Discord 🌻 🌻 🌻

SNAFU:  What could go wrong when a group of young men and teenage boys, including one with access to military secrets, a seriously flawed moral compass and a need to one-up his online buddies in order to prove he knows more about defense capabilities and the situation in Ukraine than they do bond online in a chat room over a shared love for guns and racist and anti-Semitic memes to play war themed video games.  Well, it turns out a lot could go wrong, especially since the leader of the group, a straight guy rather than one of those feared trans people, thought it was hunky dory to share those secrets with a group that included some overseas participants, including one or more Russians and Ukrainians.  Yesterday, the Feds arrested a 21-year-old National Airman named Jack Teixeira, who appears to be the one who “shared” the military intelligence about Russian and Ukrainian war capability as well as information concerning Egypt, South Korea, and Israel and probably a whole bunch of other things that we still don’t know about it. Most of the credit for the leads that resulted in Teixeira’s identification and his arrest came from some intrepid journalists, including a team from Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalist group that “specializes in fact-checking and open-source intelligence.” Their story was carried forward by the NY Times and the Washington Post with the FBI lagging behind.  Naturally, Margie Q has already taken to social media to let us know that Teixeira is a hero because he’s “white, male, Christian and anti-war.” According to her those attributes, and to be clear, it’s not clear that he’s anti-war, make him an “enemy of the Biden regime” which of course makes him someone that she, another one with a severely damaged moral compass or more likely no moral compass, admires.  She went on to say that because of Teixeira’s leak we now know that there are US troops on the ground in Ukraine, an assertion that Fox’s Tucker Carlson is also pushing.  The problem with that, at least according to the Pentagon, is that the troops she’s referring to are the special forces protecting the US embassy, normal especially in war zones, rather than an invasion force.  While we’ve been lied to in the past, this time around the Pentagon’s explanation probably holds water but Margie Q is on to something because who among her fan club, or among Tucker’s really cares about facts when fear mongering and pushing false narratives are so much more fun.  On the subject of twisted narratives, Fox’s defense in the Dominion Voting Machines case took a few more hits as a result of information provided by Abby Grossberg, a disgruntled former producer who worked on Maria Bartiromo’s show before being moved to team Tucker.  Grossberg has accused Fox’s lawyers of deleting incriminating information from her phone.  Additionally. she says that despite having access to them, Fox “deliberately or recklessly failed to produce highly relevant recordings of behind the scenes conversations” to Dominion in the course of the lawsuit.  Those conversations likely involved Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, among others, admitting that they had no proof that their claims about Dominion’s machines flipping votes to Biden were anything more than a twisted fantasy. Fox’s lawyers also lied about Rupert Murdoch’s role at Fox News, asserting that he didn’t have one when he did. The judge overseeing the case isn’t happy about any of this and has imposed sanctions on Fox, offering more time to Dominion if they want to proceed with additional discovery on Fox’s dime. As of now jury selection in the defamation trial is due to start on Monday unless Dominion takes the judge up on his offer or Fox comes to its senses and settles over the weekend. 

Reproductive Rights: Here at home the abortion battles continue. While the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, another court that is known for its reliably right leaning opinions, ruled that mifepristone can still be used, don’t be fooled.  They severely curtailed mifepristone’s use by limiting it to the first seven weeks of pregnancy rather than the ten weeks that the FDA has said is safe and effective.  In addition, they agreed with the part of Texas district court Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling that banned mail distribution of the pills while also ruling that women could only access their needed doses after not one but three in-person office visits.  And forget about nurse practitioners, only physicians will be allowed to dispense the drug.  The Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling remains at odds with the opinion of US District Judge Thomas Rice of Washington state who continues to assert that his opinion that the FDA cannot roll back access to mifepristone in 17 blue states and Washington DC is the correct one.  The DOJ is expected to file an appeal to Kacsmaryk’s ruling today meaning that the legality of limiting or altogether banning mifepristone is headed to the Supreme Court.  We’re about to find out whether Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh meant it when they opined that abortion was a state’s issue rather than a federal one.  And we should feel really comforted about that because they never lie?  In other news, late last night Florida Governor, anti-Mouse, anti-“woke” book culture warrior, Ron DeSantis, who still hasn’t formally announced that he’s running for president, returned from his book tour and ran to his mansion to sign Florida’s six-week abortion ban into law.  That’s not popular even in Florida but DeSantis has his eye on winning the Republican nomination for president rather than meeting the reproductive needs of his state’s population.    

And:  Trump, who spent his day providing a six-hour long deposition to NY AG Letitia James, part of the state’s fraud case against his company, is now suing Michael Cohen in Florida for talking too much, or something like that. While in NYC Trump called James out as racist again, something he also keeps saying about Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg who received another envelope of white powder from someone in Trump’s fan base because that’s what happens when Trump says and does what he does.  Senator Diane Feinstein who is still MIA and has no plans to return to Washington DC next week, if ever, has asked to be allowed to temporarily stand down from her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee so that Senate Leader Schumer can seat another Democrat in her place.  That sounds good on paper but since it requires Senate approval it might not happen.  A number of her Democratic colleague continue to call for her to step down from the Senate so that California Governor Gavin Newsom can appoint a replacement, a process that would lead to another Democrat taking her place but could also be messy given that the primary battle for her spot has already begun.