As such, the religious schools in question will still not get funding, because they love their bigotry more than they love their money:
What a week so far for conservatives. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down a Maine law that prohibited religious private schools from receiving taxpayer dollars. On Thursday, it invalidated a New York State gun safety law limiting the public carry of firearms. And on Friday, it overturned Roe v. Wade. The outcome in these cases was not surprising. The court has ruled in favor of religious litigants in an overwhelming number of cases; the gun case’s outcome was clear from the oral argument before the justices in November; and the court’s draft abortion decision was leaked in May.
What is surprising is how little the 6-to-3 decision in the Maine case, Carson v. Makin, will matter practically. And the reason offers a glimpse of hope for those who worry about a future dominated by the court’s conservative supermajority — including the many Americans troubled by the court’s decision in the gun case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Let’s start with the Carson case. Anticipating this week’s decision, Maine lawmakers enacted a crucial amendment to the state’s anti-discrimination law last year in order to counteract the expected ruling. The revised law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, and it applies to every private school that chooses to accept public funds, without regard to religious affiliation.
The impact was significant: The two religious schools at issue in the Carson case, Bangor Christian Schools and Temple Academy, said that they would decline state funds if, as Maine’s new law requires, accepting such funds would require them to change how they operate or alter their “admissions standards” to admit L.G.B.T.Q. students.
Nice move, but you've only bought a few years.
The Supreme Court has already made it clear that it wants to force public funding of discrimination in Fulton v. Philadelphia.
Maine should use the time that they have to replace their program with public schools in rural areas.
At least that's what perennial douche bag both sider pundit Chris Cilizza is telling us.
All I know is that :
In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court's monumental decision to overturn Roe v Wade, conservative writer John Ellis took to the internet to make a provocative case: It was time for Hillary Clinton to make a(nother) political comeback
"Now is her moment," he wrote. "The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade creates the opening for Hillary Clinton to get out of stealth mode and start down the path toward declaring her candidacy for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination."
………
He's not the only person eyeing a Clinton re-emergence.
Writing in The Hill newspaper, Democratic pundit Juan Williams makes the case that Clinton should become a major figure on the campaign trail this year.
"Clinton is exactly the right person to put steel in the Democrats' spine and bring attention to the reality that 'ultra-MAGA' Republicans, as President Biden calls them, are tearing apart the nation," Williams writes, adding: "Keep talking and talk louder, Hillary!"
Juan Williams is arguably the stupidest pundit in Washington, DC, which is no small accomplishment. (He's also a regular on Fox News)
Let me be clear here: I think that Joe Biden is a DEEPLY flawed candidate, and he has a penchant for doing DEEPLY stupid things as a candidate.
That being said, what he has not done is lose to Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton has, which in the minds of Ellis, Celliza, and Williams seems to make her a better candidate against Donald Trump, because ……… The Aristocrats!
The idea here is to use the threat of sanctions against the rest of the world, because only the G7 nations can process payments and provide shipping insurance.
Given the current effect of sanctions, the Ruble has risen more than any other currency on earth since the start of the war in the Ukraine, this seems to be a highly dubious proposition, particularly since oil is pretty fungible, and to the degree that it is not, Russian oil plays an outsize role in refining to diesel fuel, so any switch would require retooling of the refineries.
This is the act of a group trying to show people that they are doing something, not actually doing something:
G7 leaders meeting for a summit in the Bavarian Alps are seeking a deal to impose a “price cap” on Russian oil as the group works to curb Moscow’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine.
Talks were set to continue on Monday, having begun on Sunday in the luxury resort of Schloss Elmau, where leaders want to enlist a range of countries beyond the G7 to put a ceiling on the price paid for Russian oil.
………
On Monday, the caps will be debated by a broader group when the leaders of Germany, the US, UK, France, Italy, Japan and Canada are joined by “partner” countries invited to the summit. These include India, which has become a big buyer of discounted Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine, as well as Argentina, South Africa, Senegal and Indonesia.
I'm thinking that there is a sovereign bond case where a crazy federal judge in New York has Argentina over a barrel (pun intended) that might come up for review as a result.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, said the EU was ready to decide with its partners on a price cap but stressed the need for a “clear vision” and awareness of possible knock-on effects. “We want to make sure the goal is to target Russia and not to make our life more difficult and more complex.”
Host Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, said all the G7 states were worried about the “crises we currently face”. But he said he was convinced the group would send a “very clear signal of unity and decisive action”.
This is an acknowledgement that the sanctions are not working.
The leaders are also targeting China. Biden said the G7 had built on a deal first announced in Cornwall a year ago to offer infrastructure funding to poor countries as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
It's an even bigger sucker bet than China's Belt and Road Initiative.
………
The idea of an oil price cap comes as the high price of crude means Russia’s revenues from oil exports have not necessarily declined despite western restrictions on Russian oil imports.
Concern is also mounting that attempts to ban ships carrying Russian oil from accessing western insurance markets this year could drive global oil prices to unprecedented levels. The International Energy Agency warns it could contribute to the shutdown of more than a quarter of Russia’s pre-invasion production.
Under the price-capping scheme, Europe would limit the availability of shipping and insurance services that enable the worldwide transport of Russian oil, mandating that the services would only be available if the price ceiling was observed by the importer. A similar restriction on the availability of US financial services could give the scheme added impact.
So, China, and India, and Brazil, and Iran, etc. cannot do business without using US dominated payments systems (False), and cannot operate without insurance supplied by the UK by Lloyd's of London and other British firms. (False)
This might make it difficult to deliver oil to the US, but no oil is going directly from Russia to the US right now anyway.
Attempting to extend sanctions Russia like this, whose costs primarily fall on the EU and non-aligned nations, seems to me a recipe for destroying the, "Very clear signal of unity and decisive action," that Olaf Scholz is so deeply enamored of.
Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? (Letters of Note) Scathing rejection letters from editors to literary giants like Kipline and Orwell. Unsurprisingly, the title is from a Hunter S. Thompson rejection letter to Anthony Burgess.
