as the answer to a lot of our country's problems, and instead worked on finding real solutions, we wouldn't be lamenting yet another school shooting every few months.
But who am I kidding. Conservatives will do what they always do - "thoughts and prayers" and blaming scapegoats to distract from the real issues.
"Christians aren't the solution, Christians are the problem"
that was what the killer thought
deadly violence is justified to get revenge for...saying they are wrong?
the extremist tendencies of gay thought is one of the problems with such widespread publc tolerance
"bullying of gender non-conforming children by Christians has been a favorite pastime of theirs for many, many decades"
why don't we start by defining "bullying"?
acting strangely carries social risk, which can be avoided by, duh, not acting strangely
"Quite frankly it's a bit surprising that more of these bullied children don't lash out like this"
straight mass killer = monster
transgender mass killer = noble victim
"For the past 70 years, science has shown a better way to deal with and treat gender dysphoria, but like so many other issues addressed by science"
instead of treating mental illness, gay advocates suggests we endeavor to make delusions reality
that's not science, it's metaphysics
"I'm curious to see what's in this person's "manifesto.""
aren't we all
"scapegoats to distract from the real issues"
yes, Audrey Hale was just a scapegoat
the guns made her do it
how do lunatis fringe gay advocates sleep at night?
Federalist CEO Sean Davis was locked out of his Twitter account Tuesday night for factually reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance” following the deaths of three children and three staff members at a Christian school in Tennessee at the hands of a transgender shooter.
“The cold-blooded mass murder at a Christian school in Nashville by an apparent transgender person came just days before a planned ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network,” wrote Davis.
According to Twitter, Davis’ objectively true tweet violates the app’s rules “against violent speech.” Twitter has already deleted the tweet but informed Davis his account will remain locked until he manually deletes it as well. Davis, however, is refusing to participate in Twitter’s Orwellian re-education exercise.
“This is deliberate censorship and gaslighting designed to memory-hole the FACT that the Nashville shooter targeted and murdered Christian children and teachers just days ahead of a scheduled ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’” Davis wrote in a statement. “Twitter is lying about the facts and defaming those of us who reported on them.”
Davis is not the only one to be censored on Tuesday. Daily Wire journalist Luke Rosiak was also punished for reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance.”
According to Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, Twitter had to “automatically sweep our platform and remove >5000 tweets /retweets of the ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ poster.”
“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them,” Irwin continued. “‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”
How Davis’ objective reporting on a planned event was “incit[ing] violence” remains unclear. Twitter has taken a different tack against real violent threats on its website, however. On Monday, the press secretary for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs tweeted out a GIF of a woman gearing up to shoot pistols with the caption, “Us when we see transphobes,” a tweet Twitter initially allowed. Twitter later removed it from the platform, but the press secretary’s account appears still to be active.
One user asked if Irwin stopped to consider whether the “complaints” were “coming from the ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ supporters who didn’t want a living record of their calls for violence and vengeance after the Tennessee shooting.” Irwin did not respond.
Early Wednesday morning, Twitter rejected Davis’ appeal to reinstate his account, meaning he is permanently banned from accessing it unless he deletes the factually true tweet that Twitter already deleted
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ press secretary, Josselyn Berry, posted a tweet that encouraged gun violence just hours after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Tennessee.
Berry posted the tweet, which featured a screencap of the 1980s film “Gloria” with a woman holding two guns with the caption reading; “Us when we see transphobes.”
It’s difficult to fathom that several families started their day with one less precious child around the breakfast table this morning. It’s also hard to fathom responding to that reality — caused by a transgender mass shooter who left three 9-year-olds and several adults dead in a “targeted attack” at a Christian elementary school — by confessing you misgendered the murderer and blasting your political opponents over the same tired gun-control talking points.
But behind all the partisan smoke and mirrors of the Nashville story is an unmistakable and unavoidable reality: Our modern mental health crisis is out of control.
You don’t even have to dig into the glaring transgender element of the case to acknowledge this fact. No mentally healthy person blasts their way into a building of defenseless children to murder them in cold blood, much less devises a detailed plan literally mapping out how to make it happen. Transgender perpetrator or not, this sick pattern has repeated itself with unsettling frequency.
And though President Joe Biden, his press secretary, and other politicians disgustingly spun the attack to blame so-called “assault weapons” and imply conservatives are complicit in mass murder, the simple reality is that over the past handful of decades, firearms have changed very little. Meanwhile, mental illness has proliferated and our culture’s conception of it dangerously evolved.
That’s why the transgender identity of the shooter can’t be fully ignored — not for those who truly care to understand the gnarly roots of this violence. Despite the protestations of LGBT apologists, gender dysphoria and trans-related narcissism are inextricable from America’s broader mental health emergency.
In less than five years, we’ve had four people who identify as transsexual committing a mass shooting.
In November of 2018, Snochia Moseley, a man who identified as a woman, wounded three and killed three after opening fire at his place of employment in Aberdeen, Maryland.
In May of 2019, a Colorado woman who identified as male shot up a school, killing one and wounding eight.
In November of 2022, a Colorado man who shot up a gay nightclub, killing five and wounding 18, was identified as transsexual.
On Monday, 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a woman who identified as a man, entered a Nashville Christian elementary school with a firearm. She murdered three adult staffers and three nine-year-old children.
In less than five years, that’s four mass shootings committed by people who make up about one-half of one percent of the population. So that works out to around 2.75 mass shootings per million transsexuals over four years.
Suppose the roughly 325 million American heterosexuals committed mass shootings at that rate. In that case, you’d be talking about somewhere around 900 mass shootings over four years, and I’m talking real mass shootings—schools and places of employment—not the BS “mass shootings” fabricated by fake media outlets like CNNLOL.
Gee, maybe de-listing gender dysphoria as a mental illness wasn’t such a good idea…?
how about Norman Bates?
a guy that dressed up in his mother's clothes and stabbed women in the shower
when they caught him, he just kept saying, "I wouldn't hurt a fly..."
Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five, had just one word to say on former President Donald Trump’s indictment Thursday: “Karma.”
Salam was among five Black and brown teenagers wrongfully imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a white woman in New York’s Central Park, a case that was explored in the 2019 Netflix series “When They See Us.” Salaam served nearly seven years in prison before he and the other wrongfully accused teens were exonerated in 2002.
In 1989, before any of the five teens had been tried, Trump, then a Manhattan real-estate developer, took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York. People involved with the case later said that although Trump’s ads never explicitly called for the death penalty for the defendants, they played a major role in securing a conviction.
Salaam, who recently announced his candidacy for New York City Council, noted Thursday that Trump never “said sorry for calling for my execution.”
In 2019, when Trump was asked if he would apologize, he said: “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.”
Members of the five, now criminal justice activists, say they were coerced by police into confessing.
“During the hours of relentless questioning that we each endured, detectives lied to us repeatedly,” Salaam, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana wrote in a 2019 opinion article for The New York Times, describing themselves as “terrified young boys” at the time.
“They said they had matched our fingerprints to crime scene evidence and told each of us that the others had confessed and implicated us in the attack. They said that if we just admitted to participating in the attack, we could go home. All of these were blatant lies.”
Trump was indicted Thursday by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election. The payment was given in exchange for the adult film actor’s silence about an affair she claims she’d had with Trump a decade earlier.
"Trump was indicted Thursday by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election."
It's actually not illegal to pay someone to keep a private matter secret.
What the Central Park Five were accused of doing was. If they didn't commit the crime, glad they were exonerated but Trump didn't manufacture false evidence or coerce their confession. The corrupt police department of the most liberal city in the country did. Trump reacted to the news as reported by the deceptive liberal press. At the time, Trump was a registered Democrat.
Explain how this is "karma"......
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma
Karma (/ˈkɑːrmə/, from Sanskrit: कर्म, IPA: [ˈkɐɾmɐ] (listen); Pali: kamma) is a concept of action, work or deed, and its effect or consequences. In Indian religions, the term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect): Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and bad rebirths. As per some scripture, there is no link of rebirths with karma.
Trump sided with NY's Central Park Five's lying cops, paid for a full page ad about bringing the death penalty back to NY, and now he's been indicted in NY.
Go figure!
7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
In 1989 Rump paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times. Under the headline “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” and above his signature, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”
The so-called Central Park Five — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam (ages from 14 to 16 when they were arrested and charged) — were vindicated 13 years after the crime when a serial rapist confessed to the attack.
Rump plans to fly to New York on Monday and stay overnight before appearing in a specially secured Manhattan courthouse to be arraigned on still-unspecified criminal charges, people briefed on the arrangements said.
Rump will be arraigned on Tuesday at the very same Manhattan facility where the (since exonerated) Central Park 5 were processed back in 1989.
"Trump sided with NY's Central Park Five's lying cops, paid for a full page ad about bringing the death penalty back to NY, and now he's been indicted in NY."
Trump was supporting enforcing laws to make his city safe, which eventually happened when when Guiliani became mayor. How was he supposed to know the cops were lying?
"Go figure!"
Someone has to because you appear incapable of figuring
the indictment is still under seal but if it is wat has been reported, it will eventually be overruled by a court and Trump will look like a persecuted martyr
the whole "karma" remark is risible
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A formerly well-connected GOP donor was convicted Friday of enticing teenage girls with gifts, cash and money in exchange for sex.
A federal jury found Anton “Tony” Lazzaro, 32, guilty of seven counts involving “commercial sex acts” with five girls ages 15 and 16 in 2020, when he was 30 years old. The charges carry mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years with a maximum of life in prison.
The jury will return to court Monday to determine what property the government can seize based on each conviction, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
Lazzaro, who contends the charges against him were politically motivated, plans to appeal, a spokeswoman for his attorneys said in a statement to The Associated Press.
“The unusual application of this federal sex trafficking statute to his activities is frighteningly broad, conflating what is nothing more than arguably an act of prostitution with federal sex trafficking,” Stacy Bettison said. “He believes he has strong grounds for appeal, and he will vigorously seek reversal of his conviction. Mr. Lazzaro trusts he will be vindicated.”
His indictment led to the downfall of Jennifer Carnahan as chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota.
His co-defendant, 21-year-old Gisela Castro Medina, who formerly led the College Republicans chapter at the University of St. Thomas, pleaded guilty to two counts last year. She testified against Lazzaro.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that Lazzaro enlisted Medina, who he initially paid for sex, to recruit other teenagers — preferably minors — who were white, small, vulnerable or “broken.”
“He wanted sex, and not just any sex,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Melinda Williams said during closing arguments Friday. “He wanted sex with minor girls under the age of 18. And he had a plan to get it.”
Lazarro’s attorney, Daniel Gerdts, argued that government’s “salacious” prosecution was based on “completely unfounded” allegations.
“The prosecution clearly disapproves of Mr. Lazzaro’s playboy lifestyle,” Gerdts said. “And frankly, as the father of three daughters, so do I. The opprobrium is well deserved, but that is not why we’re here.”
[Yeah, you're there because your client was a heterosexual predator absuing minors. Maybe you shouldn't forget that.]
Carnahan, the widow of U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, resigned a week after the charges against Lazzaro were unsealed. She denied knowing about Lazzaro’s crimes but his arrest prompted outrage among party activists.
Pictures on Lazzaro’s social media accounts showed him with prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. He gave more than $270,000 to Republican campaigns and political committees over the years.
"A formerly well-connected GOP donor was convicted Friday of enticing teenage girls with gifts, cash and money in exchange for sex."
this is just fascinating.
here's a little know factoid:
just as many Democrats commit sexual offenses as Republicans
it's just not as publicized because it's not surprising when Dems behave that way
dog bites man is no story
man bites dog is a story
Democrat commits pedophilia is no story
Republican commits pedophilia is a story
see what I mean?
Reality to the MAGA crowd.
"the indictment is still under seal but if it is wat has been reported, it will eventually be overruled by a court and Trump will look like a persecuted martyr"
Sorry MAGA/QANONer, this is only the first of many indictments your Rump will face.
https://apnews.com/article/what-else-is-trump-being-investigated-for-bbc926171b5bdf91eabd76db93411b8b
Less than two hours after his indictment became public, former President Donald Trump’s fundraising machine sent out an email to supporters on his behalf loaded with extremist rhetoric and antisemitic tropes.
"The Deep State will use anything at their disposal to shut down the one political movement that puts YOU first,” Trump wrote in the email, a reference to a conspiracy theory about a network of people working inside the federal government to exercise power over ordinary people.
Trump also attacked Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, whose office was responsible for bringing the case to the grand jury, as being funded by George Soros, a major donor to Democratic causes and a popular target of anti-Semitism on the far-right, including in his birth country of Hungary.
In the hours that followed, Trump sent out at least three other fundraising emails about the indictment, according to a review of an archive at politicalemails.org. All used the same tone, selected all-caps words, and rhetoric as fundraising emails he sent in the roughly two weeks since he told supporters he expected to be arrested.
“They're loaded with antisemitic language, some of which has been used in the past to validate violence against Jews,” said Kurt Braddock, a public communication professor at American University. “There's no other way to describe it — he's using anti-Jewish stereotypes and historical hatred to raise money.”
Braddock pointed to language pinning Bragg’s activity on Soros and presenting Soros as “a shadowy financier” that “feeds into anti-Semitic tropes related to Jews and money,” and references to Soros as part of a “globalist cabal.” The QAnon conspiracy theory is based around the idea of a shadowy cabal going after Trump.
"this is only the first of many indictments your Rump will face"
oh, well, so the liberals nuts have said
we can talk about those if and when
as for now, this is outrageous
prosecutors pass on indictments all the time, for various reasons
indictment of a former President on dubious charges without a clear chance of success should have been a pass
btw. who would be the victim of the heinous crime that Trump is alleged to have committed?
"Trump also attacked Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, whose office was responsible for bringing the case to the grand jury,"
rational people on both sides agree
"as being funded by George Soros, a major donor to Democratic causes and a popular target of anti-Semitism on the far-right, including in his birth country of Hungary."
the left mercilessly attacks GOP donors
just because one of the Dems' donors is Jewish doesn't mean he's beyond GOP criticism
“They're loaded with antisemitic language, some of which has been used in the past to validate violence against Jews,”
like what?
NEW YORK (AP) — A self-styled far-right propagandist from Florida was convicted Friday of charges alleging that he conspired to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.
Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial.
On the internet, he was known as “Ricky Vaughn.”
In 2016, Mackey had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th-most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election, prosecutors said. He had described himself as an “American nationalist” who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.
Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16.
His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to choose from to vacate the conviction.
“We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” Frisch said.
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.
“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality,” he said.
The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.
Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.
At about the same time, prosecutors said, he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit “black turnout” at voting booths. [Why would he do that - Republicans are always saying they're not the racist ones!] One tweet he sent showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said.
Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton’s ads in other ways, they added.
By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said. [For comparison, Trump only beat Hillary by 10,704 votes in Michigan.]
Twitter has said it worked closely with appropriate authorities on the issue.
Trump called the indictment “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”
Trump went on to falsely describe the Manhattan district attorney as being “hand-picked and funded by George Soros,” peddling an antisemitic conspiracy about wealthy Jewish people influencing society.
Trump (who still faces three other criminal investigations) said he believes the so-called “Witch-Hunt” will “backfire” and mobilize his followers to beat Joe Biden.
"Trump's trials won't top the salacious Starr Report"
in what way?
