Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[Mr. Bumble]

Epstein......

[Frank Drackman]

Horshack….

[Mr. Bumble]

Barbarino.....

[Frank Drackman]

Did I ever tell you about my Uncle Schlomo??

[DDHarriman]

You didnt have to. Doesn't everyone of your people have one?

[Frank Drackman]

He told his wife he was seeing a Psychiatrist, she told him she was seeing a Psychiatrist, a Butcher, a Plumber, and 2 of his friends.

[DDHarriman]

lol that's great

[Commenter_XY]

Do you remember the scene in Animal House where John Belushi chomps down a bunch of mashed potatos in the cafeteria, and asked what he was (a zit)? And then that morphed into a huge food fight that left a giant mess to clean up?

That is what is about to happen in Washington DC, writ large. A gigantic food fight. It will be highly entertaining. And perhaps sobering.

As for the predators (to be named), they will never walk around in American society again w/o having to look over their shoulder. They will never know who might come calling, or when. Alternatively, I can see a virtual cottage industry of websites being created, naming and shaming the predators. I hope they (the predators) will be completely shunned in American society for their actions (I tend to doubt it though; our moral code has broken down in America).

If a prosecutable crime not outside the SOL can be shown to have occurred, then prosecute. Yes, it might (probably?) fail. Regardless, the victim had their day in court, and the predator tried in public. American society must have zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and victimization of young women and boys; if we do not ferociously protect our children, what are we? Who are we?

I don't care about predator party or age; I do care very much that they receive sanction (justice? accountability?) in American civil society. Many Americans feel exactly the same way I do about this (meaning, have zero tolerance or sympathy for sexual predators of young girls and boys), and it is not just Team R or MAGA adherents.

[Frank Drackman]

If Trump really wants to "troll" they should release the Files at the Kennedy Center.

[John F. Carr]

I don't think we will find a reliable and unambiguous list of perpetrators and acts. There will be a list of names of people who associated with Epstein. The mob will have to make up its own stories.

[Commenter_XY]

Is there a way for Congress to subpoena the GJ transcripts, and then release them? Ostensibly, the subpoena would be to assist Congress in drafting legislation to help the victims of Epstein's associates.

Could Congress do it?

[Frank Drackman]

They can do whatever they want, my biggest complaint about the "Gallows" on January 6th is it wasn't big enough.

[John F. Carr]

The grand jury didn't hear any evidence the executive branch didn't already have.

[Commenter_XY]

So it is 100% redundant, is that what you are saying? Meaning, there is absolutely nothing in the GJ transcripts the Feds don't already have by other means (i.e. email, financial records, tax returns, smartphone data).

[David Nieporent]

No, that’s not correct. First, there’s testimony before the grand jury, which by definition is only within grand jury materials.

Second, the govt may have obtained some of the documents “by other means,” but some of those would have been acquired via grand jury subpoena. Those would also be grand jury material.

[not guilty]

Is there a way for Congress to subpoena the GJ transcripts, and then release them? Ostensibly, the subpoena would be to assist Congress in drafting legislation to help the victims of Epstein's associates.

Could Congress do it?

Congress theoretically could issue a subpoena, but it would certainly be quashed. Disclosure of grand jury matters is prohibited by Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, subject to exceptions not applicable here. Pursuant to Rule 6(e)(1), an attorney for the government should have retained control of the recording, the reporter's notes, and any transcript prepared from those notes and disclosure thereof by that attorney us prohibited.

As I explained yesterday, Congress could subpoena witnesses who testified before the grand jury and ask them about their testimony. The witness has a First Amendment right to discuss his/her testimony after the grand jury term has ended. Butterworth v. Smith, 494 U.S. 624 (1990).

But anyone listed in Rule 6(e)(2)(B), that is, a grand juror, an interpreter, a court reporter, an operator of a recording device, a person who transcribes recorded testimony, an attorney for the government; or a person to whom disclosure is made under Rule 6(e)(3)(A)(ii) or (iii), is prohibited from disclosing proceedings occurring before the grand jury in the absence of an exception created by Rule 6(e)(3).

Compliance with a Congressional subpoena is not listed among such exceptions. Rule 6(e)(3)(E) permits a court to authorize disclosure—at a time, in a manner, and subject to any other conditions that it directs—of a grand-jury matter in a limited number of circumstances not relevant here.

[Riva]

Again you have it backwards. The Epstein Act plainly requires the disclosure of certain materials. There is NO exception for Rule 6(e) materials. The federal rules were promulgated pursuant to statutory authority. The federal rules of criminal procedure do not override the statute, It is actually the opposite. Absent a specific carve out of Rule 6(e) materials, such documents must be released. I’m not sure why you cannot understand this.

[not guilty]

As I pointed out yesterday, Riva, Congress has no authority to negate the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure regarding grand jury secrecy, Riva. If you have actual legal authority to the contrary, please cite it. Ipse dixit pronouncements dont feed the bulldog.

Moreover, the bill passed by the House does not even require production of grand jury transcripts or materials. https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr4405/BILLS-119hr4405ih.pdf Ctrl-F is your friend.

There is no substitute for original source materials.

[Riva]

“Congress has no authority to negate the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure regarding grand jury secrecy “?????? That’s profoundly wrong. The federal rules would not exist without an authorizing statute. And the latest statute (technically bill until signed, see cartoon for source for that) clearly calls for the release of certain categories of material, none of which include an exception for Rule 6(e) materials. That’s from source materials by the way. My advice, stop digging the error hole and move on.

[not guilty]

What is your authority here, Riva? Federal procedural rules are, "in every pertinent respect, as binding as any statute duly enacted by Congress". Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 255 (1988).

Assuming arguendo that there is any conflict between the Epstein Files Transparency Act and Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the two must be read together harmonized if possible. "Statutes in pari materia are to be interpreted together, as though they were one law." A. Scalia and B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts § 39, 252 (2012).

SCOTUS has opined, "We generally presume that Congress is knowledgeable about existing law pertinent to the legislation it enacts." Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486 U.S. 174, 184-85 (1988). If the Epstein Act had employed language such as "Notwithstanding any other provision of law," that would present a different question. Congress did not use such language, so the instant legislation must be construed in light of pre-existing law.

[Riva]

What is my authority? The general effect of procedural rules is not at issue. And that a regulation/rule does not control a statute is so basic that it is quite shocking that you persist in this.

And there is no exception for Rule 6 (e) materials in the disclosures required by the pending Epstein act. Feel free to identify those exclusions if you believe they exist.

[Ridgeway]

This may be a first here, but I think Riva has the better of the argument. The Epstein Bill makes an exception for classified materials -- If they intended that the Epstein Bill respect all existing protections (like GJ secrecy) there would have been no need to call out classified materials.

In any event I'd wager a lot of innerweb bucks that the GJ materials have nothing interesting in them. First off, they were specifically aimed at indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, and so the materials most likely just relate to them. Moreover, a judge just recently reviewed them in one of the other cases and basically said there was nothing new in there.

[Riva]

Ridgewhatever, if you disagree with anything I've argued in the past, have the intellectual integrity to explain yourself. Unlike others here, I would acknowledge an error. I won't respect your fucking insults. So, F off.

[not guilty]

What is my authority? The general effect of procedural rules is not at issue. And that a regulation/rule does not control a statute is so basic that it is quite shocking that you persist in this.

And there is no exception for Rule 6 (e) materials in the disclosures required by the pending Epstein act. Feel free to identify those exclusions if you believe they exist.

IOW, ipse dixit blather is all you have got. Thank you for your sub silentio admission there.

Any amendment to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure must conform to the Rules Enabling Act, whereby Congress vested power in the judicial branch to promulgate such rules. Per 28 U.S.C. § 2702:

(a) The original rules were adopted by order of the Supreme Court on December 26, 1944, transmitted to Congress on January 3, 1945, and effective March 21, 1946. The Criminal Rules were last amended in 2023.The Supreme Court shall have the power to prescribe general rules of practice and procedure and rules of evidence for cases in the United States district courts (including proceedings before magistrate judges thereof) and courts of appeals.

(b) Such rules shall not abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right. All laws in conflict with such rules shall be of no further force or effect after such rules have taken effect.

The specific subject matter of Rule 6(e) is grand jury secrecy, detailing particularly when and under what circumstances exceptions to the rule of secrecy applies. The "Epstein Files Transparency Act" is a generalized command to the Attorney General to make public various matters related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It makes no mention of Fed.R.Crim.P. 6(e), nor any other provision of law dealing with grand jury secrecy.

As SCOTUS has opined:

It is a basic principle of statutory construction that a statute dealing with a narrow, precise, and specific subject is not submerged by a later enacted statute covering a more generalized spectrum.

"Where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment."

Radzanower v. Touche Ross & Co., 426 U.S. 148, 153 (1976), quoting Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 550-551 (1974). The Radzanower Court added at footnote 7:

See Brown v. GSA, 425 U.S. 820; Bulova Watch Co. v. United States, 365 U.S. 753, 365 U.S. 758; Rodgers v. United States, 185 U.S. 83, 185 U.S. 87-89 ("It is a canon of statutory construction that a later statute, general in its terms and not expressly repealing a prior special statute, will ordinarily not affect the special provisions of such earlier statute"); Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U.S. 556, 109 U.S. 570-571. See also Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., 353 U.S. 222; Stonite Products Co. v. Melvin Lloyd Co., 315 U.S. 561 (specific venue statutes for patent suits prevail over general venue statutes).

[Riva]

I'm sorry NG, I'm not following you. Is your agrument now that Congress has permanently delegated to the S.Ct. its legislative authority with respect to the federal rules of criminal procedure? I suspect not even KBJ would agree with you on that. But, as noted before, you are welcome to your views. Good luck with your theories. Any further exchange is pointless.

[not guilty]

"Is your agrument [sic] now that Congress has permanently delegated to the S.Ct. its legislative authority with respect to the federal rules of criminal procedure?"

No, my argument is that statutes dealing with the same subject matter must be read in pari materia and harmonized such that each statute is given effect. There are various canons of construction to aid in that task, including the Harmonious Reading Canon (the provisions of a text should be interpreted in a way that renders them compatible, not contradictory), as well as the General/Specific Canon cited above (if there is a conflict between a general provision and a specific provision, the specific provision prevails (generalia specialibus non derogant)). See, A. Scalia and B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts §§ 27 and 28 (2012).

[David Nieporent]

Ridgewhatever, if you disagree with anything I've argued in the past, have the intellectual integrity to explain yourself. Unlike others here, I would acknowledge an error. I won't respect your fucking insults. So, F off.

Priceless. Bot so badly programmed that even someone agreeing gets met with insults and curses.

[Riva]

Not really priceless, but predictable that asshole yet again feels compelled to insert himself, with no apparent purpose other than to just be an asshole. The old Twitter cesspool was more worthwhile than the fucking idiots here pretending to be legal professionals.

[Stephen Lathrop]

not guilt — You write:

Congress has no authority to negate the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure regarding grand jury secrecy,

On the prestigious internet, with reliance on an AI query (?!), I find this:

Federal rules on grand jury secrecy, like all Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, are promulgated by the U.S. Supreme Court under authority granted by Congress (specifically, Title 28, United States Code). The rules are then subject to amendment by Acts of Congress. Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure specifically codifies the tradition of grand jury secrecy, detailing who is bound by the secrecy obligation and the limited circumstances under which disclosure is permitted.

I do not read that as fully supportive of your remark as I quoted it above. Do you care to add anything, or to correct me, or to criticize the AI in this instance?

[not guilty]

Congress here does not purport to be repealing any provision of prior law, including Rule 6(e). Nor did Congress employ language such as "Notwithstanding any other provision of law," which would present a different question if it had been included.

Repeals by implication are highly disfavored.

[Riva]

Please identify in the pending Epstein Act where the legislation excludes Rule 6(e) materials.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Do you concede an explicit repeal lies within the power of Congress?

[not guilty]

"Do you concede an explicit repeal lies within the power of Congress?"

Congress could expressly repeal all or part of the federal rules, but that is not to be inferred from Congressional silence.

Congress could also create an explicit exception by using language such as "notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, . . ."

But here the Congress has not done so.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It says, "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice."

It's hard to harmonize that with a law that excludes some records.

[not guilty]

It says, "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice."

It's hard to harmonize that with a law that excludes some records.

No, it is not hard at all for someone with actual legal training and experience. The general provisions of the ‘‘Epstein Files Transparency Act’’ (which nowhere discuss grand jury secrecy) control, except where they conflict with the specific provisions of Fed.R.Crim.P. 6(e) regarding grand jury secrecy.

Hey, if practicing law were as simple as you posit, the top drawer lawyers wouldn't earn the big bucks.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The general provisions that apply only to Epstein related documents, as opposed to the specific provisions that apply to all grand jury material?

[not guilty]

"The general provisions that apply only to Epstein related documents, as opposed to the specific provisions that apply to all grand jury material?"

Has our blind hog found an acorn?

[Martinned]

Are the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure superior law to a Congressional subpoena?

[Riva]

That is an irrelevant hypothetical. Not Guilty is making the federal rules superior to a statute promulgated by Congress which statutorily authorized the creation of the federal rules in the first place.

[not guilty]

SCOTUS has opined in regard to Rule 52(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which provides that "[a]ny error, defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect substantial rights shall be disregarded":

The Rule was promulgated pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 687 (1946 ed.) (currently codified, as amended, at 18 U.S.C. § 3771), which invested us with authority

"to prescribe, from time to time, rules of pleading, practice, and procedure with respect to any or all proceedings prior to and including verdict. . . ."

Like its present-day successor, § 687 provided that, after a Rule became effective "all laws in conflict therewith shall be of no further force and effect." It follows that Rule 52 is, in every pertinent respect, as binding as any statute duly enacted by Congress, and federal courts have no more discretion to disregard the Rule's mandate than they do to disregard constitutional or statutory provisions. [Emphasis added.]

Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 255 (1988).

The Rules Enabling Act is codified at 28 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq. Per § 2702(b), "All laws in conflict with such rules shall be of no further force or effect after such rules have taken effect."

[ducksalad]

Isn't it true, at least in theory, that it would take the same number of votes in Congress to change those statutes or make a one-time exception, as it did to pass the bill mandating release of the files?

[Bob from Ohio]

"after such rules have taken effect." says existing laws are no longer of any effect, it does not apply to laws passed afterwards

Congress can just pass a new law to order release of GJ materials here.

[Riva]

And indeed they have. And democrats will soon regret this like they likely regret the release of the 20, 000 emails.

[windycityattorney]

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/20/epstein-grand-jury-materials-ruling-00516558

Trump's DOJ has been to court to a couple times to try to unseal or release Epstein/Maxwell GJ materials. Each time they have failed.

The legislation, while admittedly broad, I think would still be subject to the general presumption that grand jury secrecy remains intact. Without some specific language very directly addressed to the issue; I don't think the legislation is going to override the rule. So I think NG is likely correct here. All that being said, there is more than one way to skin a cat. It appears that perhaps only an FBI agent or two testified at the grand jury. In one of the opinions, the Court noted the GJ testimony was something less than 100pgs total whereas the "epstein files" numbered into the thousands of pages.

If its like most other GJ testimonies; the FBI agent likely had a police report/summary of the investigation and just read from it in response to leading questions from the prosecution. That FBI summary/report (redacted?) could be subject to the legislation so the info the agent relied on can still theoretically be released.

[Riva]

The presumption of grand jury secrecy is not a rule of federal statutory construction, but a principle of common law codified in Rule 6(e). And there is no such exclusion in the pending legislation.

[not guilty]

It is not a "presumption," Riva. It is an explicit command to the persons identified at Rule 6(e)(2)(B).

What part of "must not disclose a matter occurring before the grand jury" do you fail to understand?

[TwelveInchPianist]

What part of "all unclassified records..." do you not understand?

[Commenter_XY]

Thank you for the complete response, NG. I learn.

Congress has options. Do nothing more than release everything (heh). Or, compel testimony from everyone who testified to the GJ via a Congressional subpoena, no matter how trivial. Or, issue congressional subpoenas for the GJ transcripts to the various courts, and have the Art1 v Art3 separation of powers battle reach SCOTUS (note: I am acutely aware of the shoe being on the other foot, one day).

[Riva]

Congress has already required the release of grand jury materials in the AG’s possession by a bill (which will become law after the president signs it, watch a cartoon for that if you need a source) with NO exceptions for grand jury materials. But be careful what you wish for. Epstein was a prominent democrat with many prominent democrat friends. And he hated President Trump for throwing his ass out of Mar-a-Lago.

[SRG2]

Yet Democrats everywhere had no issue with releasing the files, while the Republicans resisted.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, except for the ones who were in a position to DO it for about 4 years...

[Riva]

Some republicans may be tired of the Epstein distraction and want to actually conduct legislative business. But remember, Democrats also whined for the release of the 20,000 emails, that showed that the prominent democrat Epstein had no relationship with the President and in fact hated him. Democrats have glommed onto Epstein as their latest distraction since they have no agenda a sane voter would support, notwithstanding they spent years trying to ignore the democrat embarrassment that was Epstein. Would be nice if they actually honestly put forward some policies but they, like most commenters in this thread, don’t do the honesty thing. (Commenters that don’t even acknowledge their own errors when pointed out. Repeatedly. See above comments in Epstein Act) .

[David Nieporent]

Is there a way for Congress to subpoena the GJ transcripts, and then release them? Ostensibly, the subpoena would be to assist Congress in drafting legislation to help the victims of Epstein's associates.

Could Congress do it?

Asked and answered repeatedly. No.

[loki13]

I think that there are two separate issues going on.

First is the bizarre obsession with the grand jury materials. I know we've been over this before, but this was just a smokescreen from Trump. He didn't want to release the hundreds of thousands of pages that he could release, so he had the DOJ "try" to release the one thing he knew wouldn't get released hoping that people (like XY) would latch on to this, instead of ... everything else.

The grand jury proceedings are a red herring. There is no there, there. It doesn't matter.

Second ... I will slightly retract the above statement. It's possible that there might be something interesting there in terms of process- what testimony and evidence that the prosecution chose to use (and not use) to make the case. So it's not like there couldn't possibly be anything at all, but whatever is in them would not shed light on the overall "Epstein Business" ... not even close to the release of all the information that was collected.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Asked and answered repeatedly. No."

Oh, they cannot pass a law ordering the release? Bet they could.

[wvattorney13]

The response was to a question asking if Congress could subpoena the GJ transcripts. You deftly changed the hypo to a law.

I think, yes, Congress could pass a law requiring the release of this or any grand jury transcripts. There is a non-frivolous argument that there is no such legislative power.

[Riva]

You need to keep up on current events. What do you think the Epstein Files Transparency Act is? Just so you understand, there are no exceptions for Rule 6(e) materials in the required disclosures.

[wvattorney13]

I wish people could follow the direction of the conversation.

A law could be passed that requires the release of the grand jury transcript. I did not claim that THIS law did so. I didn't claim that it did not. I haven't read it.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think there's a strong argument that the Epstein act is a bill of attainder and/or an EPC violation. Or would be in regards to Epstein if he were still alive, and is still in regards to Ghislaine Maxwell.

If it only applied to information the executive branch could already lawfully release, and simply acted to deprive that branch of discretion concerning the release, that would be one thing, I think Congress could do that.

But to the extent it purports to remove statutory protection from only named individuals? Yeah, bill of attainderish, no doubt. And kinda unequal protection, too.

[loki13]

Are you just slinging around words without understanding them again?

Yep.

Anyway, as we have all told you over and over again, these files could have been released at any time by Trump prior to this, but he has not done so. He could have given them to Congress, and he did not.

The bill is because he has not done so. Any other questions?

[not guilty]

"I think there's a strong argument that the Epstein act is a bill of attainder and/or an EPC violation. Or would be in regards to Epstein if he were still alive, and is still in regards to Ghislaine Maxwell."

Who is being punished without trial, Brett?

[David Nieporent]

I think there's a strong argument that the Epstein act is a bill of attainder and/or an EPC violation.

