Can We Arrest Him Now?

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ was using child pr0n to train his Grok artificial intelligence system.

We are not talking hashes here, where the a digital signature is generated and used to compare to images and the like.

We are talking about actual CSAM.

Put the Elon Musk in jail. 

xAI has now been accused of training Grok on child sex abuse materials (CSAM), as regulators and courts continue to probe how far the problem goes, and some Grok users have been arrested.

In a complaint filed on Wednesday, a plaintiff known as Jane Doe explained that she was preschool-age in the early 2000s when adult men repeatedly raped her to create CSAM to sell to pedophiles online. Since then, Doe’s images have been hashed by groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP).

For her safety, Doe has opted to receive alerts from the US Department of Justice Victim Notification System any time she may be a victim in a new criminal investigation. Although she has received countless alerts, she was shocked when the CCCP notified her that it had identified AI-generated CSAM on xAI that depicted her. This re-traumatized Doe, whose complaint alleged that messages were found on online forums “between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.”

Now, Doe fears that xAI has not only made it easier to make more violative images of the most distressing time in her life, but also that xAI allegedly has stored the images that Grok generates and uses those outputs to further train Grok. Because of this, she believes that Grok has been trained on both the initial set of images that have haunted her for more than 20 years and the more recent AI-generated ones.

………

The lawsuit further noted that while xAI filters out violent content in Grok outputs to exclude it from training data, xAI’s terms notably do not specify if CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), or NSFW material are “excluded categories.”

It seems to follow then that “because full removal of a training example’s influence from an already-trained model is technically difficult and not something that xAI has publicly claimed to have done, any CSAM ingested into training before takedown likely continued to shape the model’s outputs even after the original images were removed from public view,” Doe’s complaint said.

If you cannot get Musk arrested, I would suggest that perhaps Ms. Doe and her lawyers could ask for all of xAI be deleted, because the nature of Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence means that the entire data set has been polluted.

Headline of the Day

Ex-Barclays boss denies having sex with woman dressed as Snow White after Epstein emails

—The Guardian

There are a lot of ,b.REALLY,/b. sick f%$#s out there.

The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.

The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

In the email exchange on 9 and 10 July 2010 Staley and Epstein referred to Disney princesses. In those messages, the details of which have been circulating in the media since 2021, Staley tells Epstein: “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White.”

Epstein then asks: “What character would you like next?” to which Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.” Epstein responded: “Well one side is availble [sic].”

During his congressional testimony, Staley, who spent more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase before joining Barclays in 2015, was asked: “Did you ever have sex with a young woman in a Snow White costume?

“No, I did not,” Staley said.

Mandy Rice-Davies Applies.  (Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?)

I expect Disney to file a lawsuit against Mr. Staley in the next few days. 

 

Pocket Change

It appears that the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ will be pay somewhere between $12 and $17.1 billion to settle the lawsuit accusing it of deliberately making an addictive product.

That is by my calculation less than 1 month's revenue.  

They can find it in their couch cushions. 

Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms.

In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, the states announced. Meta also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and to bans on features that stoke mental health issues, striking at the heart of the company’s business of engagement for advertising.

………

The settlement effectively ends a bellwether federal trial in the U.S. Northern District of California in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were seeking roughly $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. The states filed their agreement with Meta on Wednesday morning in that court, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved it.

Separately, Meta said on Wednesday that it settled with Texas for about $1 billion over similar allegations. The company still faces numerous other lawsuits from school districts and individuals, some of which are scheduled for trial in the coming months.

Meta’s stock rose on the news, closing up just over 1 percent. The company is valued at $1.47 trillion and most recently generated $60.8 billion in quarterly revenue.

 Like I said, pocket change.

Also, there is a condition to this settlement that will likely mean that they won't even be paying that.

………

The full value of Meta’s payout depends on whether other social media companies also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. 

I would be very surprised if a significant amount of this payout will occur this decade.

Facebook is, and always has been, a bad actor, and this settlement will not change that.

What would change this is frog-marching Mark Zuckerberg out of his offices in handcuffs. 

Private Island? How Does a Justice Afford a F%$#ing Private Island?

