Well, Bless His Heart! (Meant in the Southern Way) ⃰

If you were to tell me that Samuel f%$#ing Alito would recuse himself on a climate change case because of his investments in energy companies, I would have responded with, "Very droll!"

Not this time.  He HAS recused himself from Suncor v. Boulder.

Call me a cynic, but my guess is that he got assurances from the other "Felonious Five," justices that they would vote his way before making this announcement.

I do not believe that Alito has even the vaguest concept of what legal ethics means.

He does not care.  He does not have to. He's a Supreme Court justice. 

Supreme court justice Samuel Alito recused himself on Monday from a major climate-change case after facing calls to step aside due to stock holdings in oil companies.

A letter posted in the case did not specify a reason, but the conservative justice has previously recused himself from other cases involving companies where he holds stock.

………

Alito had so far resisted calls to step aside in the case, which the court agreed to hear in February. He does not own stock in Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil but does have holdings in other oil companies such as ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, according to his disclosures. The group Consumer Watchdog says that means he could indirectly benefit from a decision in the industry’s favor.

The group’s organizing director, Alexandra Nagy, pointed to the court’s recently adopted code of ethics, which says a justice should step aside if they or their families have a “subject matter or controversy”.

Ethics, schmethics.  This is optics, and the fix is in.

^*It means, "Go f%$# yourself!"

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), So Much Winning

In Michigan Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is leading in the polls against Mike Rogers and Maine’s Troy Jackson is behind Susan Collins.

The difference between these campaigns?  Troy Jackson is following the advice of the mainstream Democratic Party political consultants.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are to winning elections what Ebola is to French kissing.

The New York Times has a new article headlined “Democrats Show Strength in Michigan Senate Race but Trail in Maine, Polls Find.” It highlights the divergent electoral prospects of two Democratic Senate candidates: Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson. Both Michigan and Maine are swing states that have voted statewide for both Democrats and Republicans in recent years, yet polls currently show El-Sayed leading his opponent, Mike Rogers, by five percentage points, while Jackson is trailing Republican Susan Collins by three percent.

We have to regard polls skeptically. In the primary, polls showing El-Sayed far ahead of his rivals turned out to be wildly wrong, and his ultimate victory was very narrow. But the paper’s report also presents some illuminating facts, beyond the raw polling data. They note that:

In Michigan, support for Dr. El-Sayed appears to be fueled by the popularity of his economic message and his vocal support for single-payer health care. He is more trusted to handle the cost of living by nine points, the only Democrat who is more trusted on the issue across the three states. And despite a bitter primary, a whopping 95 percent of Democrats are now supporting his candidacy. Dr. El-Sayed is also winning 8 percent of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2024 election, more than either of the other two Democrats in the survey. Abel Kang, a social worker from Grand Rapids, said he knew very little about Mr. Rogers other than his support of Mr. Trump. Mr. Kang said he planned to support Dr. El-Sayed largely because of economic issues and his support of single-payer health care. “He is talking about free health care,” said Mr. Kang, 47, an independent. “Personally, I think that is a necessity. It’s a basic human need.”  

The paper spends less time trying to explain why Troy Jackson is not having as much success during an electoral cycle that is widely assumed to favor Democrats, who hold an 11-point national lead on the “generic” congressional ballot. They note that Susan Collins is seen by “a majority of Maine voters as more likely than Mr. Jackson to be an effective senator and as having better character.” But a recent report in New York magazine adds critical additional context to help us understand why the Jackson campaign isn’t catching fire. In it, Rebecca Traister documents that Jackson’s campaign has been directed in large part by establishment Democratic consultants who are crushing Jackson’s main sources of appeal: his populism, his authenticity, his ability to connect with ordinary people. Traister’s report is full of utterly damning findings:

“These advisers are frustrated by Jackson and his backwoods cadence, his insistence on taking questions, and his unapologetically progressive stances. Jackson, a decent, marble-mouthed logger with a phone belt clip[…] has often deferred to their expertise, angering longtime allies and organizers who have their own thoughts on how he can win. “These people are very convincing… He’s being taken advantage of by people who have a lot of power and influence in this political sphere.” 

