Mon - When They Are Shooting At You, Don't Post Your Address

Apparently Even Spineless Jackasses Have to Testify

A federal judge on Monday denied Sen. Lindsey Graham's effort to quash a subpoena seeking his testimony in an investigation into possible 2020 election interference in Georgia by former President Donald Trump and others.

In a 22-page order, U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May in Atlanta rejected Graham's arguments against having to testify before a special grand jury, including his contention that the speech and debate clause of the Constitution shields the South Carolina Republican from providing testimony.

Graham's lawyers had argued that a post-election phone call Graham made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2020 had a legislative purpose and therefore was covered by the clause.

The judge also rejected Graham's argument that sovereign immunity protects him from having to testify because he's a sitting U.S. senator.

"If the court were to accept Senator Graham’s sovereign immunity argument, it would mean that U.S. senators would not be required to testify before state grand juries no matter the circumstances," May wrote. "The law would give them complete immunity based solely on their status as federal officials."

Lastly, the judge said Graham's reasoning for being exempt from testifying because he's a high-ranking official also doesn't hold weight. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has shown "extraordinary circumstances" necessitated the testimony of Graham, who has "unique personal knowledge about the substance and circumstances of the phone calls with Georgia election officials, as well as the logistics of setting them up and his actions afterward," May said.

The Raid:  The Gift that Keeps on Giving

With the Mar-a-Lago raid gobbling up the news bandwidth, the QOP isn't able to get their message out.  They want to be shouting, "Inflation!  Inflation!  Inflation!".

Instead we are getting tons of coverage of previous guy's ever-changing defenses as well as "Defund the FBI" and "Repeal the Espionage Act".  Those two slogans are guaranteed to lose the swing vote.



It isn't a total blessing for the Dems.  The raid drowned out the news of the passage of the IRA, although Biden has the option of when he wants to do the signing ceremony.

The repeal of Roe was one hit to the QOP.  The long life of this story is another.  

If there are more attacks on FBI offices or agents, it will be a terrible thing.  The QOP needs to STFU, or they may find the violence hung around their necks.

Apparently the QOP is More Worried About Looking Bad Than Violence Against the FBI

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee held a press conference on Friday, before the release, in which they continued to cast the search as politically motivated.

But even some Intelligence Committee Republicans who participated struck a more measured tone in interviews afterward.

And according to the New York Times, Trump allies have told top Republicans to tone down their criticism of the Justice Department "because it is possible that more damaging information related to the search will become public.

Previous Guy Continues Inciting 

Former President Donald Trump intensified his bashing of the FBI on social media over the weekend with his own comments and those of QAnon followers calling the bureau a “criminal enterprise,” “corrupt,” seditious and abusive.

Trump, in likely the ugliest public attack on federal law enforcers by any president or former president in American history, launched a fresh tirade on his Truth Social platform late Saturday into Sunday to blast the FBI’s search last week of his Mar-a-Lago resort to collect boxes of White House documents that should have been surrendered to the National Archives when he left office.

Trump insisted that the FBI has a “long and unrelenting history of being corrupt.” He also called the search a “sneak attack on democracy,” and referred in a post to “great simmering anger” over the action, which he characterized as a “break in.”

If the GOP has truly morphed into the QOP - as you seem to imply - then the shootings are not a bug but a feature.

If the QANON crowd cannot achieve their objectives via political power, they want a war. The pols who formerly led what was known as the Republican Party have shown little or no backbone, and they are now in the process of being swept away by the violent members of what was formerly known as "the fringe." What will Lindsay Graham et al do when the shooting starts?

Waiting For That New Drug?  Better Get Out Your Checkbook...And Consider a Second Mortgage.

Drugmakers are launching new medicines at record-high prices this year, a Reuters analysis has found, highlighting their pricing power even as Congress moves to cut the $500 billion-plus annual bill for prescription drugs in the United States. At the same time, some pharmaceutical manufacturers are disclosing less information about the pricing of those treatments, which have come under greater scrutiny in recent years, Reuters found.

"In the U.S. we allow drug manufacturers to freely set prices for all brand-name drugs," Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told Reuters.

The median annual price of 13 novel drugs approved for chronic conditions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration so far this year is $257,000, Reuters found 
They were in good company: seven other newly-launched drugs were priced above $200,000. Three other drugs launched in 2022 are used only intermittently and were not included in the calculation.

Last year, the median annual price rose to $180,000 for the 30 drugs first marketed through mid-July 2021, according to a study published recently in JAMA.

While the Reuters tally does not completely replicate the work of that study, it shows that the direction of new drug prices continues to be on the rise.