How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure (STAT) It turns out that avenues of research that did not involve amyloid plaques were ignored and belittled. It also turns out that amyloid plaques are not the alpha and omega of Alzheimers.
In a settlement announced by the Department of Justice on Tuesday, Meta Platforms — formerly known as Facebook — has agreed to eliminate features in its advertising business that allow landlords, employers and credit agencies to discriminate against groups of people protected by federal civil rights laws.
The deal comes nearly six years after ProPublica first revealed that Facebook let housing marketers exclude African Americans and others from seeing some of their advertisements. Federal law prohibits housing, employment and credit discrimination based on race, religion, gender, family status and disability.
For years, ProPublica and other researchers showed that problems persisted in the delivery of advertisements related to housing, employment and credit, even as Facebook pledged to fix the loopholes that we identified.
………
As part of the settlement, Meta has agreed to deploy new advertising methods that will be vetted by a third-party reviewer and overseen by the court.
The company said in a statement that it will implement a “novel use of machine learning technology that will work to ensure the age, gender and estimated race or ethnicity of a housing ad’s overall audience matches the age, gender, and estimated race or ethnicity mix of the population eligible to see that ad.”
………
After we reported on the potential for advertising discrimination in 2016, Facebook quickly promised to set up a system to catch and review ads that discriminate illegally. A year later, ProPublica found that it was still possible to exclude groups such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps and Muslims from seeing advertisements. It was also possible to target ads to people with an interest in anti-Semitism, including options such as “How to burn Jews” and “Hitler did nothing wrong.”
We later found that companies were posting employment ads that women and older workers could not see. In March 2019, Facebook settled a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups by creating a “special ads portal” specifically for employment, housing and credit ads. The company said the portal would curb advertisers’ targeting options and also limit its algorithm from considering gender and race when deciding who should see ads.
………
ProPublica also continued to find employment advertisements that favored men or excluded older possible applicants, potentially violating civil rights law. Some advertisers we interviewed were surprised to learn that they were unable to reach a diverse audience, even if they tried.
(emphasis mine)
So, not only did Facebook help discriminate, they discriminated for clients who did not want to discriminate.
Facebook is a deeply and profoundly evil organization.
The short version, was that Brookings got lots of money from the government of Qatar, and that during an FBI investigation of whether or not Allen was an unregistered foreign lobbyist:
Last week a bipartisan bill was introduced in the House of Representatives to curb foreign influence in the US political process. This bill comes on the heels of Ret. Gen. John Allen’s resignation from his post as president of the Brookings Institution—the most prominent left-leaning think tank in the US—after being accused by the FBI of secretly lobbying on behalf of Qatar and obstructing the government’s investigation into his alleged lobbying and influence activities on behalf of the Qataris. This bombshell news and congressional action should send shockwaves through the national security community.
Think tanks are supposed to be the intellectual backbone of D.C. Their rigorous research guides policy discussions, and their staff shape media narratives, lobby Congress and the executive branch, and even help to write our nation’s laws. We know—we’ve worked at multiple think tanks for more than a decade and have done all of these things.
Clearly Mandy Rice-Davies* applies here. The authors, Eli Clifton and Benjamin Freeman, having made their careers in the think tank industry, see their role as essential.
This risk is particularly high given that think tanks are awash in foreign money. In fact, foreign governments donate tens of millions of dollars to the United States’ most prominent think tanks every year, and there are myriad examples of how this money influences what these institutions do (or don’t) say. In some cases, think tanks have exploited loopholes in US lobbying laws, like the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Yet few in Congress or law enforcement have seemed to care—until now.
The accusations leveled against Allen represent the first publicly known Department of Justice investigation of a think tank staffer or leader for FARA violations since FARA enforcement began ramping up after Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The Allen allegations do not implicate anyone else at Brookings or the institution itself, but do raise the flag that Qatari funding has flooded Brookings’ coffers for years. While funding records are incomplete as Brookings, like all think tanks, is not required to disclose any of its funders, publicly available information indicates that the think tank has received more than 30 million from Qatar in just the past 15 years, with the Embassy of Qatar regularly appearing in Brookings’ contributors list in the “2 million and above” category. Brookings certainly isn’t alone in accepting foreign government funding. In fact, with few exceptions—like the Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch, and the Quincy Institute, where we work—most US think tanks accept foreign government funding, with some accepting millions annually. Many of these think tanks have also been accused of bending to the desires of their foreign funders. Foreign funding has, allegedly, paid for a research report for the Center for a New American Security that recommended policies beneficial to the foreign funder. In other circumstances, it has financed conferences denigrating a foreign funders’ geopolitical rival. Think tanks have been notably silent about the misdeeds of their foreign funders. At Brookings, for example, one former employee alleged that he was not permitted to write negatively about Qatar.
(emphasis mine)
The entire think tank ecology is corrupt.
I'm not sure if it can be fixed, I would advocate burning them all to the ground, but a good first step would be to make their funders public.
President Biden on Saturday signed into law a bipartisan gun bill intended to prevent dangerous people from accessing firearms and increase investments in the nation’s mental health system, ending nearly three decades of gridlock in Washington over how to address gun violence in the United States.
Final passage of the legislation in Congress came one month after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 children and two teachers dead, a horror that galvanized a bipartisan group of lawmakers to strike a narrow compromise.
“God willing,” Mr. Biden said as he put his pen down on Saturday morning, “it’s going to save a lot of lives.”
If we are lucky, we might save 1 or 2 lives. It has been watered down to near irrelevance:
………
The president acknowledged that the legislation fell far short of the sweeping measures he had pushed for, but he said it included some long-sought priorities.
………
For lawmakers, advocates and survivors of gun violence, the law is the culmination of decades of work, building on repeated failed efforts to overcome Republican opposition and overhaul the nation’s gun laws in response to mass shootings across the country. But the law’s enactment came the same week that the Supreme Court struck down a New York law limiting where gun owners could carry a firearm outside the home, citing the Second Amendment.
And then there is the Supreme Court sabotaging any attempt to enact reasonable gun laws.