[The] effect of the campaign on the 58-year-old Jackson is readily apparent. Typically an impassioned speaker, Jackson has become more tentative, with answers on Israel and ICE getting muddier. His political identity is now undergoing an awkward transformation before voters’ eyes as he struggles to incorporate new, seemingly foreign talking points. Internal campaign documents instruct him to say, when asked about his position that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, “No matter what you’re comfortable calling it, I think we can all agree this is senseless violence.”

“The Jackson campaign’s wariness of in-person events seems to merge with a general suspicion of Mainers and their conviction that they know what’s best for Jackson. A handful of them who work as staffers at this point “are treated like garbage” by the campaign bosses, according to one source[…] “They think it’s going well when Troy is boring AF,” said another person with knowledge of the campaign.” […] “They want to run this campaign through numbers and spreadsheets. And wherever a campaign is connecting with people or doing anything quirky or unique, they’re like, ‘This is bad and weird.’” A lot of this friction comes down to competing theories of how to win elections. The people running Jackson’s campaign are relying on heavy vetting, poll testing, and data that pinpoints exactly who may be persuadable. They focus on ads, the messages neatly sculpted, while the candidate attends fundraisers and does call time, raising more money to pay for more ads. Emphasizing ads over a field operation is more profitable for the companies running that campaign. TKO and McCollister’s firm, Frame, make and sell ads for Jackson.”

Say what you will about Graham Plattner, but he went all over the state, and he listened to and talked to voters.

This was popular and provided a contrast with both with Collins and his primary opponent Mills.

Of course, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) consultants cannot tolerate this, because campaigning in person and talking to voters does not make them any money. 

Republicans may be the opposition, but the The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is the enemy.

Not Good

It appears that Donald Trump and some of his more unhinged supporters are considering meddling with the upcoming election with a martial law declaration. 

Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.

Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.

………

To head off a crisis, Trump’s White House and Cabinet advisers have been working for months to move Trump’s focus away from baseless theories of election fraud peddled by people like Ticktin, Root, and Peters. At the same time, they have authorized as-yet-unsuccessful efforts to uncover actual evidence that would make the conspiracies more credible: Trump’s advisers gathered once-classified documents that he could share on genuine foreign efforts to influence elections, set up a prime-time address where he again falsely suggested that the 2020 election was stolen, authorized the seizure of Georgia election records, and reviewed voting equipment used in Puerto Rico. None of these efforts has revealed the type of large-scale fraud that Trump has alleged, though they have allowed the president to keep the idea of election theft in the news. Meanwhile, Trump has failed to persuade Senate Republicans to pass legislation, called the SAVE America Act, that would restrict mail-in voting and impose new voter-ID and citizenship checks on ballot access, and the Supreme Court has rejected his effort to restrict voting by mail.

………

But the prospect of Trump deciding to act on the demands of his most fervent election-denying supporters has remained a constant threat, one that even Trump’s inner circle admits remains possible. Such measures are broadly opposed by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and within Trump’s own administration, not least because they’re considered bad politics. Polling commissioned by Republicans earlier this year found that if the SAVE America Act passed, it was likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm and suppress Republican turnout, particularly in red states, such as Florida, that have long embraced mail-in voting, according to a person who has reviewed the numbers.

We need to make sure that local and state authorities are prepared for this.

We also personally need to be prepared to push back against this personally. 

The Fix is In

I not particularly surprised that the major social media networks are refusing ads for Alex Gibney's new Elon Musk documentary.

Tech bros gonna protect tech bros.

All of the major social media platforms are refusing to run ads for the upcoming Musk documentary, which hits theaters Oct. 9, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Google-owned YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have declined to run trailers for Musk, much to distributor Bleecker Street’s surprise. So has TikTok, which in the U.S. is run by an Oracle-backed joint venture. According to THR, all three tech firms cited reasons related to “political content.”

TikTok does not allow political ads. Meta has restrictions on political ads but not a strict ban, just pre-authorization. YouTube only requires disclosures. But all of those restrictions have until now mostly been understood as applying to political campaigns/parties and advocacy or lobbying groups, not Hollywood.

Not only has Elon Musk-owned X (née Twitter) refused to acknowledge Bleecker Street’s ad inquiries, X won’t “even accept advertising for any of its other films on its upcoming calendar,” THR wrote.

