Politics bits: Possible bipartisan issues; Unsettling videos & commentary about Biden v. Trump

Possible bipartisanship? 

At this point, criticizing radical right Republican Party authoritarianism often seems mostly redundant. At least it is a way to keep tabs on how the threat is developing and the tactics being used to kill democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. Guess there's some value in that.

At present, Biden frames his campaign as one of finishing the job of stopping Trumpist extremism, which he says he was elected to do in 2020. That platform, coupled with Trump's platform of stopping corrupt, evil, socialist Democratic Party tyranny and atheism is probably most of what the public is going to hear from now until the Nov. 2024 elections. Which side is out to defend democracy and oppose tyranny and which is out to destroy democracy and establish tyranny will be the focus. Both sides accuse the other of being the democracy destroying tyranny supporters. Aside from that, there will probably be limited policy debate. 

This list of issues focuses on what PD believes might be a basis for some policy discussion and bipartisanship that might appeal to people looking for something more than which side is evil and which is good.

1. Rural poverty 

2. More food banks 

3. Better hospitals 

4. End social promotion in high schools*  

5. More (equalized) education spending in poor zip codes 

6. Discuss social class concerns and policies to deal with problems, e.g., stagnant wages and cost of living increases 

7. Pass the Afghan Adjustment Act to keep out allies from being sent back and slaughtered by the Taliban in Afghanistan; the Act provides a path to permanent residency for the more than 70,000 Afghans paroled into the United States in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan

* I didn't know that was an issue

The problem with Biden

A couple of videos and comments that PD cite have cast the election differently for me, but not in a good way. The problem is that, bad as the Biden vs. Trump possibility is, it seems inevitable to too many people. In this video, Steve Schmidt lays out the problem of Biden vs. Trump.

• Biden failed to stop the American radical right extremist movement or its threat to democracy

• Most people will be voting against the side they believe will hurt them the most

• Biden won the 2020 election by a few thousand votes spread across three states - Trump absolutely can be re-elected

Here Schmidt argues that because of his age, Biden is not a good choice for 2024.

PD comments: You know I have ambivalent feelings about Steve Schmidt. But he made a statement acknowledging that nobody really wants Biden (65% of Dems surveyed would prefer he not run), and that he didn't really "start the job" he wants to "finish" re: putting Trump and his minions out to pasture. However, note the way he frames the "rematch" as almost "inevitable"-- as if the second time there would be a recognition of Biden's victory if he won, and the claims that we have an illegit president could be put behind us. He doesn't say that in those exact words, but I think one can infer the message by paying attention to subtext that lies between the lines. Maybe you'll hear it differently though. So, here's a link to Schmidt's statement on Biden's run. It *might* be an interesting way to raise the question about whether or not DP readers feel let down or not by Biden's performance, and whether they think this "rematch" is a road that could lead to both the GOP moving past the claim that Biden's not our "legit" president as it was "stolen." Also, it might be asked whether they have any faith that Biden and his admin (esp. including the AG) will really do anything more than they did this time. Just a suggestion. Here's the link to Schmidt's insightful but in my personal opinion carefully phrased, ironic endorsement for someone he admits he'd rather not see running: Steve Schmidt: No one wants Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden in 2024 election | The Warning

Biden's re-election announcement.

Biden says he wants to finish the job. But to a large extent he can't finish one key job because he and his useless Attorney General Merrick Garland failed to prosecute Trump. Time for prosecuting the at least the four or five obstruction of justice felonies Trump committed during the futile Mueller investigation has run out. The same is happening with other prosecutable Trump felonies. 

If it were not for the mountain of evidence of treason and crime the House 1/6 Committee forced into the public spotlight, Garland would not have even tried prosecute any Trump crime. Biden and Garland left the head of the snake untouched. Now, it is too late. Poll data indicates that Republicans are going to vote for Trump even if he is convicted of a crime, which GOP propaganda will easily dismiss as a partisan witch hunt. By May of 2021, it was obvious to me that Garland had no intention of even investigating Trump, much less prosecuting him. I was criticized for being too impatient at that time, but I was right. Garland was and still is a total failure and a disgrace. 

Simply put, Biden has failed to deliver on what he claimed was his key reason for running and being in office.

