Sunday, November 15, 2026

🤦‍♂️ Tell Me You’re Not A Lawyer…

... Yadda Yadda Yadda.

two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
18 USC 242
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
A congressional investigation is not a conspiracy “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.” Not even conceptually.

Likewise it is not a “deprivation of rights, privileges, or immunities…on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race.” Unless Miller wants to argue that congressional investigations by Democrats are unfair to white men.

These laws apply to criminal justice and its implementation. They have nothing to say about Congressional investigations. To put it bluntly: if a police officer thinks you’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny, that is not reasonable suspicion of a crime. You cannot be investigated. OTOH, on the same grounds, Congress could call you before a committee to examine the possibility of laws regarding how your mother dresses you, as an aspect of child abuse. It’s not a criminal investigation (no 5th amendment violations, unless you don’t want to testify), and certainly doesn’t carry the abuse of power and process that the police investigation does.

And the issues the new Congress wants to investigate are a bit more serious, and more soundly chosen. Congress may feel the need to strengthen some laws, or write new ones. Investigations will guide that process.

“Threats”? That reveals a lot more about the guilty dogs barking the loudest.

I’m just going to add this:
And note that if McCotter thinks that language applies to what various Senators and Representatives are doing now, he needs to contact his law school. They probably want their diploma back.
Posted by at 3 comments:

When You’re Calling Congressional Oversight A Threat…

... you aren’t really strengthening your position that you’re innocent. 😇 

And why is the White House Counsel front and center in this? The DOJ represents the government, although not the Administration. Not in the case of Congressional oversight or impeachment (wait for it…), anyway. The office of White House counsel is meant to give legal advice to the office of the president. It cannot and should not provide legal representation, period.

Blanche doesn’t have enough lawyers to spare?  Reitz has his hands full writing mean letters to Sen. Warren?

All this Administration is doing is showing it has something to hide, and digging the hole it’s already in, even deeper. If it weren’t so significant, it would almost be entertaining. 

Almost.
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These People Really Are Idiots

And he hit his own foot. Speech and Debate clause. Separation of powers doctrine. Failure to state a justiciable claim. Failure to show probable cause, likely leading to another grand jury no bill. I can think of several reasons why this goes nowhere, and law licenses face review.

A first year law student wouldn’t survive moot court trying out this nonsense.
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Sunday Morning Going Down

Like this? Congress approved $12.5 billion in 2025. Where did that go?
Koh: President Biden had historic funding not only to the FAA, but over $1 trillion worth of infrastructure money, a lot of it that Donald Trump has reversed on the grounds of it being “too woke”

Donald Trump likes to say it's Biden's fault, but it's actually his policies that are stopping the funding…
🤔
Bash: There was a nationwide ground stop only for the second time since 9/11. Millions of travelers were stranded. No information for a bit about what was happening. Didn't Americans deserve to hear from the president while this was going on?

Duffy: We were talking to the president. The president told Stephen Miller, this is a whole of government approach

Bash: He was posting on social media about the motion, motion picture, television, entertainment, many posts about revitalizing a golf course.
Doocy: Isn't it possible that bad actor could have flooded these routers in Arkansas with data to shut things down?

Mullin: So is it a possibility? Possibly. But the fact is, it isn't. It really appears to be with 98% certainty that this was, this is because of a 50-year-old system…
So, who wants to fly today? C’mon! It’ll be fun! And maybe safe! Relax, America. You’re in good hands.
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There’s Always A Tweet

So, Hegseth is quoting Rubio, who, in the speech referenced, quoted Pompey, a Roman general.
According to Plutarch's Life of Pompey, the Roman commander encountered resistance in Messana, Sicily, around 82 BC. When the inhabitants invoked legal privileges against his jurisdiction, Pompey answered by asserting the authority of armed force.
Pompey didn’t die in battle. He was executed, following a civil war. The more appropriate aphorism is: “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
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Now I’m Using “Strimmer” 😹

You have to watch this because it’s funny as it gets.

And Oscar Wilde: "We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language."
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It’s About Time!

I almost had money riding on this happening! Yup.
Trump’s attempt to pin the meltdown on Biden skips over some inconvenient timing. He has been back in the White House since January 2025. His Transportation Department picked the contractor for the air traffic control overhaul in December 2025, and Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year.
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Texas Is Already Healing

And Paxton’s replacement hasn’t been sworn in yet. But the Administration in D.C. isn’t getting any better. Not really a surprise.
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Another Reason For Duffy To Get $50 Billion, I’m Sure

Adding: Don’t think he’s going to carry much weight in January.
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Saturday, November 14, 2026

How Many Scaramuccis Does He Have Left?

