Finally Friday Reads: Big Lies and Law-Defying Revenge

“Among other things.” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, we’ve definitely thrown the dice and entered the Darkest Timeline. Every day brings something shocking and awful.  Most of the professional folks have either resigned or been removed from their positions. What we have left are the usual assortment of incompetents, loyalists to Dotard Donald, and the usual grift machine. The DOJ is basically the Don’s personal enforcers now, skating outside the law.

The arraignment date for James Comey is October 9. He will be booked as he was indicted on Trumped-up evidence, including an indictment that includes words that he did not say. Yam Tits has given the press a chance to witness his gloating and using the term “sick, radical left people,” which is about as weird as him taking aim at the Antifa philosophy as some kind of club with a membership list and dues. Meanwhile, what remains of the cult has stewed their brains in this shit so long, it’s impossible to believe they haven’t all lost their minds.

So, the Comey Timeline includes his last-minute maneuvers concerning Hillary Clinton that definitely contributed to Orange Caligula’s first Reign of Terror and Stupidity. You may check our archives for that travesty of justice. However, it’s not difficult to separate his karma from Yam Tit’s likely illegal indictment campaign. So, let’s go there. This is from the SubStack “Public Notice” and Lisa Needham. “The tragicomical indictment of James Comey. In a sane country, this thing would be laughed out of court.”

For the last few days, the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey felt inevitable, so when news of it dropped Thursday night, it wasn’t as much a surprise as a confirmation that the Trump administration is completely out of control.

ABC News broke the news Thursday that Comey had been indicted for obstruction and making a false statement in relation to his 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. NBC News reported that the charges are based on testimony Comey gave in a September 30, 2020, hearing. During it, Sen. Ted Cruz asked Comey about his 2017 testimony, when Comey said he did not authorize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to leak anything to the press. Comey stood by what he testified three years earlier, but MAGAs are convinced he lied.

Ryan Goodman of Just Security has a good rundown on Bluesky of the flimsy basis of the charges against Comey, which can basically be summed up as “Ted Cruz misunderstands or mischaracterizes things or both.”

Why are we all guessing at what the charges are based on when the indictment is available? Well, because Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s myriad former personal attorneys and currently his handpicked acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, didn’t really see fit to include much in the way of detail.

The indictment clocks in at 1.5 pages, and you can read the whole thing in about 30 seconds if you have some time during a commercial break. Here’s the entirety of the explanation of the first charge:

On or about September 30, 2020, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, JAMES B. COMEY JR., did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.

2. That statement was false, because, as JAMES B. COMEY JR. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.

That’s it. That’s the whole of Count One, alleging false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch under 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2). A source told CNN that this is related to “Arctic Haze,” an FBI investigation into leaks that ultimately appeared in four news articles.

Republican Lawmakers are obviously playing victims along with Lady Lindsey, doing the usual pearl-clutching hysteria. Nebraska Republican Don Bacon is one of the few speaking like he’s confused by the Darkest Timeline, too. Here’s another one that’s deeply off the reality vector. This is from The Guardian. “Republican Arizona lawmaker makes post calling for execution of Democratic congresswoman. John Gillette on X called for ‘people like’ Pramila Jayapal to be ‘hanged’ in response to her video on anti-Trump protests.”

An Arizona Republican state representative who has expressed support for January 6 insurrectionists on Wednesday called for a Democratic congresswoman to be executed, as a response to a video clip.

The comment on X by state representative John Gillette of Kingman, Arizona, first reported by the Arizona Mirror, was a reaction to a short clip drawn from a YouTube video in March by US representative Pramila Jayapal, a longtime Democratic congresswoman representing Washington state, entitled “The Resistance Lab.” In the video, Jayapal discusses preparations for street protests against the Trump administration.

“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried, convicted and hanged … it will continue,” he posted.

Nothing in either the clip or the longer video actually suggests Jayapal is advocating for the overthrow of the US government. The video carries explicit calls for non-violent protest and discussed with alarm a rise in political violence in the US.