The gun legislation will expand the background check system for prospective gun buyers under the age of 21, giving authorities up to 10 business days to examine juvenile and mental health records. It sets aside millions of dollars so states can fund intervention programs, such as mental health and drug courts, and carry out so-called red flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from any person found by a judge to be too dangerous to possess them.
Like I said, weak tea, though I am sure that Democrats will try to run on it.
In a solo concurring opinion, Thomas says the court should reconsider rulings that protect contraception, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage. pic.twitter.com/zcQNko6NVR
By this logic, it would invalidate Loving v. Virginia as well making his marriage illegal in Virginia
I’ll give him this: At least when McClellan half-heartedly pretended to fight these people for a coupla years, he didn’t send out a fundraising telegram every time he got his ass kicked. pic.twitter.com/k7J6DzqHJT
You know that you will see this. They have been using it to fundraise for decades.
Also thanks to Obama for not recess appointing Garland or whoever to replace Scalia, your inaction and failed presidency helped make this moment a reality
Obama also said that the Freedom of Choice Act was not a priority.
If you think your favorite political party cares about Women’s Rights btw, please remember Nancy Pelosi was campaigning for an anti-choice democrat like three weeks ago
In fact, I spent most of yesterday staring at the screen, which explains why I did not post this Saturday.
Clearly this decision was intellectually bankrupt, hypocritical, nakedly partisan, and corrupt, but so was Bush v. Gore, and there was no consequences for that.
This would have the effect of largely dismantling the the ability of federal regulations to institute regulations that ware not specifically authorized through legislation.
While this might not completely roll back the regulatory role of the federal government to before 1935, it comes pretty close.
The Roe decision is not a surprise. It was leaked 1½ months ago, and the final version is largely unchanged:
The Supreme Court on Friday eliminated the constitutional right to obtain an abortion, casting aside 49 years of precedent that began with Roe v. Wade.
The decision by Justice Samuel Alito will set off a seismic shift in reproductive rights across the United States. It will allow states to ban abortion, and experts expect about half the states to do so.
In one of the most anticipated rulings in decades, the court overturned Roe, which first declared a constitutional right to abortion in 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which re-affirmed that right in 1992. The decision followed the leak in early May of a draft opinion showing that a majority of the justices were privately poised to take that step. On Friday, they made it official.
The vote to overturn Roe was 5-4. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the opinion. He agreed with the majority that the Mississippi abortion restriction at issue in the case should be upheld, but in a separate opinion, he argued that the court should not have overturned Roe.
The court’s three liberals — Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — filed a joint dissent. They called the majority opinion a violation of women’s autonomy and said it would harm the court’s legitimacy and jeopardize other constitutional rights.
………
The majority contended that Friday’s ruling would not undermine other decisions by the court involving fundamental rights that the Constitution does not expressly mention, such as the right to contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut) and the rights to same-sex intimacy (Lawrence v. Texas) and marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges). Unlike those rights, Alito wrote, abortion terminates what Roe and Casey refer to as “potential life” and what the Mississippi law refers to as an “unborn human being.” “Nothing in this opinion,” Alito added later, “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
This last bit is crap. Roe flows from the the right for people not to have the state, or the states, dictate their personal decisions, and this precedent flows from Griswold and Loving v. Virginia, which ruled anti-miscegenation (interracial marriage) laws unconstitutional.
If you pull that string, it all unravels, and saying, as the hacktacular Samuel Alito, "Because Babies," (actually, he says, "Potential Life") it does not apply to other rulings, is dishonest and stupid.
Unsurprisingly, this does not hold up to scrutiny. At the core of his argument is that since abortion was not considered a fundamental right in 1868, there is no right to abortion.
This argument also invalidates the idea that the 14th amendment protects, contraception, gay marriage, and interracial marriage.
In a separate concurrence, Clarence Thomas gets this right: (I cannot believe that I just wrote that)
………
But a concurring opinion by Thomas indicated that, at least for him, decisions like Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell
are very much in doubt. Thomas reiterated his view that the
Constitution’s due process clause only protects process – the right to
have the government follow proper procedures before taking away
someone’s life, liberty, or property. The due process clause, Thomas
wrote, does not protect any substantive rights. Because the Alito
opinion concluded that there is no right to an abortion even under the
Supreme Court’s substantive due process cases, Thomas explained, he
joined the court’s opinion. But in a future case, he urged, the court
should “reject substantive due process entirely” and reconsider cases
like Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.
And, as I had noted, Loving v. Virginia.
Even if this opinion is not applied to LGBTQ rights or contraception, and it will be, it creates a mess, where in vitro fertilization will be criminalized, as will pregnancy, with criminal investigations of miscarriages becoming common in many parts of the nation.
This is a disaster, promulgated by a deeply evil and deeply corrupt group of people, and it is going to get much worse before it gets better.
United States cops watch in amazement while other country's police do their jobs without taking any lives. pic.twitter.com/iGh71VugTN
— 🥀_Imposter_🕸️ (@Imposter_Edits) June 20, 2022
US cops cannot imagine living in a world where cops not carrying firearms can enforce the law, because they have been trained to be in fear of their lives at all times, and to act as if they have complete impunity.
It is a toxic mix.
If cops spent their first few years not carrying a firearm, we'd have much better cops.
The invaluable Cory Doctorow make an observation that is so obvious in retrospect that I feel ashamed.
It is almost a cliche that the erotic media industry is on the cutting edge of communications technology because for some reason they are particularly attuned to developments in technology, and are eager to implement these technologies.
They start on the next big thing because they have no alternative:
The sex industry has pioneered every new communications tool since
the printing press: in my own lifetime, I've watched it take the lead in
VCRs, desktop publishing, BBSes, digital text, digital images, digital
videos, live streaming services, cryptocurrency, and VR. It would be
easy to conclude that being interested in sex is somehow correlated with
being fascinated by technology.
But that's wrong. While there are lots of sex workers and sex
industry participants who have an innate fascination with technology,
there's no reason to think that being into sex is a predictor of being
into tech. And yet, sex workers are the vanguard of every technological
revolution. What gives?
Well, think about the other groups that make up that vanguard – who
else is an habitual early adopter? At least four other groups also take
the lead on new tech: political radicals, kids, drug users, and
terrorists. There's some overlap among members of these groups, but
their most salient shared trait isn't personnel, it's exclusion.
