So I said... #25 for June 26 to July 8

The next of my apparently never-ending series of posts of comments I’ve made here there and everywhere and yes I’ve always liked that song.

Just a reminder that comments on different topics are separated by “==” while those separated by “—” are parts of a thread. What is in braces - that is, “[ ]” - in italics is added here for context; if it’s regular type is was as per the original comment.

Speaking of which, comments and reactions are always encouraged.

Here we go….

2026-06-26
”It’s hilarious when Americans pity my Norwegian tax rate.”

I once asked my father, a WW2 veteran which I mention to establish his generation, if he would be willing to pay the income tax rates in Sweden. He immediately said yes on exactly the logic presented here: How much you pay in taxes isn’t important, it’s do you get back in services what it’s worth.

(I specifically remember him citing free education through college as an example.)

And I am going to remember (and steal) the description of the US health care system as “a GoFundMe waiting to happen.”

—

2026-06-26
[Troll: ”If Norway didn’t have control over North Sea oil reserves then your taxes would be four times as much”]

So IF Norway did not have income from North Sea oil, taxes would be higher.

Perhaps. And IF your grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.

And oh yeah, IF we didn’t have a government and economic system encouraging rapacious capitalism, we’d have nice things, too.

==

2026-06-27
The Shuffle [moving ICE prisoners around so family and legal aid can’t find them] reminds me of the old police trick of repeatedly moving those they arrested from one station house to another so neither their families nor their attorneys knew where they were. There was/is a name for it; maybe someone here can remind me of it.

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2026-06-27
[A comment on a list of words that can’t be used in NIH grant applications referred to variations on “lactating or pregnant person” as “chilling absurdities.”]

Those actually aren’t absurd; they are intended to include trans men, who while being male by personal identity (i.e., gender) can still have or relate to issues involving having a female phenotype.

Please accept my apology if I have misunderstood you.

==

2026-06-28
The image (of booksellers in Iraq who leave their stock out on the street overnight, confident none will be stolen) reminded me of an experience I’ve had a few times, with the first being the most profound, when I walked into a bookstore and suddenly felt - well, stupid. Aware of a world of knowledge I will never know, whole fields of thought, of philosophy, of which I am unaware, whole realms of history I will never hear of, entire fields of scientific undertaking and development at which I have and will continue to have no understanding, assuming I’d even have come across the name.

It actually can be a rather salutary experience as a corrective to the ego and a invitation to keep learning what I can.

==

2026-06-29
[Re SCOTUS overturning the Humphrey’s Executor decision: “A progressive president could accomplish a lot by systemically removing any Republican appointee.”]

Except that’s not the real danger. If DOGE (which I always pronounce “dodgy” because the whole enterprise was/is) proved anything, it was that you can destroy a program or an institution in a small fraction of the time it took to build it. That incoming administration would spend much of its time rebuilding what had been destroyed just to get back to where things had been - assuming it could.

The danger is not to potentially doing something progressive, it’s rather, to misquote Ben Franklin, “you have something progressive - if you can keep it.”

==

2026-06-30
[A report in Erin in the Morning about the SCOTUS decision allowing sports bans on transgender girls/women produced a lot of discussion. One commenter, looking to rebut another’s argument, said that if the other chose to argue as they did, “every part of Title IX is null and void. All of it, you don’t get to pick and choose.”]

I’ve been staying out of this since I think people are talking past each other - but I do have to insert that “you don’t get to pick and choose” is untrue. Striking down part of a law or regulation or rejecting it “as applied,” meaning it can be valid in other circumstances, is hardly unknown.

==

2026-06-30
[Responding to a different comment in the same article.]

I expect you realize that “T in excess of typical levels” intended to create fairness has been used to exclude cis women as well as trans women. Drawing rigid lines that are actually fair to all is no easy task.

—

2026-06-30
[“Why is it unfair or difficult to apply the same standard to cis women as trans women?”]

Um, I’m confused. The point, which I thought was clear but apparently wasn’t, is that a standard designed to allow for trans girls/women to play on women’s teams could also bar some cis women from that same opportunity and that it’s no easy task to develop a standard that would accomplish the former while avoiding the latter.

If you’re saying that some T level should be controlling in all cases, okay, but then you should say that explicitly and I don’t think anyone would be satisfied.

==

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2026-06-30
[Yet another from responses to the same article, referring to an example of people talking past each other. ”Studies show no advantage after 2 years HRT.” “I said the same thing exactly.”]

Which I honestly think is a source of a lot of the verbal conflict here: You kept burying the damn lede underneath declarations that “male biological advantage is real.”

I think the idea that it’s not unreasonable in the pursuit of fairness for trans girls/women to go through a course of HRT in order to be able to compete would meet little objection.

One last thought: Cracks like “as if some woo-woo appeal to spirit gender should be persuasive to any sane person ? !!!” - which certainly comes across as claiming that psychology and neurology are “woo-woo” - certainly didn’t advance understanding of your position.

—

2026-07-01
[Summary of the response: Didn’t bury the lede; idea of requiring course of HRT got “no small bit” of rejection; “woo-woo” refers to “belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.”]

I have no intention of continuing this, so this will be my last.

Burying the lead is exactly what you did. More than once. The lede is the central argument, the one you want people to see, the one intended to frame what follows. It’s precisely why the headline and opening paragraph of a story are so important.

Your first comment was “T in excess of typical levels for a gendered category [is cheating]. Biological reality must be acknowledged and addressed.” (If you don’t know that “biological reality” is a verbal calling card of the anti-trans crowd, I have cause to doubt you are “quite current” on the topic.)

When someone responded by noting the effects of hormones, you responded by calling them an “i***t,” which I think we can assume meant idiot, condescendingly claiming superior expertise - punctuated with “I award you no points” - and went on to declare “The ‘male’ athletic advantage is real.”

It was only at that point when you posted what I assume was your lede, that a prior course of HRT is a reasonable requirement for trans female athletes in traditionally female sports.

Yes, that is damn well burying the lede.

As for the “rejection,” what there was of it was based on the impression you gave by the way you initially approached the topic. If that many people misread your intention, you have to consider that perhaps the problem was not their lack of understanding buy your lack of clarity.

Finally, there is the statement “I refer to a belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.” I have absolutely no idea what that even means. It’s incoherent nonsense. Unless, that is, you are insisting that the brain isn’t “physical” and that, exactly as I suggested, you hold psychology and neurology to be “woo-woo” - in which case your “45 years of study” did you no good.

