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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 9:03:02 GMT -8
These are things people actually said in court.
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ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
We Need to Protect Our Children from Over-Protective Parents
A California elementary school made major revisions to its sixth-grade performance of "The Sound of Music."
Parents at Rolling Hills Elementary complained about Nazi elements, including swastikas and "Heil Hitler" salutes, used in telling the story of the von Trapp family's escape from Nazi-ruled Austria in the years before World War II, and school officials intervened, reported KNBC-TV.
“These social media posts of our children could leave them vulnerable to co-opting of these photographs by nefarious individuals or groups meant to mock or exploit our children for their own purposes,” said Fullerton School District superintendent Bob Pletka in a statement. "I made the decision to remove these signs and symbols associated with genocide from the play."
Pletka said he also wanted to foster a safe and respectful environment for alls students, and some parents said they were creeped out by the Nazi elements in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, which is based on a 1949 memoir by Maria von Trapp.
“When my wife called me, she said, ‘Our son was whispering ‘little Nazi boy, little Nazi boy,' [and] I’m like, what? Where’s that coming from?” one parent said at a district meeting. “My 8-year-old does not need to be hearing that. My 8-year-old does not need to be participating, or have that understanding at that age.”
But not all parents agreed with the decision.
"The kids in our sixth grade, they go to the Museum of Tolerance, they have a Holocaust survivor come talk to their classroom," said parent Sarah Blake. "They have spent months learning about World War II, Holocaust, all those things, and this play is the culmination of the history that they've learned."
And Protect Them From Bigots
It has been revealed that Daily Salinas, the parent who gained notoriety for her effort to ban Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb (along with other pieces of literature) at the Bob Graham Education Centre in Miami Lakes, had ties to the Proud Boys, having attended several rallies linked to them. Miami Against Fascism posted several screenshots of Salinas’s past whereabouts on Twitter. Salinas also had ties to Christian extremist group County Citizens Defending Freedom USA. (Oh, and she’s sorry that she was caught posting antisemitic content in the name of defeating communism.)
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 9:07:02 GMT -8
Quid Pro Quo
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that loosens regulations on space flight a day after he announced his presidential campaign in an event hosted by Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces.
Twitter's CEO Musk is also the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, which launches from Florida -- and the new bill would shield space flight companies from being sued for accidents that kill or injure crew members, reported Rolling Stone.
"DeSantis signed into law CS/SB 1318 – Spaceflight Entity Liability along with 27 other bills," the magazine reported. "The law exempts 'spaceflight entity from liability for injury to or death of a crew resulting from spaceflight activities under certain circumstances.'
Did He Ask Elon for a Few Quid?
Officials who work for Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration — not his campaign — have been sending text messages to Florida lobbyists soliciting political contributions for DeSantis' presidential bid, a breach of traditional norms that has raised ethical and legal questions and left many here in the state capital shocked.
NBC News reviewed text messages from four DeSantis administration officials, including those directly in the governor's office and with leadership positions in state agencies. They requested the recipient of the message contribute to the governor’s campaign through a specific link that appeared to track who is giving as part of a “bundle” program.
“The bottom line is that the administration appears to be keeping tabs on who is giving, and are doing it using state staff,” a third longtime Florida lobbyist said. “You are in a prisoner’s dilemma. They are going to remain in power, we all understand that.”
NBC News is not naming the specific staffers who sent the text messages because it could out the lobbyists who received the messages and shared them.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 9:10:37 GMT -8
I WonderWhat Oaths He Has Broken
Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes may have been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — but the damage he has done, and could do, is still tremendous, his ex-wife Tasha Adams told CNN's Abby Phillip on Thursday.
Despite this, she said, she is glad he is in a place where he is not a danger to her family anymore.
"You have known Stewart Rhodes for a long time," said Phillip. "You know, deeply, this organization, the Oath Keepers. Knowing that for the next 18 years, you and your six children can live your lives with Stewart Rhodes behind bars, how do you feel about that?"
"I'm very happy about it," said Adams, who has previously detailed Rhodes' physical and emotional abuse against her and their children. "It's been a great week for us as a family. We are happy to feel safe. We are happy he is in a place where he can't hurt us, he can't hurt anybody else. Of course, there's that dark cloud looming of a pardon, depending on who gets in office next or even beyond that, the next election. There's some reason for concern. But other than that, it's been great to feel safe really. It's been — my divorce was finalized this week after five and a half years of trying to deal with that. It's been a lot at once."
More Pardons for Sale?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who officially stepped into the presidential race this week, said Thursday that, if elected, he would consider pardoning people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — possibly including his rival for the GOP nomination, former President Donald Trump.
This is Behind a Paywall
Stewart Rhodes' son fears Trump or DeSantis will pardon his father
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 9:59:45 GMT -8
Will Mexico Pay for This?
When Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.), a comparatively affable chap in the context of contemporary GOP politics, announced his 2024 presidential bid on Monday, the speech was predictably full of the upbeat, anecdotal, ain't-America-grand stuff that Scott, like generations of Republicans before him, has made central to his political career.