Clinton was being investigated about a very serious matter, Whitewater, and lied in sworn testimony to the special prosecutor
that's perjury committed by a sitting President
but Clinton had no criminal charges filed against him
the Stormy Daniels story is common knowledge already
the issue isn't the salaciousness of the story, it's the destructive attempt to turn into a criminal act
"Trump went on to falsely describe the Manhattan district attorney as being “hand-picked and funded by George Soros,” peddling an anti-Semitic conspiracy about wealthy Jewish people influencing society"
This is a real crock of crap
Dems regularly demonize contributors to conservative causes
just because George Soros is Jewish doesn't make criticism of his influence anti-Semitic
In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to a payment of hush money to an adult film actress, half of Americans view the charges as serious, and nearly as many feel that Trump should be charged with a crime, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows. Around half also feel that Trump should be charged for a crime for his actions related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and for his efforts to change the 2020 election results. However, roughly one in three say he should not be charged and one in five remain undecided on these questions, and many see these actions as politically motivated, demonstrating how American public opinion may not yet be fully formed on the topic.
Most Americans view the hush money-related charges against Trump as serious, yet there are deep partisan divisions on the outlook toward the indictment.
Overall, 50% say the indictment, which came one day before this poll was fielded, is serious, including slim majorities of women, Americans under age 30, Black and Hispanic Americans, and those with a college degree.
Political party divisions run deep, as 87% of Democrats view these charges as serious, compared to just 29% of Republicans. Independents are evenly split, 43% serious – 41% not serious. These divides cut across all questions, from severity of the charges to whether or not Trump should be charged with a crime for different issues.
When asked about four different investigations around Trump (including the current one), more believe he should be charged with a crime than not.
In this current case, 45% believe Trump should be charged with a crime (32% say he should not). The same number say he should be charged with a crime for the way he handled classified documents after he left office as president.
Similarly, 49% say he should be charged for his actions related to January 6th, and a bare majority – 51% - feel the same about his efforts to change the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In light of the indictment, 43% are looking for him to suspend his presidential campaign, while 35% say he should not.
In all cases, political independents lean slightly toward thinking he should be charged, though there is not majority support for charges among this group.
n equal number of Americans – nearly half – feel the charges against Trump are politically motivated. While this looks similar overall to how many think he should be charged, it is driven by an outcry from his base, whereas other attitudes are driven by Democrats.
Overall, 47% say the charges against Trump in this case are politically motivated, while 32% disagree.
Here, however, we see the inverse of attitudes toward whether or not Trump should be charged. In this case, eight in ten Republicans say the charges are politically motivated. Sixteen percent of Democrats agree.
When asked if Trump should be charged in this current case, nearly nine in ten Democrats say he should be, and just 16% of Republicans agree.
Ultimately, many Americans remain undecided on whether Trump should be charged with a crime, leaving open the possibility for them to be swayed both by how the events unfold and the coverage around them.
Twenty-three percent are unsure if Trump should be charged in this current case. Indecision is higher among younger Americans, independents, and women.
Looking at other cases, the number of undecided Americans ranges from 16% to 21%.
A racist “White Lives Matter” member firebombed an Ohio church that planned to host a “Drag Queen Story Time,” federal prosecutors say.
Ohio resident Aimenn D. Penny, 20, faces up to 30 years imprisonment if convicted on two charges of malicious use of explosive materials and possession of a destructive device in the March 25 attack. The FBI reported finding a Nazi flag, a White Lives Matter of Ohio T-shirt, and other hateful memorabilia in Penny’s home, along with a gas mask, multiple rolls of blue painter’s tape, and gas cans.
Penny is one of the men suspected of throwing Molotov cocktails at the Community Church of Chesterland, allegedly in response to the congregation’s plans to hold two drag-related events on Saturday, April 1. The church’s representatives reported receiving hate mail before last week’s attack, which scorched its front door, damaged the exterior and broke a sign at the corner of the property. Surveying the grounds of the crime scene, Chester Township Police said they recovered broken glass pieces from bottles of Denaka Vodka and Corona beer.
“Violence and destruction are never an acceptable way to express a disagreement with a particular viewpoint,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle M. Baeppler, for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a statement.
Well before the Molotov cocktail strike, authorities say, Penny showed up to another drag queen event on March 11, where members of White Lives Matter were carrying “swastika flags and shouting racial and homophobic slurs and ‘Heil Hitler.'”
The Wadsworth Police Department says that they saw Penny there distributing anti-drag flyers.
Months earlier, on Oct. 11, 2022, the Alliance Police Department saw Penny distributing hateful flyers, too.
“Penny told the police that the flyers were an effort to spread the ‘word,'” the affidavit supporting Penny’s criminal charges states. “In Penny’s opinion, African Americans were the ‘problem.’ Further, he wanted to educate everyone about their violence toward white Americans. Penny stated that he believed African Americans were solely responsible for the high crime rate across the country. Penny further made it clear that he believes — and looks forward to — the civil war coming between races. Penny expressed his belief that the United States will not prosper until all the other races, or ‘weaknesses’ as he called them, are gone.”
Those authorities say they saw Penny carrying a very large hunting knife and expandable baton, which weren’t concealed.
Penny also told the police that he owns a gun, according to the charges.
After securing Penny’s cellphone records, the FBI recorded executing a search warrant on his home. There, the bureau says, Penny admitted to agents in a recorded interview that he built and deployed the Molotov cocktails at the church.
“Penny stated that he was trying to protect children and stop the drag show event,” the complaint states. “Penny described using bottles from his bedroom and detailed the ingredients and steps he used to build and use the devices. Penny stated that night, he became more and more angry after watching internet videos of news feeds and drag shows in France and decided to attack the church. Penny stated that he would have felt better if the Molotov cocktails were more effective and burned the entire church to the ground.”
Criminal Complaint:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1577496/download?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
"former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to a payment of hush money to an adult film actress"
Sounds like a real threat to society.
There is only one relevant thing to keep in mind here: It's none of your business. If somebody has an affair with a porn star, if they pay her to not go public, if they deny they did it -- it's none of your business. It doesn't affect you, doesn't hurt you, people don't all have to live their lives in ways that you understand. And that should be the end of the discussion.
https://digbysblog.net/2023/04/03/randy-rainbow-ftw/
Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and will plead not guilty, faces charges tied to the alleged concealment of $130,000 in hush money paid to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels. Although hush payments are not illegal, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is thought to be preparing to prosecute Trump for allegedly masking as legal fees reimbursements for hush payments funneled through his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, reports The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch.
Bragg has elevated charges against the former president to Class E felonies, the lowest level of felonies in the New York State penal code, on grounds that the alleged conduct was intended to conceal another underlying crime, according to Yahoo News. Under the New York State penal code, a conviction for the class E felony of falsifying business records can result in a prison term of up to four years.
Some social media users are accusing Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, of having poor prosecutorial judgment in other cases.
CLAIM: News footage about the unprovoked and deadly shooting of a man on the New York City subway in May 2022 provides an example of the “real crime in Manhattan” that Bragg should be prosecuting.
THE FACTS: The Manhattan DA’s office is prosecuting the suspect in this case, according to records and communications from Bragg’s office.
Bragg announced in June 2022 that a grand jury had indicted the suspect, Andrew Abdullah, on murder and weapon possession charges after he allegedly killed 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez aboard a Manhattan-bound Q subway train the previous month.
Court and inmate records show the 26-year-old Abdullah is being held without bail in a prison ward at Bellevue Hospital, with a court appearance expected on April 12.
The misleading claim spread across Twitter over the weekend after Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican, tweeted news coverage of the shooting.
“Heartbreaking!” Greene tweeted Saturday. “Shame on Alvin Bragg for being not prosecuting real crime in Manhattan!”
Redmond Haskins, a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit-public defender organization, confirmed Abdullah remains held in custody on the murder charge. He declined to comment further.
CLAIM: Bragg is charging a New York City parking garage attendant for attempted murder after he shot an alleged armed robber.
THE FACTS: Bragg’s office isn’t prosecuting Moussa Diarra, a Manhattan DA spokesperson and Diarra’s lawyer confirmed to the AP.
Charles Clayman, Diarra’s lawyer, said video of the altercation was eventually located and sent to the DA’s office, clearing his client of wrongdoing.
“There’s no attempted murder charges and there never will be because my client was the hero and the victim, not the perpetrator,” he said by phone. “That’s the whole story.”
But that didn’t stop social media users from spreading false claims about the incident.
“New York City is a Joke: Manhattan Prosecutors Charge Victim of Assault With Attempted Murder,” wrote one Twitter user in a post that was liked or shared more than 12,000 times as of Monday.
The shooting happened early Saturday morning when Diarra confronted a suspected thief in the parking garage where he worked, which is in midtown Manhattan.
Charles Rhodie, 59, shot the 57-year-old twice before Diarra was able to wrestle the handgun free and fire back, according to police. Both were hospitalized and initially charged with attempted murder, assault and gun possession.
Rhodie was also charged with burglary. It’s not clear what charges he’ll ultimately face or whether he still remains hospitalized. Spokespersons for police and Bragg’s office didn’t respond to follow up questions and a lawyer for Rhodie couldn’t be identified.
"Although hush payments are not illegal,"
you got that right
"Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is thought to be preparing to prosecute Trump for allegedly masking as legal fees reimbursements for hush payments funneled through his former lawyer, Michael Cohen,"
frankly, that's dubious
Cohen was employed as Trump's lawyer to find a way to deal with the blackmail
while technically reimbursement is not legal fees, most companies would classify any payment to a lawyer as "legal fees", making it difficult to proof any illegal intent
furthermore, falsification of business records is a misdemeanor in NY and, since Trump's company is not public, there is no real victim of this supposed crime
"Bragg has elevated charges against the former president to Class E felonies, the lowest level of felonies in the New York State penal code, on grounds that the alleged conduct was intended to conceal another underlying crime"
what crime? Trump used his own money, not campaign funds, to pay Daniels off
further, not every expenditure that makes a candidate look good is a campaign expenditure
if it were, a candidate could use campaign funds for clothes and haircuts
as a matter of fact, the government trued to make this case against John Edwards when friends who were also campaign donors paid off a woman he got pregnant while his wife was dying of cancer
the government did not win
I was really hoping this was an April Fools joke, but apparently it is not.
Bud Light’s newest brand ambassador is none other than transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney.
Mulvaney — a biological male who began identifying as a woman just over a year ago — has extensively documented his journey into “girlhood” on social media. Mulvaney wears dresses, puts on makeup and prances around on camera making fun of women. He reduces the entire gender to cartoonish stereotypes.
And he’s been rewarded handsomely for it! Just over the past year, Mulvaney has struck brand deals with Ulta Beauty, Haus Labs, Crest, Instacart, EOS, CeraVe, Native, Kate Spade, Ole Henriksen and KitchenAid — just to name a few.
And now, you can add Bud Light to that list.
Mulvaney posted a video on Instagram Saturday. Try not to vomit when you watch it.
“I kept hearing about this thing called March Madness. And I thought we were all just having a hectic month,” Mulvaney said. “But it turns out, it has something to do with sports!”
Teeheehee, what is basketball? Mocking women is so fun!
Of course, social media wasn’t having it.
OutKick’s Tomi Lahren tweeted, “So who at Bud Light thought this was the move? Do y’all really think a man pretending to be a woman (in the most demeaning manner possible) is how you sell beer?”
U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and liar George Santos joined the crowds gathered outside the New York courthouse where former President Donald Trump was expected to appear for his arraignment on Tuesday. Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was drowned out by counterprotesters as she rallied to former President Trump’s defense outside a Manhattan courthouse and compared Trump to Jesus in an interview ahead of his arraignment.
On Tuesday afternoon, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene held a poorly attended rally in support of Trump outside of the Manhattan courthouse where the disgraced former president was being arraigned. During an interview before the event – which Greene retreated from after being heckled by a much larger group of counter-protesters – she also elevated Trump to the level of Jesus Christ.
"Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government."
Rolling Stone reports how the disgraced former president wanted a high-profile surrender for purposes of propaganda and political theater, during which he would show the world how he is a "Jesus Christ"-like figure:
The Secret Service had argued in favor of holding the proceedings outside of court business hours, at night with minimal cameras and less risk. But Trump, a source close to his legal team says, wants to create the type of scene that he believes will galvanize his supporters.
"It's kind of a Jesus Christ thing. He is saying, 'I'm absorbing all this pain from all around from everywhere so you don't have to,' " says the source. Describing the message Trump hopes to send his supporters, the source says: " 'If they can do this to me they can do this to you,' and that's a powerful message."
The elevation of Donald Trump to the level of god or prophet or some other tool of destiny by his followers and enablers represents a much larger trend among the American right-wing, "conservative movement" and other neofascists and malign actors. Today's Republican Party and "conservative" movement have abandoned any pretense of normal politics and instead have fully committed themselves to anti-rationality, anti-intellectualism, a rejection of learned real expertise, religious fundamentalism, conspiracism, "alternative facts" and the "Big Lie." This is a type of religious politics that is antithetical to real democracy.
Trump's indictment and arrest may not result in massive and immediate violence by his followers, but the danger should not be minimized.
Public opinion and other research show that millions of Trump followers are radicalized and support (and a not insignificant number of which are willing to participate in) acts of violence on Donald Trump's behalf in the name of a MAGA holy war if he were to issue such a declaration. As seen on Jan. 6 and beyond, such people are capable of doing anything to get and keep corrupt power. Why? Because they are engaged in a holy war by their "God."
Late Monday night (April 3), the “Bad Reputation” singer posted a video of himself across his social media accounts, speaking directly to the camera. Wearing a white MAGA hat, the rock-rapper said that “Grandpa’s feeling a bit frisky today,” and promised to be as “clear and concise as possible” with his statement.
The “Devil Without a Cause” singer then lifted up a semi-automatic assault rifle [you know, like the ones that get used in school shootings] and opened fire on three cases of Bud Light propped up on a wooden table, releasing a couple dozen rounds in about 3 seconds. Ceasing his fire on the beer cans, Rock looked back into the camera to make his point clear: “F–k Bud Light, and f–k Anheuser-Busch.”
The video came shortly after trans activist Dylan Mulvaney teamed up with Anheuser-Busch to promote the brand’s Easy Carry Contest, posting a video of herself talking about the campaign and even receiving “possibly the best gift ever” — a commemorative can of Bud Light with her face on it.
Mulvaney’s video immediately sparked outrage from right-wing commentators, who lambasted the brand for working with a transgender influencer. Anheuser-Busch responded to the backlash first in a statement to Fox News, which they reiterated to Billboard, saying the company works with “hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics and passion points,” and adding that Mulvaney’s commemorative can “was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”
The ongoing backlash comes at a time when transgender people are being targeted at a steady cadence by state legislatures around the U.S. Kentucky became the latest state to pass anti-trans legislation into law last week when lawmakers overrode Gov. Andy Beshear‘s veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18, while also compelling physicians to cease any ongoing gender-transition care for minors.
Donald Trump has called on Republicans in Congress to defund both the Department of Justice and FBI, less than 24 hours after a historic and unprecedented day for America, when the former president was arrested and arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court over hush money payments including to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
He cut a glum figure in the courtroom as he pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
After the court appearance, he railed against Judge Juan Merchan, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and their family members in a primetime speech at Mar-a-Lago.
In the televised address, he attacked Judge Merchan’’s “Trump-hating” family including his 34-year-old daughter Loren Merchan who he said “worked for Kamala Harris, and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign”.
Critics have accused Mr Trump and his allies of attempting to intimidate the judge and his family.
“Let’s be very clear: intimidation and stochastic terror are the core tools of Trump and the fascist movements that support him. They rely on it to skirt consequence and silence others - and each time it works, they grow more brazen. One reason why accountability is so important.”
While Mr Trump took aim at the people involved in his criminal case, Senator Lindsey Graham was begging Americans to send the former president money to help fight the charges.
