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Eugene Volokh | 10.15.2025 3:00 AM
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Hmmm. One more U.S. strike on a boat in international waters. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/us/politics/trump-drugs-boat-attack.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20251014&instance_id=164418&nl=breaking-news®i_id=59209117&segment_id=207891&user_id=86ac9094018f7140c62a54a4e93c075f/ The New York Times reports:
The United States killed six men aboard a boat in international waters “just off the Coast of Venezuela,” President Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, asserting without evidence that they had been transporting drugs. The strike was the fifth known attack by the U.S. military on such boats since Sept. 2. The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known” route for smuggling, Mr. Trump said in his social media post.
The United States killed six men aboard a boat in international waters “just off the Coast of Venezuela,” President Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, asserting without evidence that they had been transporting drugs.
The strike was the fifth known attack by the U.S. military on such boats since Sept. 2. The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known” route for smuggling, Mr. Trump said in his social media post.
Sadly NG, I am not hearing much from Congress about it. One would think that Congress-critters might want to discuss an issue (war) that is squarely in their wheelhouse. And sinking boats in int'l waters is an act of war. BTW, that studious silence is bipartisan.
All that said, I don't have sympathy for druggies. They can be converted to shark shit for all I care.
I don't think war means what you think it does...
You run that by your King-Buggerer fist? No typo.
We could imagine an alternate constitution where the President could force a yes or no vote on a policy. Members of Congress, are you going to stand up for the rights of narco-terrorists or approve violations of international law?
Such a constitutional rule would also end a lot of administrative law disputes.
I think that we are a lot closer to a war than you may realize, and rumor has it that the Congressional leaders have already been advised.
That said, what did we and the British do with Pirates?
Wrong place
I believe Congress did vote on this matter to reel in some of the Wars Powers act. Republicans Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted to stop these actions by the President. The measure did fail.
Life sure has gotten difficult for narcoterrorists and human traffickers under the Trump administration. I’m sure they can find a willing judicial insurrectionist to enter a TRO. Biden didn’t interfere. He opened the border for them. What’s President Trump’s issue? He even has the audacity to pay the troops.
Just pretend they're Israelis and you'll be fine with it.
That sure is some neutral non-biased reporting by the NY Times. "asserting without evidence" "as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects"
But you guys keep it up. Here's a hint: nobody cares about drug dealers getting killed. People like seeing a leader who finally does more than just talk while the country goes to hell. You miss this point every.single.time when it comes to Trump. That's why he keeps beating you.
He's on the side of us. You are throwing in with Venezuelan drug smugglers. Who wins that debate?
Where is the evidence which makes the NYT report biased?
Where is there any evidence that these are not innocents being killed?
When deadly violence is used, those are normative questions. Your complicity is reprehensible to echo politically self-serving assertions presented without the usually required evidence.
Not keen with what he's doing, but if these are innocents, let the nation of origin demonstrate so and embarrass the US and Trump.
Same for act of war. If innocent, claim act of war on top of it. If guilty of being drug runners, claim act of war anyway. Good luck with the latter.
That's ... kind of the point, isn't it? I mean, this is exactly the playbook favored by authoritarians- it's practically a rinse and repeat of what happened in the Philippines (sorry, I know that we 'Murikans don't care what happens in other countries).
Yes, you are right! Who cares if a bunch of drug smugglers get blown up? Let's ignore the fact that ... we don't have any proof other than the administration's assertions (and they've never lied to us) that they are drug smugglers each time. And that even if these are drug smuggling boats, there are no other people on board (like trafficked people). Let's just assume ... the following- 1. The administration never lies. 2. There are never any mistakes in intelligence. 3. There are never any innocent people on board the targets.
Assume all of these. Now, let's point out the following- 1. None of these boats was actually going to America. I assume you don't know much about drug smuggling, but boats from Venezuela like this don't zoom zoom to America- they go to other destinations, and then offload, and then boats from those places go to other places (that are usually, but not always, America). Or they offload and go overland (if Mexico). 2. None of these boats was a threat to any military target, or given a chance to standdown- they were targeted without warning. 3. All of these people were killed for a crime- well, assumedly a crime- not for engaging in any armed conflict with America.
That's really the debate, isn't it? Real life isn't a Hollywood movie- it feels good to just kill the baddies. But our military has rules for a reason. We don't use them to go after mere criminals abroad (and ... at home).
Let's make this simple- the problem that our southern neighbors have is us. Yeah- their own governments struggle because we... AMERICA ... have such a massive drug issue that is so profitable that groups spring up to meet OUR demand. And instead of working harder to solve OUR problem (which is massive), we make it THEIR problem.
But let's dig deeper- where does this end? If you want to tackle the fentanyl problem in this way, the fastest way to do that is to start blowing up the real drug traffickers- that's right, the massive container ships leaving China carrying precursor chemicals and going to Central and South America. But ... we don't do that, do we?
So let me ask you a serious question- what do you think is really going on here? Venezuela is a drop in the bucket when it comes to drugs coming to the US. And blowing up one of these boats is ... nothing. All of these boats, combined, don't compare to a single coast guard interdiction (such as the recent one--- great job, CG!).
Is this really about drugs? Or about something else? And if it's about something else, why are we deliberately putting our service members at risk legally in such a way that even John "Torture is Good" Yoo is saying, "YOU KANT DO THAT!"
But sure- feel good that you are winning some sort of "debate." If you look around a room, and you don't know who the mark is, you're the mark.
"None of these boats was actually going to America."
The First Circuit hears a trickle of cases from the Puerto Rico involving drug smugglers caught near enough to the island to be brought there for trial. The cases don't say where the defendants were headed. Under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act it is not necessary to prove intent to reach the United States.
1. Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory. If they're caught "close enough" to Puerto Rico, then they're close to the U.S.
Um, you know that, right? We are talking about territorial waters.
2. The point I was making that I assume you are missing is that we repeatedly hear the Administration claim that they were heading to the US. They were not. And the issues regarding criminal prosecution of drug traffickers are not the same issue as extrajudicial killings- which they are, unless we are either at war and they are enemy combatants (see also, AUMF) or otherwise authorized (they fired on us).
This is kind of the whole point- the deliberate blurring of law enforcement and military activity. They are not the same thing. I don't like money launderers, and arguably they are the engine of the drug trade; that doesn't mean we can start launching tomahawks at banks in Panama.
Right?
An attorney taking issue with noting an assertion is being made without evidence? That's not bias, that's actually what is going on.
If the assertion is false, we're just murdering Venezuelans. That seems something we should nail down!
You're right. When it comes to druggies I'm in favor of it being open season with no bag limit. I used to sit there in a helicopter off Florida and watch them throw bales and cartons off of ships to the speedboats. The boats would haul it aboard and take off. All we were allowed to do was phone it in. As a trained door gunner I could have wreaked some havoc with an M-60 or M-2.
This is not the place for your mass shooter fantasies.
Since Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, started the operation last month, a broad range of legal specialists have called the premeditated and summary extrajudicial killings illegal. They noted that the military cannot lawfully target civilians — even criminal suspects — who do not pose a threat in the moment and are not directly participating in hostilities.
Not sure about Fifth Avenue, but apparently, he is trying to see if he can oversee murdering people (aka "lethal kinetic strikes" to use Trump's term via his social media account) on the high seas without any negative consequences.
Well, he can definitely do it without any consequences thanks to SCOTUS.
But the people that follow his orders do not have the immunity of a King, unfortunately.
Yes, they don't have immunity, but putting aside the pardon power, people have reason to think that prosecution there is a long shot.
The sensible first step would be congressional hearings to examine the decision-making that went into the killings, including the specific procedures and details involved. This would include examining the chain of command and the various actors involved.
Yoo is quoted here:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/16/trump-gop-officials-strikes-venezuela-00567212
Just a reminder...Obama ordered the assassination by drone of US Citizens without a trial.
US plans to power military with small portable Janus reactors.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-army-plans-to-power-bases-with-tiny-nuclear-reactors-c41c1383?mod=mhp
The future of power generation is here.
These will also power your local moon base or hotel in orbit at L2.
We wouldn’t have such issues with power generation if the Chicken Littles would just get out of the way and allow nuclear to freely compete in the market. Massive energy production, carbon-free, and green, with little waste product.
It’s so ironic to me that the ones who decry the carbon output of coal plant are often the ones who are simultaneously preventing the technology that would put them out of business from thriving.
The problem is not so much the opposition as the lack of any real highly visible proponents of nuclear power. Trump is a throw back looking to promote coal. There are plenty of advocates for wind and solar. But nuclear seems an orphan child.
It's too many orphan children, abandoned by their parents, who want to go out gallivanting again.
There are two basic problems in the way of a nuclear rennisance:
1. The regulatory environment is insane, still based on the known bad linear no threshold (LNT) theory of radiation risk. Essentially, nuclear is the rare industry where the regulators were captured by the opponents of the industry, not the industry itself. 2. Even if you can overcome this, it only takes one anti-nuke administration every 12-16 years to render investment impossible because nobody trusts that they won't have their investment suddenly rendered worthless.
Shoot your local Greenpeace or Sierra Club member.
Suing with sob stories from sacred lands to little anipals, check!
Setting up businesses to supply new mandates and ride it up, check!
Not seeing how the power monger class can profit from nuclear, except getting in the way. Ohhhhhh...
The Three Gorges dam is 70x the size of the Hoover dam. China's building another that's 3x the size of that.
We have a lawyer/politician class that profiteers from getting in the way of that. Our government no longer keeps the trade routes open, the purpose of the Interstate Commerce clause, but uses it for historic corruption ways, as is done in countries with corruption.
Fundamental Theorem of Government: Corruption is not an unfortunate side effect of the wielding of power. It is the purpose of it from day one.
Nelson — No irony from me. I am tired of a nuclear promotional industry which runs on lies. No reason at all to give the benefit of the doubt this time, after a record of time-after-time promises made and promises not merely broken, but utterly disregarded.
For starters, every claim for superior economy made by nuclear advocates will remain non-credible, until there is a record of the real cost of cleaning up nuclear messes. That record will not exist until all the existing messes have been cleaned up.
It would greatly benefit the nuclear industry with the public to do the clean-ups, but they continue to evade. The reasonable inference is that the nuclear industry reckons its own costs are always too high to justify, and too embarrassing to discuss candidly. That is why the proposed solutions are always new technologies discussed de novo, to exclude discussion of the record.
The nation is awash in unsafely stored high-level nuclear waste, plus many instances of uncontrolled, unbounded, dispersed nuclear pollution. At least one of the worst examples of the latter kind of pollution—at the Idaho National Laboratory north of Idaho Falls—has never even been formally disclosed to the public. That one encompasses almost 900 square miles, and hosts the world's largest concentration of nuclear reactors, many of them abandoned.
