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July 16, 2025

Daily Tech News 16 July 2025

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:35 AM | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 15, 2025

Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - July 15, 2025 [scampydog]

No Stairway.JPG


Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday ONT - cheaper than a weekly therapy session. Jump into the comments for some fun after you have skimmed, perused, or read the content.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Bed-Hoppers Cafe

bridgeofsighsgustavedore.jpg
Painting of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice
by Gustave Dore
If memory serves, it's called the Bridge of Sighs
because the bridge leads from a prison to the
place of execution. You get a few sighs of regret
as you cross it. Swell view, though!

My memory didn't quite serve. The bridge led not from the prison to the gallows, but from the courts where the accused were tried to the prisons where they were subsequently jailed.

Dog never goes anywhere without his teddy bear.

Another happy customer.

Re-Post: They thought it would be nice to be married at a farm. They thought wrong.

This cat's been riding her dog-brother since she was a kitten.

Cuddling an otter.

Head-tilting with a friend.

Cats will steal anyone's bed.

Drone captures images of great white sharks gliding just beneath the surface. Good video, just excuse his relentless Shark Apologism. ("The most misunderstood of creatures" -- nah, I understand them just fine. We just disagree on whether I'm food.)

Cute dog is moved by seeing Simba suffer in The Lion King.

Dungeons & Dragons TV commercial from the early eighties.

Women feeds and raises an orphaned fawn, "Thor."

Replacing Timothy Chalamet in Dune with Elmo the Muppet. I don't really see much difference.

A couple's dog passed. Then the goofiest-looking stray dog decided they should adopt him.

Beaver enjoys a good rub.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (282) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

Stay Gold, NYT:

nytisprecious.jpg

That is adorable!


Bill Melugin
@BillMelugin_

BREAKING: CBP reports June was the lowest month of illegal crossings ever recorded at the southern border, w/ just 6,072 for the month. The Biden admin routinely had 6,000+ in a single day.

CBP reports ZERO releases of illegal aliens into the US in June, compared to 27,776 in June 2024.

CBP says June was second month in a row of zero releases of illegal aliens at the southern border.

Bill Melugin
@BillMelugin_

A reminder, President Biden routinely claimed he had "done all he can do" with the border, and that bipartisan legislation was needed to fix it.

That claim turned out to be unequivocally false.

Alan Derschowitz now clarifies: There's not an "Epstein client list," just names that have come up in grand jury testimony of largely-innocent people. And he says these records are redacted by the New York courts, not by the DOJ.


arvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz on Tuesday asserted that juges in New York were responsible for suppressing information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case rather than the Trump administration.

"So, many of the things that are being suppressed are being suppressed by two judges in Manhattan, and they're doing it largely to protect the alleged accusers who are, in the view of the judges, victims, even though we don't know what their actual status is," he told Chris Cuomo.

He further asserted that, while there is no one client list, the FBI possessed an affidavit from Epstein accusers, that he said "accuse various people of having improper sex, and that has been redacted, the names of the people accused have been blacked out."

Dershowitz went on to assert that the redactions could be reversed were the matter to reach a court.

Julie Kelly points out that while MAGA is roiling about Epstein, we're ignoring major victories.

Among others:

Many DOJ employees are leaving voluntarily rather than anxiously refresh their email inbox for a message with the subject line, "Notice of Removal From Federal Service." Dozens of employees working at the DOJ unit responsible for defending the administration against a nonstop deluge of lawsuits have resigned, according to a Reuters analysis this month. Prosecutors complained of a heavy workload--boo hoo!--and ideological differences with the new boss.

"Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system. How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?" one lawyer who recently quit told Reuters.

A similar exodus is underway at the DOJ's civil rights division where nearly 70 percent of the division's attorneys have headed for the exits rather than work for Harmeet Dhillon, the president's pick to run the office. Apparently the totally nonpolitical lawyers object to doing things like keeping boys out of girls' sports, protecting children from surgical mutilation, and combating religious bias--just a few of Dhillon's stated objectives.

All of this comes on top of months of success in identifying and firing known partisans at both the DOJ and FBI, an historic purge with no signs of stopping. The moves are "creating rampant speculation and fear within the workforce over who might be terminated next," former staffers told the Washington Post.


Trump's DOJ has sent out subpoenas to butcher-shops still performing "gender affirming" mutilations on children.

