Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

Both houses of Congress have now approved legislation that could force the Pentagon to turn over footage of strikes against suspected drug smugglers.

According to Politico, lawmakers are using the sprawling policy bill to demand the Pentagon hand over unedited videos of strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats near Latin America. The bill restricts a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until Congress receives the footage.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/17/senate-ndaa-passage-trump-boat-strikes-00694738

That is encouraging. The Trump administration should also be required to disclose the shady legal memoranda that were reportedly produced over the summer by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and which the Department of Defense is purportedly relying on to justify the Caribbean strikes. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/11/trump-boat-strikes-lawyers-torture-memos-column-00685071

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights have sued the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the Department of Defense in the Southern District of New York pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act seeking to compel disclosure of the OLC memo. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.654371/gov.uscourts.nysd.654371.1.0.pdf Let's hope that effort succeeds.

[Malika la Maize]

Have you tried reading legal realism?

[Commenter_XY]

NG, there is this thing called, help me out here, a veto = Both houses of Congress have now approved legislation...

I know, I know....POTUS Trump would never veto a Congressional bill he doesn't agree with. 😉

[David Nieporent]

It's the NDAA, not a standalone bill. Hard to veto it.

[Commenter_XY]

Good point. Looks like SecWar Hegeseth got his wings clipped.

[not guilty]

Politico reports that Trump has signed the bill. https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/12/18/congress/trump-defense-bill-00699102

[Commenter_XY]

Looking forward to seeing how we efficiently snuff drug smugglers and dealers, and then make sure the job is done. 😉

[Dr. Ed 2]

And you will have blood on YOUR hands.

During WWII, some politician told the press that Japanese depth charges weren't a threat to our subs because the subs could go below the depth that the Japanese set them at.

Japanese read this, set them to go off deeper, and Americans died.

Same thing here -- that footage will tell our enemies things we don't want them to know about our drones.

[David Nieporent]

Same thing here -- that footage will tell our enemies things we don't want them to know about our drones.

No, it won't.

[DDHarriman]

Wrong.

[DDHarriman]

You forget who these people serve.

It isn't America or her ideals.

[not guilty]

Who has forgotten who which people serve?

Our military personnel, including the Doofus-in-chief and his Secretary of Defense, each take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Did you see that photo of Don jr with his new fiancée?? Don jr has some tig ol bitties!! If Hegseth knocks back a few bourbons he won’t be able to keep his hands off them!!! 😉

[DDHarriman]

Shouldn't you be making some 50s cultural reference? Like George Bush, or that faggy Queen band, or speakeasy's or some shit?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Hegseth gets so drunk I could see him titty fucking him…nasty style!!! 😉

[Frank Drackman]

Freddie Mercury (redacted) more hot chicks than dreamt of in your (faggy) Philosophy

[Kazinski]

Incredible Thursday Night Football game between the Rams and the Seahawks. The Rams offense at times looked unstoppable, and at other times like they could be shutdown at will.

Seahawks were lucky to win, no other way to describe the foiled 2 point conversion that was ruled a backwards pass and gifted them a decisive 2 points to make it a one score game than one of the luckiest flukiest plays of the year. But the Seahawks executed in the clutch and dominated on special teams.

Rams had 581 yards and no turnovers, to Seattle's 415 and 3 turnovers and lost.

[Malika la Maize]

The Seahawks are certainly one of the major stories of the NFL this year so far.

[Kazinski]

Nobody remembers they were tied the Rams for first place in the NFC West last year at 10-7, but lost out on making the playoffs on the last tiebreaker SOV (Strength of Victory, average winning percentage of the teams they beat). If the Rams hadn't lost to Carolina 2 weeks ago the exact same thing could have happened this year, and still could happen if the Rams win out, 49ers lose to the Bears, but beat the Seahawks in the last game. If all 3 teams go 13-4 49ers will win the tiebreaker and the division and the #1 seed.

[Kazinski]

And as an aside Puka Nacua had to apologize earlier in the week for demoing a new TD celebration dance on a podcast:

"Puka reprehensibly vowed to Ross that the next touchdown he scores he will do a “Covetous Jew” dance, which Ross taught Nacua and involves spinning a dreidel, flexing, then rubbing his hands together while mimicking an established antisemitic trope."