Kids, drug users, political radicals, sex workers and terrorists are
all unwelcome in mainstream society. They struggle to use its money, its
communications tools, and its media channels. Any attempt to do so
comes at a high price: personal risk, plus a high likelihood that some
or all of their interactions and transactions will be interdicted –
their work seized and destroyed or blocked or deleted.
Using a new technology comes at a cost. If it's 1979 and you're Walt
Disney Pictures, you've got no reason to explore the VCR. The existing
system works great for you – and it works great for your audience. You
can always find a movie theater willing to show your movies, your
audience is happy to be seen entering that cinema, and the bank gladly
accepts ticket revenues as deposits.
Once again, the old adage that, "Necessity is the mother of invention," is proved true.
It appears that British filmmaker Alex Holder filmed had months of intimate access to Trump, his family, and his campaign organization. Even better, he's completely fine with cooperating with the Congressional investigation:
After we scooped this morning that the Jan. 6 committee has subpoenaed documentarian Alex Holder for his 2020 footage of Donald Trump and his inner circle, Holder confirmed the news in a statement, saying he’s fully cooperating with the probe.
“When we began this project in September 2020, we could have never predicted that our work would one day be subpoenaed by Congress,” he said. “As a British filmmaker, I had no agenda coming into this. We simply wanted to better understand who the Trumps were and what motivated them to hold onto power so desperately.”
Holder added that the project is a three-part series over which he had total editorial control, including filming at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Oh my.
As to what is there (from the "scooped" link), we have:
………
(1) Raw footage from Jan. 6.
(2) Raw footage of interviews from September 2020 to present with Trump, Pence, DONALD TRUMP JR., IVANKA TRUMP, ERIC TRUMP and JARED KUSHNER.
(3) Raw footage “pertaining to discussions of election fraud or election integrity surrounding the November 2020 presidential election.”
Holder is expected to fully cooperate with the committee in an interview scheduled for Thursday. Read the full subpoena.
If you don't live in they UK, you may not have heard about the strike at National Rail, the biggest labor action in the UK in decades.
One would expect that Labour would support the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.
Instead, Sir Kier Starmer, the head of the Labour Party, (for a while, at least) forbade senior members of Parliament (Front Benchers) from showing up at the picket lines in support, because ……… Labour should never be seen as supporting labo(u)r unions?
Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the left wing of his party over strike action, after at least three junior frontbenchers defied his instructions and joined RMT union picket lines on Tuesday morning.
Kate Osborne and Paula Barker, both parliamentary private secretaries to shadow ministers, tweeted that they had shown solidarity with striking workers on Tuesday morning.
The third frontbencher defying Starmer’s ban was Navendu Mishra, a Labour whip. He tweeted: “As a proud trade unionist, I stand with all workers on our railway network who are taking industrial action to fight for their jobs and keep passengers safe.”
………
Jarrow MP Osborne tweeted that she would, “always stand on the side of the workers”. She was pictured alongside RMT strikers in Bromley, south-east London.
………
Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, took a markedly different approach from Starmer, tweeting a picture of himself meeting striking RMT workers in Glasgow. “Solidarity with those on the picket lines. This is a crisis entirely of the government’s making,” he wrote.
I get that political expedience has a role in the actions that a party leader must take, and that starmer is concerned about labor unrest being tied to the Labour Party, but his actions are not only immoral, they are stupid. (Worse than a crime, a mistake)
It only serves to demoralize his supporters, and the Tories will tag him for the strike anyway.
Labour frontbenchers who defied Keir Starmer to appear on picket lines have been encouraged to issue public apologies or risk disciplinary action, despite some shadow cabinet members urging the Labour leader to drop the issue.
Several frontbenchers were pictured alongside striking RMT workers on Tuesday, despite explicit instructions from Starmer to stay away.
The Guardian understands some of the rebel MPs involved have been asked to issue a statement explaining their attendance.
One senior party source jokingly suggested a junior frontbencher had been asked to claim they had been “ambushed by a picket line” – a reference to an excuse used to explain Boris Johnson’s attendance at his own birthday party.
Another source, an MP, said the whips were “threatening people at the moment, trying to get them to issue apologies”. It is unclear what the consequences would be if they refused to apologise.
Meanwhile, Starmer is under pressure from some members of his shadow cabinet to drop the threat of disciplinary action.
To say that Starmer's actions are completely reprehensible is an understatement.
With the growing sh%$ storm over various attempts by Trump and his Evil Minions™ attempts to corruptly subvert thge 2020 election making waves, Trump is doing what he always does, throwing his lackeys to the wolves, in this case it is lawyer (though hopefully not for long) John Eastman.
In a perfect world, Eastman would start showing investigators where the bodies are buried for both Trump and the Thomases, but I am not holding my breath:
With the Justice Department and Jan. 6 committee taking a close look at Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he and his cronies could certainly use a fall guy, and it looks like they’ve found their patsy: right-wing lawyer John Eastman.
Eastman worked for Trump as the attorney devised legal strategies to overturn the election to keep the outgoing president in power. But, in recent weeks, Trump has confided to those close to him that he sees no reason to publicly defend Eastman, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president is also deeply annoyed with Eastman and all the negative “attention” and media coverage that the lawyer’s work has brought Trump and his inner sanctum, including during the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill.
Furthermore, to those who’ve spoken Trump about Eastman in recent months, the ex-president has repeated an excuse he often uses when backed into a corner, as investigators confront him with an associates’ misdeeds: He has privately insisted he “hardly” or “barely” knows Eastman, despite the fact that he counseled Trump on taking a string of extra-legal measures in a bid to stay in power and wrote the so-called “coup memo,” which laid out the facsimile of a legal argument for reversing Trump’s election defeat.
………
Indeed, the infamously garrulous Trump has publicly kept his mouth shut about Eastman, a lawyer whose work became integral to the scandalous efforts to nullify President Biden’s 2020 victory. (Trump even considered Eastman as counsel for his post-insurrection impeachment.)