Watch how the left-wing garbage blog United Press International reports this:

he Justice Department on Wednesday announced that it had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics performing gender-affirming care for minors, as the Trump administration ramps up its attacks on this marginalized community.

No information about the doctors and clinics subpoenaed was provided by the Justice Department, though it suggested the subpoenas were part of investigations into "healthcare fraud, false statements and more."

"Medical professionals and organizations that mutilate children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

The Pentagon is snubbing the left-wing, Deep State operation called "The Aspen Security Forum." This is a subsidiary of the Aspen Institute, which infamously brought in the FBI to wargame a "table simulation" instructing the media to suppress any reportage on a hypothetical leak of Hunter Biden's laptop.

The Pentagon has pulled all military speakers from the event, calling the organization "globalist."


The Pentagon has pulled roughly a dozen high-ranking U.S. military officials who had been slated to participate in this week's annual Aspen Security Forum, Just the News has learned.

The Defense Department cited the left-wing nature of the Aspen Institute and the participation of such critics of President Trump as Biden administration National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

The annual forum put on by the Aspen Institute -- which has been dubbed "the mountain retreat for the liberal elite" -- describes the event as "the premier national security and foreign policy conference in the United States."

Roughly a dozen top Defense Department officials -- including the secretary of the Navy and the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command -- are still listed as speakers on the Aspen Security Forum agenda this week, but a source told Just the News over the weekend that that will no longer happen.

"The Department of Defense has no interest in legitimizing an organization that has invited former officials who have been the architects of chaos abroad and failure at home," Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Just the News.

"They are antithetical to the America First values of this administration. Senior representatives of the Department of Defense will no longer be participating in an event that promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the President of the United States," Wilson also said.


A professor of music was punished by his left-wing fake "university" for saying the unsayable: That classical music is not racist.

It took a lawsuit, but he just got a $750,000 settlement.


More than four years after suing the University of North Texas for punishing him in a spat over alleged racism in classical music, distinguished research professor Timothy Jackson accepted a $725,000 settlement with the taxpayer-funded school in a legal fight that pitted embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton against former state Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell.

The parties filed a joint stipulation of dismissal earlier this month, signed by Paxton's office as counsel to UNT and Mitchell as co-counsel to Jackson. The settlement also gives back Jackson the music theory journal he founded and edited and even reduces his teaching load.

UNT kicked Jackson out of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, named after German music theorist Heinrich Schenker, and put it on ice for five years after Jackson published an issue responding to a black peer's claims that the Jewish Schenker was an "ardent racist."

...

The university opened an investigation of the journal and editors including Jackson after anonymous graduate students condemned the Ewell response issue for "platforming of racist sentiments" and demanded its editors be punished. Ewell wrote and circulated an "open letter on antiracist actions" against the journal as well.

To encourage learning English and assimilation, Trump slashes the budgets for translation services to the minimum necessary levels.


The Department of Justice said it is coordinating a government-wide effort to reduce the use of foreign languages in public-facing services, calling many such programs "non-essential."
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ will lead efforts to codify Trump's executive order and eliminate "wasteful virtue-signaling policies," emphasizing a focus on national unity through shared language.
According to Breitbart News, DHS has also been instructed to discontinue translation services for calls regarding immigration or employment matters.

Tom Cotton wants to close the birthright citizenship loophole, at least for criminals.

Sen. Tom Cotton has introduced a bill to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens, terrorists, and foreign spies. The move backs President Trump's America First agenda and targets a key driver of illegal immigration.

Key Details:

Cotton's bill would deny automatic citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, foreign terrorists, and foreign spies.

The legislation responds to what Cotton calls a major contributor to the illegal immigration crisis under President Joe Biden.

The Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled that children of illegal immigrants must be granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

You might think that doesn't go far enough but I know what he's up to: He's using the left's tactic of making a "test case" for the courts that they will have a lot of trouble knocking down, thereby establishing the precedent to go further with the next bill.

Comer subpoenas Biden's former chief of staff/Lead Puppeteer.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Tuesday subpoenaed Joe Biden's deputy chief of staff when Biden was president.

The committee had requested the former White House official, Annie Tomasini, to appear for a deposition on Friday.

Tomasini appeared for a transcribed interview in May, and her legal counsel has confirmed her voluntary appearance for July 18, according to the subpoena. However, on Monday, her lawyers requested a subpoena to compel her appearance on July 18.