THR reported TikTok and YouTube “are still entertaining the petitions” from Bleecker Street to reconsider, though Meta is not and has rejected the distribution company’s appeal. None of the social media companies immediately returned THR’s requests for comment.

………

In other words, this is exactly the kind of thing that might piss off Musk, who has a notoriously thin skin and needs no excuse to slip into a fit of rage. Musk already has: he responded by tweeting Gibney has “ZERO integrity” and is a “horrible human.”

Musk’s webs of companies and business interests weave all throughout Silicon Valley and beyond—that’s how you become the world’s first temporary trillionaire. He has wealth, business relationships to threaten, and other methods of influence, not to mention an army of right-wing trolls and/or government officials who indulge his every grievance. No telling whether he’s called any of those favors in, or tech firms are just helping shush the baby as a matter of habit.

………

But Musk can’t stop people from talking about how much he doesn’t want them to see Musk, can he? Perhaps that Streisand effect will kick into motion soon enough.

One can only hope for the Streisand effect.

Nakedly Corrupt and Partisan

In an unsigned shadow docket opinion (the 3 court liberals issued a dissent) the Supreme Court issued a ruling saying that the Trump Administration’s "Verified Voter" database.

Despite the fact that the database is inaccurate, and despite the Supreme Court's own Purcell Doctrine, which says that courts should not change rules too close to the elections, the corrupt 6 want to allow the Trump to use their bogus database to undermine the election.

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can deploy an expansive online system that combines citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data about millions of Americans, allowing states to use it to hunt for ineligible voters.

Critics fear that states could use the system to purge large numbers of valid voters from their rolls ahead of the midterm elections.

The decision is a win for President Trump, who has pressed his administration to find evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, even though such instances are exceedingly rare. However, states are not required to use the federal system and it remains to be seen how much enthusiasm there will be among local and state election officials for it, as it has mistakenly flagged U.S. citizens as noncitizens in past searches.

The majority concluded that a lower-court ruling that had blocked the Trump administration from rolling out the system was improper because it inhibited “the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”

The emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, but the court’s three liberal justices joined in dissent. In a 12-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that the majority’s decision created the conditions for some states to cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or to force them to provide proof of citizenship before voting.

Today in Corruption

According to whistle-blowers Kennedy Center management has systematically ignored maintenance needs in order the manufacture a justification for shutting down the facility.

Needless to say, this is not the behavior of a good faith actor.

Former employees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts say that center officials canceled a plan to start overhauling its leaking infrastructure months ago, despite those officials now asserting the leaks posed an urgent safety risk requiring the building to close.

On Thursday, a lawyer for the former employees sent internal documents and a letter that detailed their concerns to Congress amid mounting scrutiny of President Trump’s reign over the Washington arts institution.

The center’s main building remains closed because of what officials have characterized as escalating structural deterioration that was never properly addressed by former leadership. But in the letter to Congress sent via a lawyer, the former employees say it’s clear the problems have been exaggerated because, given the chance, the center deferred responding to them over the past year.

………

Democratic lawmakers have accused officials of using the maintenance issues as a pretext for a shutdown that is actually necessitated by the center’s financial and artistic decline under Mr. Trump.

Gee, you think. 

So, Tech Bros are Rapey? Hoocoodanode!

It seems that "Hacker Houses" are a thing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Someone who hit the tech lottery sets one or more houses that function as group homes for coders.

The residents go to work, and to blow off steam, they sexually harass and sexually assault women at their parties.

We already knew that they were self entitled misogynous assholes.

Packing them in like sardines and throwing money at parties in an attempt to keep the residents working is a petri dish for sexual misconduct.

The eight-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion, which borders a golf course in the wealthy Silicon Valley town of Hillsborough, Calif., has gone through a lot in recent years.

………

The mansion is one of the most prominent — and notorious — tech group homes, which have proliferated across Silicon Valley and San Francisco amid the artificial intelligence boom. Long gone are the fraternity-style rental homes popularized by Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of Facebook, where grungy engineers coded all day and crammed into shared rooms at night.

Today these so-called hacker houses are driven by missions, like the advancement of humanity, and have become critical nodes for the A.I. industry. Residents are often start-up founders or engineers working at OpenAI or Anthropic. Rent can hit $10,000 a month for a room.