"Because nothing says ‘innocent’ like threatening a judge’s family"
actually, in America, what says 'innocent' is when the government has no evidence that you committed a crime
it's a quaint old concept that is held dear by everyone except liberal Dems: innocent til proven guilty
you say that Trump threatened the judge's family but you didn't post any quote showing him doing that
what you posted was quotes showing him criticizing the judge's family
this is actually common about liberal Dems, the idea that words that disagree with are the equivalent of violence
if that were so, Dems have threatened Trump
guess what?
on the very day Trump was in court, a court in Los Angeles ruled that Stormy Daniels must pay Trump $122,000
this brings to a total around 600K she owes trump because she couldn't prove in court that she had an affair with Trump
meanwhile, Trump is on trial for paying a blackmailer who has become a celebrity for going public after accepting the blackmail payment
Trump will never be convicted
he isn't guilty of anything
"you say that Trump threatened the judge's family but you didn't post any quote showing him doing that "
Fox News’ Steve Doocy criticized former President Donald Trump on Wednesday for going after the family of the judge overseeing Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan.
On “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning, Doocy noted that Judge Juan Merchan had warned Trump during his arraignment on Tuesday not to use social media to incite violence.
“Six hours later, at Mar-a-Lago, the judge was attacked, the judge’s wife, and the judge’s daughter,” Doocy said. “The judge’s daughter wound up on Truth Social and a bunch of social media sites yesterday because she works for a consulting firm that did work ... for the Biden-Harris campaign.”
After pleading not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Trump returned to his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, where he railed against the prosecutor and judge in a speech to supporters
He called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a “criminal” and a “radical left George Soros-backed prosecutor,” while casting Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge, with a Trump-hating wife and family.”
Earlier in the day, Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, sparked an uproar after they shared an article that prominently featured a photo of the judge’s daughter, calling out her ties to Democratic candidates and casting Merchan as biased and corrupt as a result.
“It is a very bad look to attack the family of the judge,” Doocy added, although his co-hosts pushed back.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his top deputies stayed silent Tuesday as former President Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts, signaling how far they have diverged from their former ally.
Many Republican senators blame Trump for the loss of the Senate majority and the disappointing performance of Senate Republicans last year.
There are also big doubts about Trump’s ability to win the general election in 2024, especially as he faces the prospect of additional charges from the Department of Justice and the Fulton County district attorney.
His arraignment Tuesday only adds to the political baggage of the GOP presidential front-runner.
McConnell, who hasn’t spoken to Trump since December of 2020, didn’t make any statement in response to the former president’s arrest Tuesday. He didn’t say anything when news of Trump’s indictment broke Thursday, either.
Instead, he put out a statement welcoming Finland’s accession to NATO, something he has championed since last year.
Al Cross, a professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky and a longtime commentator on McConnell’s career, said McConnell doesn’t feel the same pressure as other Republicans to rally around Trump.
“Mitch McConnell does not feel pressure in the same way that other human beings do. He has steeled himself to resist the typical politician’s urge to talk and it’s paid off for him, you don’t get in trouble for something you didn’t say,” he said. “His strategy with Trump has been to not come close to that kryptonite and let other people do the talking and work behind the scenes.”
Cross speculated that McConnell doesn’t want to put himself out on a limb by defending Trump when the former president is facing additional possible indictments.
“There will be other shoes to drop and I expect Mitch McConnell knows more about Donald Trump’s situation than we do,” he added. “He is one of the most influential and best-informed people in the country and has all kinds of sources of information and he probably sees other things coming.” ...
McConnell is trying to lessen the former president’s political influence in GOP politics.
He told reporters in February that “we’re focusing now to try to get the very most electable candidate[s] nominated” in West Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"you say that Trump threatened the judge's family but you didn't post any quote showing him doing that "
still waiting for you to show us any instance of Trump "threatening" the judge's family
political criticism is not a threat
if it was, TTF would be guilty
What's the matter with you?
Oh that's right, you suffer from willful blindness.
Go to Rump's TRUTH SOCIAL webshit and read for yourself things like "Trump Issues Warning Of 'Potential Death And Destruction' If He's Charged With A Crime"
I will not bless his website with a hit nor post a link to it.
Ta ta
Thirty years after David Koresh we have Donald Trump. He has arrived at this "inflection point," to quote Joe Biden, flying by the seat of his soiled pants. After years of grifting, he has finally found a group that would never leave his side. They'll remain loyal as long as he plays their favorite hits: Deep state, conspiracy, guns and apocalypse. While he whines about his "victimization" he also tells them, like Koresh before him, that their cause is noble. They believe him.
This group is committed. They cannot be intimidated. They can't be reasoned with and they won't follow logic or facts. Like the Branch Davidians, they have invented their own reality.
Like Koresh, Trump paints himself as a messiah. It is just another of his endless false claims. Like Koresh, he is a continuing danger, a menace and a coward.
But as Trump faces many other potential criminal charges — all more serious than those he faces in Manhattan, — as well as civil lawsuits, don't worry about him turning Mar-a-Lago into a second Mount Carmel. Trump is the Daffy Duck of cowards. He's a craven, greedy little coward. He is the new David Koresh. But he won't end with a bang. He'll end with a whimper.
I hope Karem is right
BALTIMORE (AP) — More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused more than 600 children over the past 80 years, according to a state report released Wednesday that accused church officials of decades of cover-ups.
The report paints a damning picture of the archdiocese, which is the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. Some parishes, schools and congregations had more than one abuser at the same time — including St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, which had 11 abusers living and working there between 1964 and 2004.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office issued the report during Holy Week — considered the most sacred time of year in Christianity ahead of Easter Sunday — and said the number of victims is likely far higher.
“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report said. “The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ conduct, and the frequency with which known abusers were given the opportunity to continue preying upon children are astonishing.”
The disclosure of the redacted findings marks a significant development in an ongoing legal battle over their release and adds to growing evidence from parishes across the country as numerous similar revelations have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years.
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, in a statement posted online, apologized to the victims and said the report “details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese, a time that will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten.”
“It is difficult for most to imagine that such evil acts could have actually occurred,” Lori said. “For victim-survivors everywhere, they know the hard truth: These evil acts did occur.”
Also on Wednesday, the state legislature passed a bill to end a statute of limitations on abuse-related civil lawsuits, sending it to Gov. Wes Moore, who has said he supports it. The Baltimore archdiocese says it has paid more than $13.2 million for care and compensation for 301 abuse victims since the 1980s, including $6.8 million toward 105 voluntary settlements.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, who took office in January, said the investigation shows “pervasive, pernicious and persistent abuse.” State investigators began their work in 2019 and reviewed over 100,000 pages of documents dating back to the 1940s and interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses.
Only one person has been indicted through the investigation: Neil Adleberg, 74, who was arrested last year and charged with rape and other counts. The case remains ongoing. Officials said he coached wrestling at a Catholic high school in the ’70s, then returned to the role for the 2014-2015 school year. The alleged abuse occurred in 2013 and 2014 but the victim was not a student of the school, officials said.
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, noted the attorney general’s report has more names of abusers than have been released publicly by archdiocese officials. The organization called on the archbishop to explain the discrepancies.
Other investigations involving the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which both include parts of Maryland, are ongoing.
The Baltimore report largely focuses on the years before 2002, when an investigation by the Boston Globe into abuse and coverup in the Archdiocese of Boston led to an explosion of revelations nationwide. The nation’s Catholic bishops, for the first time, then agreed on reforms including a lifetime ban from ministry for any priest who commits even a single incident of abuse.
The report notes that while new national policies significantly improved the internal handling of reported abuse in the Baltimore archdiocese after 2002, significant flaws remained.
For example, some alleged abusers were allowed to retire, with financial support, rather than be ousted. In other cases before 2002, the archdiocese did not report allegations to authorities, or would not remove abusers from the ministry or restrict their access to children.
In some situations, victims ended up reporting abuse to priests who were abusive themselves, prosecutors wrote.
Jean Hargadon Wehner said she was abused in Baltimore as a teen by A. Joseph Maskell, a priest who served as her Catholic high school’s counselor and chaplain. She said she reported her abuse to church officials in the early ’90s, when her memories of the trauma finally surfaced about two decades after she was repeatedly raped.
“I expected them to do the right thing in 1992,” she told reporters Wednesday. “I’m still angry.”
More than a dozen people accused Maskell of abuse. The priest denied the allegations before his death in 2001, and he was never criminally charged.
The Associated Press typically doesn’t name victims of abuse, but Hargadon Wehner has spoken publicly to draw attention to the issue.
The report also includes numerous instances of church leaders taking steps to protect accused clergy. In 1964, for instance, Father Laurence Brett admitted to sexually abusing a teenager at a Catholic university in Connecticut.
He was sent to New Mexico under the guise of hepatitis treatment and then to Sacramento, where another teenage boy reported being abused by Brett, the report said. He was later assigned to Baltimore, where he served as chaplain at a Catholic high school for boys.
After several students accused him of abuse in 1973, Brett was allowed to resign, saying he had to care for a sick aunt. School officials didn’t report the abuse to authorities and dozens more victims later came forward. He never faced criminal charges and died in 2010.
Lawyers for the state asked a court for permission to release the nearly 500-page document and a Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled last month that a redacted version should be made public. The court ordered the removal the names and titles of 37 people accused of wrongdoing — whose names came out during confidential grand jury proceedings — but will consider releasing a more complete version in the future.
Lawmakers’ passage of a bill to end the state’s statute of limitations Wednesday came after similar proposals failed in recent years. Currently, victims of child sex abuse in Maryland can’t sue after they turn 38. The bill would eliminate the age limit and allow for retroactive lawsuits.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has long faced scrutiny over its handling of abuse allegations.
In 2002, Cardinal William Keeler, who served as Baltimore archbishop for nearly two decades, released a list of 57 priests accused of sexual abuse, earning himself a reputation for transparency at a time when the nationwide scope of wrongdoing remained largely unexposed. That changed, however, when a Pennsylvania grand jury accused Keeler of covering up sexual abuse allegations while serving as bishop of Harrisburg in the 1980s.
ProPublica report published on Thursday outlined Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ undisclosed ties to GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
Thomas “has accepted luxury trips virtually every year” from Crow for more than two decades without reporting them, ProPublica reported, citing travel records and interviews. Thomas’ failure to disclose the trips appears to violate a law requiring judges, members of Congress and other federal officials to report most gifts, including private jet flights, according to the article.
Thomas has already been under fire over ethics issues. He failed to recuse himself in a case brought by President Donald Trump seeking to block the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection from obtaining access to White House documents and communications, even though his wife worked with Trump supporters to undo the 2020 election.
Thomas ignored ProPublica’s questions and has not responded to its report.
"I will not bless his website with a hit nor post a link to it.
Ta ta"
nice try, but no one's fooled
trying to assume an air of flippancy doesn't hide the fact:
you accused Trump of threatening a judge's family and it was an unsubstantiated lie
"There have been more than 130 mass shootings in our country already this year, at the rate of 1.5 every day"
the latest by a mentally ill trans
"Trump faces many other potential criminal charges — all more serious than those he faces in Manhattan"
well, the Manhattan one is a local politician trying to prosecute Trump for a non-crime that the Feds decided wasn't worthy of prosecution
the other are the charges that the left has been claiming is right around the corner for eight years
remember Robert Mueller, LOL!
"He is the new David Koresh. But he won't end with a bang. He'll end with a whimper."
in other words, nothing like him
"While conservatives are banning LGBT books, drag queens and trans people to "save the children," Catholic priests are busy assaulting them"
those Catholic "priests" are noting but homosexuals who infiltrated the priesthood to hide their sexual preferences
WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers added a solid 236,000 jobs in March, suggesting that the economy remains on solid footing despite the nine interest rate hikes the Federal Reserve has imposed over the past year in its drive to tame inflation.
The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, just above the 53-year low of 3.4% set in January.
At the same time, some of the details of Friday’s report from the Labor Department raised the possibility that inflationary pressures might be easing and that the Fed might soon decide to pause its rate hikes. Average hourly wages in March were up 4.2% from 12 month earlier, down sharply from a 4.6% year-over-year increase in February. Measured month to month, though, wages rose 0.3% from February to March, a tick up from a mild 0.2% gain from January to February.
In another sign that might reassure the Fed’s inflation fighters, a substantial 480,000 Americans began looking for work in March. Typically, the bigger the supply of job seekers, the less pressure employers feel to raise wages. The result is often an easing of inflation pressures.
In its report Friday, the government also revised down its estimate of job growth in January and February by a combined 17,000.
“The labor market continues to soften,″ said Sinem Buber, economist at the job firm ZipRecruiter. “”That should reduce inflationary pressures in the coming months and give the Federal Reserve greater confidence regarding the inflation outlook.″
Among the sectors of the economy that gained jobs in March were restaurants and bars, healthcare providers and government agencies.
For comparison, Trump added 6.459 million jobs in his first full 3 years in office, before losing 9.111 million in 2020.
In his first 2.25 years, Biden has added 12.6 million jobs:
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
"those Catholic "priests" are noting but homosexuals who infiltrated the priesthood to hide their sexual preferences"
Selectively ignoring the facts doesn't make your statement true. Try reading this part again:
"Jean Hargadon Wehner said she was abused in Baltimore as a teen by A. Joseph Maskell, a priest who served as her Catholic high school’s counselor and chaplain. She said she reported her abuse to church officials in the early ’90s, when her memories of the trauma finally surfaced about two decades after she was repeatedly raped."
Former president and current GOP presidential frontrunner is being indicted in New York over the payments of hush money to conceal information that might have damaged his chances in the 2016 election. It's a huge story but it's not unanticipated nor is it the last prosecution Donald Trump is likely to face in the coming months. The most interesting aspect of it remains the fact that the Republican establishment is circling the wagons around him once again while Republican voters seem determined to push him to the nomination. This is despite the fact that he will be under indictment on felony charges in at least one case and probably more, proving once again that no amount of norm-busting, corruption or criminal behavior is a deal breaker with his cult. Trump has trained them to believe that it's all an elaborate conspiracy against him.
But this week also showed that something else is afoot. Yes, Trump is a galvanizing force in Democratic politics going all the way back to the massive, global Women's March in 2017. His grotesque behavior motivated millions of people, especially women, to organize and it paid off in every election since then. Donald Trump has been dragging the GOP down for years but they just can't quit him. However, the party's rapid descent into extremism is bigger than Trump and the backlash is continuing to show itself in ways that are shattering the status quo.
The swing state of Wisconsin has been a battleground for years with a polarized electorate that has had power swinging back and forth between the two parties with razor-thin margins. It was assumed that the high-stakes election this week for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be similarly tight. The future of the outrageous gerrymander that makes Republicans massively over-represented in the state legislature was at issue but, most importantly, abortion rights were front and center. Abortion has been illegal in the state since last June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and an archaic law banning abortion that had been on the books since 1849 was no longer moot. The hard right legislature and the conservative state Supreme Court wasn't going to fix that.
The election turned on those two intersecting issues. Abortion rights and democracy were on the ballot with the first being denied as a result of the Republicans manipulating the map to un-democratically seize more power than the people voted for. The anti-abortion candidate (a Trumper, by the way) lost by 10 points, a miracle in that polarized electorate. With good organization by the state Democratic Party — which saw a huge uptick in 18-29-year-old voters, a big gender gap and even, surprisingly, inroads among white, non-college-educated voters — abortion rights and democracy advocacy carried the day.
Meanwhile in Chicago, just as in Los Angeles earlier, the progressive mayoral candidate won despite widespread expectations that the centrist "law and order" candidate would prevail as a result of right-wing fear-mongering about crime. (The head of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police, a Trumper, threatened that 1,000 police officers would walk off the job if Brandon Johnson, the eventual winner, was elected.) The stale "law and order" handwringing didn't work in 2022 and it didn't work this week — and it's yet another sign that the extremism of right-wing rhetoric and policies is turning off voters. Backlash.
