Place: Atlanta Ga., U.S.A. Date: 1993 Credit: The Carter Center
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Before I start kvetching about Appeals Courts today, I’d like to join the country in its appreciation of Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who passed this weekend at 96. Former President Jimmy Carter got the very first vote I cast in a Presidential election. I was at University and remember those turbulent times well. The Israel-Palestine conflict was as ghastly then as it is now. Iran introduced itself by capturing U.S. hostages from our Embassy there. Inflation was roaring. Rosalynn Carter was the face of humanitarian efforts during that one term. She was also active in trying to get the ERA passed and brought a new perspective to the treatment of people with mental illness and the elderly. The Carters’ work with Habitat for Humanity is the stuff of legends. She was both a social justice warrior and a humanitarian.
This is the tribute given to her by NBC News’ Daniel Arkin.
Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady and humanitarian who championed mental health care, provided constant political counsel to her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, and modeled graceful longevity for the nation, died Sunday at her home in Plains, Georgia, according to the Carter Center.
In a statement, former President Carter said: “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”
Rosalynn Carter was widely regarded for her political shrewdness, drawing particular praise for her keen electoral instincts, down-to-earth appeal, and work on behalf of the White House, including serving as an envoy to Latin America.
She devoted herself to several social causes in the course of her public life, including programs that supported health care resources, human rights, social justice and the needs of elderly people.
“Twenty-five years ago, we did not dream that people might someday be able actually to recover from mental illnesses,” Carter said at a mental health symposium in 2003. “Today it is a very real possibility.”
“For one who has worked on mental health issues as long as I have,” she added, “this is a miraculous development and an answer to my prayers.”
Place: Afeta, Ethiopia Date: Feb. 13, 2007 Credit: The Carter Center
Five first ladies have paid tribute to the extraordinary woman who was visibly a partner to her husband’s presidency. “Her life is a reminder that no matter who we are, our legacies are best measured not in awards or accolades, but in the lives we touch,” Michelle Obama wrote. Secretary Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former President, characterized Mrs. Carter as a “champion of human dignity.
The Washington Post‘s Karen Tumulty characterizes Mrs. Carter this way.
But Rosalynn Carter arrived at a time when women’s roles were changing at every level of society. And, according to Paul Costello, who was her assistant press secretary, the new first lady took to heart a bit of counsel from her own outspoken predecessor. “Betty Ford gave her wise advice: Do what you want to do because no matter what you do, you will be criticized,” Costello told me.
Still, the first lady was taken aback by the stir she created when, in the second year of the Carter presidency, she began showing up at Cabinet meetings and quietly taking notes.
“Jimmy and I had always worked side by side; it’s a tradition in southern families, and one that is not seen as in any way demeaning to the man,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I also think there was a not very subtle implication that Cabinet meetings were no place for a wife. I was supposed to take care of the house — period.”
It was not the only time she felt frustrated with the expectations that came with her role. Less than a month after the inauguration, she held her first solo news conference to announce the formation of a presidential commission on mental health — an issue that would become her biggest cause.
“The next morning when I picked up the Washington Post to read about it I found not one word about the commission or the press conference,” she recalled. This newspaper instead ran a story about how the Carters had established a policy against serving hard liquor at White House functions.
But the first lady continued to press against the constraints, and in breaking her own path, she would make it easier for those who followed — including Hillary Clinton.
Rosalynn Carter traveled abroad and met with heads of state to discuss matters of substance, not for photo opportunities, and made it clear she was speaking for the administration in her public appearances. “Dinner guests at the White House have seen her interrupt the President — not rudely but unhesitatingly — usually to explain something more clearly than he had been doing,” the New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote in 1979.
Two crucial cases are coming from two very different Federal Appeals Courts today. The first one is on Voting Rights and came out of the 8th District. It’s basically forcing the outcome that Republicans have championed for some time and will likely find an accessible Advocate in the Supreme Court in its Chief Justice John Roberts. Hansi is the NPR reporter for this case. It’s terrible news. Most of the judges on the 8th circuit were appointed by Bush or Trump.
BREAKING: An 8th Circuit panel of federal judges has struck down the main path for enforcing the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 protections for people of color, upholding a lower court ruling that says private individuals can’t bring lawsuits under the lawhttps://t.co/yUT8xItF1Gpic.twitter.com/SfTt7xunRh
The 8th Circuit just ruled that the NAACP is no longer allowed to sue under the Voting Rights Act. The decision came from two white male judges: Raymond Gruender (Bush) and David Stras (Trump). Lavenski Smith (Bush), the only Black judge, dissented.https://t.co/IsBLW96VLQpic.twitter.com/hvhoQA5Vry
A federal appeals court issued a ruling Monday that could gut the Voting Rights Act, saying only the federal government — not private citizens or civil rights groups — is allowed to sue under a crucial section of the landmark civil rights law.
The decision out of the 8th Circuit will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. But should it stand, it would mark a dramatic rollback of the enforcement of the law that led to increased minority representation in American politics.
The appellate court ruled that there is no “private right of action” for Section 2 of the law — which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race
That, in practice, would severely limit the scope of protections in the act. For decades, private parties — including civil rights groups, individual voters and political parties — have brought Section 2 challenges on everything from redistricting to voter ID requirements.
Rosalynn Carter, wife of presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, appears on the ‘Meet the Press’ television talk show, September 26th 1976. She is wearing a ‘Carter/Mondale’ campaign badge. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
We’re also seeing action from the Appeals Court in the DC circuit on their”Hearing on Trump gag order in federal 2020 election subversion case.” This is breaking and updating news from CNN.
After 2 hours and 20 minutes of oral arguments, the three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals appears inclined to restore the limited gag order in former President Donald Trump’s federal election subversion case, but may loosen some restrictions so he can more directly criticize special counsel Jack Smith.
None of the judges embraced Trump’s claims that the gag order should be wiped away for good because it is a “categorically unprecedented” violation of his free speech rights.
Yet they also posed sharp questions to prosecutors as they tried to find the boundary of where intense campaign-trail rhetoric crosses the line of undermining a criminal case.