Add the mess at Hanford Washington which keeps expanding, and dispersed pollution from the Nevada test site, and those by themselves are industry-cost back-breakers.
There is also the matter of plutonium already circulating in private commerce—at least thousands of critical masses, lightly supervised—with the usual private priority to keep costs down. See how easy it is to find out the details necessary to estimate the national or international peril that creates.
So the right stance for the public on nuclear generation now is, clean it all up first, then talk about what you can do better later. If that gets resisted, it's crazy public policy to invite getting worked over again. Clean it up, or no to nuclear.
Renewables, plus management efficiencies, plus user conservation, plus progress in renewable engineering technology will get the job done.
The base nuke plant strikes me as a prime enemy target -- all the benefits of using a nuke without any of the liability.
Pebble reactors. Hit it and all you get is some low grade local contamination. There's no Earth shattering KABOOM there.
In the 1980s Scientific American published an article about what if somebody hit a nuclear power plant with a nuclear warhead. Twice the fallout.
The Democrats had absolutely terrible luck on their shutdown strategy. Their game plan was to try to show the GOP as both lazy and heartless.
But then to have the Gaza piece deal come together so quickly, and then end two major humanitarian crises if one fell swoop, and to have all the principles to the agreement crediting Trump and thanking him, it just collapses the narrative.
Speaking of shut down....Kaz, did the world as we know it end, yet? It has been two weeks. My life, and the lives of pretty much everyone around me remain unaffected, despite the terrifying, world-ending fed gov't shutdown.
I would note that the Fed Gov't has several thousand fewer non-essential DC employees than it did 2 weeks ago. More pink slips are going out this week. Maybe the newly unemployed bureau-critters can call Chuck Schumer and tell him what they think of his splendid shutdown strategy.
Maybe the Senator can refer them to a coding boot camp so they can learn to code.
There is no government shut down. All the bits of the government that people like you care about are still running.
Tell that to Senator Schumer and Congress-critter Jeffries; they'll appreciate the eurotrash update.
Go ahead. Tell me about something the Federal government does that you care about and that's shut down.
Nothing. It does nothing I care about. It does nothing I care about that's shutdown.
"Shutdown" is a fake ceremony the politicos do. It's meaningless just like 80% of Congress.
QED
This is the only thing you and I are in agreement on.
These "shutdowns" are just political theater. Every day that goes by just further confirms it.
Oh, no, things are being shut down. But the things that are being shut down are, by design, things that nobody with political influence minds shutting down. Like, in my policy field, government lawsuits blocking mergers, but also NASA.
https://www.nasa.gov/shutdown/
The online version of Washington Monument Syndrome.
lol good one
So what is it? Do you care about NASA or don't you?
Elon Musk has basically turned NASA into an antique of an agency. The private sector in the USA is who is putting satellites into space.
SpaceX is specifically about launches.
There's a lot more to NASA than that.
You mean Musk has no plans to get to Mars? So Sarcastro what is NASA doing recently?
Yes, I don’t believe Musk has any actual plans to go to Mars.
You are pretty gullible of he’s convinced you otherwise.
"Yes, I don’t believe Musk has any actual plans to go to Mars.
You are pretty gullible of he’s convinced you otherwise."
Wow. Politics really can drive people crazy, can't it?
What exactly WOULD it take to convince you that Musk is serious about Mars? SpaceX announcing it's pricing structure for delivering payloads to Mars starting in 2030, ($100M per metric ton) wasn't enough for you?
Sarcastro Musk has put a lot of resources into a Mars expedition. What makes you think it's a fraud?
A plan, Brett.
A plan that brings up and addresses the many well known issues with humans going to Mars.
I'm sure Musk WANTS to go to Mars; that doesn't mean he's doing anything effective about doing so. And certainly it doesn't mean SpaceX is supplanting NASA when it comes to manned space flight.
I don't think either of you know much about space policy, NASA, or Musk's history.
Everyone of Musk's companies feeds into his Mars vision.
But, not to Sarcastr0!!
From the Boring Company, to Tesla self driving cars, Optimas, neuralink, to even X (the everything app). Each of these serves a purpose in a Mars community.
To humans that look, they can see this obvious common thread. But not to govies or other Democrats. Are they even human?
"I don't think either of you know much about space policy, NASA, or Musk's history."
I have been a space fanatic since before I helped found a chapter of the L-5 society in college. I probably know more about the technical requirements of space colonization than you have any clue even exists.
There are things Musk needs to do before colonizing Mars that he hasn't done yet, but there's time to do them, and if they don't work out?
Then almost all the work would be useful for colonizing someplace else, or for other purposes. Not wasted at all.
Your priorities don't seem to be keeping up on what NASA is doing, nor the research into the challenges of going to Mars. Radiation, landing, and lack of gravity spring to mind.
That's the cool thing about podcasts - NASA has 3. They keep me up to date on NASA's latest cool plans and programs. Well, they did. The podcast is furloughed.
Hey guys, did you hear that? Sacastr0 subscribes to ALL THREE NASA podcasts!
He's practically a NASA Ph.D.!! Maybe not that, but subscribing to NASA podcasts definitely grants him authority to speak on their behalf. Whereas everyone else who isn't a subscriber is just a normie who doesn't have all the same NASA esoterica.
It must be frustrating for you. The usual democratic lies and misbehavior are just not working. Go to your quiet space and have a good cry.
Episode number 27 of MAGA bringing up you shutdown and pretending that the Democrats are talking about it all the time.
They aren't talking about it?
First rule of the Shutdown Club is you have to talk about the Shutdown, constantly. Otherwise there is no point.
I'm sure some Democrats are talking about it, but nowhere near as incessantly as you guys.
Kazinski — That's the kind of forward-looking commentary which makes monkeys out of journalists foolish enough to indulge in it.
To me, the most obvious think about the bruited Gaza peace deal is the apparent ignorance of the sources talking about it. Everything I hear implies agreements on future conditions which go unmentioned in the coverage. So maybe there are double-crosses not yet out in the open.
I might be content to give Trump credit for this deal after a year or two, if it lasts that long. And if it becomes possible to understand what means brought it about.
If it came about because Trump, or his family, or minions, or counter-parties, seized opportunities for criminal grift which no American president ought to use, hind-sight will enable us to subtract from Trump's credit accordingly. Likewise if renewed Gaza violence results.
You could go ahead and say, who cares about the grift, the good it did is self-evidently greater. But you will not know whether that is right until the harm you get by living with that as a standard becomes the expected norm.
I'll tell you the means that brought it about, it was Israel and the US totally crushing Iran in June.
Hamas had already been defeated by then, and Hezbollah completely defanged, but until June Hamas still had a supposedly very dangerous Iran supporting it.
Then suddenly Iran isn't dangerous anymore, and Hamas has no hope.
As Bernstein said today on Twitter: "It's less important whether Hamas has really agreed to disarm and give up power than whether Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar have agreed that Hamas must disarm and give up power. Terrorist movements like Hamas facing much stronger enemies like Israel can't survive without outside support."
And Iran is no longer even worth mentioning.
As for "Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar" rearming Hamas, I think the chances are slim, not that Israel the Israeli Air Force would bomb them, but Mossad might.
I wonder now if the Mossad attack on Hamas in Qatar helped the peace process along or not, it didn't seem to hurt.
Hamas had already been defeated by then
Yes, and Israel kept bombing Gaza and shooting at Gazans all the same. Which they would have kept doing if it wasn't for the international community applying a successful carrot & stick approach.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ex18xx9xeo
It turns out you can't stop a war after you've defeated the foe, if the foe stupidly insists on continuing to fight you.
That's not what "defeated" means.
Hamas finally realized last week, that once you are beaten then its time to surrender.
Japan was also beaten by the time we dropped the 2 A bombs to remind them to surrender.
Germany was already beaten even before Hitler shot himself in his bunker, but the Russian tanks kept rolling, ours too.
Hamas did not surrender. They're complete (religious) nutcases. They will never surrender.
So how does it end?
With someone taking over in Gaza who has the ability to shut Hamas down. And that requires legitimacy in the eyes of the Gazan population, because shutting Hamas down requires that ordinary Palestinians risk summary execution by terrorists to tell the government, their government, that person X is in Hamas, or that Hamas will carry out attack Y.
That's why the UK couldn't make peace in Norther Ireland without talking to Martin McGuinness and the rest of Sinn Fein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement#Parties
How does one tell the good vipers from the bad vipers?
So who is this group that if the USA and the rest of the west recognized could shut down Hamas and represent the Palestinian people of Gaza?
The Freemasons, or perhaps Rotary International. I'd include Knights of Columbus as well, but they don't let ANYTHING interrupt Wednesday night bowling league.
But I keep hearing that these "ordinary Palestinians" should have a full vote and statehood. Why would we do that when they are so beholden to terrorists that if given any power they will simply give terrorists more power?
I have heard positive comments about the building of German democracy after WW2. Start at the local level with foreign policy dictated by occupying powers.
Person knowledge? Or are you hoping that Hamas will rise again?
I didn't realise someone was here taking the view that Hamas are actually very reasonable people.
Yet how often over the last two years did you advocate for a war strategy that would have terminated hamas. I recall almost every comment you made was effectively to prevent israel from destroying hamas
The law should be followed even if it is inconvenient to you.
The law was being followed!
Thanks for confirming the very point I made below:
I will add that it would have been a rare occasion that any of the liberals/leftists, etc posting advocated of a solution that would bring lasting peace to the Irsaeli/Palestinian region.
Likely the fall of Assad in Dec. 2024 shutdown all the arms pipelines to Hezbollah and Hamas
Mossad runs Hamas, CIA runs ISIS.
Surely Mossad and the CIA would cooperate on getting arms to each others front groups. While Mossad controls CIA, CIA funds Mossad.
The Mossad did not attack Qatar. Mossad leadership opposed the missile strike.
Politico has an interesting article about what unhinged Young Republicans talk about among themselves: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146
Haters gonna hate.
Turns out at least one Young Republican got fired from Kansas government for that. Kudos to Kansas, and to all Republicans who can still think straight. So far, no comment from the Trump administration.
So far, no comment from the Biden administration or Obama administration regarding Jay Jones' public calls for murdering conservative children either.
Live by social media, die by social media. They are being rightly denounced, and paying he price for their ill-considered words: loss of employment, public humiliation. No sympathy here.
Commenter is unaware of any affiliation between the Young Republicans and the Republican Party,
Now, let me tell you how big a deal the Dem’s Virginia AG candidate is…
Oh I see, he didn't apply the "guilt by association" tactic and lever this incident into whole cloth condemnation of every thing even remotely associated with it.