No, it's not Clarence Thomas, it's John Roberts, who was confronted by protestors at his private island.

Also, the whole private island thing is a bad look.  Just ask Jeffrey Epstein. 

Chief Justice John Roberts’ island escape was interrupted by protesters who arrived by kayak to stage a demonstration.

The 71-year-old Supreme Court justice, who has pleaded with critics of his ultra-conservative court to back off, learned earlier this month that even his private island retreat off Port Clyde, Maine, wasn’t beyond the reach of protesters.

Arriving by kayak, canoe, and rowboat, the protesters staged a one-hour “floating vigil” in the waters between Port Clyde and Hupper Island, where Roberts has a home, the Midcoast Villager reported.

he protesters’ signs declared “The Roberts Court: Rubber Stamp for Fascism” and “Roberts Benched the Constitution,” according to photos published in the Midcoast Villager. More than 20 people paddled out for the protest, while another 20 demonstrated on land, according to the Midcoast Villager.

Roberts and his wife, Jane Roberts, bought a 1,344-square-foot home on Hupper Island, a private island accessible only by water, in 2006. They bought a second 1,560-square-foot home sitting on two waterfront acres in 2016, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Last month, the couple—whose wealth is estimated at roughly $25 million—sold their longtime home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for $3.44 million, Realtor.com reported. They had bought the seven-bedroom house for $1.23 million in 2003.

$25,000,000.00? I'd love to see a deep dive on his finances. 

Worse than Useless

Just the thing for caving I am referring, of course, to the dead eyed leader of the Democratic Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, and exemplar of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), Hakeem Jeffries, who was just caught meeting with Trump son in law Jared Kushner.

Nice job of pre-capitulation.  Showing your belly to these guys is going to work out just great.

Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration.

The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.

There are longstanding conflict-of-interest concerns about the way Kushner has continued to make money from foreign nations as he works on foreign affairs, including conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza.

There is no excuse for this.  Kushner holds no government position, and he is arguably the most aggressive grifter among the Trump Crime Family except (perhaps) for Donnie "Small Hands".  

………

Nonetheless, among some who lamented the reported gathering was Tommy Vietor, previously an aide to former president Barack Obama and now a co-host of the left-leaning podcast Pod Save America.

“Jared Kushner has no actual government job he just uses his family connections to get money from gulf autocrats and fund corrupt deals. The only way [Jeffries] should work with him is with demands for documents and subpoenas,” Vietor posted.

In April, Democrats on the House judiciary committee opened an investigation into Kushner’s financial conflict of interest. The investigation is focused on the way Kushner’s private business has raised money from Gulf nations while Kushner served as a special envoy for peace for the government.

“You cannot both be a diplomat and a financial pawn of the Saudi monarchy at the same time; you cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own,” Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, wrote in an April letter to Kushner.

What a useless excuse for a leader.

Impeach Them All

I am not referring to anyone in the White House.  I am referring to the 6 corrupt and partisan Supreme Court Justices who just authorized Donald Trump's plan to meddle in mail-in voting in the upcoming election.

The US supreme court sided with Donald Trump on Monday in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it remains unclear if his administration can take action ahead of the midterm elections in November.

Justices on the court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction from June that a judge in Massachusetts placed on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote in an unsigned order. “On that score, time will tell.”

The three liberal justices dissented. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.

Justice Brown Jackson, injecting, "Chaos and ncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections," is a feature, not a bug.

To be fair the conservatives on the court did take a principled stance, it's just that the principle was, "N%$#@!*s should not vote." 

 

Funny, Innit?

After getting outed for having large investments in AI companies, Michigan Republican US Senate candidate Mike Rogers has changed his views on a data center moratorium.

I wonder why that would be? 

Days after The Lever revealed that Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers held millions of dollars in stock that could benefit from his support for artificial intelligence-related development, he reversed his position and backed a statewide moratorium on new data center construction.

Rogers, a former FBI agent, congressman, and adviser to a venture capital firm, now supports a one-year moratorium on new data center developments, declaring in a statement on Thursday that “Michigan needs stronger guardrails to protect community control, prevent utility price hikes, protect our water, and stop pay-to-play schemes.”