The limited gag order from district Judge Tanya Chutkan – which was temporarily frozen by the appeals panel when they agreed to hear the case — restricts Trump’s ability to directly attack Smith, members of his team, court staff or potential trial witnesses. He is allowed to criticize the Justice Department, proclaim his innocence, can say that the case is “politically motivated.”
The appellate judges, who are all Democratic appointees, heard the case on an expedited schedule and are expected to issue a ruling soon.
First Lady Rosalynn Carter on stage with Willie Nelson at the White House, 1978 Identifier
I believe that Jack Smith is more concerned about the attacks on his family than himself, but we shall see.
The Guardian discusses how recent data has shown that the Upper 1% of global wealth holders are responsible for destroying the World’s resources via carbon emissions. This study was done by Oxfam. “Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says. ‘Polluter elite’ are plundering the planet to point of destruction, says Oxfam after comprehensive study of climate inequality”
The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report.
For the past six months, the Guardian has worked with Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts on an exclusive basis to produce a special investigation, The Great Carbon Divide. It explores the causes and consequences of carbon inequality and the disproportionate impact of super-rich individuals, who have been termed “the polluter elite”. Climate justice will be high on the agenda of this month’s UN Cop28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates.
The Oxfam report shows that while the wealthiest 1% tend to live climate-insulated, air-conditioned lives, their emissions – 5.9bn tonnes of CO2 in 2019 – are responsible for immense suffering.
Using a “mortality cost” formula – used by the US Environmental Protection Agency, among others – of 226 excess deaths worldwide for every million tonnes of carbon, the report calculates that the emissions from the 1% alone would be enough to cause the heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people over the coming decades.
Over the period from 1990 to 2019, the accumulated emissions of the 1% were equivalent to wiping out last year’s harvests of EU corn, US wheat, Bangladeshi rice and Chinese soya beans.
The suffering falls disproportionately upon people living in poverty, marginalised ethnic communities, migrants and women and girls, who live and work outside or in homes vulnerable to extreme weather, according to the research. These groups are less likely to have savings, insurance or social protection, which leaves them more economically, as well as physically, at risk from floods, drought, heatwaves and forest fires. The UN says developing countries account for 91% of deaths related to extreme weather.
The report finds that it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.
LAGRANGE, GA – JUNE 10: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn attach siding to the front of a Habitat for Humanity home being built June 10, 2003 in LaGrange, Georgia. More than 90 homes are being built in LaGrange; Valdosta, Georgia; and Anniston, Alabama by volunteers as part of Habitat for Humanity International’s Jimmy Carter Work Project 2003. (Photo by Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images)
Throughout much of the Western world’s history, the wealthiest have been viewed in their communities as a potentially unfavorable presence, and they have attempted to allay this sentiment by using their riches to support their societies in times of crises like plagues, famines or wars.
This symbiotic relationship no longer exists. Today’s rich, their wealth largely preserved through the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic, have opposed reforms aimed at tapping their resources to fund mitigation policies of all kinds.
This is a historically exceptional development. Helping foot the bill of major crises has long been the main social function attributed to the rich by Western culture. In the past, when the wealthiest have been perceived to be insensitive to the plight of the masses, and especially when they have appeared to be profiteering from such plights (or have simply been suspected of doing so), society has become unstable, leading to riots, open revolts and anti-rich violence. As history has the unpleasant feature of repeating itself, we would do well to consider recent developments, including legislators’ inability to increase taxes on the rich, from a long-term perspective.
Let us begin with the consideration that the presence of very rich, or even superrich, individuals has always been somewhat troubling for Western societies. Medieval theologians regarded the rich as sinners and thought that the building of large fortunes should have been discouraged. At the very least, the rich were expected not to appear to be wealthy and to provide generous bequests to charitable institutions to the benefit of their souls.
But with time, as new economic opportunities in trade and in finance led to the accumulation of fortunes of unprecedented size, the increased presence of extremely wealthy individuals within the community could no longer be dismissed as an anomaly. From the 15th century, and beginning with the most economically developed areas of Europe such as central-northern Italy, the rich were assigned a specific social role: to act as private reserves of money into which the community could tap in times of dire need.
Nobody made this point better than the Tuscan humanist Poggio Bracciolini. In his treatise “De avaritia” (“On avarice”), completed in 1428, he argued that cities that follow the tradition of instituting public granaries to build up food reserves should also be well provided of “many greedy individuals, in order … to constitute a kind of private barn of money able to be of assistance to everybody.”
US First Lady Rosalynn Carter plays basketball with members of the Harlem Globetrotters outside the White House, Washington DC, March 1980. They are teaching her how to spin a basketball on her fingertip. (Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images)
As with all good economics treatises, this one brings home the numbers, story, and background. Private jet travel is one of the biggest culprits.
His legions of fans call him “the madman” and “the wig” due to his ferocity and unruly mop of hair. He refers to himself as “the lion.” He thinks sex education is a Marxist plot to destroy the family, views his cloned mastiffs as his “children with four paws” and has suggested people should be allowed to sell their own vital organs.
A few years ago, Milei was a television talking head whom bookers loved because his screeds against government spending and the ruling political class boosted ratings. At the time, and up until mere months ago, hardly any political expert believed he had a real shot at becoming president of South America’s second-largest economy.
But Milei, a 53-year-old economist, has rocked Argentina’s political establishment and inserted himself into what has long been effectively a two-party system by amassing a groundswell of support with his prescriptions of drastic measures to rein in soaring inflation and by pledging to crusade against the creep of socialism in society.
This analysis is from the Washington Post. “Argentina set for sharp right turn as Trump-like radical wins presidency.” Argentina is now off the list for where in the Western Hemisphere one might go to escape a second Trump Presidency.
A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.
Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56 percent of the vote in a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.
Trump also congratulated Milei. “I am very proud of you,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “You will turn your Country around and Make Argentina Great Again!”
Voters in this nation of 46 million demanded a drastic change from a government that has sent the peso tumbling, inflation skyrocketing and more than 40 percent of the population into poverty. With Milei, Argentina takes a leap into the unknown — with a leader promising to shatter the entire system.
In his first speech as president-elect, Milei told Argentines that “the model of decadence has reached its end. There is no turning back.”