"The Committee seeks information about your assessment of and relationship with former President Biden to explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents' fitness to serve pursuant to its authority under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or to propose changes to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment itself," the subpoena reads.

Posted by: Ace at 06:25 PM | Comments (289) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Paul Sperry: The Criminal Case for Comey's and Brennan's Perjury is Real and It's Spectacular

They have repeatedly lied to Congress.

Explosive new evidence suggests that some of the highest-ranking officials in the Obama-era CIA and FBI perjured themselves regarding their claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump secure his victory in 2016.

A newly released CIA review challenges their sworn denials to Congress that the Steele dossier -- a discredited set of allegations about Trump funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign -- was used as the basis for the years-long Russiagate probe that hamstrung President Trump's first term.

The eight-page review conducted by career CIA analysts found the dossier did, in fact, worm its way into the text of the highly classified report known as an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) to buttress the thinly sourced, yet inflammatory allegation that "Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances."

"Ultimately, agency heads decided to include a two-page summary of the dossier as an annex to the ICA, with a disclaimer that the material was not used 'to reach the analytic conclusions,'" the CIA review said on page five. "However, by placing a reference to the annex material in the main body of the ICA as the fourth supporting bullet for the judgment that Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win, the ICA implicitly elevated [the dossier's] unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment."

The CIA's "lessons-learned" report contradicts Obama administration officials' claims -- most of which were made under oath -- that they did not use the since-debunked dossier.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, for one, insisted in his sworn May 2017 testimony before Congress that the Steele dossier was not "in any way" used as a basis for the so-called ICA completed in late December 2016. Later, during a May 2023 House Judiciary Committee interview, Brennan claimed: "The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment."

Likewise, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper said in an official January 2017 statement that "we did not rely upon [the dossier] in any way for our conclusions." Several months later, he assured Congress the dossier was "not a formal part of the Intelligence Community Assessment."

More recently, Clapper also swore, "We didn't use [the dossier] in our Intelligence Community Assessment" and "We didn't use it for the Intelligence Community Assessment, we didn't draw on it." [Emphasis added.] In the same May 2023 House Judiciary interview, which was conducted in closed session but during which he was advised of federal perjury laws, he expounded that "the team that put together the Intelligence Community Assessment was not to draw on it as a source for the Intelligence Community Assessment. So you won't find a footnote using the dossier as a source."

While testifying in a December 2017 deposition, moreover, former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asserted that although a written summary of the dossier was appended to the classified version of the ICA, it was never referred to "in the main body" of the intel report.

"I participated in conversations [with Brennan and Clapper] in the consideration of how to handle the Steele reporting with respect to the ICA. And ultimately it ended up being included in 'attachment A,' rather than in the main body of the report," he told the House Intelligence Committee, according to a transcript of the closed-door interview. "It's handled and referred to in an appendix," he added, "and not in the main body."

McCabe's boss, former FBI Director James B. Comey, swore the same thing during a September 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: "It was significant enough and consistent enough with other intelligence that it ought to be included, but it wasn't sufficiently corroborated to be in the body of the Intelligence Community Assessment."

The CIA review shows that the unverified and now-debunked dossier was used as support for the intelligence analysis, not just as a sidebar as Obama officials have maintained. And they relied on it to back the most inflammatory finding in the intelligence report.

The new report also raises fresh questions about the candor of the Obama administration's top intel operatives and whether they politicized intelligence to paint incoming GOP President Donald Trump as compromised by the Kremlin.

In an X post last week, deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis said newly declassified CIA emails "show how Brennan personally intervened to insert the Steele dossier's lies into intelligence analysis" over the objections of his top Russia analysts at Langley.

Margot Cleveland of the Federalist writes that the case is even worse than Ratcliffe's report suggested.


A still-classified staff report compiled by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) found the John Brennan-led 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment ("ICA") on Russian Election Interference significantly worse and significantly more corrupt than conveyed in the memorandum released last week by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to sources familiar with the report. The HPSCI staff report also reveals more details of the corruption, the sources told The Federalist.

...

But those problems and the others detailed in the CIA report pale in comparison to the real corruption at play, according to sources familiar with a separate HPSCI staff report. Those sources told The Federalist that HPSCI, under the leadership of then-Chair Devin Nunes, "found the ICA significantly worse and significantly more corrupt than was conveyed in the CIA report." The staff report also reveals more details related to the ICA's report on Russia's 2016 influence campaign.