There is not a strong argument, a weak argument, or any argument at all to that effect. Those words do not mean what you're using them to mean.

[David Nieporent]

As for the predators (to be named),

The null set.

[Don Nico]

At this point with the political circus and grandstanding, all epstein material should be dumped on the doorsteps of every journalist large and small. Will some victims be hurt? doubtless. Will some myriad, innocent acquaintances be besmirched? Doubtless. That is the price of disinfectant. Will anyone apologize to those pointlessly injured? I doubt it.

[John F. Carr]

For almost a decade Trump's opponents have been thinking "this time we've got him!" I bet the Epstein files ends up like the Access Hollywood tape and a long list of other career-ending scandals that just slid right off. To quote Edwin Edwards, you need to catch Trump in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. Such an incident would have leaked already. We'll see a story of two sleazy businessmen hanging out together. We won't see an unambiguous rape.

[Frank Drackman]

Enough about Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, I want to know what Epstein and "45/47" did.

[loki13]

....I mean, you have a good chance of being right. Not because of the heinousness of Trump's actions (I am not sure that even if he was caught with a live boy or a dead girl it would make a difference for the die-hards, because then it would be "DEM HOAX" and "DEEPFAKE" and arguments that it shows that Trump isn't a homophobe or something something manliness) .... but because how thoroughly debased and degraded many of Trump's supporters have become.

It's something I've thought about a lot. It reminds me of the people who have gotten scammed, and yet ... they keep sending money, and somehow convince themselves, despite all the mounting evidence, that it isn't a scam. Because they can't admit to themselves that they have been scammed. So they become willing to become increasingly outrageous lies, sending more and more money, because acknowledging the truth would be worse for them than continuing in the deception.

Look, there's a hardcore floor to Trump's support. But as the issues continue to crop up- not just the Epstein files, but all of it. The cognitive decline. The lies about narco-traffickers so we can build up military forces around Venezuela. The continual "Who do you believe, me telling you prices have gone down, or your lying bank account every time you shop?"

All of it matters. Why? Because he was never broadly popular. Instead, he had a small and highly motivated base of support. And seeing what he does has just made him increasingly unpopular. Will it matter? Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see. Last time, he got pwned in the mid-terms and lost the Presidency.

This time, of course, he is doing everything possible to rig the elections (so it would appear). But with free and full elections coming next year, I don't think he will do very well.

Time will tell.

[Josh R]

My bet: there is nothing in the files that will electorally hurt Trump/GOP more than "grab 'em by the pussy." But, it's bad enough for Trump to cover up.

The election is going to be decided on affordability, not Epstein unless the MAGA base sits it out because Bondi/Trump don't fully. release the files.

[Mr. Hook]

"It's something I've thought about a lot. It reminds me of the people who have gotten scammed, and yet ... they keep sending money, and somehow convince themselves, despite all the mounting evidence, that it isn't a scam. Because they can't admit to themselves that they have been scammed. So they become willing to become increasingly outrageous lies, sending more and more money, because acknowledging the truth would be worse for them than continuing in the deception."

During Trump's first term, when many were predicting his base would soon realize that they'd been taken for a ride and turn on him, a psychologist who specialized in cults or some such wrote an oped and explained that grifters succeed by letting their marks' ego do the work after the initial hook. The mark would rather double down and double down and double down instead of admit that they aren't so smart and have been fooled. And, well, look at this place, filled with Dunning-Kruger University summa cum laude graduates who would rather abandon prior principles than admit they've been supporting a grifter. They're the diehard Communists in Russia when Gorbachev turned out the lights on the Soviet Union. So, yeah, expecting the base to turn on him requires that they run out of ways to rationalize his con.

[Brett Bellmore]

"During Trump's first term, when many were predicting his base would soon realize that they'd been taken for a ride and turn on him,"

The problem is, the people predicting this were assuming that Trump wouldn't be trying to carry out his campaign promises. He largely did try, and the novelty of a Republican President visibly trying to actually fulfill campaign promises rather than blow them off, (No new taxes!) was so novel, Trump gets a LOT of slack.

Not an infinite amount, of course, but quite a lot.

[David Nieporent]

The problem is, the people predicting this were assuming that Trump wouldn't be trying to carry out his campaign promises. He largely did try, and the novelty of a Republican President visibly trying to actually fulfill campaign promises rather than blow them off, (No new taxes!) was so novel, Trump gets a LOT of slack.

Brett's fanfic strikes again, with his lone counterexample going back 35 years.

[MoreCurious]

Two questions: (1) Does anyone believe those files still exist? (2) If they still exist, does anyone believe we'll ever see them?

[ducksalad]

(1) In the electronic age it's really hard to make sure every single copy of a document has disappeared from the planet. They're probably somewhere.
(2) IMO we'll get to see a badly redacted version. Some of the redactions will be the traditional black squares or notice of a missing page, but the most important redactions aren't going to be made obvious.

[Sarcastr0]

Indiana not gonna try, and Texas and now Utah redistrictings are on the ropes.
https://kutv.com/news/local/utah-house-speaker-says-judges-timing-tied-our-hands-on-appeal-of-redistricting-ruling

Utah doesn't matter much. Per https://ballotpedia.org/Redistricting_ahead_of_the_2026_elections:
California +5D
Missouri +1R
North Carolina +1R
Ohio +2R
Texas +5R
Utah +1D (somehow)

After the dust settles, the Dems may come out ahead. Some on here will blame the legions of judges suddenly discovered to be lawless leftists.
But bear in mind that it's mostly institutionalists who are deeply in the weeds on really weedy civic stuff like each state's idiosyncratic districting rules. MAGA is anti-institution, among other things. So Dems gaining seats in redistricting because they’re the only ones competently able to do it is a distinct possibility.

I don't like it; the whole gerrymandering enterprise sucks and I hope the Dems fail as well. And there's still plenty of time for them to do so.
Maybe we'll get a bipartisan movement for some kind of anti-gerrymandering federal reform. But as of right now I don't see it. 'Lets make new rules to prevent partisan power grabs' is not a MAGA thing.

[ThePublius]

"Maybe we'll get a bipartisan movement for some kind of anti-gerrymandering federal reform. But as of right now I don't see it. 'Lets make new rules to prevent partisan power grabs' is not a MAGA thing."

It's funny that you would end with this. The Dems are the kings of Gerrymandering! Look at all of the states where near 40% of voters voted Republican, yet their congressional delegations have zero Republican members; Massachusetts is but one example. If anyone were to stop Gerrymandering reform it would be the Dems.

[Brett Bellmore]

While there's some justice to what you're saying, I would point out that a lot of that depends on exactly how the voters are distributed.

If you have a state that's 40% Republican, and the voters are uniformly distributed, no matter how you draw the maps, only 40% of the voters are going to be Republican in every single district, and Democrats are going home with all the marbles.

And that largely is the case in Massachusetts. You simply can't draw a map there that gives Republicans seats, Republicans aren't concentrated enough anywhere.

[jb]

Publius isn't interested in learning. I pointed to this paper last time the claim about Massachusetts being gerrymandered came up:

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/elj.2018.0537

Which, like you say, demonstrates that is simply not possible to draw a Republican district in Massachusetts due to population distribution. But since Trump posted that Massachusetts is gerrymandered, I guess we're just going to keep hearing this lie every time the topic comes up.

[ThePublius]

Are you suggesting that Massachusetts is not Gerrymandered? That would be a preposterous statement. Gerrymandering was named for Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts in 1812, and political parties have kept up that notorious tradition.

For example:

""According to the Brennan Center report, Democrats would still be projected to hold all nine of their Massachusetts congressional seats even in an election cycle as bad as the 2010 midterms. Li says that fact suggests that “at least some of the districts were drawn in 2011 to hold even if Democrats had another year as bad as 2010.”

“A lot of this is because Massachusetts is very Democratic, but it also suggests that Democrats have been spread out so that they win,” he said."

https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2018/04/08/massachusetts-gerrymandering/

So, for you, if Trump says Massachusetts is Gerrymandered, then it must not be Gerrymandered, because Trump lies. Is that so?

You're the one who is not only not learning, you are in a TDS bubble. Can you imagine denying that Massachusetts is not Gerrymandered? Holy cow.

[jb]

Once again, it's like you don't bother to read your own articles.

“The last time the legislature did redistricting, they did a good job,” said Pam Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts.

Wilmot was there in 2011 when Gov. Deval Patrick signed the latest redistricting bill, which earned plaudits from voting-rights and government-reform activists. For all of Beacon Hill’s entrenched flaws, the Center of Public Integrity said the process was a bright spot, giving the state an A grade for redistricting.

“We felt like the legislature actually took our suggestions and actually did one better,” Wilmot said in a recent interview.

But the principal point about Massachusetts is exactly what Brett lays out above: because the D/R split is relatively even across the state, you end up with most Congressional districts roughly mirroring the statewide vote split, and this would be true regardless of how you drew them. The summary from the paper I posted also gets at this:

Republican candidates often receive between 30% and 40% of the two-way vote share in statewide elections in Massachusetts. For the last three Census cycles, Massachusetts has held 9–10 seats in the House of Representatives, which means that a district can be won with as little as six percent of the statewide vote. Putting these two facts together, it is striking that a Massachusetts Republican has not won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1994. We argue that the underperformance of Republicans in Massachusetts is not attributable to gerrymandering, nor to the failure of Republicans to field House candidates, but is a structural mathematical feature of the actual distribution of votes observable in some recent elections. Several of these elections have a remarkable property in their vote patterns: Republican votes clear 30%, but are distributed so uniformly that they are locked out of the possibility of representation. Though there are more ways of building a valid districting plan than there are particles in the galaxy, every single one of them would produce a 9–0 Democratic delegation.

[Armchair]

Regardless of what a "non-partisan" organization says, the truth is in the maps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts%27s_congressional_districts#/media/File:Massachusetts's_4th_congressional_district_(since_2023).svg

Take a look at MA 4, for example. What you have is the more republican areas in the south bordering RI. But then you have that nice little strip reaching right into the core of Boston.

That is traditional for a Democratic gerrymander. You take a nice large sub-urban/ruralish area. But then you put a strip of it into the nearest major Democratic city.

This is the 2024 US Presidential vote by precinct in MA. It's not a surprise that the GOP-voting areas are all split up. It's gerrymandering.

https://www.politico.com/2024-election/results/massachusetts/

[jb]

Take a look at MA 4, for example. What you have is the more republican areas in the south bordering RI. But then you have that nice little strip reaching right into the core of Boston.

That's because each district needs to have uniform population and there's not enough people in that red area to construct a district. And as you can see from your own map, the red area is surrounded by blue so any district you draw up is going to end up with a bunch of blue votes countering those red ones.

Take a look at the paper I linked to. If you disagree with its methodology or conclusions, let us know why, but pointing to the shape of some existing districts doesn't beat the math of the state's population distribution. Or feel free to try yourself on https://districtr.org/ and let us know if you can successfully draw a district that will create a Republican Congressional seat in MA.

This conversation is so dumb because there's obvious examples of Democratic gerrymanders (e.g., Illinois or Oregon). But I guess because those states have at least one Republican representative, Trump (and therefore the rest of you) get fixated on Massachusetts, which just happens to have a voter distribution that makes gerrymandering irrelevant.

[Armchair]

"Or feel free to try yourself on https://districtr.org/ and let us know if you can successfully draw a district that will create a Republican Congressional seat in MA."

That was easy. Yes, if you draw the district, like I said, in southeastern MA and along the RI border, you get a full district which voted majority for Trump in 2016. And in 2024, this area went even MORE republican.

But...it's a minority district that has been split up and gerrymandered out of existence by the Democrats in MA. They call it "shoring up" their districts.

[ThePublius]

YOU are the one who asserted that Massachusetts is not Gerrymandered. That is simply not so, regardless of the outcome.

[Sarcastr0]

So I can read your comment one of 2 ways, both are wrong.

jb is arguing Massachusetts districting includes no gerrymandering. This is not what he argues, he argues that any way you'd seek to gerrymander would not materially change anything.

Though if you're arguing that there's totally gerrymandering 'regardless of the outcome' you're already well away from a thesis anyone cares about and just seeking to win an argument on the Internet.

There are better hobbies.

[jb]

I did not actually say that, which is easy to see by scrolling up a little. I said it wasn't possible to draw a Republican Congressional seat in Massachusetts.

You're actually the one that posted an article saying that the Massachusetts maps earned an A for how nonpartisan they were.

[ThePublius]

jb: "But since Trump posted that Massachusetts is gerrymandered, I guess we're just going to keep hearing this lie every time the topic comes up."

What is one to take from this statement?

[Armchair]

"I said it wasn't possible to draw a Republican Congressional seat in Massachusetts."

It is absolutely possible. I just did, using your own website.

Democrats have split up that district, snaking lanes into super-liberal Boston in order to keep it from existing.

[Stephen Lathrop]

ThePublius — To understand this, you have to pay attention to some of the facts on the ground—or in the bogs, as it were. The areas in SE MA you are upset about have a geologic history that figures into this. They were under a glacial lobe which culminated at Cape Cod. Cape Cod is the terminal moraine.

As the glacier melted back, in geologically recent time, it left that area with a characteristic geography, hydrology, and ecosystem. You are looking at the region of Big Cranberry.

The folks who live there are spread thin, A lot of that area has its water table on top, or so near the top folks did not build on it.

The ancestral white population in that area were called Swamp Yankees, and compared to the rest of MA, they do tend conservative. But you are being visually confused by the map, which suggests a vast area full of population, which is not what you are seeing.

If you mapped just the dry land suitable for home building, it would look tiny, and the population pattern would spread thinly over that tinyness. The traditionalists remain more subsistence and extractive than otherwise, with the folks living there sticking near the resources they subsist on or extract. There just aren't that many folks still living that way in MA.

I won't insist that you couldn't make a Swamp Yankee congressional district in MA, if you were intent on doing it. I don't know enough to say. It would be really hard, and it would take a notable gerrymander to do it. Or maybe you couldn't do it.

Suburban development has been creeping in among the bogs. And bringing golf courses. Golf course developers love glacial outwash. It's all sand trap and water hazard before you even put the grass down. And suburban developers love golf courses. But the people who live around the golf courses commute to Boston. Their politics do not trend Swamp Yankee.

Plus there are extensive areas where early settlers just abandoned what seemed to be dry land, but with new rocks which came boiling up from below every year. In outwash, the sand goes down, and the rocks come up. So that abandoned land is second growth forest now, with old dry stone walls running through it, and old stone foundations here and there among the trees.

It's an interesting region. I don't know of another quite like it anywhere. The major highways mostly got routed around the edges. In some ways it's like the NJ pine barrens.

[bernard11]

So, for you, if Trump says Massachusetts is Gerrymandered, then it must not be Gerrymandered, because Trump lies. Is that so?

Well, as a man once said in a different context, "That's the way to bet."

[ThePublius]

Take a look at this congressional district map and explain District 7 to me, for example.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/congress-districts-sample-map/download

[Brett Bellmore]

It's a gerrymanderer, but it's not a partisan gerrymander, it's a racial gerrymander, to elect a black Democrat instead of another white one.

[Martinned]

If you have a state that's 40% Republican, and the voters are uniformly distributed, no matter how you draw the maps, only 40% of the voters are going to be Republican in every single district, and Democrats are going home with all the marbles.

That seems like a great system...

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't think it's a great system. I think even single member, first past the post, could be done better than we do it. And I'd really prefer proportional representation.

It's the early adopter disadvantage: You get trapped in your mistakes, while later adopters can learn from them and not repeat them.

[Martinned]

The Netherlands had a single-member district system too, until 1917 when it was changed to proportional representation. (We had two rounds, like in France.)

[Frank Drackman]

There is not a language on Earth, or even in the entire Federation of Planets which would adequately express my dis-interest in Belgium's Legislative System.

[Brett Bellmore]

Change is easier in smaller countries.

We'd probably be in a better position, but federal incumbents afraid for their chances in a different system have outlawed PR for federal elections.

Uniform Congressional District Act

And state level legislators are typically opposed to it for the same reason.

It would have to be imposed against the opposition of both major parties, because they understand that the current system is enforcing their duopoly, and they like it that way.

[Martinned]

Change is easier in smaller countries.

Is it? In both cases you have the same problem, of politicians being asked to vote themselves out of office.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, yeah. It's basic statistics: Assume politicians have a general tendency to act in their own interest, which you can sometimes successfully counter.

For a small group of politicians, the odds of enough outliers happening to flip the outcome is relatively high. For a larger group, it becomes smaller, the statistical tendency approaches a fixed rule as the number increases.

It's like, suppose you have a coin that's biased, 55% heads, 45% tails. You're hoping to get a majority of tails.

For one flip you've got an almost 50-50 chance of the outcome you want. Flip it ten times, expecting to get 6 tails, and the odds of getting your 6 (or more) tails are 28%, not exactly doomed.

But to get 51 out of 100? 14%

101 out of 200? 7%

251 out of 500? 1%

By analogy, the bigger the country, the more deterministic the politics.

[Bob from Ohio]

"until 1917 when it was changed"

Minor countries can do lots of things nobody here cares about.

[Martinned]

Every time I talk about a country that isn't the US, I get that kind of nonsense, and when I do talk about the US, I get complaints that I'm too critical. There's no winning with you guys.

[Bob from Ohio]

Maybe just go away then.

[bernard11]

This is a fundamental problem with single-member districts. If you assigned voters to districts randomly, without reference to geography, the minority party in the state is only going to win a seat in extraordinary circumstances - Edwards' classic "live boy or dead girl" situation.

This is true even for minorities much larger than 40%.

I think the first question to ask is, "What defines an equitable system?" There's lots of talk about compactness of districts, but why does that matter so much?

[Brett Bellmore]

Basically, because allowing any shape of district gives the map maker more "knobs" to turn, more independent variables, to rig the election. Once you have compact districts of equal population, the map maker actually has very little ability to skew the election outcome. Not none, but enormously less than otherwise.

This doesn't mean that compact, equal population districts guarantee a "fair" outcome, however you chose to define that. Just an outcome that can't be manipulated much.

Now, abandon compact districts, and you have more "knobs" with which to manipulate the outcome, and if you're so inclined, you can increase some measure or another of "fairness".

But you can also just rig the outcome for the party you like, and tell yourself it's really about fairness.

I'd rather take away those knobs.

[bernard11]

That makes some sense, but the same argument applies to any criterion you might choose. Any rule that restricts the design of districts imposes limitations on the the ability to turn your knobs.

[wvattorney13]

I agree. That goes the other way as well. When blacks are concentrated in an area, drawing a neutral line that stuffs them into one district is not racial discrimination.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think we might have had anti-gerrymandering reform years ago, but Democrats tried to hijack it to mandate pro-Democrat gerrymanders instead, by using phony 'definitions' of "gerrymandering" that had nothing to do with what the term actually means.

Literally, you could draw a map that was an Escher tiling of salamanders, and minimize vote inefficiency. It would be easier than doing it with compact districts. That kind of rules out any claim that vote efficiency is a measure of 'gerrymandering', doesn't it?

I can understand why they'd want to, of course: The actual way Democratic voters are distributed in this country, with most Democrats living in areas that are disproportionately Democratic, and most Republicans living in areas that are only moderately Republican, is just fundamentally inefficient at translating votes into seats in the legislature.

That puts Democrats at a disadvantage in most states, unless the maps are deliberately drawn to counter that factor.

But "Gerrymandering" doesn't mean "unfair maps", whatever you think constitutes fairness. It means drawing maps to dictate the outcome of elections, particularly non-compact maps.

So Democrats were literally demanding actual gerrymandering, in the name of fighting it. And that they were doing that was just too bloody obvious, so the Court decided to just throw up their collective hands.

While I can imagine single member, first past the post districting techniques that would prevent gerrymandering, (And have proposed them here.) in the end, the only real answer is proportional representation. First past the post just inherently wastes votes, it's what enables gerrymandering in the first place. And once gerrymandering is possible, people ARE going to do it.