It's not...
Friedman: I agree we should be prioritizing funding modernization of our air traffic system. But that's not what they've been doing. They prioritized $85 billion for ICE. They have funded putting billions of dollars a day into Trump's war of choice in Iran. They have put millions of dollars into building monuments to Trump.

Now they're asking for an increased amount of money without explaining how that money would have prevented this particular mishap from happening

But if they want to take money away from ICE or out of the Iran war, I am all for it. We should be putting money into helping make our skies safer.
... going to go well.

And he’ll have a to be questioned about:
And how much will this shorten his time?
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🫧🧠

$3 trillion? And people weren’t jumping out of windows or losing their life’s savings? I’m familiar with 401k’s, they don’t recover that rapidly. A loss that massive would have people reconsidering their life choices.

$3 trillion would be almost 15% of the market capitalization of the DJIA. I think that would have been more broadly noticed. And a rapid recovery would mean the entire DOW is just a bubble. Or a scam.

Or Grandpa Shoutypants is loony as a shithouse rat.🐀 

Gotta wonder why nobody says that….
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Why Is Twitter Any More Reliable Than The MSM?

A) I don’t think Hasan Piker has a direct line into the elected Democrats in D.C.

 B) I think he’s got the wrong party.

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Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

In other news:
The incident at the BioUrja ethanol plant in Peoria, Illinois remains very active this morning. Peoria Police Chief Brad Dixon said at an overnight press conference that one device has been rendered safe, but the rest of the facility has not been cleared and the search will continue throughout much of today. Chief Dixon confirmed that a device was found Friday afternoon after the plant reported a bomb threat.

Chief Dixon reiterated that the threat is credible and the incident is still active. He would not confirm whether more than one device has been located.

The FBI and ATF are on scene assisting Peoria authorities. A one mile evacuation zone around the plant on Edmund Street remains in effect across parts of Peoria and East Peoria, with more than 5,000 people reportedly evacuated. About 75 people are sheltering at Manual Academy.

The next scheduled update is at noon.

The timeline of events as relayed by the Chief:
1:08p.m - BioUrja contacted Peoria Police in reference to a bomb threat
2:00p.m. (approximately) - A suspicious device was located and additional resources requested to the scene
6:45p.m. - Device determined to be credible and a 1 mile blast radius was established
7:02p.m - Mass notification ordering evacuation within the 1 mile blast radius sent
9:12p.m. - Device rendered safe
Also, too, as well:
Details regarding what exactly occurred last night at U.S. bases across the United Kingdom are still extremely scarce nearly 24 hours after initial reports began to surface, with no official information being provided as of yet by U.S. European Command (EUCOM) or the Pentagon.

All we know so far is that some kind of security incident, some have said a bomb threat and others have said a drone incursion, occurred at RAF Lakenheath resulting in air raid sirens sounding, partial lockdowns and security measures being increased at bases across the country, including at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Feltwell.
And then there are the other questions. Which is a conspiracy theory, except… And he did blame a “legacy contractor” for the failure, today. Clearly angling to replace them (because, like StarLink, the contractor “owns” the communications system. Which makes it easy to displace responsibility as it suits.). So, did he cause it? Or did he just wait for it to happen? And is there a difference, between intent and allowance?
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From Remote Locations?

FAA acting CTO Rebecca Guy: "When we started to see the occurrence where our network was having instability, we started to look at what was the cause. We saw two places that were actually pinging our network at a very high rate -- 1,000 connections over every 4 to 5 seconds."