The HPSCI staff report, however, remains classified. In a letter to President Trump last week, current HPSCI Chair Rick Crawford, R-Ark., noted there was a strong public interest in the report being declassified. A HPSCI spokesperson told The Federalist that "it is the Committee's view that the information in this report should be released to the public." The spokesperson added that Chairman Crawford has raised this issue with CIA leadership.

...

Given his record, there is no reason to doubt that Director Ratcliffe will ensure the HPSCI staff report will be declassified when the time is right. Here, the public would be well advised to remember that transparency and accountability may sometimes be at cross purposes: It may well be that Director Ratcliffe or the other members of the Trump Administration working to rid D.C. of the Augean-stable levels of corruption have not yet finished investigating the additional details and/or individuals implicated in the HPSCI staff report. And if that is the case, perjury may be the least of Brennan's worries.


Matt Taibbi thinks that this dispute is mostly a "misunderstanding." He says that Ratcliffe wrote his short 8-page report in order to give Kash Patel the grounds to open a perjury investigation, but one shouldn't take this as Ratcliffe's last word on the subject. He says the other allegations can come in once the investigation has begun.

He says that at least the full report on Brennan's and Comey's crimes has now been released from the CIA vault in which it had been hidden.

The HPSCI report has remained classified and "in a vault at the CIA" for seven long years. This followed the same pattern as the WMD episode, where the CIA did not release its full 93-page National Intelligence Estimate* on Iraq until 2015, thirteen years after a redacted version was released to the public to sell the invasion. The full document, hidden from the American public before the war, determined there was no operational tie between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

HPSCI investigators who hoped the new Trump administration would aggressively pursue the leads Kash Patel's team dug up in 2017 and 2018 were both puzzled by the release of Ratcliffe's relatively tamer report last week, and upset that their more hard-hitting work remained locked up. After Crawford sent his letter, however, Trump interceded and Ratcliffe returned the original HPSCI report to Crawford on the Hill. The HPSCI material remains classified, but at least it's no longer being "held hostage" at Langley, as Crawford put it, in a public note of thanks tweeted last Thursday.

The news that the FBI is now opening criminal investigations into Brennan and Comey seems to have mollified some of those close to the original HPSCI investigation. "I don't know how the fuck they got here, but I'm happy they did," laughed one source familiar with the full HPSCI report.

The same source was not disappointed that the FBI is "only" looking at charges like perjury or conspiracy. "You have to understand, there's no statute that really fits what these people did," the source said. "But there is one against lying to Congress, and given that that's what they have to work with, the Ratcliffe report makes more sense to me now."

Posted by: Ace at 05:29 PM | Comments (265) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Harvard-Harris Poll: Democrats (and Tucker Carlson) Are Once Again on the Wrong Side of an 80/20 Issue

The American voter favors stopping Iran's nuke program "by any means necessary" by a margin of literally 80 to 20.

Even Democrats support this to the tune of 70%.

Now, as to approval of Trump's successful "Midnight Hammer" strike: Democrats oppose it just because they reflexively, insanely oppose anything associated with Trump. Even though the Midnight Hammer strike was successful and did stop Iran's nuke program.

But even there, 58% of the public supports the strike.

And Tucker Carlson needs to go back to his hard-hitting UFO reportage.


Turns out, they were clutching their pearls on the wrong side of a new 80/20 issue.

No, that's not an exaggeration.

According to a new Harvard-Harris CAPS poll, a staggering 80% of voters back stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions "by any means necessary." That's right, "any means." Even among self-identified Democrats, support is north of 70%.

That's a landslide.

When it comes to the strike itself, the numbers tell a similar story that the left won't like. A solid 58% of Americans support Trump's decision to level Fordow and the other Iranian nuclear sites, despite the usual Democrat outrage machine's propaganda efforts.

Predictably, 67% of Democrats oppose it. But here's the kicker: Every other demographic backs the strike, except one, Gen Z, where the split is a tight 48/52.