And then there was the grotesque display we witnessed in Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday when the Republicans expelled two Black lawmakers, Justin Pierson and Justin Jones, for staging a protest for gun safety legislation on the floor of the House. Here's an illustration of what took place: an odious, condescending comment delivered by a Republican House member who is clearly hard-pressed not to go full Bull Connor and address his colleague as "boy":
The Tennessee Holler
@TheTNHoller
Rep. @Justinjpearson: “You all heard that. How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?”
Pearson responds to Rep. Farmer’s belittling, disrespectful rant. #TennesseeThree
7:03 PM · Apr 6, 2023
Jones said it plainly:
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Acyn
@Acyn
Jones: it's morally insane that a week after a mass shooting hit Nashville where I represent a part of Nashville, my colleagues on the other side are not passing common sense gun laws, they’re passing resolutions to expel the youngest Black members.."
A third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson was also subject to expulsion but they came up short by one vote. Johnson knows exactly why this happened:
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Acyn
@Acyn
Question: Why were those two expelled and you weren't
Johnson: Well, I think it's pretty clear. I'm a 60 year old white woman and they are two young black men
10:09 PM · Apr 6, 2023
After six people, including three little children, were shot down in a Nashville school, citizens protested the state's insanely loose gun laws that allowed the shooter to legally obtain firearms despite a history of mental illness. The anti-democratic Republicans (yes, Tennessee is ridiculously gerrymandered as well) essentially scoffed at their concerns, attacked their colleagues' First Amendment rights and then showed the entire country in living color that they are unreconstructed racists on top of it by instituting the political death penalty against two Black legislators for a minor rules violation.
In this instance, we are seeing the burning issue of gun violence converge with the issue of democracy and systemic racism and while it hasn't yet been fully demonstrated, the fact that the two ousted legislators are also quite young, as are most of the protesters, makes me think we are on the verge of seeing another backlash developing. Look at the age of the protesters:
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March For Our Lives ☮️
@AMarch4OurLives
“YOU BAN BOOKS, YOU BAN DRAG— KIDS ARE STILL IN BODY BAGS.”
Prioritize what’s killing our kids: GUNS.
#Nashville
0:20
1.4M views
12:08 PM · Apr 6, 2023
from Nashville, TN
This dispatch from a local Tennessee journalist suggests that some Republicans sense that too:
Phil Williams
·
Apr 6, 2023
@NC5PhilWilliams
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Scrolling through Tennessee legislative Twitter, Republicans are incredibly quiet tonight! 🤔
Phil Williams
@NC5PhilWilliams
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Privately, some Republicans express concern to me that these events are not only alienating independents, but also GOP women who don’t want their kids getting killed at school.
10:22 PM · Apr 6, 2023
The GOP is an authoritarian, extremist political party that is out of the mainstream of American life. As NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez tweeted after the events in Nashville on Thursday:
"Republicans may think they won today in Tennessee, but their fascism is only further radicalizing and awakening an earthquake of young people, both in the South and across the nation. If you thought youth organizing was strong, just wait for what's coming,"
Backlash.
Republicans spent much of last year celebrating an anticipated “red wave” during the midterm elections. It didn’t materialize. Instead, the GOP only gained a marginal majority in the House of Representatives—thanks in large part to Democratic voters who were energized to protect reproductive rights. Across the country, in elections both before and after the midterms, voters pushed back against abortion bans—even in deep-red states like Kansas. For Democrats, moreover, the message was simple. Republicans were trying to pass sweeping abortion bans. Rachel Sweet, who led a campaign to defeat an anti-abortion constitutional amendment in Kentucky, put it well: “While we may not all agree on abortion, we do agree that the government needs to stay out of our personal lives and that women, their families and their doctors are the ones who should be making these decisions, not politicians.”
The GOP had no answer then and still hasn’t come up with an answer in the months since. The Wall Street Journal is right: This is a five-alarm fire for Republicans heading into a crucial presidential election. They’re also right that a total ban is a loser in swing states.
But the idea that the GOP can get behind a policy that isn’t a total ban is a fantasy. Right-wing activists have been pushing for not just a reversal on Roe but a total abortion ban for years; they remain a crucial part of the Republican base. Any candidate who espouses a moderate position on abortion would quickly find himself in a primary battle—and one can think of few contests in recent years in which the more moderate Republican prevailed. This will almost certainly be the case in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. As Slate’s Jim Newell wrote in a perceptive piece last summer, it’s easy to imagine the conversation on the debate stage about abortion: “The 2024 Republican presidential primary … could quickly become a race-to-the-bottom on the issue. A 15-week national ban? RINO. Let’s make it six. A 6-week ban? RINO! Let’s make it zero. Exceptions? R-I-N-O.”
Schweppe’s remedy is similarly fantastical. Graham’s policy—a total, national ban on abortion after 15 weeks—would arguably make things even worse for Republicans. For months, when they have acknowledged the issue at all, which is rarely, mainstream Republicans have argued that they aren’t looking for a national ban at all and that the issue should be left to the states. This is, as evidence suggests, not a winning electoral argument. But there is no evidence whatsoever that replacing it with a nationwide policy that bans abortion just after the end of the first trimester would be better.
If anything, it would energize even more voters against Republicans. It also, as I argued when Graham first unveiled it, gives the game away: The Republican goal is a nationwide ban, full stop. Indeed, nationwide abortion restrictions are at the center of GOP politics, even though they’re unpopular: The House of Representatives has passed several anti-abortion measures since Republicans took back control.
Ultimately, the problem Republicans face is both simple and unsolvable. None of their abortion policies are popular with voters. In fact, they’re all so unpopular they mobilize millions of Democrats to vote against them. This will not stop anytime soon: There’s no magic policy that will stop it because some idealized middle ground that would be palatable to the diehards in the Republican base simply doesn’t exist.
Alvin Bragg alleges that Donald Trump defrauded voters into electing him president on November 8, 2016.
Alvin Bragg also alleges that the first crime Donald Trump committed occurred on February 14, 2017.
Are you seeing the problem here?
There may not be enough space in the mega-verse to describe the sundry flaws in the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment against the former president of the United States.
It fails, despite its 34 counts, to state a crime. It is time-barred under the statute of limitations.
Bragg is attempting to enforce either federal election laws that a state prosecutor lacks jurisdiction to enforce or state election laws that do not apply to US presidential elections.
The DA’s biggest problem, however, is that his indictment is utterly incoherent.
As a standard-issue Trump-deranged progressive Democrat, Bragg naturally cannot accept that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she was a historically bad candidate. Ergo, the election must have been stolen from her.
The thief, Bragg deduces, was Trump, who stole the election by sinister fraudulent schemes.
There’s just one thing: The only schemes Bragg accuses Trump of carrying out prior to the 2016 election are non-disclosure agreements. More darkly stated, the NDAs were hush-money deals to silence people who were otherwise poised to reveal information that would have damaged Trump politically.
Yet there is nothing illegal about NDAs. They are a staple of civil litigation and private negotiations. And while some of the underlying information, if revealed, would have portrayed Trump in an unsavory way, none of that information involved illegal activity.
In fact, to the extent anything was even on the edge of a crime, Trump was a victim — the NDAs happened because people made extortionate threats to humiliate him if they did not get their paydays.
As a good woke progressive, Bragg is upset because this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, so if embarrassing information about him was kept under wraps prior to Election Day, that simply must be a crime.
But since Bragg well knows, however much it grates on him, that NDAs are not crimes, the DA is left to make up crimes to fit his fever dream of a stolen 2016 election.
He tries to do this by taking a single transaction — Trump’s reimbursement to Michael Cohen of the $130,000 Cohen paid to Stormy Daniels to stay mum about an alleged 2006 fling — and ludicrously slicing it into 34 transactions, each of which he brands as felony falsification of business records.
The transaction in question may have been accounted for inaccurately. It was the reimbursement of a loan from a lawyer, but it was booked to look as if legal fees had been paid.
But no one was harmed by this. These were records of Trump’s own privately held companies, and even Bragg does not claim that Trump committed tax evasion or cheated someone out of money or property.
Leave all that aside, though.
Even if this bookkeeping amounted to fraud crimes that Bragg could prove (and it doesn’t), the transactions in question could not possibly have had the slightest impact on the 2016 election. They didn’t occur until months later — specifically, from February 14 through December 5, 2017.
What’s more, even if Bragg had jurisdiction to enforce federal campaign finance law (he doesn’t), and even if Bragg were correct that the hush-money payments were in-kind campaign contributions that had to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission (he isn’t), the NDAs he alleges happened late in the 2016 campaign cycle.
That means Trump’s campaign would not have had to make an FEC disclosure until several months into 2017. Again, there could not conceivably have been any impact on the 2016 election.
"Tennessee has now given the entire country an object lesson in critical race theory better than any AP history course ever could have. Everybody sees it now. Everybody knows it now. Everybody gets exactly what'sgoing on. To Harry's point about the Supreme Court, any argument that this was about decorum or or or or the House rules in Tennessee, um that...the Republicans took that argument off the table for the rest of us when they decided not to expel the white lady but they did expel the two black men, right so I think that opens them up to a legal challenge that's even more serious...." Elie Mystal
Oh and check out these headlines::
U.S. Adds A Healthy 236,000 Jobs Despite Fed's Rate Hikes
Black unemployment rate hits record low 5 percent
"they decided not to expel the white lady but they did expel the two black men"
well, she was a little less involved in the effort to overthrow the state Capitol
also, she failed to be expelled by one vote so the supposed racism, if it was actually racism, was on the part of one minor state legislator
big deal..
what is not emphasized in the mainstream media (aka the PR department of the dumb Dem Party) is that these three legislators stormed the Tennessee Capitol, just like a state version of January 6
hey, did you know with the primaries about none months away, that Biden has turned on transsexuals?
A Biden administration proposal angered trans rights activists by allowing schools to athletes from participating on teams that align with their gender identity.
The proposed rule, which still faces a lengthy approval process, establishes schools could adopt policies that limit transgender students' participation in competitive high school and college sports.
Under the proposal, schools will be able develop policies that prohibit trans athletes from playing on competitive teams if those policies are designed to ensure fairness or prevent sports-related injuries.
Imara Jones, a trans woman who created “The Anti-Trans Hate Machine” podcast, said the proposal shows that President Joe Biden is attempting to “straddle the fence” on a human rights issue ahead of an election year by giving legal recourse to schools that bar trans athletes from competition.
“The Biden Administration..provides guidelines for how schools and universities can ban trans athletes legally,” Jones said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, also offered pointed criticism, saying in a tweet that the plan was “indefensible and embarrassing.”
Erin Reed, a prominent trans activist and researcher, said the proposal “alarmingly” echoes right-wing talking points, which argue that trans participation could increase injuries and take away scholarship opportunities from female athletes whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. She worries school boards and lawmakers will use it to justify bans.
“I can’t read this any other way than a betrayal,” Reed said in a tweet.
Sean Ebony Coleman, a trans activist and founder of the LGBTQ+ center Destination Tomorrow in New York, said policymakers — particularly on a national level — need to completely rule out any option for trans people to be further ostracized.
“it offers enough gray area for discrete gender policing and demonization to occur, specifically on a local level,” Coleman said.
Doriane Coleman, a law professor at Duke University, said the proposal allows for schools that receive federal funding to “still choose to have male and female sports teams" and makes sense.
The public will have 30 days to comment on the proposal after it is published in the Federal Register. After that, the U.S. Department of Education will review the comments and decide whether any changes are needed before issuing a final rule.
"these three legislators stormed the Tennessee Capitol, just like a state version of January 6"
Do show and tell us all about the destruction of property they caused and the gallows they built and all the police officers they beat up and which elected officials were chanting about wanting to find and bestow their own version of justice on.
In fact, you cannot show us any videos of any Jan 6 crimes in Tennessee because there weren't any so STFU.
"A Biden administration proposal angered trans rights activists by allowing schools to athletes from participating on teams that align with their gender identity."
Failure to proofread before posting leads to meaningless statements like these.
“Our legislature honored Candace Owen (shortly after she praised Hitler) for her ‘criticism of creeping socialism and leftist political tyranny,’” Balko tweeted, “but refused to honor Renata Soto because she worked with groups who help undocumented immigrants.”
Tennessee Republicans passed a resolution congratulating Ben Shapiro for moving his company to the state, but blocked a resolution honoring a murdered 17-year-old because, in addition to being a basketball player who founded an LGBTQ student group and worked two jobs, she was rumored to have been involved in a “small marijuana sale.”
Speaking of basketball, one of the representatives Tennessee Republicans haven’t expelled in recent years was a fellow Republican accused of having sexually assaulted three teenage girls decades earlier while he was their basketball coach. Rep. David Byrd ultimately didn’t seek reelection after a furor that included Rep. Gloria Johnson, the lawmaker who was almost expelled for a decorum violation on Thursday, filing an expulsion resolution.
Another Republican who got to leave by not seeking reelection rather than by being expelled was former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada. Casada resigned as speaker after a scandal involving his chief of staff using cocaine in the statehouse, sending racist texts to people, including Casada, and doctoring an email to try to frame a student activist for violating a no-contact order. The student activist in question was Justin Jones, one of the Democrats expelled on Thursday, and the no-contact order came after Jones was accused of throwing a cup of coffee into an elevator Casada was in. But wait, Casada’s story isn’t over! He and the same chief of staff were indicted for fraud, theft, and bribery in 2022, after he had resigned as speaker but while he was still in the legislature. He didn’t run for reelection, but did serve out his term.
Yet another Tennessee Republican was not expelled after it came to light that he had prescribed opioids for family members, including his second cousin/lover.
These are some high-quality folks representing the Republican Party in the Tennessee legislature.
Their track record of appalling actions goes back a ways, too. In 2013, two Republican lawmakers reportedly freaked out that a renovation to the Capitol building might have added a footwashing sink for Muslims to one bathroom. In reality, it was a mop sink.
Tennessee Republicans have been largely flying under the radar, drawing less attention than their fellow Republican legislators in other states and in Congress. But it turns out they’ve been right there all along.
"In fact, you cannot show us any videos of any Jan 6 crimes in Tennessee because there weren't any so STFU"
who needs a video
here's a confession from one of the perps, now-former Rep, Justin Jones:
"There comes a time when you have to do something out of the ordinary. We occupied the House today"
the Tennessee were mad because they were in the minority so they stocked the gallery with protesters who loudly chanted and used bullhorns to drown out any other voices, effectively shutting down official proceedings.
the Shaman of January 6 did less and received a four year jail sentence
Any democratically elected legislature will have members who disagree sharply. Rules of civility must be enforced to prevent chaos and allow democracy to function.
the woman who narrowly avoided expulsion, btw, was not only white but she also didn't use a bullhorn
all she did was civilly stand with the protesters, hence why fewer voted to expel her
"Failure to proofread before posting leads to meaningless statements like these."
well, I posted several trans activists who say Biden's policy is a betrayal of their cause
Biden's proposed rule will allow high schools and colleges to ban trans from participating in sports competition with a gender they weren't assigned at birth
Biden is doing this because an election is coming and it's clear the electorate doesn't want guys pretending to be girls competing against girls
he doesn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows
he can just read up on JK Rowling
"who needs a video"
People who do not suffer from "willful blindness" prefer seeing the facts to pretending they do not exist.
We all saw the videos of the damages and crimes the Jan6 MAGANON idiots performed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/04/08/capitol-riot-costs-go-up-government-estimates-273-million-in-property-damage/?sh=3e85d07219c5
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-capitol-riot-poopers-20210107-prlsqytyabgdhnexushotl4nam-story.html
Even you have got to admit nobody pooped on any desks or in any offices in Tennessee.