(That sure sounds like hacking!)
I don’t know that this means “hacking.” But it would be nice if, 20 hours later, they could provide a consistent narrative.
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🍌

Okay, yesterday it was a cascade failure starting at O’Hare. Now it’s in a “remote location,” you wouldn’t know where, it’s in Canada. And bonus points: we’re throwing a contractor under the bus! A @legacy contractor,” no less, who owns this communication system, so we need to give them $50 billion to REALLY screw it up. Or something. In my mind, Duffy is wearing a banana suit now.  Seriously. And when Duffy can’t handle it, bring in techno-bafflegab guy:
FAA ADMIN: We started to experience instability. What is instability mean? Well, within every facility. We started seeing instability we couldn't explain. And as we're going through the diagnostic, we see this propagate into some of our radar low altitude radar facilities known as tracon, affecting both voice and ground communications on our primary lines.
He can explain things using words that mean things. Sort of. Don’t blame you, don’t blame me, blame that feller behind the tree. Besides, oversight is criminal, isn’t it? He’s gonna be wearing that banana suit for the next two years. And we’re back to the router failure in O’Hare story. 🤷‍♂️ 🍌 So air flight in America is fucked for 15, 20 years? How’s that working for you? Between today and January 2nd, I mean. He still believes in Santa Claus.
Sean Duffy must resign, or President Trump must remove him immediately.

America’s airspace ground to a halt yesterday, leaving thousands of flights canceled and travelers stranded across the country. More than 3,500 planes were already in the air as radar and communications systems faltered. We’re fortunate no lives were lost.

From chronic air traffic controller shortages to repeated communications breakdowns, serious lapses in our aviation system have become a pattern on Sean Duffy’s watch.

Through it all, he’s been more focused on starring in his own reality show than addressing the crisis at his agency.

With millions of Americans preparing to travel for the holidays, families deserve answers and confidence in the safety of our skies. Congress must launch a full investigation to determine what went wrong and ensure it never happens again.
How a real executive does it. SNAFU.
Posted by at 2 comments:

The Logic Of Incumbents

Fetterman: "I'm frustrated by the gas prices. It's terrible Americans have to suffer, but if you want to blame the Trump administration, I continue to blame the Iranians as well too. They could find a way forward for peace. It's a political loser, absolutely, but that's a country over party."
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Democrats wiped the floor with the GOP.

‘Tis indeed a mystery…
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Now They’ve Done It

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The Morning After

Sec. Mullin during tonight’s briefing at the White House : “What it appears to be right now is, as secretary Duffy and FAA was going in and putting patches into the system, they were putting new equipment and new technology and that new equipment, new technology just wasn’t— it was overwhelming the older system, which is why secretary Duffy made it very clear the patchwork doesn't work. We need one complete system. We need someone to come in and build the whole system, doing it nickel and diming it together does not work. This is what happens when that takes place. That's why the president has made it very clear we can't do this. It has to be a complete overhaul of the system, which we estimate to be about $50 billion. However, out of an abundance of caution, we are still going to do everything we can to rule it out. If that changes, we will let you know.”
Yeah, that didn’t inspire confidence.
I’ve spoken with 60 air traffic controllers tonight about what Sean Duffy said at the White House today. None of them are buying what he said because they said these types of switches that the FAA is doing, they don’t happen during the day, they don’t happen during busy times like a Friday afternoon. They’re doing these midweek, middle of the night when there is no air traffic going on. The controllers were saying, “We don’t buy that this is actually what’s happening, the reason that Sean Duffy is saying this has happened.”
So we give these clowns $50 billion, and don’t expect them to just light it on fire? Or to threaten Congress with criminal charges if they try to conduct oversight of the use of that money?


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Friday, November 13, 2026

✈️ “This Is What President Trump Does”

That explains the election results. I think we’re about to find out. Let’s see if Mullin or Duffy address that. Not an explanation of what did happen. "Let be be finale of seem." "The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”🍦  This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like. They did. According to the CBO, you spent it incompetently, rushed complicated work, only addressed the communications system, and tore that out before the new was in place. In other words: reflecting pool redux. First, let’s get some competence in DOT. Because all you’re talking about is throwing money at the problem. 👍 The important stuff. So we don’t know what happened, we don’t know what fixed it, and we don’t know that it won’t happen again. We do know it’s Congress’ fault, because Duffy came out of hiding to say so.
So:
And then it gets better:
He doesn’t know that, either.

Good job, guys. The system is so fragile this could happen again; maybe during Thanksgiving week. And there’s still the problem of getting the entire system working smoothly again. With all those planes piled up at airports, I think that’s going to be a new problem.

Good job, guys!! Country reassured. 👍

That the people in charge are boneheads….:
Indeed we don’t.

Tomorrow, they blame Biden.
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FUBAR

Even if we had a White House Press Secretary, they would be as incompetent as Duffy and Mullen and Trump.