Yeah, I’m done with this.

==

2026-07-02
[New Jersey enacted a trans shield law.]

There was considerable disappointment when the NJ lege didn’t pass a shield law in the post-election session despite a promise from the party leadership to do it.

I was among those who concluded that the promise to act was to serve as a stopgap in case right-wing nutzoid Jack Ciattarelli won the governor’s race. Since he didn’t, the feeling in the lege was, “Well, there’s an EO in place and that’s been good enough so far, why raise the issue at all?”

I’m glad to see others kept with it and turned an order into law.

==

2026-07-02
I’m glad you mentioned, if only in passing, the women’s national team. They are, in fact, the most successful women’s national football team in the world, having won the cup four times along with finishing second once and third three times. The fact that gets so rarely mentioned just demonstrates the male bias in US appreciation of sports.

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2026-07-03
[Responding to a note, a biologist wrote, summarized: Nature isn’t binary; a spectrum is the norm; gender is a social construct.]

Just throwing this in because it’s a point I like to emphasize: Gender presentation is a social construct, but the concept of gender exists across time and culture, marking it as something inherent to being human. Which also serves to point out that sex and gender are not the same thing.

—

2026-07-04
[I’m not sure I get your point. I didn’t say concept, I said and spoke from a scientific, not a sociological, perspective. Could you explain more? ]

First, thank you for asking, both because it gives me the opening to blather on a bit and because, well, it’s always a little flattering to have a comment considered seriously.

Let me start by saying that I think that we too often and too easily fall back on the old habit of equating sex and gender as synonyms or as the former defining the latter. But they are not synonymous, which is why I raise the point. You may well be fully aware of that, but I still think the language we use matters.

So, yes, you did use the word “construct.” That is what I was addressing. Referring to gender as a “social construct” is a sociological argument that suggests that gender does not exist outside of social relations - that is, that it is a creation of society.

But the fact that the **idea of gender, the **idea of the masculine and the feminine, exists across human history and (as far as I’m aware) all human societies testifies to the fact that that idea is inherent to humans, as inherent as male and female phenotypes, as inherent as language.

However, and again like language, what forms the **expression of that part of us, in this case, gender expression, is indeed a social construct, determined by the standards and mores of the society in which we live and which instruct us in what is masculine and what is feminine (and what is approved or disapproved in each) in dress, behavior, speech, mannerisms, roles in family and broader society, and more. It tells us how we are supposed to act and more importantly, to be.

For most people, their genetically-driven phenotype (sex) and their internal personal sense of self (gender) align, or at least closely enough to avoid troubling stress from the incongruence. For some among us, they don’t. Which ultimately is the basis of the whole issue.

So my point, which I hope I’ve made clearer than my previous once-over, is that gender exists [I should have added “on its own] apart from sex and we should make a point of presenting it that way as a clearer description of why the whole discussion and defense of trans rights and health care needs to take place.

—

2026-07-04
[My words indicate these ideas, just in fewer words]

:shrug: Okay. I’ll leave it at this: Saying “gender,” not “gender expression” but “gender,” is a “social construct” is to say the concept of gender does not exist on its own but only as an creation of society, little different from clothing fashion.

==

2026-07-04
[Notoriously anti-trans judge Reed O’Connor put an FTC motion “on hold.”]

Maybe I’m just trying to entertain a dream, but I can’t help but wonder of O’Connor, after hearing from WPATH and Boasberg, decided he was kinda tired of being treated like The Orange Overlord’s legal errand boy. He may be a right-wing nutzoid, but he could still have some measure of self-respect.

==

2026-07-05
[USAF Major Jason Watson stood on the Capitol steps in full uniform with a sign reading “Impeach Convict Remove.”]

“you just cannot do what MAJ Watson did”

Yes you can. We know because he did it. He did it knowing there would be a cost, knowing he was risking his position, his career, likely his pension - and prison. Doing it because it seemed a way to make a difference, to have an impact, and doing it because sometimes the “call to conscience” outweighs the “call to duty.”

Yes, he could have just resigned. And Rosa Parks could have just sent a letter to the bus company.

But he didn’t and she didn’t and that’s why we’re talking about him and about courage and about civil disobedience and what are our real first duties and why we still know her name and what followed.

We never know in advance what spark will start a fire and history says his spank very likely will not light one now (few ever do). But he struck his with, I have absolutely no doubt, knowledge of the potential consequences because “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

And that deserves at the least honor and respect rather than arrogant condescension suggesting he acted without consideration of others, including any family.

==

2026-07-05
[Re a video of people reading the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence]

Okay, I know it’s silly but it always irks me. What those folks read was not the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence, it was rather (most of) the second paragraph. It was the core argument, not an introduction or preamble to it, and was followed by a bill of particulars.

If the Declaration has a preamble, it is the opening paragraph, which reads:

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

==

2026-07-07
[A fundamentalist tries to claim the Bible describes evolution.]

Genesis 1:3-5: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day. (NIV)

So much for “days don’t mean anything before the fourth one.”

Genesis 2:7: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV

So much for “Adam had ancestors.”

This guy reinterprets words with the looseness of Humpty Dumpty - or the majority of SCOTUS.

==

2026-07-07
One sort of side but relevant thing: Please stop referring to the [US-Iran] MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] as if it was a settled pact. It is not.

A MOU is essentially an agreed list of what are the outstanding issues, what needs final settlement. It is not binding on either party; rather it is an indication of the direction they intend to take in a final, formal, pact. Neither the US nor Iran properly can be accused of “violating” an agreement to which they have made no legal commitment. So, bluntly, whatever it says about Iranian control over the Strait is entirely irrelevant to the present moment. Stop talking as if it was.

Oh, and to save some folks’ time: Do not even bother trying to claim I’m justifying the [renewed] attack [on Iran]. It would only demonstrate an inability to read what is clearly said, that I am addressing one particular point about the reporting.

==

2026-07-08
[Chris Geidner commented on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s writings on the birthright citizenship and transgender sports ban cases. One person asked “if ‘sex’ includes things other than biological sex, what exactly are those things?”]

Sorry for the delayed response. No arguments, just some of my thoughts on this.

I’d say first that people in general and courts in particular should stop treating the words “sex” and “gender” as if they are synonymous. They are not.

But of course the fact that we have and continue to equate them means that we could just decide that the term “sex” in the law was intended to encompass gender identity - which is in fact what we had done and what this court undid, despite having decided essentially the opposite in an earlier case involving a different title.