Compare to Tennessee Capitol protest explainer: Here's what did and did not happen
More than a 1,000 peaceful protestors rallied around Tennessee’s state Capitol on March 30 calling for more restrictive gun laws. Many made their way into the Capitol in a demonstration top Republican lawmakers have likened to “an insurrection.”
No demonstrators broke into the Capitol, no one was arrested or injured, and no property was damaged.
But legislative business in the House was brought to a halt when three elected Democratic representatives stood at the podium with a bullhorn to lead protestors in the galleries in calls for gun reform.
House Republicans filed resolutions Monday to expel the three members who interrupted legislative business, triggering a removal process expected to take place this Thursday. The trio will have a chance to defend their actions, but expulsion is likely under the Republican supermajority in the House.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, compared the events on March 30 to "at least equivalent, maybe worse" than the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which left a protestor dead, many police officers injured and millions of dollars of property damaged.
Clarifying his comments on Monday, Sexton said it was not his intent to conflate the protesters at the Capitol with the three lawmakers.
Still, misinformation and false allegations continue to circulate that protestors illegally stormed the House chamber or staged an "attempted takeover" of the Tennessee Capitol.
Here’s what to know.
What happened on Thursday?
Protesters gathered inside and outside the state Capitol beginning before 8 a.m. on Thursday, March 30. Protestors loudly but peacefully confronted lawmakers as they arrived for legislative sessions, asking them how they would increase school safety. By mid-morning, the crowd gathered at War Memorial Plaza, where several speakers called for gun-control in the wake of The Covenant School shooting on March 27.
A smaller crowd remained inside the Capitol just outside the House and Senate chamber doors, where they remained loudly protesting until the early afternoon.
How did protesters enter the Capitol building?
Most protestors entered the Capitol building through the west entrance of the second floor. Everyone was required to go through security, managed by officers from the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Demonstrators congregated in the area outside the House chamber, under a rotunda-like ceiling directly accessed by two elevators and stairs leading to the first floor of the Capitol.
The area is flanked by two staircases where members of the public can access the viewing gallery of the House. The area in front of the Senate, down the hall, was cordoned off, and protestors did not try to fill down the hallway.
Continues at https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/04/04/tennessee-capitol-protest-heres-what-did-and-did-not-happen/70075823007/
"the Tennessee were mad because they were in the minority so they stocked the gallery with protesters who loudly chanted and used bullhorns to drown out any other voices, effectively shutting down official proceedings.
the Shaman of January 6 did less and received a four year jail sentence"
Chansley, the MAGA Shaman pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding, was among the first rioters to enter the building. He has acknowledged using a bullhorn to rile up the mob, offering thanks in a prayer while in the Senate for having the chance to get rid of traitors and scratching out a threatening note to Vice President Mike Pence saying, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”
Chansley only got into the Capitol because hundreds of protesters had already beat the crap out of hundreds of police officers, incapacitated them with bear mace, and smashed windows and doors to gain unlawful entry.
Setting up a false equivalency by ignoring the fact that the Tennessee protestors didn't do ANY of that is such crude gaslighting it's hard to imagine even YOU believe it.
Are you really *THAT* stupid?
I can understand you believing other conservatives are that stupid because of their continuous suspension of reality to worship their Orange Demagogue.
But you've been posting here long enough to know that no one else here is buying that BS. It makes one wonder why you keep doing it.
Boredom? Loneliness?
Or are you really just that stupid and delusional?
Enjoy your blindness.
When two Democrat lawmakers joined a mob of left-wing insurrectionists who took over the Tennessee Capitol last week, they were rightfully expelled from the state’s general assembly.
Nashville Rep. Justin Jones and Memphis Rep. Justin Pearson violated the Tennessee General Assembly’s decorum requirements when they held up a protest sign and shouted into a bullhorn, encouraging left-wing rioters who were illegally disrupting legislative proceedings last week.
Eventually, the noise coming from Jones, Pearson, and insurrectionists grew so raucous members of the General Assembly were forced to exit the chamber and suspend legislative business.
Democrats have responded to the insurrection instigators’ rightful expulsions in hysterics, claiming the assembly’s decision to expel Johnson and Pearson was undemocratic and racist. Some even claimed the expulsion signals that Tennessee is less free than North Korea.
Leftists claim Jones and Pearson were expelled simply because they are black, given that Gloria Johnson, another representative who is white, stood next to the two men during the Tennessee insurrection but was not expelled.
“I feel like North Korea has more democracy than we do in the state of Tennessee, and it’s terrifying to me that we’re in this march to fascism,” said Johnson, who later credited her continued standing position in the assembly to the fact that she’s a “60-year-old white woman.”
However, Johnson’s own lawyer separated her from Jones and Pearson, pointing out Johnson did not shout, let alone scream into a bullhorn during the Tennessee insurrection. Instead, Johnson stood silently next to the other two men. Johnson survived the expulsion by only one vote but was stripped of her committee assignments.
Ironically, the only example of real racism came from Jones, who described his former colleague, Rep. Sabi “Doc” Kumar, as “a brown face” because Kumar is an Indian immigrant who happens to be Republican. This week, while pretending racism was the cause of his expulsion, Jones found time to double down on this bigotry, saying Kumar is only a Republican because he’s “confused.”
President Joe Biden characterized the Tennessee insurrection as “peaceful” and described Jones and Pearson’s expulsion as “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.” Former President Barack Obama issued a similar statement on Twitter. To be clear, a mob of insurrectionists halting Tennessee’s legislative process with the aid of assemblymembers is actually undemocratic, as was the politicians’ decisions to egg them on. Jones and Pearson are simply facing the consequences of subverting American democracy.
Further, Democrats, notably Biden and Obama, have spent the last decade targeting their political opponents and eroding democratic norms and standards in the process. Obama’s Internal Revenue Service infamously targeted conservative organizations, and his administration spied on the Trump campaign under knowingly false pretenses.
Under Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), Jan. 6 demonstrators, many of whom were truly peaceful, were thrown in jail for two years without due process and slandered by a months-long Congressional show trial that maliciously hid exculpatory surveillance footage from the public and the defendants’ lawyers.
Despite the similarities between what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and March 30, 2023, Biden, Obama, and the rest of the Democrats, insist the Tennessee insurrection was peaceful, but Jan. 6 was an affront to democracy and a national tragedy akin to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the Civil War.
Moreover, the same Democrats who are describing the expulsions as unprecedented and undemocratic called for the expulsions of U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley for objecting to the certification of the 2020 election after Democrats rigged the outcome.
Jones, Johnson, and Pearson are not victims. They instigated an insurrection at the Tennessee State Capitol and have been justifiably punished for their bad behavior. The real victims are the six Christians who were murdered by a transgender shooter, whose deaths are now being used by Democrats for political gain.
Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to travel to Tennessee to visit with Jones, Johnson, and Pearson, but not the families of the six slain Christians. Harris plans to further discuss restrictions on Americans’ Second Amendment rights but not the mental health crisis instigating the barbaric actions of the transgender shooter, whose gender dysphoria leftists have falsely labeled normal and brave.
Democrats haven’t just exploited the Christian victims, they’ve disrespected their memories by claiming the transgender murderer is a fellow “victim” of the shooting. Last week, the Tennessee insurrectionists held up seven fingers for the supposed “seven victims” in the shooting, referring to the killer as “victim.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press conference after the shooting that “our hearts go out to … the trans community” who is “under attack right now,” instead of the murdered Christians. Further, Biden’s Department of Justice does not plan to investigate the shooting as a hate crime despite Nashville law enforcement suggesting the killer specifically targeted her victims and that the attack was linked to the killer’s transgender identity.
Jones and Pearson seized on a national tragedy and exploited it for political fame. They are not martyrs or heroes. They are morally bankrupt former members of the Tennessee General Assembly who have been rightfully removed from positions they do not deserve to hold.
Stop pretending that right wingers didn't latch on to the shooter's alleged trans identity for their own political gain and current culture war efforts to erase trans people.
Tennessee doesn't have "red flag" laws that would keep someone from legally purchasing a gun anyway, and Republicans in TN have made it quite clear that murdered children (Christian or otherwise) are acceptable losses to save their gun fetish.
You can keep seeking out right wing propaganda that labels the TN protestors as "insurrectionists" and falsely equate them to the Jan 6 rioters, but that fact of the matter is that there was none of the cop-bludgeoning, pepper spraying, feces smearing violence of the Jan 6th attack that day in TN. Just because SOME of the DC protesters didn't do that, doesn't mean people are going to forget what the other ones did - no matter how much you try to rewrite history like it's "1984."
There's not enough stupid people to believe you.
A longtime sheriff in Frederick County, Maryland faces a multi-count federal indictment in connection with an alleged scheme to lie to the government on sheriff’s office paperwork so a gun store owner who promised political support would be able to acquire and rent out machine guns to members of the public.
Charles “Chuck” Austin Jenkins, 66, and Robert Justin Krop, 36, face counts of conspiracy to interfere with a government function and to violate federal law regulating machine guns, false statements during the purchase of firearms, false statements in records maintained by a federal licensee, and false statements to the ATF. Krop is additionally charged with knowingly and unlawfully possessing a FN Herstal SCAR 17, a FN Herstal SCAR 16 CQC, a FN Herstal SCAR 16, a KRISS USA Vector SMG, a Remington ACR, a FN P90 Tactical, and a FN M249 SAW.
Jenkins is accused of conspiring to illegally buy machine guns through the use of his office’s letterhead so Krop, a political supporter and owner of The Machine Gun Nest, could obtain and rent out the firearms to private citizens, according to the indictment.
“Krop and his businesses held up to two Federal Firearms Licenses (‘FFLs’) that allowed Krop and the business, under certain circumstances, to possess and deal in machine guns,” the government said in a press release, just before alleging instead that a criminal conspiracy unfolded from August 2015 through May 2022.
The sheriff allegedly used his office’s letterhead to falsely attest in “law letters” to licensed dealers and manufacturers (and by extension on ATF forms) that the machineguns were “dealer sales samples for law enforcement demonstration purposes,” according to the indictment. The government alleged that the weapons were instead rented out to The Machine Gun Nest’s customers and raked in six figures in profits for Krop — who reiterated his potential support in May 2022 emails to the sheriff.
“Jenkins and Krop conspired to unlawfully purchase machineguns and falsified multiple documents on the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office letterhead requesting machine guns for evaluation and demonstration to the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office. Krop allegedly drafted these documents for Jenkins’ signature,” the government said in its press release. “According to the indictment, Jenkins and Krop knew that there would not be a demonstration of the machine guns to the Sheriff’s Office and that the machine guns were intended for rental to Krop’s customers. Krop also allegedly illegally possessed seven machine guns. The indictment further alleges that Krop’s business offered political support to Jenkins in recognition of his support for the business.”
Sheriff Jenkins is a conservative multi-term elected Republican sheriff who most recently ran and won in 2022.
“I’m just a law and order, no-nonsense guy,” Jenkins summarized himself in a 2018 election with the Frederick News-Post.
Discussing his full support for the Second Amendment amid a wave of school shootings, the sheriff told the News-Post, “I’m just a very staunch Second Amendment guy. I believe in gun ownership, the right to own firearms — either for self-defense, sport shooting, whatever the case may be. It’s not the gun, it’s society and the people that make the decision to [commit these crimes].”
Later in the interview, he named Condoleezza Rice — “one of the smartest people I’ve ever seen in public life” — and Donald Trump — “just to pick his brain” — as two people he would have dinner with.
“If convicted, Jenkins and Krop face a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for the conspiracy, for false statements in records maintained by a federal firearms licensee and for false statements to federal law enforcement. If convicted, Krop also faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for unlawful possession of a machine gun,” the government noted.
"Stop pretending that right wingers didn't latch on to the shooter's alleged trans identity for their own political gain and current culture war efforts to erase trans people"
this from a someone who scours the web looking for any conservative in the land who has committed a crime so they cab use it for their own political gain and current culture war efforts
you have to laugh in the face of such hypocrisy
there have been multiple examples of trans who did these shootings in the last few years, above their percentage of the population
the inability to accept your own gender is a mental illness and should be classified as such
it makes sense that the stress of that illness may cause some to lash out
recognizing that someone is ill doesn't equate to "erasing" them
"Republicans in TN have made it quite clear that murdered children (Christian or otherwise) are acceptable losses to save their gun fetish"
actually, they are pretty clear that the way to protect children, or anyone else, is to provide them protection, not to pass inane laws that forbid law-abiding citizens from owning guns and make sure only outlaws have them
"You can keep seeking out right wing propaganda that labels the TN protestors as "insurrectionists" and falsely equate them to the Jan 6 rioters"
there are a number of Jan 6 defendants who have been convicted and jailed for doing nothing other than interrupting an official proceeding, which is just what the Tennessee Three and their co-conspirators did
there was a time when protesters who committed civil disobedience expected to suffer the consequences
it was their contribution to their cause which they nobly accepted
now, they act like people who enforce the law are persecuting them
The transgender movement has left many intelligent Americans confused about sex. Asked to define the word “woman” during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year, Ketanji Brown Jackson demurred, saying “I’m not a biologist.” I am a biologist, and I’m here to help.
Are sex categories in humans empirically real, immutable and binary, or are they mere “social constructs”? The question has public-policy implications related to sex-based legal protections and medicine, including whether males should be allowed in female sports, prisons and other spaces that have historically been segregated by sex for reasons of fairness and safety.
Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union frequently claims that the binary concept of sex is a recent invention “exclusively for the purposes of excluding trans people from legal protections.” Scottish politician Maggie Chapman asserted in December that her rejection of the “binary and immutable” nature of sex was her motivation for pursuing “comprehensive gender recognition for nonbinary people in Scotland.” (“Nonbinary” people are those who “identify” as neither male nor female.)
When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.
Intersex people, whose genitalia appear ambiguous or mixed, don’t undermine the sex binary. Many gender ideologues, however, falsely claim the existence of intersex conditions renders the categories “male” and “female” arbitrary and meaningless. In “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex” (1998), the historian of science Alice Dreger writes: “Hermaphroditism causes a great deal of confusion, more than one might at first appreciate, because—as we will see again and again—the discovery of a ‘hermaphroditic’ body raises doubts not just about the particular body in question, but about all bodies. The questioned body forces us to ask what exactly it is—if anything—that makes the rest of us unquestionable.”
In reality, the existence of borderline cases no more raises questions about everyone else’s sex than the existence of dawn and dusk casts doubt on day and night. For the vast majority of people, their sex is obvious. And our society isn’t experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people born with ambiguous genitalia. We are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex or as something other than male or female.
Gender ideology seeks to portray sex as so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional practice of classifying people as simply either male or female is grossly outdated and should be abandoned for a revolutionary concept of “gender identity.” This entails that males wouldn’t be barred from female sports, women’s prisons or any other space previously segregated according to our supposedly antiquated notions of “biological sex,” so long as they “identify” as female.
But “intersex” and “transgender” mean entirely different things. Intersex people have rare developmental conditions that result in apparent sex ambiguity. Most transgender people aren’t sexually ambiguous at all but merely “identify” as something other than their biological sex.
Once you’re conscious of this distinction, you will begin to notice gender ideologues attempting to steer discussions away from whether men who identify as women should be allowed to compete in female sports toward prominent intersex athletes like South African runner Caster Semenya. Why? Because so long as they’ve got you on your heels making difficult judgment calls on a slew of complex intersex conditions, they’ve succeeded in drawing your attention away from easy calls on unquestionably male athletes like 2022 NCAA Division I women’s swimming and diving champion Lia Thomas. They shift the focus to intersex to distract from transgender.
