Free Brittney 🌻 🌻 🌻

Whoa – Here’s a reason I should check my junk email box before hitting post, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party to become an Independent.  She says she’ll continue to caucus with the Democrats much like Maine’s Angus King and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, both Independents, but still wow. She’s up for reelection in 2024 and was likely to be primaried for the Democratic nod by Congressman Ruben Gallego, so this could complicate things a bit, then and now. 

Home Sweet Home: WNBA player Brittney Griner is back in the USA while ex-Marine Paul Whelan remains in a Russian prison camp, immensely sad for Whelan and his family but a very good thing for Griner and hers. A shellshocked looking Griner was released in exchange for convicted, imprisoned arms dealer Viktor Bout, the Putin favorite who is also known as the Merchant of Death for his extensive and deadly trading of illegal arms. Basketball player Griner was in Russia playing for a Russian basketball team during the off season, something many professional women players do to supplement their relative to their male counterparts’ meager earnings. A frequent traveler in and out of Russia, shortly before the start of the Ukraine war she was nabbed at the airport with some hash oil in her luggage.  Her arrest was probably a set-up by the Russians who recognized her “swap value.”  Paul Whelan, a corporate security expert who had been discharged from the Marines for bad conduct in 2008 for charges related to larceny, was also a frequent traveler to Russia.  He was on vacation there, something to do with a friend’s wedding, when he was caught with or set-up in possession of a “suspicious” flash drive.  He was accused and convicted of espionage and sent to prison where he is currently completing year four of a 16-year sentence.  Both Whelan and the US deny that he ever was a US spy, however Putin views him as one, which is all that matters.  To date Vlad has refused to include him in any prisoner swap so the offer to the US was its Griner or nothing. Depending on where you sit on the political spectrum President Biden’s decision to do the trade, freeing Bout in exchange for only Griner, was either the compromised senile Biden’s crime of the century or the best that could be accomplished given the fraught relations between the US and Russia.  Whelan’s family, incredibly gracious about Biden’s decision, appear to believe that POTUS and his negotiators did everything they could do but couldn’t get their son/brother home at this time.  They also believe Biden’s promise that his administration remains focused on getting Whelan out eventually.  None of that matters to the right-wing echo chamber which spent the day viciously slamming Biden rather than this sad saga’s real villain, Putin.  That chamber of course includes Don Jr. and his daddy who insist that he could have done better even though he never managed to get Whelan released while he was in office.  One of the best comments on the swap comes from former NBC journalist Tim Russert’s son Luke who tweeted “Prisoner swaps between adversarial nuclear powers are not Madden or the NBA trade machine.  Leave the nuances of intelligence gathering and diplomacy to experts.”   

Love and Marriage: Much of the vitriol targeted at President Biden as well as the horrible comments saying Britney Griner should have been left to rot in a Russian gulag probably have a lot to do with her race and sexuality. Many of those tweeting anti-Britney hate messages are among those who also find same-sex marriage to be an unforgivable sin so it must have been that much more upsetting to them that Griner was released the same day that the House passed the Senate’s version of the Respect for Marriage Act, the watered down bipartisan legislation crafted to protect both same sex and interracial marriage in the face of concern that the conservative dominated Supreme Court might strip away the right to privacy recognized in Griswold v Connecticut, throwing both the Loving v Virginia and Oberfell v Hodges rulings that established the rights to interracial and same sex marriage respectively into the waste bin alongside Roe v Wade. The fury about the Respect for Marriage Act was expressed most pathetically by one tearful Republican Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler of Missouri who burst into tears as she begged members of the House to join her in voting against the bill she called “misguided and dangerous” because others getting to live their lives ruins hers?  Despite her emotional outburst the bill passed with support from both sides of the aisle with 39 Republicans joining in with their Democratic colleagues.  The Republican group consisted of a mix of Republicans from purple districts, retirees and even one from leadership, NYS’s Elise Stefanik as well as Liz Cheney, the women she replaced in that leadership role.  Curiously or maybe not so curiously, seven Republicans who had voted for an earlier version of the bill in the run up to the midterms voted against this one.  Additionally, neither Adam Kinzinger nor failed NYS Gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who both voted for the earlier version cast a vote this time around. Worth noting Trump acolyte Zeldin’s name is one of those frequently bandied about as a possibility to become the new RNC head or even the new Speaker should Kevin McCarthy fail to get his problem crazies, the five Republican Representatives who say that they’ll never ever vote for him, to vote for him.  Those five include Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Virginia’s Bob Good, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, South Carolina’s Ralph Norman and probably Montana’s Matt Rosendale with a few other possible naysayers still out there.  In case you are wondering, Georgia’s Margie Q is now totally in McCarthy’s camp, she’s now considered a senior influential member of the Republican caucus and is likely to be on the Oversight Committee come January.  On the committee front, Jim “Gym” Jordan is definitely going to be the incoming Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.  Get your popcorn ready, next sessions’ “impeachment” hearings are going to be offensive, loud, and bizarre.   

Law and Order:  On the Trump front, his lawyers revealed that the team they hired to search his other properties for “accidentally” purloined documents have found two more with secret markings in a West Palm Beach storage facility.  The Washington Post reports that Justice Department lawyers are so fed up with the Trump team’s shenanigans that they have asked federal Judge Beryl Howell to hold Trump’s office in contempt for failing to fully comply with a May subpoena to return all the classified documents in his possession.  Remember Judge Dearie who’d been assigned by “in the pocket” Judge Aileen Cannon to screen the misappropriated documents, he’s now officially off the case as Trump and his lawyers opted not to appeal the Appeals Court ruling that he never should have been assigned in the first place. One more thing, though the January 6^th Committee has not yet decided or at least has not leaked any plans to make a criminal referral of Trump to the DOJ, last night it was reported that they do plan to refer kraken lawyer John Eastman, Environmental lawyer/AG wannabee Jeffrey Clark, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and whatever he is now Rudy Giuliani.  And because of course, the Florida legislator who sponsored Governor DeSantis’ much heralded Don’t Say Gay bill, stepped down yesterday after he was indicted for COVID relief fraud.   

Enjoy the weekend.