Given that’s our situation, I’d say the issue isn’t what’s beyond “biological sex,” but the assumption that the word “sex” - even though we persist in equating it with “gender” - refers only to “biological sex,” which is than taken as a synonym for “means of reproduction.”

But that is a constructed and constricted meaning which separates sex from society and the impacts of each on the other, thus making “biological sex” a perhaps convenient but still a purely arbitrary basis of judgment.

Consider that neuroscience is classed as a multidisciplinary subdivision of biology. Which means that brain function, which is fundamental to and thus directly involves personal identity, is itself part of our biology.

Meanwhile, sociobiology sits in the area where sociology and biology overlap, regarding biology as fundamental to social interaction and identity, which are socially produced and regulated. That is, biology is fundamental to identity, but what defines that identity in a given society is socially generated and the study is of the interplay between them.

Bottom line: SCOTUS imposed a predetermined definition on a word and term that is disconnected from the science involved - and got it wrong.

(BTW, sociobiology got a bad rep when it emerged into popularity in 1975 because some of its adherents insisted that genes are controlling of social relations and so such things as then-accepted social roles for men and women were “natural” and trying to change them “defied reality.” Sound familiar? Thankfully, it has matured at least somewhat in the past 50 years, even though it still to my mind tends to focus too much on genetics as explanations for social relations.)

More to come, I expect. “See” you then.

News Worth Knowing (which you may have missed) #3

For something over a year, on every Tuesday we’ve had a one-hour lunchtime vigil downtown. Over that time we’ve developed some you could call them traditions, one of which has become me taking about 5-7 minutes on “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed),” reporting on three or four things outside the main headlines, which I’ve taken to posting here. So here is News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed) #3. Comments are always welcome.

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Meaningful actions

Just not meaningful in the way you might have thought, but full of meaning nonetheless.

Here’s an incident which seems to summarize a lot of what’s happening in and around Israel. It happened on April 28, but I learned of it on June 2, which is why it’s here.

Lebanon and Israel announced a ceasefire on April 16. Twelve days later, on April 28, Israel declared new yellow line, pushing its military control further north, further into Lebanon.

As a result, Ain Arab, a small farming village nestled in the plains near the southern border, was now inside that line and IDF soldiers went door to door giving the people of the village hours to leave, telling them, according to one villager, “You either leave right now or you die.”

Over 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since March 2, many of who have no idea if or when they will be able to return to their homes.

Israel is engaged in active ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, with significant indications it intends an on-going, indefinite, occupation of the area and oh my haven’t we been here before.

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Multifront resistance

Israel could not conduct its repeated egregious actions Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and - as we keep forgetting - even Syria without US arms and aid. That military aid should stop, and legislative attempts to that end have been made, but they haven’t gotten far, so far, but there is another front to this: direct nonviolent civil disobedience protests against weapons shipments.

There have been such protests at ports in France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and last year in Oakland, California.

I raise this because the latest port action occurred on May 22, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The port is routinely used by the major shipper Maersk and the Israeli-owned company Zim to transport tons of weapons and spare parts to Israel.

The protesters called on the International Longshoreman’s Association to refuse to load Zim-owned ships destined for Israel. They succeeded in blocking the port for over three hours; ten people were arrested for the civil disobedience.

The action didn’t stop the shipments - which was not really a surprise - but hopefully it can serve as one more link in a growing chain of solidarity.

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Another part of being an informed voter

Judd Legum and the folks at Popular Information have figured out that two supposedly progressive PACs are actually linked to House GOPpers.

One, California Blue, appears to have been active in a single California Congressional district.

The other, Real Change, which describes itself as “dedicated to electing grassroots candidates who are committed to progressive values,” was active in several Congressional district primaries. One was the 7th CD in New Jersey, where they attacked the Democratic frontrunner, Rebecca Bennett, while promoting her opponents.

They sent out mailers accusing Bennett of “STANDING WITH ICE” and “CASHING IN ON TRUMP’S TERROR,” employed AI images of her in a MAGA hat, and used footage that was previously used by the Congressional Leadership Fund - which is the super PAC of House Republicans.

(The effort failed; Bennett won the primary by a comfortable margin.)

This is an update of an old right-wing tactic dating back to at least 1972, where it was the root of Watergate. GOPpers thought George McGovern was the weakest Democrat among those striving for the party’s presidential nomination, so they set out to build him up while undermining the others.

So just remember if you see any ad claiming to be from “Real Change PAC,” it’s a false flag and don’t believe it.

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If they’d only do it the white - I mean right - way

For over 50 years, foreign nationals with legal status in the US - individuals married to US citizens, holders of work or student visas, refugees, political asylum seekers, and others - have been able to apply for and complete the process of obtaining permanent legal residence, that is, a green card, from within the US.

On May 22, Citizenship and Immigration Services said those who want to apply for green card have to return to their native country and apply from there.

The agency didn’t say when the change would come into effect or if individuals would be required to remain outside the US throughout the entire process or whether the policy impacts those whose green card applications are already underway.

But the central fact here is once those folks leave the US to apply, there’s no reason to think they would be let back in again.

The changes come on top of steps already taken (and challenged) to restrict and limit entry for people from a total of 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries - note what they all have in common - who have either been outright denied entry or barred from final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.

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And speaking of that

Pete Hogsbreath has announced the number of religions to be recognized by the US military has been cut from over 200 to just 31, with such as desists, humanists, wiccans, Unitarians, and atheists vanishing into “Other” or “None.”

Of the 31 categories remaining, 21 - maybe 22 - are sects of Xianity.

And so we continue toward being a white Xian fundamentalist ethno-state.

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So what? Climate change is a hoax, anyway

The National Science Foundation is planning to remove hundreds of ocean monitoring instruments from four sites in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

These instruments are part of observational network, gathering data on a number of factors affecting the health of the oceans and marine life - but most particularly for studying climate change and monitoring effects on the oceans, including on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean system that some warn is at risk of collapse.

This follows firing of entire National Science Board, which is the advisory committee to the NSF.

The potential (partial) saving grace is here is that The Orange Overlord tried cut funding for program by 80% in both 2025 and 2026 and failed both times. Hopefully that losing string will continue.

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You have the best week you possibly can and we’ll see you then.

Remember, comments and reactions are always welcome.

So I said... #21 - for May 15-24

So here I am again, striving for relevance, with a collections of thoughts and opinions expressed here, there, and pretty much anywhere else I happened to stick my keyboard. I hope you’ll find a few at least interesting; remember that comments and reactions are welcome.