Acknowledging the existence of rare difficult cases doesn’t weaken the position or arguments against allowing males in female sports, prisons, restrooms and other female-only spaces. In fact, it’s a much stronger approach because it makes a crucial distinction that the ideologues are at pains to obscure.
Crafting policy to exclude males who identify as women, or “trans women,” from female sports, prisons and other female-only spaces isn’t complicated. Trans women are unambiguously male, so the chances that a doctor incorrectly recorded their sex at birth is zero. Any “transgender policy” designed to protect female spaces need only specify that participants must have been recorded (or “assigned,” in the current jargon) female at birth.
Crafting effective intersex policies is more complicated, but the problem of intersex athletes in female sports is less pressing than that of males in female sports, and there seem to be no current concerns arising from intersex people using female spaces. It should be up to individual organizations to decide which criteria or cut-offs should be used to keep female spaces safe and, in the context of sports, safe and fair. It is imperative, however, that such policies be rooted in properties of bodies, not “identity.” Identity alone is irrelevant to issues of fairness and safety.
Ideologues are wrong to insist that the biology of sex is so complex as to defy all categorization. They’re also wrong to represent the sex binary in an overly simplistic way. The biology of sex isn’t quite as simple as common sense, but common sense will get you a long way in understanding it.
We live in a world where a man who masquerades as a sportswoman is showered with praise and money while an actual sportswoman is branded a ‘stupid fucking bitch’ and punched in the face. A world where a bloke can be paid thousands of dollars to prance around in a sports bra in a grotesque parody of a female athlete while a real female athlete is set upon by a seething mob and told to ‘go the fuck home’. A world where a man in leggings doing a sub-Dick Emery satire on womanhood is held up as a role model while a young woman who trained her whole life to be an elite athlete is damned as a bigot and – direct quote – a ‘transphobic bitch’.
These are the cases of Dylan Mulvaney and Riley Gaines. Mulvaney is a 26-year-old man who labours under the delusion that he’s a girl. For the past year, in the modern Bedlam of TikTok, he’s been documenting his ‘journey to girlhood’, his ‘man-to-girl transition’, as the Daily Mail called it, brilliantly capturing the post-truth lunacy and outright sleaziness of this fully grown bloke saying ‘I’m a girl!’.
Gaines is a woman – one of the old-fashioned ones, the ones with vaginas, as Ricky Gervais calls them – who excels in swimming. She’s a champion college swimmer in the US and she is pretty ticked off that big burly blokes like Lia Thomas – six-foot-one, bepenised, full of that muscle mass bestowed on the male of the species by puberty – has been allowed to compete against women like her. Mulvaney and Gaines have both hit the headlines in recent days, and their stories show just how toxic and menacing the cult of transgenderism has become.
Mr Mulvaney made the news for securing a sweet sponsorship deal with Nike Women. He posted a video of himself doing a workout in Nike Women’s Zenvy leggings and Alate bra. I say workout. It’s less Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect and more Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Show. He does naff high kicks and star jumps, all while wearing a look of mouth-agape ditziness. Girls, what are you like! As many pissed-off women have pointed out, it looks nothing like a woman doing a workout. It looks more like a camp actor auditioning for A Chorus Line. Which, fundamentally, is what Dylan Mulvaney is. And yet he’s garlanded with praise. Corporations throw money at him. He’s treated as a real woman – or, shudder, girl – including by the White House.
Gaines made the news after being showered not with cash and love, but with vile misogynistic insults. Gaines is on a mission to save women’s sports. She has spoken movingly about how unjust it is to force sportswomen like her to go up against men. When Lia Thomas was plain old Will Thomas, he was an average male college swimmer in the US. When he became Lia he soared to the top of the women’s rankings. Women who trained for years to be the best at their sport were left behind in the waves made by his big man hands. Gaines gave a speech at San Francisco State University last Thursday on why women’s sports should be ringfenced from blokes, and the response was extraordinary. A heaving mob surrounded her. They barked insults in her face. They called her a bitch. Gaines says she was punched twice. She had to hide in a room for three hours to escape the fuming witchfinders.
And there you have it. A man in women’s sportsgear is fawned over by the right-on while a woman who wants to protect women’s sports is monstered by them. A man does a sardonic take on women’s ‘girly’ workouts and progressives cry, ‘Go, girl’. A woman stands up for the right of women to have their own sports and progressives shout, ‘Shut up, bitch’. The confluence of these two stories is perfect. It captures what a devastating impact the trans ideology has had not only on women’s rights, but also on the entire category of womanhood. That the elites feel more comfortable with a man’s frivolous performance of womanhood than they do with a woman’s passionate, reasoned defence of womanhood confirms that the trans ideology has laid waste to truth, science and sexual equality. All that is left in the wake of this deeply misogynistic ideology is the skin of womanhood, the accoutrements of it, the mask and the drag and the lippy. That’s why, in certain circles, Dylan Mulvaney is a more respected ‘woman’ than Riley Gaines – because he performs the caricature so much better than she does.
In July 1989, Germaine Greer wrote a piece for the Independent titled ‘On why sex change is a lie’. It is always wheeled out as Exhibit A in the Gen Z crusade to damn Greer as a foul old bigot, but in truth it’s a brilliant piece of writing, a reminder of what a fierce and excellent polemicist Greer was. She describes an encounter with a transsexual in the US in the 1970s, his face ‘thickly coated with pancake make-up through which the stubble was already burgeoning’. He had on ‘flapping draperies’. He shook her hand with – those of an easily offended persuasion, look away now – his ‘enormous, knuckly, hairy, beringed paw’. And then came one of Greer’s most famous lines on the trans issue: this man, she said, was a ‘gross parody of my sex’. ‘Kneejerk etiquette’ demanded that I accept him as female, she complained, ‘even to the point of allowing him to come to the lavatory with me’.
‘Gross parody of my sex’ – those words ring in my ears whenever I see Dylan Mulvaney. And many of the other ‘transwomen’ we’re meant to treat as actual women. ‘Trans women are women’, as the mantra goes, a mantra that was bellowed with medieval ferocity in the face of the witch, Riley Gaines. Today, though, there’s more than ‘kneejerk etiquette’ demanding that we recognise these fellas with stubble and hirsute fingers as women. An entire new machinery of authoritarianism has been fashioned to pressure us to believe that transwomen are women and to punish those, like Gaines, who dare to demur. Public shaming, blacklisting and even violence are now used to force all to acquiesce to the idea that someone like Dylan Mulvaney is a girl.
Mulvaney’s schtick is incredibly sexist. His diary of ‘girlhood’ gives the impression that femaleness is an act. You thought womanhood was biological, cultural, historical and relational, a thing of real substance and meaning? Think again. It’s drag, basically. It’s eyeshadow and hair extensions. From his make-up tutorials to his videos on how he tucks his bollocks into his swimsuit, Mulvaney’s vision of ‘womanhood’ is entirely fatuous. Womanhood is garb, apparently.
Let’s be clear about this: the idea that a man becomes a woman simply by having a facelift and popping a few pills and maybe having his knob removed is profoundly misogynistic. In Greer’s words from 1989, it promotes the idea ‘that the female is no more than a castrated male’. These days a bloke doesn’t even have to be castrated to become a woman. The demeaning of women as castrated males has been replaced by the even more repugnant demeaning of them as dolled-up males. Fellas, if you have access to mascara, wigs and tucking tape to hide your cock, you too can become a woman. Put on your leggings, do a couple of high kicks, open your mouths to make yourselves look dim and vacuous, and hey presto, you’re a lady. Anyone can do it.
The trans ideology has rendered womanhood meaningless. It has emptied it of its truths and reduced it to mere costume, one that anyone can don. As Greer has argued, the trans ideology is entirely counter-feminist, in that it treats ‘femininity’ as the core truth of womanhood. Femininity is a ‘role you play’, says Greer, ‘and for that to become the given identity of women is a profoundly disabling notion’. It really has become the given identity of women. Mulvaney is a celebrated ‘woman’ precisely because he performs femininity so enthusiastically, while Gaines is a demonised woman because she has the audacity to push back against the idea that womanhood is a performance and argues that, actually, it’s real. Biologically, culturally real. That Mulvaney’s gross parody of womanhood enjoys greater validation than Gaines’ sincere defence of women’s rights speaks to the misogyny that has been unleashed by the trans cult.
The problem isn’t Dylan Mulvaney himself. It’s the fact that the chattering classes, the White House and big businesses like Nike Women and Bud Light are all falling at his feet and saying: ‘Yes, Dylan, you are a girl.’ In doing so, they don’t only flatter one bloke’s delusions – they also give official sanction to the sexist idea that womanhood is nothing more than cosplay. And if women aren’t real, what’s the need for women’s rights? It’s a short step from treating womanhood as a joke to treating women as jokes.
The sad murders of three young children and three staff members at a private Christian school in Nashville have been followed by bitter protests at state capitols, White House commentary, and a swarm of media kowtowing.
But this wasn’t aimed at banning assault weapons. This was in support of transgender rights in the wake of a shooting by a transgender assailant, who was “gunned down” by police, as some media outlets put it.
Awkward fact: this was at least the fourth mass shooter ( and at least the fifth attempted one ) since 2016 who had gender issues. She was born female and decided a few months ago she was now “he.” That settles matters for everyone on the Left these days: simply asserting it makes it so.
This outcry is bizarre. We have worked mightily to accommodate transgender people to an extent far in excess of their presence in the population — five persons in a thousand, or 1.65 million people in a nation of 330 million. This is five one-thousandths of 1% of the population. Yet transgenderism is now the tail that wags the dog of the entire Democratic Party.
Last week, upset that children can’t access puberty blockers and sex-change surgery, protesters stormed the state capitols of Texas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Florida. Transgender activists insist they are victims of genocide and bigotry. They wallow in the noblesse oblige of choosing a life that exposes them to such horrible risks. But this fraught, drama-queen depiction is statistically and anecdotally false. The Biden administration, the Democrats, and the media capitalize on it to blame MAGA Republicans for a problem that is nonexistent.
“Our hearts go out to those — the trans community as they are under attack right now,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday. She offered no such words for the families of the six victims in Nashville.
NBC News ran a sympathetic story on how transgender people were feeling fearful because of the reporting on the murders, as did Reuters and NPR . Other media outlets spoke of the 28-year-old killer’s self-described “whimsical and light-hearted feel” in her artwork, and took pains to refer to her as “they,” shedding a thousand years of English grammar.
On Friday, as part of a previously planned “Transgender Day of Visibility,” President Biden put out a histrionic statement that laid it on a little thick: “The bullying, discrimination, and political attacks that trans kids face have exacerbated our national mental health crisis… Loving parents are terrified for their children’s futures.” Terrified?
The Nashville murders occurred three days before a planned “Transgender Day of Vengeance” had been scheduled in Washington. A poster of the event , declaring “Stop Trans Genocide,” was tweeted more than 5,000 times on Twitter, which then took down the tweets.
Thereafter, the organizers canceled the event and cited a “credible threat to life and safety,” which was “the direct result of the flood of raw hatred directed toward the trans community after the Tennessee shooting.” You can see what they did there — they blamed the victims and other people upset about the shooting for their own discomfort.
But the entire transgender martyr story is a myth. FBI crime statistics show that in 2020, a total of 266 hate crimes against transgender people were recorded nationwide. All of 44 transgender people were murdered; this works out to a murder rate for trans people of just 2.66 people per 100,000 transgender people. The murder rate in the general population is almost three times as high — 6.52 people per 100,000 .
Yet the rest of America is being accused of genocide, even as we let men who say they now are women use women’s restrooms, serve time in women’s prisons, compete in women’s sports, teach our children, take "Woman of the Year" awards from women, visit the White House, get jobs in government, join the military, and star in ads for Ulta Beauty, Kate Spade bags, and Bud Light beer.
Oh, and perform drag queen shows in front of children. How much further do we have to go to prove our tolerance, guys?
Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years
The number of children and teens killed by gunfire in the United States increased 50% between 2019 and 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest annual mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 1,732 gun deaths among U.S. children and teens under the age of 18. By 2021, that figure had increased to 2,590.
The gun death rate among children and teens – a measure that adjusts for changes in the nation’s population – rose from 2.4 fatalities per 100,000 minor residents in 2019 to 3.5 per 100,000 two years later, a 46% increase.
Both the number and rate of children and teens killed by gunfire in 2021 were higher than at any point since at least 1999, the earliest year for which information about those younger than 18 is available in the CDC’s mortality database.
The rise in gun deaths among children and teens is part of a broader recent increase in firearm deaths among Americans overall. In 2021, there were 48,830 gun deaths among Americans of all ages – by far the highest yearly total on record and up 23% from the 39,707 recorded in 2019, before the pandemic.
The total number of gun deaths among children and teens in 2021 includes homicides, suicides, accidents and all other categories where firearms are listed on death certificates as the underlying cause of death. It does not include deaths where firearms are listed as a contributing, but not underlying, cause of death.
Homicide was the largest single category of gun deaths among children and teens in 2021, accounting for 60% of the total that year. It was followed by suicide at 32% and accidents at 5%. Among U.S. adults, by contrast, suicides accounted for a 55% majority of gun deaths in 2021....
"The so-called "pro-life" Republican machine that put the gun in his hand lives on"
banning law-abiding citizens from owning guns will make sure that the only ones who have guns will be those likely to use them to kill others
the increase in homicides is part of an overall increase in crime that began with the defund-the-police movement, frustration during unreasonable COVID lockdowns, and lax enforcement policies in big cities controlled by socialist Dems
recently, in the DC area, there have been a number of stabbing
are you in favor of banning knives?
if not, I suppose you put the knife in their hands,,,
WHO NEEDS TO OWN A WEAPON OF WAR?
NOBODY!
Former President Bill Clinton signed into law a 10-year assault weapons ban in 1994. It expired in 2004. Several studies, including one published in 2019 in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, have shown that mass shooting deaths were reduced during the years the ban was in effect.
Senate Republicans have not been open to any additional gun measures after passing bipartisan legislation last month aimed at enhancing background checks to include juvenile records and providing grants to states to enact “red flag” laws.
Want to save school childrens' lives?
BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS!
"are you in favor of banning knives?
if not, I suppose you put the knife in their hands"
When US knife murders reach the same number of deaths as assault weapon mass murders, I would consider it.
Handguns 6,012
Firearms (unstated) 4,740
Knives or cutting instruments 1,035
Personal (hands, fists, feet, etc) 461
Rifles 447
Other guns 277
Blunt Objects (clubs, hammers) 243
Shotguns 152
Narcotics 117
Fire 73
Asphyxiation 35
Poiaon 6
Other/unstated weapons 1,059
"When US knife murders reach the same number of deaths as assault weapon mass murders, I would consider it"
Firearms (unstated) 4,740
Knives or cutting instruments 1,035
over a thousand?!?!?
looks by your way of thinking, you put the knife in their hand
time for you to start considerin'
also, a significant number of homicides happen on the streets so you may want to consider banning leaving your property, except to work
a matter of fact, we should only let those whose jobs requires it leave home
that'll save lives!!!!!!!!!
Concerning the grand jury indictment against former president and 2024 contender Donald Trump ,the corporate press has already moved on, redirecting the public’s focus to the other pending investigations — a subtle acknowledgment that the forthcoming charges by the Manhattan district attorney is both weak and properly perceived as political persecution. But the Fulton County, Georgia investigation and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probes of Trump are equally weak.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged the former president with 34 criminal counts of business fraud related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.
Since news of the indictment first broke, legal pundits have called out Bragg, who ran for prosecutor on a “tough on Trump” platform, for pushing the questionable criminal case against the former president. With all but the hard left and the intransient Never-Trump right viewing the indictment as the political targeting of the former president, the press quickly pivoted to the other still-pending investigations, leaning into the Fulton County D.A.’s investigation and special counsel probes as the real crimes of concern.