[Sarcastr0]

“ I think we might have had anti-gerrymandering reform years ago, but Democrats”

Every single fucking time.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, every single fucking time, you ignore the arguments and evidence, and just go to straight to, "Does it fail to make my side out to be angels? OK, dismiss it out of hand."

It is an objective fact that the Democratic party's preferred "metrics" of gerrymandering do not measure gerrymandering, and generally require non-compact maps to optimize.

That you'd prefer that "gerrymandering" had a different definition than it actually has really isn't a persuasive argument. No 'metric' of gerrymandering that ignores geometry is a valid definition.

[bernard11]

Yeah Brett. Every fucking time.

The point is that you reflexively blame every ill on the Democrats, or "the left," every fucking time. Yes, you'll claim you don't like the GOP either, but on any specific issue you blame the Dems.

Those kinds of comments are pure noise, because they contain no information whatsoever - they are totally predictable.

[Stephen Lathrop]

bernard11 — The principle at work with Brett is he is a minoritarian—but not a principled minoritarian. He finds himself in the minority, so he wants minority rule. The first time he heard, "tyranny of the majority," was a big moment for Brett. He has favored tyranny of the minority ever since.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, gerrymandering is simply something we will have to live with. The way to deal with gerrymandering in the long run is outward migration.

[DDHarriman]

Don't worry though, the Democrat racist gerrymandering won't be stopped by a judge so between Democrat cheating at the census and the Democratnl activist judges, Democrats will maintain their unearned grip of terror.

[Armchair]

Of course, California is being sued due to it's racial gerrymandering.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-governor-gavin-newsom-californias-race-based-redistricting-plan

Maybe that will be walked back entirely. Hey, maybe they'll have enforced districts in CA by the DoJ that give the Republicans another 5 seats, as the racial gerrymanders in CA are reversed!

[apedad]

One huge difference is Cali's redistricting was approved via constitutional amendment while TX's effort was just a legislative act subject to judicial review.

[Brett Bellmore]

That probably protects California's redistricting from state court review, but not from federal court review on this specific basis, since a state can't engage in racial gerrymandering just because it adopts a constitutional amendment.

Only because a federal judge orders them to. 😉

[DDHarriman]

That CA bureaucrat publicly stated the purpose of the redistricting was to diminish White votes.

That's as racist as it gets.

[Poxigah146]

That makes no difference. California approved Prop 8 by Constitutional Amendment and one homosexual judge voided the whole thing.

These perverts really do believe penetrating another man's anus and getting a "marriage" license and "wedding" cake is a Constitutional right.

[Armchair]

State Congressional Amendments are also subject to federal Judicial review....

[not guilty]

Utah doesn't matter much? I think that every seat in play matters.

Republicans' majority in the House of Representatives is thin, and a pickup of a few seats by Democrats would shift control and result in Hakeem Jeffries' election as Speaker -- which would drive the MAGA cult even crazier than they presently are.

Control of investigative resources and subpoena power in both the House and the Senate matters hugely, and the House is less of a reach.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Control of investigative resources and subpoena power"

You are going to be surprised how easy it will be to evade such things if they want.

[Riva]

The solution is to stop judges from interfering with political redistricting. They have no authority here. CA is different. There is direct evidence of CA’s racist intent.

[jb]

LOL. All of Riva's incoherence, hypocrisy and partisan hackery in four short sentences.

[SRG2]

Translation: GOP gerrymanders cannot be overturned by the courts, while Democratic gerrymanders must be.

[Riva]

No, you obviously don't understand the issues or the law. Partisan gerrymandering is not a matter for review by the federal courts. They have no jurisdiction there. Where there is direct evidence of racial gerrymandering, like CA, that is a different matter altogether.

Incidentally, democrats have already partisan gerrymandered the living shit out of jurisidictions they control. There are 9 repubican reps out of 52 congressional districts in CA, and this was before their latest racial gerrymandering scheme. There are zero rebulicans reps across 6 New England states.

[SRG2]

Except Texas was a racial gerrymander. Try again

[Kenneth Almquist]

Riva is actually right about something: Rucho v. Common Cause holds that the Federal judiciary does not have jurisdiction over partisan gerrymanders.

The Texas map was enjoined because there was plenty of evidence that it was a racial gerrymander; see the opinion for details: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txwd.1150387/gov.uscourts.txwd.1150387.1437.0.pdf

In the California case, the plaintiffs claim that the new map is a racial gerrymander. The DoJ has intervened and filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. The opposing motion is due on November 21, at which point will get an idea of whether the claim of racial gerrymandering is plausible. There is a hearing scheduled for December 5. December 19 is first day for candidates to collect signatures to appear on the ballot, which candidates cannot do if the district boundaries are undecided, so I expect the Court to rule before that date.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.994285/gov.uscourts.cacd.994285.38.0.pdf

[Riva]

In the Texas case, there was ZERO direct evidence any map line was drawn on the basis of race, or that a racial target was used, or that Texas could have created five new republican districts with a different racial outcome. Zero statements from any Texas legislators advocated in favor of discrimination on the basis of race.

In CA, however, there is a shit load of evidence of an intent to discriminate on the basis of race. Legislators and proponents explicitly described the purpose of the new district maps as enhancing the voting power of Hispanic/Latino communities because of their race.

[David Nieporent]

In the Texas case, there was ZERO direct evidence any map line was drawn on the basis of race, or that a racial target was used,

Other than all the evidence cited in the opinion, yes.

[Riva]

Anytime you’re ready asshole feel free to cite this direct evidence.

[Kenneth Almquist]

I hadn’t even known that Trump had decided to seek a racial gerrymander in Texas after his attempt to get a partisan gerrymander looked like it would fail, but the evidence is all laid out in the Court ruling. I could try to spoon feed it to you, but I doubt I could explain it as well as the Court has already done, so I suggest you just read it. For my part, I will read the California ruling when it comes out and learn all about the evidence you claim exists.

[Riva]

You can’t because there isn’t any such direct evidence, just inferences and circumstantial evidence. That’s why you’re trying to avoid answering.

[Sarcastr0]

Schedule F regs dropped. Some nutsy rhetoric for a reg, but that's par for the MAGA course these days.

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/11/final-schedule-f-regulations-describe-civil-service-protections-unconstitutional-overcorrections/409616/

We'll see what it delivers; so far in my agency it looks like plenty of folks expecting they'll be demoted to being the deputies of new politicals but no expected new terminations.

So a new layer of beurocracy. Thanks, Trump!

[DDHarriman]

Of course a federal bureaucrat cant spell bureaucrat

[Commenter_XY]

That can be fixed = a new layer of bureaucracy

[ThePublius]

I noticed the misspelling, too, but I confess I always have difficulty spelling that word.

[Mr. Bumble]

Spell check. It's a thing.

[John F. Carr]

A USDA employee was fired for giving an interview to MSNBC about the effect of the shutdown on SNAP. Possibly fired. There is an internal process for appealing termination before the courts or the Merit Systems Protection Board gets involved.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-11-14/usda-worker-appeals-firing-for-talking-to-press-about-food-assistance-during-shutdown

[ThePublius]

In every company for which I have worked, unauthorized communication to the press was a fireable offense. Why should the USDA be any different?

[John F. Carr]

There are two competing policies here. One says public employees can speak on matters of public concern. The other says agencies communicate with the public through official channels only.

[Armchair]

This one is going against the employee.

One of the items to consider is "are they interviewing you because you're job status makes you someone to be interviewed on this topic?

For example, if you're a public school teacher, and you're interviewed and asked "should this drug be approved by the FDA"...yes, technically it's a matter of public concern, and you're a government employee. But there's no real connection through your job.

On the other hand, if you're an FDA employee and interviewed and asked the same question...it's a problem.

Here, the questions were directly related to her job duties. It's going to go against her.

[ThePublius]

I agree. She was implicitly representing the FDA in that interview, which is against protocol.

[Martinned]

If she was, I'm sure the Merit Systems Protection Board will conclude that her dismissal was allowed. But a little bit of due process seems sensible when constitutional rights are involved. (I know that you don't like that approach, but bear with me.)

[Kenneth Almquist]

1. Mei was introduced as a “furloughed federal worker”, which means that viewers knew that even if her job were to represent the USDA on TV, she wasn’t doing that job in this interview.

2. Mei was further introduced as President of chapter 255 of NTEU, a union that represents Federal employees. If you are going to claim that she was “implicitly” speaking on behalf of someone other than herself, what is your basis to claim that she was representing the USDA rather than the NTEU?

3. Before asking the first question, Chris Jansing said to Ellen Mei, “I want to let people know, you’re not representing your employer here; you’re here speaking for yourself.” If that’s not clear enough for you, I don’t know what would be.

https://www.ms.now/chris-jansing-reports/watch/furloughed-federal-worker-we-are-feeling-angry-at-being-treated-as-political-pawns-248938053768

[wvattorney13]

"Before asking the first question, Chris Jansing said to Ellen Mei, “I want to let people know, you’re not representing your employer here; you’re here speaking for yourself.” If that’s not clear enough for you, I don’t know what would be."

Do you think you can duck the whole Pickering test by this cutesy little manuever?

The bottom line is that the only reason she was on television was because of her employment. Nobody would have cared about her opinion if she was speaking as a plumber.

[Sarcastr0]

The bottom line is that the only reason she was on television was because of her employment.

No, her experience seems more the driver. Her past employment, in other words.

Nothing about her current job, which she was not doing, mattered.

This is more censorship of feds. And the usuals are all in favor.

[Kenneth Almquist]

If a television reporter approaches a worker on a picket line and asks, “you’ve been out here for twelve days now. How are you holding up?” it’s clear that the only reason the person on the picket line is on television is because of his employment. Nobody would be interest in his opinion on the strike if he were working as a plumber.

As far as I can see, Pickering doesn’t say anything remotely like, “you can’t appear on TV if the only reason you are on TV is your employer.” See, for example, Lane v. Franks (573 U.S. 228), which held that speech about stuff Lane learned about in the course of his employment was protected under the Pickering test. (Indeed, this was pretty obvious; the only reason that the case reached the Supreme Court is that there was a dispute about whether Pickering applied in the first place.)

[ThePublius]

As a side note, I don't think we should allow unions for federal employees.

[Mr. Bumble]

Neither did FDR (at least so he said) and yet here we are.

[Martinned]

Why stop there? Why not ban unions altogether? Send in the army if the working classes get uppity.

[Michael P]

Why stop there? Private employers can't tax the general public to buy off their unions, for one.

You could bother to read any of the usual arguments against public-sector unions.

[Martinned]

Private employers can raise their prices, which they have to do if/when the entire sector negotiates higher wages.

But don't pretend that you're interested in a serious discussion. It's just more petty tribalism.

[Michael P]

Nobody is compelled to pay higher prices from a private company in a free market, you empty-headed troll.

If you're going to accuse people of not being interested in serious discussion, try not being such a dishonest fuck and learn some basic economics. (Also, don't post walls of all-caps text like your "HAHA" comment. You need to look hard in the mirror before you accuse anyone else of bad behavior here.)

[Bob from Ohio]

"entire sector"

we don't do sectoral bargaining here in the US

[bernard11]

Private employers can raise their prices,

There is no reason that will necessarily increase revenues. If demand is elastic it won't. The microeconomics of a company-wide wage increase can be complicated.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I wouldn't ban unions, I'd eliminate statutory protections for them though.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s a cute slogan but nonsense.

There are tons of examples of arms length relationships within the federal government.

There is no inherent conflict of interest.

It’s just another way for right wingers who don’t much care about truth or good policy to slop some red meat to the rubes by targeting a disfavored group.

[Michael P]

As usual, lots of empty and unbacked assertions from Gaslight0 in defense of lies and bad policy.

[Sarcastr0]

Is there something in particular you dispute, or are you just sealioning?

[Michael P]

All of it.

[John F. Carr]

Former judge Joshua Kindred has been disbarred by the Supreme Court of Alaska. He was forced to resign his federal judgeship after an investigation found he lied to cover up accusations of sexual misconduct. He will need to take ethics classes before he can be reinstated.

https://alaskapublic.org/news/2025-11-07/alaska-supreme-court-orders-disgraced-former-federal-judge-kindred-disbarred
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2025/11/07/alaska-supreme-court-bars-disgraced-federal-judge-from-practicing-law-in-the-state/
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/disgraced-alaska-judge-joshua-kindred-disbarred-by-court

[David Nieporent]

Autopen Joe Biden appointed yet another corrupt, degenerate — um, wait, what’s that? Never mind. Never heard of this guy.

[ThePublius]

This is interesting:

Noon Used To Be Around 3:00 p.m.

"“Noon” and “midnight” are tidy designations of time, both marking the point when an analog clock starts another 12-hour cycle. But the word “noon” took a little bit of a journey around the clock before arriving at its current location.

The root of the word “noon” is the Latin nonus, meaning “ninth,” which became nōn in Old English and Middle English. The word marked the ninth hour after sunrise. This made “noon” a bit of a moving target, but a 6 a.m. sunrise, for instance, would put noon around 3 p.m.

It may have been fasting monks that caused noon to shift earlier in the day. The ninth hour is significant in Christian liturgy as time set aside for prayer, known as nones, and it was particularly important in early monastic traditions. Because monks were often required to fast until then, one prevailing theory as to why the ninth-hour prayer started drifting earlier is that people were getting hungry. The Roman Catholic canonical hour of nones remained at 3 p.m., but by the 14th century, “noon” referred to a new time of day, when the sun was highest in the sky."

From 'History Facts' (sorry the link is broken)

[ThePublius]

The link is working now:

https://historyfacts.com/world-history/fact/noon-used-to-be-around-3-p-m/?lctg=971e12b5-24ca-42a0-a644-d8ee21943ae8

[John F. Carr]

And November is named after the number nine because the counting of months used to begin in spring.

The late Ottoman Empire had a confusing system where religious matters used the Islamic lunar calendar, government matters used a solar calendar starting on March 1, and international business used the Gregorian Calendar starting on January 1.

[SRG2]

And November is named after the number nine

I thought the misnumbering of the later months was due to the Caesars inserting July and August before what had been the seventh month.

[Mr. Bumble]

Those months weren't inserted, just had their name changed.
July was originally "Quintilis" and August was "Sextilis".
The added months were January and February.

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/month-name-origins

[SRG2]

Thanks!

[Krayt]

I thought that too, but apparently those months were renames, not insertions shifting the remaining months two months over.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The first Roman calendar was ten months and started in March.

Thus, October (octo/eight) would be the eighth month.

The two winter months were left unassigned. Later, a reform added the first two months, throwing off the original name etymology.

https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/roman-calendar.html

[Malika la Maize]

What the holy f*ck is wrong with this guy and you people who support him?

“President Trump assailed an American journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the violent death of a Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence has said the attack was carried out on the prince’s orders.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Trump told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.””
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11/18/world/trump-saudi-crown-prince-visit#trump-reporter-khashoggi-saudis

[ThePublius]

I agree with Trump on this. There's a time and a place for everything. Decorum matters.

[Malika la Maize]

JFC. He murdered a guy and you’re like “it’s impolite to ask him about this while he’s being feted!” This is you in a nutshell.

[ThePublius]

Now do FDR and Stalin in the context of WWII.

When you are conducting international policy relations, you have to deal with who you have to deal with. When Trump is conducting diplomacy in the oval office, it's inappropriate to accuse his 'guest' of murder. What should Trump have done, sought regime change there? One must be pragmatic.

[Martinned]

Well, for one thing, he could have stopped short of excusing the murder of a journalist working for a US newspaper. Just spitballing, of course.

[Bob from Ohio]

He was part of the Muslim Brotherhood, not merely a "journalist".

Few outside DC cared when he was killed, fewer will care now.

[LawTalkingGuy]

So that makes it okay for the state to order a torture murder?

Once again you demonstrate your complete lack of morals and care for victims of crimes.

[Bob from Ohio]

Why should I care if a Muslim Brotherhood stooge is killed?

The US didn't kill him, didn't order it, didn't have advance knowledge.

Biden tried the moralizing angle but abandoned it because SA is unfortunately an important country that we have had a friendly relationship with since FDR. I certainly wish we did not but its reality.

Stalin killed a lot more than one dude, we allied with him. Were FDR and Churchill supposed to lecture him too?

Grow up.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Why should I care if a Muslim Brotherhood stooge is killed?”

Because he’s a human being with inherent moral worth and depraved acts of violence are bad no matter who it happened to. Plus you pretend to care about justice.

“The US didn't kill him, didn't order it, didn't have advance knowledge.”

So? That doesn’t affect the morality of the act or whether you should care.

As to your realpolitik points…that’s irrelevant as to whether YOU personally should demean this victim of a brutal crime. We are talking about YOU and YOUR morals and personal sense of justice. And simply put: you don’t have them.

“Grow up”

This old canard from the idiot who laughs at the dumbest nicknames.

But I guarantee you I’m way more mature than you on this or really any topic. I’ve worked on murder cases and other violent crimes. Have you? So I know it’s entirely possible to both grieve and feel empathy for a victim of violence and do the hard work of upholding the rights and interests of an alleged perpetrator of that violence. Demeaning the victim is never ever necessary, even when it’s part.

So you can lecture me on how much more mature you are after you’ve dealt with real shit instead of whatever transactional bullshit you pretend is important.

[Malika la Maize]

I know you don’t like this, but we are the land of the free. We allow questions to murderers in the people’s house.

There was outrage at Obama bowing to Saudi royalty, this is infinitely worse.

[Martinned]

Yes, but tbf, Obama also wore a tan suit once.

[Michael P]

Narrator: It remains actually worse for the US President to kowtow to foreign royalty than for a US President to point out a breach of decorum.

[Martinned]

What about a US President who kowtows to foreign royalty by making up some decorum BS?

[ThePublius]

And you're all outraged at bin Salman Al Saud's murder of Khashoggi, but not a peep out of any of you at Obama's murder of literally thousands - THOUSANDS - via primarily drone strikes, including U.S. citizens and innocent civilians.

"During his presidency, Barack Obama authorized a significant expansion of a targeted killing program, primarily using drone strikes outside of traditional war zones, which drew intense criticism and accusations of extrajudicial killings from civil liberties and human rights groups.
Key aspects of the controversy include:
Scale of Strikes: Obama authorized nearly four times the number of drone strikes in Pakistan in his first two years than George W. Bush did in his entire eight years. By the end of his first term, American strikes had killed several thousand people in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
Civilian Casualties: Reports and independent investigations by organizations like Amnesty International and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that these strikes killed many hundreds of civilians, including women and children. The administration acknowledged at least one strike that killed two innocent hostages (one American, one Italian) by accident.
Targeting U.S. Citizens: A major point of contention was the targeting and killing of U.S. citizens abroad without trial. The Obama administration formally acknowledged the deaths of four Americans in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born cleric accused of being an operational leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was an intended target and killed in a September 2011 strike in Yemen. The Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder defended the killing as lawful and just, based on the determination that he posed an "imminent threat" to the U.S..
His 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also an American citizen, was killed in a separate strike the following month; the government stated he was not an intended target.
Legal Justifications: The administration relied on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and a secret legal framework, detailed in a Justice Department "white paper" and a 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) often called the "drone playbook", to justify its actions. These documents argued that lethal force could be used against individuals who posed an "imminent threat" to the U.S., even far from active battlefields, and that this did not constitute unlawful assassination.
Criticism: Civil liberties groups, including the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, sued the government, arguing that the policy constituted "death without due process" and violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. Critics argued that the secret process and lack of judicial oversight were unconstitutional."

Thousands. Not a peep.

[David Nieporent]

Whatabout whatabout whatabout. Also, there were lots of peeps. As your own fucking uncredited quote expressly says!!!!!!

[ThePublius]

When I said "any of you" I was referring to commenters here, dummy. Maybe you have a problem with context and English.

[ThePublius]

And it's not whataboutism, it's a legitimate comparison, pointing out the lib/prog commentariat's hypocrisy.