“Enough of the impoverishing power of the caste,” he said. “Today we once again embrace the model of liberty, to once again become a world power.” His supporters joined him in shouting: “Long live freedom, damn it!”
Milei will take office on Dec. 10, the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s return to democracy after the fall of its military dictatorship.
Wielding chain saws on the campaign trail, the wild-haired Milei vowed to slash public spending in a country heavily dependent on government subsidies. He pledged to dollarize the economy, shut down the central bank and cut the number of government ministries from 18 to eight. His rallying campaign cry was a takedown of the country’s political “caste” — an Argentine version of Trump’s “drain the swamp.”
Why are so many people becoming dictator-curious and looking to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini again? Plus, these folks are raping the planet. It’s discouraging. I hope we can find a new model for Thanksgiving this year where we can celebrate with others and be thankful for what we have. I also hope it isn’t based on stealing your host’s land, committing genocide, and destroying their cultural practices.
Have a good Turkey Day! And it’s time we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act!
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After years of avoiding Covid, I finally came down with it. I have no idea how I caught it, because I stayed in my apartment all last weekend. But somehow I did get it, and it’s not fun. So I’m just going to post some stories, and then go back to bed.
We may have dodged Hurricane Season, but I’m unsure how to characterize a season with a Salt Water Wedge that’s making more than a few communities downriver use bottled water. What comes out of the faucet isn’t drinkable down there. It’s combined with these eerie Marsh Fires. They’ve now broken through to remove the brushy, dead foliage left by the drought. Currently, there is a coastal flooding warning on our radar. I’m sitting high and dry here on the banks of the Mississippi, watching the dismal Republican pols and candidates miss the natural disasters while inventing their own. Climate change, anyone?
John Buss, @repeat1968
Many of us are now on the Trumpist list known as ‘Vermin.’ If this sounds less Orwellian and more Hitler-like to you, it should. This is from Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. “It’s Official: With
“Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk. He’s telling us what he will do to his political enemies if he’s president again. Is anyone listening?”
We’ve all often wondered whether Donald Trump understands the historical import of what comes out of his mouth. He’s so ill-informed, so proudly ignorant, that it’s easy to think that when he hurls a historical insult, he just doesn’t know.
I feel pretty safe in saying that we can now stop giving him the benefit of that particular doubt. His use—twice; once on social media and then repeated in a speech—of the word “vermin” to describe his political enemies cannot be an accident. That’s an unusual word choice. It’s not a smear that one just grabs out of the air. And it appears in history chiefly in one context, and one context only.
Before we get to that, let’s just record what he wrote and said. On Saturday at 10:25 a.m., he posted on Truth Social: “In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.” Then, at a rally in New Hampshire later that day, he repeated those words essentially verbatim—promising to “root out … the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”—and doubled down on it: “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day, every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
This is straight-up Nazi talk, in a way he’s never done quite before. To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word.
Mom and Dad were back in Kansas City, MO, right before he deployed to England.
My Dad and Mother would be 100 this year. As I frequently shared here, my Dad was in the Army Air Corps during World War 2. He and his unit were responsible for bombing targets in France, Belgium, and Germany so the troops on the group and the parachuters could get to Germany. One of the results of these missions was freeing those who remained in Concentration Camps. That would include people of the Jewish Faith, Homosexuals, and intellectuals. People were often teased with “Godwin’s Law” because it couldn’t happen again or here. Right?
Godwin’s law, short for Godwin’s law (or rule) of Nazi analogies,[1] is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitlerapproaches 1.[2]
Well, this Trump Speech was not “reductio ad Hitlerum“. Dad’s crew on the bomber included a Jewish American from a small town in Washington State as well as a Puerto Rican American from New York City. BB’s Dad was a small-town Middle of America professor who spent time in the Pacific Theatre. Everyone in the military represents everyone you could possibly meet in the US population, from indigenous Americans to those who are newly immigrated. How dare this man speak like this on a day when we remember those who have sacrificed much for our democratic Republic? Which of them would be on Trump’s “vermin” list?
This is from the Washington Post. “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini, On Veterans Day, the former president vowed to “root out” his liberal opponents, drawing backlash from historians who say his rhetoric is reminiscent of authoritarians.” It’s reported by Marianne LeVine.
The former president’s speech in Claremont, N.H., echoed his message of vengeance and grievance, as he called himself a “very proud election denier” and decried his legal entanglements, once again attacking the judge in a New York civil trial and re-upping his attacks on special counsel Jack Smith. In the speech, Trump once again portrayed himself as a victim of a political system that is out to get him and his supporters.
Yet Trump’s use of the word “vermin” both in his speech and in a Truth Social post on Saturday drew particular backlash.
“The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”
“Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians ‘communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left’ to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom,” Ben-Ghiat said. “Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told The Post “those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”
Cheung later clarified that he meant to say their “sad, miserable existence” instead of their “entire existence.”
Liz Cheney ripped into the RNC after this speech. This is from The Hill, “Liz Cheney says RNC chair ‘collaborating’ with Trump’s ‘Nazi propaganda’.” This is written by Miranda Nazzaro.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) ripped Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel for dodging questions Sunday about former President Trump’s “vermin” comments, which Cheney described as “Nazi propaganda.”
“When @GOPChairwoman refuses to condemn the GOP’s leading candidate for using the same Nazi propaganda that mobilized 1930s-40s Germany to evil, it’s fair to assume she’s collaborating,” Cheney wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “History will judge Ronna McDaniel and every republican who is appeasing this dangerous man.”
Since we’re on the subject of disrespecting Americans serving in our Military, I have one bit of reasonable, possible bi-partisan effort to stop the temper tantrum reign of Tommy the Willfully Stupid.
Tomorrow, the Senate will consider a rules change that would eliminate Tommy Tuberville’s blockade on military promotions.
Moreover, the ability of a single traitorous Senator to paralyze the government this way could become a thing of the past.https://t.co/kecC6L2NLf
The committee on Tuesday will vote on a plan to allow consideration of about 350 pending nominations in a single parliamentary move, a dramatic change in precedent for the chamber. The proposal is expected to easily pass out of the committee but will face more problems in the full Senate, where Republican cooperation will be needed for final approval.
Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, has held up fast-track consideration of routine senior military promotions and confirmations since the spring over his objections to the Defense Department’s abortion access policy. In recent days, several GOP colleagues have pressured him to relent on the holds, citing cascading leadership difficulties caused by the move.
But Tuberville thus far has rebuffed those requests. Tuesday’s rules committee meeting is designed to force a resolution on the issue, with Democratic leaders (and a number of top Pentagon officials) insisting the standoff has already lasted too long.
Don’t forget about all the domestic and abroad disturbances that require a US presence. We still have a looming government shutdown. The Republican Party representatives cannot govern. This is from CNN.
New House Speaker Mike Johnson may already be losing his first big clash with the hard-right lawmakers who are making the Republican majority and the nation ungovernable as time races down to yet another federal funding cut-off.
The Louisiana conservative, who was just lifted from obscurity to second in line to the presidency, may soon find himself in the position that doomed his predecessor Rep. Kevin McCarthy — needing Democratic votes to keep the government open.
A funding deadline of Friday night means Washington again faces a wild ride of shutdown brinkmanship caused by extreme GOP lawmakers who either cannot or don’t want to help run the country. The imbroglio is not just harming America’s image as a functioning democracy abroad. It has already wasted every week of the House majority party’s term since the summer and threatens to further weaken the key swing-district members critical to the GOP’s hopes of keeping the gavel in next year’s election.
The move could head off the Washington holiday-season tradition of shutdown dramas and mammoth all-encompassing spending bills. But the chances that a GOP majority that has trouble passing any bill could deliver on this intricate plan seem very low.Given the House’s record, Johnson may simply be setting the country up for two government shutdowns rather than one.
While the two-step approach appears to be a concession to the far right — which abhors what it calls “clean” continuing resolutions, or CRs, that keep government open temporarily at current spending levels — Johnson’s approach may already have backfired since it lacks the sweeping cuts that hard-right Republicans demanded even though they have no chance of getting them past a Democratic-run Senate and White House. “It’s a 100% clean. And I 100% oppose,” Freedom Caucus member and Texas Rep. Chip Roy wrote on X, conjuring up exactly the showdown that cost McCarthy his job.
Johnson’s task is so difficult because the tiny GOP majority means he can lose only a handful of members on any bill and still pass it with only Republican votes – hence the need to get help from Democrats on some issues and the consequent risk of further alienating far-right members of his conference.
The Marsh Fires aren’t getting as much play on the national level as the forest fires up north, but believe me, if you live downwind of them, you feel them. They’ve been trying to get masks to people here with asthma and problems breathing. I’ve felt like I’ve had one big sinus infection the entire time, but other than a few pain relievers and allergy medicine, there’s not much you can do. I hope we’ve gotten our share of FEMA and federal disaster relief for this because if they shut the government down, there will be a lot of hurt all over the state.
Have a great week! I hope all our active military and veterans got the recognition and respect they deserve for Veteran’s Day!
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A lucky cat was rescued by firefighters after falling 100ft (30m) down a mineshaft in Cornwall – and it was all thanks to a quick-thinking dog.
After six days of searching, Mowgli’s owner Michele Rose said she had “almost given up hope” of finding her missing pet.
But she said she saw her dog Daisy “going berserk”, running in and out of woods near their home in Harrowbarrow.
Daisy’s intervention led to the rescue of her feline friend, Ms Rose said.
Daisy guided her along a footpath toward the Prince of Wales old mine workings, she said, before “stopping dead in her tracks” next to the mineshaft.
“Daisy is a superstar, she’s an amazing dog.
“Without Daisy doing that Mowgli could still be down there, that’s for sure,” Ms Rose said.
“She was persistent in making me follow her, it was amazing.”
The RSPCA and Cornwall Fire and Rescue were called but it was “too dark” on the first night to access the mineshaft, the RSPCA said.
The next morning the team, led by RSPCA animal rescue officer Stephen Findlow, spotted Mowgli, who was 100ft down – but remarkably uninjured – and he was pulled to safety.
The family has another cat, Baloo, who greeted Mowgli after he was pulled up.
Ms Rose said she adopted kittens Mowgli and Baloo in December 2022 and oversaw a gentle introduction to Daisy, who was already resident.
She added: “Daisy was already a year old when the kittens arrived and they have all been inseparable ever since.
“She is quite matriarchal and puts up with them, they love her and she’s very protective of them.”
NILES, Ill. — Police in Niles, Illinois — a suburb of Chicago — expressed satisfaction with a pilot program begun in August to “deputize” five feral cats to control the rat population, a police official told Pioneer Press. Now, the department says it is looking to extend the program.
The cats have lived around the 7800 block of Nordica Avenue for about three years under the care of a resident. The Niles police department recruited the cats because they are a natural deterrent to rats, according to Niles Police.
Earlier in the year, Niles officials passed a wildlife ordinance to curb rat problems in the village. According to the village’s website, the Community Development Department tracks and investigates rat complaints and inspects alleys and properties. The department gives out free rat traps to residential properties.
By James Pelham, 1800s
Niles Police Sergeant Dan Borkowski told Pioneer Press through email that the department reviewed complaint data from the Development Department and resident feedback and decided to continue and expand the feral cat program. Borkowski said the department had yet to determine where the cats will be placed because it’s contingent on cat availability and host families to take care of the cats.
Borkowski said they would keep the cats in a more defined territory. The village’s animal control officer gave Sarwat Hakim, the resident who has been watching over the feral cats, three makeshift, tarped shelters for the felines….
Hakim said the cats usually stay in the neighborhood or head off into the forest preserves, where they hunt for rats.
Hakim said before the cats were in the neighborhood, she used to see a lot of rats and rat traps. She hasn’t seen a rat trap in the neighborhood for about a year, which she is a fan of because she worries about kids potentially playing with them.
Hakim said she started caring for one feral cat three years ago when it kept returning for food. The cat gave birth to 15 cats, most of which were put up for adoption, with four of the cats staying behind.
“They’re so united you wouldn’t believe it,” said Hakim.
Hakim said she and her daughter-in-law feed the cats chicken in the morning, canned tuna for lunch and dinner, with cat food, both dried and canned, served as a snack. The cats also like to drink milk, she said.