Rogers added that he does not support a full federal ban on data centers, as some lawmakers have called for. Instead, he noted that a pause should be instituted “until we establish a fair, transparent approval process” for the projects. He told The Detroit News at a press conference Thursday that the policy would help “make sure that we’re answering all of the questions that people have.”

Rogers’ new position comes just days after The Lever that he and his wife, former lobbyist Kristi Clemens Rogers, hold between $1.7 million and $2.6 million in companies that could benefit from AI-friendly policies and streamlined permitting for AI-related infrastructure. 

Will wonders never cease.

Gee, Ya Think?

A former safety engineer at Facebook, Arturo Béjar, has testified that Mark Zuckerberg does not give a f%$# about protecting children.

Gee, you think?

A massive trial is underway in California, where state attorneys general are holding Meta’s feet to the fire for its role in fueling a children’s mental health crisis.

According to the testimony of former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, the company has purposefully adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to keeping children safe on its platforms, the Guardian reported.

Throughout his time on the witness stand, Béjar asserted that Meta has known its platform is actively harming children, pushing things like violent and predatory sexual content onto their feeds.

Béjar, whose role in the company reportedly involved briefing CEO Mark Zuckerberg on safety issues, said that executives were well aware of the issues, but weren’t in any hurry to solve them, despite repeated assurances that Meta and its platforms Instagram and Facebook “don’t prioritize profit over safety,” per the Guardian.

Why are they not looking at criminal prosecutions? 

Fuck John Roberts

The modern day incarnation of Roger B. Taney decided to allow the construction of Trump's White House Ballroom to continue while the case proceeds.

This is clearly an attempt to allow facts on the ground to take precedence over the the facts and the law.

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon allowed construction on a new 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom to continue – at least for now. Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had issued an order, slated to go into effect at the end of the day, that would have stopped above-ground work on the project. But Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order, known as an administrative stay, that kept Leon’s order on hold to give the justices more time to consider the Trump administration’s request to pause it.

The brief, one-sentence stay did not indicate when the justices might act on the government’s request. Leon’s order has never gone into effect, permitting the Trump administration to move forward with construction while the case made its way toward the Supreme Court. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court last week that there was “a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the Project ahead of schedule and under budget”; as a result, he wrote, as of last week, the project was “65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion.”

Another nakedly corrupt and partisan act by a naked and partisan justice.

This is not a court of law, this is the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation.

Ever Wondered About Democratic Party Fundraising Spam?

It turns out that there are organized for-profit operations doing this and taking delivering barely more than 5% to the candidates. (Not referring to Act Blue)

We need to lead with the preface, which shows just how eager these rat-f%$s are to suppress this information:

This investigation was originally developed for The New York Times, where it underwent eight months of editing, multiple rounds of fact-checking, and independent replication of the underlying methodology. The piece had a scheduled publication date when requests for comment were sent. It was only after the Times reached out to the subjects of the investigation for routine comment that the Elias Law Group, representing the DCCC and DSCC, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the paper not publish. Although the paper’s fact-checkers and legal department later cleared the piece before sending out a second round of requests for comment, the Times ultimately decided to kill the piece.

The piece was subsequently slated for publication at The Bulwark, where it underwent additional fact-checking, data verification, and legal review. When requests for comment were sent to the subjects of the investigation, lawyers representing the Progressive Turnout Project and Mothership Strategies likewise responded with legal letters demanding that the article not run. From there, publication was repeatedly delayed. The piece cleared successive rounds of legal review. When I asked for a committed publication date after months of delay, The Bulwark conditioned publication on my accepting an extensive rewrite prepared by its editors that, in my assessment, removed key empirical findings without explanation, introduced claims contradicted by the data and fact-checking record, and presented the subjects' legal defenses as my own conclusions. When I declined to publish under those terms, the piece was released back to me.

What follows is the complete investigation that emerged from this year-long process. 

To quote P.C. Hodgell, "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."

If you’ve ever donated to a Democratic campaign, you know the messages never stop: “All hope is lost.” “We’re BEGGING.” “Quadruple-match EXPIRES in 180 MINUTES!” They arrive at all hours, claiming to be “close to tears” because you haven’t sent $15.