Recommended: Media Runs Interference as Biden Autopen Scandal Explodes

Even more telling, 54% of Americans consider Operation Midnight Hammer a "major accomplishment" by the U.S. military. The 46% who downplay it? You guessed it: mostly Democrats, by a lopsided 32/68 margin. Independents are split down the middle, and the youngest voters again tilt negative, 41/59. Still, Trump's bold move is winning where it counts -- and the numbers are only getting worse for his critics.

Here's a graph I stole from Ed Morrissey:

harrispolliranstrikes.jpg

Posted by: Ace at 04:17 PM | Comments (371) | Trackbacks (Suck)

As Predicted, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are Refusing to Allow People to Rebuild Their Houses in the Pallisades.
The Plan is to Starve Them Out and Offer Them Pennies on the Dollar for Their Property, to Build Low-Income Apartments.

Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass promised Californians who lost their homes in their engineered firestorm that there would be reduced red-tape to allow reconstruction to begin within weeks.

More than six months later, not a single home has been rebuilt. In fact, not a single construction has even started.

People suspected that Newsom and Bass would not let this crisis go to waste and would seize people's property in order to build apartment buildings for the poor.

That's exactly what they're doing. They're refusing to grant permits to let people rebuild, so that their multimillion-dollar properties become effectively valueless.

Then they're going to offer peanuts to buy these distressed, deliberately-impoverished landowners out.

Right Angle News Network
@Rightanglenews

BREAKING - The California Senate has passed SB 549, granting LA County authority to purchase fire‑destroyed lots for minimal cost and convert them into low‑income housing, directly contradicting Gavin Newsom's previous assurance to homeowners that such government‑driven property conversions wouldn't happen.

Beege Wellborne wrote about this last week.

Adam Carolla predicted this. (Video below the fold).

Beege Wellborne writes: "You knew he was right."


That sick feeling only grew as months passed. The empty words of a nervous-as-a-cat Bass, defensively deflecting Donald Trump's directions to make residents as whole as possible as soon as possible, hang in the air still.

In hard-hit Altadena alone, the rebuilding process six months later is sucking the lives and hope out of people.

And every dime they ever had.


...Addressing the concerns of homeowners at a recent community meeting, Barger told them, "You have lost so much, you shouldn't have to worry about permitting fees getting in the way of rebuilding your home. For most families, these fees may have exceeded $20,000. That's a barrier we cannot allow to stand."

The deferral of fees only applies to people who lived in their own single-family homes before the fire. It does not apply to non-owner-occupied rental properties, multi-family housing units or commercial structures.

The county estimates that if 60% of homeowners in Altadena and elsewhere in unincorporated Palisades rebuild, it would amount to $84 million in building permit fees.

Permitting is only one hurdle. For most, state and local building codes have changed in the decades since many of these homes were originally built, meaning the house has to have changes and extras that insurance covering a like-to-like rebuild does not account for.

"It adds expenses that we didn't expect. Like, solar is required on all new builds, and so is the easement from the property line. It's got to be five feet now and ours was only three," says Toomey, as she stands under a backyard oak tree that survived.

"And insurance doesn't pay for that stuff. That's on us," Silvernail adds.

Soil sampling is now required, and that tacks another $5000-$8000 onto the process.

The very long and tedious process, which is beginning to look as if it's specifically designed to soak as much money out of the homeowner as possible before they give up in disgust and move elsewhere.

There have been only an unconscionable 44 building permits approved in LA County since the fires.

...But the process is still slow. As of midday July 1, 2025, the LA County Permitting Progress Dashboard showed 890 rebuild applications in the Eaton Fire area, but only 44 building permits have been issued, taking an average turnaround of about 10 weeks to get through the process.

And speed matters. A survey of fire victims found that the longer it takes to rebuild, the more likely it is people won't move back.

"So even folks that fully intend to move back today, if this process, either through permitting or financing or insurance, takes more than three years, the percentage of people that want to move back drops to like 50%," Kawahara says.

Those are the single-family homeowners' travails.

Back in February, I wrote about a new Los Angeles ordinance that had come into effect, requiring low-income housing to be erected, replacing apartment buildings that were lost.

What that meant to fire victims who'd lost their rental homes was they might never have a home to return to if the landlord rebuilt their building and they now earned too much to make the qualifications for the low-income threshold.

In effect, LA County would be making them homeless.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Ace at 02:58 PM | Comments (435) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Inflation Ticks Upwards But Comes In Under Expectations

It rose 0.1% to 2.7%.