That’s just science.
It still starts from the top. And this idiot is still the spokesperson for this shit: Which means nobody has any fucking idea:
According to CBS News, citing several sources, an update to the private communications network - operated by L3Harris Technologies - that connects America’s air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, resulting in a system crash and the current nationwide ground stop across the United States.
Not just here: And if it goes too long (which isn’t long at all at this point), Thanksgiving travel will be affected. Because those dominoes are already ready to tip.

In the meantime, the Administration still can’t say shit.
(Current conventional wisdom is that, at base, the ATS is held together with string and baling wire, and should have been overhauled years ago. But that doesn’t excuse a software update crashing the nation. Or Boob McGee being the only person shoved out the door to answer questions, while the SOT hides behind a single tweet. 10,000 flights have been delayed, 4400 cancelled. And nobody from the Administration can even get in front of a camera, or report to Congress. Elect a clown 🤡, get a circus 🎪.)
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Your Reminder That No Matter What Happened In The Midterms…

These clowns are still in charge of important functions of government for the next two years.

So please, 🙏, for the love of God and all that’s decent, the next time you vote for President, THINK about what you are doing. And if you can’t do that, just stay home. Preferably with the curtains drawn and the TV off and away from the internet, so nothing catches your attention and inspires you to act. Because whatever Congress does in the next two years, they can’t do enough to stop these blithering incompetents and set every government agency right. And we can’t go through another four years of this crap. Ever.

Because we do know what caused it. And we can’t ever let that happen again.
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Leaderlyship ✈️

Yeah, don’t hold your breath. This is gonna take a while. REMAIN CALM! ALL IS WELL!! (Yes, this is the best person the Administration can put in front of a camera right now. A plumber from Oklahoma whose name sounds like a really bad mullet.) Including incompetence? Coming from a plumber, that’s extremely reassuring. 🙄 I HADN’T EVEN THOUGHT OF THAT! So if you’re in an airport trying to get some: start walking. Oh, so you’re a dick AND an Administration official? But I repeat myself. That phrase doesn’t mean: “Keep repeating it!” Did pull him away from the television? His phone? Wake him from his nap?💤  But we call it “SI.”

If it turns out to be the new AI program, and especially if they can’t unfuck the system for days, I have to ask again: what is the fucking point of AI? So far it just seems to be the wet dream of a handful of tech bros who want all the money, and want to spend it on a concept that is financially unsound (indebtedness already far exceeds any reasonable return, but the beat goes on) for a future that will be so much better for…them. But so far, we ain’t gettin’ shit, and this whole concept looks far less than half-baked.

It’s obvious by now nobody’s building SkyNet, but beyond fucking up Google search and making celebrity nudes and kiddie porn, and wrecking the nation’s air traffic control system…what the fuck is AI good for?

Or, for that matter, DHS and DOT? And why isn’t Duffy in front of the cameras covered in flop sweat. 😓 

That would at least be entertaining.
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Sean Duffy To The White Courtesy Telephone, Puh-leeze

CNN: CNN has just learned that the FAA has issued a nationwide ground stop for all flights because of extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.

Now, according to information our aviation correspondent, it's limited to the communication of en route, the air route traffic. In other words, they can still communicate. But for some reason there is outages and problems with the communications that direct or that tell airplanes which way and the various route networks across the country.

What does it mean? Chaos
Schiavo: What's interesting to me about the ground stop is the FAA had also announced that it was about to deploy their new tool called SMART, to assist in managing air traffic across the entire national airspace system…

I don't know if they're linked, but it's just too much coincidence that they were trying to start that moving today. And now we have problems with the system.

And that would be my guess that they are having computer issues by putting the new software in with the old
I’m only surprised FAA didn’t wait until the last week of November to install the program.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans:
Duffy is on the way to being scapegoat No. 1. Because, of course.

Trump told somebody, anybody, to get Hueng’s name out of the headlines. “Who will rid me of this troublesome CEO?”
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🤔🤨

I seriously wonder... ... if she has bus fare to get back to Colorado. Because I understand she’s broke.
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Y’All Need To Understand

You don’t have to like him.  He’s not running for President. The Democrats just have to decide if he should be Speaker. 

Unless you voted in his district, you didn’t even get to elect him.

For better or worse, this is how it works.

Though I am intrigued by this:
The crowd jeered him as his tirade dragged on for more than a minute, Newsweek reported.