Nowadays, in the top ranks of MAGAland, there’s a clear attitude towards Eastman (“Johnny,” as some Trump advisers derisively call him): He might be going down. So be it, as long as he doesn’t take anyone else down with him.
………
Eastman has become an increasing focus for the January 6th committee for his role in spearheading many of the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election. Exhibits posted by the committee last week included excerpts of a deposition by Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann in which he described a heated confrontation with Eastman the day after the insurrection where he told Eastman to “get a great fucking criminal defense lawyer” because “you’re going to need it.”
Shortly afterward, Eastman emailed fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to say: “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”
“Any time you give legal advice and then feel compelled to ask for a pardon, it probably wasn’t good legal advice,” says Steven Groves, formerly a lawyer and then a spokesman in Trump’s White House.
Indeed.
……….
Eastman, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas turned conservative constitutional law professor, was first welcomed into Trump’s orbit during the penultimate year of Trump’s term in office. Trump, enamored of Eastman’s skepticism of the birthright citizenship afforded by the constitution, increasingly came to rely on the attorney’s crackpot views of election law as the the odds of overturning Biden’s 2020 election victory grew longer. On behalf of Trump, Eastman authored briefs for the Supreme Court to intervene in the election in Trump’s favor — both ultimately discarded by the justices.
………
But the idea that Eastman is becoming something of a fall guy for Trump and various Republicans’ efforts in 2020 and early 2021 is now so prevalent in influential conservative circles that it’s now being acknowledged by some of the former president’s favorite right-wing media stars.
………
When the FBI arrested Trump’s former trade advisor Peter Navarro for defying a subpoena from the committee, the former president thundered with outrage that “our great trade genius, Professor Peter Navarro, was just handcuffed, shackled, and put in jail.” Ginni Thomas, whose efforts to overthrow Biden’s victory in Arizona, received similar encouragement from Trump when The Washington Post uncovered her emails urging legislators there to ignore the voters’ will and proclaim Trump the state’s victor. Thomas, Trump wrote after the Post story, is a “Great American Patriot, the wonderful wife of Justice Clarence Thomas” who “fought for Voter Integrity in the Great State of Arizona.”
On Trump’s personal website, where the former president hosted written statements after his ouster from Twitter and before the launch of Truth Social, he’s been similarly mum. Eastman’s name appears on the site only twice, in hosted copies of the Supreme Court election briefs he authored in 2020.
Does it make me a bad person to feel nothing but amusement about all of this.
OK, I'm feeling a little bit disappointed that Donnie Two Scoops isn't in the same position, but nothing is going to happen to him, because of the norms fairy.
Which I am sure that my reader(s) in Baltimore County are waiting for with bated breath.
Specifically, I am endorsing Robbie Leonard over incumbent Scott Shellenberger in the race for Baltimore County State's Attorney. (Another name for DA, you can get a good start on the issues involved here.)
The short version is that Schellenberger is a soft on cops, refusing to prosecute misconduct, and he threatened a rape victim in an attempt to keep her from filing charges on her own.
………
Shellenberger is a defendant in a federal lawsuit alleging unfair treatment of female victims of sexual assault. A judge dismissed most of the lawsuit, but let one claim go forward: an allegation that Shellenberger and others in his office violated a woman’s constitutional rights.
The remaining case centers on events that followed a Towson University student’s report she was raped by three men in 2017. After county prosecutors declined to charge the men, the woman tried to file charges on her own through a court commissioner. Shellenberger and others in his office, according to the lawsuit, told police to go to her home to tell her to stop seeking charges.
The judge handling the lawsuit wrote that the case should be heard because a reasonable jury could find that Shellenberger and other defendants had a “retaliatory motive.“ A civil trial is scheduled for September.
Shellenberger said he acted out of concern that the men would sue the woman or file criminal charges against her.
So, as opposed to, for example, having someone call and explain the legal jeopardy, he sent cops to this woman's home. Does not sound like concern to me.
It sounds like he did not want his office embarrassed by a private prosecution after soft pedaling a gang rape, and used the cops as his bully-boys.
A professor of mine went to go hear Derrida speak once. The entire talk was about cows; everyone was flummoxed but listened carefully, and took notes about...cows. There was a short break, and when Derrida came back, he was like, “I’m told it is pronounced ‘chaos.’”
At the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) Lina Kahn has made the radical step of actually enforcing corporate bribery statutes, which have been ignored by the regulatory body for decades.
About damn time:
This is a weird moment in politics, with obvious dysfunction everywhere. There are mass flight cancellations, shortages of everything from cat food to baby formula to tampons, real wage declines, and an administration that looks out of its depth in so many ways. But in our corner of the world, the political fight to take on monopolies, things are going… well.
I’m going to highlight a bunch of policy actions that happened this week, and how they show that out of the limelight we are slowly turning key parts of the U.S. government around. The most important change is FTC Chair Lina Khan resurrecting an old antitrust law that bars corporate bribery, and using it to attack corrupt middlemen in the insulin market. But while insulin is the immediate target, this law can reach Amazon and a host of other monopolies.
This is a very good thing.
………
A year ago, Lina Khan became Chair at the Federal Trade Commission, followed a few months later by Jonathan Kanter taking the helm at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Khan and Kanter are perhaps the most aggressive proponents of antitrust enforcement in decades, returning competition policy to the basic view that when it comes to corporate power, big is usually bad.
This week, three actions will help flesh out what this new enforcement regime looks like practically. First, Jonathan Kanter at the Antitrust Division filed a statement of interest on a court case asking for the narrowing of the antitrust exemption for Major League Baseball. MLB is embroiled in litigation over its choice to eliminate 40 minor league teams, and has been heavily criticized for mistreating minor league players. It was trying to use its antitrust exemption to get the lawsuit dismissed. With this statement of interest, as well as a series of others, Kanter is using his posture as the chief antitrust enforcer at DOJ to shape the law in a more assertive direction.