Most of us dismiss them as annoying spam. But federal election records reveal a hidden population of seniors for whom these messages prove surprisingly effective. What reads as parody to one recipient may be psychologically triggering for another.

To understand how this system works, I combined contribution data from the Federal Election Commission with age data from voter registration lists, covering more than 300 million donations. The donors who send money in response to Democratic fundraising spam are overwhelmingly elderly, and a surprisingly concentrated group of them accounts for the bulk of the money raised.

Looking closely at the donation data can be heartbreaking. An 85-year-old retiree in Oxford, Ohio made more than 7,800 donations totaling over $648,000 to Democratic causes, more than double the estimated value of his home. A 91-year-old woman residing in a senior living facility in Indianapolis donated over 25,000 times, totaling over $250,000, burning through money she may need for care.

………

Who is behind this flood? A thriving industry of digital-fundraising consultants who specialize in offering spam as a service, and the political action committees and candidates who adopt their methods. Together, they form a broader network of fundraising that deploys these methods at scale.

The most visible players in this ecosystem are what I call “spam PACs” — organizations that use high-volume digital fundraising firms to raise small-dollar contributions, only to sink a disproportionate share of those funds right back into fundraising. They are built on a common financial model: outsized spending on aggressive digital messaging that repeatedly extracts donations from a disproportionately elderly group of donors. But these tactics have spread throughout the party. Even the party’s own congressional campaign committees and some of its most senior leaders have embraced the spam.

………

Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who oversee multiple committees at once. The largest I found is a group of PACs connected to the Progressive Turnout Project. Harry Pascal, a longtime accountant turned Democratic fundraiser, is treasurer for the Progressive Turnout Project PAC and seven additional PACs whose affiliated status allows them to operate as a single network.

Through 2025, Pascal’s network of PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors. According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20 million more went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising itself. 

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is little more than a pale echo of Mel Brooks' character Max Bialystock from his first film, The Producers.

Forget it Jake, It's Texas

In response to Texas' refusal to extradite an indicted ICE agent, Minnesota has sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott. 

While I know that this won't result in Abbot being wheeled into a prison cell, the image makes me smile.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, alleging the governor is refusing to extradite a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with shooting an immigrant during Operation Metro Surge.

Christian Castro, 52, is facing four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime related to a Jan. 14 incident in which prosecutors allege he fired through the front door of a Minneapolis home he knew was occupied.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Ellison have sent letters to Abbott urging him to sign off on the officer’s extradition after Castro was charged in May. Last week, Ellison warned Abbott he would sue if he did not authorize Castro’s extradition by the end of the day Monday.

“This is not some accidental thing,” Ellison said in a Tuesday news conference announcing the lawsuit. “This is a choice.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Abbott said he would not respond to Minnesota prosecutors until they “acknowledge their fault in the fraud that took place” and repay the government for it. He was referring to the Trump administration’s accusations of fraud in Minnesota.

Governor Abbot?  You do not get to ignore a lawful request for extradition because you want Minnesota to do racism.

………

In addition to the extradition demand, Ellison’s lawsuit also requests a temporary restraining order to bar the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office, where Castro is in jail, from releasing him. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District Court of Texas, Castro could be released under Texas law as soon as Aug. 26 if he is not extradited. 

If Castro is released, he will most likely flee to Mexico.  

Irony, neh? 

No Disciplinary Actions

After prosecutors in Queens, New York were discovered to have concealed exculpatory evidence, The disciplinary committee decided to take no action against them.

These guys should have been fired ……… Out of a cannon ……… Into the sun.

Five years ago, one of the state’s top judges found Queens prosecutors had deliberately hidden evidence that could have spared three men decades in prison. Not long afterward, an attorney asked a disciplinary committee to investigate the incident.

The committee has finally returned its own finding. There is “insufficient evidence” the prosecutors had violated any of the “rules and laws governing attorney conduct,” according to a letter from the committee that was obtained by Gothamist.

The letter states the committee has closed the complaints against seven prosecutors filed in connection with the wrongful murder conviction of George Bell.