While it seems likely Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, a Democrat, will soon follow Bragg’s lead and indict Trump on state law grounds, that move will only make the targeting of Trump look more political — and pathetic. The media rounds by forewoman Emily Kohrs following the release of portions of the special purpose grand jury report guarantee that result.
Not only did Kohrs come off as unserious, at best, but her public statements confirmed Willis’ criminal targeting of Trump rests on the false premise that Trump had asked the Georgia secretary of state to find him 11,780 votes. Trump, however, did no such thing. The transcript of his call with Brad Raffensperger confirms that fact, no matter how much the corrupt press and prosecutor repeat the lie.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is handling the other two investigations into the former president, one concerning Trump’s conduct related to Jan. 6, 2021, and the second probe focusing on the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Smith will be hard-pressed to concoct a crime Trump committed related to Jan. 6, with the former president’s speech constitutionally protected and his legal theories, even if flawed, insufficient to create criminal liability.
The investigation into Trump’s retention of presidential documents faces problems as well, first because two of the three supposed crimes relied on by the government in the search warrant application crumble upon reflection.
For instance, in obtaining the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, the Department of Justice relied on the Espionage Act. But, significantly, the Espionage Act does not prohibit the retention of classified documents. Rather, it prohibits the “unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over” national defense information. To establish a crime, the special counsel would also need to establish Trump had reason to believe the information illegally possessed would harm the United States or help an adversary.
Not only would it be difficult for the special counsel to establish that fact, but here, given Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, indicting Trump for violating the Espionage Act would only confirm the political targeting of the Republican, unless Biden were also indicted.
The search warrant application also suggested a potential violation of Section 2017 of the criminal code, which criminalizes the removal, destruction, or concealing of government records. Section 2017, however, seeks to protect the government’s access to its own records, and merely possessing a copy of a government record is insufficient to create criminal liability.
Yet from the search warrant affidavit and the search warrant, it appears the government sought to recover from Trump hard copies of information it already had within its possession, either through various agencies or the electronic copies maintained by the relevant authorities.” Trump is unlikely, then, to face any liability under Section 2017 either — again, the Biden snafu would make charging Trump, but not Biden, proof of political persecution.
What remains, then, is the obstruction of justice accusation. Here the legacy press thinks it has a winner, as demonstrated by The Washington Post’s article on Sunday claiming the special counsel’s office has “amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction by former president Donald Trump,” concerning the investigation into the documents seized by the FBI at Trump’s home.
Then, based on unnamed sources, the Post suggests Smith’s team has gathered extensive evidence that could be used to indict Trump for obstruction of justice. The Post takes care to stress that the special counsel’s “emphasis on obstruction marks a key distinction so far between the Mar-a-Lago investigation and a separate Justice Department probe into how a much smaller number of classified documents ended up in an insecure office of President Biden’s, as well as his Delaware home.”
Until Smith’s investigation concludes, it will be impossible to know whether evidence exists that Trump obstructed justice. But the Biden case, rather than distinguishing the Mar-a-Lago situation, actually illustrates the ease with which documents marked classified could be overlooked in a review of documents. Just as Trump’s attorneys missed some classified documents in their search for materials with the markings, so too did Biden’s attorneys.
If that is all the special counsel’s office has against Trump, it will be just as weak as the other cases. More importantly, by that point, the American public will have witnessed the clear witch hunts against the former president, first in Manhattan and then in Georgia. Those criminal cases followed years of the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and others, while Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden’s mishandling of documents went ignored.
So, no, the other investigations into the former president are no more serious than the Manhattan D.A’s targeting of Trump, but the corrupt press’s effort to focus our attention away from Bragg’s case tells us they know just how weak that case against Trump is.
One of the largest supermarkets in Downtown San Francisco—the Whole Foods Market at Eighth and Market streets—intends to shut down at the close of business Monday just a little more than a year after the store opened. The company cited deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for its closure.
Why is crime soaring in Dem bastions? Because Dems' attitudes toward law enforcement.
American swimmer Riley Gaines should be commended for her bravery. Gaines is a college athlete who has raised her head above the parapet to say what ought to be self-evident to anyone in touch with reality – namely, that men should not compete in women’s sports. For saying this, she was ambushed and attacked by trans activists at San Francisco State University last week.
On some fundamental level, every adult understands Gaines’ point. However, the indulgent and self-immolating West is now divided into three starkly different camps on the trans question: those who agree with Gaines and are brave enough to say so out loud (the smallest group); those who are ideologically captured, delusional and brainwashed into magical thinking (the loudest group); and those in the squishy middle. The latter category consists of mostly liberal centrists who look away, make excuses or allow themselves to be cowed by the baying mob. I understand these folks up to a point – go along to get along, and all that. But their continued silence is now tantamount to capitulation and complicity – after all, Gaines’ experience is only the latest in a long line of examples of trans activism turning violent.
Gaines was at San Francisco State University to talk about the importance of defending women’s sports. Last year, Gaines was one of the swimmers on the University of Kentucky women’s swimming team. She raced against University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a male who ‘identifies’ as female. Gaines and Thomas tied in that race, but when it came time for photographs on the podium, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) official informed Gaines that only Thomas would hold the trophy.
As it turns out, Gaines wasn’t the only athlete unhappy with Thomas getting special treatment. In February 2022, 16 of Thomas’ female teammates sent an unsigned letter to the University of Pennsylvania, stating: ‘We have been told that if we spoke out against [Thomas’] inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.’
Another teammate was interviewed anonymously in Matt Walsh’s documentary, What is a Woman. She told Walsh that concerns about fairness and the ‘locker-room situation’ – ie, a person with a penis and testicles being allowed in the women’s changing room – were dismissed. Thomas’ teammates were accused of transphobia and were told to meet with school officials, psychological services and LGBT activists.
appears that the violence committed against Riley Gaines in San Francisco is being suppressed
it's no use, people will find about it
Washington DC, April 9, 2023 -- In a second poll fielded a week after news broke about former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to falsifying business records in hush money payments, the divisions among Americans regarding Trump continue to deepen. This comes as independents and people who were undecided on this issue last week look to be moving away from the former president by small margins. The poll also finds that a majority of Americans believe Trump intentionally acted illegally.
Currently, just over half of Americans (52%) view the charges against Trump as serious (was 50% last week). Additionally, half of Americans (50%) say Trump should have been charged with a crime in this case, up five percentage points from last week. The slight changes in both cases look to be drawing from people who said “don’t know” in the earlier survey, a number that is down six percentage points in both questions.
Deepening polarization is apparent on the question of the seriousness of the charges. While the topline number has barely changed from 50% serious / 36% not serious last week to 52% serious / 39% not serious this week, the percentage saying “very serious” is up 6 points while the number saying “not serious at all” is up 4 points.
Undecided Americans drifting away from the former president is shown on the question of if Trump should have been charged. Half (50%) now say Trump should have been charged in this case, up 5 points from 45% last week. Most of the difference appears to come from people saying “don’t know” which is down 6 points, from 23% to 17%.
A similar trend is visible on the question of if Donald Trump should suspend his presidential campaign because of the indictment. Nearly half (48%) say he should, up five points from 43% last week. Here too, the number of Americans saying don’t know has fallen 6 points from 22% to 16%.
In a new question, most Americans (53%) believe that Trump intentionally did something illegal in this case. About one in ten (11%) say he acted wrong but it wasn’t intentional, and a fifth (20%) believe he did nothing wrong.
Washington DC, April 2, 2023 -- In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to a payment of hush money to an adult film actress, half of Americans view the charges as serious (compared to one-third who say they are not), and nearly as many feel that Trump should be charged with a crime, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows. Around half also feel that Trump should be charged for a crime for his actions related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and for his efforts to change the 2020 election results. However, roughly one in five remain undecided on these questions, and many see these actions as politically motivated, demonstrating how American public opinion may not yet be fully formed on the topic.
"In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to a payment of hush money to an adult film actress, half of Americans view the charges as serious (compared to one-third who say they are not)"
if accurate, this poll indicates the media has not explained the situation
the media repeatedly says he has been indicted for paying hush money but rarely explain that isn't a crime
the crime he has been charged with is falsifying business records but since he owns the company, there is no victim
hopefully, we never get to a point where one is convicted because he is not well-liked
that would result in a lot of jailed liberal Dems
"the crime he has been charged with is falsifying business records but since he owns the company, there is no victim"
Under New York law, falsifying business records in the second degree is a class A misdemeanor, while falsifying business records in the first degree is a class E felony. The elements of the crime are set forth by Article 175 of the New York Penal Code.
Those falsified records can lead to tax evasion which makes the USA the victim.
See: https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/al-capone
"Those falsified records can lead to tax evasion which makes the USA the victim"
thanks for the theoretical
it apparently didn't lead to tax evasion since even the incompetent Bragg didn't say that was the crime that lifts the falsification to a felony
Bragg said the crime was that since it helped Trump get elected, the payoff was a campaign contribution above legal limits
quite an adventurous theory which is rendered hopeless because the government prosecuted John Edwards for the same thing and lost because the courts ruled expenses to protect the reputation of a candidate are not campaign contributions under the law...
Over the past three years, we reporters learned there were certain things that we weren't allowed to say. Not long ago, in fact, my new video may have been censored.
One dangerous idea, we were told, was that COVID-19 might have been created in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That seems very possible, since the institute studied coronaviruses in bats, and America's National Institutes of Health gave the lab money to perform "gain-of-function" research, experiments where scientists try to make a virus more virulent or transmissible.
A Washington Post writer worried the lab leak theory "could increase racist attacks against Chinese people and further fuel anti-Asian hate."
The establishment media fell in line, insisting that COVID most likely came from a local market that sold animals.
Left-wing TV mocked the lab theory as a "fringe idea" that came from "a certain corner of the right."
"This coronavirus was not manmade," said MSNBC's Chris Hayes, confidently, "That is not a possibility."
Not even a possibility?
Debate about it, we were told, posed a new threat: misinformation.
Facebook banned the lab leak theory, calling it a "false claim."
But now the U.S. Department of Energy says the pandemic most likely came from a lab leak. FBI director Christopher Wray now says the origin of the pandemic is "most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan."
For two years, the most likely explanation was censored.
Do the media gatekeepers apologize for their censorship? No.
The closest to an admission of guilt I found was from Chris Hayes, who eventually said, "There's a kernel of truth to the idea that some folks were too quick to shut down the lab leak theory."
There was more than "a kernel of truth." Again and again, politically correct media silenced people who spoke the truth.
Facebook throttled the reach of science journalist John Tierney's articles simply because he reported, accurately, that requiring masks can hurt kids.
YouTube suspended Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) for saying, "Most of the masks you get over the counter don't work."
But what they said is true. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance to say cloth masks are not very effective. And now a big study failed to find evidence that wearing even good masks stops the spread of viruses.
Probably the most blatant censorship was Twitter's shutting down the New York Post's reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop.
Twitter wouldn't let users decide for themselves. The company just called the Post's report "potentially harmful" and blocked users from sharing it.
Facebook, as usual, was sneakier, suppressing the story instead of banning it outright. That's what they do to my climate change reporting.
Today, the media admit the Post story is true. But they don't admit they were wrong. Now they just say things like, "Nobody cares about Hunter Biden's laptop."
Bad as the media are, what's worse is that government wanted to censor.
Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) complained, "We've done nothing in terms of content regulation!"
Fortunately, his colleagues were not as irresponsible as he; no censorship legislation passed. But government did apply lots of pressure.
The White House asked Facebook to kill what they called "disinformation," even urging them to censor private WhatsApp messages.
Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter and opened up the company's internal files, we know that censorship requests came from "every corner" of government, as journalist Matt Taibbi put it.
Even individual politicians tried to censor.
Sen. Angus King's (I–Maine) staff complained about Twitter accounts that they considered "anti-King." Rep. Adam Schiff's (D–Calif.) office asked Twitter to suppress search results.
Fortunately, Twitter refused.
But the sad truth is that lots of government agencies and media tyrants want to limit what you read and hear.
At least now, we can speak the truth:
COVID probably was created in a Chinese lab.
Masks are unlikely to provide much protection and requiring them can harm kids.
Hunter Biden did lots of sleazy things.
Self-appointed censors tried to shut us up, but eventually, the truth almost always comes out.
A judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News on Wednesday imposed a sanction against the network after it made "misrepresentations" to the court and potentially withheld evidence.
Dominion's lawsuit accuses Fox News of knowingly pushing false conspiracy theories that the voting machine company had somehow rigged the 2020 presidential election in Joe Biden's favor, so the network could retain viewers.
The judge said during a pretrial hearing on Wednesday that Fox News would have to pay for any last-minute additional depositions that Dominion would need to do before the case is set to head to trial on Monday. Dominion did not immediately make clear if any such depositions were needed.
"If there is a deposition that needs to be done, it will be done," Judge Eric Davis said. "Fox will do everything it needs to make the person available, and it will be at the cost of Fox."
But potentially more significantly, the judge said he would "most likely" appoint a special master to "do an investigation" into whether representations by Fox made to the court as part of the case were "untrue or negligent" -- including a certification it had made in December that it had essentially completed its discovery process in accordance with the case.
The special master was already involved in the case to oversee the discovery process, but the new investigation will determine "what sanctions could be implemented" against Fox, the judge said -- a significant development on the eve of trial.
"This is very serious," Judge Davis said of the issue.
FOX ‘News” is facing a trial next week in it’s Dominion’s $1.6 Billion defamation suit, soon to be followed by an even larger $2.7 Billion suit against FOX ‘News’ by election company Smartmatic. Now a FOX ‘News’ investor is suing FOX over its election conspiracy theories, and other institutional investors may soon sue FOX.
A Fox Corp. shareholder sued Lachlan Murdoch and several members of the Fox Corp. board of directors in Delaware on Tuesday afternoon, arguing that they violated their fiduciary duty to the company when they allowed Fox News to broadcast election conspiracy theories.
The derivative action — a kind of lawsuit brought by shareholders who believe they’ve been harmed by the corporation — was brought by a single plaintiff, Robert Schwarz.
Bloomberg Law reported recently that several firms are eying derivative action against Fox Corp. board members.
“The Board’s decision to chase viewers by promoting the false stolen election claims has exposed the Company to public ridicule and negatively impacted the credibility of Fox News as a media organization that is supposed to accurately report newsworthy events. The Company is now the subject of two defamation cases, with combined damages claimed to exceed $4 billion,” the lawsuit alleges.
The suit builds on the trove of internal communications, documents and evidence made public in Dominion Voting Systems' sweeping $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Fox Corp., which has revealed that many at Fox News knew the rigged election claims were false even as they allowed their continued broadcast.
“FOX knew — from the Board on down — that Fox News was reporting false and dangerous misinformation about the 2020 Presidential election, but FOX was more concerned about short-term ratings and market share than the long-term damages of its failure to tell the truth,” the filing continues.
Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have argued in their court filings that Fox executives elevated election conspiracy theories because they feared they were losing their audience after Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss.
Fox News has denied that it defamed Dominion Voting Systems, arguing that its broadcasts and social media posts are protected by the First Amendment.
The Kansas state legislature approved a bill last week that will ban gender-affirming care for all minors in the state, as Kansas is projected to join 14 other states with legislation to protect young people from transgender indoctrination.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill that prohibits healthcare providers from “knowingly” providing “gender transition procedures” to minors, which include gender-reassignment surgeries, hormone therapy and drugs that block puberty.