Which of course is the standard trope applied by the Left on the Right, while they, natch, do not apply the same standards to themselves.
Every conservative is guilty from the actions of those people in chat and must instantly and publicly have a struggle session. Whereas no Democrat is guilty from the actions of Jay Jones and only haters, racists, transphobes, and bigots are even bringing it up!
Even Jay Jones isn't guilty for what he said in their eyes.
This is, of course, a strawman.
Just another excuse to go after liberals in "self defense."
He's so guilty, every Democrat is rallying around him!
Name any elected Democrat who has called for Jay Jones to step down due to his remarks.
Step down…I guess you mean drop out?
The GOPs attempts to nationalize that race haven’t gone well, have they?
Meanwhile the national Young Republicans are oops all white nationalists but that means nothing about the GOP.
Your standards don’t really allow for you to get mad without looking like a massive hypocrite.
Rando nutpicking is good now!
YR and Young Democrat groups are both mainly populated by losers and idiots, and have always been.
The national Young Republicans isn't nutpicking, is the thing.
Your attempt to ignore the problem this makes evident is unsurprising.
The GOP is continuing to trend more and more white nationalist. That doesn't end well for minorities, including Jews.
"The national Young Republicans isn't nutpicking, is the thing."
It absolutely is.
Its not the "national Young Republicans" as a group, it some YR people in a chatroom.
"including Jews."
Your faux concern is noted.
When I nutpick it isn't nutpicking, when you nutpick it's immoral smearing! Self-censor and silence yourself!!!
It's their leadership, at both the state and national level.
It seems clear you're not up on the story. I guess it's easier to throw up bullshit if you don't know what you're defending.
So you can't name one elected Democrat who has called for Jones to drop out. Young Republicans are little more than a fraternity. They have no authority to impose any policy. Jones on the other hand should he win would be the state's attorney general with control over law enforcement and hundreds of millions of dollars of state money. Which should people be more concerned about?
it would be a contest for the worst state attorney general -
oops forgot about Ellison's hand in all the fraud in Minnesota (better described as his overlooking the rampant fraud )
Can you name one elected Republican who has condemned Laura Loomer? Or Stephen Miller?
It's a dumb game you want to play. And when I point out it's a dumb game, that doesn't mean it's time for your victory lap.
Ellison intentionally turned a blind eye to the massive fraud in Minnesota
Not even a close comparison Life in the echo chamber
"Can you name one elected Republican who has condemned Laura Loomer? Or Stephen Miller?"
Oh, whataboutism.
Did they threaten to kill children of political opponents?
And Loomer? Talk about nutpicking, you hypocrite.
Well the following elected Republicans criticized Laura Loomer Thom Tillis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lindsey Graham, Pete Hegseth and Nancy Mace.
Bob, when I said it was a dumb game to play, I was talking about my questions as well. Thanks for agreeing with my point.
Count, your examples are doing great. Awesome job. Lindsey Graham - wow, what a leader. Truly my point about stupid games is not lost on you!
And you might want to check your AI - Hegseth bent the knee more than criticized from what I recall.
So sad Sarcastro, so very sad. You and your fellow leftists want to make a big deal out of what is a few nobodies using bad language as compared to a candidate wishing death upon an opposition candidate and his children but most people see the difference.
The College Republican/Young Republican organizations are morally bankrupt and have been for decades -- it's the same thing as with the NRA. Nothing these organizations do would surprise me.
You realize you are talking about Turning Point
Did you notice how nobody mentioned Charlie Kirk for at least a week, because too many other crazy things had happened in the meantime, so Trump gave him the Medal of Freedom to get another couple of news cycles out of him?
Looks like the ADL's dossier on Turning Point being full of Neo Nazis and antisemites was fairly accurate. But poor ADL got to close to the main nerve and had to be canceled. We eat our own here, Martin
The ADL cries "wolf" way too much. I support Israel, not the ADL.
His name is Charlie Kirk. So your Divine King doesn't hand out Medals, Orders, Handjobs???
Frank
No, I am NOT!
Charlie Kirk managed to remain independent of that mess. And he was a Christian -- most of the YR/CRs aren't.
Your ignorance is shocking. As a Life Time NRA member I have firsthand experience with what they do. I pay $US100 a year for access to the local NRA ranges. This is way less than the local private ranges. The reasons in large part are a monthly volunteer day, donation of materials, and support from the national NRA. Every Saturday there is some type of competition with an entry fee of around $US10 which basically covers consumables. To me the most important thing is the volunteer Range Officers who strictly control shooters and any safety violation is punished with ejection.
As an aside the NRA was formed shortly after the Civil War by two Union officers who were appalled by widespread poor marksmanship of the Union soldiers and saw the need to train civilians in marksmanship. Today this is still the main function of the NRA. While I don't always agree with some of the political moves the NRA engages in (they often lobby for what I consider more restrictions on firearms) I also don't donate to the political side. You really need to get out more.
So when is the NRA going to use its constitutional right to keep and bear arms for its intended purpose of resisting tyranny?
FAFO and I'm ignoring your ignorance in thinking the NRA matters, it's like the AMA, an ineffectual special interest group, Amuricans exercise that right every day, even in "Blue" areas like Illinois and California, and once you get outside of San-Fran-Sissy-Co it's suddenly Louisiana (without the great Cajun food)
When we have a tyranny to resist, I suppose, rather than an elected government pursuing policies you don't like.
The President sending the army after US citizens isn't good enough for you?
Are there a lot of NRA members in downtown LA? Or, if injunctions are lifted, Portland and Chicago?
Only Democratic tyranny is bad. Republican tyranny is celebrated.
To me the most important thing is the volunteer Range Officers who strictly control shooters and any safety violation is punished with ejection.
Bunny495 — That otherwise laudable precaution is also a flaw in any supposition that gun range training delivers practical gun experience for any real-world purpose. In the real world, conditions at gun ranges are nothing like conditions anywhere else. If they were, an insurance industry daunted by uncontrolled risks would shut down gun ranges.
Until you have carried firearms in the field long enough to experience a few horrifying inadvertent incidents you happen to escape unscathed, you will never learn to be realistically humble about humans' capacity to be safe around guns. Those incidents might involve the mishaps of others around you, or your own mishaps.
This thread's pro-gun advocates mostly sound nothing at all like people who have extensive practical gun experience. I have never known anyone with experience like that who was assertive about how safe guns are, or about how a well-trained gun carrier is a paragon of safety.
Instead, the experienced gun carriers I have known tend to be pessimists about others' gun skills, and reluctant to join unknown others in the field, to the point of evasions or even outright hostility. That is not merely a judgment about the failings of others. It is chiefly the product of long-examined insight into their own limitations. Because such people actually are extraordinarily careful, it takes long experience to teach themselves the limits of even extraordinary care. Thus, people with lots of practical gun experience are not likely sources of sunny estimates about gun safety.
For example, this remark is a giveaway that the person who wrote it is not yet trained reliably to carry a gun outdoors: "Your ignorance is shocking. As a Life Time NRA member , , , etc."
I looked all over and I couldn't see a similar comment by you about Jay Jones and his public fantasies about murdering conservative children.
That's strange. Do you like murdering conservative children or something?
More of that MAGA white supremacy and antisemitism that doesn't exist. Nothing to see here.
Isn't it something to see how both the Left and the Right have become antisemitic?
Maybe they should stop doing so much stuff that causes so many people to hate them.
What do you think?
Sorry, I enjoy breathing. Next get Black People to stop being Black and get the Asians to fix their slanty eyes. Maybe have the Moose-lums take a bath, and start using this Western Invention, Toilet Paper Seriously, in most parts of the Moose-lum world they still wipe with "Old Reliable" Hispanics I'd leave like they are, they're basically just white people with a good tan (and better work ethic)
I see. It’s the victim’s fault that people are racist and antisemitic, eh?
Do you blame the rape victim for dressing “too sexy” or the gay victim for “degeneracy” or Charlie Kirk for being hateful, too?
Charlie Kirk? You mean did I just do the exact same thing the Democrats have done with Charlie Kirk and with violent assaults on ICE agents but applied to the sacred Jews?
Wow, you caught me cold being a hypocrite and not cleverly making a point!
Pretty stunning how this next generation of GOP leaders speak to each other in private. And the imitation of Trump actually went so far as to include screwing contractors, which in a perverse way is kind of cute. Vile on numerous levels and a sad statement on where these young people feel they must go to get ahead in politics in the new MAGA.
Note to Josh Blackman and others: as I have repeatedly stated, these people are not your friends. Cast your lot in with MAGA at your own peril, eventually they will be coming for you.
Finally I would be remiss not to mention my favorite little amusing tidbit, the appearance of the number 1488! Yes, that’s right, the same 14.88 that several of the usual suspects around here strenuously asserted was just another number, a perfectly normal number to use, when MyPillow guy repriced in September of 2024. I wonder if any of those folks have had time to reflect. The receipts may be found in the open thread of September 30, 2024.
And let me tell you, if you need a laugh— some of the usual suspects’ huffy hand-waving in that thread is priceless. Publius, LOB, TiP, Bob, Bwaaah, it’s a real candy lineup. LOL!
Given repeated lethal missile attacks, it seems odd that a supply of drug boat targets navigating in daylight continues to present itself for Trump's gruesome campaign of aerial photography. It is worth wondering what could account for such apparently suicidal stupidity. Several possibilities worth thinking about:
1. The boats targeted are piloted by people who are not carrying drugs. They keep going out because they think fishing, or transport of inoffensive cargo, or just going out on the water to beat the heat and get drunk is safe, because the U.S. is targeting drug boats,, not them.
2. They are drug boats, but piloted by people whose families are under deadly threat if they refuse to go out.
3. They are drug boats, but drug boats engaged in commerce which has nothing to do with the U.S. They foolishly expect the fact that they are plainly not headed toward any U.S.-related destination will keep them from being attacked.
4. The boats are engaged in illicit traffic which pays well, but carrying refugees, not drugs, to destinations which have nothing to do with immigration into the U.S.
5. Some or all of the boats shown are not even real, just AI fakes. That would help account for the complete lack of corroborative information about any of the attacks.
Presuming that none of those explanations applies, and every drug boat attack is a righteous arbitrary murder of people Trump despises, what makes him think he gets to do that without blow-back here in the U.S.? If drugs smuggled into the U.S. are actually involved, then so are people under cover in the U.S. involved. Likely including people with better-than-average cover, complete freedom of movement, well-armed, capable of extreme violence, and with stereotypical tastes for vengeance. Plus lots of contacts among drug customers subject to blackmail.