But what has unfolded in them has sometimes gone far beyond socializing and networking. Some houses have become the sites for sexual harassment cases and rape allegations, as well as infighting among residents, according to previously unreported police reports obtained by The New York Times, court records and more than 20 people in the A.I. industry.

………

At the mansion in Hillsborough known as AGI House — named for “artificial general intelligence,” a technology that can match the powers of the human mind — the local police have logged 37 incidents since 2022. At least 17 were related to complaints about large parties and events, according to the reports.

The others included an episode in December when a woman called the police and told them that a male AGI House resident had pressured her to have sex; she climbed over a gate to escape. Last year, the police were also asked at least four times to perform welfare checks, which typically happen when people experience mental health issues or are considered unsafe to themselves or others.

………

Some of the industry’s biggest names are involved. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has advised the Residency, which aims to be a global network of hacker houses for “ambitious builders” to live and work.

………

Sofie Bukovska, 26, who works at the A.I. film production company Trippy Pictures, moved into AGI House last year for a few months and said she had quickly realized how helpful it was to her career. She met A.I. executives and personalities, including Grimes, whom she probably wouldn’t have otherwise, she said.

The atmosphere “was something very different from normal life,” Ms. Bukovska said.

Rocky Yu, a venture capitalist who has managed AGI House since 2023, has tried to curb the partying, he has claimed in court documents. Reached by phone, he said he was not aware of any police reports and declined to answer questions.

The mansion, which is connected to a venture capital fund, is backed by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, and Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist, according to its website. A representative for Mr. Andreessen said he was not involved.

………

The 18,000-square-foot property has become such a center of gravity for the A.I. industry that Mr. Yu and a former manager are embroiled in a court battle over who owns the rights to the AGI House brand. The home has become emblematic of the behind-the-scenes issues — often not publicly discussed — that group houses face.

………

AGI House’s roots trace back to Jeremy Nixon, 33, a former Google researcher who established other tech group homes before the A.I. boom. One that he co-founded around 2019 at a five-bedroom house in San Francisco was called Genesis.

………

Yehong Zhu, 30, who is not related to Mr. Zhu, filed a police report accusing a former Genesis house member of rape and assault in December 2021, according to a copy of the report. She has lived in four tech houses and initially viewed them almost as utopias where she could quickly meet other entrepreneurs, she said, before seeing a darker side.

Ms. Zhu’s case remains under investigation. The Genesis resident she accused has left the house and cannot be located, she said.

“I’m far from the only one this has happened to,” said Ms. Zhu, the founder of an A.I. start-up called Zette.

It appears that tech frat boys are even worse than the ordinary kind of frat boys.

Least Surprising News of the Day

Is anyone surprised that Maine Senator Susan Collins was likely engaging in corrupt pay to play campaign donations with a defense contractor and that the FBI was hot on her trail until the Trump DoJ stood down the investigation?

I'm not. 

Collins has responded with a profoundly misleading denial.

In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C.

For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising.

Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation.

Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.

But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.

To quote the Maine Senator, this apparent quid pro quo makes me, "Concerned."

Why Am I Not Surprised?

It appears that the original architect for the Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Trump ballroom pulled out of the project because Trump was demanding that he design an unsafe building.

Trump thinks that he is above safety regulations.  Imagine that?

In the weeks leading up to his resignation last year, the first architect on the White House ballroom clashed with President Donald Trump over design features that the architect believed violated building safety codes, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions and corroborating documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

James McCrery II withdrew from the project last October after warning repeatedly that Trump was insisting on a preliminary design that did not provide adequate emergency exit routes or fire-containment measures, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

Trump brushed off McCrery’s concerns, they said, and the president countered that no building codes apply to White House construction.

“I am the code,” Trump said.

That episode, as described by the people familiar with the matter, offers new insight into Trump’s priorities for the ballroom at a time when he is flexing executive power to fast-track construction projects across the nation’s capital. The interviews and documents obtained by The Post — including early ballroom designs and images Trump appeared to have marked up with his trademark black-ink Sharpie — also show how deeply involved the president has been in the details of the project.

So, in addition to being a crime against architecture, it appears that the ballroom is just a crime.