2023A bill signed by Idaho Gov. Brad Little prevents healthcare providers from providing any gender-altering services to minors, and violators could face up to 10 years in prison.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill that prohibits “irreversible gender reassignment surgery” and the prescription of any “gender altering medications.
Lawmakers in Kentucky passed a bill that prohibits healthcare providers from providing gender-aaltering services to minors “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance or perception of the minor’s sex.”
A bill signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp prohibits physicians from providing hormone therapy or any gender-transition surgeries to minors.
Physicians in Iowa were granted a six-month period to cease gender-altering services for minors after a bill signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds prohibited healthcare providers from prescribing drugs that block puberty and hormone therapy.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill that prohibits healthcare providers in the state from performing gender-reassignment surgeries for minors, and physicians could be sued by parents or the state.
Physicians in Mississippi are prohibited from offering gender-reassignment surgeries, drugs that block puberty or hormone therapy to minors, according to a bill signed by Gov. Tate Reeves.
Healthcare providers in South Dakota could lose their medical licenses and civil action if they provide gender-altering services “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or to validate a minor’s perception of, the minor’s sex,” according to a bill signed by Gov. Kristi Noem.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill that prohibits healthcare providers from providing any gender-altering services and places an indefinite ban on access to hormone therapy and puberty blockers.
The Florida Board of Medicine prohibited healthcare providers in the state from performing gender-transition surgeries and from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that prohibits healthcare providers from performing gender-reassignment surgeries and from prescribing hormone therapy and puberty blockers, with violations punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
A bill signed by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey prohibits physicians from providing any gender-transition procedures to anyone under 18.
Arkansas outlawed gender-altering services for minors after the state legislature voted to override a veto by then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R).
He would rather threaten violence outside of a courthouse than make a reasonable argument inside of one.
Ever since Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Trump has responded by attacking Bragg as well as the district attorney’s wife; Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case; and the Biden administration, all while exhorting his supporters—some of whom attempted to violently overthrow the government—to rally to his defense again.
In other words, Trump has chosen to fight the charges against him like a lawless thug.
It’s tempting to allow ourselves to feel inured to Trump’s authoritarian antics, but we should never lose our ability to recoil at what he’s doing. Trump isn’t attacking the law; he’s attacking the rule of law. Instead of availing himself of the process afforded to every citizen who is accused of a crime, he’s calling for Bragg’s arrest. Instead of using his overwhelming resources to fight the charges, he’s using his platform—and an endless supply of free media coverage—to spread lies and misinformation about the entire justice system.
Trump’s strategy stands out because he is doing this by choice. He has perfectly legitimate legal defenses he could rely on.
Donald Trump claimed Friday that thefts at retail stores in major cities include “hundreds” of people running out carrying pilfered refrigerators.
The former president, in a speech Friday to the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis, said that “gangs of hundreds” of young people in major cities “attack” department stores.
“And they run in by the hundreds, and they’re running out carrying refrigerators and carrying air conditioners and big stuff ― big, little, everything,” Trump said.
“Fur coats, non-fur coats, everything they’re carrying. They empty out the stores.”
Twitter users weren’t buying the claim about the thefts, and one quipped that carrying fridges weighing hundreds of pounds would be good for their back.
"Seems totally real. In fact, many people strongly say that they see people running with 300 lb refrigerators strapped on their backs while wearing fur coats, believe me."
"But the refrigerators and air conditioners can run by themselves if they’re plugged in."
His remarks at the NRA convention also included him taking aim at transgender health care, enlisting the Food and Drug Administration to conduct an investigation if he’s reelected, as have other delusional politicians.
It hasn’t been a great week for people who spread false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
First, Fox News settled its defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems and acknowledged that the court found some of its claims about the company to be false.
Now a private arbitration panel has ruled that My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell must pay $5 million to a man who won a “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge at Lindell’s 2021 “cyber-symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, according to The Washington Post.
Lindell made the challenge after claiming that his data showed evidence of Chinese interference in the 2020 election. He offered to pay $5 million to anyone who could prove his material was not related to that election.
Robert Zeidman, a 63-year-old computer forensics expert and Donald Trump voter from Nevada, was the only one who filed a claim. He concluded that Lindell’s data was not proof of voter fraud and, worse (at least for Lindell), that the data displayed no connection to the 2020 election.
In a 23-page decision issued Wednesday, the panel ruled in Zeidman’s favor, saying the data used in Lindell’s challenge “unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”
The panel directed Lindell’s firm to pay Zeidman within 30 days, but Lindell seems reluctant to go along with the rules of his own contest.
“They made a terribly wrong decision! This will be going to court!” Lindell told the Post via text.
The paper notes that Lindell is facing a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems and a defamation lawsuit from one of Dominion’s former executives.
The award is the latest humiliation to befall Lindell as a result of his 2021 “cyber-symposium.”
The three-day event went viral for all the wrong reasons.
For instance, one of the experts hired to decrypt and analyze Lindell’s data reportedly said he could not prove that it constituted evidence of hacking.
Lindell also told a CNN reporter at the time that he couldn’t release the data he’d promised to release, because he didn’t “need the media driving the narrative before my case to the Supreme Court.”
After Dominion deal, Murdoch drops case against Australian publisher
SYDNEY — Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch dropped a defamation case against an independent Australian publisher Friday, just days after Fox News ended its own defamation ordeal in the United States with a $787.5 million settlement.
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The decision avoids what promised to be a public rehashing Down Under of the damaging claims made by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News in the United States, as the Australian news website Crikey and its parent company prepared to use documents from the American case in their defense.
Lachlan Murdoch, the son of Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, was confident he would have prevailed, said his attorney John Churchill.
But the younger Murdoch did not wish to “further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits,” he said in a statement.
Crikey, an edgy online news magazine, celebrated the outcome in its typically blunt style.
“The fact is, Murdoch sued us, and then dropped his case,” Crikey’s parent company, Private Media, said in a statement posted to Twitter. “This is a substantial victory for legitimate public interest journalism. We stand by what we published last June, and everything we laid out in our defense to the court. The imputations drawn by Murdoch from that article were ridiculous.”
The controversy began in June last year when Crikey published an opinion piece headlined “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator.”
In it, Crikey political editor Bernard Keane argued that the Murdochs and Fox News commentators shared some blame for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol in Washington. The headline did not specify which Murdoch was the “unindicted co-conspirator.”
Crikey took down the piece the next day following a legal threat from Lachlan Murdoch. The website also offered to publish a clarifying statement, but it refused to apologize. When Murdoch continued to demand an apology, Crikey doubled down by reposting the opinion piece, printing the Fox Corp. CEO’s legal threats and effectively asking to be sued.
Earlier this month, in a brazen assault on democracy and blatant display of racism, the Tennessee state legislature expelled two Black members, Rep. Justin Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones, for halting legislative proceedings in a nonviolent protest for gun control legislation. Cameron Sexton, the Republican speaker of the Tennessee House, who led this farce, called the peaceful protest "an insurrection in the State Capitol" that was "at least equivalent, maybe worse" than the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The comparison is comically false while also highlighting a cruel irony: In the two years since the violent attack on the Capitol, not a single state legislator involved in that actual attempt to upend our democracy has been expelled or barred from office. Reversing that trend should begin with state legislators who participated on Jan. 6 and continue with other officials, including Donald Trump.
Contrary to Sexton's claims, the expelled Tennessee representatives did not engage in an "insurrection." After another horrific school shooting in Nashville, the representatives joined thousands of students and parents in a peaceful protest calling for gun reforms. Unlike on Jan. 6, the representatives did not aid protesters in violently attacking law enforcement in order to break into the Capitol and delay the peaceful transfer of power. Reps. Jones and Pearson spoke on the House floor using bullhorns while they were not recognized to speak, which violated the chamber's "rules of order." Both members were selected to return to the chamber by their communities. Before last week, only two Tennessee House members had been expelled since Reconstruction, one based on sexual misconduct allegations and another for accepting bribes. Unlike the bipartisan majorities that voted in Donald Trump's House impeachment and Senate trial that he had incited an insurrection, the Tennessee representatives' "unprecedented" expulsions were along strictly partisan lines.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has identified several newly elected or sitting state legislators who should be investigated for their roles in the attack on the Capitol and potentially disqualified from office. A CREW report released this week documents how Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano helped mobilize and incite the mob ahead of Jan. 6, including by using campaign funds to charter buses transporting Trump supporters to Washington to "Stop the Steal." He also played a pivotal role in the fake elector scheme, which the House Jan. 6 committee concluded "led directly to the violence" that day, and joined the mob within the restricted area of the Capitol grounds before ultimately leaving. To date, none of these legislators have been blocked or expelled. The Tennessee legislature's expulsions of Reps. Pearson and Jones and cries of "insurrection" confirm what we already know: Bad-faith actors will abuse the rules to undermine democratic institutions and make false equivalencies to defend their actions. That reality cannot deter lawfully pursuing accountability for the Jan. 6 insurrection in courtrooms and legislatures across the country.
Last year, three New Mexico residents, represented by CREW, won the first case in more than 150 years removing an elected official from office based on their participation in an insurrection. The court ruled that a New Mexico County Commissioner, Couy Griffin, violated Section Three of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which bars any government officer who takes an oath to defend the Constitution and who then engages in an insurrection or aids one against the United States from ever holding office again. The court found that Griffin recruited rioters to attend Trump's "wild" effort to overturn the election, normalized violence and breached police barriers as part of a weaponized mob that allowed other insurrectionists to overwhelm law enforcement and breach the Capitol. Griffin's removal marked the first successful litigation at the federal or state level concluding that Jan. 6 was an insurrection.
In Griffin's case, the court explicitly rejected attempts to conflate the attack on the Capitol with the rights to assembly and speech protected by the First Amendment. The court cited amicus briefs from legal scholars noting that disqualifying officials under Section Three of the 14th Amendment does not conflict with the First Amendment right to protest, and from the NAACP, outlining how federal judges have repeatedly rebuffed attempts by Jan. 6 defendants to compare their conduct to Black Lives Matter protests. The court also cited expert testimony explaining that while violence may be an unintended consequence in some protest movements, it is a key tactic in insurrection. While it's clear that such guardrails will not prevent anti-democratic efforts to punish legitimate protest, as occurred in Tennessee, pursuing accountability for those who engaged in or facilitated the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, by enforcing the 14th Amendment's "Disqualification Clause" — a recommendation endorsed by the bipartisan House select committee — is essential to restoring our democracy. As such, we must examine whether current and former government officials like Griffin, Mastriano, Trump and others are unfit to serve in the government they sought to overthrow.
As Tennessee Rep. Justin Pearson said upon being expelled from office, "We can never normalize the ending of democracy." Enforcing the Constitution against insurrectionists is necessary to prevent the end of our democracy. Though some may wonder whether pursuing disqualification will lead to disingenuous efforts to turn the tables, we're clearly already there. Actual insurrectionists — like those who incited and supported the Jan. 6 attack — must be investigated and held accountable, including by being expelled from state legislatures and removed from ballots.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A member of GOP leadership in the Tennessee House of Representatives was recently found guilty of sexually harassing at least one legislative intern, likely two, by an ethics subcommittee acting in secret, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has learned.
About six hours after being confronted by NewsChannel 5 Investigates, Rep. Scotty Campbell gave up his seat in the Tennessee General Assembly.
Until now, Campbell, who served as vice chair of the House Republican Caucus and who recently voted to expel three Democrats who engaged in a gun violence protest on the House floor, had suffered no previous consequences as a result of his actions.
Despite accusations of sometimes extremely vulgar comments and other inappropriate advances, Republicans did not remove the 39-year-old East Tennessee lawmaker from his leadership position nor from his committee assignments.
But taxpayers are paying for his actions.
NewsChannel 5 has learned that potentially thousands of dollars have been spent to protect one victim, relocating her from the downtown apartment building where she and Campbell both had apartments, shipping her furniture back home in another part of the state and placing her in a downtown hotel for the remainder of her internship.
Legislative officials refused to say how much they've paid out, saying that information is confidential.
Confronted with the allegations Thursday as he headed to Capitol Hill, Campbell referenced a second intern who was also involved in the investigation. NewsChannel 5 was previously unaware of that individual's complaint.
"I had consensual, adult conversations with two adults off property," he insisted.
"I think conversations are consensual once that is verbally agreed to. If I choose to talk to any intern in the future, it will be recorded."
But a four-member ethics subcommittee, composed of two Republicans and two Democrats, came to a different conclusion, according to a memorandum dated March 29 that was sent to House Speaker Cameron Sexton.
"Based on the completed staff investigation, the Ethics Subcommittee finds that Representative Campbell violated the Policy" against workplace discrimination and harassment, the memo says.
It goes on to say that "discrimination and harassment in any form will not be tolerated," concluding that "no further information concerning this complaint will be released."
Under the Tennessee General Assembly's own rules, however, quietly placing that vaguely worded memo in a representative's personnel file is the only action that the ethics subcommittee can take upon a finding that he has engaged in improper conduct.
Ethics subcommittee members are also barred from publicly discussing their proceedings.
Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, has explained why he’s still a card-carrying Republican — despite his fierce criticism of the party’s lurch to the right under former President Donald Trump.
“One, because I know it pisses the rest of them off. Two, because I like to claim I was here first,” Steele said at a roundtable of conservatives hosted by The New Republic.
Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, has explained why he’s still a card-carrying Republican — despite his fierce criticism of the party’s lurch to the right under former President Donald Trump.
“One, because I know it pisses the rest of them off. Two, because I like to claim I was here first,” Steele said at a roundtable of conservatives hosted by The New Republic.
“I was in this party at a time when it was not easy, particularly as a Black Republican, to carry water for the party, even back at that time in the mid-’70s,” Steele recalled. “To consciously decide to join the party was a big deal. And here I sit today looking at this shit show, this absolute, God-awful train wreck … actually, a train wreck looks better than this thing.”
Steele said that “what pisses me off more than anything” are GOP leaders like House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and “the folks who sit there and wring their hands privately” to him “about how awful this is” and admit action is needed but won’t do anything about it.
Steele described himself as "kind of a Motel 6 Republican."
“Someone’s got to keep the lights on,” he said. “And I’m standing there on the front porch, and I keep replacing the light bulb because these bastards keep coming by, shooting it out.”
The GOP in its current form is unsalvageable and "needs a political enema,” he added. Steele likened the party to a “cancer that has overrun an organ” but said current Republicans aren’t prepared to cut it out, meaning “this thing only metastasizes further and becomes harder down the road.”
Montana’s Republican-controlled legislature is punishing the state’s first trans representative for speaking out about proposed anti-trans legislation by refusing to recognize her to speak on any bills moving forward.
On Thursday, State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) pointed out she wasn’t being called on at all during a debate about defining sex in state law as not including trans people. “No amount of silencing tactics will deter me from standing up for the rights of the transgender community. This year, I have lost friends to suicide, and I have listened to the heart-wrenching stories of families dealing with suicide attempts, trans youth fleeing the state, and people being attacked on the side of the road—all due to legislation like this,” Zephyr said in a statement. “I will not apologize for speaking with clarity and precision about the harm these bills cause.”
A rules committee decided that the leader of the State House can opt to not recognize individuals without giving an explanation, Zephyr said. “This decision is a direct assault on the principles of our democracy and serves to silence the voice of my community, as well as the 11,000 constituents I represent.”
Zephyr is being silenced for having spoken out against an anti-trans bill on Tuesday. “This body should be ashamed,” she’d said. “If you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”
The Montana Freedom Caucus then sent a letter demanding her censure “for attempting to shame the Montana legislative body and by using inappropriate and uncalled-for language during a floor debate.” They also misgendered Zephyr repeatedly in the letter. Zephyr was speaking out about amendments to state Senate Bill 99, which banned gender-affirming care for minors
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