Under President Trump, core inflation continues to come in below expectations -- with June marking the fifth consecutive month of better-than-forecast results. From vehicles to groceries, key prices are holding steady or falling, confirming that inflation is right on track.

Key Details:

Headline inflation rose just 0.1% in June, with the annual rate at 2.7% -- both numbers showing price stability as the trend continues to improve.

Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, increased 0.2% -- below the 0.3% economists predicted. Year-over-year, core inflation held steady at 2.9%, reinforcing the consistent progress made under President Trump.

New vehicle prices declined 0.3% in June, and used car prices dropped 0.7%. Apparel prices rose for the first time in months, but men's and children's clothing costs fell. Shoe prices and household furnishings saw modest increases, showing strength in domestic demand.

Diving Deeper:

For the fifth month in a row, inflation under President Donald J. Trump came in cooler than economists expected -- a clear sign that the White House's pro-growth, pro-stability agenda is working. June's Consumer Price Index showed a modest 0.1% rise from the prior month, and an annual increase of 2.7%, slightly above projections but still a sharp departure from the runaway inflation seen under Joe Biden.

The bigger story came from core inflation. Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy categories, rose just 0.2% in June -- under the 0.3% forecast -- and remained at 2.9% year-over-year. Since President Trump returned to office, core inflation has stayed consistently below expectations, helping drive real wage growth and boost consumer confidence.


Rapid Response 47
@RapidResponse47

.@PressSec: "Every month since @POTUS
took office, core inflation--the best measure of inflation--has beat or matched expectations. The data proves that @POTUS
is stabilizing inflation and the Panicans continue to be wrong about tariffs raising prices."

So the media did not cover inflation under Biden for four years, covered it intensely for the first few months of Trump's Restoration with snarky "I thought Trump said he'd lower prices on day one" hit pieces, then stopped covering inflation when Trump's policies reduced inflation to just above the 2% target rate, and now are back to covering it again, for at least this month, because it ticked up 0.1%.

Got it.

Regime hack Jerome Powell cut interest rates just before the election to boost Biden, and refused to raise interest rates throughout most of Biden's reign of inflation. He never cautioned Biden on his massive overspending or linked it to inflation.

But now that a president he doesn't like is in the White House, he's claiming he can't ever cut interest rates, because Trump's tariffs may, one day, possibly, cause price increases in the future.

People are now calling for "regime change" at the Fed.


Former Fed Gov. Kevin Warsh, considered to be a top contender to succeed Fed Chair Jerome Powell, said the central bank needs "regime change."

"I think what we need is regime change at the Fed," Warsh told Maria Bartiromo in an interview on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures that aired on Sunday. "And that's not just about the chairman, it's about a whole range of people, it's about changing their mindset and their models, and frankly it's about breaking some heads, because the way they've been doing business is not working."

President Trump has been openly critical of Powell and has called on the central bank to cut interest rates, with no success. Fed officials have taken a cautious approach to rates in the face of mild inflation data.


...

Asked about whether Trump has the authority to fire Powell, Kevin Hassett, a top Trump economic advisor, told ABC's This Week that right now it's an issue "that's being looked into. But certainly, if there's cause, he does."

A Republican Congressman also called for Powell's resignation.

Arizona Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh on Monday called for the resignation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, citing a pattern of "gross mismanagement" and policy failures. In a public letter shared on X, Hamadeh accused Powell of dragging down the economy by refusing to cut interest rates.

Key Details:

In a letter posted to X, Rep. Hamadeh criticized Powell for what he described as "gross mismanagement" of the Federal Reserve's headquarters renovation project and a failure to act in the country's economic interest.
Hamadeh also took aim at Powell's public comments on tariffs and accused him of showing "a lack of candor" while ignoring the need for timely interest rate cuts.
The criticism follows public comments from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Chairman William Pulte, who said he was "encouraged" by reports of Powell's potential resignation, calling it "the right decision for America."

Trump is searching for a replacement for Powell when his term is up... or maybe before his term is up.

The Trump administration has taken its clearest step yet toward reshaping the Federal Reserve, launching a formal search for who will take over from Jerome Powell when his term ends -- or possibly before. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, "There are a lot of great candidates and we'll see how rapidly it progresses. It's President Trump's decision and it will move at his speed."

