“But it ought to be pretty plain to people that when a new administration comes to Washington, it is not the ordinary and appropriate thing to start filling your own pockets, your friends’ pockets, your political allies’ pockets with public goods.”
“In an era when many species are declining because of multipronged, seemingly intractable problems, the solution to protecting loons is relatively straightforward. Anglers simply need to swap their old lead jigs and sinkers for tackle made from tungsten, steel, tin, or bismuth. Given loons’ immense popularity, you might think that would be an easy sell.” Spoiler alert: There’s a villain of this story, and it’s the NRA.
“In our own time, regrowing democratic habits requires that we first identify what some of those habits are. Let me name a few of them here.”
“Don’t trust billionaires. They don’t get rich by finding that money on the side of the road, brother!”
A very happy retirement to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who was one of the first “big name” bloggers to put me on his blogroll a million years ago when that meant something. Also, I’m a big fan of the Scalzi books, so thanks for publishing those as well.
“The bottom line is, unlike the boat strikes the U.S. military has carried out to date that have occurred in international waters against stateless vessels, this operation, striking Venezuela and abducting its president, is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small States from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war. The consequences of flouting this rule so brazenly are likely to extend well beyond the case of Maduro’s forcible ouster.”
“Two people close to the White House said the president’s lack of interest in boosting Machado, despite her recent efforts to flatter Trump, stemmed from her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the president has openly coveted.”
“America’s Bourbon Industry On The Rocks Due To Unforced Error”.
“A woman so notorious that she had been a character in the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins,” alongside John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, was now the stepmother to Suzy and Cru.” A truly wild story.
“But there are ways to disguise yourself from facial recognition systems in your everyday life, and it doesn’t require owning clothes with a special design, or high-tech anti-surveillance gear.”
“Way back then, just before Thanksgiving, these MAGA evangelicals — Sean Feucht, Tom Buck, Andrew Walker, Mike Huckabee, Franklin Graham, Greg Laurie, Gary Bauer (still alive!), Johnnie Moore, Eric Metaxas, Jenna Ellis, Todd Starnes, et. al. — would have told you that as loyal, obedient MAGA footsoldiers, they were opposed to interventionist adventurism because it violated the sacred principle of America First.”
“Wyoming’s constitutional amendment, while passed as a rebuke to a Democratic president’s signature legislation, has inadvertently become a similarly effective shield against abortion restrictions in the state.”
“Five years after January 6, dozens of pardoned insurrectionists have been arrested again“.
“2 police officers relive Jan. 6 through their own bodycam footage”.
Why was the Trump Justice Department tracking Julie K. Brown, the journalist who has done the most work reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and his victims?
“Wildfire smoke is an emerging nationwide crisis for the United States. Supercharged by climate change, blazes are swelling into monsters that consume vast landscapes and entire towns. A growing body of evidence reveals that these conflagrations are killing far more people than previously known, as smoke travels hundreds or even thousands of miles, aggravating conditions like asthma and heart disease. One study, for instance, estimated that last January’s infernos in Los Angeles didn’t kill 30 people, as the official tally reckons, but 440 or more once you factor in the smoke. Another recent study estimated that wildfire haze already kills 40,000 Americans a year, which could increase to 71,000 by 2050.”
Aldrich Ames, CIA turncoat, has died, in prison.
“In the hours since U.S. military forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in a pre-dawn raid Saturday, officials across the landscape of Major League Baseball have scrambled to check on the safety of players, coaches and scouts throughout the country, while trying to understand how the raid and its aftermath might affect the upcoming baseball season and World Baseball Classic.”
“Even so, whatever it is we’re doing in Venezuela isn’t really a war for oil. It is, instead, a war for oil fantasies. The vast wealth Trump imagines is waiting there to be taken doesn’t exist.”
“States have a long history of prosecuting federal officials for allegedly using excessive force on the job. And when federal courts agree that the force may not have been legally justified, they have allowed the state prosecution to proceed.” You know what needs to be done, Minneapolis.
“No matter: MAGA never allows truth to get in the way of their self-pitying narrative. On the contrary, it was darkly funny how much the self-appointed tough guys of the right whine like spoiled brats.”
“Which is why it’s long past time not only to treat an American move on Greenland as a theoretical exercise but a real likelihood—one that would be not only a morally reprehensible crime, but a national security crisis of a sort the United States has not seen in decades. There’s good reason to think it would be the greatest foreign-policy blunder since at least the Vietnam War.”
RIP, Jon Lindsay, longtime Harris County Judge and former State Senator.
Sorry, the Republicans have always ardently practiced the principle that the main reason to gain elected office is to allow the transfer of as much taxpayer money as possible to one’s self and one’s friends. The more cash robbed from the American people and the faster it is stolen, the better.