PD comments: Biden and his admin (esp. AG Garland) have done so little about MAGA that as he now concedes, they're not only back but strong enough to get the executive branch, and thus he sells himself as all that stands between US and Trump/ism. How exploitive. How manipulative. So this is one of those occasions where my advice to talk about Dems seems pertinent.

One last open question: Is it really a "done deal" or fait accompli-- this "rematch?" Mightn't Biden -- and for that matter Trump -- lose the primaries?" I mean stranger things happen. Why frame this as "inevitable" which seems to accept the cynical quasi-emotional blackmail of Biden's basic message-- "Hey, it's either me or Donny?"-- and is that really self evident? If everyone who says they don't want him (including those who didn't love him the first time round such as now-Biden supporting Bernie and the Progs) criticized this move by Biden as yet another broken pledge (he strongly implied he would be a 1 term -- transitional president -- a bridge to get us safely past the plague of Trump which, he said, is what made him want to run ) might he not lose credibility on being the anti-maga default to guy??

His anti-democracy talk has been all about East Europe and Taiwan, with nary a word devoted to our own tenuous democratic footing here at home. If media, social media, blogs, etc. all called him out on the BS that he's any kind of MAGA fighter at all, his whole appeal to saving Democracy at home might founder. There may be other qualified and younger, more contemporary thinking candidates being eclipsed by this power hungry guy who has compared himself (seriously) to FDR. Anyway, I'd be interested to learn more about what DP readers think about his launching a campaign so explicitly tethered to "finishing the battle for Democracy at home" against Trump/ism/MAGA. Just a suggestion.

In one of my replies to your question about suggestions, I mentioned another case of Democratic hubris and hypocrisy during a time of emergency level crises in the judiciary. Again we have Biden defending the destructive behavior of Diane Feinstein who has prevented the 1 person majority (hers is the swing vote) Judiciary Committee from making up for decades of lost time in bothering to appoint good democratic judges. Everyday, Biden and most Dems plead powerlessness due to GOP capture of the judiciary, and here we have BIDEN, SCHUMER, PELOSI AND DO-NOTHING DURBIN ALL CIRCLING THE WAGONS AND PROTECTING THEIR FRIEND DF WHO WON'T EVEN BE RUNNING AGAIN (i.e. she knows her health makes it all but impossible). Schumer's cynical ploy to pretend he would get a "temporary replacement" (as if he's so stupid as to not know Repubs won't oblige!); Pelosi's low-shot in suggesting this is all about sexism and ageism (when actually the age question is one that has been discussed openly for both male and female politicians-- including an editorial in the NYT which questioned the wisdom of Biden running again for that reason) and Durbin's strange combination of using DF's absence as an explanation for his own inaction and yet his support that she "have the time she needs to make her own decision" right down to Bernie Sanders stating that nobody should tell her what to do, she should only step down if that's what she wants-- all of this smacks of do-nothingness, of weird complacency as all methods of abortion continue to be stripped away in plain view.

It's hard for me to argue against that. There is no way to deny the failures of Biden and the Democratic Party leadership to defend democracy. 

The question is this, what should be done at this point? Write letters to younger, prominent Democrats asking them to run and be as bipartisan as they can? I'm at a loss.

Satanists bring their abortion extremism to Boston for 'SatanCon'; Christians respond

 As the Satanic Temple kicks off what is billed to be the largest gathering of Satanists in history this weekend in Boston, one pro-life leader warns about the "connection between Satanism and abortion" as churches are bracing for the influx of Satanists in the city.  

Known as SatanCon 2023, hundreds are slated to gather between Friday and Sunday for a sold-out event hosted by a group known for making fun of Christians and theologically conservative beliefs. 

Many of those gathered are likely to display their support for abortion as the Santinic Temple promotes what it calls abortion rituals and has filed legal challenges against state restrictions on legal access to abortion, arguing that abortion is a religious right. 

Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone said in an interview with The Christian Post that while many attendees will deny that they are coming together to worship Satan, he was "very sensitive to the connection between Satanism and abortion."

"These Satanists who are gathering will claim that they do not worship the devil. In fact, they will claim that they do not even believe in a personal spiritual being called the Devil or Satan," Pavone said. 

