Oh Happy Day

Oh Happy Day

Trump indicted

Andrew Weissmann, who was part of the Mueller probe, comments ...



And so it begins. I'm glad to see that our basic maxim, that no one in the US is above the law, has won out over Trump's effort to undermine and intimidate our legal system.

Trump will be treated better than most people who are arrested, but he will still have to get fingerprinted, photographed, and come before a judge. Will there be violent protests?

This is just the beginning. There is still the Georgia election tampering case, the Jack Smith federal cases of classified documents and the Capitol insurrection, and there are E. Jean Carroll's defamation and rape cases.

Trump has tried his best to overturn our democracy and make himself our absolute ruler, but as Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "in America, law is king".

Farmers

Trump has been putting out these bizarre policy videos ... this one was pretty funny. I saw it earlier in the week on Mehdi Hasan's show, but here's a Forbes video of it ...



How can this critter be the Republican candidate for president of the United States? Don't get me wrong - I hope Trump is going to be the candidate, because Biden can and will beat him.

Again

Gun-Loving Republicans Offer Condolences After Latest School Shooting

Another school shooting. More dead kids. A shooter with 2 AR style weapons and a handgun.

This carnage has been brought to you by "pro-life" Republican politicians, who not only refuse to vote for gun control legislation, but who actually champion access to assault riffles.

Waco

Trump held his first campaign rally today at Waco, Texas ...



Waco was the perfect venue for Trump, and his rally was what you would expect from someone channeling cult leader David Koresh: full of lies, rants against the government, apocalyptic threats, etc etc etc. Trump describes 2024 election as ‘the final battle’ from podium in Waco

Trump's fans at the rally ate it up. I used to wonder if they were all terminally stupid and just didn't realize what Trump was. But I've come to understand that they know exactly what he is and they love it.

I hope pro-life people understand that these Trump followers, the gun-toting anti-government extremists ... they are your people, the same kind of domestic terrorists who bombed abortion clinics and killed doctors.

Capone

Anger as Trump posts picture of himself wielding baseball bat next to Alvin Bragg’s head

Donald Trump sparked anger by posting a picture of himself holding a baseball bat next to the head of the Manhattan District Attorney leading an investigation into him ...

I keep tthinking about an old movie, The Untouchables, in which government agent Eliot Ness and his team (the Untouchables) are finally able to bring down mobster Al Capone.

There's a clip with a baseball bat that comes to mind, in which Capone is feting his suck-ups, and uses the bat to punish one of them ... clip (violence).

And there's the ending scene in a courtroom, in which Ness (Kevin Costner) finally gets Capone sentenced to prison (for tax evasion). Ness repeats to Capone the advice he got from one of his team who Capone later murdered ... "Never stop, never stop fighting till the fight is done".



I hope our justice system follows that advice.

Toys

Gathering up some of Yoda's toys so I can sweep :)

Hush money case

A really informative article on the hush money case against Trump, written by Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann.

Ryan Goodman is ... the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and is the founding co-editor-in-chief of its website Just Security, which focuses on U.S. national security law and policy.

And Andrew Weissmann is a former FBI agent and former US attroney who prosecuted the Enron case and was also on special counsel Bob Mueller's team, and is a Professor of Practice at NYU School of Law.

Make No Mistake, the Investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels Scheme Is Serious

Though it may be tempting to do so, it is a mistake to assess the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump by comparing its relative severity with those of myriad other crimes possibly committed by him. That is not how state and federal prosecutors will — or should — be thinking about the issue of charging Mr. Trump, or for that matter, any other defendant ...

Fear not!

Some say that this possible case in Manhattan is weak or is unseemly, but I disagree. In the case that sent Michael Cohen to prison years ago, federal prosecuters stipulated that what Cohen had done was done for the benefit of and at the direction of Trump. And though this case concerns Trump having sex with an adult movie actress while his wife was home with a baby, that was not the crime in question. Lying was: lying to the government about what the checks to Cohen were for, and lying to the American people about the kind of person for whom they were considering voting.

Looking forward to seeing the mug shot :)

Monument

- anti-abortion protester from Lake of Fire

In the news: A new Arkansas law allows an anti-abortion monument at the state Capitol

In the state that now has Trump's former press secretary as governor, there's going to be an anti-abortion monument created. I can only imagine what that will be like.

Maybe there will be statues in remembrance of those anti-abortion protesters who harassed pregnant women, bombed clinics, and murdered doctors. Because we really don't spend enough time recalling those "pro-life" heroes.

The Waiting

This song on the Muzak at the store yesterday, Tom Petty, 1981 ...

St. Patrick's Day

- from St. Mary’s & St. Michael’s Parish Church, New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I have some Irish heritage from my grandmother, a McNeeley.