[Michael P]

Whines about "whataboutism" almost always admit hypocrisy.

[Michael P]

His quote does not, in fact, describe any peeps from you, Malicia, Martinned or any of your alts, sock-puppets or other account aliases.

[ThePublius]

By the way, why are you so mad? You are displaying the internet brand of "irascible." Bold text. Bad language. Six exclamation points.

Do you think you are going to convince me, change my mind? Make me whimper and beg your forgiveness?

Maybe you should switch to decaf.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Maybe you should switch to decaf."
Too expensive.

[grb]

Plus it's like non-alcoholic beer. What's the point?

[Mr. Bumble]

...or even light beer.
Eat, drink and be merry...
Of course, all things in moderation.

[grb]

Mr. Bumble : "Of course, all things in moderation."

One of the zillion things pinned-up in my cubicle is a bumper sticker from the Green Parrot in Key West. It reads "Excess in Moderation".

I hold that a pearl of deep wisdom - though perhaps best yoked with its inverse, "Moderation in Excess". Of course there's also Blake's famous quote, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom". But I can never see or hear that without thinking of Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I prefer to eat, drink, and make merry, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

[ThePublius]

Uncredited: google AI response to "barak obama's extrajudicial killings"

[not guilty]

President Obama was much criticized for his so-called "extrajudicial killings." There was, however, a memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel supporting the proposition that such killings were within the ambit of the October 16, 2002 Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB529-Anwar-al-Awlaki-File/documents/16)%20OLC%20Barron-Lederman%20July%202010%20Awlaki%20memo.pdf

The text of the AUMF is here: https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ243/PLAW-107publ243.pdf

[TwelveInchPianist]

What does that have to do with anything?

[not guilty]

"What does that have to do with anything?"

If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand it.

As Jonathan Swift (may have) said, you cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Would it matter Al Saud had a memo saying that what he did was authorized by Saudi law?

[Martinned]

Really? Not a peep? I'm pretty sure I've been having this conversation on this very blog for literally 20 years.

At various points during that time I explained the legal difficulties in defining who is and isn't a combatant (Khashoggi wasn't a combatant), and where is and isn't the battlefield (the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is definitely not party of any battlefield).

But sure, you do you.

[ThePublius]

I said not a peep about Obama's extrajudicial killings, not the Khashoggi killing. Didn't you get that from my comment, when I said "...but not a peep out of any of you at Obama's murder of literally thousands - THOUSANDS - via primarily drone strikes, including U.S. citizens and innocent civilians."

Geez.

[Martinned]

Let me repeat: I peeped about that for literally years, while trying to educate my American friends about the laws of war.

[Kazinski]

She asked an edgy question and got an edgy response. She didn't get thrown in jail.

Now she's getting attaboys in the pressroom, and Trump made it clear he has MBS's back.

Everyone is happy.

[David Nieporent]

Trump wasn’t “conducting diplomacy” — though doing so absolutely is the time to bring up grievances — but holding a press conference.

[ThePublius]

If he wasn't conducting diplomacy, what the heck was he doing?

[David Nieporent]

Soliciting bribes, most likely.

[David Nieporent]

That’s the explanation for why he was meeting with MbS in the first place. The press conference was to show off how important he is that foreign leaders come and meet with him.

[loki13]

On the one hand, the meeting could have been mostly about soliciting bribes.

On the other hand, maybe Trump was asking questions about how to deal with journalists?

Thinking .... Why not both!

[Commenter_XY]

First, he (MBS) did not murder anyone. FTR, I think MBS probably said to get rid of this troublesome man, and someone definitely did. The rules are different in that region of the world than ours. Regardless, we (America) still have to have a modus vivendi with KSA. Just like we have a modus vivendi working with Israel. And another 192 countries, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. We don't do business with saints, only sinners.

Second, you have to wonder about the motivation behind the question, the way it was asked, and what outcome the reporter was trying to accomplish. It is not in American national interest to gratuitously insult the leader of a country we might formally ally with, on the world stage, and especially in the Oval Office. I thought ABC was the shortening of American Broadcasting Company, but evidently ABC has forgotten that. Yesterday in the Oval Office was neither the place nor the time for a question like that. Bob Iger is handing his successor a real PR mess.

Third, a vigorous press is essential to freedom. People can decide for themselves what they think of ABC, and Disney (by extension). To combat poor, agenda-driven questioning, we need reporters who ask more pertinent and timely questions. I see that happen more in long format interviews. You combat bad speech with good speech; you combat poor questioning with better questioning.

Fourth, I don't blame POTUS Trump for being justifiably irritated. A misstep at his level can mean the undoing of years of diplomacy, and 1T in direct US investment. It isn't the job of the press to try and create a diplomatic mess with insulting questioning of a foreign leader. It is emphatically the job of the press to keep Americans fully informed of the activities of our government.

FTR, I don't want that happening to any POTUS, regardless of party.

[ThePublius]

Well said. I completely agree.

[David Nieporent]

No kings.

[loki13]

"It isn't the job of the press to try and create a diplomatic mess with insulting questioning of a foreign leader."

Da fuq?

I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware that the Constitution, in establishing robust protection for free speech and a free press, had a secret "Trump Only" mandate that the Fourth Estate had a duty to carry water for the foreign policy preferences of the Executive.

Let's recap-
Out intelligence services stated that Khashoggi, a US resident who was a journalist who worked for a US publication and had two US citizen children, was lured to a Saudi Embassy and murdered there in heinous fashion on the orders of MBS.

But sure, during a press conference in America it would be unseemly to ask any questions about that. Better to ask those questions in a bastion of free speech, like Riyadh.

After all, in America you'll just have your job and your employer's broadcasting license threatened (nothing a bribe to Trump won't handle). In Riyadh, the consequences might be a little more dire. I'd tell you to ask Khashoggi, but he's unavailable.

[Commenter_XY]

Let's recap...we (America) do business with sinners, not saints. We (America) have national interests (i.e. alliance with a country). It is notably unhelpful for an American reporter to ask a foreign leader who we are trying to reach a modus vivendi with, gratuitously insulting questions in the Oval Office. It is fair to question the motivation of the reporter, and their employer for their actions.

People will come to their own conclusions. It was completely the wrong place and time to be asking questions like that.

There are no grounds to yank the FCC license.

[loki13]

It was a press conference.

We have a free press.

It was 100% completely foreseeable that a member of the press would ask MBS and/or Trump about Khashoggi. It was his first visit to the US since he ordered Khashoggi killed.

In a situation like this, you either know what's going to occur, and you DO NOT HAVE THE JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE (have scripted photo ops with no questions), or you know it's going to happen and you have a prepared and scripted response.

Trump, being Trump, just wanted the optics and ability to blather without being prepared, and then bully people like he always does.

This is not a fault of the free press. Maybe consider this for a second- the job of the press is NOT to suck up to power, but to hold it to account.

[Kazinski]

Well if you like what you saw, an aggressive press asking tough questions without regard to the fallout, remember how you got it.

You got it because the people elected a Republican administration, House and Senate.

It is refreshing to have an robust press asking tough questions, and an President who spends hours every week allowing the press to asking them. Trump allows an average of two press interactions with him daily, whether its more formal, or the press gaggle asking questions at an event.

And its a far far cry from what we saw in the last administration.

[Sarcastr0]

You set a low and carefully tuned bar.

[David Nieporent]

The question might have offended — it was not “insulting” — but it certainly wasn’t gratuitously so.

[Josh R]

The questions were legitimate. And sure they were "nasty" from Trump's standpoint. That's what the press is supposed to do: get the truth, not advance the President's policies.

[wvattorney13]

Do you assert that this question was to "get the truth"? Did the reporter believe that there would be a murder confession?

[Bob from Ohio]

"Did the reporter believe that there would be a murder confession?"

Maybe, reporter are usually pretty dumb.

It was just to impress her pals in DC media, the only people who have ever really cared about the killing.

[loki13]

The fact that people don't like questions, or might not answer them, or might not answer them truthfully, does not mean that we don't ask them.

Because if that was the standard, the press should never ask Trump questions.

Seriously, though. You ask them because maybe they will answer honestly. Or maybe they will lie, and you have the lie on the record now. Or maybe they show their true colors when not answering the question.

Did you actually think that this was a clever point? If someone is accused of murder, the press isn't supposed to ask them questions because, DUH wvattorney13 knows that the accused won't actually confess? Great thinking!

[Josh R]

What loki said: get them on the record. Totally legitimate.

[Bob from Ohio]

"on the record."

Oh noes, the record! That will get him.

[bernard11]

XY,

Trump did not just try to brush it off.

He justified the murder:

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you liked him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he presided over a pageant-filled visit for the de facto Saudi leader.

He exonerated MBS:

Trump went on to insist Prince bin Salman — who the CIA assessed likely ordered the murder — wasn’t involved.

“He knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that,” Trump said, turning toward the crown prince.

And as for your BS:

First, he (MBS) did not murder anyone. FTR, I think MBS probably said to get rid of this troublesome man, and someone definitely did.

FTR, that's likely nonsense you pulled out of your butt, unless you're a KSA insider

The CIA assessment released in 2021 found the prince approved the assassination of the Washington Post columnist, though he has long denied any involvement.

“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi,” the report said.

IOW, you simply want to defend Trump regardless. Much easier than thinking.

[Martinned]

First, he (MBS) did not murder anyone. FTR, I think MBS probably said to get rid of this troublesome man, and someone definitely did.

Yes, MBS used words like "kill", but he definitely didn't murder anyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashoggi#Alleged_perpetrators

It's bad enough that you have to debase yourself to defend your own leader, but why do it with the Saudi crown prince?

[wvattorney13]

"Second, you have to wonder about the motivation behind the question, the way it was asked, and what outcome the reporter was trying to accomplish."

I agree with your whole post, but this is the main factor for me. The whole idea of a press conference is to gather information for the news articles so that they can inform the people. This question has no potential to do that.

It is pure modern shock journalism. Let's see if I can get Trump to say something that will upset the left. Let's see if I can get something to go viral on Tik-Tok. As you said, it doesn't matter if we torpedo what the U.S. is trying to do with this meeting; people are too stupid to care about that. Give me the impressions.

I think it is more than appropriate to call out reporters who do this and to even ban them from these events. If I was president I would not hold these conferences so that reporters can have their platform to launch these irrelevant and personal ploys for attention.

[loki13]

Yes, of course you think the real problem here the free press, and not a murderer who kills journalists or the President who explicitly threatens them.

[David Nieporent]

As you said, it doesn't matter if we torpedo what the U.S. is trying to do with this meeting;

It would not, in fact, matter, no. Journalists are not required to agree with — let alone assist — the president in doing what he wants to do.

[wvattorney13]

I never said they were. They really should not try to actively harm the United States. And if they do, they can be banned from these little photo ops and/or we don't have them anymore.

This doesn't implicate the free press. The reporter can call this guy a murderer on the front page, all day long. That's such a strawman.

[bernard11]

They really should not try to actively harm the United States.

This is nonsense, WVA. Reporters are not State Dept employees. They work for private companies and do not represent the US government. They can ask what they like. And if the deal Trump and MBS was so great, it's highly dubious that an impertinent question from a reporter is going to knock it off track.

There is no "harm," and Trump, BTW, who calls the press "enemies of the state," has no business berating a reporter for what he sees as rudeness.

[bernard11]

The whole idea of a press conference is to gather information for the news articles so that they can inform the people. This question has no potential to do that.

Of course it does. Look, MBS ordered Kashoggi killed. Any answer he, or Trump, gives about that is of public interest.

Further, it is not for Trump, or MBS, or you, to decide what it is in the public interest to publicize. Suppose a reporter decides that asking a certain question is in the public interest, or will increase her employer's audience. Why shouldn't she ask it? Contrary to what some here seem to think, she has no obligation to advance the Administration's policies.

[SRG2]

ThePublius regards decorum as more important than moraliry.

[Bob from Ohio]

“it’s impolite to ask him"

She was just grandstanding for fellow reporters. I showed him!!!!

What do you think he was going to say?

"Damn right, I ordered the code red! Here, I carry his femur with me, want to see".

WH press sucks.

[Glaucomatose]

"What do you think he was going to say?"

Who knows? He certainly isn't going to get asked the question in his own country. One of the great things about living in a country with a free press is that he can get asked it when he comes here. If he doesn't want to get asked questions by a press that isn't afraid of getting murdered for saying things he doesn't like, he shouldn't take press conferences here. And if Trump doesn't want journalists asking his guests why they murdered other journalists, he shouldn't hold press conferences with people who murdered journalists.

[Bob from Ohio]

"One of the great things about living in a country with a free press is that he can get asked it when he comes here."

"I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!" Otter

[Glaucomatose]

"I think it's stupid not to be as obsequious and groveling as possible to foreign dictators."
Trump supporters

[loki13]

Well, as every Trump supporter knows, the American Press is supposed to be obsequious and grovel to Muslims, amirite?

It's so weird, isn't it, that the very same people that constantly push out the most bigoted nonsense about Islam and Muslims are suddenly so very concerned that Americans, in America, might offend MBS by asking him why he ordered that a journalist be lured into a Saudi Embassy under false pretences, brutally killed, and chopped up?

[Bob from Ohio]

What's that have to do with her question being dumb and useless ?

[Glaucomatose]

What makes her question dumb and useless, other than that you're upset she didn't grovel enough?

[Bob from Ohio]

Was it going to get any semi-honest response? Was he going to admit anything? Was the answer going to inform her readers?

[Glaucomatose]

Yes, how MBS, or Trump on his behalf, responds to the question would have been informative to readers. As in fact it was.

[wvattorney13]

"Yes, how MBS, or Trump on his behalf, responds to the question would have been informative to readers. As in fact it was."

You want the Tik Tok. Trump telling the reporter to piss off did not shed any light on the murder. Whether or not his is guilty of the murder, we have already assumed he is and priced that into our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Asking a question solely for the shock value and to get a reaction is cheap journalism, not ready for the White House.

[loki13]

Let's try this again, wvaattroney13, since you know so much about the subject.

This was the FIRST visit by MBS to America since Khashoggi was lured under false pretences to a Saudi Embassy, brutally murdered, and dismembered. I notice you never mention that bit of, you know, decorum. Or the fact that he lived in America, and had US Citizen children, or worked for a US publication.

In other words, this was the FIRST press availability by American press, on American soil, to ask this question- and it was offered up by the President.

And somehow, in their first opportunity, you think the press shouldn't have asked? Because ... what? It offended you? Asking a murderer about a murder that was committed is more offensive than the killing and dismembering of a person for their speech?

You're a real free speech guy, aren't you? Have you ever found water that you could not carry?

[Malika la Maize]

And imagine a person who writes Trump and decorum in the same comment!

[Martinned]

Decorum matters.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[ThePublius]

You guys are idiots. You hate Trump so much you would throw the baby out with the bath water. It is strategically important, and economically important for the U.S. to have a solid partnership with Saudi Arabia.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/11/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-solidifies-economic-and-defense-partnership-with-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia/#:~:text=The%20President%20secured%20an%20agreement,safeguarding%20hundreds%20of%20American%20jobs.

[Martinned]

Never mind that, tell me more about Trump's sense of decorum.

[Malika la Maize]

This guy brings up decorum to defend the “shut up piggie” guy.

[Martinned]

O, and speaking of that Saudi partnership, please do also explain how Saudi is going to invest $1trn out of its $1.1trn GDP in the US.

[ThePublius]

Do you they're saying that SA is going to write a $1T check or something? This will happen over time.

[Martinned]

Yes, that's exactly what they're saying. Because the US Regime is (fortunately) run by illiterate idiots.

[loki13]

In fairness, the illiterate idiots depend on the gullible supporters to forget about all the deals a week after they are announced.

They get the high of the announcement without ever worrying that they need to follow through.

[Mr. Bumble]

@ Martinned:
Yes, so much better for all to be run by literate idiots.

[Martinned]

Better for who? For all the Trumpists who are filling their pockets with bribes?

[Malika la Maize]

As I posted the other day Trump is doing business in Saudi Arabia. The rubes who fell for “drain the swamp” avert their gaze.

[Michael P]

He's not only an idiot, he's also an asshole. And he pretends to be able to read minds, but really just projects his own nastiness onto others.

On top of that, he shows his assholery further just down-thread.

[David Nieporent]

If a journalist asking a question could upend our partnership, then it wasn’t a solid one to begin with.

Remember when Trump and Vance had a tantrum and insulted Zelensky personally, though? Good times.

[loki13]

DECORUM!!!!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Members of the press can be "insubordinate" by asking a question like that? They need to give lists of appropriate questions when they have a press conference. The press don't want to be "piggies."

A later comment alleged "he (MBS) did not murder anyone." Akin to someone hiring a hitman, not murdering someone.

"U.S. intelligence and Senate Republicans’ assessments declaring the crown prince complicit."

A bipartisan group of senior senators said on Tuesday that a classified briefing by the C.I.A. director had only solidified their belief that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, ordered the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

Prince Mohammed “is a wrecking ball,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters after an hour-long briefing by the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel. “I think he’s complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi to the highest level possible.”

Trump also handwaved the whole murder:

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Trump said in response to a question from ABC News about Khashoggi. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but [Mohammed] knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”

(linked and quoted here: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/trump-dismissed-mbs-role-in-khashoggi-murder-when-it-happened-too)

[jb]

The party of freedom of speech!

[Martinned]

Speaking of freedom of speech, guess who said this:

"ABC, your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should take a look at that."

[Frank Drackman]

I don't know? Your Pediophile King maybe?

[ThePublius]

Freedom of speech. Why don't you go home tonight and tell your wife "gee, honey, you've gotten fat. And you still can't cook." See how what goes over. And when she complains shout "freedom of speech!"

[Sarcastr0]

The US Press's job is not to be a good husband to the US government.

[grb]

I think ThePublius envisions the Press as a "good wife", bedroom and kitchen-style, but spot on analogy regardless.

[jb]

If I was pretty sure my wife had murdered someone, I would definitely ask her about it and not sit down for a friendly dinner so that I didn't hurt her feelings.

[wvattorney13]

And if your wife cannot handle the truth, then you didn't have a good marriage anyways. Your wife can't be sitting around with fat rolls hanging everywhere and not be questioned about it, right?

[Swede425]

Easy.
The alternative was Kamala Harris.
Who you guys didn't even vote for to be your candidate.
Now cry more.

[Malika la Maize]

Swede’s so cool, cry about defending a murderer from questions, you bitches! MAGA, folks. You can’t mention terrible behavior or you’re “crying.@

Btw, I only voted for Larry Hogan (wrote him in), but are you too stupid to know how nominations work? They vote for delegates and the delegates vote for the nominee, and they voted for Harris.

[Swede425]

Calm down, sir and/or madam.
Trump was mean to a journalist.
Oh, no.
It's going to be a long three more years (at least), so you're going to want to pace yourself. I know we've spoken about this before, but you may want to consider your health.

[Malika la Maize]

Why are you so upset at the guy for fucking the goat in public?

MAGA, folks.

[Swede425]

You're so edgy!
Drama Queen, folks.

[Malika la Maize]

Why so mad about President defending murderer from questions? Drama!

MAGA, folks!

[Martinned]

So you're saying that you were so terrified of having a black woman for a president that you willingly and knowingly voted for a fascist instead? And you think that makes you sound good?

[Swede425]

I understand that English is not your mother tongue, so I'll forgive you for wrongly rephrasing what I said. I'm magnanimous like that.
Trump is no fascist. But you already know that.
Also, "sound good"?
Who, exactly, is it that you think I'm trying to impress? You?

[Martinned]

I don't know who you were trying to impress, that's exactly what I was trying to find out. I still have no idea.

[Swede425]

Well, if you MUST know, I'm trying to impress the fascist Sydney Sweeney. I hope she sees this!

[Martinned]

You're thinking of Kim Kardashian. That's the one that wants to be a lawyer.

[Swede425]

Two birds, same awesome comments.

[Bwaaah]

What part of "Sydney Sweeney" didn't you understand?