"Anything that even appears to be worship of the devil or being elite with the devil is dangerous stuff because the devil is real."   😈 

https://www.christianpost.com/news/satanists-bring-abortion-worship-to-satancon-christians-respond.html

A Christian event called "ReviveBoston" is also planned in Boston this weekend, with organizers calling for thousands of Christians to overcome evil by gathering for worship, prayer and evangelizing the city.

Good Luck, Jamie!

A decent man who has been through a lot.  Mucho respect.

"Tuesday I thanked nurses, doctors & pharmacists at

@MedStarGUH who serve with splendid kindness—and saved my life over 5 months. I finished 6 rounds of 5-day chemo sessions—which they organized so I didn’t have to miss votes or hearings—and I rang the bell! A new chapter begins."

Tuesday I thanked nurses, doctors & pharmacists at @MedStarGUH who serve with splendid kindness—and saved my life over 5 months. I finished 6 rounds of 5-day chemo sessions—which they organized so I didn’t have to miss votes or hearings—and I rang the bell! A new chapter begins. pic.twitter.com/lAtpGyBG5b

— Jamie Raskin (@jamie_raskin) April 27, 2023\

 

 

 

News bits: The radical right movement to crush transparency; The evolving Twitterland hellscape

Clarence Thomas' failure to disclose his financial entanglements reflects his long-standing opposition to public disclosure laws. The Atlantic writes:

The justice has publicly stated that the failure to comply with the law by disclosing his financial entanglements with Crow was an unintended error, but if so, it was a mistake that is remarkably consistent with his ideological position that people who use their money and influence to steer the American political system ought to be able to do so in complete secrecy. This error was curiously convenient, in that it just happened to conceal a deep financial relationship with a very politically active right-wing donor who has bankrolled organizations that have a winning record before the Court. Perhaps more significant, Thomas’s idiosyncratic views about speech, democracy, and accountability have become more popular among the justices themselves as Republican appointments have moved the Court to the right. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write at Slate, Thomas has argued over decades that laws compelling such disclosure are unconstitutional.  

In the 2010 Citizens United decision striking down limits on corporate electioneering, Thomas was the only justice to argue that the Court “should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements,” because donors to the California anti-marriage-equality referendum Proposition 8 had been subject to threats, harassment, and verbal criticism. The first two are potentially illegal acts, and the last is a form of constitutionally protected speech. The conflation foreshadows the current right-wing discourse on free speech, the core of which is that conservatives have a right to prevent others from disassociating from them because they find their views noxious.  

Put simply, the conservative position had moved from heeding Scalia’s reminder in Doe v. Reed of the importance of transparency and civic bravery in a democracy, to embracing Thomas’s 2010 Citizens United opinion, which conflates threats, violence, and harassment with people thinking you’re a jerk.

I post this to warn about a growing sentiment among elite radical right Republicans and other right wing American extremists.* They increasingly see serious danger to their bigoted authoritarian (fascist IMO), pro-corruption and anti-democracy agenda in public disclosure laws. With that kind of an agenda, they should be concerned. Sunshine kills rot, or at least slows its spread.

Deep corruption like what Thomas operates comfortably with can be disrupted by public disclosure law. This important new front in the radical right's authoritarian war on democracy needs to be made well known to all Americans who fear for the fate of our democracy. 

* Another example of authoritarians imposing secrecy by crushing sunshine laws to hide sleaze and to deceive the public about what radicals are doing is happening in Florida (not surprisingly). There, the state legislature passed a law that shields the travel agendas of the governor's office. A news outlet in Orlando FL recently wrote: Florida Senate approves bill that shields travel records and who visits Gov. DeSantis' mansion -- The measure would create a public-records exemption for information held by law-enforcement agencies related to 'security or transportation services'. Given how broadly one can claim security or transportation services are, that covers just about everything the governor does. In other words, DeSantis has gone mostly dark to the public, but not to corrupt rich elites who always meet in secrecy, behind closed, usually guarded doors.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Regarding the evolving Twitterlandia hellscape: The NYT writes about the toxic early aftermath of Elon Musk forcing people to pay to have their accounts verified: 

In the 24 hours after Twitter last week eliminated the blue check mark that historically served as a means of identifying public agencies, at least 11 new accounts began impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.