A note on formatting, in case it’s not clear. Comments on new topics are separated by “==” (a double equal sign) while parts of reply threads are separated by “-” (an en dash). That said, let’s get on with this.

==

2026-05-15
[A post, the link to which I unfortunately failed to record, discussed the requirement for new cars to have a kill switch, supposedly to prevent drunk driving. It included four questions for discussion.]

Answering the questions in order:

Do you have an analog car and are you planning to keep it? Yes, and I’m keeping it as long as I can keep it running.

Does this bother you, or honestly, does it not? Yes, it bothers me, bothers me both because of the invasion of privacy (or, rather, the off-handed assumption of a lack of it) and the paucity of attention to the potential for unintended consequences.

Do you think saving 13,000 lives a year [the claimed benefit] is worth it? “Lives saved” is a claim, not a fact, and should be treated with the same skepticism as any other promotional claim should be. On the other hand, “false accusations” is a reality and while we can’t quantify the effect of these measures on that, we can safely assume based on the historical record that it will primarily affect minorities and other marginalized communities.

Is there a bigger agenda behind the legislation that we aren’t being told about? Maybe not an “agenda” in the sense of a conscious plan but it is part of an overall trend, an overall bias call it, toward the government in general and the police in particular knowing more and more about us while we are more and more restricted about what we can know about them - with the phrases “public safety” and “national security” waved like magic incantations.

Or do you think there’s a better way to get there? “You got anything better?” is not an argument, it’s a way of avoiding the issues and objections by demanding that you on the fly come up with something “better” - which assumes the supposedly desired end, whatever it is in a given case, requires no justification to a degree that “the ends justify the means” and thus the method is the only question involved while unintended consequences are irrelevant.

==

2026-05-16
[Popular Information revealed that The Orange Overlord had been investing in stocks just before acting in a way to promote them, clear evidence of insider training. Some commentators bemoaned a supposed inability to do anything about it because of presidential immunity.]

Will people puh-leeze stop saying that SCOTUS gave The Orange Overlord “absolute immunity” so he can do whatever the hell he wants, commit whatever crimes he chooses. That immunity decision was horrible but it was limited to actions related to “core presidential duties and powers,” if I recall the quote correctly. I don’t see how even this court could create a fig leaf big enough to define insider stock trading as a “core presidential duty.”

The statute of limitations for insider trading is five years for civil cases and six years for criminal ones. So yes, the SOB can be held responsible. Very likely not until he’s out of office, but yes.

Stop letting him off the hook before you even cast your line.

==

2026-05-17
[Re the White House video of TOO doing his bit during a Bible reading event]

Okay I will say he didn’t look as bad as I’d been told but otherwise, what a disaster.

He obviously had never seen those words before, had made no preparation - but my word, even for a cold reading, what a crappy job!

==

2026-05-18
[On May 18, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that hospitals which stopped GAC because of The Orange Overlord’s anti-trans EO discriminated against transgender youth in violation of state law.]

The most important sentence in the whole thing: “Because the Kennedy Declaration isn’t federal law.”

YES! And it’s damn well about time everybody - and I mean anybody and everybody - stopped acting as if any of that mass of heinous Executive Orders is anything other than what it is: the vapid ramblings spewed by biased fanatics dreaming of what they wish the law would be, not what it is.

-

2026-05-18
[Excellent news but can it be overturned by the Supreme Court?]

Not easily, anyway. This is a ruling by the Supreme Court of Colorado - a state court, not a federal one. SCOTUS should have no say unless there is a federal law to the contrary - and, as the decision points out, a declaration from Robert F. “My father would be ashamed of me” Kennedy Jr. is NOT a law.

==

2026-05-20
[Erin Reed reported that California has reaffirmed its policy re trans girl high school athletes where if a cis girl places lower than a trans girl, for the purposes of awards and meet records, she is treated as if the trans girl didn’t compete at all.]

In this case, as in a number of others, the thing that strikes me is that the people supposedly damaged by the presence of someone like A. B. - that is, the other competitors - seem to be the ones who are the least troubled by it.

==

2026-05-20
[In a discussion of supposed advantages trans women athletes have over cis women athletes, it was noted how the idea was being applies in competitions like disc golf, darts, and chess. Another unrecorded link, dang it.]

Just a bit of trivia to throw in: There is a way in which physicality can provide an advantage in chess, particularly at its highest levels. A game of tournament or match chess at master or grandmaster level can take a physical toll on a player because of the mental effort involved. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a long, hard-fought game to be lost because someone got tired enough to make mistakes.

That is, physical endurance can make a difference.

It’s trivia because there is so much individual variation and it’s such an individual quality that it’s silly to suggest men have more endurance than women.

==

2026-05-21
Why are there no ethical complaints against Reed O’Conner [the notorious judge in the notorious Northern District of Texas]?

He is patently biased to the point that he essentially has decided LGBTQ+-related cases even before they are filed. Overt animus drips from his every order. (Why is that not an issue in every such case he handles?)

He got a request to enforce a subpoena against Rhode Island Hospital signed by two of his former law clerks (Why didn’t he recuse himself?) and issued it hours later. (Why was the target not allowed a chance to respond?)

He has continued to press the matter even after learning (assuming he didn’t know originally) that the parties were in active negotiations literally the day before the request for the enforcement order. (Why didn’t he withdraw the order as not ripe?)

And now he has declared that he can decide where the targets of his bigoted wrath can seek relief and by implication what cases and motions other courts can accept.

And yet nothing happens and lawyers wonder why people don’t trust the system.

-

2026-05-21
[It’s really not that difficult: Just don’t hand over the information. Do not obey a single ruling handed down by Reed O’Connor]

I expect it will soon - indeed it has - come to that, where people need to just say “no.” The problem, the difficulty, with what we used to call “doing ‘no’” is that it involves consequences and it’s always easier to convince ourselves that those consequences (which seem real and immediate) are of greater weight than the potential gains (which seem distant and uncertain) than it is to convince ourselves that despite that the risks are worth the goal.

Breaking through that psychological barrier takes a good deal of courage, perhaps even more so for those in situations like hospitals, where people may fear the consequences not only to themselves but to others.

So I have some sympathy for places like Rhode Island Hospital even as I agree that the moral (and in the long run, more effective) course of action would be to tell Reed O’Connor and the entire 5th Circuit to stick it.