The five-sentence letter offers no information about the committee’s investigation or reasoning. Gothamist’s reporting on the matter is the first public confirmation of how the disciplinary process ended, and may be the only accounting the public ever gets.

This is why secret proceedings done by secret committees staffed by fellow members of the same profession rarely if ever deliver meaningful accountability.

When You Are Too Corrupt for JP Morgan………

JPMorgan has terminated their relationship with the online gambling site Polymarket.

JPMorgan Chase terminated its banking relationship with Polymarket last year over regulatory concerns, underscoring escalating worries in the industry over fast-growing prediction platforms.

JPMorgan notified Polymarket that it needed to find a new bank in October, according to people familiar with the matter. Polymarket is now working with a new lender, the identity of which could not be confirmed. 

At the time, Polymarket was banned from allowing US customers to use its platform following a 2022 enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for operating an unregistered derivatives trading platform. 

The CFTC under the Trump administration allowed New York-based Polymarket to re-enter the US last year, though the agency has an ongoing investigation into the company, the FT reported in June.

Gambling is a great way to launder money, and has been shown with both Polymarket and Kalshi, it is an even better way to engage in insider trading. 

Whatever JPMorgan saw, it's worse than what is publicly known.

That ain't good. 

Interesting Supreme Court Corruption Data Point

Fix the Court has documented all of the various gifts that Supreme Court Justices have received.

Since 2004, the total received from the current justices has come to $3.62 million.  Of that, Clarence Thomas has gotten $3.04 million, or about 84 percent of the bribes gifts.

Gee, corruption much?

A watchdog group called Fix the Court keeps a running tally of every gift and free perk handed to the people who sit on the Supreme Court, and the newest version of that tally counts 515 gifts and complimentary benefits worth an estimated $3.62 million from 2004 forward, pieced together from the justices’ own financial disclosure forms, investigative reporting, public records requests and a Senate investigation. Stretch the count across every year the database touches, including older records that are patchy and incomplete, and the total climbs to 735 gifts worth roughly $4.69 million.1

That figure covers 17 people. Nine of them are the justices deciding cases right now. Eight are recent former justices who have left the bench. That distinction is the single most important thing on this page, and I will show you why in about sixty seconds.

Now get this. One justice accounts for almost all of it

Clarence Thomas alone accounts for roughly $3.064 million of the $3.616 million total. Do the division. That comes to 84.7 percent of everything the group tallied for all seventeen justices across more than twenty years.

Narrow the lens to the nine justices on the bench today and the picture gets sharper still. Their tally since 2004 is 307 gifts worth about $3.231 million, and Thomas accounts for roughly 94.8 percent of that dollar figure, which means that if you set one man aside, the entire gift controversy at the current Supreme Court shrinks down to something around $166,412 spread across his eight colleagues over two decades.

Every other justice in the database, sitting and retired, adds up to about $551,425 combined.

I want to see Thomas frog marched out of his office in handcuffs.

Nope

So it looks like Donald Trump is trying to put his name back on and shut down the Kennedy Center again.

Because his feelings are hurt when the judge told him that putting his name on the facility was unlawful. 

If I were judge Cooper, I'd be throwing the entire board in jail for contempt.

The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to inscribe President Trump’s name on the building beneath the main signage, according to two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings, aggressively testing a federal judge’s order.

According to the resolution approved by the Trump-allied board, the inscription underneath the institution’s name would read: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The board’s decision, which directs officials to act by “all legal means,” came shortly after it voted to move forward with Mr. Trump’s plan to shutter the building for renovations.

Restored and renovated by Trump? 

Is he swinging the hammer? Nope.

Is it his money that is being spent on this? Nope. 

F%$# this. 

………

The move appeared to attempt to find a creative workaround to a provision in the federal law governing the Kennedy Center that says “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas.”

………

Both decisions will be subject to the scrutiny of the judge who, in response to a lawsuit from a Democratic lawmaker, found that the board had been “derelict” in considering the closure plan before approving it originally. Mr. Trump announced in February that the center would close for two years, with the objective of transforming what he called a “tired, broken and dilapidated” institution.

The board voted on Thursday to close the Kennedy Center’s main building while keeping a newer addition to the campus, known as the Reach, open for limited programming and to operate as an active memorial to John F. Kennedy. 