Bessent, who is among the top contenders alongside former Fed governor Kevin Warsh and NEC Director Kevin Hassett, dismissed speculation that the administration would install a "shadow" Fed chair in advance of Powell's departure. "It would be very confusing for the market," he noted, suggesting the White House is focused on an orderly, albeit early, transition.


Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (319) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Advises Prosecution of Adam Schiff for Mortgage Fraud

This doesn't seem like a big story but it's a slow news day.

The problem is that Schiff claims his Maryland home is his primary residence in order to get a lower interest rate for the mortgage. But the law says that a Senator must actually reside in his home state (California, in Schiff's case).

This could be characterized as mortgage fraud, but I dunno. We all know that most senators live permanently in the DC area and the idea that they are primarily residents of their "home" state is just another fiction in the Empire of Lies.

Then again, I have been reliably informed that No One Is Above the Law, even when it comes to ticky-tack stuff like keeping a napkin you wrote a note on as president.


President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged "justice" for Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., after Fannie Mae's Financial Crimes Division concluded that he engaged in a sustained pattern of possible mortgage fraud.

"I have always suspected Shifty Adam Schiff was a scam artist. And now I learn that Fannie Mae's Financial Crimes Division have concluded that Adam Schiff has engaged in a sustained pattern of possible Mortgage Fraud," Trump posted on Truth Social.

"Adam Schiff said that his primary residence was in MARYLAND to get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America, when he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA because he was a Congressman from CALIFORNIA," he added. "I always knew Adam Schiff was a Crook. The FRAUD began with the refinance of his Maryland property on February 6, 2009, and continued through multiple transactions until the Maryland property was correctly designated as a second home on October 13, 2020. Mortgage Fraud is very serious, and CROOKED Adam Schiff (now a Senator) needs to be brought to justice."

Fannie Mae has not issued a public statement as of press time.

This isn't much of a post so I'll try to find another story within 30-40 minutes.

Posted by: Ace at 01:12 PM | Comments (251) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Just the News: Discovery of "Vault" Where Comey Hid Evidence of His Russiagate Maneuverings May Help Prove Conspiracy

I think the idea here is one that the DOJ uses all the time in prosecutions: If you do something that indicates a consciousness of guilt, such as hiding evidence, then that can be used as evidence to prove intent at trial.

So, James "No Intent" Comey may have proven his intent to defraud the United States of the presidency they voted for by hiding the evidence of his crimes.


The FBI's decision to open a probe that treats the last decade of political weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence agencies as an ongoing criminal conspiracy is being cheered by lawmakers and could be aided by Director Kash Patel's recent discovery of a room where the bureau had "hidden" evidence from public and congressional view.

Patel's discovery of the evidence "vault" or "lockbox" as he called it on a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan and the opening of the "overarching conspiracy" probe occurred around the same time this spring, officials told Just the News.

The discovery that the FBI stashed away evidence in politically hot probes like Russigate could help prosecutors convince a grand jury that government officials were engaged in a coverup or an effort to deprive civil liberties, experts said.

"I think it's part of a coordinated strategy to deprive people of their constitutional rights to speech and to petition the government for redress of agreements and also the right to counsel," former Trump attorney John Eastman told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday.

And while the discovery of the evidence vault and the emergence of the conspiracy probe are shrouded in some secrecy, their existence has buoyed Republicans in Congress who long believed prosecution of government actors behind scandals like Russiagate and Biden family corruption was warranted.

"They put America through unbelievable, really historic political turmoil, knowing that the entire narrative was completely false," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., declared Monday, after word of the conspiracy case surfaced in a Just the News report.

"I felt these people were criminals for many years now," Johnson told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. "I mean, the fact that they knew this...the whole Russiagate was a conspiracy hatched by the Clinton campaign back in 2016. President Obama was briefed on that. I mean, they all knew."

Just the News reported Monday that the FBI quietly launched an investigation into a decade of Democratic Party and "deep-state" antics ranging from ginning up the Trump-Russia collusion to examining special counsel Jack Smith's pursuit of Trump.

That news could open the door for the appointment of a special prosecutor to examine whether the different events support a presentation to a grand jury regarding a criminal conspiracy to influence three consecutive presidential elections to the benefit of Democrats and the detriment of Trump.

Previously hidden documents or information with potential impact being suddenly discovered is a developing pattern, and the release of that material is likely to have major repercussions.