“I hope nobody harms them and lets them stay because they’re benefiting us getting rid of the rats,” she said.
One can think of the claims presented by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) as though they are the experiments of a ninth-grade physics class.
The assignment is simple: Build a contraption that will ensure an egg survives a fall from the roof of the school. So Comer and his friends get together and sketch out little parachutes and agree that the parachutes will work great and talk about how cool the different little parachutes are.
They build the parachutes and take them over to Fox News’s desk and Fox News takes the eggs and puts them in the parachute and holds it one hand over the other and lets go: the egg survived! What a parachute! Going to hype this parachute for a few days until you come up with a new one.
Sometimes, though, Comer or one of his buddies has to take the egg to the actual roof. Maybe Comer thinks some of the parachutes will actually work; probably he knows that a lot of them won’t. But either way, the teacher holds them over the edge of the building and subjects them to reality.
Ssssssssssplat. Over and over and over again. Different eggs and different parachutes but the same result.
Thanks to his incessant chatter about his parachutes and how cool they are, Comer has — despite this pattern — built a reputation with his peers as a really great parachute-maker. A lot of them have only heard Comer talk about his parachutes or have only seen the Fox News tests of the parachutes, so they really think he’s got it, he’s a master of Newtonian physics. Asked to head to the roof for their own tests, they simply grab the parachutes that Comer’s made. Bad move.
So what happened when another Republican Congressman tried to use Comer’s “evidence” in a non-Fox appearance?
On Thursday morning, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) put some to the test. Murphy appeared on CNN to discuss subpoenas issued by Comer’s Oversight Committee to President Biden’s son Hunter and the president’s brother, James Murphy sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which, along with Oversight and Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) Judiciary Committee, is tasked with leading the stalled impeachment investigation into the president.
Murphy was asked by host John Berman whether he would vote to hold the Bidens in contempt should they not comply with the subpoena. “Absolutely,” Murphy replied. Then he got out the parachute.
WC Mills, Gentleman in a top hat reading with his cat beside him
“You know, here’s the deal, John,” he said with the confidence of a guy who has never seen Comer’s physics experiments at work. “It’s very, very clear. Why … would Hunter and Jim create 20 shell companies to not — to be legal? We’ve seen time and time again — and Representative Comer has proved this — there was money, influencing peddling that Biden had during his last couple of years as vice president. And then after, right afterwards, they wanted to gain the money back.”
Sssssssssplat.
Comer likes to talk about the “shell companies,” ignoring that a number are simply corporate entities like one that serves as the structure for Hunter Biden’s law firm and another that’s a consulting company he ran. The Washington Post examined each of these “20 shell companies” finding that — despite Murphy’s insinuations — they were created because this is how business structures often work. (Comer tends not to talk about the much more extensive web of corporations controlled by the Trump Organization, which might have given Murphy pause.)
What happened when Murphy tried to explain what Joe Biden did that was criminal?
Comer also has not by any stretch proved that there was influence peddling by Joe Biden. That’s the crux of what he wants to prove and what his investigations are pointed toward. He’s shown, with an abundance of evidence, the already-obvious efforts by Hunter Biden to leverage his last name as he sought out business deals — but has also accrued numerous sworn statements from former Hunter Biden partners that Joe Biden wasn’t involved in the effort. (Among those drawing that line was Devon Archer.)
Berman, however, took the conversation in a different direction. He asked Murphy why he’d vote to hold Hunter or James Biden in contempt when he voted against holding former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon in contempt in 2021 after Bannon failed to provide testimony to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
“Well, I think it’s a little bit different when you have a president of the United States,” he said. “We have somebody who’s not an elected official. You know, the president of the United States was selling his influence, his son was selling his influence—”
“It’s a little bit different of standards, John, when you have somebody who’s in elected office,” Murphy continued, “versus somebody who’s not in elected office.”
Berman then asked what elected office Hunter Biden held. Oops!
Unfortunately for Rep. Comer, it turns out that he also lent money to his brother.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) on Wednesday subpoenaed President Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden, who Comer has implicated in unsubstantiated allegations of “shady business practices” in the Biden family.
Comer has in particular been trying to make hay out of two personal loan repayments from James Biden to his brother, for $40,000 and $200,000—with all transactions occurring in 2017 and 2018, when Joe Biden was neither in office nor a candidate.
By Escha van den Bogerd
But if Comer genuinely believes these transactions clear the “shady business practices” bar, he might want to consider a parallel inquiry into his own family.
According to Kentucky property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business. In one deal—also involving $200,000, as well as a shell company—the more powerful and influential Comer channeled extra money to his brother, seemingly from nothing. Other recent land swaps were quickly followed with new applications for special tax breaks, state records show. All of this, perplexingly, related to the dealings of a family company that appears to have never existed on paper.
But unlike with the Bidens, Comer’s own history actually borders a conflict of interest between his official government role and his private family business—and it’s been going on for decades.
While Comer and House GOP allies have tried to cast the Biden transactions as evidence of unsavory and possibly impeachable offenses, multiple news organizations—including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, FactCheck.org, and the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner—have all thrown cold water on the notion that the payments are evidence of anything other than a brother helping a brother.
Click the link to read the rest.
Speaking of conflicts involving people holding high-level positions, The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus has an op-ed about serious ethics issues for Clarence and Ginni Thomas: The Crystal Clanton case shows a system failure.
Well, so much for getting to the bottom of the story of Crystal Clanton, the judicial law clerk accused of sending racist texts. And so much for all the talk about having Supreme Court justices abide by the code of conduct that covers other federal judges. In this case, at least, the mechanism to enforce that code turned out to be toothless. The judicial discipline system is better at self-protection than self-policing.
To review: Clanton is a protégé of Justice Clarence Thomas and Ginni Thomas. She met Ginni Thomas while working at the conservative youth group Turning Point USA. Her employment was terminated in 2017 after the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer unearthed texts apparently sent by Clanton: “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like f— them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” Clanton told Mayer in an email that “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.” (Clanton was 20 when the texts were sent in 2015, and evidence suggests that this was not an isolated episode).