………

Outside arts administrators have suggested the financial realities for cultural organizations are far different from what the board is projecting, saying institutions typically do anything possible to avoid closure so they do not lose ticket revenue and donors. Ms. Beatty’s lawsuit questioned the true reasoning for the closure plans, arguing that it may be an effort to mask a financial downturn stemming from the president’s takeover.

Gee, ya think? 

I do hope that the judge goes postal on their flabby white asses.

Well, That Was Quick

Less than 24 hours after being sworn in as US Attorney General, Todd Blanche  is already making a mockery of the law in order to shield Donald Trump.

Gee, hoocoodanode? 

It’s been less than 24 hours, and freshly sworn-in Attorney General Todd Blanche has already issued entirely new legal protections for President Donald Trump.

In a memo published Monday evening, just hours after Blanche’s swearing-in ceremony, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel argued that the president could claim executive privilege over communication between him and his “private advisers,” provided that the communications were confidential and related to his presidential “decisionmaking.”

The memo also seemed to expand executive privilege to apply to communications between the president’s “direct advisers” and civilians.

If the Democrats take back the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, this memo could have major implications for any investigation into the president and other top administration officials. Clearly, the Trump administration is preparing to stonewall Congress.

 This is a feature, not a bug.

A Fortunate Failure

The Trump administration has done its best to hamstring wind power.  Its primary tool for this is stopping required reviews of new wind farms by the Pentagon.

The courts are having none of it.

On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August 2025, when the Department of Defense (DoD) stopped participating in a process that allows it to compel developers to alter projects in order to limit their interference with radar equipment. The court ruled, however, that the DoD’s national security claims did not allow it to opt out of a process that is legally mandated.

The Trump administration has made many attempts to block wind development, both offshore and land based. Its attempts to stop offshore wind included the same approach at issue in this case: Claim that drone developments mean that radar interference by wind turbines creates a national security risk. The courts were not sympathetic to this claim, including in cases where judges examined a classified report that the DoD was using to justify blocking offshore wind construction. As a result, the administration has turned to paying companies not to pursue wind development.

In parallel, the government was pursuing a similar approach for onshore wind. Here, a law lays out a process for the DoD to evaluate any problems posed by wind turbines and negotiate changes to planned wind farms with the developers. As laid out in the new decision, the government simply stopped participating in this process in August 2025, first by refusing to sign off on previously negotiated agreements, and later by refusing to draft agreements entirely. Eventually, it simply refused to participate in negotiations at all. This has brought a halt to all wind development in the US.

………

Nothing in that framework allows the DoD to simply stop participating in the process. “If DoD wishes to alter the statutory scheme, it can ask Congress to do so,” Immergut wrote. In the absence of congressional action, the DoD can’t simply ignore the law.

The ruling orders the DoD to resume the process of approving wind projects using the congressionally mandated schedule and to report back every 30 days on its progress.

 

Of Course He Did

Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Trump's peace plan for Gaza because even the illusion of peace will result in his losing power and going to jail for corruption.

It's really that simple. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected US President Donald Trump's 15-point plan for Gaza, stating that no military pull-out will happen until Hamas is "genuinely" disarmed.

Trump's Board of Peace said last month it had reached an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

But Hamas said handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending "all forms of aggression" and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.

On Sunday, a senior Board of Peace official insisted the US-backed peace plan for the territory remained the only way forward.

Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Gaza since agreeing to an initial ceasefire in the territory last October.

"Israel rejects the 15-point document," Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

This is what happens when a leader is convinced that a loss of power will result in their incarceration.

This applies to Donald Trump as well. 

Skeet of the Day

[image or embed]

— Susan (@joeyotis.bsky.social) August 8, 2026 at 3:01 PM

This is as true . . . as turnips is. It was as true . . . as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.

Rat-F%$#er in Chief

Todd Blanch has been confirmed as US Attorney General by the Senate.

I'm pretty sure that he is going to be a lot worse than John Mitchell or William Barr.

One hopes that he suffers the fate of the former, jail time and disbarment, and not of the latter, no consequences and lucrative gigs.