Those might live or work anywhere. In big cities, or impoverished rural backwaters. For instance, in a munitions plant in Tennessee which maybe makes the kinds of warheads used to arm missiles used in aerial attacks. Far-fetched, I know, but a U.S. president bragging about a campaign of aerial murder unjustified by any evidence is far out too.
If Trump is trying to gin up a real war to aggrandize his executive powers—as seems certain—why would anyone suppose the war he gets would be some kind of stupidly direct confrontation with a certain-to-lose two-bit foreign military? Maybe Trump would suppose that. But why not asymmetric warfare instead—mass casualty events here and there, with no one claiming responsibility publicly?
I might suggest the blow-back from Russia's campaign against Chechen terrorism as an example. But I know that some of that apparent terrorism was committed by Russian intelligence operatives, to provide public justification for military attacks which razed Chechnya. So that is more like an example to show urgent need to hold out-of-control authoritarians accountable to explain what they do when they get violent. Maybe the U.S. should do that.
I think it's probably #6: Drug smuggling as a career attracts people who are unusually risk tolerant by ordinary standards.
"Presuming that none of those explanations applies, and every drug boat attack is a righteous arbitrary murder of people Trump despises, what makes him think he gets to do that without blow-back here in the U.S.?"
The fact that almost everybody despises drug smugglers, not just Trump?
"If drugs smuggled into the U.S. are actually involved, then so are people under cover in the U.S. involved. Likely including people with better-than-average cover, complete freedom of movement, well-armed, capable of extreme violence, and with stereotypical tastes for vengeance. Plus lots of contacts among drug customers subject to blackmail."
So, in order to imagine a big downside for Trump's policy, you have to transmogrify drug smuggling into something that would actually, not pretextually, qualify as a predatory incursion? Maybe even an actual war?
Bellmore — Nope. Like millions of members of my generation, I grew up in a culture where illicit drug smuggling was an approved social norm. Despite being heavily penalized sometimes, that activity was commonplace, recklessly open, and even conferred social status among a crowd whose status already seemed high enough to obviate possibility of improvement.
I found myself a bit lonely in that culture, because I have always personally avoided recreational drug use. But appearance of disapproval was never motivated by moral censoriousness. To the extent I wished things otherwise, that was motivated by disappointment that drug use seemed to make my friends and acquaintances boring.
I long felt that pretty keenly as a personal loss for me, and sometimes still do. But with an older person's experience, I now see it more as expression of human character in its usual imperfections, with only the means of expression varying.
An earlier generation similarly intent on personal liberty, and similarly privileged, would have indulged tastes for fine spirits in dangerous quantities, while suffering more severe casualties, but gaining more conviviality among the survivors. That might have suited me better. In any case, I experienced the privileges more vicariously than by inheritance, and thus initially lacked the others' self-confident frame of reference.
To this day, tolerance for that culturally pervasive drug smuggling legacy remains customary among some of America's most prestigious leaders—your hero Elon Musk, reputedly. Thus, hypocrisy on that subject, however fervent, will not conjure an alternative reality with much real power to affect politics. Life-long cultural experience will not erase itself, and need for personal relief from perfectionist norms remains near universal.
Your problem is conflation of drug use with race and class. "Those people," are the targets of the scorn you invoke, not the drugs the scornful have been so long accustomed to smuggle and use themselves. Look to your own community to see the proof. It's evident everywhere.
It didn't take long for some lib to come along and weep for the drug dealers.
You misspelled "alleged drug dealers".
Martinned, they were criticizing UK immigration policy on FB and got what the UK law says they get.
I get the impression that we're roughly of the same generation; I was born in '59. Maybe you're a bit older than me.
I'm enough of a libertarian to think that drugs should be relegalized, but that's not because I actually have a favorable opinion of drug users. As I like to say, if you want to drill a hole in your head and pour in battery acid, I'll defend your right to do so, but I'll still consider you an idiot.
Rather, I support the freedom to use drugs because I think people are morally entitled to make their own decisions, even if they're stupid decisions, and because victimless crime laws have really nasty consequences for the rest of us, too.
But the war on drugs does not persist because views like mine are the majority viewpoint. It persists in large measure because the majority not only consider drug use stupid, but consider it something the government can reasonably suppress.
Now, saying "drug" is insufficiently nuanced; I'd guess the majority in most places are prepared to tolerate pot use as a vice that should at least not be sanctioned, even if it should be discouraged. I don't think, however, that tolerance extends to "hard" drugs like cocaine or fentanyl.
So, I think your personal circles aside, bombing drug smugglers' boats is not going to excite much domestic opposition. Though maybe it should from a principled legal standpoint.
You'll maybe recall back when Clinton got some incoming bad press, and diverted public attention by bombing a pharmaceutical plant (Which he dismissed as an "aspirin factory".) in Khartoum. Legally, that was a LOT more problematic than what Trump is doing, and in humanitarian terms it was nightmarish in its consequences.
But it hardly hurt him at all, in fact, he did it thinking he'd benefit from it.
If he could survive doing THAT, I don't think bombing a few drug smuggling boats is going to prove even the least bit troubling for Trump.
"Rather, I support the freedom to use drugs because I think people are morally entitled to make their own decisions, even if they're stupid decisions, and because victimless crime laws have really nasty consequences for the rest of us, too."
We usually agree on stuff, but this is overly simplistic in my view. It imagines a world where a guy bangs out a 10 hour shift at the plant, comes home, enjoys his recreational heroin while watching the History Channel and gets up in the morning and does it all again.
The reality is that hard core drug use, by its nature, causes vast societal harm. People are addicted and don't work, sap the social welfare system, ruin the neighborhood because they live in flop houses, need money to feed their addictions so they resort to property crimes like burglary and shoplifting, and then gravitate to personal crimes like robbery.
I don't think you can realistically say, "Okay, but we'll punish those secondary things while fighting for your right to do the primary thing." Experience teaches that doing the drugs will inevitably lead to most people becoming addicted, ruining their lives, and ruining their communities. There's nothing paternalistic about society saying that you can't do that.
The party of small government!
And any libertarian who breaks with these people is actually a leftist!
[I'm not a decriminalization person other than wrt pot, but drug policy does show the cleavages in the MAGA coalition, and how little these ideological issues bother them. The luxury of a cult of personality is it avoids the hard work of actual politics.]
Oh, I agree that sort of drug use, just like habitual drunkenness, causes societal harm. Mostly by rendering the users a waste of skin, but harm. Mostly but not exclusively to the user.
Efforts to effectively make it illegal cause harm, too, and mostly to the people who weren't stupid enough to use the drugs. They feed organized crime, inner city gangs, police corruption. An awful lot of our crime problems in the US are driven by the war on drugs.
That's why we gave up on Prohibition, remember, not just because people were tired of being sober. Because it was messing up society in all sorts of ways. Only, with the war on drugs, instead of giving up we doubled down.
One big difference between Prohibition and the War on Drugs (WoD) is that Prohibition targeted a home-grown industry (which is why it was easier to overturn Prohibition), while the WoD targets - mainly - foreign groups, so it's easier for Americans to accept the WoD actions.
I get the impression that we're roughly of the same generation; I was born in '59.
Perhaps a bit more age difference than you suppose. I was born in 1946.
But we are vastly different in generational experience. For practical social and political purposes, you were too young to have first-hand insight into the cultural revolution that preceded your awareness, which cannot have happened much prior to 1964. That means you missed not only most of the defining youthful experiences of the baby boom generation, but also the most critical turns in the civil rights struggle, McCarthyism, and the experience of a militarized society bequeathed by WW II and the Korean War. Like essentially everyone without first-hand memory of Jim Crow, you underestimate its impact, its horror, and its cultural staying power.
That was all context which shaped attitudes for a lifetime. Some of it context helpful to good judgment, some the opposite.
You don't have it first-hand, and your remarks here show the usual alterations that second-hand insight mixed with later lived context are likely to deliver. Like a great many commenters here, that seems to make you an acolyte of the so-called Reagan revolution. I remain as baffled by that as I think you are about the era I described
#7: We have not sunk enough drug runners yet to make anyone think that their drug boat will be sunk.
You do not need a crew of six to run a boat -- when the fear of the US becomes real, you'll see crews of one. But right now, the price of Coke is dropping, lots of boats are getting through.
.. it's not dropping enough...
Umm, what's the price of Coke in your neck of the nape? Asking for a friend.
Surprising precisely no one, the hamas human animals have broken the terms of yet another ceasefire. Still waiting for the remaining hostages (48 hours past phase 1 deadline).
The war will resume if the guarantors (Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, etc) continue to look the other way, while hamas refuses to honor it's commitments.
Gee, who could have seen that coming?
(Me, actually, on this very blog last week.)
Maybe next time involve the Palestinians in the peace talks?
But seriously, all this will do is delay the IDF withdrawal from Gaza, which was the Israeli government's intention all along, as Netanyahu told anyone who wanted to listen from day 1. Under the terms of this "deal", Israel decides if and when it wants to withdraw from Gaza, and it only needs the bare minimum of Hamas violence to stay there indefinitely.
...which of course brings us back to the situation before 2005, when Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel from Gaza. Sometimes history really does repeat, particularly in the Middle East, where nobody ever seems to learn anything.
Who are the representatives of the Palestinian people in Gaza? Because correct me if I am wrong it is Hamas.
That Palestinian Authority is the internationally recognized diplomatic party for the Palestinians, not Hamas.
Hamas can be ignored, but their lock on power in Gaza would make any agreement that didn’t include them end the exact same way this one did.
Hamas was the elected government of Gaza
No it wasn't, and it certainly isn't. It fought a civil war against Fatah, that's how it ended up in charge of Gaza.
Legislative elections were held in the Palestinian territories on 25 January 2006 in order to elect the second Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The result was a victory for Hamas, contesting under the list name of Change and Reform, which received 44.45% of the vote and won 74 of the 132 seats, whilst the ruling Fatah received 41.43% of the vote and won 45 seats.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election
So far there are no representatives of the Palestinian people in Gaza, because anyone who might potentially take that role ends up blown up or locked up by the Israelis.
"(Me, actually, on this very blog last week.)"
Regular Nostradamus you are.
The only ones who couldn’t make that prediction were the idiots who believed someone as shallow and transactional as Trump could secure Mideast peace.
Yeah, my point was that everyone thought that Hamas would try to wiggle out.
People were hopeful, not everyone is a sullen lefty troll like you.
Transactional is how the Mideast works. He got the living hostages out, good enough for now.
People around here were feting Trump and saying he deserved the Peace Prize.
You'd best start believing in cults of personality, Bob - you're in one.