Jeffries barely flinched, and when Tarlov remarked on how unbothered he seemed, he chalked it up to his roots.

“Remember, y’all, I grew up in Brooklyn,” he said.
The Golden Child spent a week at an art school in Brooklyn the summer after she graduated high school. Made a lot of friends who were charmed by her liberal use of “y’all.” When we picked her up on the last day, as she parted from them they giggled and said “Bye, y’all!” They were talking to my daughter.

So I’m surprised Jeffries knew the word is plural, never singular.

I do think he handled the protests correctly. People can yell and scream and be escorted out. People who think they’re more privileged than the rest of us, and only their opinions count…can suck it.
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🤖 When All The Laughter Died In Sorrow

Huang’s downfall raises questions about the viability of Silicon Valley’s reliance on godlike CEO figures—executives who, regardless of how often or unwisely they fuck, become the all-powerful faces of the corporations they run. Apple, though it largely invented the tech-CEO-as-god archetype with Steve Jobs, has successfully moved away from the model in recent years, but Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Palantir’s Alex Karp, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have perpetuated it, even though some of these men are motherfuckers to the core.

The problem, industry experts say, is that when a company becomes so identified with a single executive, that executive can’t wreck even one hotel bed in the company of a foreign espionage agent without jeopardizing shareholder value. A single trail of baby-oil footprints leading out of the wrong sex cabana may cause Moody’s to downgrade a firm’s senior unsecured rating to Baa2. You live by the fucker, you die by the fucker, as they describe key-man risk on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Ultimately, however, the greatest lesson of the Huang scandal may be that once a system of fucking grows complex enough, it becomes almost impossible to identify the optimal resolution to a scandal. AI companies are now so heavily represented in cap-weighted 401(k) plans, pensions, and index funds that the collapse of the AI industry would fuck the living bejeezus out of millions of regular people who never chose to invest in AI in the first place. But the continued success of the AI industry—in part funded by those same regular investors—would fuck society in a slew of different ways: mass layoffs, erosion of trust, cognitive decline, surveillance, misinformation, and environmental catastrophe, among others. Should we root for the Jensen Huangs of the world to go on fucking with impunity, in the hope of maintaining our own economic security? Or should we root for the implosion of an exploitative industry that shoehorned its way into the center of the economy through bluster and deceit, an industry that means none of us any good? What the actual fuck are we supposed to do?

All we know for sure is that we, too, have been fucked by Jensen Huang. We may not be Chinese spies, yet we have been plowed in the moonlight by a doughy sexagenarian billionaire with a leather fetish, and in our case we don’t have a single state secret to show for it. Huang and his industry fucked our computers. He fucked our classrooms. He fucked our government. He fucked our art. He fucked our jobs. Now, on his way out, he’s fucking our savings, too.

This fucking fucker fucked the ever-fucking fuck out of us all.
Fuck AI. Fuck data centers. Put it all back in an hermetically sealed laboratory until we find a real use for it.
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“I Don’t Belong To An Organized Political Party.”

"I’m a Democrat.”—Will Rogers. Who was from Oklahoma, if that tells you the more things change, the more they stay the same. Back in the day, Sam Rayburn ran the Democratic House with strict party discipline, and taught LBJ a thing or two about how to get bills passed. 

If there is any question left that those days are gone, consider the speakerships of Boehner, McCarthy, and Johnson. Jeffries is smart enough to know his success will depend on staying in front of the parade. And if you listen to AOC lately, she understands that. She has not abandoned her principles. She has just become wise in how to achieve them.

Jeffries has a lot of incoming freshman Democrats to listen to, surfing a tsunami that hasn’t been seen in this country in most of their lifetimes. Frankly, booing and cursing Jeffries is kind of childish. But protest is the American way, so…
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Maybe El Sayed…

....can get the one Keith Ellison used. Funny MAGA never got around to purging the Library of Congress. Maybe because their Dear Leader can’t read.

(And yes, read correctly, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures contain ideas that are antithetical to the Constitution of the United States. The process of kicking these people into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, is gonna take awhile.)
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I’ve Gotta Say…

The BosWash punditocracy really likes the narrative that Schumer from New York did that.

Those of us west of the Hudson and the Potomac are pretty sure we had more to do with it.

Success has a thousand fathers; and the pundits race to crown some of them.

Same as it ever was.
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Joe Biden Is The New George Soros

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