Second, on Thursday, the FTC voted to resurrect the Robinson-Patman Act, a bill prohibiting corporate bribery and price discrimination by middlemen that hasn’t been meaningfully enforced since the 1970s. I wrote several chapters in my book on the titanic fight in the 1930s to tame chain stores with this law, and the equally vicious conflict in the 1970s to stop enforcing it. The end of RPA enforcement is why chain stores like Walmart and Amazon took over our retail space, and why dominant middlemen control every area of our economy at this point. It’s worth noting that Robert Bork’s most hated statute was the Robinson-Patman Act, and he considered it a tremendous victory that he helped end the enforcement of the law.
So what happened at the FTC? All five commissioners voted on a policy statement saying that the use of rebates by dominant middlemen in the insulin market were a potential violation of different laws under the jurisdiction of the FTC, including the Robinson-Patman Act. This vote is a signal to every private antitrust lawyer, state attorney general, and judge, that the Robinson-Patman Act can once again be dusted off and used.
Insulin is a great test case for this law, because everyone knows how unfair and inefficient the insulin market truly is. It’s a medication that has been around since 1922, and yet it has been increasing in cost every year for decades. And while the three main producers engage in all sorts of schemes to push up cost, most of the high cost of insulin is actually a result the middlemen named pharmacy benefits managers - CVS Caremark, Cigna (Express Scripts), and United Healthcare (OptumRx) - who manage and control how medicine is priced and sold. PBMs demand rebates of up to 70% for the right to have an insulin company sell their product to patients. These rebates in turn massively drive up the price of insulin.
………
It takes a while to stop a giant ship, turn it around, and get it going in the opposite direction. That’s where we are with antitrust. We started this journey in 2013 or so, and finally got the ship stopped by the end of the Trump administration. Well, the ship has turned around, and it is beginning to move in the right direction. Slowly. But it’s speeding up.
This is the most aggressive antitrust enforcement since (at least) the Reagan administration.
I imagine that somewhere in a basement in Langley, Virginia, someone is planning something similar to the now-discredited "Car Wash" investigation in Brazil that targeted Lula:
Colombia has elected a former guerrilla fighter Gustavo Petro as president, making him the South American country’s first leftist head of state.
Petro beat Rodolfo Hernández, a gaff-prone former mayor of Bucaramanga and business mogul, with 50.47% of the vote in a runoff election on Sunday and will take office in July amid a host of challenges, not least of which is the deepening discontent over inequality and rising costs of living. Hernández had 47.27%, with almost all ballots counted, according to results released by election authorities.
Petro’s election marks a tidal shift for Colombia, a country that has never before had a leftist president, and follows similar victories for the left in Peru, Chile and Honduras.
………
Hernández looked to be a contender, though could not escape an almost constant stream of scandal. He referred to Hitler as a “great German thinker” and has been filmed galavanting with models on a yacht in Miami. His posts on TikTok – from where he ran much of his campaign – were laden with profanity and he refused to attend any debates ahead of Sunday’s vote.
On the agenda for the new leader will be the country’s faltering peace process with the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which was signed in 2016 and formally ended five decades of civil war that killed more than 260,000 people and displaced more than 7 million. Duque has been accused of slow-walking the accord’s implementation in order to undermine it.
Another headache for Petro will be neighbouring Venezuela, which has been mired in social, political and economic crisis for years. Petro has advocated for a reopening of ties with Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, bucking the Duque government’s policy of isolation.
Petro has also pledged to wean the country off its dependence on fossil fuels, worrying investors.
Seriously, this just screams CIA sponsored coup, doesn't it?
Given that his policies have consisted of Islamophobia and screwing the average French workers, this is a completely justified turn of events:
Emmanuel Macron’s centrist grouping has lost its absolute majority in parliament, amid gains by a new left alliance and a historic surge by the far right, according to projected results in Sunday’s election.
After five years of undisputed control of parliament, the recently re-elected Macron, known for his top-down approach to power, now enters his second term facing uncertainty over how he will deliver domestic policies, such as raising the retirement age and overhauling state benefits. His centrists will need to strike compromises and expand alliances in parliament to be able to push forward his proposals to cut taxes and shake up the welfare system.
"Raising the retirement age," means making people whose bodies are broken by decades of manual labor, and, "Overhauling state benefits," means reducing benefits for the most needy in order to cut taxes on rich people.
He is the epitome of the neoliberal policies at the core of the current EU.
………
Projections by Ipsos pollsters, based on partial results, showed that Macron’s centrists would win about 234 seats – much less than the 289 required for an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
But the most striking result of the night came for Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally party, which was forecast to increase its seats from eight in 2017 to about 90 – a historic high for a party that in the past has struggled to make gains in the first-past-the-post parliamentary voting system.
Unfortunately, if Macron continues to follow his current course, he will hew even more strongly to the right and to populist bigotry in an attempt to control the legislative agenda.
So a woman who engaged in a massive fraud of the New York glitterati is moving to NFTs.
Anna Sorokin, the scammer who convinced people and companies to give her hundreds of thousands of dollars by pretending to be a German heiress, has decided to get into NFTs. After winding up with a "scammer persona", which she says is a result of the Netflix series about her and not a result of the scams that landed her in prison, she has announced her intentions to "move away from" it. Now she is focusing on an NFT collection, which she announced in an interview from a detention facility in New York.
So she is moving from scamming to NFTs?
This definition of self improvement that I was previously aware of.
It is a given that there will be failures in various software driven driver assistance technologies, but Tesla's record is particularly egregious, accounting for 70% of all crashes.
This is not a surprise, and I would argue that it is confluence of primarily 5 issues:
A poorly designed system which relies too heavily on artificial vision systems and eschews more mature technologies like LIDAR and Radar.
Poor human-machine interface design.
Lack of restrictions on when it should be used.
The system is designed to allow operations well outside the parameters for which it has been designed.
The system's capabilities have been consistently misrepresented to Tesla customers, who then use the system in unsafe ways as a result.
The result is dead people. LOTS of dead people:
On Wednesday morning, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data
on the safety, or lack thereof, of advanced driver assistance systems.
Since June 2021, automakers have been required to inform NHTSA if any of
their vehicles crash while using partially automated driving systems,
also known as SAE level 2 systems.