Hamas is also conducting summary executions of other Palestinians on unbelievable pretexts. Where is the outcry from the left about those murders?
Haven't you seen? The Left has a bloodlust and they love murder.
There is certainly a notable absence of reporting on this point on the website of The Guardian.
Good!
"Where is the outcry from the left about those murders?"
No Jews, no news.
Your caricature of “the left” is causing your comprehension problem. I am repeatedly and relentlessly (despite ample proof to the contrary) accused of being a leftist, yet I have unambiguously and constantly supported Israel’s right to defend itself.
There is a far-left contingent that is virulently anti-Israel and anti-semitic that mirrors the far-right Nazi and white supremacist movements.
There are a lot more people throughout the political spectrum (including those on the left) who support Israel but are appalled by the brutality and inhumanity of the far-right Israeli government’s strategy and tactics in Gaza. Those people aren’t anti-semitic, they are anti-Netanyahu and oppose the ultraorthodox and hard-right government. That includes a majority of Israeli Jews, as evidenced by the massive protests that have been going on (and growing) as the brutal actions of the government have continued.
The summary execution of civilians and targeted destruction of civilian infrastructure is to be decried and called out, whether it is Israel or Hamas terrorists doing it. Many on the left do so on a regular basis.
Trump has essentially said that if they don't stop, he will kill them.
I think he will.
Trump would kill lots of people if he could. Does he have the ability to kill these people?
"Does he have the ability to kill these people?" No, but the IDF does.
If the IDF could kill those people the war would have been over in a week. Usually the IDF makes a big mess where it thinks some Hamas members are.
I was assured that Donald Trump had secured peace in the Middle East. He literally had a banner made that said so. How could such a thing have happened?
As I said when the Trumpkins were falling all over themselves to claim he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, most people were hoping it was like Clinton and the Good Friday Accords and not Carter and the Camp David Agreement.
To no one’s surprise (except Trump and his sycophants), it was the latter and not the former.
Trump could have saved money by reusing George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Kind of a wild press release from DOJ:
"Department of Justice Files Largest Ever Forfeiture Action Against Approximately $15 Billion in Bitcoin Currently in U.S. Custody BROOKLYN, NY - An indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Chen Zhi, also known as “Vincent,” the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group (Prince Group), a multinational business conglomerate based in Cambodia, with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for directing Prince Group’s operation of forced-labor scam compounds across Cambodia. Individuals held against their will in the compounds engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, known as “pig butchering” scams, that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world. The defendant is at large.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Department’s National Security Division also filed today a civil forfeiture complaint against approximately 127,271 bitcoin, currently worth approximately $15 billion, that are proceeds and instrumentalities of the defendant’s fraud and money laundering schemes, and were previously stored in unhosted cryptocurrency wallets whose private keys the defendant had in his possession. Those funds (the Defendant Cryptocurrency) are presently in the custody of the U.S. government. The complaint is the largest forfeiture action in the history of the Department of Justice."
I go to Cambodia every year for a month or two, and I can tell you Prince Group is a pretty big deal there in banks and real estate, but all in the last 5 years.
I'm sure almost all the 15 billion is from other countries in Asia, that's on third Cambodia's annual GDP.
But 15 billion in bitcoin using slave labor call centers is pretty impressive in any country.
“Most recently, the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet was the naked bicyclers in Portland who were protesting ICE,” (House Speaker Mike Johnson) added, alluding to the city’s annual “Naked Bike Ride,” which has taken place since 2004 but was convened in an “emergency” demonstration on Sunday to protest federal presence in Portland.
Sure Mikey....
No Kings is now antiAmerican too.
And the Cartels and Antifa got together to make some kind of superAntifa.
They’re not really bothering to try for a good sounding justification anymore. They know MAGA will support all force against all liberal seeming peoples. And they don’t much care about anyone else’s opinion.
They're starting to uncover the Democrat terror networks behind events like No Kings.
This is great to see the wheels of justice and accountability turning.
"Though the people behind him [Mike Johnson] appeared to stifle a smile, it does not seem that he was joking, because he went on to say that protesters have attacked officers and people have been arrested."
This is hilarious.
I hear there's a group of 'moms in pajamas' that hand out pastries to protesters. That probably terrifies poor Johnson.
Yeah they arrested a lady in a banana costume playing a clarinet on Sunday, allegedly for assault. The video is horrendous. She’ll never be convicted— the officers ran into her— but the arbitrary arrests are kind of the point at this stage.
Mike has a literal pact with his son to monitor each others social media to police possible porn.
These people are deeply weird.
Makes you wonder how they use Twitter, because that's literally one of the two things left on Twitter at this point. It's far right bots and porn bots.
He is threatened by nudity, I guess? Anyways in most circumstances public nudity is protected by the Oregon Constitution (our first amendment has been interpreted more broadly than the US 1st amendment, there was an interesting case about that a few years back).
Fox News, along with ABC, CBS and NBC, did not sign the Defense Department’s press policy by Tuesday’s deadline, having earlier in the day denounced the new regulations in a joint statement that included CNN, which previously said it would not sign.
weekend.
“Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues,” the news networks wrote. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/14/fox-news-among-broadcasters-refusing-sign-pentagon-press-pledge/
So DOD got all the journalists to volunteer to vacate the Pentagon. Oh noes, don't throw Pete into that brier patch!
I get the impression you don't want to live in a free and open country.
Maybe Argentina is more your speed?
The lobbyists and disgruntled bureaucrats will still provide them leaks at the bars and they can transcribe from press releases off site just as well.
This is you doubling down on not wanting to live in a free and open country.
President Trump said on Tuesday that Washington’s $20 billion bailout for Argentina comes with strings attached — namely, that the ruling party of his ally, President Javier Milei of Argentina, must prevail in the country’s legislative elections this month.
“If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, where he was meeting with Mr. Milei. Just minutes earlier, Mr. Trump had denied the economic lifeline was meant to help Mr. Milei’s party in the elections.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/us/politics/trump-argentina-leader-bailout.html
I guess we shall see if the Argentine people want to be made MAGA's bitch for a mere 20B Shekels. Although, they could use the dough to prop up their soybean industry
^^^ no leftwing antisemitism here folks
Why should $20bn go to Argentina in the first place, strings or no strings?
bitch for a mere 20B Shekels.
Don't twist out of your sick antisemitism.
Please reply to the right person, thanks.
Please suck a Schlong, thanks.
I think you're confusing him with Simon P, who after a long comment decrying the quality and lack of civility in the comments closed by telling everyone to "go fuck themselves".
Please stay on topic and not derail this important discussion.
Good.
Alec Baldwin crashed his wife's SUV recently, blaming the collision on a garbage truck the size of a "whale" allegedly cutting him off. The garbage truck has a dashcam that makes the situation look rather different:
https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1978119883293331815
It looks to me like he was trying to pass the truck on the right, by driving dangerously fast. In a shoulder or parking lane. The truck looked like it was pulling over, either to let him pass or to pick up trash.
I didn't think it would take long for Baldwin's tale to crumble. It sounded like something some high school kid would say. 'Garbage truck big as an elephant came out of nowhere.' Right. He's such an arrogant, entitled asshole.
While I can't stand the guy, I have to admit his Comedy Central Roast was hilarious -- if you like that sort of content.
I think he’s a rotten guy personally but a good guy publicly.
In his defense Mitch & Murray asked him to give a Pep Talk to some loser Salesmen and he was running late.
My favorite Boston driving moment had a car going on the sidewalk on the left side of the street to avoid oncoming traffic after attempting an unsafe pass of a garbage truck. As far as I could tell all vehicles exited the scene without damage.
This happened a few years before an appropriate movie quote: "I'm not even mad. That's amazing."
So I took a trip south into the Old Dominion and saw a funny thing. GOP signs said “Winsome Reid Mirayes.”
The latter two are the last names of their statewide candidates, the former the first name. I think the GOP is trying to bury the fact that “Winsome” dares have a hyphenated last name (Earle-Sears).
No, it's even more nefarious!! They hate black people so much THEY ONLY USE THEIR FIRST NAMES!!!
It's disrespect because she's black. Or, maybe she isn't authentically black because she's not liberal, so you can't disrespect an Uncle Tom. amiright?
you've uncovered a big mystery, Scoob.
I notice no one offers an explanation as to why they refer to her by her first name but the others on the ticket by their last name.
Winsome is such a winsome name.
I like her more outgoing sister "Getsome"
I guess idiots can't understand that using fewer letters means the text can be bigger and therefore easier to read at a distance.
The VA GOP would probably do the same for Miyares if "Jason" wasn't such a common first name.
I'm happy to predict that the Great State of Northern Virginia (and those lesser regions) will be electing Abigail Spanberger for Governor.
Last Friday, Trump even declined to back Winsome Earle-Sears while praising Attorney General Jason Miyares and (current Governor) Youngkin.
No way VA Democrats are gonna vote for a black. They got a strong slavery tradition.
No way VA Democrats are gonna vote for a Republican.
FTFY
a "black Republican"
You might know that the Democrat Attorney General candidate (Jay Jones) is also black, so either way, we'll have a black AG.
Now Jones is not a good candidate and has a scandal about comments he made in 2022.
Jones said if he were given two bullets and had to decide who to shoot between Nazi Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler, Cambodia’s dictator Pol Pot and then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert, “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
“Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time,” he added.
I'm leaning on not voting for the AG either way in a tight race.
There was a bit more to it than the two bullets remark. Considerably more, actually. It went on over an extended period, so it wasn't like it was just a momentary brain fart.
What Did Jay Jones Say? Read Text Messages in Full
Jay: "If those guys die before me I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves. Sent them out awash in something."
Coyner responds, "Jay Jones"
Back to, Jay:
"Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head. Spoiler: Put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time."
Coyner: "Jay. Please stop"
Jay: "Lol Ok, ok"
Coyner: "It really bothers me when you talk about hurting people or wishing death on them. You weren't simply asking questions and you know it." [Was this a regular thing???]
Jay: "I genuinely was. I wasn't attacking you, I was trying to understand your logic."
Coyner: "You weren't trying to understand. You were talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die."
Jay: "Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy."
Coyner: "There isn't. I point blank asked you more than three times. And you dug in that you meant it. I honestly am questioning a lot today."
Jay: "I mean I do think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascists? Yes"
Add that to his record of reckless driving, 116mph on the highway, and you have a picture of somebody who simply doesn't have much in the way of impulse control.
I agree. He’s slightly worse in that regard than the current GOP President.
That's what struck me about the exchange. It wasn't a drunken private text between buddies where he blurted out something that in hindsight he shouldn't have said.
He texted the wrong person, was chastised for what he said, had the opportunity to clarify or take it back, but he just doubled down on it to a political opponent.