You should preface your comments with, "So what I wish you said was [...]" That preface would properly contextualize so many of your arguments.

[Malika la Maize]

A guy who failed to get into the Air Force and had to clean latrines in the marines can’t be expected to understand or appreciate professionalism.

[Swede425]

LOL!
"Professionalism".
Like your comments in this thread.
Look how upset you are right now.
I'd recommend decaf.

[Bwaaah]

Malicia can't help itself.

[Malika la Maize]

I’m not the President, ya goof.

[Malika la Maize]

Here comes the ankle-biter. Remember when he pretended to be a recently disaffected liberal? Performance art!

[Frank Drackman]

You're gonna go blind you keep responding to yourself like that.

[Bwaaah]

Nobody makes brings Malicia to the edge like you do, Frank.

[Bob from Ohio]

"clean latrines in the marines"

Denigrating military service. Typical lib.

You do what you are assigned. He still had to train as infantry. Likely could kick your a** too.

[Glaucomatose]

Right. Wouldn't want to denigrate the suckers and losers.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Denigrating military service. Typical lib."

And he's ignorant. Marines are under the Navy. They have heads, not latrines.

[Swede425]

The funny thing? I was in the Army.
And there is literally NOBODY in the Army who hasn't cleaned a latrine.
Only the Air Force has maids.

[ThePublius]

If Trump is a fascist, he's the worst fascist ever. Can you imagine a fascist making the central government smaller?

[Martinned]

Yes. That's in fact central to fascism MO. It's corporatist by nature, so the government does lest, and pliant business does more.

[ThePublius]

That's bullshit.

do fascists want smaller government?

"No, fascists do not want a smaller government; they advocate for a large, powerful, and totalitarian state that controls nearly every aspect of society. The core principle of fascism is the supremacy of the nation and the state over the individual."

[Martinned]

Yes, and they do that not by having the state own the means of production, but by having corporations answer to the Regime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Year_Plan

[Michael P]

A plan under which one government minister "had complete control over the economy, including the private sector" and where "the state, under the [state-owned] industrial conglomerate Reichswerke, began building refineries, aluminium plants, and factories for the development of synthetic materials" sounds like not only (a) bigger government but (b) government ownership of the means of production. "Göring himself supervised the Reichswerke but did not own it in any sense and did not make personal profit from it directly, although at times he withdrew cash for personal expenses."

As Hitler wrote in the Four-Year Plan Memo: "The nation does not live for the economy, for economic leaders, or for economic or financial theories; on the contrary, it is finance and the economy, economic leaders and theories, which all owe unqualified service in this struggle for the self-assertion of our nation."

That is big government, and your attempt to distinguish between that and direct government ownership only shows that socialism leads to even bigger government than fascism.

[Martinned]

How is that different from business leaders coming to Trump grovelling and begging for favours?

[Michael P]

That's not happening, for one. There's no policy saying that business leaders should do that, for another. The US has nothing like Reichswerke for a third. The only people in the US with the kind of authority granted to Göring are Democrat federal judges, for a fourth.

Get it?

[Brett Bellmore]

I take exception to the idea that the fascists were acting favorably towards the corporations. They were basically conscripting them, as an alternative to having to do the grunt work of running the means of production themselves.

Rather like the ACA did to American health insurance companies.

[Sarcastr0]

The ACA is not facist; quit making up your own words.

[Bob from Ohio]

Just counterproductive.

[Brett Bellmore]

The ACA is indeed fascist, in the economic sense of the word.

Before the Nazis associated the word with genocide, it mostly had to do with what we'd today call "economic planning". FDR was a big proponent of it, with his forced cartelization of multiple industries.

Economic Fascism

Today the left, and to some extent the right, desperately want to memory hole the ideological connection between the modern regulatory state and fascism. Because they really desperately want to keep that toxic fruit around.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Brett please for the love of god read one book about fascism by an actual historian who studies the period. Paxton, Griffin, Payne, Browning, Freidlander, fuck even Snyder.

[David Nieporent]

I think you mean "Brett please for the love of god read one book"

[Malika la Maize]

He’s making the parts he likes larger and the parts he doesn’t smaller.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Fascist regimes tend to have a dual structure with both a prerogative state and the normative state. The normative state, comprising the civil service and traditional state functions tends, at least initially, to operate somewhat normally after a fascist party gains power. They do things in a standard legalistic way. So when the policy makers “shrink” this part, it can be characterized as “small government”

By contrast the prerogative state, consisting of the personalist leader and the party apparatus operate outside the bounds of law and regular procedure in effecting their whim when desired. And Trump has at least attempted to make the prerogative state a thing with the tacit support of the GOP. That appears to be faltering however.

Of course, the measure of whether a movement is fascist shouldn’t be judged by whether it is successful, simply whether leaders or individuals are doing things comparable to historical fascist parties or can fit within an ideal-type description.

[Frank Drackman]

What Black Woman was running?

[Moderation4ever]

Kamala Harris would be a perfectly good President. I am guessing that with hind site many would have voted different in 2024. That a guess but the 2025 election do tend to support the guess.

[ThePublius]

That's laughable. She was a monumentally shitty VP!

[Swede425]

Donald Trump is a perfectly good President.
And your guess is worth everything we paid for it.

[Martinned]

Donald Trump is a perfectly good President.

It's difficult to imagine seven words you could have said that would have made people think less of you more effectively. Maybe "Jeffrey Epstein is my best buddy."

[Swede425]

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

[Moderation4ever]

Well with Trump having a 57% disapproval rating it is a pretty good guess.

[Bob from Ohio]

What poll?

[Moderation4ever]

Sorry I am wrong the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll has Trump's disapproval at 60%. You got a better poll for Trump?

[Frank Drackman]

Unless you're referring to Cums-a-lots Huge Ass, I think you mean "Hindsight"

[Bob from Ohio]

"2025 election"

Blue states and cities voting for Dems. Trump is finished!

[Moderation4ever]

Guess you missed the elections in Mississippi and Georgia where Democrats won after a long drought.

[Bob from Ohio]

The GOP in Miss. lost its "supermajority". Egads! Of course they have the governor so who cares.

Two very, very obscure posts in Georgia too.

Look, the new GOP doesn't come out in off year elections or especially special elections. A problem going forward but does not mean Trump voters would vote for former borde czar Harris.

[Moderation4ever]

What your missing Bob is the fact that these seats in Mississippi should have been in the bank. These are not high profile seats with a lot of money being spend. The people simply decided they wanted a change.

[DDHarriman]

Tell your handler that this talking point embarrassed you more than normal.

[Malika la Maize]

It’s embarrassing that I’m offended our President staned for a murderer?

Of course I’m responding to the guy who talked about gassing people (Life of Brian has a sad)…

[DDHarriman]

I don't speak your kind's language. Can you try again in Human English?

[Frank Drackman]

You don't beeze down wit dee E-bonicks?

[Martinned]

Speaking of Khashoggi, guess who said this:

"You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to embarrass our guest."

[Frank Drackman]

The Saudi's were perfectly honest with what happened to the (Very) Late Mr. Khashoggi
"He left the Embassy shortly after he arrived"
OK, he left in pieces, it's still technically true.

Frank

[Malika la Maize]

Look at this pathetic person. MAGA!

[Frank Drackman]

We're already looking at you, and I thought I was a figment.

[Malika la Maize]

Don’t you mean
We’re already looking
at You and I
thought I was a Figment)?

[wvattorney13]

""He left the Embassy shortly after he arrived"
OK, he left in pieces, it's still technically true."

That type of pedantry would only be had by our resident Trump critics who would have no problem making the first statement and leaving it at that.

[Malika la Maize]

It’s ok he was murdered by my guest!

[Moderation4ever]

Let's start with the fact that Trump is pretty stupid and he has surrounded himself with an even stupider staff. Everyone knows the question of Ahmad Khashoggi murder will come up, so why even let the press near the meeting. Have the White Photographer take the pictures and leave it at that. Or be ready to face the questions. I willing to bet that Mohammed bin Salman would know how to handle the question and would not behave as Trump did.

[Bob from Ohio]

Maybe the Saudi dude wanted a mini press conference?

Trump defended him and was in fact correct to do so. Press all bitching about Trump instead of MSB/MBS.

[Martinned]

Yes. The Saudis are famously keen on talking to the press, and are always giving long rambling speeches whenever they see a bank of cameras anywhere.

[bernard11]

Trump defended him and was in fact correct to do so.

Horseshit. He was dead wrong to defend him, especially the way he did, by suggesting:

A. Kashoggi deserved to be murdered, because he was "controversial."

B. MBS had zero to do with it.

IOW, he behaved like a three-year-old.

If he didn't want to deal with the question he could have said something like, "That's not what we are here to talk about. Next question, please."

[David Nieporent]

As I pointed out yesterday, it is by definition impossible for an American journalist to be “insubordinate” to the president, let alone to a foreign leader.

[ThePublius]

Who said insubordinate? Was that just you? I didn't say insubordinate. I said something to the effect that a journalist invited into the oval office should at least show some decorum, and not piss all over those in attendance in an effort to boost their cred with their colleagues.

[grb]

ThePublius : "Who said insubordinate?"

Trump. You do know that, right?

[David Nieporent]

Who said insubordinate?

Trump. Even if you didn’t bother to follow the news, he’s quoted in this very thread. In, you know, the comment I was responding to. Which is kind of how “reply” works.

[ThePublius]

Ah, yes, I missed that. Multi-tasking.

[grb]

ThePublius : "Multi-tasking."

The bane of modern civilization (he said, typing with a canopy steel submittal on his desk).

[ducksalad]

OT: I got talked into corrosion resistant steel for a $30K roof. Is it going to last as long as aluminum? Or am I going to be catching rusty drips in buckets a few years from now?

[grb]

Corrosion-resistant steel is like bullet-proof glazing. It's ultimately an impossibly except in matters of degree. And there is a wide range of degrees in both cases, from extremely effective to much less so.

[not guilty]

Per yesterday's New York Times:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that the Trump administration filed against New York State in hopes of enabling immigration agents to conduct arrests in state and local courthouses.

The judge, Mae A. D’Agostino, ruled late Monday in favor of New York, finding that a 2020 state law and two executive orders that limit civil arrests near local courts and in state facilities were not unconstitutional, as the Department of Justice had argued in June.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/nyregion/immigration-court-arrests.html

The District Court ruling is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nynd.148581/gov.uscourts.nynd.148581.66.0.pdf

[Poxigah146]

This greaseball judge went to a garbage law school, which is probably why she thinks that federal agents can be stopped by a state from conducting lawful arrests, anywhere.

[David Nieporent]

It is not lawful to arrest someone if/where the law doesn’t authorize it. If ICE were using actual judicial warrants, then the state couldn’t block them. But ICE is too lazy and incompetent to do that.

[Kazinski]

I would think any public place Federal officers should be able to make an arrest.

And I think that will eventually be resolved in a higher court.

There is already an exception for criminal arrests, so its not a blanket ban, so I'd think the Supremacy clause would override it.

[DDHarriman]

A Democrat judge ruled in favor of a Democrat??

Woah!! That's so rare and unheard of, I bet their reasoning is super sound and near perfect!

[Martinned]

If only not guilty had posted a link to the judgment! Then you could have written something substantive that actually explained what was wrong with it...

[DDHarriman]

Oh yeah, that will bare fruit and change peoples minds!

Have you ever commented here before?

[Martinned]

I'm still not seeing an explanation of why "their reasoning is [not] super sound and near perfect".

Are you simply here to annoy everybody, or would you like to have an actual conversation?

[ThePublius]

"Are you simply here to annoy everybody, or would you like to have an actual conversation?"

No, I don't think so, you've got that covered.

[Michael P]

If someone were simply here to annoy everybody without having an actual conversation, might they post hundreds of characters simply repeating "HAHA"?

I'm asking for ... well, not a friend, but somebody who should know better.

[Commenter_XY]

NG, I was surprised to read about the laws from the 1800's protecting witnesses traveling to and from court, not merely at the courthouse. The dist court seemed to imply the history, tradition and text of the NY state law required the result. That was interesting, I thought.

Is that a fair interpretation.

[Michael P]

A lawless Obama judge is, of course, entitled to abnegate the Supremacy Clause.

According to some jackanapes with a terrible track record on legal issues.

[Bored Lawyer]

I have not yet had time to read the opinion, but seems off to me. Particularly the part about travelling to and from court. Under that theory, if Bernie Madoff was on his way to court to contest a parking ticket, the feds could not arrest him for his many frauds.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Particularly the part about travelling to and from court."

How can a NY state law bind ICE under the Supremacy Clause?

[wvattorney13]

Or Dylan Roof. What if he was actually shooting on the way to court? Would the opinion still immunize him?

[Kenneth Almquist]

The case in question is about civil arrests. Bernie Madoff was arrested for committing a Federal crime, so he could have been arrested on his way to court to contest a traffic ticket.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and the comments have officially begun with Qualika upset at something Trump said.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Qualika"

Ha!

[DDHarriman]

https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1990949941808935310

ANTIFA is now out there threatening anyone who dares blaspheme Islam.

What strange bedfellows the Left has.

[David Nieporent]

That doesn’t mention anything about “blaspheming Islam,” Voltage.

And that’s not antifa. That’s BAMN.

[Frank Drackman]

David Never-coherent continuing his streak of never being coherent. Most Southern States have laws against wearing masks in Public, (with exceptions for Artistic/Halloween/Costume Parties) goes back to some DemoKKKrat affiliated group that gave them a bad name.
That towel head walked into the meeting like he was a member of Black September, should have gotten a 40 S&W Lobotomy.
Seriously, a guy walks into a Public Place wearing a mask and nobody's concerned? and that's before he starts speaking and you know he's got a name with Kareem, Moe-hammad, Jamal, and The Isley brothers names in it.

Frank

[DDHarriman]

"A masked member of the violent Antifa group By Any Means Necessary "

[David Nieporent]

Yes, that's quoting Andy Ngo, not an honest person.

[Frank Drackman]

Just noticed PMS-NBC is now "PMS-NOW"
Seriously, Morning Schmoe and "The View" are better than a marathon of Curly-Only 3 Stooges Episodes (Shemp was decent, but you can't replace a legend)

Frank

[Michael P]

The Danish government required dairy farmers to use a feed additive to reduce methane emissions from their herds of cows. Apparently the additive also reduces health and even headcount.

https://dairynews.today/global/news/danish-dairy-farmers-cease-use-of-methane-reducing-feed-amid-health-concerns.html

[Mr. Bumble]

...and from "believe [all] women":

"NASA astronaut's wife who said she was victim of 'first crime committed in space' admits she made whole thing up "
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15303345/nasa-astronaut-wife-said-victim-crime-space-lied-guilty.html

[Michael P]

It's hard to #BelieveAllWomen when the astronaut and her wife disagreed on the basic facts of this matter.

[TwelveInchPianist]

In any event, you should not #BelieveAllWomen. You should treat allegations with appropriate skepticism, no matter the sex of the accuser.

Unfortunately, the #BelieveAllWomen propaganda succeeded to some degree, and it's not uncommon to have uncorroborated allegations made by women met with chants of, "I believe you."

[loki13]

Guess what? The CDC (what is left of it) has confirmed that we are two months away from having to acknowledge that measles are once again endemic in America.

Measles
Are
Growing
Again!

Let's face it, when all those Trumpers said they wanted America like it was in the '50s, I guess they meant it? (The first measles vaccine was licensed for use in 1963).

[Michael P]

The maps at https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html make it pretty damn obvious that MAGA isn't at fault here, but that Biden's open-border policies are.

[Krayt]

Assuming what you say is true, is it immigrants spreading it amongst themselves, or also spreading it to idiots who believe snake-oil fraudulent patter about vaccines?

Shouldn't they be having explosions of measles in their source countries?

Aren't those source countries also plagued by leaders who buy into the snake oil vaccines bad yo fraud?

[Michael P]

is it immigrants spreading it amongst themselves, or also spreading it to idiots who believe snake-oil fraudulent patter about vaccines?

It's hard to be sure. New Mexico is in the highest tier for vaccinations, but has almost as many cases as Arizona (NM's population is less than a third of AZ's), and most cases are in outbreaks within communities where vaccinations are lower than average.

Shouldn't they be having explosions of measles in their source countries?

No, they only need to have endemic cases, but there are outbreaks around the world (that loki13 neglected to mention). Canada recently lost its measles-free status, Mexico has an outbreak similar in size to Canada's (both have more cases in the US, not per capita), Brazil regularly has huge case numbers, and Europe is seeing large numbers of cases.

Aren't those source countries also plagued by leaders who buy into the snake oil vaccines bad yo fraud?

I don't even know what you're trying to ask here. Countries like Mexico, Canada, Brazil and those in Europe are plagued by leaders who buy into snake oil and fraud.

[jb]

Nice try. Not sure it's necessarily MAGA (although the MAHA folks aren't helping) at fault as opposed to a general trend towards vaccine skepticism, but the biggest outbreak so far was in Texas and New Mexico and started in a Mennonite community in Texas, and are spreading almost entirely amongst the unvaccinated population:

The Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) today reported 30 more cases in a measles outbreak in the western part of the state near the New Mexico border, as the New Mexico Department of health added 4 new cases to its total, pushing the outbreak total to 351...

Texas has now reported cases from 14 counties, though most are in Gaines County where the outbreak began in a Mennonite community that has low childhood immunization levels...

Of the state’s 309 cases, 307 were unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status...

So the problem is definitely vaccine hesitancy, and despite there being a big outbreak in a couple of states on the southern border, I'm pretty sure the Mennonites didn't sneak in during the Biden administration.

[Michael P]

Measles doesn't appear out of thin air. It comes from somewhere.

August: https://www.rivieramayanews.mx/measles-cases-in-mexico-surpass-4000-with-14-deaths-reported/
November: https://www.paho.org/en/news/10-11-2025-paho-calls-regional-action-americas-lose-measles-elimination-status

[jb]

Ooh, if there were measles in Mexico in August and there was a measles outbreak in the US in March, then the Mexicans must have used their time machine to go back to the Biden administration and give measles to the people in the US, right?

Except, obviously not. As the timeline would suggest, actually it's the other way around:

Health authorities traced Chihuahua's first case—a 9-year-old Mennonite child—to a family trip to Gaines County, Texas, where the disease has flourished this year. Mennonite communities, known for being vaccine hesitant, are also implicated in Canada's hotspots.

According to the Pan American Health Organization, last year, Mexico recorded only seven confirmed cases of measles, but the country's tally this year is already above 4,000. In recent months, Mexico's caseload has grown faster than the reported infections in the United States.

(emphasis added)

Stop being a clown.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I'm pretty sure the Mennonites didn't sneak in during the Biden administration."

Nor are they big MAGA people.

Did loki make a nice try" too?

[loki13]

Look, it's not like there aren't some lefty anti-vaxxers too. I get it.

But it's not like the Democrats put a known anti-vaxxer in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services so that he could systemically gut our public heath infrastructure, specifically targeting vaccines.

Or, for that, matter, that the MAGA movement hasn't empowered states like Florida to engage in further anti-vax lunacy.

It's the usual sidestep. "Look, let's ignore what our side is doing with the power we've given them, and the actual bad effects it is having. Instead, I wanna talk about some fringe nutty leftists with no power. WHADDABOUT THEM?????"

[grb]

loki13 : "...some lefty anti-vaxxers too."

Anti-Vaxx lunacy used to be pretty evenly divided between rightwing freaks and leftwing loons. But that's nowhere close to being true anymore. The Right decided pandering to anti-vaxx morons was a growth opportunity.

[Frank Drackman]

Is it too soon for UPS/MD11 Jokes??? Probably, it's been almost 2,000 years and Louis CK's still getting crap for his "Jesus" routine.