As many suspected, Tesla's Autopilot system accounted for the
majority of crashes since the reporting period began. In fact, Teslas
represented three-quarters of all ADAS crashes—273 out of 367 crashes
reported between July 2021 and May 15, 2022. The news provides yet more
data undermining Tesla's safety claims about its Autopilot system.
In the past, Tesla and even NHTSA have claimed that Autopilot reduced crash rates by 40 percent. However, as we reported in 2018, that claim fell apart once a consulting company called Quality Control Systems got its hands on the data.
Autopilot's woes did not end there, however, and a string of Tesla
Autopilot crashes eventually spurred NHTSA's Office of Defects
Investigation into action. In August 2021, NHTSA's ODI opened a probe
into 11 crashes in which Teslas using Autopilot crashed into first
responder vehicles and upgraded that probe to a much more comprehensive Engineering Analysis earlier this June. This is in addition to a separate NHTSA investigation
into the propensity of newer Teslas—which lack forward-looking radar—to
spontaneously brake. The investigation began in February.
Tesla's Autopilot system has also been repeatedly singled out by the National Transportation Safety Board, which even blasted NHTSA
for failing "to recognize the importance of ensuring that acceptable
safeguards are in place so the vehicles do not operate outside of their
operational design domains and beyond the capabilities of their system
designs."
A note here. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is charged with investigating accidents and determining their causes, and not with regulation, while the NHTSA can actually draft regulations.
Note that the number is not normalized, so we do not have per car or per mile numbers, but given that Honda, which is number 2 on the list, has nearly 5 million cars on the road with its driver assist technologies, and Tesla has about 1 million cars on the US, something is very wrong.
It appears that His Excellency Robert Joseph McManus, Bishop of the Diocese of
Worcester in Massachusetts, may have just screwed the pooch.
You see, he picked a fight with a Jesuit school over the flags that they are flying.
While there might be some theological justification for his objecting
to the Nativity School of Worcester flying a pride flag, given that the
Catholic Church and Pope Frank have expressed opposition gay marriage, the
fact that
demanded that the school take down a Black Lives Matter flag as well, which has jo justification beyond being a bigoted member of the right wing
of the Church.
I do not think that this will end well for the Worcester prelate, nor should
it end well for him:
Always nice to see the ol’ hometown making the papers again. From the
Boston Globe:
Because it flies the Black Lives Matter and Pride flags, Nativity School of
Worcester can no longer call itself Catholic. Bishop Robert J. McManus brought
the hammer down on the middle school this week, after school officials
rejected his demand that the flags — which had flown outside Nativity for more
than a year before the bishop objected — be taken down.
“The flying of these flags in front of a Catholic school sends a mixed,
confusing and scandalous message to the public about the Church’s stance on
these important moral and social issues,” McManus wrote. Effective
immediately, he wrote, Nativity is prohibited from identifying itself as a
Catholic school. Mass and sacraments are no longer permitted on school
premises, or in any building in the Diocese if Nativity sponsors them.
Nativity School is run by the Jesuits, so His Excellency is fcking with The
Society, which, as shebeen regulars know, rarely ends well. ………
It should be noted here that Pope Francis is a Jesuit, and the first Jesuit pope, so it is likely that, should this come to the attention of the Vatican, that this will be viewed dimly.
Why does McMmanus object to the BLM flag? That's changed over time:
Back in April, McManus said he objected to the Black Lives Matter flag because it has at times been co-opted by “factions which also instill broad-brush distrust of police and those entrusted with enforcing our laws.” Gay pride flags, he said then, “are often used to stand in contrast to consistent Catholic teaching that sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman.”
So his first objection to BLM was that they were not nice enough to cops, and so he objects to confronting the police over shooting black people.
Also note that it was the students who wanted to fly this flag, and this makes the school's position on BLM is understandable. They don't want their classmates gunned down by racist cops.
Then he follows up with an updated justification, which is even less defensible:
He has since revised his reasoning on the BLM flag. Instead of basing his position on his concerns for law enforcement, McManus now objects to the Black Lives Matter flag because elements of the movement, “which, I daresay, most people do not know about but is easily available on the internet,” are “queer affirming” and “trans affirming…”
So because some folks in BLM are supportive of the LGBTQ community, any sort of support of the group is beyond the pale.
It should be noted that this objection could also apply to Major League Baseball.
McManus had better pray that word of this does not make it back to Rome.
This what happens you deal with Republicans. (Also Joe Manchin, but I repeat myself)
This has happened again, and again, and again, and again, and while voters are wising up, it's one of the reasons that Kurt Schrader was destroyed in his primary election, it seems that Democrats refuse to learn:
The lead Republican negotiator in US Senate dialogue toward a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, dimming the likelihood of a vote on the legislation before senators leave for a two-week July 4 recess.
Senator John Cornyn told reporters that he had not abandoned the negotiations, but he was returning to Texas amid difficulty reaching agreement.
“It’s fish or cut bait,” he said. “I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking.” Other senators in the huddle remained inside the room.
The bipartisan group has been working on a deal to curb gun violence since a gunman killed 19 school children and two adults in the small city of Uvalde, south Texas, just 10 days after a separate gunman killed 10 people in an act of stated racist violence against Black people in Buffalo, New York.
Seriously, did anyone expect a different outcome?
There might be a few more talks, but it's going to stretch out past elections, and nothing will happen.
The
City of Uvalde and its police department are working with a private law
firm to prevent the release of nearly any record related to the mass
shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 19 children and two teachers
died, according to a letter obtained by Motherboard in response to a
series of public information requests we made. The public records Uvalde
is trying to suppress include body camera footage, photos, 911 calls,
emails, text messages, criminal records, and more.
“The
City has not voluntarily released any information to a member of the
public,” the city’s lawyer, Cynthia Trevino, who works for the private
law firm Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech, wrote in a letter to
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The city wrote the letter asking
Paxton for a determination about what information it is required to
release to the public, which is standard practice in Texas. Paxton's
office will eventually rule which of the city's arguments have merit and
will determine which, if any, public records it is required to release.