Well, that Jones guy will win for sure. He's running on a platform of murdering conservative children, and there's one thing we know for sure, all those Democrat bureaucrats and ex-bureaucrats in NOVA are foaming at the mouth for the blood of conservatives and their children.
Hi Lex.
Shaggy and crew are on the case!
You never know what political signs might turn up around the Old Dominion. Years ago I ventured toward its southern border, where just on the other side I encountered what I was certain was satire: a campaign sign for sheriff, touting candidate Porcius Crank.
But no, it turned out to be Porcius Festus Crank. He was a scion of the long-influential Crank clan, of southern Virginia and eastern North Carolina. I never heard how the election turned out for him.
Did you know that, "Sic Semper Tyrannis," means, "Get off my neck!" Check out the state seal of Virginia to see why.
No, I'm pretty sure it means "thus to tyrants".
Actually, "thus always to tyrants" but I'm pretty sure SL was being sarcastic.
It means whatever I want it to mean. Nothing more, nothing less. H/T H. Dumpty.
Yes, we're accustomed to your way of thinking.
I can't help but immediately think about Twin Peaks when I hear her name.
I think the GOP is trying to bury the fact that “Winsome” dares have a hyphenated last name (Earle-Sears).
Or maybe it's just a name recognition thing. The driver of the recent hyphenation is actually a bit of a puzzler -- she's been known as Winsome Sears her entire political career and Earle is/was her middle name. They've been married for nearly 4 decades.
Its like both Kerry and Edwards bringing up Cheney's lesbian daughter way back in 2004.
They think all GOP voters are deplorables.
Then it sure is weird how the posters around here who say they can't live in the same country as the other side are the MAGA ones.
I've got friends and coworkers who voted for Trump, and would again. It's easy not to talk politics, if you're not brain poisoned.
Your take on the attitude of the other side remains more projection than reality.
"I've got friends and coworkers who voted for Trump,"
Some of your best friends are Negroes, right?
I'm not sure you know why that's a cliche and how people deploy it.
And I note you didn't answer my point about the commentariat around here.
If you don't talk politics, how do you know they voted for Trump and would again?
Can someone link the video of Obama and other prominent Democrats decrying the deployment of tens of thousands heavily armed National Guard troops against US citizens for the two months after J6 in Washington DC?
Was the US government not supposed to resist an insurrection?
Anyway, speaking of January 6, remind me: Who was president at the time?
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115359345947837427
The cultists simultaneously believe that Pelosi controlled the DC NG and that Trump has unlimited authority to deploy the NG wherever he wants.
Of course, you're using the bluesky version of alt-facts to make your claim.
Good one.
https://www.house.gov/the-house-explained/officers-and-organizations/sergeant-at-arms
The Sergeant at Arms reports directly to her. Pay special attention to this part:
The Sergeant at Arms reviews and implements all issues relating to the safety and security of Members of Congress and the Capitol complex. The Sergeant at Arms also coordinates extensively with the U.S. Capitol Police and various intelligence agencies to assess threats against Members of Congress and the Capitol complex.
Given these new-to-you facts, did Pelosi have any authority, what-so-ever, over the security of Congress?
Their brains are made of poeslaw: it's impossible to tell whether they don't understand that the Capitol Police and National Guard are different things (... and why), or whether they're merely pretending not to for some astonishingly stupid tactical reason.
I recall cultists claiming that Pelosi had control of the NG - for whjch they were roundly and rightly mocked.
It seems both you and DDH suffer from the same cognitive dysfunction.
Until an actual emergency occurs, the NG needs permission to deploy at the Capitol, and Paul Irving vetoed that because he said Nancy Pelosi would "never go for it". He might have been wrong, but he did veto NG deployment as her agent.
Did Pelosi ever say that Irving was wrong, and that Donald Trump was right to recommend the presence of the National Guard to ensure order?
More new-to-them facts.
They never knew of this detail, only the narrative. The narrative is their reality, it's their universe. Nothing exists outside, all exists inside of it.
You can cite all the protocols you like. I am talking about what cultists claimed, not what reality is - the two are oft unrelated.
You should stop projecting your cult mindset onto others. Your delusions and confused misrepresentations only make you sound like a crank.
Can speak to your outie? Your innie only lives in the narrative and has no understanding of human reality.
There was no insurrection.
But there is one in Chicago and Portland!
What a joke.
Would like to see one of the commentators here pick up coverage of the OpenAI copyright litigation in the Southern District if New York. Sounds like things are getting interesting in the spoliation department.
Another non-political topic. In honor of Commenter XY’s recipe posts, I ask this: what’s your favorite dish?
If you want to make it even more interesting, give us the best single meal you’ve ever had and where you had it.
My favorite dish is an eggplant parm sub. Paper-thin slices of eggplant very lightly breaded on a good sub roll (dense with a good chewy crust, none of that soft, airy nonsense) with the cheese melted under a salamander so the bread gets ever-so-slightly toasted.
The best meal I’ve ever had was at Felidia’s in New York, Lidia Bastianich’s original restaurant (now closed). It was house-made squid ink pappardelle pasta in a sage brown butter sauce. Such a simple dish, but done perfectly with the pasta nicely al dente and the butter browned to the edge of burning so the nutty flavor was deep and prominent. Dear God, it was delicious.
My favorite was an individual filet mignon beef Wellington. It was so incredibly good! I have yet to find it again, either in that original restaurant, or anywhere else.
Every year for Christmas dinner I try to cook something new and really out there, and last year it was beef Wellington. It's not quite as complicated to make as you might think, and the individual size is even easier, so you might try it yourself.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/282602/chef-johns-individual-beef-wellingtons/
Still haven't decided what to make for Christmas this year. I'm thinking maybe Beef Bourguignon made with beef short ribs.
My mom used to make those for fancy dinner parties (although as kids we only got the leftovers). Did the one you had have that mushroom pate layer between the filet and the crust?
The duxelle? Yeah.
My mom and dad used to make this rolled roast filled with onions and olives, and cooked in wine. They claimed that the recipe was from the Galloping Gourmet, and required that you drink a glass of wine at each step, so that you were quite drunk by the time it was in the oven.
I've had no luck tracking down the recipe, if anybody has any leads I'd appreciate it.
My absolute favorite dish is kind of plebeian: Shrimp egg foo young, with that brown gravy Chinese restaurants specialize in, that's got so much MSG you're risking a headache eating it. I just LOVE that stuff!
But the single best meal I ever had was when we had to travel to Atlanta on a holiday, and surprisingly didn't have trouble finding a last minute room at the Omni at Centennial park. It was even reasonably priced! We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and you could have rolled a hand grenade into there and had no casualties.
The bored out of his skull head chef came out personally to serve us our broiled scallops and chat. Seems somebody, since fired, had really screwed up reservations, and the hotel was practically empty.
I have literally never had scallops that good, before or since. They were, like, the Platonic ideal of broiled scallops. I swear they must have just been delivered straight off the boat, and I know they were 30 seconds off the grill.
I have a recent beef about dishes featuring really big shrimp. They are weirdly chewy. Shrimp are a synonym for small for a reason! Serve small shrimp!
Also, cut the tails off, you lazy chefs.
Something we can agree on, although I don't mind the tails. Makes a nice handle when dipping in sauce.
Depends on the dish, I suppose. The really big ones work well on the grill.
Shrimp? Yucko, you're pretty much eating Ocean Roaches, Shrimp, Lobster, Crawfish, it's the one food I have no trouble keeping away from. (OK, now Pulled Pork, Bacon, Country Ham???? like Barry Hussein with his Smoking, it's a "Work in Progress"
Back in the end of June my family and I were in Venice for a wedding and we had dinner out on the canals one of the evenings and chef came out and prepared our dish table side. He even processed the lobsters table side.
It was something special. One of my favorite dinner memories.
FYI, I've recently picked up a brand sponsorship and I am getting paid per 'and'.
Egg foo young? Really, Brett? That American abomination? I thought you were more refined than that. But I suppose the palate wants what it wants.
Sure, I can cook perfectly authentic Chinese food, and do, (Red cooked pork, yum!) but childhood favorites stick with you.
Not everyone enjoys the Kum of Sum Yung Gai
The best dish I make for myself is braised short ribs on - yep - pappardelle pasta: brown the meat, sweat the mire poix. Then I go in for the kill: tomato paste, anchovy paste, king oyster mushroom and my homemade demi glace.
I think the best restaurant meal I ever had would be 15 years ago in Paris Las Vegas. The iced seafood tower, plates taken away covered by a table cloth, tornadoes Rossini, creme brulee
Oyster sauce works in that dish, too, in place of the anchovy paste. I swear by the stuff, but you have to get the real thing, not "oyster flavored sauce". We buy ours in bulk at an Asian grocery that supplies local restaurants.
Brave man, whoever first saw an Oyster and thought, "I've got to eat THAT!"
Next up; best sex you ever had and where you had it.
For me back in the 1960s. But conventional wisdom is if you can remember what you did in the 60s you were not doing it right.
About 5 minutes ago, Rosey Palms and her 5 sisters, Holiday Inn Express (might want to check the towels) it's my version of the "Morning Constitutional", and has health benefits, but you gotta alternate hands or you end up looking like Guillermo Vilas (1970's Lefty Tennis Player, my second favorite after Connors, (and later McEnroe, another lefty btw) had YUGE (HT "45/47") Left forearm/biceps, while his Right arm was a withered vestigial appendage (I would say like Bob Dole, but that would be cruel) Seriously, you gotta flush the toxins out of the Prostrate, you've got to! (HT C. Kramer) Oh wait a minute....... You said "Best you ever had" Well in the words of that Great Songster Stephen Sills "Love the one you're with"
Taking advantage of some unexpected free time to make a Smörgåstårta
My favorite dish is unadorned salmon.
I like just cheap grocery store brand hotdogs, and not the All-Beef, the Pork/Chicken blends. I will splurge for the Top Sliced Bun, and only condom-mint is a little Salt (they don't put enough in them) and some Texas Pete. OK, I get that Texas Pete is made from Tomatoes (and in North Carolina, not Texas) it's not Ketchup No Ketchup, Never, Ever, Ever I'll convert to Islam, cut off my Schlong and become a Fairy, and start watching Soccer before I put Ketchup on a Hot Dog.
We kinda overlap. I very much like eggplant parm but not on a sub, and mine is rich and savoury and cooked for a long time so the eggplant skin gets crispy.
I liked Felidia - it was just along from my old apartment, but I never ate anything there that improved on the average meals I'd eaten in Rome or Milan.