But they weren't Irish Catholics, they were Scotch-Irish, Scottish Presbyterians who were encouraged to move to Northern Ireland by the English in the 17th century (eeeek, they were on the side of the bad guys). I think they moved here at least by the time of the American Revolution, because I remember Auntie Bert, my grandmother's sister, wanting to join the DAR.

Sadly, when I was young I was totally uncurious about the family past and never really asked them about it. Now it's too late.

Pro-life death penalty

At this moment, a conservative Trump appointed judge in Texas is deciding whether a drug the FDA approved 20+ years ago for medical abortion can still be used by women across the US, or if it is too "dangerous and ineffective" to be used, as the anti-abortion plaintiffs ludicrously and disingenuously contend. Of course, this won't stop the use of abortion by medication, as the other drug in this 2 drug cocktail can still be effective, but the abortion will be less safe, more painful. For the coservatives, the cruelty is the point, after all ... make those uppity women pay.

But speaking of making women pay, I wanted to mention another related situation: pro-lifers in South Carolina propose executing women who have had abortions. The hard part will be choosing exactly how to execute them, as that state wants to bring back firing squards and the electric chair ... remember, it's all about the suffering.

21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions

Members of the South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty.

The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death ....

We knew this was inevitable once the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs. The anti-abortion movement is emboldened and sees no reason anymore to pretend that this has not always been their agenda. How I remember those nutballs at America magazine going on about how "women are vitims" and "it's the evil abortionist doctors who are to blame" and "we just want to help women, not punish them" and blah, blah, blah. I guess lying just comes naturally to conservatives.

DeSantis

DeSantis is on his book tour (campaign tour) and The Washington Post has confirmed he will indeed run for president as the Republican candidate. Some think he will be a less crazy version of Trump, a Trump with a brain, a moderate alternative to Trump. No, no, no! He is, if possible, even more dangerous than Trump: he is smart, cynical, vicious, and has shown himself to be a ruthless autocrat. He would probably also be harder to beat than Trump. Here are two examinations of him ...

Lawsuit

Five Women Sue Texas Over the State’s Abortion Ban

Even before the Dobbs case, maternal morbitity/mortality in the US was high ... The U.S. Maternal Mortality Crisis Continues to Worsen: An International Comparison ... I recall how surprised I was when the doctor who prescribed birth control pills for me as a teen told me that it was more dangerous to my health to be pregnant than to take those pills.

But after the Supreme Court took away the constitutional right for women in the US to access abortion, the danger of being pregnant has grown ... What a High-Risk Pregnancy Looks Like After Dobbs

You might say that the pro-life movement and the Catholic church don't want women's lives to be endangered. The Catholic church would never value the life of a fetus more than that of a woman or girl. Actually the church does and would (Bishop Strips Hospital of Catholic Status After Abortion ... Nine-Year-Old's Abortion Outrages Brazil's Catholic Church).

Let us consider one of the church's modern saints, Gianna Beretta Molla ... an Italian Roman Catholic pediatrician. Although aware of the fatal consequences, Molla refused both a termination of pregnancy and a hysterectomy during her pregnancy with her fourth child. She died and was canonized just about 40 years later (usually it takes about 100 years). What lesson do you think the church was teaching Catholic women and girls with that action?

The latest on the pro-life agenda is outlawing abortion pills. After that, will be the outlawing of contraception (Contraception is already restricted in many states, and it could be the next battleground. Here's what you need to know.). They won't stop until they've dragged women and girls back to pre-1950s.

Outside

Cloudy here today with a bit of sun, though another atmospheric river is on the way. Just walking around with the cats, taking pictures. I took a lot but only a few turned out ok, like this one of the house ...

And this one of Olive, who's on the lookout for the scary Dash monster ...

SNAP

High Seas

High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN

[T]he historic treaty is crucial for enforcing the 30x30 pledge made by countries at the UN biodiversity conference in December, to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030. Without a treaty, this target would certainly fail, as until now no legal mechanism existed to set up MPAs on the high seas.

Covering almost two-thirds of the ocean that lies outside national boundaries, the treaty will provide a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas (MPAs) to protect against the loss of wildlife and share out the genetic resources of the high seas. It will establish a conference of the parties (Cop) that will meet periodically and enable member states to be held to account on issues such as governance and biodiversity ...

To understand more about what will be protected and how important that is, watch the episode below of Our Planet, High Seas. It's amazing!

A.I.

John Oliver discusses A.I. - fascinating, funny, and kind of disturbing. And there are cats :)

More: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’

Cold

It's pretty cold here today and Yoda is in her igloo. But at least it has stopped raining for a while!