Puka did have 225 yards and 2 TDs, but no "Covetous Jew" TD dance.

[Commenter_XY]

To be fair, Puka issued a public apology and stated he had no idea of the antisemitic nature of the dance. That is what he wrote. Was he being truthful? Only he and God know that answer.

[Commenter_XY]

Well, well, well....Judge Dugan is now Convict Dugan.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/milwaukee-county-judge-found-guilty-obstructing-federal-immigration-agents-courthouse-incident

NG was right, she was thoroughly unsympathetic to the jury, and her frumpy appearance and demeanor did not help matters.

[Kazinski]

She thought she was being a hero for saving a thug form deportation, and she already knew what he had (allegedly) done. And I'm sure ready to cut him a break in court proceedings if it would help him stay here.

[not guilty]

Judgment has not yet been entered, and the District Court took the defense motion for judgment of acquittal under advisement. If the motion is granted after verdict the government will have the right to appeal to the Seventh Circuit pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3731.

[DDHarriman]

Have you reflected upon how wrong all your legal analyses of her case were?

If not, don't you think you should?

[Michael P]

Being wrong never stopped him before. Why would it now?

It's probably good that he retired from law; otherwise, truth-in-advertising laws might compel him to change his account name to "not right".

[Frank Drackman]

She could be a Benny Hill Impersonator

[Dr. Ed 2]

We have more questions than answers with the Portuguese shooter.

He was enrolled from September 2000 to April 2001, when he took a leave of absence before formally withdrawing in July 2003"

Why did the leave of absence start in April and formally withdraw in July? Usually the leave would start with the start of the *next* semester, i.e. September, and would end two years later, i.e September. Here it appears to start mid-semester and end mid-summer.

That looks like they booted him for psych reasons. Technically called something like an "involuntary medical leave", they know they'd lose a lawsuit if they booted him outright, so they make it temporary and "for his own good" and have conditions that they know he can't meet and then technically boot him for that.

Universities make used car dealers look honest and ethical by comparison, but I digress....

As he was here on a student visa, he should have been sent home to Portugal in 2001 but wasn't -- and then won a "diversity" green card in something like 2017 -- which means he was here illegally for 16 years

Maybe he acted on his own, but maybe he didn't,

[Dr. Ed 2]

And I haven't seen an explanation as to why the Team Hamas member was scrubbed from the Brown website.

[David Nieporent]

Probably because there are assholes trying to get him lynched by calling him "Team Hamas."

[David Nieporent]

Oh, god. Dr. Ed is going to take random facts that he didn't even read correctly and craft an entire fictitious narrative out of them based on his own mental illnesses.

1) College students take voluntary leaves of absence all the time. Anything from personal family reasons to financial problems to medical issues.
2) There is no evidence that he was "booted for psych reasons."
3) There is no evidence that he was "booted" at all.
4) Why Dr. Ed is assuming without knowing any facts that the guy was "here illegally for 16 years" is a mystery whose answer is known only to him. Indeed, none of the coverage so far says he was here at all during those years.

Notably, while spinning his new flights of fancy, Dr. Ed will never admit that all of his previous "analysis" [sic] was completely wrong.

[Malika la Maize]

A comment on Ilya’s post last evening about a position at George Mason University in Northern Virginia…Behold the power of propaganda and/or resentment:

Longtobefree   3 hours ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
Sounds interesting, but I am not suited to living in a left wing hell hole.
(4400 University Dr, Fairfax, VA 22030)

Having recently taking the slightly southern trek to that area I looked up the stats.

Compared to the national average, Fairfax has significantly lower unemployment, crime, poverty and obesity and significantly higher median income and population with advanced degree. Truly a hell hole!

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/virginia/fairfax-county#overview

[Kazinski]

But a large population of undesirables: federal workers, contractors, and lobbyists.

I think that's what he meant.

[Malika la Maize]

Undesirables producing these great conditions?

Does he (or you) know the definition here?

[Malika la Maize]

Mikie Q(anon, says Trump is an informant on Epstein) and A(deflects Trump assholery), now attacks Marjorie T Greene on her death threat claims.

I’m not one to defend MTG’s credibility, but I’d like to know what Mikie Q&A thinks about Trump calling her a traitor. Seems petulantly unprecedentedly crazy to me, but interested in his assessment.