But I'll start
"Woke up to find UPS left a GE CF-6 Jet Engine on my porch. Dammit! I'm sure I ordered a CF-5, and looks like it was "damaged during delivery""

[Mr. Bumble]

What happened to FFAB (fat fucks are beautiful):
"Big is no longer beautiful and body positivity is officially over"
https://jennifersey.substack.com/p/big-is-no-longer-beautiful-and-body?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=904886&post_id=179198980&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=9bg2k&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[grb]

Mr. Bumble : "What happened to FFAB (fat fucks are beautiful)"

Sigh. Three points:

1. Some "large" women (by common consensus) are exceptionally beautiful.

2. The actions of Amy Schumer reflect on her alone. I'm sure she prefers it that way.

3. Jennifer Sey's Substack doesn't have less authority than my own imperial pronouncements. But nor does it have more.

[Mr. Bumble]

Shumer is hardly alone.
"Lizzo is done with it. Sharon Osbourne is done with it. So is Oprah and Kathy Bates and Rebel Wilson and Megan Trainor and Kelly Clarkson and on and on."
From the linked story.
Also;https://www.women.com/1857718/celebs-totally-transformed-taking-ozempic-other-glp-1/

[Bob from Ohio]

Ken Klippenstein (NSPM-7 Compliant)@kenklippenstein
17h
Jamie Raskin defends Virgin Islands delegate Stacey Plaskett for texting with Jeffrey Epstein, saying "she took a phone call from one of her constituents"

Dems really care about Epstein's victims!

[Bored Lawyer]

At the end of the day, I think the Dems will regret pushing on this.

[Michael P]

Donald Trump was doing Dems a favor by opposing the release of all the material. https://nypost.com/2025/11/18/business/goldman-sachs-staff-shocked-over-exec-caught-in-epstein-scandal/

Or maybe it was 4-D chess.

[grb]

Yeah. The Dems are shaking in their boots over these revelations about (checks the name again) Kathy Ruemmler. You were better off sticking with Larry Summers. Nobody cared then either, but at least there was a pretense of relevance.

Most of the chess I play these days is 2D. Is relevance required in the four-dimensional variety?

[loki13]

I'm beginning to think that at this stage of straw-grasping, they are going galaxy brained and are now playing 1D Chess.

"Look, we all know that Trump didn't actually perform oral sex on Bill Clinton or a horse. Therefore, by the power of logic, Trump was never involved with Epstein!!!11!!!!"

BTW, Summers was always a loathsome human being, and while he may not have committed a crime (or, at least, not one within the SOL), he deserves all the social opprobrium that is coming. It's unfortunate that people don't seem to be focusing their ire on ... I dunno ... others who seem to have such frequent ties.

Did I say Steve Bannon? No, I didn't. Why do you ask?

[Michael P]

Ruemmler was merely White House Counsel for Barack Obama for three years. I mean, that practically makes her a Jane On The Street.

I figured everyone was already current on Plaskett almost getting censured by the House for taking (ineffectual) cues from her bud Epstein during a hearing, so we should look at the next wave of compromised Dems.

[Bob from Ohio]

More on the woman Raskin is defending

Eric Daugherty@EricLDaugh
50m
PLASKETT: I believed Epstein had information. I was gonna get that information to seek truth

CNN: At the time, he was a KNOWN sex offender...

PLASKETT: A lot of people have done a lot of crimes!

She's a non voting delegate. If the Dems really cared, easy peasy to just cut her loose. But we all know its just performance outrage.

[Estragon]

You can have Plaskett but you also have to take Bannon. Isn’t this fun?

[Bob from Ohio]

Ok.

[Estragon]

“At the end of the day, I think the Dems will regret pushing on this.”

Regret what? That Larry Summers might be collateral damage? Not everyone in the world views everything through a nihilistic partisan lens. Exposing anyone involved with Epstein is good, full stop. I’m certain most “Dems” agree with that.

I’ve seen this take over and over. Like somehow not wanting to cover up for sex trafficking will backfire? You people have seriously lost the plot.

Cynicism is a form of naïveté.

[Bored Lawyer]

I’m certain most “Dems” agree with that.
I’ve seen this take over and over. Like somehow not wanting to cover up for sex trafficking will backfire? You people have seriously lost the plot.

Sorry, the Dems in Congress have been pushing for this for one reason: to embarass Trump. The notion that they are interested in exposing pedophiles is laughable.

For the record, I agree that the files should be released in total, and let the chips fall where they may. But that is not the political climate we live in.

[Estragon]

I can only say it so many times: cynicism is a form of naïveté, because you assume everyone shares the same terminal self-interested cynicism and therefore are blind to other motivations that indisputably do move people to act. Things like love, a sense of duty, the law, patriotism. This is not a new or original observation.

But sure, pushing to expose those involved in sex trafficking will really blow up in everyone’s faces. Except Clay Higgins.

The frantic attempts to stuff this into a partisan box is obviously a tactic that Trump has used for years to avoid accountability. Ask yourself why that doesn’t seem to be working here. This has gone on for months stretching into years, despite people claiming it was “over” again and again. Is it possible that people view this in terms other than who it helps in our never-ending political war?

[wvattorney13]

"But sure, pushing to expose those involved in sex trafficking will really blow up in everyone’s faces. Except Clay Higgins."

The government has had this material for years. Biden had it. Do you believe that both administrations would not have brought charges if there was evidence of "sex trafficking" in these materials?

[loki13]

Two responses-

1. In terms of releasing files, it's actually longstanding policy that the DOJ doesn't release investigative files. So the lack of release is not a big surprise.

2. In terms of not continuing to go after people ... you're kidding, right? Look, the one thing I think we all know after the limited amount of information that we have gotten is that Epstein was incredibly well-connected and plugged in to a number of people. He was so connected that he managed to get a sweetheart deal from the prosecutor (Acosta, Labor Secretary for Trump) that no one else could, and even after the sweetheart deal (which still, you know, made him a convicted sex offender) continued to associate with all the people you know and love, like Summers, Thiel, Bannon, and so on.

So ... are you seriously asking if people might think that powerful people with connections had an interest in not seeing the matter further pursued? You tell me.

[Joe_dallas]

Yes Epstein was very well connected. It was also likely that Epsteins abuse of underage girls was an open secret within his circle of friends which likely influenced his light sentence under Acosta. Very likely Trump knew about Epsteins abuse of girls 20 years ago, same as Clinton likely knew about the abuse.

[wvattorney13]

If that is the case, then why couldn't Epstein bury this stuff and save himself?

[loki13]

I mean, right up until the second arrest he acted with impunity, didn't he?

Didn't think he needed to save himself.

And as for why he didn't release something in the month between when he was arrested (and denied bail) and ... the suicide ... in prison, dunno. Maybe he didn't have the goods. Maybe he was waiting for a better moment. Maybe he thought that someone was going to save him again. Maybe he realized that burning everyone else would burn him too.

I'm not too good at understanding the motivations of psychopaths. You?

[Zarniwoop]

Biden had it.

TL,DR: Maybe Biden didn't know what was in there, but why is Trump so desperate to hide it?

The constant repetition of "buh-buh-but Biden!!1!" basically amounts to a "Schrödinger's Democrats" theory.

Was Biden asleep at the wheel? Or was he awake and knowledgeable about every detail in the vast trove of Epstien documents in DOJ's possession?

All we know is that there was a lack of action by the Biden administration. But "lack of action" does not affirmatively demonstrate that actionable evidence does not exist. I'll grant that "lack of action" probably means they didn't have full knowledge of October Surprise material about Trump and inexplicably declined to use it.

Consider an Occam's Razor explanation:
1) Epstein was already dead;
2) Maxwell was already arrested, there was a prosecution in progress focused on Maxwell, and there are DOJ rules about disclosures in ongoing prosecutions that normal administrations follow; and
3) Lack of significant focused attention beyond that.

And that's it. Biden might have "had" the trove of docs, but that's not the same as knowing what they had.

In other words, the Biden administration and DOJ didn't ask "how high?" whenever right-wing conspiracy theorists ordered them to jump. Now, maybe they should have; maybe they missed the best October surprise ever because they didn't look. But it's pretty normal for presidents not to let the crazy-ass fringe drive their agenda.

And against that backdrop, the sudden heel turn by Patel, Bongino, Bondi, etc. all the way up to Trump is still plenty-hugely eyebrow raising for a huge swath of America. The crazy-ass fringe got access to the trove, and suddenly the crazy-ass fringe are the ones who are affirmatively & desperately trying to hide something.

Seems pretty darn reasonable for the American public to ask "what are they trying to hide, and why?"

No matter how many times the "buh-buh-but Biden!!1!" line is repeated.

[Sarcastr0]

Kind of low-key horrifying how many people are revealing themselves as feeling nothing more than political transactionalism about pedophilia and associated enablers.

[Moderation4ever]

Pretty amazing how the Congress moved on the Jeffery Epstein files in less than 24 hours. Wondering how will take to address rising health care costs? Health care costs has a high profile too.

[loki13]

The GOP health care plan is like nuclear fusion that gives out more energy than it takes in. It's going to be GREAT when it arrives.

And it's always on the horizon, never in the present.

[Brett Bellmore]

The only appropriate GOP health care plan would be a compilation of various ways the federal government can get the hell out of the way of the provision of health care. The government itself is directly or indirectly responsible for most of health care inflation.

[Moderation4ever]

Brett that would only be true if you factor in that the government funds a lot of the health care research. Cost have gone up because healthcare is continuing to improve and that improvement costs money. When I was a kid a diabetic gave themselves shots of insulin, as an adult I met diabetics that had insulin pumps to give them continuous feeds of insulin, today the diabetic has an arm patch that monitors their glucose levels. This has meant great progress for the diabetic but it comes at a price cost. Want to bring down the cost of healthcare start rationing access. Good like with that.

[jb]

"The government itself is directly or indirectly responsible for most of health care inflation."

This is, of course, a shibboleth of the right, but has basically no basis in reality. In almost all of our peer countries, the government is much more involved with healthcare, and yet they are all substantially cheaper than the US. And, of course, private healthcare costs (per capita) have risen much faster than Medicare or Medicaid spending in the US.

If you want to actually start learning about why health care is so expensive in the US, here's a starting point:

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/health-policy-101-health-care-costs-and-affordability/

[grb]

loki13 : "The GOP health care plan is like nuclear fusion..."

I'm not sure that's the right analogy. Nuclear fusion is possible without violating the laws of nature, physics, and science itself. I doubt that's true of a GOP "healthcare plan". At a minimum, you're gonna need quantum mechanics with something so mired in contradictions & common-sense absurdity.

[loki13]

....well played. #nonotes

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't think it in any way violates the laws of physics to start repealing regulations.

I'll give you an example I'm personally familiar with, because I've met the researcher.

Dr. Gregory Fahy has developed a protocol for reversing thymus involution.

If you know anything about the biology of the immune system and aging, this is the sort of thing that is freaking important. The thymus is where immune cells mature and are programed to distinguish friend from foe. But starting in middle age, the thymus starts degenerating, and by your 50's or 60's, most people functionally don't have one anymore.

And their immune system starts declining, you get more and more autoimmune problems, your response to actual pathogens becomes sluggish and weak. The immune cells have other beneficial functions, too, that they stop performing.

Dr. Fahy's protocol reverses that. Reliably, repeatedly demonstrated. It doesn't cure anything the government admits is a disease, but it makes you much less SUBJECT to disease.

Widespread use could dramatically reduce the medical needs of older people, saving billions a year.

The regulatory burdens he's facing are absurd! One of the components in the protocol is HGH, and that's locked down so tight it's barely possible to do research with it, and once you've done the research you can't APPLY it.

We actually know a major cost saver with positive impact on quality of life, and because of the government, can't roll it out!

It's not the only such thing, by the way....

[Sarcastr0]

Or maybe it's a scam.

Easy to scam some folks by blaming the evil feds that are keeping your miracle.

I don't have the expertise to tell, but also this is a single study. Exciting potential or not, it's not ready for prime time were it physical or social science, much less medical.

[grb]

Definitely worth a look (particularly if you're Brett & my age). The linked Forbes article is from 2022, and it highlights both the promise and limited evidence behind the suggested treatment.

1. First, additional description : "The thymus starts to deteriorate from an early age, and by the time you are 50 it has almost entirely converted to fat. Fortunately for those of us older than 50, T cells survive a decade or two, so we don’t all drop dead in middle age. But in your mid-60s, your T cell population declines rapidly, and your immune system is increasingly compromised.

2. Dr. Fahy started by testing himself. He subsequently moved to ten then twenty-six subject tests, both of which showed promise. Brett link seems to reflect the former study. The '22 article was written while the second trial was underway. And - yes - he continues to test himself.

3. In the article, Dr. Fahy suggests part of the problem is this subject lays outside his recognized field, which is cryobiology.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/calumchace/2022/11/01/regenerating-the-thymus-profile-of-greg-fahy/

[Brett Bellmore]

His research has continued since 22, and it's been going great. The treatment absolutely works, and now he's testing it on an expanded age distribution, seeing if it works to bring the thymus back from practically gone.

He's currently looking into moving his work to England, and serving people in the US via medical tourism, since the FDA simply flatly will not approve anything that reverses aging.

[Sarcastr0]

A scientist testing themselves is kind of a red flag.

the FDA simply flatly will not approve anything that reverses aging
You got that from him, I presume? This seems a secret agenda from the FDA.

You don't even need that agenda - twenty-six subject tests is well before you're gonna be going for FDA trials! NIH is who he should be talking to!!

[John F. Carr]

Like the Massachusetts legislature and governor acted in a few days to criminalize "upskirt" photos then went back to the usual procrastination over regular business.

[Bob from Ohio]

"less than 24 hours"

Congress always moves fast on symbolic gestures.

"Wondering how will take to address rising health care costs?"

I thought you guys solved all this with Obamacare?

[Moderation4ever]

Wrong thinking. The ACA was about getting people access to healthcare. Something that the ACA has done successfully. Health care costs are up because we now have so much more available. Want to bring costs done ration care.

[jb]

The ACA actually did help decrease spending on health care, but like you say, that wasn't it's main goal:

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/affordable-care-act-still-reduces-deficits-despite-tax-repeals

[Brett Bellmore]

The ACA was an off budget welfare program. People who couldn't afford a product were given that product at a reduced price that didn't remotely cover what they were getting, that's "welfare".

But a new welfare program would have been a hard sell in Congress, so they had the clever idea of taking it off budget by mandating that it be run by the insurance companies themselves, as a condition of doing business.

Naturally, in order for a business to sell a product below cost to Paul, it must sell it ABOVE cost to Peter. And so at the same time that a fair number of people who previously couldn't afford health insurance got it, a vast number of people who HAD health insurance saw the cost of their insurance go up dramatically, and the terms of it get worse.

I don't want to ration health care, I want a free market in it, so the insurance companies can go back to selling insurance their customers want, not insurance the government wants their customers to have, and at a rational price that doesn't deliberately rip most people off in order to give other people a great deal.

And then, if you really want to give health insurance to people who can't afford it, do it on budget, openly.

Instead of doing it the way, yes, fascists do.

[Commenter_XY]

Fine, I'll decide what care you get...or don't get = ration care

[Sarcastr0]

The market rations care as well.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you insist on misusing the word "ration", sure.

[Sarcastr0]

What are you on about? A market distributes limited supplies as much as any other method.

And it's worse at it for medical care - most don't want a flight to whoever has the most resources with that particular service.

[bernard11]

No misuse.

The market allocates - rations - health care, as it does everything else, because there is not an infinite supply.

Lots of people like to pontificate - often inaccurately - about "Econ 101." One of the first things you learn in Econ 101 is that economics is fundamentally about allocating scarce resources in the face of unlimited demand. That's also known as rationing.

[loki13]

Interesting update on the Comey litigation (reported from a live blog of the hearing)-

There is a hearing right now before Nachmanoff. The issue is Comey's motion to dismiss for selective or vindicative prosecution (which is a really high bar, although these are unusual facts).

Anyway, the following two recent exchanges caught my eye that reportedly occurred at the beginning of the DOJ's presentation-

1. Tyler Lemons (the attorney brought from out of state to litigate this because, um, Halligan) said the whole thing was okay, because, you know, a grand jury returned an indictment!

Nachmanoff- "“We’ll have some questions about that."

OUCH.

2. Tyler Lemons* stated that someone at the Deputy Attorney General's Office (*cough* Todd Blanche) instructed him NOT to provide the declination memo to Comey's defense team because it was privileged, and could only be disclosed with the DAG office's permission.

Hmmmmmm. That's interesting. Really, really, really interesting. But not in a good way for the DOJ.

*Tyler Lemons- remember you have ethical duties, and your name is now on this shitshow.

[John F. Carr]

The Comey case is remarkable for the number of independent and non-frivolous grounds to dismiss or supress enough evidence to doom the case.

Vindictive prosecution
Improper appointment of prosecutor
Misleading the grand jury
Violating attorney-client privilege
Exceeding the scope of a search warrant

Did I miss any? I don't see selective prosecution. Lying to Congress gets other people in trouble too.

[loki13]

There's also outrageous conduct. Latetia James filed a heckuva outrageous conduct motion yesterday.

Seriously, check it out. It's ... something.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.583341/gov.uscourts.vaed.583341.109.0.pdf

Pretty sure Comey would have a similar claim, even though the "shocks the conscience" standard is so high ... but da-yum.

[John F. Carr]

My conscience is not shocked. As alleged, the administration dug up dirt on James because of her legally protected conduct. That's vindictive prosecution.

[loki13]

I'm not saying that the motion will succeed (given all the other issues, it doesn't need to), but I disagree- it's a colorable motion.

It's not "digging up dirt." It's engaging in what appears to be unlawful conduct (illegal access to protected systems) to selectively secure "evidence." Then, when the government attempted to investigate Pulte's unlawful conduct, Pulte fired a dozen employees because they believed the evidence of this misconduct had to be turned over to James' defense.

Then, after referring the matter to the DOJ using unlawful evidence, Pulte continued to "investigate," despite the other people at the FHFA telling him there was no basis to do so.

Then, we have Martin at the DOJ, who, before there were any charges, not only did the Inspector Gadget routine outside of James' house, but also sent her a letter telling her she should resign.

Then, after Siebert refused to indict James, he was forced out and Halligan was put in with a mandate to indict James. Oh, another career prosecutor who also wrote a memo explaining why they couldn't prosecute James was also fired.

Then Halligan indicted James.

There's more.

Look, if that doesn't shock the conscience, it's hard to find a set of facts that will. But it is an incredibly high burden.

Then using that "evidence" to gin up bogus charges, in order to send a letter demanding that James quit her job.

[Zarniwoop]

This motion does seem to have substantial overlap with James's vindictive/selective prosecution motion.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.583341/gov.uscourts.vaed.583341.53.0.pdf

[bernard11]

Wow. That really is amazing.

Shouldn't these guys be disbarred or something?

[loki13]

Oh. Oh wow.

Halligan speaks! And ... it was not good.

First, the DOJ has finally admitted what we were all thinking. After the Grand Jury no true billed, Halligan just brought an ... altered indictment for the Grand Jury Foreman to sign.

Oh lord. I can't even.

When the judge heard that admission, he called up Halligan to testify and to confirm what he just heard was correct. Apparently, he started with "Am I correct ..."

Halligan interrupted the judge and said "No, you are not correct," and then proceeded to Halligan-splain her back-and-forth with the magistrate judge that was already on the record.

The judge said "I'm familiar with the transcript," and told her to sit down.

Do you think she understands? Maybe ... it would have been prudent to at least let the judge ask a question after the DOJ just admitted that?

[Estragon]

She’s gonna need a pardon

[John F. Carr]

What is the procedure in the Fourth Circuit for disbarring a lawyer from federal practice?

[Zarniwoop]

maybe in addition to "Halligations" we should put "Hallisplain" in the dictionary for "ignoring questions and talking over a judge about materials the judge has read themself".

That's "stuff not to do in court for $100, Alex" territory. Nowhere near a $500 question.

[loki13]

Hearing is over.

Judge Nachmanoff says he isn't going to rule on vindicative and selective prosecution today.

Why?