Republican Family Values

Have you heard the one about the state representative who co-authored the Texas abortion ban paid for multiple abortions for his former exotic dancer mistress?

Also, he started f%$#ing her when she was just 18.

No, this is not a joke.

Texas Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione helped write one of the country’s strictest abortion laws.

Now he’s been forced into a stunning admission after a woman revealed that she had carried on a 17-year relationship with Capriglione and accused him of “secretly paying for multiple abortions.”

“Years ago, I selfishly had an affair,” the Southlake Republican said in a statement after the allegations became public. “I’m not proud of this.”

And that’s where this story gets politically explosive.

Capriglione was the House author of Texas’ 2021 Human Life Protection Act, the so-called trigger ban that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The law prohibits abortion except under specified circumstances and provides both civil and criminal penalties.

The woman making the allegations is Alex Grace, a former exotic dancer who says she met Capriglione in 2004, when she was 18, according to International Business Times.

Stay classy, my froiend.

Of Course They Caved

Despite every indication that they would win in court, state attorneys general have settled with Paramount for little more than some magic beans, because our political system has been deeply corrupted  by big money.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has settled the challenge that he brought with 11 other state AGs to the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. The deal to settle the suit is both improbable and outrageous.

The $81 billion merger will give the Ellison family control of two of America’s biggest media companies, rolled into one behemoth combining film, television, sports, entertainment, and news. It would slash jobs and reduce competition throughout several industries. David Ellison has already destroyed the independence of CBS News. This would allow him to destroy CNN as well.

As an indication of the strength of Bonta’s case, on July 20, U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a temporary restraining order against the merger that rejected many of Paramount’s arguments, and scheduled a trial for next March. At that point, the Ellisons began applying political pressure for a settlement and threatening that Paramount would leave California if the suit succeeded.

In late August, Bonta canceled a scheduled meeting with representatives of Paramount after leaks of supposed settlement talks began appearing in the media, accusing Paramount of bad-faith tactics.

The tactics never changed. Paramount, Bonta, and other AGs spent the weekend in “advanced settlement talks” in which Paramount would stay in California, agree to 30 film releases per year among the two studios under threat of divesting some production companies if they don’t, invest $1.5 billion, and add an editorial board to allow for independence at CNN and CBS. The leaks of the deal very likely came from Paramount.

………

Yet Bonta caved under pressure, after being abandoned by every major politician in California (from current Gov. Gavin Newsom to heir apparent Xavier Becerra to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass), all of whom are worried about jobs in the event of a Paramount exit. But Paramount’s stated plan post-merger includes $8 billion in “savings,” which translates into the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

So, the right-wing nepo-baby, and his even more right-wing dad, end up with control over much of the US media landscape.

This sucks. 

This Makes Me Smile

It looks like Flock Security is now offering employee buyouts in an attempt to reduce headcount.

They have become too toxic, and contracts are being canceled, not being renewed, or sales inquiries are being rebuffed.

Good. 

Flock Safety announced a voluntary employee separation program on Friday, offering a “generous” severance package to those who want to leave amid growing backlash against the surveillance technology company, according to an internal email shared with WIRED.

Applications for Flock’s voluntary severance program opened Friday, and employees have until October 2 to decide whether to leave the company. Flock expects to grant buyouts to the majority of workers who apply, according to the email. People familiar with the program but not authorized to discuss it publicly say they believe that a significant number of the startup’s roughly 1,500 employees may try to depart.

Flock is making the severance offers as it continues to lose customers amid growing frustration across the US about its sprawling network of license plate readers, which have raised concerns about privacy and misuse. In the last month, WIRED has documented officers allegedly abusing Flock to track former romantic partners and colleagues, exposed how widely some agencies share access to the system, shown how little is known about the manufacturing of the devices, and revealed in new detail how much information Flock’s cameras collect based on data from a dismantled Flock device.

 

Criminals Gotta Crime

Said criminal is the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, who is under investigation for breaking the law in his rollout of his Robotaxi.

Safety, schmafety, I guess. 

It says nothing good about America how easily Elon Musk convinced the press and public he was a supergenius engineer who could cobble together complicated rocket machinery wearing coveralls in his backyard shed.