Gillette’s comment is a continuation of a string of inflammatory far-right online invective by the Mohave county Republican and retired army reserve command sergeant major. Gillette has defended January 6protesters, who were intent on violently overturning Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, as “political prisoners” and described Muslims as “terrorists”.

It also reflects a widening call among Republicans to criminalize protest and speech critical of the Trump administration.

What fucking country is this? Here’s another Gestapo move by the ICE thugs. “ICE agents point guns at bystanders during violent arrest in Maryland. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yelled. “Go ahead. Shoot me.” This analysis is by Maris Kabas writing for “The Handbasket”.

For about nine minutes Wednesday morning, ICE agents pinned a man to the ground in the middle of a Maryland intersection. It was broad daylight as he screamed in anguish and shouted for help in both Spanish and English. When bystanders gathered to bear witness, agents briefly brandished their guns and pointed at them, with one officer appearing to keep his finger on the trigger for several minutes after. According to witness Raphi Talisman, “It looked like he was trying to calm himself, but at the same time, his gun was brandished and he was ready.”

Talisman posted to Facebook Wednesday a more than nine minute video he’d just recorded at the intersection of Hamilton St. and Queens Chapel Rd. in Hyattsville, just 6.5 miles from The White House. The freelance photojournalist captioned it: “The video I took of them speaks for itself. Ice treated the man they arrested like an animal! I just dropped my son off at school and I was coming home when I saw this. Notice the Ice officer pulls his gun out.”

Talisman’s video, along with others reviewed by The Handbasket, begin while the incident is already in progress, with the man face down in the middle of the intersection just beyond a crosswalk while two ICE agents physically restrain him. Just before he began recording, Talisman was sitting in his car when he saw a man run into the intersection with the two agents chasing him. Once they tackled him to the ground, Talisman got out of his car and began recording.

The Handbasket spoke to Talisman by phone Friday morning to get additional context about the violence he witnessed. He said after seeing videos from around the country this year of ICE brutality, he’d been waiting for something like this to happen in the town he calls home. “It felt totally familiar and I think a lot of people are primed for it, especially if you live in an area that has a diverse population, and if one is following the news and just paying attention,” Talisman said.

In the video, agents can be seen kneeling on the man’s back and crushing his neck. At one point the gun falls out of one of the agents’ holsters and after scrambling to grab it, he points it at the crowd of people watching and filming his brutality. His partner briefly draws his weapon and aims at the crowd, too, while the man on the ground repeatedly yells “I am American!” Talisman estimates there were about 30 witnesses gathered at the scene, with many others driving by.

After about 20 seconds, the first officer aims his gun towards the ground, with one hand resting on top of the gun and the other appearing to still be on the trigger. He remains in this position for another seven minutes. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?” one witness yells. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

At least four additional agents arrive on the scene to help keep the captured man on the ground while their armed colleague gazes menacingly at witnesses and takes heaving breaths. At one point you can hear the man on the ground yell “I live in America! I love you America!” None of the agents on the scene would provide their badge numbers or names when asked repeatedly by witnesses.

This comes a few days after this act of cruelty. NBC NEWS reports. “Video shows ICE with 5-year-old girl while agents attempt to arrest her father. The Department of Homeland Security said the father ignored directions to pull over and “abandoned” his daughter.”  This is absolute cruelty and child abuse!

A video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a 5-year-old girl, whose mother says is autistic, while agents attempt to arrest her father near their Massachusetts home.

The video, provided to Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra by the girl’s mother, depicts the girl sitting beside an SUV with three agents nearby outside her home in Leominster last Tuesday. Her father at the time was inside.

The girl’s mother told Telemundo — which is owned and operated by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News — that her husband called her while he was driving with their daughter shortly before the incident and told her he thought he was being followed.

Her husband, Edward Hip Mejia, drove home and “managed to run back into the parking lot of my house,” she said, and her daughter as a result was left with the agents.

“They took my daughter, she’s 5 years old. She has autism spectrum,” the girl’s mother is heard telling agents in the video. “Give me my daughter back.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Mejia “ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house. He fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house. He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car. Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.”