Well, he needs to sit with the issue of the grand jury never seeing the indictment that was actually brought against Comey. So, um, there's that.

[loki13]

Have to say, was not expecting those fireworks at this hearing.

It just continues what I've seen in a lot of cases by the Trump DOJ in front of District Courts- they rely on procedure and declarations to try and get cases won, because they know that if they have to provide real evidence (testimony) or there are hearings .... it tends to go really poorly for them.

Like this hearing- where we see why they fought tooth and nail for so long to keep the grand jury proceedings under wraps. Heck, this actually sheds light on Judge Currie's question at the prior hearing about whether Comey's team had seen the declination memo.

Remember- they lie. They lie. They lie. And they know that those lies will get found out if they can't succeed on assertions like, "Courts aren't allowed to interfere with anything the President does, m'kay."

[OpinionsVary]

And remember Pamela Bondi signed a bit of paper saying she personally ratified all this...

[loki13]

Anyway, the DOJ has been ordered to file a response to the Court by 5pm TODAY regarding the .... grand jury indictment issue that they finally acknowledged to the Court.

That should be a doozy. Looking forward to seeing them trying to explain this as a minor paperwork issue ... the kind that Bondi twice ratified.

[David Nieporent]

Look, the grand jury probably would have indicted, so the fact that Halligan skipped that step isn't really important, is it?

After all, everyone knows the 5A says, "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, unless everyone knows — because the president says so — that the person is guilty."

[Zarniwoop]

I'm gonna need more popcorn.

[Glaucomatose]

Look, it's fine - just PDF me your signature pages in advance and I'll hold them in escrow until you confirm over email that you're OK with the changes that we agree to with lender's counsel after we work this all out.

[Kenneth Almquist]

> Anyway, the DOJ has been ordered to file a response to the Court by 5pm TODAY

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.200.0_8.pdf

They accuse the magistrate judge of violating the Canons of Judicial Conduct, not once, not twice, but three times. One of the things about the Trump Administration is that it lets us discuss all sorts of issues that would never come up if the DoJ were functioning normally. In the days when the DoJ wouldn’t present a case to a grand jury unless there was probable cause to indict, we’d never get to consider the question of how to handle the grand jury indicting on some counts and not others because that didn’t happen. And now we get the question of whether it’s a good idea to accuse a judge of violating the Canons of Judicial Conduct because they reached a conclusion that (you claim) is not supported by the evidence.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Federal judges are so insubordinate.

[David Nieporent]

2. Tyler Lemons* stated that someone at the Deputy Attorney General's Office (*cough* Todd Blanche) instructed him NOT to provide the declination memo to Comey's defense team because it was privileged, and could only be disclosed with the DAG office's permission.

My understanding (from reading various coverage, of course) is that he actually said that he was instructed by Blanche not to say whether such a declination memo had been written.

Which, I mean… if none had been written they'd have just said so.

[loki13]

In the best possible light to Tyler Lemons, this might have been his way of telling the Court, "Yes, there is a declination memo," without telling the Court that, while still following Todd Blanche's orders, and while alerting the Court to the constraints that he is under.

Personally, I think that given what we know, Tyler Lemons might be better off resigning than continuing to prosecute this case given what we know, but I'm trying to be generous.

[jb]

In the best possible light to Tyler Lemons, this might have been his way of telling the Court, "Yes, there is a declination memo," without telling the Court that, while still following Todd Blanche's orders, and while alerting the Court to the constraints that he is under.

From what I've read, this seems correct. He was told by Blanche he couldn't admit the thing existed, but he did say he'd seen drafts of a memo and that Blanche had told him he couldn't actually say more which is basically all he could do under those constraints.

[Bunny495]

Is the process the punishment?

Asking for a friend.

[loki13]

Yes. The process of Trump dismantling the DOJ and destroying institutional competence and integrity that took generations to achieve is punishment that this country will take a long time to undo.

[SRG2]

This is so embarrassing that the cultists have stayed away from the topic. Not even Riva has popped up to 'splain to us why Halligan is right and everyone else is wrong, legally, factually, morally and philosophically.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Here is the text of the Epstein Files Transparency Act

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405/text

Plus, in the devil's advocate category:

https://www.vox.com/policy/469461/doj-case-against-releasing-jeffrey-epstein-files

[ducksalad]

"all unclassified records"

I predict we'll be seeing that word and it's opposite a whole lot in the next 30 days. That's the whole game now.

[loki13]

Don't forget, Trump can classify and unclassify documents with his MIND!

[ducksalad]

(4) All decisions to classify any covered information after July 1, 2025 shall be published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress, including the date of classification, the identity of the classifying authority, and an unclassified summary of the justification.

And he did it in his mind prior to July 1, 2025. You can't prove otherwise.

[Zarniwoop]

That's the whole game now.

Well, "under investigation" is another available excuse.

Trump announced new (surely a coinkydink) "investigations" (only of democrats, surely also a coinkydink) about the same time as his "release the files" TACO.

What's the over/under on how long those "investigations" will take? Checking the calendar, I'm thinking a little over three years.

[ducksalad]

You're right. That excuse sounds a lot better. It can even turn the tables- "You want the files released? Why are you protecting sex offenders?"

[Voize of Reazon]

The bill says that information can be withheld because of an active investigation "provided that such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary". Since Trump has them only investigating Democrats I guess that means they can only withhold information about Democrats.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Here's one article discussing loopholes that can block the release of various information.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/19/epstein-files-justice-department-release/

[MoreCurious]

To repeat two questions I asked earlier: (1) Does anyone believe the files still exist? (2) If they exist, does anyone believe we'll ever see them?

[TwelveInchPianist]

So it's probably a bad time to be a married man who once got interviewed by Olivia Nuzzi...

[Estragon]

I bet Sanford is glad to be back in the headlines. Has he been on the AT this whole time or what?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I guess that means no defunding the NYPD.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/11/19/jessica-tisch-accepts-offer-to-remain-nypd-commissioner-under-mamdani/

[loki13]

I think that's what the rubes don't seem to understand. Or deliberately choose not to.

Does Mamdani have a fair amount of power? Sure, he is the mayor of NYC. But the mayor of NYC doesn't have unlimited power- there are a lot of checks and balances- from the state of New York. From the federal government. And from a lot of the internal checks and balances within NYC!!!!!

Yet, somehow they are equating the election of a single mayor, of a single city, with limited power that is hemmed in on all side as somehow equal to giving an authoritarian the Presidency, and cheering on his systemic dismantling of all possible checks on his power.

Even assuming all the bad things they say about Mamdani are true (and they aren't) ... that's a problem for New York, not the rest of us.

[Ridgeway]

The best argument for not fretting too much over Zohran! is that NYC just had 8 years of Bill DeBlasio and survived OK. Bill D was older, whiter and most likely lazier than ZM, but their politics seems to overlap about 100%.

[loki13]

Look, Bernie Sanders is a Democratic Socialist. The reason that people got so ... concerned (we'll call it that) about Mamdani has only a little to do with his politics, and a lot to do with ... let's say other factors.

But it's just not a big deal. NYC is a great city. Maybe he'll be a good mayor. Maybe he will suck donkey balls. But NYC will be fine, and he's just a mayor.

[loki13]

Just thinking ... the DOJ has TWO things due at 5pm today.

In one, they have to argue that the Magistrate Judge is wrong to force the release of the Grand Jury Proceedings to Comey's Defense team, because those proceedings have a presumption of regularity, and nothing in it could possibly help Comey with a motion to dismiss (setting aside the privilege issues).

In the other, they have to explain to the same judge how their admission in Court today that the indictment they are using against Comey was never presented to the Grand Jury is no big deal, guys in their high school used to indict people without a grand jury all the time. Just regular process!

When #synergy meets #voltage

[loki13]

FYI-

"The same considerations of efficient administration of justice do not apply to indictments to be brought in the future. Henceforth the United States Attorney is on notice that the indictment procedure followed in this case is defective. Because the test for prejudice is cumbersome and difficult to apply and, more important, because the application of it involves the kind of guesswork which the Supreme Court has disapproved, a flat rule requiring dismissal of indictments not found by 12 grand jurors will be appropriate in the case of indictments returned after the date of this decision."
Gaither v. United States, 413 F.2d 1061 (D.C. Cir. 1969).

[Ridgeway]

What exactly is Halligan supposed to have done with the indictment? Did she just x-out the count that the GJ voted down and have the foreman sign that document, or was it something else (and more egregious)?

[loki13]

Let me start by saying that criminal law isn't my thing, so I will defer to the other lawyers here on this particular matter with more expertise.

That said, I can still remember from way back in CrimPro (that's criminal procedure class) being told "the black letter law" that the Grand Jury needed to sign the indictment that they were presented.

In other words, if you type up a new indictment (as was done here), you can't have it just signed by the foreman. You have to have it presented to the entire Grand Jury again. Because it's a new indictment.

Now ... this is where my lack of knowledge of criminal law comes into play. I think that the correct procedure would have been to simply take the indictment that the grand jury had voted on and if they had, in fact, voted on two of the charges and rejected the third, then you cross out one (or otherwise indicate that only two charges were true billed) and have that signed.

I'm welcome to be corrected on that, but I think that's what could have happened, but didn't. Now, you might think this is a minor issue, but it isn't. For a lot of reasons- not just to avoid shenanigans (like a different "new" indictment) but because when you change the indictment, it has to be presented to the Grand Jury, so that they know what they have agreed to. And it's such a big deal that even I remember that all these years after a class, and the MJ flagged it in his order (calling it "uncharted territory") and the Judge in this hearing, after the admission, immediately was like, "Um, we need to deal with this, now."

[David Nieporent]

Remember how badly Halligan botched this even before we knew about this little peccadillo: she originally presented both indictments (the three count one and the two count one) to the court right after the grand jury voted, which completely confused the judge, and then she claimed she hadn't, and then was shown that both had her signature on them, and she said it was just some sort of clerical mixup. Also, the original three count indictment that the grand jury rejected had been drawn up so hurriedly/slipshoddily that it had two Count Twos and no Count Three.

[Bunny495]

Just when you thought it was safe from off the wall conspiracy theories this pops up in my feed.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hidden-meaning-in-melania-s-3000-dress-at-white-house-dinner-with-saudi-crown-prince/ar-AA1QJXas?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ASTS&cvid=2a1c7fa424794514ca7c60010f727ad0&ei=58

[apedad]

"The dinner was held in the East Room, and when Donald and Melania arrived, the first lady stole the show in a strapless, emerald green Elie Saab gown. According to several news outlets, it was meant to mirror the Saudi flag."

The Saudi flag has bodacious breasts on it?!?

[grb]

Rewrite!

"The dinner was held in the East Room and Melania stole the show in a strapless white gown randomly splattered with red. According to several sources, it was meant to symbolize Jamal Khashoggi.

"A lot of people didn't like that gentleman", the First Lady said. "Things happen"

[Bunny495]

grb please stop posting when you have been using cheap drugs. At least try and get the good stuff.

[grb]

People have mentioned this, but it bears repeating : We're currently consumed over Matters Epstein, with every MAGA lickspittle dutifully insisting Trump could never be implicated in Epstein's crimes.

Meanwhile, fresh reporting shows the White House directly intervened to protect loathsome misogynist / sex trafficker in three separate countries / rapist Andrew Tate.

“The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” AT posted on X in February and was soon proved right. The Department of Homeland Security's White House liaison, Paul Ingrassia, personally instructed senior DHS officials to lay-off the Tate brothers. Of course Ingrassia was the Tate's lawyer before joining the White House, but unethical conflict of interest is common in that cesspool.

Besides, when your president is a sleazy corrupt lifelong criminal, you expect this fraternal brotherhood with others who share that vocation. But it does make you wonder whether that same fellow feeling extended to Epstein.

https://www.propublica.org/article/andrew-tate-investigation-dhs-paul-ingrassia

[loki13]

It's what I wrote yesterday.

The story of the Trump Administration...

Nazis protecting sex traffickers.

...or is it the other way around?

[Glaucomatose]

"Yes."

[Bunny495]

"The Tate brothers’ lawyer, Joseph McBride, said he didn’t know what happened to the devices but that his clients have still not had them returned. He said it’s unclear whether any investigation into their contents is continuing."

Article further states the devices were searched and no charges were ever filed. There is an ongoing investigation by the AG in the state of Florida. These guys do seem to be slime doggies but no law against being a slime doggie.

In any case I am wondering about seizing electronics when you enter America. I have flown in several times, arrived on a private boat more than once, and walk in when crossing into San Diego from Mexico and never once was my smart phone even asked about. The article does mention less protection for non US citizens entering but I suspect they do have some protection. Given that there apps used by illegal aliens when entering the US illegally I am wondering how many of those phones are seized. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

[loki13]

From the article:

In a brief interview with ProPublica, Ingrassia denied trying to help the Tates, before hanging up. “There was no intervention. Nothing happened,” he said. “There was nothing.”

Ingrassia’s lawyer, Edward Paltzik, said in a text message: “Mr. Ingrassia never ordered that the Tate Brothers’ devices be returned to them, nor did he say — and nor would he have ever said — that such a directive came from the White House. This story is fiction, simply not true.”

When questioned about whether Ingrassia had asked authorities to return the devices, even if he did not order them to, Paltzik declined to comment, explaining that “the word ‘ask’ is inappropriate because it is meaningless in this context. He either ordered something or he didn’t. And as I said, he did NOT order anything.”

******
Paltzik: So, did you tell them to give the Tates back their phones?

Ingrassia: Tell them? I DEMANDED THAT THEY GIVE BACK THE PHONES! It's what Der Fuhrer... um, the White House, wants. SIEG HEIL!

Paltzik: ...look, let's try and keep that to just a Nazi streak, m'kay. But you demanded, right, you didn't actually, order? Just demanded?

Ingrassia: DAS IST GUT! Uh, sure, I demanded it, not ordered it.

Paltzik: Perfect! They'll never catch on to my cleverness!

[Bunny495]

I would never be confused as someone opposed to salacious gratuitous sex stories, but this Epstein shit is so last week. First problem I have with it is claims about pedophiles. Sure some (maybe most) of the girls were underage but at least some were physically attractive enough to convincedly lie about being underage. Compared to what one can find at Pron Hub nothing I have seen so far even suggest anything but mild kinky stuff.

Problem is we already have the Steele Dossier bullshit about "golden showers" which is way kinkier than anything so far Epstein and his minions were involved in. Pols and the rich and shameless have a long history of sex outside of marriage (and in Clinton's case no sex inside of marriage). I can still recall the Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler being central figures in the Profumo Affair which brought down Profumo and the PM to some extent. Truth be told most sex scandals don't really amount to much and are quickly forgotten. They seem to be more of a 'look at this new shiny thing'.

I am still more worried about the CR being used instead of a real budget. Same goes for no way for America to pay for all the health care it needs (if you are not an account don't get in over your head about this). Bottom line is I have bigger fish to fry.

[loki13]

Donald, is that you?

Sorry, that's unfair to Bunny. Bunny's writing is much more consistently and correctly capitalized, not to mention coherent.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also unfair to Trump: even with all this pressure and his history of disgusting comments in relation to credible allegations of sex crimes, even he still hasn’t done the “actually it’s ephebophilia.” Yet so many of his defenders do that unprompted!!!

[loki13]

So true.

Even Trump knows that when you're arguing over the fine distinctions between pedophilia and epheboophilia, you kinda sound like a pedo.

[Bunny495]

Just so we are all on the same page, here is what the shrinks say and the Cliffs Notes version first.

"In short, ephebophilia refers to an adult who is primarily attracted to teenagers who have finished or are nearly finished with puberty. It is distinct from pedophilia (attraction to children) and is often the subject of legal debate because the targets of this attraction are often physically mature but legally underage."

In clinical research (specifically the study of chronophilias, or age-based attractions), sexual interests are categorized by the physical development of the target:

Pedophilia: Sexual attraction to prepubescent children (generally age 11 and younger).

Hebephilia: Sexual attraction to pubescent children (generally ages 11–14), who are in the early stages of physical development.

Ephebophilia: Sexual attraction to post-pubescent adolescents (generally ages 15–19). These individuals usually exhibit secondary sex characteristics (such as full height, breasts, or facial hair) and are physically indistinguishable from young adults.

Teleiophilia: Sexual attraction to fully developed adults (generally age 20+).

2. Psychiatric and Legal Status
It is important to distinguish between clinical diagnosis and legal status.

Not a Mental Disorder: Unlike pedophilia, ephebophilia is not listed as a mental disorder in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Because mid-to-late adolescents are physically mature and capable of reproduction, attraction to them is biologically considered a variation of normal adult sexuality rather than a pathology.

Legal Implications: While the attraction is not considered a mental illness, acting on this attraction can be illegal depending on the jurisdiction. If the adolescent is under the legal age of consent (which varies from 16 to 18 in the US, as discussed previously), sexual contact constitutes a crime (statutory rape), regardless of whether the psychological community labels the attraction as "normal" or "disordered."

3. Summary
In short, ephebophilia refers to an adult who is primarily attracted to teenagers who have finished or are nearly finished with puberty. It is distinct from pedophilia (attraction to children) and is often the subject of legal debate because the targets of this attraction are often physically mature but legally underage.

[loki13]

When you're in a hole, stop digging.

Look, if you're compelled to make a distinction so you separate out the men who have sex with toddlers from the men who have sex with young teens because those men have the emotional maturity of toddlers, knock yourself out.

But the rest of us know that while there might be some colorable arguments about a 21 year old and a 17 year old, when you're trying real hard in defense of 50-somethings doin' it with 14 year olds you're skeevy AF.

[not guilty]

Actually the distinctions among pedophilia, hebephilia and ephebophilia are well worth recognizing.

As are the distinctions among embryos, fetuses and babies.

[LawTalkingGuy]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nu6C2KL_S9o&pp=ygUcZ2lhbm1hcmNvIHNvcmVzaSB0ZWNobmljYWxseQ%3D%3D

[LawTalkingGuy]

“but at least some were physically attractive enough to convincedly lie about being underage.”

JFC.

[Glaucomatose]

Hey look, The Onion wrote an article about you:

Megyn Kelly Anxiously Waits For Everyone Else To Start Condoning Pedophilia Too
NEW YORK—Faced with backlash against comments she made last week downplaying the sex trafficking crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, an anxious Megyn Kelly appeared on her podcast Monday waiting for everyone else to start condoning pedophilia too. “I can’t be the only person who thinks having sex with a teenager isn’t all that bad, so don’t leave me hanging here, guys,” a visibly distraught Kelly said to her producer and camera operator, moments before she began cold-calling past guests of her show in search of anyone willing to agree on the record that 15 was “plenty old enough.”

[Bunny495]

I posted a comment in the thread about the DNC guy who had sex with a 16 year old and is now being sued about in a different thread EV just started. A portion of that post is reproduced below.

"I do have ethical problems with a 38 year old guy in a quasi position of authority hitting on a 16 year old female and having sex with her. I am just not sure what (if any) legal remedies exist.

Maybe a bigger issue is like it or not 16 year old kids (and kids younger than 16) are having sex. The age of consent is even older than 16 in some jurisdictions. No one with a firm grasp of reality doubts high school and middle school students are having sex, and not just with each other but older partners as well. I am not trying to argue this is a good thing, just noting that the reality is kids are having sex, and I don't have a real solution for how the law should deal with it."

reason.com/volokh/2025/11/19/democratic-national-committee-not-liable-for-field-organizers-alleged-grooming-of-16-year-old-campaign-volunteer-which-led-to-sex/?comments=true#comment-11287359

[Glaucomatose]

No one with a firm grasp of reality doubts high school and middle school students are having sex, and not just with each other but older partners as well. I am not trying to argue this is a good thing, just noting that the reality is kids are having sex, and I don't have a real solution for how the law should deal with it."

No one with a firm grasp of reality doubts that lots of crimes happen. The solution for how the law should deal with it is that people get prosecuted for committing crimes.