Then things suddenly turned dark.
"When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist," Scott vowed. "I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall, and I will allow the world's greatest military to fight these terrorists. Because that's exactly what they are."
Scott's bellicosity was no mere bolt from the blue. As Reason has been documenting for six years now, Republicans, even while otherwise souring on U.S interventionism abroad, have increasingly concluded that the alarming spike in domestic fentanyl overdoses would best be treated by sending the military into Mexico.
Donald Trump first floated the idea, while he was president, of designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations—thereby allowing for extraterritorial prosecutions, enhanced investigative powers, and increased penalties for domestic drug-related crimes—in March 2019, but held off after the government of Mexico repeatedly objected on grounds of sovereignty while making uncooperative noises about transnational migration policy.
But the appetite for corralling cartels into the otherwise-unpopular war on terror was only beginning to rumble in the conservative belly. Trump himself in the summer of 2020 twice asked then–Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether "we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly," according to Esper's 2022 memoir. Notable MAGA politicians Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) have both suggested violent interdiction south of the border, as have a bevy of more traditional hawks. There are a handful of escalatory bills bouncing around Congress.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 10:02:50 GMT -8
If We Can Keep Democracy Long Enough for the Demographics to Kick In
There is a lot about the American electorate that we are only now beginning to see. These developments have profound implications for the future of both the Republican and the Democratic coalitions.
Two key Democratic constituencies — the young and the religiously unobservant — have substantially increased as a share of the electorate.
This shift is striking.
In 2012, for example, white evangelicals — a hard-core Republican constituency — made up the same proportion of the electorate as the religiously unaffiliated: agnostics, atheists and the nonreligious. Both groups stood at roughly 19 percent of the population.
By 2022, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (better known as P.R.R.I.), the percentage of white evangelicals had fallen to 13.6 percent, while those with little or no interest in religion and more progressive inclinations had surged to 26.8 percent of the population.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 10:04:50 GMT -8
This Looks Really Bad (or Is It Really Good?)
Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before FBI agents and a prosecutor visited the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 10:06:55 GMT -8
Moving with All the Speed of Merrick Garland
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration stripped one of the nation's largest drug distributors of its license to sell highly addictive painkillers Friday after determining it failed to flag thousands of suspicious orders at the height of the opioid crisis.
The action against Morris & Dickson Co. that threatens to put it out of business came two days after an Associated Press investigation found the DEA allowed the company to keep shipping drugs for nearly four years after a judge recommended the harshest penalty for its “cavalier disregard” of rules aimed at preventing opioid abuse.
The DEA acknowledged the time it took to issue its final decision was “longer than typical for the agency” but blamed Morris & Dickson in part for holding up the process by seeking delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its lengthy pursuit of a settlement that the agency said it had considered. The order becomes effective in 90 days, allowing more time to negotiate a settlement.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 10:08:15 GMT -8
Want a Lighthouse? Here's Your Chance
Ten lighthouses that for generations have stood like sentinels along America's shorelines protecting mariners from peril and guiding them to safety are being given away at no cost or sold at auction by the federal government.
The aim of the program run by the General Services Administration is to preserve the properties, most of which are more than a century old.
The development of modern technology, including GPS, means lighthouses are no longer essential for navigation, said John Kelly of the GSA's office of real property disposition. And while the Coast Guard often maintains aids to navigation at or near lighthouses, the structures themselves are often no longer mission critical.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 10:12:18 GMT -8
What's a Little Delay in Social Security Payments?
“It feels like I’m living on the edge of a cliff,” 63-year-old Melissa Fields told The Washington Post. She lives on $1,388 a month, plus Medicare and Medicaid. “I’m so scared. I’ve been disabled my whole life and have always depended on my Social Security, my Medicaid, my Medicare. To threaten to take that away is unfair, it’s cruel. The prospect [of] … being suddenly without money or health care is too much to bear.”
Fields needs dialysis every day and has to pay a portion of that cost. She is $12,000 in debt and struggles to make minimum payments on her credit cards. This is very literally life or death for her.
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Post by mhbruin on May 26, 2023 10:13:11 GMT -8
Putin Can Still Win the War with a Little Help from His Friends
If you can get past the first minute, which DeSantis devotes to attacking the “woke” American military, you can finally reach that ray of hope on which Putin must currently hang his future dreams. DeSantis calls the illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine “what’s going on in Eastern Europe.” Then says he wants a “settlement,” says he worries about “a wider war,” and the only time he says the word “Ukraine” is when expressing how he doesn’t want to get involved there.
Right now, as most of the world waits for Ukraine’s next move, Putin has one hope—the Republican counteroffensive against democracy.
So Far, No Good
On the day that Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine, Putin set two straightforward goals in a speech to the Russian people: “de-Nazifying” and “demilitarizing” Ukraine. Essentially, that meant bringing down the Ukrainian government and destroying the Ukrainian military.
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