-

2026-05-21
[”These people should suffer such overwhelming personal / professional consequences from their collaboration that whatever the Trump regime threatens them with looks preferable.” (quote edited for length)]

My sympathy (or, as you tellingly put it, “sympathy”) was specifically directed at people in the crosshairs of the state, including situations such as that involving Rhode Island Hospital where those targeted may be deterred from resistance not only by the consequences to themselves but to the broader community; in the specific example, those whose access to care might be damaged by institutional resistance - which could, for example, result in the loss of Medicaid funding.

I recognize that you refer to “people in positions of power” but also say every person who “failed to say no” should be “hounded from polite society” and include those who acted under “whatever the Trump regime threaten[ed] them with” among the collaborators.

I find it both strategically dumb and morally offensive to lump those who wind up bending before the power of the state together with actual collaborators, who by definition are those who willingly cooperate with an enemy or oppressor.

Reed O’Conner (who faces no threat from Trump) is a collaborator - indeed, we could properly call him an oppressor. Rhode Island Hospital (which is under threat) is not. And we should not confuse the two.

I repeat: I have sympathy for places like Rhode Island Hospital even as I agree that the ethical and (ultimately) more effective course would have been to say “no.”

In the immortal words of Mr. Spock, “I understand. I do not approve.”

==

2026-05-22
After surviving a major heart attack, my wife was involved for several years with a group called WomenHeart, speaking to community groups and doing outreach at health fairs and the like. The stories I heard about women not receiving proper care because of the ignorance ranging from EMTs to MDs about women’s heart heath were both jaw-dropping and revealing.

It’s truly disturbing to hear now that in the six years since her death (ironically - and I maintain that is a correct use of the word here - not from a heart issue) it seems not much has changed.

==

2026-05-22
Please don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.

“Right-wingers falsely claim San Diego mosque shooters were trans”

OTOH, it admittedly was amusing to see the San Diego police described as “leftists.”

==

2026-05-24
[Jess Craven said some were upset that she said the Harris campaign’s silence on Israel/ Gaza cost the election.]

Just a quick note about the postmortem and Gaza: Don’t sweat the critics. You were right.

Openly calling out the slaughter in Gaza might have cost Harris the votes of some folks, but it for damn sure would have gained her those of a whole lot more. Enough to change the outcome? Precisely because the gap in so many states was so small, I’d say yes - but anyone reasonable would have to at least allow there was a good chance.

What can’t be denied is that her silence hurt her chances.

A petition re HR 9495

We all, I expect, get emails urging us to sign petitions that too often turn out to be simply fund appeals in disguise. Even so, it can be an easy and quick way to register an opinion, so I admit to responding to a good number of them.

I recently got one from the American Friends Service Committee regarding HR 9495, the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.” It’s a dangerous bill in that it, as the petition says, empowers the Treasury Secretary to strip non-profit status from any group they label as “terrorist supporting.” On November 12 the GOPpers tried to suspend House rules to pass it, but the move, which required a 2/3 vote, failed - despite getting the votes of 52, count ‘em, 52, Democrats. So they have the lather-rise-repeat route, re-writing the bill a bit so it can be brought up again under regular order. That vote is expected soon.

So I signed the petition, fully expecting it will do no good as my House rep is a long-term (like 40+ years in the House long) right-winger who would be delighted to see his opponents who oppose Israel government policy crushed to financial dust (and who voted to fast track this bill). But better to say “no” and lose than to say nothing.

However, I make a point of taking advantage of the option, when it is there, of re-writing these sorts of petitions to say it in a way I would prefer. So just for the record, this is my version, is what I said:

I urge you to vote NO on H.R. 9495, “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

It's enough well-known that is should be unnecessary to say, but loss of tax-exempt status could be financially-crippling for many affected organizations. Which is why provisions of this bill are so dangerous, as they would give the executive branch the power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization based on a unilateral accusation of support of terrorism with no requirement for proof.

Such power could easily be abused to quash free speech and punish any organizations that oppose the views of any administration - as indeed such laws have been used in other countries, including ones which I expect we would agree the US should not emulate.

The options for appeal could best be described as symbolic, consisting of little more than appealing to the same agency that made the charge while essentially requiring the accused to prove a negative. That is, it offers no practical protection against an executive branch that wants to exploit this authority to effectively close almost any organization in the political or social opposition.

What’s more, existing laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from taking part in the sort of illegal activities that this bill purports to address. Which reveals the point of this bill: Those sorts of charges would have to proved in court, not simply asserted.

I urge you: Do not cooperate with this un-American attack on dissent. Vote NO on H.R. 9495.

One final note: The bill also contains provisions helping overseas hostages avoid IRS penalties, which has already passed the Senate unanimously. By all means, pass them - as separate legislation.

It appears that in the end this bill will pass; the GOPers seem determined to give Tweetie-pie the power to financially damage if not cripple opposition which he can't crush legally. If they fail this time, they will simply re-introduce it in the new session of Congress with their majority in both houses - and will do it with a bunch of dunce cap Democrats trailing behind.

So why sign it? Because that's what we have to do now: raise every "no" we can because, again, it's better for the present and the future to say "no" and lose than to say nothing.Yes, it's a small thing, every a very small one - but it's a thing.

Thoughts on Bernie's withdrawal

[A significant part of what follows is drawn from some things I have written before. I brought them together to express my feelings at this moment.]

The man himself

So just three days after I wrote that Bernie Sanders should not drop out, he did. And so it goes.

Actually, what he did was pretty similar to what I was thinking I would do, having accepting the reality that the nomination was beyond reach: suspend the campaign, continue with the primaries, continue to gather delegates, and use that to exercise some power in the Platform Committee and use that in turn to move the Party and how it approaches the people.  The difference is that while I would have stopped campaigning, I just wouldn't have announced I was doing it, answering any "dropping out" questions with some version of "My intent is to continue to address the issues I have addressed all along and we'll see what happens."

The truth is, although I have long acknowledged that my political heart is more in "on the streets" action than electoral campaigns, his withdrawal still hurts. It's a sad moment, especially because there was a time not that long ago, just a touch over six weeks ago, in fact, when it seemed possible he could get the nomination. So yeah, even though I knew that was no longer in reach, a formal end to the campaign still makes me blue.

But. That just raises the question I touched on in that previous post: What now? Because let it be clear that as I said then, this is not the end. It must not be the end. As someone notable said in 1980 at the end of a different presidential campaign,

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Because as he himself has said, this is not about Bernie Sanders. Even his own campaign slogan declared it: "Not me. Us." This is about, again in his phrase, political revolution.

This is about change. This is about changing the nature and the structure of political, social, and economic power in our country, in our society.