More than 20 purported to be various agencies of the federal government. Someone pretending to be the mayor of New York City promised to create a Department of Traffic and Parking Enforcement and slash police funding by 70 percent.

Elon Musk’s decision to stop giving check marks to people and groups verified to be who they said were, and instead offering them to anyone who paid for one, is the latest tumult at Twitter, .... 

The changes have convulsed a platform that once seemed indispensable for following news as it broke around the world. The information on Twitter is now increasingly unreliable. Accounts that impersonate public officials, government agencies and celebrities have proliferated. So have propaganda and disinformation that threaten to further erode trust in public institutions. The consequences are only beginning to emerge.  

Some cheered the changes.

“Now you can even find me in the search,” tweeted Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, the Russian state television network that has been accused of rampant misinformation and hate speech aimed at Ukraine. She signed off the tweet by saying, “Brotherly, Elon @elonmusk, from the heart.”

Well, at least people like authoritarian thugs, liars, grifters, rabid theocrats and crackpot QAnon-level conspiracy freaks will probably be mostly OK with Musk's new and improved Twitter. 

Russian professional liar Simonyan is pleased 

with the new and improved Twitter 

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Tales from abortion wars: A WaPo opinion comments on a hearing a Senate committee held to consider real-world impacts of forced birth laws:

The most compelling and heartbreaking testimony came from Amanda Zurawski, who lives in Texas. During her prepared remarks, she explained that after sending out invitations to her baby shower she began experiencing symptoms, her membranes ruptured, and she was “told by multiple doctors that the loss of our daughter was inevitable.” However, her doctors “didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the standard health care I needed at that point — an abortion.”

Zurawski couldn’t very well drive to a “safe” state. (“Developing sepsis — which can kill quickly — in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have had to even consider.”) Instead, she had to wait — for either the fetus’s heart to stop or to get really sick. She nearly died from sepsis, which is why the standard of care in such circumstances is to perform an abortion before the woman gets very sick and risks death.

In a matter of minutes, I went from being physically healthy to developing a raging fever and dangerously low blood pressure. My husband rushed me to the hospital where we soon learned I had developed sepsis — a condition in which bacteria in the blood develops into infection, with the ability to kill in under an hour. Several hours later, after stabilizing just enough to deliver our stillborn daughter, my vitals crashed again. In the middle of the night, I was rapidly transferred to the ICU, where I would stay for three days as medical professionals battled to save my life. I spent another three days in a less critical unit of the hospital — all because I was denied access to reasonable health care due to Texas’s new abortion bans.

If she had been alone or had lacked good medical care to rescue her, she would have died.

As we all know, forced birth laws will kill some women, including even some who want a baby. That blood is on the hands of forced birthers, and if anything, whatever is left of their moral conscience (as I define it, not as forced birthers define it). 

Comments on jury duty

Sidebar at the bench

Perry: You're crazy!

Judge: I want another opinion

Perry: OK, and you're ugly too!

The case is over and verdicts were unanimous. Defendant not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of misdemeanor domestic violence, assault or battery, and not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of misdemeanor petty theft. 

This kerfuffle could have come from one of those impossibly bizarre domestic squabbles that Judge Judy decides all the time on TV. What a toxic domestic mess this couple was and still is. Married last December, marriage lasted 5 weeks then it blew up at the end of January. That was a couple of days after husband finds out his lovely bride was allegedly cheating on him with five different guys. He looked at the emails on her phone and his head exploded. That caused a serious drop in IQ and some really dumb behavior. 

The elephant in the room was the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of evidence the prosecution had to provide. The prosecuting attorney honestly believed there was plenty of evidence to convict, but it just wasn't there according to those pesky jurors.  

Did he beat her up as alleged? Maybe a little, but not by beyond a reasonable doubt. The alleged punch in the eye? The medical report said no physical damage. The eyeball photo showed no physical damage. The body bruises in the other photos were hard to see unless the lights in the courtroom got turned way down, and then by golly, there were some mild bruises sort of where the lovely bride, her sister and mom said they sort of should have been, kind of, maybe.