[Bunny495]

You totally missed my point. While "crimes" are what the government defines them as that does not always reflect the reality of what the population thinks are crimes. Prohibition and the "war on drugs" are two obvious examples of the failure of the government when defining what a crime is.

More to the point there have been posts saying it is more objectional for a 50 year old to have sex with a legal 16 year old than for a 36 year old to do the same. There are also laws that somewhat bow to reality saying a 16 year old male can have sex with a 15 year old girl and avoid punishment that a 21+ year old male would be subject to.

I am not trying to justify any of this, just saying it happens and I see a problem with how the law deals with it. I would also point out that the recent example of the guy who got off for throwing a sandwich at a LEO shows that just because someone is prosecuted does not mean they will be punished. That cuts both ways. There is a case of a 17 year old black football player that had sex with an underage girl and got a very harsh sentence (he may have been tried as an adult); of course this happened in the South and a racial component was likely involved.

I can still remember fooling around in junior high school with girls and some of them were definitely 36DD while other stuffed tissue paper in their bras to improve their figure. Not unexpectedly things really escalated in high school. Point is there were 14 year old girls who were more physically and emotionally mature in junior high school than some 18 year old girls in high school (don't get me started on the emotional maturity of the guys).

So how do you resolve this. I would also point out that in the black community older black males impregnating very young black girls is much more common than upper class white communities; and prosecution is less likely in the black communities than in white ones.

From what I have seen the girls involved in the Epstein affair were all attractive and what I would term mature for their age. This does not justify what Epstein/Maxwell did but juries tend to understand how facts like this may mitigate punishment. Another issue is one reason for the "age of consent" is before that age good judgement is lacking. Lots of kids do stupid things (like having sex) because it is cool to their minds.

Bottom line is no question Epstein deserved punishment but take him out of the equation and things get messy.

[Glaucomatose]

There is nothing messy about this. This isn't a high school senior and a high school sophomore, where as you note there are occasional over-zealous prosecutions of relationships between two young people who very often are in the same developmental stage mentally. This is a 40-to-50-something billionaire, systematically preying on and trafficking vulnerable teenagers that he flew away from their parents, slept with and lent out to his rich friends, most of whom appear to have been older than he is. If you think a jury would "mitigate punishment" in this case because they 15-year-olds were good looking, that says a lot more about you than it does about the law.

[Bunny495]

Not sure if you have a legal background but a 21 year old and a 40-50 something are equal in the eyes of the law (for some things it is even younger than 21). If you think in the eyes of a jury a 15 year old Tracy Lords would not be treated differently than a tomboy looking girl that says a lot more about you than it does about the law. Anyone who has been on 42nd street has seen young girls involved in the worlds oldest profession, not uncommonly with men in the 40s, 50s, and older. Just my two cents but I would have liked it better if Epstein had not died in jail but had been in gen pop for many years. As an aside many peeps in the EU laugh at the straight laced American sex laws; the age of consent in Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Portugal is 14. How do you like them apples?

[DeAnnP]

Eww. Imagine being 50 and wanting to bed a 16 year old. Gross. All those dudes busted on To Catch a Predator should not have been charged then?

[Moderation4ever]

I think your point is well taken. While some of these young women may have been marrying age in Mississippi and Alabama, with parental consent, the age difference between the Epstein crowd and the young women in this case is disgusting.

[Bunny495]

See my post above and the one where a 36 year old DNC worker had sex with a legal 16 year old. While I have ethical issues with that it was legal where it happened, but in FL where I live the age of consent is 18 so it would be illegal. I don't really see any difference between a 36 year old guy and a 50 year old guy wanting to have sex with a legal 16,17, or 18 year old girl, and the law agrees with me on this. There is no law against being disgusting (the term I used in other posts was slime doggie and there is no law against being a slime doggie)

[Moderation4ever]

The 36 year old was just as disgusting as the 50 year old on that we can agree. I have a limited amount of tolerance for older men having sex with women under the age of consent. While I don't think it is good, I understand that a High School Senior over 18 might be having sex with his junior or sophomore girlfriend. But that is about my limit. If a person is past there teens then their sexual partners should also be past their teens. Simply as that.

[grb]

Bunny495 : " ...be confused... "

Four Points :

1. Is it just me, or does "physically attractive enough to convincedly lie about being underage" seem just a bit off, statement-wise?

2. B-495 : "Steele Dossier bullshit about "golden showers." I'm guessing we have yet another rightwinger unaware that the sex tape was real. Of course the Mueller's Report found the tape itself was faked, fabricated by criminal elements behind the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group (a sponsors of the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia). But despite it being phony, Trump ordered his fixer Michael Cohen to suppress it. Cohen used a Russian-American businessman named Giorgi Rtskhiladze for the negotiations. He reporter back to Cohen by text, saying, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there's anything else. Just so you know..."

This occurred during the last weeks of the presidential election campaign, back in mid-October 2016. Later both Cohen and Rtskhiladze would testify before Mueller's grand jury - also turning over their records of emails and texts. Mueller only gave this a long footnote in his report, presumably because that's all its importance warranted. But if he'd been a shameless hack like Starr or Kavanaugh, we would have surely gotten a more vivid & lurid account. All in all? Bullshit-wise, Steele is coming off better than you, Bunny495.

3. B-495 : "(and in Clinton's case no sex inside of marriage)". It never fails. No rightwinger will ever pass up a chance to Display (like an animal puffing-out its fur or feathers) an absolute scrap-the-barrel-bottom pettiness. Personally? I'd place better odds on the Clintons having sexual congress than Donald and Melania. Do you think she lets the bloated walrus anywhere close to her?

4. B-495 : "Truth be told most sex scandals don't really amount to much." Agreed.

[Mr. Bumble]

What a crock. A real, faked tape.
Do better.

[grb]

The distinction was clear enough for anyone not pretending to be mentally-challenged and/or obtuse. The tape itself was a real recording. It had real physical form. But its subject matter was faked, using actors. I once saw an article that included a still, shot from a low angle near the floor. It's "leading actor" was partially in shadow, sitting in an easy chair. By that glimpse alone, it was not a quality production or worthy of Oscar consideration.

But real enough to prompt Trump to send minions to negotiate with Russian criminals during the last three weeks of the presidential campaign. But - hey - he was a very busy beaver during that period, Russia-wise. At the exact same time he also had Cohen secretly negotiating with Kremlin officials over a large Moscow business deal. Needless to say, he lied about that and other Russian entanglements when questioned on the campaign trail.

And the Russians were busy too. One of the minor details in Mueller's Report was this: Russian Intelligence hacked Clinton friend John Podesta over five months before the election. They stole a massive trove of email then sat back on their haul. So when did they start to leak the messages? Mueller determined that started less than an hour after the Access Hollywood story broke, rocking the Trump campaign back on its heels.

Their boy was in trouble. They rushed to help.

[Bunny495]

Bondi hints new Epstein stuff

msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bondi-says-she-ll-follow-law-on-epstein-files-hints-at-new-information/ar-AA1QIXTg?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ASTS&cvid=4011544ab63c4e6ff50f660127e05db1&ei=16

[loki13]

Does your neck hurt from the whiplash?

It must be hard, going from "Epstein filez are the most important things evar and will destroy the DEMS!" to "Old news, and besides, who doesn't want to screw teens, amirite?" to "Epstein filez are the most important thing evar and will destroy the DEMS!"

Over and over again, depending on the whims of a capricious man who has been working so hard to deflect attention on this while still milking it for votes ... not to mention the creeping senility.

[loki13]

Interesting- I'm sure most of you will see this reported shortly in major news outlets.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26287871-headlinestayca7111925/

The headline news from the 7th Circuit isn't surprising- granting a stay of Judge Ellis's order (Chicago litigation) pending appeal due to overbreadth (mentioning some other issues as well).

I am not overly surprised.

However, before people get too busy moaning about it (or, alternatively, celebrating too robustly), I would note two things-

1. They set it for expedited briefing and a decision. Not terribly surprising.

2. Okay ... this was surprising. The following language is at the end of the order:

Do not overread today’s order. Our concerns about the substantial overbreadth of the district court’s injunction lead us to stay it pending appeal, which we will expedite. But we have not concluded that preliminary relief is precluded. Acting on a very compressed timeline, the district court has developed voluminous and robust factual findings. Those findings may support entry of a more tailored and appropriate preliminary injunction that directly addresses the First and Fourth Amendment claims raised by these plaintiffs.

That is unusual. I am guessing that the Court split the baby- granting the stay (because it was a BROAD order, and let's face it ... judges still have trouble when they see something like that as a matter of law) ... but also recognizing that the facts are pretty pretty bad and need to be examined with actual briefing.

(Again, with the district court repeatedly notes the sheer amount of lies coming from the administration, it's hard to overlook. See also the recent District Court finding in the Portland case, which didn't say that the administration was lying, but showed over more than a hundred pages that the administration had people testify to facts that weren't in existence.)

[loki13]

Fun filing of the day! (Abrego litigation edition)

Here's the order-
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.589189/gov.uscourts.mdd.589189.94.0_1.pdf

So what happened? Well, the Judge in that case ordered that the DOJ produce the declarant at a hearing or the declaration would be stricken. Why? Well, the DOJ was up to the usual (they lie, they lie, they lie) and had gone to the well one too many times with the "Let's submit a self-serving declaration that says we win the case that is sketchy AF" so the judge ordered the declarant to testify in court. Yeah, that's where we are at.

Anyway, the DOJ's next bright idea was to, um, try and seal the hearing set for tomorrow, arguing that it would involve sealed documents that they filed. As the order points out, the documents were only provisionally sealed (under the local rule) and the judge was like, "Naw, they ain't all that. File them unsealed, with minor redaction. And no sealed hearing."

Remember- they want Star Chambers so people don't know that they lie. It's the same tactic they tried to use in the Comey litigation and that they try to use in other litigation (you can't see the Grand Jury Proceedings because they were totes regular, besides, Bondi reviewed them and they were awesome! So awesome she reviewed them twice!).

[ThePublius]

I have a question for loki13:

So, 40 posts today, over maybe 6 or 7 hours. Are you supposed to be working, or are you retired or on PTO and doing this on your own time?

[Bunny495]

I am retired but still have rookie numbers compared to that. Truth be told I am not sure I could even stay on the computer 6 or 7 hours straight.

[ThePublius]

I'm retired, too, but I do other things. 🙂

[ThePublius]

So, as some of you may have noticed, I'm doing some "vintage photography." I developed another two rolls today, one a "mystery roll" of 127 format Kodacolor (developed as B&W as the C-22 process chemistry is no longer available). Yes, there was stuff on there! I don't know who or where it was.

Anyway, one cool thing is the smells. "The sense of smell is strongly linked to memory because of direct neural connections between the olfactory bulb and brain areas responsible for emotion and memory, such as the amygdala and hippocampus. This unique anatomical pathway explains why odors can trigger vivid, emotional memories, particularly from childhood, more effectively than other senses."

Besides the smell of the film, the developer, the fixer, etc., one unexpected thing was the smell of a fired flashbulb. Wow. I recall that as a kid everyone had ashtrays all over the house, and when you popped a flashbulb you just ejected it into an ashtray. I had to use the sink! But that smell, the burning smell of the plastic coating of the bulb to prevent injury from a potentially exploding bulb, brought back a flood of memories. I can clearly recall the family gatherings, the 7 and 7 cocktail smell, Lucky Strikes, and, yes, flashbulbs.

(I got a vintage flash gun and a gross of bulbs. The killer was the $20+ for the 22.5V battery!)

[Bunny495]

Back in the day I was a photo lab monitor when taking photography classes. One of my duties was to keep the trays of chemicals fresh for other students. The university was well funded and kept the AC on artic blast mode in the lab which really cut down on the smell.

[grb]

The pop of a flashbulb and following ejection is featured in many movies, both old productions or new films set in times past. There was one film (The Aviator, I think) where the two stars are attending a premier and so many flashbulbs are popping-off their steps make a crinkly sound from the crushed glass. Exaggerated? Maybe; but evocative still.

[ThePublius]

That's cool, I'll have to look for that.

One of my favorite such scenes is Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, using his flash to try to blind the murder suspect, who had entered his apartment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oowcsynjIwc

[grb]

Raymond Burr!
I love that film.

[ThePublius]

Yes, it's one of the best Hitchcock films.

[loki13]

Someone should check on Judge Smith (5th Cir).

Just saying.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Reminded me of his Airline vaccine dissent, the substance of which I agreed with. But I’m sort of seeing that in a new light now: that guy is just an angry asshole all the time. It just so happened he was correct that one time.

[Glaucomatose]

"George and Alex Soros have their hands all over this."

Jesus.*

* (was killed by the Jews, like George Soros!)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Josh Blackman: "A judge with courage."

[David Nieporent]

OMG; that dissent is insane. "Soros likes this ruling, so it's bad" is literally his argument.

Of course, what makes it even more bizarre is that he first goes to great lengths to scream about how a bunch of the plaintiffs' experts were associated with Soros [so?], and then he rants that Judge Brown's decision didn't rely on those experts.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Recent events have shown that the GOP has a groyperization problem with its young(er) staffers, appointees, and media figures. Took me two pages of attempting to read Jerry Smith’s dissent in the Texas redistricting case to wonder what is probably worth wondering: how bad is groyperizarion among the federal clerks? Seventeen references to George and Alex Soros in an opinion that is also a bunch of personal invective against Judge Jeffrey Brown. Is this really all coming from Smith?

https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/gov.uscourts.txwd_.1150387.1439.0.pdf

Nonetheless the key phrase of the entire opinion is probably on page 5: “In 37 years as a federal judge I’ve served on hundreds of multi-judge panels. This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism I have ever witnessed.”

Old lawyers and judges love to say “in X years of practice Y is the worst thing I have ever seen.” They are typically full of shit when they say this. Because it’s awfully convenient that the thing they are mad about now just so happens to be the worst thing they’ve ever seen. What an incredible coincidence.

[Bunny495]

"groyperization"
I was gonna say you made that word up but it seems to be real.

In any case as an FSU student and employee during the Bowden years I recall listening to a broadcast of an FSU football game when one announcer said this is the game of the century to which the other replied during the 1980s FSU has been involved in seven "Games of the Century"

[grb]

Bunny495 : "I was gonna say you made that word up but it seems to be real."

I had to look it up yesterday. It does seem to be timely, both in accelerated usage and relevance to events right now.

As for the phenomena, what do you expect? Today's Right is a hollow nihilistic shell with everything performance and cartoon theatrics. Being free from any constraint of honesty, logic, ethics, or decency is seen as a badge of honor. Only RINOs worry about facts, consequences, or associative breakage. A true Rightie like Trump or Musk lies with impunity and mindlessly destroys with a child's vindictive glee.

So no wonder the next generation of Right-types adopt the ugliest beliefs they can find. Loudly professing gutter-trash doctrines proves how "free" and "strong" they are. Trump may be more symptom than cause, but he's the epitome of performance cruelty, performance stupidity, and performance spleen.

[grb]

Bunny495 : " ...as an FSU student and employee..."

When I worked in Florida, my desk was between a Seminole & Gator. Most of the year it wasn't too bad. But come football season, things got ugly.

[Zarniwoop]

Recent events have shown that the GOP has a groyperization problem with its young(er) staffers, appointees, and media figures.

I mean, when Laura Loomer (!) says the GOP "has a Nazi problem" ...

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5613042-laura-loomer-gop-nazi/

[Zarniwoop]

Hm the govt response to the procedural kerfluffle about GJ presentment errors by Halligan actually seems reasonable. Will be interesting to see Comey's response.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.201.0_1.pdf

[David Nieporent]

Here's the problem: the actual no bill returned by the grand jury with respect to the first version of the indictment seemingly indicated that the grand jury was no billing the whole thing — confusing everyone. Then Halligan supposedly clarified with the foreperson that their no bill was only on the first count, and that they were okay with the second and third. But instead of getting that from the whole grand jury, she just drew up a new indictment w/o that first count and had the foreperson sign it.

As far as I can tell, it all relies on Halligan's interactions with the foreperson. And Halligan… can't be trusted.

Also, the administration here appears to be resting a significant portion of its argument on the fact that the Gaither court didn't void the indictment. But if you read the Gaither opinion, that court made clear that it was reluctant to rule that the procedure was bad because it had been regularly used in the past, and doing so could've called into question oodles of indictments/convictions. But it ruled that prospectively that procedure could not be used.

Moreover, the administration then cites a couple of cases finding no fault with the non-substantive amendment of indictments. But that presupposes a valid indictment! Here there wasn't a valid one to be amended.

[Life of Brian]

the actual no bill returned by the grand jury with respect to the first version of the indictment seemingly indicated that the grand jury was no billing the whole thing

Can you expand a bit on this "seeming indication" and where it might be found in the ~200 docket entries in this case? The failure to concur (dkt. 3) says "12 or more grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in Count 1 only." Comey's opening brief on vindictive/selective prosecution (dkt. 59) straightforwardly reflects that: "The grand jury returned a “no true bill” on the first count. See Grand Jury Transcript at 5."

[David Nieporent]

Can you expand a bit on this "seeming indication" and where it might be found in the ~200 docket entries in this case? The failure to concur (dkt. 3) says "12 or more grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in Count 1 only."

The failure to concur originally said, "12 or more grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in this case." That was, I guess, inconsistent with what the foreperson had orally reported to Halligan, so Halligan then had the foreperson handwrite in "Count 1 only." (And then, inexplicably, re-drafted the indictment and gave it to the foreperson to sign without showing it to the grand jury.) This confused the judge actually handling the matter: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-james-comey-indictment-confusion-trump/

[Life of Brian]

As I said, Comey long ago conceded this point in his motion. A breathless CBS article doesn't change that.

And in any event, wouldn't the foreperson have to have been in on whatever sort of foul play you're darkly insinuating?

[Magister]

It doesn't seem clear to me that Comey conceded anything about the other counts; the motion "long ago" might not have had the benefit of the information that the prosecutors recently conceded.

The grand jury foreperson need not be a lawyer, and may (foolishly, in the current environment) trust what a federal prosecutor tells them. So, no, they wouldn't have to be in on it.

[David Nieporent]

Comey could not "concede" a point relying on facts of which he was unaware. It wasn't until this past week that we learned that the grand jury never actually voted on the actual indictment that was handed down.

I should clarify, however, that it appears from other coverage that the magistrate judge, not Halligan, was the one who told the foreperson to handwrite in the "count one only" language, based on the foreperson's representations about what the grand jury had done. But the magistrate, too, did not know at the time what Halligan had done.

Based on the current state of the factual record, it remains uncertain whether the grand jury as a whole actually indicted Comey for anything.

[Life of Brian]

OK, so it sounds like you're not claiming the foreperson signed the refactored indictment with even a scrap of doubt that the GJ had actually voted to indict on the remaining two counts. In other words, the text of the refactored indictment precisely reflected the GJ's decision.

Given that, the hopeful notion that there's no actual valid indictment seems like some sort of intersection of form over substance and Simon Says.

[Magister]

When you say "In other words" you really should follow it with something that is equivalent. What the grand jury foreperson believed or not does not necessarily reflect the grant jury's decision.

[Paladin_44]

G'nite all.

[Mr. Bumble]

Looks like the Dems may be down a member.
"BREAKING: Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick Indicted For Stealing $5 Million in FEMA Funds"
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/11/breaking-democrat-congresswoman-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-indicted-stealing/

[grb]

If guilty, good riddance.
No Cult thinking on our side.
Unlike the Right, we don't worship criminals.
(you should try that. might like't)

[bernard11]

So it appears that, under instruction from the Administration, the
Coast Guard will no longer regard swastikas or nooses or Confederate flags as hate symbols.

The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika — an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and the deaths of more than 400,000 U.S. troops who died fighting in World War II — as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.

Instead, the Coast Guard will classify the Nazi-era insignia as “potentially divisive” under its new guidelines. The new policy, set to take effect Dec. 15, similarly downgrades the definition of nooses and the Confederate flag, though display of the latter remains banned,...

I guess Trump's been dining with Fuentes again.