It is about racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual equality and freedom. It is about the economy, about an economy for the many, not the few, for the workers, not the bosses, banks, and billionaires. It is about education. It is about health care. It is about housing. It is about the environment and the climate. It is about peace.

It is about justice.

Justice, as I put it nearly 40 years ago, in its truest sense: economic, social, and political. It is about a justice that rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, of profits over people. It is about a justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness. It is about a justice that affirms and embraces the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression.

It is about, in the end, revolution.

So while his quitting the race is a real loss, especially when early on it looked truly possible, it's not about Bernie Sanders and it's also in exactly the same sense not about elections. It's not even about voting. It's about the process of change. Voting is a part of that process, which is why, in a sense, for the moment, it was about Bernie Sanders because he has been the vehicle, using electoral politics, to push for that change.

But now, at this point, how do we proceed from here? I have to tell you something: Tweets and Facebook posts and the rest are not gonna cut it. Period. Oh, they can be great for circulating ideas, for passing on information, for keeping each others' spirits up, for organizing, but they themselves will not change anything. Oh, sure, they can affect little bits here and there; they can embarrass a restaurant into changing a policy or an individual store into apologizing for something, and I'm sure someone could come up with some more significant example of a more significant effect, but change the fundamental nature of power in the US? Not a chance.

Way, way, back in the dreaded '60s, I said something along the lines of "the system can withstand any number of people just saying 'No' to that system. That won't change anything. We have to do "No," we have to act on our beliefs."

It's still true. We need to act on our beliefs. If we are going to see the kind of change we talk about, if we are going to see that political revolution, if we are going to change the nature of power in this country, we have to act. We can't just talk - have to act. And we can't just vote - we have to act. We can't even just campaign for a favored candidate, even though, yes, that is a form of action, but it is not near enough. We have to act outside of and beyond electoral politics. We have to be in public, in the streets, even filling the streets, in the jails, even filling the jails.

We have to be loud, noisy, disruptive, but most of all creative; we have to be impolite, rude, to power; and we have to not care what they call us - because they will call us all sorts of things - but keep on going anyway.

I know I haven't offered any concrete proposals, proposed any specific actions, which is because I don't have any to offer. What I want to press home is, the whole point of this is to press home, that if we actually believe in this political revolution, if we actually want to see, in that wonderful Biblical phrase that Martin Luther King quoted in his I Have a Dream speech, if we want to see "justice rolling down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream," if we actually believe what we say, then now is the time, now is the moment, to look beyond the primaries, beyond the convention, beyond November, beyond political candidates, beyond voting, and ask ourselves "What now? And what then?"

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Heroes and Villains

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Heroes and Villains

Alright, now for one of our occasional features, called Heroes and Villains

You may have heard about the massive protests in Moscow demanding free and fair elections in gthe wake of opposition candidates being barred from running in the Moscow city council elections.

The police response, to what should be no one's surprise, has been brutal. Hundreds arrested this past weekend, 1000 the weekend before, with many reported beaten, as crowds called out "We are unarmed," and "Our blood is on your hands."

In the midst of the state violence, 17-year-old Olga Misik sat down on the ground in her bulletproof vest in front of Putin's armed goons and read aloud the Russian Constitution, including Article 31 affirming the right to peaceful political assembly, creating a quiet but potent symbol of peaceful defiance.

Olga Misik

In what again should have been a surprise to no one, Misik was allowed to leave the demonstration only to be arrested later when there were no witnesses. She was held overnight and beaten before being charged with "attending a public event [held] without filing a notice" and fomenting "mass unrest."

For being a symbol of courageous nonviolent defiance that has been compared to the famous image of a single Chinese man facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square, Olga Misik is a hero.

As for our villain, well, of course it's Vlad Ptooie. You thought someone else?

29.3 - Good News: conviction of Desiree Fairooz overturned

Good News: conviction of Desiree Fairooz overturned

Okay, continuing with the theme of tempered good news, I think I told you a while back about the case of Desiree Fairooz, a Code Pink protester who made the mistake of letting out a quick laugh during the confirmation hearings of Jeff "I'm not a racist, I swear" Sessions as attorney general. Astonishingly, she was convicted. of Laughing.

The Good News is that on July 14, Chief Judge Robert Morin of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia threw out the conviction.

The tempered part is that he did it because the prosecutor had said in closing arguments that the laugh alone was enough for conviction, not any disruption she may have caused as she objected to being dragged out of the visitors' gallery for nothing more than laughing. The judge said the laugh alone was not enough to send the case to the jury.

But instead of dismissing the charge, he ordered a new trial for September 1. So the prosecution has a second chance to achieve what is still the same goal: punish her for laughing, this time with guidance from the court as to the best way to do it.

26.1 - The rightwing blames the progressive left for the shooting in Alexandria (as predicted)

The rightwing blames the progressive left for the shooting in Alexandria (as predicted)

I told you, I told you, I told you!

I told you this is what was going to happen.

Last week, I only mentioned the mass shooting in Alexandria briefly because news of it had come only shortly before I did the show and there was no time to gather information. But I did say something and I am going to quote what I said in full and word for word. This was it:

You undoubtedly know about the gunman who shot up a group of Republican lawmakers who were practicing for an annual charity baseball game, wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise - who at last report is in critical condition - and at least four others before being killed.

You also have undoubtedly heard about how the shooter, one James Hodgkinson, was some real liberal and a Bernie Sanders supporter.

So I want this noted, For the Record: I predict that you will not find one single GOPper, one single wingnut, one single person on the entire right half of the US political spectrum who will describe this guy as what they always describe right-wing shooters as, "a lone wacko," and that instead they will claim he is "emblematic of the violence of the left."

That's what I told you would happen and that is exactly what has happened. The right wing, demonstrating its typical total lack of self-awareness and conscience, rose as one to blame it all on "the liberals."

I'm going to go through a list because you need to understand how wide and how unified this vilification is. And remember, this is not an historical compilation. These all came in the last week in response to the Alexandria shooting.

Rush Limbaugh said "the average, base Democrat voter" is "getting more and more fringe and imbalanced; they openly promote violence," before labeling Hodgkinson "a mainstream Democrat voter."

Lifezette, the website of Laura Ingraham, declared that the "American Left demonizes and dehumanizes conservatives."

The Daily Caller called the shooting part of "an escalating pattern of violence and intimidation against Republicans," who are constantly on "the receiving end of violence and intimidation" - because they, of course, are always the victims. Always.