Then there is this:

This has particular meaning to me. I’ve visited the Wounded Knee site many times. I was there, in 1974, when Russell Means ( Waŋblí Ohítika) and Lakota activists took over the Nebraska State Capitol. I spent time at the encampments and heard many stories of the horrible treatment of the indigenous people. I cannot believe we’re totally reversing history, where this massacre is once again a monument to white colonialism and racism. This is from The Independent. “Pete Hegseth says Wounded Knee veterans will be allowed to keep their medals. Secretary of War rules that U.S. troops who received America’s highest military honor for their part in the explosion of violence in which hundreds of Lakota Sioux were killed can hold onto their accolades.”What’s next? Statues of Custer everywhere?

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ruled that U.S. Army soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their part in the Battle of Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, will be allowed to keep them.

In a video posted to X Thursday, the secretary explained that Joe Biden’s administration established a special review panel to determine whether the combatants should have been rewarded for their part in the shoot-out, otherwise known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which as many as 375 Lakota men, wome,n and children were killed or injured, according to a 1990 Senate resolution.

Twenty-five U.S. Army troops were also killed, and another 39 were wounded. Nineteen people were subsequently awarded America’s highest military honor for their role in the bloodshed in South Dakota.

The Biden panel recommended in October 2024 that the medals should stand, but, according to Hegseth, his predecessor, then-secretary of defense Lloyd Austin, failed to act because he was “more interested in being politically correct than historically correct.”

“Such careless inaction has allowed for their distinguished recognition to remain in limbo until now,” the secretary continued. “Under my direction, we’re making it clear without hesitation that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals.

The EVIL! It BURNS! One more and then I’m going to go take a shower to wash all of this off of me. This is from the SubStack “Scenes from a Slow Civil War” by Jeff Sharlet. “Rubber Glue Fascism. A close reading of “NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”

The news cycle yesterday was still spinning around Kimmel, and tomorrow it’ll be busy with Comey. But in between came bigger news: the “memo” named in my subtitle. A “Terror Memo.” I don’t like sending traffic to this White House, but you should read it. In its expansive definition of “terror,” “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” may prove to be as much of an acceleration in this slow civil war as the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

I’m no lawyer. Just a journalist, long on the rightwing beat, and an English professor who likes to linger in the luxury of close reading. What follows is my preliminary pass.

First, there’s the form: an executive memo instead of an order. Even as this memo goes into much deeper detail than Monday’s executive order designating an amorphous anything called “antifa” as a “terrorist organization,” the memo, as a form, is looser, free of the need to cite constitutional authority. And yet it retains the “force of law”—perfect for the president who says “it’s not illegal if it saves the country.” And, given what appears to be the vast reallocation of resources called for the Terror Memo, another advantage of the form is that it doesn’t require the Office of Budget and Management to issue a “budgetary impact statement.” What’ll the tab be? Don’t ask. Such questions could, according to the memo, become subject to investigation.

Section 1 lays out the case for action, and from its very first words—”heinous assassinations”—it’s a subtle sleight-of-hand. Note the plural, assassinations. There’s Charlie Kirk, yes. “This was preceded,” the memo continues, “by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive… the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh [and] two separate assassination attempts against my own life.” Excluded from the list is the assassination by a politically-motivated Christian nationlist of Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted murder of state senator John Hoffman his wife. Not all murders matter; but those that do, the memo declares, are a conspiracy hatched by forces far greater than the actual individual gunmen, little fish in whom the the memo shows no interest.

The real enemy, according to the memo, is “organized”:

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.

It’s critical to name this bait-&-switch: Using real acts of violence by a handful of unaffiliated individuals to launch an attack on the much greater strength of liberal / left “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, [and] funding sources.” This isn’t about a manhunt to stop the next murderer before he can shoot; it’s a “new… strategy,” the deconstruction by state power of far less dramatic efforts to build the very step-by-step systemic rule-of-law resistance that is the opposite of violence.

Please continue to read the rest of this at the link. I think the Darkest Timeline includes Domestic Terrorism by the Trump administration.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?