Hindsight continues to illustrate how Elon Musk’s real skill sets are opportunism, taking singular credit for the innovations of real engineers, the manipulation of a very broken media, and taking legal, regulatory, environmental, labor, and consumer protection “shortcuts” wherever possible.

Enter the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is investigating Musk’s automated-taxi Cybercab deployments in Austin for violating public safety guidelines.

The Trump NHTSA is updating existing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to help companies speed toward automated cars and taxis. But until then our previous (already fairly lax) standards still apply. This being America, companies self-certify whether they’re adhering to the rules in order to get a two-year exemption (Amazon’s Zoox got approval last month).

Tesla, owned by a man who doesn’t believe in coherent governance, is facing a new NHTSA investigation for simply refusing to participate in the process

“Ann Carlson, a former acting NHTSA administrator who is now a professor of environmental law at UCLA, says the investigation is likely “an indication that NHTSA is super frustrated with Tesla.” The agency made clear through the Zoox case that it expects driverless vehicle developers to go through the exemption process. “For Tesla to slap them in the face and ignore that—that is gobsmacking,” she says.”

Frog march his flabby white ass out of his offices in handcuffs.

Fascists Gotta Fascist

A judge has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot threaten prosecution of people who criticized them.

The fact taht they needed to have a court tell them this is f%$#ed up beyond belief.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may no longer issue a “warning notice” – threatening prosecution against a US citizen – for criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal judge in Washington DC ruled on Tuesday.

Judge Rudolph Contreras sided with David Streever, a New York man who accused DHS officials of violating his first amendment rights when they showed up first at his home in June with a “warning notice”, claiming he made a threat against former ICE director Todd Lyons, and then to a hotel where Streever and his young daughter were staying.

The notice and visits were in response to an email Streever sent Lyons in January, after federal agents fatally shot two US citizens amid an immigration crackdown in Minnesota. In the email, Streever called Lyons a “monstrous human being”, compared him to Nazi and warned him that his own conscience would “eat himself alive”.

Contreras ruled the notice “practically shouts that Mr Streever may be prosecuted if he continues to engage in his political speech”.

“Americans have long voiced their displeasure with their government. The Declaration of Independence itself is a list of grievances between Americans and the British government. And Americans have not always indulged in the elevated prose of the Declaration. Government officials have long endured ‘vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.’ Today is no different,” Contreras wrote.

The court order is limited in that it prohibits the DHS, its secretary, Markwayne Mullin, or ICE from issuing another “warning notice”, making similar threats or pursuing prosecution for his speech while Streever’s case continues in court.

These mooks need to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

Support Your Local Police

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has elected not to punish officers who assaulted a bicyclist who was blocking their parking on a sidewalk.

Assault is against NYPD policy, and so is parking on the sidewalk, but Ms. Tisch does not care.

Zohran Mamdani, fire her now.  It is clear that the Commissioner is about as interested in pursuing police misconduct as Donald Trump is in pursuing the Epstein files.

Police officers can rough up civilians to protect their ability to illegally park.

That’s the unmistakable conclusion from a recent decision by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to not punish officers who roughed up and threatened to run over a cyclist who was blocking other cops from parking on a sidewalk — a decision by the top cop that came even though the NYPD’s patrol guide prohibits both excessive force and bars officers from parking on the sidewalk.

The main details of the initial October 2023 incident are not in dispute: According to the just-obtained Civilian Complaint Review Board case file obtained by Streetsblog, the cyclist stood on the sidewalk on Bergen Street near the 78th Precinct house in Park Slope as Sgt. William McKnight tried to park his personal vehicle on the sidewalk.

The cyclist refused to move, and two officers then pushed the cyclist and used the bike rider’s backpack to pull them out of the way. McKnight, meanwhile, told the cyclist that he should have run them over and “ruined” their day. (The cyclist’s name was redacted in the CCRB file, so their gender is unknown to us).

But in the letter that cleared the officers of wrongdoing, Deputy Chief Michael Baker (who handled the correspondence for Tisch) argued that the officers have a right to use force to help their colleagues, even though the NYPD’s policies (and city and state law) do not allow officers to park on public sidewalks.