The letter makes clear, however, that the city and its police department want to be exempted from releasing a wide variety of records in part because it is being sued, in part because some of the records could include “highly embarrassing information,” in part because some of the information is “not of legitimate concern to the public,” in part because the information could reveal “methods, techniques, and strategies for preventing and predicting crime,” in part because some of the information may cause or may "regard … emotional/mental distress," and in part because its response to the shooting is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and the Uvalde County District Attorney.
Yeah, I imagine that would be spree killers are quaking in their boots at the prospect of facing the Uvalde PD.
They must have done something truly awful for this blatantly transparent coverup.
Whatever it is, it is beyond my ability to speculate, which is a complete mind-f%$#.
A group of employees at SpaceX wrote a letter condemning Elon Musk's Twitter antics, noting that it reflects poorly on the company, and is counter to the policies of the company, which are strictly enforced against the "Mere Mortals" who actually do the work there.
Rather unsurprisingly, they were promptly fired, in classic, "Free speech for me, but not for thee," Elon Musk style.
Here's hoping that these workers, who made a completely reasonable complaint about working conditions, hit the jackpot in court:
On Friday, SpaceX fired a group of employees involved in crafting an open letter to corporate leaders that criticized CEO Elon Musk — and labor lawyers now say the firings may have violated US labor law. The letter circulated Thursday calling for stronger anti-harassment policies at SpaceX and a more restrained Twitter presence from Musk. At least five employees were fired shortly after the letter was published.
It’s unclear whether any of the fired employees will try to file suit with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But if they do, lawyers say they will have a strong case. “To be covered, an action has to be concerted (certainly the case here) and it has to relate to working conditions,” says Charlotte Garden, a law professor at Seattle University who wrote about employee speech rights for the Economic Policy Institute earlier this year.
The most difficult part of retaliation cases is often proving that an employee really was fired in retaliation for speaking up, but SpaceX has made it easy to show the connection. In her note to employees after the firings, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell made clear that the employees had been terminated specifically because of their involvement with the letter, which she characterized as “overreaching activism.” Even if SpaceX tried to deny it, the simple timing of the firings — coming less than 24 hours after the letter itself — makes the connection hard to ignore.
“This could very much be seen as retaliation for speaking up,” says Mary Inman, a whistleblower attorney at Constantine Cannon. “What does this say to workers? It basically says, we don’t want to hear from you.”
Given that Elon Musk's behavior is at the center of this dispute, and given that it is likely that he had some role in the firings, I would expect an EXTREMELY thorough discovery process, emails, hours of sworn testimony from Musk, etc.
I would pay to watch the live stream of his sworn testimony. because he is going to completely lose his sh%$.
Apart from the last fact, which is confirmed from FEC records, there is no credible proof as of any of the other allegations.
Personally, I find it weak tea, though I want it to be true, so I was conflicted on talking about this, and then Boebert made this spectacular own goal, and I could not resist:
It appears that she, and by extension her husband, Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas, whose rulings on the insurrection hew remarkably closely to
Ms. Thomas' goals, were hip deep in the planning of the execution:
The House committee investigating the
Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol
on Thursday requested an interview with
Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, according to a person familiar with
the matter, after fresh evidence surfaced that she had been in contact with
an architect of former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the
election.
“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her
to come talk to the committee,” Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat
of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, told Axios earlier
Thursday.
“It’s time for us to invite her to come talk,” he told
CNN. Ms. Thomas is reviewing the letter, said the person familiar with the
matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
After Mr. Thompson’s
statements, a person close to Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of
Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, said she agreed the panel
should seek testimony from Ms. Thomas.
It was a reversal from
earlier this year, when members of the committee said they would pursue
cooperation from Ms. Thomas, only to change course and say they did not
believe she was central to their inquiry.
In a different set of
emails with the Trump legal team, Mr. Eastman, who is a former clerk to
Justice Thomas, claimed to have inside information about a heated debate
inside the Supreme Court about how to respond to the president’s voter fraud
lawsuits.
(Emphasis mine)
………
But
that appeared to have changed Thursday. A person close to Ms. Cheney said
that “the facts make clear the committee does need to talk to Ginni Thomas
now.”
Unfortunately, there are no ethics standards for the Supreme Court
Given that there is no within the US Federal Courts to hold Supreme Court justices accountable, perhaps Congress should be more involved in this process.
The numbers: New filings for unemployment benefits fell by 3,000 last week to 229,000, but they remained close to a five-month high, perhaps a sign that layoffs have increased slightly from record-low levels.
Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal forecast initial jobless claims to total 220,000 in the seven days ended June 11. The figures are seasonally adjusted.
Last week new filings jumped to 232,000, the highest mark since January. The increase appeared to stem from seasonal quirks tied to the Memorial Day holiday. Holidays can sometimes produce sharp swings in the claims figures.
It’s unclear if there was any residual effect from the holiday in the latest claims figures, economists say, or if the upturn reflects some erosion in the labor market.
This blog is a place to put my stream of consciousness thoughts about life, politics, technology, and cats.
It's a posting ground for my more-or-less annual personal newsletter, 40 Years in the Desert.(PDF's available at link)
I find that if I wait until year's end I miss stuff from earlier in the year.
40 Years is put out the old fashioned way, it's printed out on ledger sized paper with 4 pages and mailed to people, total circulation of about 100.
I'm just not the holiday card kind of guy.
A warning, if you comment here, I may use it in my paper publication.
You will get credit, and if I can get your postal adress, you will get at least the issue where you are quoted (probably a lot more, I rarely trim my list).
If someone actually wants to pay for an issue...I don't know, I guess a buck, but you can get the PDF's free.
I intend to post at least a couple of times a week,
Privacy Policy
I reserve the right to use any comments in my (paper) newsletter. Also, I will make an attempt to contact the commenter and offer them a copy of the newsletter.
I may also post on the blog on your comments.
I use Google ads, and Google Analytics, because Google is watching you anyway. They own blogger.
You can review your ad settings, and Google's policies, here.
Commercial Disclosures
Please, send me free stuff, and I will consider doing a review.
I am a complete whore, so assume that any review is the result of free stuff, and/or under the table payments.
I will do my level best to reveal such conflicts when I remember to.