After leaving Turning Point, Clanton went to work for Ginni Thomas and lived in the Thomas’s home for almost a year. She attended George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and, with enthusiastic backing from Clarence Thomas, secured one of the most prestigious judicial clerkships in the country, for William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Pryor, a reliable “feeder” of clerks to Thomas and other conservative justices, recommended Clanton for a district court clerkship, with Judge Corey Maze of Alabama, before she joined his chambers.
Girl with cat, by Merle Keller
And she appears to be en route to the high court. “It is certainly my intention to consider her for a clerkship should she perform as I expect and excel in her clerkships,” Thomas has written.
When the news of Clanton’s clerkships surfaced in 2021, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee filed an ethics complaint; the matter was assigned to the 2nd Circuit to handle. Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston dismissed the complaint without even appointing a special committee to look into the facts, as provided for under the rules and suggested by the 11th Circuit judge who conducted the initial review.
Livingston did not examine the underlying question of whether Clanton sent the racist texts. Rather, she found only that Pryor and Maze “performed all of the due diligence that a responsible judge would undertake” before hiring Clanton. The judges, she said, were “in possession of information that the allegations were false — that the anonymous sources relied on in the media accounts were not trustworthy,” and that “they have been repeatedly informed that the allegations of racist text messages and remarks are not true.”
In fact, there were on-the-record sources and screen shots of the texts. Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet confirmed to me that Clanton was “terminated from Turning Point after the discovery of problematic texts.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has three flags hanging outside his office: the American flag, the Louisiana state flag, and a flag representing a movement that wants to turn the United States into a religious Christian nation.
Normal stuff, you know?
The flag is white with a green evergreen tree in the middle and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. A report published Friday by Rolling Stone confirmed that the flag is outside his district office in Washington.
The flag was originally used as a banner during the Revolutionary War, but over the past decade, it has been embraced by a sect of Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.
The NAR fully embraced Donald Trump when he announced he was running for office, endorsing him early on and helping endear him to other Christian movements. As a result, the Appeal to Heaven flag has become popular among Trump supporters.
The flag has appeared in photos of far-right politicians and election deniers such as Doug Mastriano, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Pennsylvania governor. Mastriano lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro.
The flag was also everywhere at the January 6 insurrection. Rolling Stone estimated that there may have been hundreds of Appeal to Heaven flags throughout the mob.
It should not be surprising that Johnson subscribes to the NAR belief system. He has a well-documented history of opposing abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and environmental policy on the grounds that they are non-Christian.
But it’s upsetting and deeply concerning that he is able to embrace it so openly without so much as a slap on the wrist. What’s more, Rolling Stone’s revelation comes just days after the House of Representatives censured Rashida Tlaib for her comments about Israel and Palestine.
F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a criminal inquiry into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.
The agents approached the mayor after an event in Manhattan on Monday evening and asked his security detail to step away, a person with knowledge of the matter said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said.
The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, according to that person and another person familiar with the situation. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.
A lawyer for Mr. Adams and his campaign said in a statement that the mayor was cooperating with federal authorities, and had already “proactively reported” at least one instance of improper behavior….
The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.
The Mayor’s attorney says that Adams is not personally under investigation. We’ll see, I guess.
The federal investigation into Mr. Adams’s campaign burst into public view on Nov. 2, when F.B.I. agents searched the home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser and seized two laptop computers, three iPhones and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”
Mr. Adams responded to news of the raid by abruptly returning from Washington, D.C., where he had only just arrived for a day of meetings with White House and congressional leaders regarding the migrant influx, an issue he has said threatens to “destroy New York City.”
On Wednesday, he said his abrupt return was driven by his desire to be present for his team, and out of concern for Ms. Suggs, who he said had gone through a “traumatic experience.” [….]
The warrant obtained by the F.B.I. to search Ms. Suggs’s home sought evidence of a conspiracy to violate campaign finance law between members of Mr. Adams’s campaign, the Turkish government or Turkish nationals, and a Brooklyn-based construction company, KSK Construction, whose owners are originally from Turkey. The warrant also sought records about donations from Bay Atlantic University, a Washington, D.C., college whose founder is Turkish and is affiliated with a school Mr. Adams visited when he went to Turkey as Brooklyn borough president in 2015.
I guess we’ll learn more as time goes on.
I hope everyone has a great Caturday and Veteran’s Day weekend!!
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It’s the weekend, and I don’t feel like getting down in the weeds about all the bad stuff that’s happening; so I’m going to share a mixed bag of recent stories that caught my fancy. Since it’s Caturday, I’m going to begin with a story about cats.
…[R]esearchers have discovered that cats use nearly 300 distinct facial expressions to communicate with one another, according to a study published in October in the journal Behavioral Processes.
“Many people still consider cats—erroneously—to be a largely nonsocial species,” Daniel Mills, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Lincoln who was not involved in the study, tells Science’s Christa Lesté-Lasserre. “There is clearly a lot going on that we are not aware of.”
To collect data on these furry subjects, researcher Lauren Scott of the University of Kansas Medical Center frequented a cat cafe located in Los Angeles for about a year and recorded video footage of interactions between 53 cats. All were adult domestic shorthairs, and the group included males and females, per the study.
In total, Scott gathered 194 minutes of feline footage that contained 186 interactions. With the help of her co-author, evolutionary psychologist Brittany N. Florkiewicz of Lyon College, she analyzed the cats’ facial signals.
By Michael Bridges
The pair discovered 276 expressions made up of a combination of 26 facial movements, including shifts in ear position, blinks, nose licks and whisker and mouth movements. (In comparison, humans make about 44 facial movements, and dogs have 27.) Of all expressions, about 45 percent—or 126—were categorized as friendly, 37 percent were aggressive and 18 percent were ambiguous, writes Jennifer Nalewicki for Live Science.
“These findings show it is good to look at a cat’s ears, eyes and whiskers to understand if they are feeling friendly,” Florkiewicz tells Earth.com’sAndrei Ionescu. “Their mouth provides a lot of information about whether a cat fight is likely. People may think that cats’ facial expressions are all about warning other cats and people off, but this shows just how social and tolerant pet cats can actually be.”
The team also identified a “common play face” among cats, which was characterized by a dropped jaw and drawn back corners of the mouth, per Live Science. People, dogs and monkeys share similar expressions in playful scenarios.