Back when my family still lived in the Florida Keys my mother had a rule that the only seafood I could bring into the house was lobster and Hog fish. Both are notorious for often being overcooked. This was back in the 1960s when it was still legal to eat turtles. Again a dish that depends more on how it is processed (read butchered) but is also not an easy dish to prepare. My mother made breaded turtle steak with a garlic breading that you could cut with a fork and was a welcome but rare treat.
As for restaurants back then we could afford to go to Joe's Stone Crab in Miami. Sad to say it's prices are well over $US100 a plate for starters. But, as Yogi famously said 'that place is so crowded that no one goes there anymore'.
Blueberry Blintzes. Lingonberry Blintzes are also acceptable. My Finnish grandmother (of Swedish extraction) made them for us whenever we visited Minnesota.
"your favorite dish?"
Sydney Sweeney right now.
Favorite plate: Ribeye Tampiquena.
Best single meal at La Fogata in Reynosa, Tamps. Food was outstanding and I've never experienced service that good. Some of the other clientele appeared to be narcotraficantes. One that looked and dressed like Tuco out of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was sitting alone at a circular table meant for eight people, surrounded by a swarm of waiters in formal attire and at least ten different plates in front of him. I had cabrito al carbon, my wife had camarones al tequila (flambe). Did happen to accidentally glimpse the maitre d behind the curtains carefully dimming the house lights right before they lit my wife's dish.
Justices Pass on Hearing Challenge to H-1B Spouses’ Work Permits
The US Supreme Court has declined to consider a bid by immigration opponents to invalidate employment authorization for spouses of certain temporary foreign workers in the US.
Save Jobs USA, which represents American-born IT workers, has waged a decade-long battle to overturn an Obama administration rule extending work permits to tens of thousands of H-4 visa holders. Those visas are granted to dependent family members of workers on H-1B specialty occupation visas, which are heavily used by the tech industry.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/justices-pass-on-hearing-challenge-to-h-1b-spouses-work-permits
Trump still put a $10,000 fee on the H-1B visas (which is being challenged too).
He announced a fee. Has anybody been forced to pay it yet? The lawsuit came before any implementing regulations and I think it was premature.
Things like this may get worse before they get better. I am not sure just what the charges would be given that most LEOs enjoy significant protection from any charges.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/jb-pritzker-looking-at-prosecuting-ice-agents-in-chicago/ar-AA1Os8MA?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=ASTS&cvid=ba016d5628fc4443baa1bda3990109d7&ei=33
This just in: Libertarian MAGA's in Volokh comment section suddenly and enthusiastically support qualified immunity
hobie, no one thinks any federal agent should get a pass if they break the law.
Here is where we are different. My side doesn't think a federal agent who is lawfully exercising his authority should be prosecuted even if the policy they are enforcing is disagreeable politically.
Your side does.
Tell me more about James Comey.
Well, for starters, he perjured himself during Congressional testimony, he unlawfully absconded with classified materials, and then illegally leaked to the press.
Did you not read any of the charges? lol of course not.
You're pathetic. If you were any further up your Great Leader's ass, you could chew his Big Macs for him.
I'm pathetic because I believe Comey committed crimes? If you weren't such a fanatic, you could deduce criminal conduct too just from the publicly available information.
Being a reality denying fanatic is pathetic, Martinned. And that's you.
You're the one who kneels to an In-bred King (isn't the King Divine???)
Tell me more about your (Divine) King's Corona. What? I'm talking about his Crown. You see his Crown much? Ever taste it? want to taste it? think about tasting it? how about just smelling it?? Could have been a Rodney Dangerfield joke, "Just last week I went to a Mexican Gay Bar, I asked for a "Tall Boy Corona" they sent out a young guy named Julio!, I don't get no respect!!"
No one thinks any federal agent should get a pass if they break the law.
Hahaha, good one!
I know! Where to begin?!
You people are threatening federal agents for breaking your norms, not for breaking any laws.
A democrat government is out there threatening as much now.
I assume they still support locking up Johnson and Pritzker, though.
I would support locking up Pritzker, but feeding that fat fuck in prison will add to much to the deficit.
Vat a Country! Amurica, where even Death Row Prisoners are Morbidly Obese.
Well, most of them have twenty or thirty years to fatten up.
There is a difference between support and acknowledging reality.
Jay (Jones): "Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy."
And there you have it folks. This belief explains much of the horrific behavior we see by Democrats. They want single payer so friendly Federal bureaucrats can control everyone's literal life and death but can't get it, so what do they do? They pass Obamacare to ruin health insurance for everyone so they'll "feel pain personally and move on policy".
Student loans? Democrats nationalized them so they could make it worse and people will "feel pain personally and move on policy" to serve their goal of controlling your entire education.
They want to control your health and your mind so they can continue to use them as levers to make you "feel pain personally and move on policy".
Victim of a hurricane, but voted for Trump, Democrats at FEMA will make sure you "feel pain personally and move on policy".
---
This is not how real humans think. Only subhuman monsters.
This guy posting this as Trump fires people and cancels projects to make Democrats feel the shutdown is awesome.
Why do you think our health insurance industry has gotten exponentially shittier after Obamacare passed?
I say it was intentional. It was always a submarine job to usher in single payer.
How about you? Do you think it was intentional sabotage, or do you think Democrats just have shitty health policies that don't work?
'subhuman monsters'
You know how everything you accuse the libs of, from pedophilia to fascism to election stealing to antisemitism turns out to actually be MAGA?
Call me another name, DD. I want to know more about you
White gentrifier?
I'm certainly not that... I don't do anything, that I can help, anyway, around the coloreds.
I've gentrified the hell out of my street. The very day I moved in two years ago, everyone on the street started fixing up their houses. When they saw that some fool white boy paid an unheard of price of $80k when all their houses were going for about $30k, they got on the bandwagon. And guess what? It worked. All the sprucing self-reinforced everyone's property values such that now most houses are commanding - and getting - around $130k. Because mine is a super mansion (in my own estimation), I'm expecting $200k should I ever decide to sell.
You're like a regular White Prince! Look at you and all your blessings your Whiteness has bestowed upon the natives.
I'm so proud of you 'lil hobie. **tussles hair**
Until one day when Hobie mysteriously vanishes, when they ask one of the Neighborhood "Utes" what happened, "Mistah Hobie?- he Dead"
I'll never forget the day I was given my N-Card. It was about 6 months into my stay. Homies be sitting on my porch at 10am smokin' and calling each other Nigga. And I say that I want to start saying nigga. They all look at me incredulously. And one says, 'Man, you a nigga now! You can say it all you want!'
I swear, my nigga chest swelled with nigga pride, and nigga tears filled my nigga eyes. I was IN!
It's your most glorious day!
Some of my glorious days where obtaining my Ph.D., selling my startup, getting married to the love of my life, the births of my sons, oh how do I wish I was a Democrat so the pinnacle of my life could be hobknobbing in da hood and getting my 'nigga card' where I have permission from a bunch of niggas to say 'nigga' without getting violently assaulted and murdered for being a White who dare said 'nigga' without an official 'nigga card'!
Glory to you and your new 'nigga card'! You've achieved greatness. To climb to the top of the Democrat moral authority pile though, you have to become black, lesbian, crippled and trans yourself or your kids.
Only $200K??, I need to check that out, there's tool sheds in my area that cost more than that, and it's Georgia!
It’s Lex.
Zoinks, Scoob, we got a mystery on our hands!
Letitia James not only has been lying on mortgage applications for 42 years, she's been harboring a fugitive for five years at her primary residence which she's been renting to her fugitive niece ever since she bought it as her primary residence.
Unbelievable.
Actually quite believable. If you're not going to shelter your (grand) niece when she's a fugitive from the law, when ARE you going to shelter a fugitive from the law?
Kinda curious how her grand niece was making the rent, though.
Oh, wait, never mind: Turns out she has a criminal record in Virginia, too: Possession of burglary tools, grand larceny, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Racking up a lot of speeding tickets, too.
Good thing she's a protected class. Where 'protected class' means "in the orbit of a powerful Democrat whose saving Democracy!"
Proposed; an essay, written and presented by someone with more skill and influence than me, entitled "The Stupidity of Originalism "
1. Point One: the use of originalist principles to justify the unitary executive theory, an outcome that, if held by the leading lights of the 1780s and 1790s, would have resulted in return to rule by George III, not rule by George Washington.
2. Point Two: the further corruption through "history and tradition" of originalism to conclude it is required that Americans be allowed to own unlimited weapons designed for modern warfare which result in thousands of unnecessary deaths each year.
I think Thomas is playing 4D old school with us by channeling the Code of Hammurabi, when neegroes ruled the middle east and justice was handed out differently depending on social status. That's his likely impetus for imposing a unitary king
You're falling for that Al Sharpton "We built the Pyramids" bit??? (OK, Reverend Al was right about the Greeks) Closest thing to a "Black Civilization" was Ethiopia.
"an outcome that, if held by the leading lights of the 1780s and 1790s, would have resulted in return to rule by George III, not rule by George Washington."
You think unitary executive theory overrides the outcome of a revolution?
"the further corruption through "history and tradition" of originalism to conclude it is required that Americans be allowed to own unlimited weapons designed for modern warfare which result in thousands of unnecessary deaths each year."
Look, I get that you think the 2nd amendment is a bad idea on policy grounds. When you can get enough people to agree with you about that to repeal it, it will stop being the highest law of the land.
The thing about originalists is that we REJECT the idea that you should let your policy preferences warp how you read the law. If the law means something bad, welp, it means something bad, go change it, don't lie about it.
So, "But if you interpret the Constitution to mean that bad things will happen!" doesn't move us at all. It's irrelevant, we're not asking what the Constitution should mean, we're asking what it DOES mean.
I really hate the income tax, this doesn't affect at all my interpretation of the 16th amendment. I think direct election of Senators was a bad idea from the perspective of constitutional structure and maintaining federalism, doesn't impact how I read the 17th amendment in the least.
Denial of cert in a DP case - Humphreys was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. It turned out that one juror had been a victim of a violent crime, lied about it under oath during voir dire, and then screamed and had hysterics in the jury room, showing extreme bias, when the rest of the jury didn't go along with her wish for the DP. Eventually the rest of the jury went along with her. Obviously unfair, but not unfair enough for the SC to grant cert - "can't impugn the jury verdict1" Er, yes you can in some cases.
Whether Humphreys deserves the DP is a separate issue from whether he should have won his appeal because you can't let jurors do this.
Sotomayor's dissent: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-826_10n2.pdf
Speaking of juries, apart from that mess the main problem with juries is that they don't/can't give reasons, meaning that their reasoning cannot be challenged on appeal. A court, on the other hand, can produce something like this, which will undoubtedly be appealed and challenged in detail.