My contribution to the case and justice generally was me complaining to the bailiff at the first break after the prosecution started that the court room lights to too bright. Us jurors could not see what was being shown very well. After that first break, it got lots darker in the room when evidence slides were being shown. Germaine struck a huge blow for justice!! Germaine wondered why this issue had not come up in prior cases in that court room.

There was lots of he said-she said stuff in evidence. He allegedly beat her up multiple times. She allegedly tried to strangle him in public at the JC Penny jewelry counter when the happy couple were looking to buy their wedding rings. She allegedly flew into a snit when he wanted to buy a lower cost ring and she wanted a big rock. She allegedly was falling down drunk at a night club where the lovely bride's mom and dad were to be told that the toxic couple were married. Surprise mom and dad, he's not my boyfriend, he's my husband! 

At the club that same night, the husband allegedly lost his wedding ring when he kept catching her as she was falling down due to allegedly waaaay too much alcohol in the lovely bride. The lovely bride and her mom both testified she only had one or two regular margaritas. Singles, mind you, not doubles. Allegedly.

There were some shocking gaps in the evidence. Well, shocking to me at least. One was how far from the apartment window was the car where the alleged domestic violence happened? The sister testified that she saw him hit her from that window. The question was, could she really see in that car from the apartment window? All that had to be done was effing measure the damned distance to give some idea of the distance. Instead we got incoherent blither from the judge, and one or both attorneys about how far away the car was. I had no idea and neither did any other juror. It was pure speculation. We were told that we could not speculate, so how were we to weigh the sister's assertion that she saw the defendant hit her sister? 

Another evidence gap arose from bias. The cops assumed the male was the "dominant attacker" and the female was the victim. They did not pursue the defendant's side of the story. The testimony from the husband was that he was the victim. All in all, that sounded like it might be true. Both could have been domestic abusers of each other. This truly was a toxic couple in a toxic marriage, allegedly (because the marriage certificate was not in evidence and everyone kept calling the husband the boyfriend - my God this case was confusing out the wazoo).

There were some other things in play that us jurors absolutely, positively could not speculate about in deciding, so we didn't. One was, who among the people involved in or close to this drama, were legal residents. There was very little testimony on this at all, only one comment in passing by the accused husband. Nonetheless, it was pretty clear that most everyone involved or close here were probably not US citizens and probably not legal residents. Only the lovely bride and her sister appeared to probably be US citizens. Maybe.

Four thoughts stand out:

1. Circumstantial evidence is just as good as direct evidence. The judge said so and that's that.

2. In he said-she said type criminal cases, the beyond a reasonable doubt evidence standard is a real monster. Now I see why it is so freaking hard to convict rapists, domestic violence perpetrators and the like. 

 3. I'll probably call the judge and ask him to consider putting a suggestion box in the jury deliberation rooms (that we were locked into). Some things really need to be done a lot better than they are being done. For example, when the attorneys questioned the mom (who could not speak English), the translator was translating at the same time the attorney was still talking. It was confusing as hell with two people talking two different languages at once. In my opinion, that is fubar.*

* Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition 

4. California state law forbids jurors from selling their stories for at least 90 days after the end of a trial. So sorry, I can't sell this yet, so I am just giving it away. Well, most of it. There's still a lot of bizarre that's not mentioned above.

Legal argument helps persuade jurors

News bits: Ted Cruz supported 1/6 coup attempt; Etc.

Keeping eyes 👀on rationality: The Daily Beast reports:

New Audio Shows Ted Cruz Scheming to Steal 2020 Election

The audio was from obtained by MSNBC from a cache of recordings taken by Fox whistleblower Abby Grossberg

According to the files, Cruz reportedly tried to sell his plan to Fox host and Trump ally Maria Bartiromo on Jan. 2—four days before the Capitol riot—pitching a scheme to overthrow the 2020 election by blocking the certification of Joe Biden’s win on Jan. 6, then establishing a commission to investigate the nonexistent claims of fraud which would ultimately “decide” who to inaugurate.

“As we were looking at this Jan. 6 certification, all of the options that were being discussed were problematic,” Cruz explains.

“And so I wanted to find a path that was consistent with the Constitution and the law, and that address these very real serious claims.”