In 1648, Margaret Jones, a midwife, became the first person in Massachusetts — the second in New England — to be executed for witchcraft, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials.
The latest effort comes from a group dedicated to clearing the names of all those accused, arrested or indicted for witchcraft in Massachusetts, whether or not the accusations ended in hanging.
The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project, made up of history buffs and descendants, is hoping to persuade the state to take a fuller reckoning of its early history, according to Josh Hutchinson, the group’s leader.
Hundreds of individuals were accused of witchcraft in what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between 1638 and 1693. Most escaped execution.
While much attention has focused on clearing the names of those put to death in Salem, most of those caught up in witch trials throughout the 1600s have largely been ignored, including five women hanged for witchcraft in Boston between 1648 and 1688.
“It’s important that we correct the injustices of the past,” said Hutchinson, who noted he counts both accusers and victims among his ancestors. “We’d like an apology for all of the accused or indicted or arrested.”
For now, the group has been collecting signatures for a petition but hopes to take their case to the Statehouse.Among those accused of witchcraft in Boston was Ann Hibbins, sister-in-law to Massachusetts Gov. Richard Bellingham, who was executed in 1656. A character based on Hibbins would later appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” published in 1850.
Another accused Boston witch, known as Goodwife Ann Glover or Goody Glover, was hanged in the city in 1688. A plaque dedicated to her is located on the front of a Catholic church in the city’s North End neighborhood, describing her as “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.” It’s one of the few physical reminders of the city’s witch trial history.
The group has also encouraged Connecticut to clear the names of accused witches in their state. Read more at the NBC News link.
The publisher of Mark Meadows’ book The Chief’s Chief has filed suit against the former White House chief of staff, seeking millions in damages after he reportedly copped to lying in the book about the 2020 election being “rigged” and “stolen.”
Meadows reportedly met repeatedly with Jack Smith’s team in its investigation into election interference and had admitted the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history—contradicting much of what he’d claimed in his book and allegedly breaking his agreement with the publisher.
“Meadows’ reported statements to the Special Prosecutor and/or his staff [sic] and his reported grand jury testimony squarely contradict the statements in his Book, one central theme of which is that President Trump was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze,” the lawsuit from All Seasons Press states.
ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that Meadows negotiated an immunity agreement with the special counsel’s office and in the process admitted to his lies about the 2020 election. Meadows’ lawyer later disputed the accuracy of the report….
The lawsuit claims that Meadows agreed that “all statements contained in the Work are true and based on reasonable research for accuracy,” and that he claimed to have “not made any misrepresentations to the Publisher about the Work.”
The book weighs heavily on Meadows’ claims that the election was “rigged” —debunked claims that All Seasons Press was happy to run at the time, but that now come under renewed scrutiny with Meadows’ reported admission that he propagated falsehoods.
Republicans have had it with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s nine-month blockade of military promotions. And after publicly putting pressure on the Alabama Republican to lift his hold on hundreds of officers, GOP senators are plotting new ways to break the impasse.
During a special meeting planned for next week, some will ask Tuberville to focus his obstruction on only the Pentagon’s civilian nominees and not uniformed officers who have nothing to do with the policy he’s protesting. Others want to shift the fight to the courts to challenge the policy at the center of the hold, which reimburses troops who have to travel to obtain abortions and other reproductive services.
Fare Thee Well, by Elisheva Nesis
Democrats, meanwhile, are devising their own ways to get around the blockade, and are hoping the GOP frustration they see will push Republicans to support their idea.
The four-hour-plus event, which forced Tuberville to object to votes on 61 nominees, marked a pivotal moment for Republicans as their private frustrations with the freshman lawmaker spilled over onto live TV for all to see.
“I think what it says about where things are is Tommy’s losing support,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said of the Republican-on-Republican fight. “And you’re seeing the frustration build up because the consequences are building up.”
And while the attempt was doomed — those Republicans knew Tuberville wouldn’t budge — it’s also made some Senate Democrats optimistic that enough GOP members will join their push to confirm most of the promotions in one big bloc.
What an idiot. Alabama should be ashamed. Tuberville doesn’t even live there. He’s reportedly lived in Florida for decades.
Tommy Tuberville’s Republican colleagues had finally had it with him.
For months, the Alabama senator and former college football coach has blocked the confirmation of hundreds of senior military officers because he’s mad about a Pentagon policy that ensures soldiers have abortion access.
The group of anti-abortion Republicans had worked with him since February to try to find a solution. They’d flattered his ego. They’d mostly defended him in public as his game of chicken stretched nine months, punishing hundreds of senior service members who have no say over the policy and hurting U.S. military readiness at a time of global chaos.
But on Wednesday, their patience had worn out.
Five of Tuberville’s GOP colleagues took to the Senate floor to lambast his positions, begging him to relent and forcing him to object over and over again to allow a vote on more than 60 nominations that he’s blocked. The senators read off the sterling biographies of dozens of service members with increasing frustration.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine reserves who served as assistant secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, was particularly irate.
“Xi Jinping is watching this right now,” Sullivan, at times yelling, declared on the Senate floor as Tuberville looked on from his desk. “He’s loving this. So is Putin. They’re loving this! How dumb can we be, man?”
“We’re going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became,” Sullivan exclaimed later on during the hours-long standoff. He later mocked Tuberville’s repeated claim that his holds weren’t hurting the military’s preparedness: “That this is not impacting readiness is patently absurd.”
On Tuberville’s history:
Tuberville spent most of his career coaching football — most notably at Auburn University, which made him a household name in the state he now represents. He still prefers being called “coach” instead of by his current job title — his official Senate website calls him “Coach Tommy Tuberville.” But his old nickname from his sideline days may be more appropriate: “The Riverboat Gambler.”
Back then, Tuberville was known to ignore the odds and pick the most aggressive play. It’s a habit that’s stuck now that he’s in the Senate.
That policy that triggered Tuberville’s anger was put in place by the Biden administration after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion. Fifteen states, including Tuberville’s Alabama, have banned the procedure. Enlisted service members don’t get to choose where they and their families live — they’re stationed wherever they’re needed, many of them in ruby-red states where abortion access no longer exists and other reproductive care is severely limited. The Pentagon’s fix was to offer soldiers and their families time off and funds to travel to states where abortion remains legal.