“To issue discipline would not be in the interest of justice,” Baker wrote, setting aside the CCRB recommendation that the officers receive discipline for their use and threat of force against the cyclist.

 

TACO Wednesday

Remember when Trump and his evil minions threatened to shut down the Kennedy Center?

You should that was literally yesterday.

Well, for Representative Joyce Beatty's lawyers went to the judge and this was a explicit contempt for Federal Judge Christopher Cooper's rulings, they are now saying that the shutdown will only be a week to fix the hole in the roof.

Trump Always Chickens Out. 

Lawyers for a Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday requested an emergency hearing in federal court over whether the abrupt closure of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts violates a judge’s earlier order that barred the institution from shuttering.

………

Lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty, who is suing the center as an ex officio board member, said that the move appeared to run afoul of a judicial order in May, in which Judge Christopher R. Cooper temporarily blocked the center from closing because of what he described as a lack of meaningful scrutiny over the decision from its Trump-allied board.

“The board cannot simply ignore Judge Cooper’s rulings whenever it suits them,” Ms. Beatty’s lawyers, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, said in a statement on Wednesday.

After Ms. Beatty’s request, Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, said in an email to employees that the closure was intended to last seven days, during which officials would evaluate the extent of the safety concerns. He said the need to extend the closure would be assessed on a “weekly basis.”

What a bunch of petulant pathetic pissants.

Good News Everyone

Count the fact that the US Senate voted to block the crypto sellout bill as a small victory.

I'll take it. 

A sweeping bill that would create business-friendly rules for cryptocurrencies stalled in the Senate on Tuesday, a major blow to the crypto industry’s plans in Washington.

The Senate voted 50 to 49 to block consideration of the Clarity Act, a high-profile piece of legislation that was shaped by crypto executives over months of negotiations with Congress and the White House. The bill passed in the House last year, but it has faced numerous delays in the Senate.

The vote on Tuesday was a stinging defeat for the industry that makes it unlikely the legislation will pass anytime soon — if ever. With the midterm elections coming up in November, the window to advance it is closing rapidly, despite more than $100 million in political spending by crypto companies.

While many Republicans embraced the bill, Democrats largely opposed it. Many of their concerns centered on President Trump, who generated $1.4 billion from a network of crypto businesses last year. Democrats wanted stronger language to prevent the president and other public officials from using crypto to make money.

Ultimately, no Democrat voted for the bill, leaving Republicans well short of the 60-vote threshold required to proceed. Several Republicans, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, also cast “no” votes.

“All President Trump wants is for the Senate to give him time to crime, and I won’t support any piece of legislation that enables him,” Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, said in a statement after the vote. “This legislation failed squarely because Republicans refuse to say no to the president.”

What a Petty Little Man

It looks like Donald Trump is still trying to shut down the Kennedy Center in a fit of pique over his not being allowed to plaster his name all over the performing arts center.

Seriously, how small is his penis?  (Shut up, Stormy, I do not want to know this)

Simmering turmoil over the future of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts boiled over on Tuesday as the center abruptly closed to the public and President Trump threatened to cancel a planned $257 million renovation if his name was not returned to the front of the building.

Allies of Mr. Trump have been pushing for months to close the center for major renovations and to honor the president by affixing his name to its marble facade. A federal judge has blocked both efforts.

On Tuesday, the center aggressively tested the judge’s order not to close by shutting its doors in what officials called an emergency action designed to protect people from deteriorating conditions inside the building. Shortly after 4:30 p.m., employees heard a sudden notice on the P.A. system: “The center is now closed to the public. Please exit the center by way of the Hall of States.”

………

The Kennedy Center said in a statement that an immediate temporary closure of the building was necessary for safety reasons but that an extended closure would begin once the court gives its approval. Earlier on Tuesday, the center’s Trump-allied board voted — for a third time — to close the building, citing a recent incident in which a five-foot-long section of ceiling plaster fell amid a storm.

But lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democratic ex officio board member whose lawsuit is at the center of the court battle, signaled that they would view any closure as in direct conflict with a court order.

………

The Kennedy Center quickly filed a notice of appeal, and Mr. Trump responded on social media with a stark ultimatum. If an appeals court does not agree to allow his name back on the building, he said in the post, he would block the renovation of the center that he has been championing for more than a year.