Among the possibilities here, two stand out. First, Cruz was stupid and jaw droppingly naïve because he actually believed the 2020 election was stolen. Second, Cruz was a cynical, liar who pretended to care about the rule of law to maintain plausible deniability that he intended anything tyrannical, treasonous or illegal. Based on his education and experiences in schools and universities**, it is reasonable to believe that Cruz was and still is neither stupid nor naïve.

By those facts and analysis, it is most likely he was just being a cynical, treasonous liar who was looking to build and maintain plausible deniability for his treasonous, fascist intentions.

Q: Is the assertion that Cruz is a cynical, treasonous liar mostly unreasonable or mostly reasonable?

** Wikipedia: 

Ted Cruz education: Princeton, undergraduate BA, Harvard Law School JD.

For junior high school, Cruz went to Awty International School in Houston. Cruz attended two private high schools: Faith West Academy, near Katy, Texas; and Second Baptist High School in Houston, from which he graduated as valedictorian in 1988. During high school, Cruz participated in a Houston-based group known at the time as the Free Market Education Foundation, a program that taught high school students the philosophies of economists such as Milton Friedman and Frédéric Bastiat.

After high school, Cruz studied public policy at Princeton University. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and, with his debate partner David Panton, Team of the Year by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

Regarding Republican deceit tactics: By now, it is undeniable that GOP elites, donors and major propagandists are disciplined, practiced and without any shred of moral qualm about routinely slathering thick gobs of dark free speech on the public. Lies, slanders, deflections, projections, unwarranted opacity and crackpot reasoning are the norm for radical right (fascist) Republican elites. Knowing that much or maybe most of the public opposes the kinds of gigantic cuts the fascist GOP wants to impose, it needs to deal with how to sell the public on things it does not want. Few or none of the cuts are in the public’s interest, so public opposition is rational. The NYT writes about GOP deceit tactics to deal with this public relations (propaganda) problem: 

Don’t Call It a ‘Cut’: G.O.P. Tries to Rebrand Its Plan to Reduce Spending

House Republicans pitched their 2011 debt limit bill aggressively, trumpeting a zeal for deep spending cuts. Their latest fiscal plan tiptoes around them, with a milder slogan to match

In 2011, as a wave of populist fervor swept through Congress, delivering a restive class of anti-spending Republicans who had no appetite for raising the debt limit, House G.O.P. leaders rallied their members around a bill with a blunt, snappy slogan: “Cut, Cap and Balance.”

But this time, in a bow to political reality and economic necessity, it is a substantial retreat from what hard-right Republicans once sought, and it carries a kinder, gentler catchphrase to match: the Limit, Save, Grow Act.

These days, Republicans have all but excised the phrase “spending cuts” from their lexicon. When Mr. McCarthy took to the House floor last week to announce the bill, he did not utter the term. Asked last week on CNBC where House Republicans planned to cut spending, Mr. McCarthy replied: “I don’t call them cuts because I call them savings.”

So, domestic spending cuts are savings, not cuts. See how fun and easy dark free speech is? As always, how effective will this softer, gentler brand of fascist deceit and manipulation be? We’ll probably find out after the 2024 elections, maybe some time sooner.

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

Lawsuit watch: Devin Nunes loses his defamation lawsuit because the allegations he objected to were true. In defamation law, truth of the allegedly defamatory allegations is a valid legal defense against liability. Politico writes: 

A federal judge has thrown out libel suits former Rep. Devin Nunes and his relatives filed over a 2018 Esquire article alleging that a dairy farm owned by Nunes’ family members hired undocumented workers.

U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams ruled Tuesday that the claims at issue in writer Ryan Lizza’s story — “Devin Nunes’s Family Farm is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret” — were essentially accurate. The judge said that conclusion was fatal to the suits brought by Nunes, his relatives and the company used to operate the dairy, NuStar Farms.

“The assertion that NuStar knowingly used undocumented labor is substantially, objectively true,” wrote Williams, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.

It is good to know that this particular Trump judge as not gone fascist rogue in this lawsuit. Some of his other judges are enemies of the state, including his three Supreme Court fascists.

Devin and his cow

Even crackpots fear The Devin

Respecting The Devin