Tuberville was irate when he found out about the workaround. His obstructionist response has hamstrung the Pentagon and forced officers who have nothing to do with the policy to serve as pawns in his policy fight….
There’s some irony that Tuberville, who frequently says he ran for office so he could give back to America in the same way his own father did with his years of military service, has almost single-handedly paralyzed the entire leadership of the U.S military — in a time of global conflagration, no less. (Tuberville reiterated that he won’t budge even after Hamas attacked Israel.)
In some ways, Tuberville is a mustache away from being the bizzarro Ted Lasso of the Senate — a folksy and affable former college football coach who makes a radical career change, then makes things up as he goes along while blithely ignoring the status quo. But instead of an aw-shucks success story, he’s a testament and a cautionary tale for those who wing it.
There’s still more at the link.
Speaking of idiots, a couple of stories on the new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.
Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.
Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.
Hug Needed, by Anita Zotkina
The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.
At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.
For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.
The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s adopted son has had a string of run-ins with law enforcement for crimes ranging from drug possession to theft since leaving the care of the Louisiana Republican congressman and his wife Kelly, records show, but he’s since turned his life around.
The Johnsons met Michael T. James, now 40, when he was a teenager while the couple were doing charity work for a Christian ministry in Baton Rouge, La., in 1996.
The newlyweds took the troubled then-14-year-old into their home and filed court papers to become his legal guardians in 1999 after James became homeless.
However, once the Johnsons moved from Baton Rouge to Mike’s hometown of Shreveport in 2002, James stayed behind and struck out on his own, as he was then legally an adult.
Since 2003, James has been arrested more than a dozen times, according to records reviewed by The Post.
Charges against him in Florida ranged from marijuana and cocaine possession, theft, possession of a concealed weapon, violating a protective order, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
On two occasions he was sentenced to prison time, serving 37 days on the cocaine possession rap in 2003 and a 30-day term in 2007 on a retail theft charge.
He was also ordered by a court to take an anger management class in 2017.
James is understood to have moved around to a number of places during this time period, at times living with his biological mother and older brother, moving to both Florida and Texas.
Additional court documents seen by The Post indicated James was indicted on a theft charge in 2003 while living in Houston.
One more read before I wrap this up. This is the best thing I read this week.
The world inches closer to a war that only psychopaths want to see.
On Tuesday the FBI issued a warning that the chance of staged terrorist attacks in the United States has grown since the war began in Gaza. In the White House briefing later that day, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “Has the White House considered the possibility that a terrorist could be in the country right now after crossing the southern border?”
Obviously they have, or the FBI wouldn’t have issued the warning. The question remains, however, what our government response would be to such an attack. That has already been discussed at the highest levels in our government, and the public has a right to know what that reaction would be.
So, although I wasn’t called on, as Kirby left the stage I interrupted to ask the only question I thought mattered: “John, wait a minute. Before you leave: If Hamas terrorists attack the U.S., would the U.S. put boots on the ground in the Middle East?”
Cat Messenger, by Elisheva Nesis
Kirby stopped his retreat from the stage, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre let him answer. Kirby was succinct: “I won’t speculate about that, Brian. We’ll obviously do what we have to do to protect our troops and our people.”
On that same day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer showed up at the White House with a bipartisan group — Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., Mike Rounds, R-S.D. and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. — to talk to President Biden and help steer a congressional response to the threat posed by SKYNET … sorry, I mean AI. It’s a bipartisan effort, but there are both Republicans and Democrats who remain opposed.
Bipartisanship, once seen as a laudable goal on many issues, is now sneered at by most remaining members of the Republican Party. Working with Democrats, for them, is like choosing death over a slice of cake. (Apologies to Eddie Izzard.)
Most Republicans are so dismayed at the prospect of working with Democrats that they want to scuttle efforts to fund the war in Ukraine, virtually isolating Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who seems to be nearly alone on an island calling for aid to continue. It’s a rare display of common sense from the 81-year-old Kentuckian, whose primary focus is on political power.
“No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine,” McConnell said. “We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it’s wonderful that they’re defending themselves — and also the notion that the Europeans are not doing enough. They’ve done almost $90 billion, they’re housing a bunch of refugees who escaped. I think that our NATO allies in Europe have done quite a lot.”
Few Democrats have said it any better, and it spelled out exactly what the stakes are for the U.S. in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Remember that Vlad “The Impaler” Putin has clearly suggested that he wants to get the old Soviet Union band back together — Ukraine is just the first stop in a quest for global hegemony.
Karam on Mike Johnson:
Fellow Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said that McConnell was “out of touch” with his party’s base while Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley chided McConnell for siding with Democrats — and that was before Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas gave Hawley a tongue-lashing on border issues later that afternoon. It looks like Putin still has a few fans in the GOP.
In the House, those would likely include newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (and that still sounds like a Bart Simpson prank call to Moe’s Bar), who took on McConnell directly, pushing to unlink aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine.
While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — which seems to have swallowed the evangelical movement while also embracing it (a T-1000 morphing into Sarah Connor is just about the right image) — is embracing the darkest verses of the Bible, apparently pushing for apocalypse with an enthusiasm only rivaled by Saul’s slaughter of Christians before he changed his name to Paul.
I’m waiting for Mel Brooks to break out into song: “Let all those who wish to confess their evil ways and accept and embrace the true church convert now or forever burn in hell — for now begins the Inquisition!”
The House of Representatives, now run by Johnson, offers a discount version of the apocalyptic orgasm the holy rollers have dreamed of for years. They’ve renewed the Inquisition and seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it.
Lord, how they love to preach fire and brimstone. But the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Forget it. Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”? Not a chance. They’ve embraced only the Old Testament angry God and the apocalyptic parts of Revelation brought on by ergot poisoning.
I know I’ve quoted too much, but there’s still a lot more to read at the link.
That’s my contribution for today. Let me know what you think. And have a great weekend!!
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
“It’s important that we correct the injustices of the past,” said Hutchinson, who noted he counts both accusers and victims among his ancestors. “We’d like an apology for all of the accused or indicted or arrested.”
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine reserves who served as assistant secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, was particularly irate.
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