William Jacobson of the rightwing blog Legal Insurrection wrote that "the entire concept of 'The Resistance' invokes violence" and "the window for violence has been moved from the radical fringes to the mere left."

Rightwing radio host Bill Mitchell tweeted that "The Left in this country is ushering in a new #CultureOfViolence where violent hate is the new normal."

Newt Gingrich called the shooting "part of a pattern" of left behavior.

Alt-right troll Nick Short claimed that"Alexandria comes from the incitement by the Left and the media" and thatsaying "people will die" as a result of losing health coverage - which is literally true and there are studies finding that anywhere from 18,000 to 45,000 Americans die every year from inadequate access to health care - but speaking that literal truth is to Nick Short "an incitement to violence."

And indeed, political cartoonist Mike Lester directly connected Hodgkinson to that, directly connected his murderous rampage to those people saying folks will die if they lose their health coverage.

Alex Jones of InfoWars claimed that Democrats have been "calling for Trump's death" and for his supporters to be attacked."

Sean Hannity blamed the shooting on "left-wing hate that is being spewed" by "liberals all across the country" who are "glorifying violence."

Far-right operative and bizzaro-conspiracy-monger Roger Stone said the shooting was the result of hate generated by the media and egged on by "LibDems."

National Review claimed "the American Left has embraced political violence and 'anarcho-tyranny,'" whatever that's supposed to mean.

Harlan Hill, a rightwing political consultant, said tough criticism of TheRump, even if accurate, such as calling him "dangerous," is "a passive justification for the kind of violence we saw."

When they get to more specific targets, the wingnuts got positively loopy, dumping the blame in the lap of whoever the particular wingnut is obsessed with: Among those blamed were Snoop Dogg, Barack Obama, Madonna, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Kathy Griffin, Sen. Tim Kaine, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the media, and the investigation into TheRump's ties to Russia.

That's by no means all, but it should be enough.

Note well: Not one of these people said anything about "lone wacko," about there being no meaning beyond the individual tragedy and how dare you even suggest it had something to do with political rhetoric. Not one of them said any of the things they always say when it's a rightwing shooter.

In fact, Limbaugh went out of his to way specifically say that Hodgkinson is not "a Looney Tune kook burger."

Well, right now federal officials are now characterizing Hodgkinson as a desperate man who was unemployed, running out of money, taking prescription drugs, having anger issues, and in a troubled marriage and that he was "struggling in all kinds of different ways." They also described the shooting as more of a spontaneous event.

And other reports note that Hodgkinson has one other issue that research suggests connects almost all mass shooters: a history of - in his case alleged - domestic violence.

James Hodgkinson

But none of that will matter. I guarantee you none of that will matter. The right wing will still insist on the collective guilt of the entire left, still insist there is blood on the hands of every American in or out of government, in or out of the Democratic party, who dares to question the bigotry, the selfishness, the greed, the destructiveness, of the right. Because those of the right wing have no conscience and they do not care about truth. They only care about power.

And again, note well: Unlike the lies promulgated by the right in their attempts to "prove" the inherent violence of the left, the examples I have cited were not plucked out of the depths of some comment stream, were not authored by someone you never heard of before and very likely will never hear of again. These are leading voices of the American right wing, some of them with mass audiences.

And what makes it all worse is that all too often what is screeched in the dank halls of the right-wing echo chamber soon enough becomes spoken aloud in the mainstream media.

For example, the Kansas City Star said the shooting "highlights [a] disturbing increase in left-wing violence" but couldn't find space to mention any examples.

CNN's national security analyst, Peter Bergen, described what he called "the return of leftist terrorism," claiming some sort of link with some poorly-described examples involving the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers from 50 years ago.

But for some, even that was too vague and for them the question quickly became resolved to "How much blame does Bernie Sanders bear?"

In an interview with Jane Sanders, Bernie Sanders' wife, to discuss the shooting, Wolf Blitzer demanded to know if Sanders "went too far" when he called TheRump "the worst and most dangerous president" the US has ever had, as if that was a cause of the attack.

And the New York Times, well, the New York Times had a big long article in which it did its best to blame Bernie Sanders without admitting that it was doing it.

It referred to Hodgkinson as a "test for the movement" and an "opportunity for the senator's fans to consider their message," which of course assumes that said "message" is an incitement to murder.

The paper admits that "Sanders has advocated a peaceful political revolution," but then immediately goes on to say that "long before the shooting, some of his supporters had earned a belligerent reputation" and that the shooting "put a new spotlight on the rage buried in some corners of the progressive left."

This is, the article intoned, "a moment for liberals to figure out how to balance anger at Mr. Trump with inciting violence" - which, again, assumes that "inciting violence" is what progressives have been doing.

The whole thing was thick with innuendo. Here's an example, quoted directly from the article:

On Tuesday, Mr. Hodgkinson posted a cartoon on Facebook explaining "How does a bill work?" "That's an easy one, Billy," the cartoon reads. "Corporations write the bill and then bribe Congress until it becomes law."

"That's Exactly How It Works. ...." Mr. Hodgkinson wrote.

That is not far from Mr. Sanders's own message.

This is insane.
 
Shaun King, a syndicated columnist with the NY Daily News, said it well:

To this very day I work directly with several dozen progressive grassroots organizations fighting for real change in this country. I've attended and hosted and contributed to hundreds of meetings with these organizations. Not once, publicly or privately, did a single person in a single meeting I was a part of ever suggest, explicitly or implicitly, that someone should go do what James Hodgkinson did today. Period.

The blaming, the finger-pointing, the accusations, he didn't use the word, but I will: It's all lies. Lies intended to secure and advance a reactionary right-wing agenda.

Understand: I do believe words can have an impact. I do believe we need to accept responsibility for the meaning of what we say, of the terms we use, of the ideas we express. I do believe we have to be aware of how our words can sound and of the fact that, as I have often said in the past, in communication what you say is not as important as what the other person hears.

What I deny is that the words, the terms, the ideas, of the progressive left have been or are provoking or inciting violence, especially murderous violence. Oh yes, I'm sure if you dig into the bowels of Twitter you can find individual examples of expressions of heinous thoughts or heinous images, and the right wing will search out those isolated examples buried in the mass like some political version of Where's Waldo and then take those isolated examples and claim that the ill behavior or immoral assertion of that one or those few describes the entire progressive movement. And that is, again, a lie. A deliberate lie.

In fact, if you want to see incitement to violence, if you want to see the impacts of incitement, the effects of incitement, the left is not the place to look.