ICC Trial Chamber I - judgment in the matter of The Prosecutor v. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman
P.S. Here is an interesting blog post about the judgment, discussing how the ICC (trial chamber and appeals chamber) has dealt with the principle of legality (nulla poena sine lege) in a situation such as this, where the defendant is a citizen of a state that did not ratify the Rome Statute, committed the alleged crime in a country that did not ratify the Rome Statute, and where the jurisdiction of the Court is based on a Security Council referral.
https://www.ejiltalk.org/abd-al-rahman-trial-judgment-new-views-on-the-principle-of-legality-applied/
Sorry Martinned, in Amurica we don't kneel in front of some inbred King's Schlong, or some "International" Clown Court, and which Rome Statue are you talking about? Michelangelo's "Moses" (why does he have Devil horns??), "Seduction of Prosperina"??, Trajan's Column (there's some underlying theme there, just can't get my hands around it, I stroke it enough, it'll come sooner or later) Love how you Euro-trash are like Natives everywhere (I'm a native Atlantan, never been to the King Center (too dangerous) ignoring your own cultural landmarks.
So you must be all in favour of "No Kings" protests. Good on you!
I don't like Kings, except maybe Elvis (and then only his early stuff)
"No Kings" protests"
The last one sure stopped ole Donnie. You guys live to protest, its better than sex!
It sure seems to piss a lot of MAGA people off for not mattering at all.
Mocking is not being "pissed off".
Nobody here cares. ICC = LOL
The problem with that case is that if you rule in favor of the defendant you might as well repeal the no-impeachment rules.
The dissent says that this qualifies as an "exceptional" case but it is really par for the course. I would be that nearly EVERY guilty verdict, if the jury deliberations were audio recorded, would find a violation of instructions, juror bias, misapplication of law, etc.
Also it isn't evidence that the juror lied at voir dire. She may have been lying to the other jurors to convince them to impose the DP. In any event, who are these 11 spineless people who came around to her side?
US citizen played the Ghostbusters theme in her clarinet at a protest at the Portland ICE facility,
She was arrested around 5 p.m., Her husband didn’t hear about her whereabouts until 2 a.m. the next day, only to discover she was being held at Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Washington.
No sign of specific probable cause, and no reason to take her out of state.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/portland-ice-clarinet-arrested-protest-b2845329.html
Early days yet, but unless something comes out to directly contradict this reporting, this is not defensible.
"the-independent.com" lol get real
On what grounds do you think the Independent is not to be trusted?
"Clark County Sheriff’s Office representative said she was being held on suspicion of assault on a federal officer."
They were chasing a suspect who ran into the band. Melee ensued.
Seems legit, given the utter lack of evidence.
Especially the moving her out of state bit.
I didn't realize prosecutors are supposed to publicly release all their evidence before a trial.
I hope they do in this case so they can get your approval!
"utter lack of evidence. "
According to her husband!
And her band. And the videos taken at the protest. And the Independent.
And DHS at this point has a history of asserting things without evidence that are later contradicted. Pointing to videos from years ago, or claiming videos from right now are from years ago. Evidence and baseline truth doesn't matter much to them. They know tools like you will insist whatever they say is true, so why bother making it convincing?
They, of course, called her and all the protesters Antifa.
"videos taken at the protest"
The video mentioned was when she was actually under arrest. What videos show the incident itself?
Her band? Less reliable than her husband.
Yes, you've made your willful blindness clear over and over again. We all know what you're happy to allow when it comes to liberals.
Apparently that includes not telling anyone and shipping citizens out of state for no good reason.
"no good reason"
You do not know the reason at all.
Might shock you but the US contracts for pre-trial criminal detention with local authorities.
Maybe Portland does not so contract, or it was full. I have no idea why, maybe its a bad reason or maybe good.
In ICE's defense the nails-on-the-chalkboard sound of an unskilled Clarinet player has been used as an "Enhanced Interrogation Technique" Most peoples musical talents should be confined like mine are, to the Shower. (and No, Car's not acceptable either, if you've ever seen my Kareoke version of "Love Shack" you'd know why
Frank "Red, Roof, busted!
There were some posts here a year or two ago on criminal liability for accidentally killing a bystander during an otherwise justified shooting. Texas has liberal laws allowing use of deadly force and sometimes the wrong person gets shot. The law has to decide whether such mistakes are crimes. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts recently decided state law for criminal prosecutions in such cases.
Defendant Kenneth Jose Santana-Rodriguez shot at Irving Sanchez but missed his target and killed Trung Tran instead. This much is agreed. Whether killing Sanchez would have been murder is disputed. Under settled law, any criminal intent towards intended target Sanchez transfers to Tran. If killing Sanchez would have been murder, killing Tran was murder.
Defendant Santana-Rodriguez argues self-defense. His attorney told the SJC that Massachusetts should adopt Pennsylvania law where killing a bystander in an attempt of self-defense is not a crime. The prosecution argued that killing a bystander is never justified, or can only be justified if the defendant acted without negligence. Most states are between the "never" and "always" extremes.
The court split the difference and adopted a form of the majority rule, stating
We conclude that a defendant's lawful self-defense against an assailant may excuse the killing of an unintended victim, such as an innocent bystander. This is not, however, a defense to wanton or reckless conduct. A defendant may therefore be held criminally liable for the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter if the Commonwealth proves that a defendant's exercise of self-defense was wanton or reckless so as to create a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm would result to an unintended victim.
Commonwealth v. Santana-Rodriguez, SJC-13753 https://www.mass.gov/doc/commonwealth-v-santana-rodriguez-sjc-f13753/download
In my opinion, proving negligence is easy in such cases – gun control means hitting your target – but proving recklessness is hard.
This decision comes on pretrial motions. The parties need to know the law to present the case to a jury. The SJC is more generous than federal appeals courts in granting interlocutory review.
Would this apply to a police officer?
The reasoning would apply to police charged criminally for killing bystanders. Police are rarely charged. In civil cases the legal rules are different, "clearly established" right for constitutional claims and usually negligence for state-law claims.
It should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
If an officer is shooting at a specific, identified, valid, threatening suspect and accidently shoots a bystander, that could be justified.
But if an officer is shooting at a random target, not fully identified, or the shooting is not justified based on specific circumstances, then they could be held liable.
Each incident is unique.
(Retired federal officer)
Excused, maybe. Not justified.
I suspect that cases like this are rare but they are one reason I am concerned about people having too easy access to guns. Guns are very dangerous and people using them without training or carelessly are even more dangerous. Bullets don't fly where the shooter intends, but rather where the gun is pointing. One of the first rules I remember from hunter training is to not only know where your target is, but what is near and behind your target.
That's why I don't buy that Dick Chaney shot that guy in the Heart "accidently"
Cheney, Face?
You are right, Dick did shoot Harry Whittington in the face. Frank's point is good. It wasn't really an accident because Chaney was violating hunting rules and shooting to the back of the skirmish line rather than forward.
Face, neck and chest; Wikipedia says Whittington subsequently had a heart attack "due to at least one lead shot lodged in or near his heart".
I'm confused (as usual) aren't these "Drug Boats" supposed to be flying a "Skull & Crossbones" Flag so everyone knows to stay away from them?
Here's a good story: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/congress-collected-30-million-lines-phone-data-trump-j6-probe-raising-civil
In a follow-up from last week's post I read this week that the government turned down the Navajo Tribe connected Energy Company's bid for a coal mining lease. The bid was less than a penny a ton for the coal. I know that President Trump cannot read but maybe one of his staff could read the paper to him so he can start to understand that coal is not ever coming back.
Never say never and always avoid always.
NASA has had so much mission creep that who knows what it's mission is any more. For a while there they were cheerleaders for climate change. Then it was all about Arab scientists. They kind have forgotten that they are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA mission was all about Araba scientists?
You really need to get out more.
Interesting concurring opinion (helpfully short) providing criticism of federal Indian law:
https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/sal-mungia-federal-indian-law-opinion/
Judge Mungia has gone off the reservation, as they say.
"I dissent from the racism embedded in the federal case law"
It is not his place to decide whether federal case law is racist and it is definitely not his place to dissent from U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
Judge Mungia only took office this year, after a career mostly in tort law, and will not be up for reelection until 2030.
Perhaps we should abolish all the Indian laws. For a period of transition, convert the reservations into municipalities coordinate with counties.
Where does this "his place" rule arise?
Lower court judges (of a range of ideologies) regularly discuss their disagreement with current law, granting as he does that they are bound by high court precedents.
This is not novel. Concurring and dissenting opinions are particularly in place to provide personal statements of this kind.
Imagine a state court judge in 1859 noting, while acknowledging they are bound by it, that Dred Scott was wrong and the case law is racist.
Some editorial ignores their (quite valid) criticism and discuss how it is not the judge's "place" to say anything.
"[I]f our Constitution embalms inflexibly the habits of 1789 there may be something in the point. But it does not; its grants of power to Congress comprise, not only what was then known, but what the ingenuity of men should devise thereafter. Of course, the new subject-matter must have some relation to the grant; but we interpret it by the general practices of civilized peoples in similar fields, for it is not a strait-jacket, but a charter for a living people."
Reiss v. National Quotation Bureau, 276 F. 717 (S.D.N.Y. 1921) (Judge Hand).
I have been skimming Gerald Gunther's seminal biography of Learned Hand. A lot of interesting material. "Learned" was his mother's maiden name. His birth name was Billings Learned Hand.
His "Spirit of Liberty" speech is well worth reading:
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/spirit-liberty-speech-judge-learned-hand-1944
Near the end of his life, he had his "Bill of Rights" lectures that provided a very strict take on judicial review. Hand was throughout his career very wary of judicial review but the lectures is basically Hand on steroids on the point.
Josh Blackman found a clip of him singing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKN_W35P8jA
Hand never got to fulfill his dream of being on the Supreme Court. His last chance came when he was over 70.
His supporters figured FDR, after making an issue of justices being too old, would not want to pick him for that reason. The reason FDR went another way was as likely ideological.
He outlasted the person FDR wound up picking by over a decade.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15192815/Terrifying-footage-reveals-moment-far-left-arsonist-firebombs-home-Pennsylvania-Governor-Josh-Shapiro-war-Gaza.html
The far-left arsonist who firebombed the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro targeted a room where the Democrat had held a Passover Seder earlier that night.
Those violent MAGAts!!
Balmer was described by his brother as a political independent until 2024, when he tried to convince his family members to vote for Donald Trump.
Famously, that's the way to recognize someone on the far left.
Trump's Time photo shows a perfect ear.
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Jared Dillian | 10.15.2025 12:55 PM
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