[Malika la Maize]

To be clear, in recent time Trump has

Called someone a retard
Attacked a murder victim as deranged
Called a member of his party a traitor….

What say you Mikie Q&A and other cultists?

Gonna lead with Obama’s tan suit?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Trump has murdered 80 people so far…killing foreigners for being in a boat with cocaine in it that will never end up in America is murder. Why does Trump care if someone in Venezuela snorts cocaine??

[Michael P]

How many billions of dollars in fraud did Tim Walz enable? At what point do you admit that he is morally stunted and incompetent to carry out the duties entrusted to him?

https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-fraud-charges-fbad68312012dc02a4060852474f72ee

As previously discussed, you refuse to spend a few words to show that you have the standards of a normal, decent person in regard to political derangement. I am not impressed by your continued trolling.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Define "crime."

Some consider the Federal Government to be a criminal conspiracy.

🙂

[Malika la Maize]

Vivek Ramaswamy

There are two competing visions now emerging on the American right, and they are incompatible. One vision of American identity is based on lineage, blood and soil: Inherited attributes matter most. The purest form of an American is a so-called heritage American — one whose ancestry traces back to the founding of the United States or earlier.

This view is now popularized by the Groyper right, a rapidly ascendant online movement that argues for the creation of a white-centric identity. This is a predictable response — one that I anticipated in my 2022 book, “Nation of Victims” — to anti-white discrimination over the last half-decade, and it is no longer just a fringe viewpoint.

The alternative (and, in my view, correct) vision of American identity is based on ideals.

Americanness isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It’s binary: Either you’re an American or you’re not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.

As Ronald Reagan quipped, you can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman; but anyone from any corner of the world can come to live in the United States and become an American. No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant, as long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it. This is what makes American exceptionalism possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/republican-identity-divide.html

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Yep, Trump has the shallowest American roots of any president in history…and 4 of his 5 children have even shallower roots with 3 being anchors for the foreign con artist Ivana. Lineage would disqualify every Trump but Tiffany!

[David Nieporent]

The one thing I object to in Ramaswamy's op/ed is the word "quipped." Reagan was not quipping; he was entirely serious and making an important point about the distinction between propositional America and blood-and-soil nations. (And he did not single out France, either.)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/J5upAEZOchM

[Brett Bellmore]

The thing about a propositional America, is that while anyone can become an American if they subscribe to the proposition, not everyone will subscribe to the proposition, and become more than a nominal American.

Both concepts of nationality exclude as much as they include.

[Commenter_XY]

You are not the selection committee. You are the welcoming committee.

What a great blog post, I LOL'ed at that line. It is so true. I had a similar situation in my life where a friends child chose a spouse we (or our friends) would not have selected. I bet some of you have had the same experience.

How do you prevent estrangement? Since their marriage, they see much less and hear much less from their child and his spouse. It isn't hostility or animus, but a definite cooling. It hurts.

For those of you that have dealt with this, what did you do (passive acceptance isn't happening in this case)? What worked and what failed?

One final note: Make Arranged Marriages Great Again! 😉

[Brett Bellmore]

"I bet some of you have had the same experience."

I had the same experience from the other side: My mother and sister took an immediate dislike to my fiancee the first time I got married.

Within a year she'd cleaned me out and divorced me. So I guess their judgement was much better than mine.

[Frank Drackman]

Those DSL's will get you every time.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Poontang clouds a man’s judgement.

[Mr. Bumble]

As I said on an earlier Open Thread:
Poontang, is there anything it can't do (or get men to do)?

[Brett Bellmore]

Feh, didn't take that. I was lonely and socially awkward, and when the first girl to actually act friendly towards me suddenly got all serious and asked if our relationship was going anywhere, I panicked and proposed, just as she'd intended.

Then she divorced me as soon as I refinanced the house to pay off her credit card debt.

[not guilty]

As I have said before, immigrants will do jobs that American citizens find distasteful.

Such as marrying Donald Trump or marrying Brett Bellmore.

[Mr. Bumble]

You need help! Maybe make an appointment with Qualika for some sessions.

[Mr. Bumble]

Could it be?
Might the outflow of residents to other climes include Da Bears?
Will Jabba the Pricktzer's failed government usher in the Indiana Bears?