Remember when Ted Nugent called Barack Obama "a subhuman mongrel" who should "suck on my machine gun," called Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch," and said both deserve to be hanged?

Was any of that incitement?

How about when Bill O'Reilley spent week after week attacking abortion provider Dr. George Tiller as "Tiller the baby killer" until Tiller actually was murdered? Was that incitement?

What about Byron Williams and his failed plot to shoot people at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, where Williams explicitly identified Glenn Beck and Alex Jones as what prompted him to act?

What about Robert Dear, who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado based on what he heard from Limbaugh and Jones and O'Reilly and the like?

Oh, and what about the guy who shot up a family pizzeria in Washington DC after Alex Jones wanted his audience to investigate the child sex-trafficking ring that Hillary Clinton was supposedly operating out of the building's basement?

Was any of that incitement?

And what of His Orangeness himself? At a campaign rally last August, Donald TheRump suggested that "the Second Amendment people" could maybe deal with Hillary Clinton if she were elected. Was that incitement? Did that go "too far?" Did that have to be "considered?"

At another rally, after being told by security that someone might be planning to throw tomatoes at him, TheRump, who openly yearned for the days when protesters would be carried out on stretchers, told the crowd to "knock the crap out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees." Was that incitement?

And of course there were the celebrations of sexual assault and the denunciations of refugees, of Muslims, of Mexicans, and others. Was any of that incitement?

To the right wing, the answer in each case is "no." None of that was an incitement to violence. None of that "went too far." None of that "message" needed to be "considered."

Despite the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center documented almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, with many of those involving people invoking TheRump's name during the assaults, none of it, they insist, was an incitement

Despite the fact that the Anti-Defamation League reported that anti-Semitic incidents in the US jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017 and there has been a surge in violent attacks on Indian Americans and Sikhs, frequently by people thinking they were Muslims or Arabs, none of it, they insist, was an incitement. None of it.

Even as the hate crimes continue, even to torching the memorial to a victim of a previous hate crime. Nope, none of it has a single blessed little thing to do with anything the right said, even when repeated over and over by its loudest voices.

Even when Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, said in response to the Alexandria shooting that we are seeing "The first skirmishes of a second American civil war" - saying that's not metaphorical but "an objective statement of the reality in America" - even that is not an incitement to violence in the eyes of the right.

The hard truth here is that for the right wing, this actually has nothing to do with incitement, it has nothing to do with safety, nothing to do with cooling the rhetoric, and sure as hell has nothing to do with "civility."

It has to do with trying to emotional manipulate and intimidate the left, trying to exploit our natural tendency to pay attention to the impacts of what we do, to worry about unintended effects of what we say, our natural tendency to care about others and our effects on them, to exploit that to make us so hesitant to criticize, so reluctant to run even the hypothetical risk of "going too far," so timorous in our words and deeds, that we offer no effective resistance to their reactionary agenda that would undo moe than a century of progress to serve the desires of a selfish elite.

But the right should know now: We will not be silenced. We will be nonviolent, but we will be aggressive. We will be honest, but we - sometimes - will be rude and crude. We will be understanding - but we will not back down. You wingnuts seem to actually want a second civil war, with all the blood and death that implies. We want the next - and notice I say next because there have been several - the next American revolution, with all the growth and progress that implies. And we will not be turned around by your lies about us.

20.8 - For the Record: Desiree Fairooz convicted of laughing

For the Record: Desiree Fairooz convicted of laughing

[Note: Due to time constraints, of the following, only the one about Desiree Fairooz appeared on the show as broadcast.]

Next, it's For the Record, where we cover a few items very quickly just to make sure they get mentioned.

So, For the Record: You surely recall the flap over the size of the crowd for TheRump's inauguration, a crowd he claimed was just like you know the absolute bigliest ever - only to almost immediately have someone in the National Park Service send out on the agency's Twitter account a side-by-side comparison of TheRump 2017 versus Barack Obama 2009.

Through an FOIA request, CBS News was able to report on May 2 that TheRump was directly and personally involved in agency efforts to find out who did it, efforts which included tracing the IP addresses to an certain ISP and checking all National Park Service social media points of contact in that area. They never did find the person.

For the Record: That's not the only such example, either. Another, even worse case because it didn't even involve an agency account, involved the attempts by the US Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department for the Protection of The Fatherland, to unmask the owner of a private Twitter account run by someone claiming to be an employee of the agency who was critical of TheRump's harsh immigration policies. Customs and Border Protection actually served Twitter with a summons demanding to know the name of the account holder.

Twitter, to its credit, responded by suing the CBP and the Department, forcing them to back off.

And it now develops that the agency's conduct was so bad that the Department's Office of the Inspector General has launched an internal investigation into the attempt, citing the possibilities of improper actions and abuse of authority. Inspector General John Roth added that his office is "also reviewing potential broader misuse of summons authority" by the Department.

Desiree Fairooz being arrested

For the Record: Back in January, Desiree Fairooz, an activist with Code Pink, was in the rear of the audience for the confirmation hearing on Jeff Sessions for attorney general. When Sen. Richard Shelby claimed that Sessions has an "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law," Fairooz laughed. Which, considering how nonsensical that claim is, is a natural reaction.

She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct intended to "impede, disrupt, and disturb" congressional proceedings and with "parading" in the Capitol, evidently because she held up a sign while she was being dragged out.

The laugh was a one-off and indeed is barely audible on the C-SPAN video of the hearing; there are coughs that are louder. Shelby didn't even pause in his statement.

Despite that, on May 3 she was convicted by a jury on both charges and now faces a year in prison and a $2000 fine. For laughing. For spontaneously laughing at an absurdity. For failing to pretend that Jeff Sessions, who in 1986 was thought too racist to be a federal judge, has an "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law." For failing to be able to let the lie pass unnoticed. For laughing at the lies.

Finally, For the Record: Speaking of Code Pink, the group says that since April 17, over 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been on a hunger strike to demand basic human rights and dignity, including proper medical care, family visits, an end to the use of solitary confinement, and an end to administrative detention, where Palestinian prisoners are held without charge or trial.

Since the strike began, others have joined, bringing the total number of hunger strikers to 1,700.

The Israeli response has not been to has not been to accede to this call for a level of treatment prisoners should expect in any civilized nation but to try to break the strike, putting the leaders in isolation, further restricting family visits, and threatening ongoing punishments.

There are calls for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to urge the Israelis to give a positive response to the hunger strikers goals.