“If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said in the post, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”

He also said the building would close “immediately.”

………

For weeks, Mr. Trump’s allies have suggested that the president’s continued commitment to the Kennedy Center was contingent on some conspicuous acknowledgment on the center’s exterior. A recent draft resolution submitted to board members said the center was at risk of bankruptcy but could be saved by fund-raising by Mr. Trump — if he were to receive “appropriate recognition.”

Mr. Trump’s made that quid pro quo even more clear in his social media post on Tuesday. It said that $17 million raised by the president had been put into the center’s account “to keep it afloat.”

Pathetic. 

Flock Deathwatch

The city of Boston has canceled their Flock contract citing unauthorized data sharing by the surveillance firm.

Gee, flock safety is run by a bunch of lying sacks of sh%$?  Hoocoodanode?

The Boston city government abandoned Flock Safety’s license-plate reader cameras after the company shared data nationwide in violation of a contract provision, according to city officials.

“We have actually abandoned Flock,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in her monthly “Ask the Mayor” segment on GBH News last week. Wu made the comment a few days before the release of Boston’s annual surveillance technology report, which said a Flock “vendor error” resulted in nationwide data sharing.

The report, which covers 2025, describes how the Boston Police Department deployed about 45 Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras in a trial with Flock from April to September last year. The unauthorized data sharing occurred during the first few days of the pilot, the report said:

Pursuant to the contract, the Flock ALPR Pilot Program was designed to restrict access to the data collected by BPD ALPR cameras exclusively to trained BPD personnel. The contract clearly noted that data sharing was to be disabled, and BPD confirmed with Flock that settings were “off” for sharing. Within three days of initiating the Pilot, BPD became aware that other law enforcement agencies were able to access license plate and vehicle information collected from BPD ALPR cameras using a nationwide lookup feature that was enabled by the vendor in error. Upon learning of the vendor error, BPD ensured that the function was immediately disabled and access to the Department’s data was no longer available without submitting a written request to BPD as described above. No further direct access was available for the duration of the Pilot.

The report didn’t say how many law enforcement agencies accessed the data. The problem with Flock didn’t stop Boston from seeking another vendor of license-plate reader technology. The police department started another license-plate reader trial with Motorola in February 2026 and a third trial with Axon in June 2026.

Unfortunately, they are moving to a another ALPR, but seeing as how Flock is the worst of the worst, but I'll take this.

What Lina Khan Said

Jacob Coxson's vague, "Revalations," appear to be a PR ploy pump both AI company stock prices as well as the personal stock of one Jacob Coxon.

In response to a recent media campaign by the AI giants to crteate regulation that would prevent net entrants from competing with them, former FTC chair Lina Khan notes that existing law can already do this by frog marching executives out of their offices in handcuffs.

She notes that we have been jailing CEOs of firms that engage in anticompetitive behavior and release unsafe products for over 90 years.  (Not so much since Reagan became President, but still) 

Former FTC chair Lina Khan wants the federal government to know that it doesn't need to wait for new laws to address AI threats. There are already laws and regulations on the books, including a 92-year-old Supreme Court precedent, that she argues could be used to hold AI companies and, in some circumstances, their executives accountable for their actions.

………

“We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books,” Khan said. “Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products.”

………

There’s no leap needed to understand what Khan’s talking about here. OpenAI’s agents broke out of their intended sandbox and gained unauthorized access to Hugging Face systems - conduct that could raise serious criminal-law questions if carried out knowingly by a human. After doing some digging to look at its own agents' behaviors, Anthropic has essentially copped to similar activities that would be criminal if a meatbag was behind the keyboard instead of a simulated silicon brain. OpenAI’s agents have since been identified as the culprits in other misuses of online assets that, again, would be crimes were they perpetrated by a human.

Khan points to a 1934 US Supreme Court decision to argue that the current battle between American frontier labs, which has put parts of the internet in the firing line of agents that escaped their intended constraints, could amount to an unfair method of competition if companies feel compelled to take similar risks to keep up.

That decision, FTC v. R.F. Keppel & Bro, includes a passage where the justices argue that, if keeping up with the competition requires companies to “descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt,” that competition is unfair whether or not it’s criminal.

Break out the cuffs, Ponch.