The FBI's "grand conspiracy" case was opened several weeks ago, Just the News reported, and it could get a significant boost if Trump were to declassify two yet-classified troves of evidence that identify key pieces of the alleged conspiracy dating back to the summer of 2016, according to several people directly familiar with the inquiry who spoke to Just the News on a condition of anonymity.

Patel said in a mid-May joint interview with FBI deputy director Dan Bongino that "as much as we know about Crossfire Hurricane, he and I just found out more last week, and we're continuing to work with Congress to put those documents out."

Comey and the Deep State repeatedly prosecuted J6ers on the theory that they "conspired to defraud the people of the United States" of a free and fair election.

That precedent can now be used to prosecute them.

Related? Pam Bondi fires the DOJ's top "ethics" official.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has dismissed one of the department's top career ethics officials. Joseph Tirrell, who was responsible for advising senior Department of Justice (DOJ) leaders on ethical standards, had long been seen by critics as emblematic of the entrenched bureaucratic mindset that too often prioritizes politics over justice. Bondi's decision sends a clear message: under her leadership, the DOJ will no longer tolerate internal resistance that undermines conservative reforms or the will of the American people.


Hello everyone! Hope your Tuesday afternoon is feeling more like a Friday 'round five-ish.

Posted by: Ace at 12:03 PM | Comments (331) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Rant

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I'm old enough to remember the summer of 1974 pretty vividly. The feeding frenzy in Washington, D.C. was the Watergate hearings leading to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon on August 9, 1974.

What is the current feeding frenzy in Washington, D.C. The Swamp? Is it RussiaGate and the possible criminal indictments of James Comey and John Brennan? No, it involves the late Jeffrey Epstein's missing client lists and the bumbling US Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

I voted for President Trump thrice and do not regret my votes nor my campaign contributions. He's not my spiritual leader, he isn't my dog sitter, he's not my golf buddy. He's my president. I voted for him and his policies. And that those policies would be implemented by competent cabinet selections.

President made "Transparency" a promise during the 2024 campaign. And when the president and/or his AG aren't going to be transparent on a promise. The president needs to be called on it. Especially since the current dust up should have never happened. Of course this is just the fodder the MSM needs to avoid covering more important matter.

I'm not sure who whispered into President-Elect Trump's ear about selecting Rep. Matt Gaetz as U.S. Attorney General. Obviously a chunk of red meat thrown out for the MAGA movement. So who ever said, "Let's replace this polarizing figure with a clueless DEI state AG." Didn't do any better. Obviously Pam's bleached roots have contaminated whatever common sense she may have possessed.

Instead of telling us who diddled whom on Epstein Island. She thought a good way to say "Squirrel, I'll change the optics" is to terminate people who probably should have been fired sooner rather than later. Later being now to cover her ass for her botched Epstein file handling.

Attorney General Pam Bondi — who has been purging the Justice Department of anyone tied to the Jan. 6 prosecutions as well as the prosecutions of President Donald Trump — fired the lawyer personally advising her and the department’s thousands of employees on ethics, Bloomberg reported Sunday.

Joseph Tirrell, who began his career in the Navy and spent almost two decades in the federal government, was fired Friday via a brief letter from Bondi, who gave no reason for the termination. The same day, Bondi fired 20 DOJ employees who were involved in prosecuting Trump. She has also recently fired employees related to the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol. Tirrell had advised Special Counsel Jack Smith on ethics related to the prosecution of Trump, Bloomberg reported.



As I write this Pam Bondi is still the AG. Dan Bongino is still deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And "Law & Order" Cash Patel is still the Director of the FBI.

Nothing will happen to either Bondi, Bongion or Patel. They will "kiss and make up" and somewhere down the road either they will resign or be fired. The NDAs they signed will forbid them from spilling whatever they may know.

Some may call me a cynic. But, I'm a realist, nothing will happen to the Diddlers of Epstein Island. Nothing will happen to the Swamp Creatures. Nothing happens to the professional protesters but OMG how dare someone walk through the capitol? It really doesn't matter who the POTUS is anymore. There are at least two sets of laws in this country and there isn't a damn legal thing we can do about it.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 11:00 AM | Comments (357) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

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The North-West Passage
Sir John Everett Millais

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (326) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 7/15/25

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Good morning kids, a few things in today's compilation of links that are worthy of note. To the courts we go where it's still a bit of a mixed bag.

On a positive note:

The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling on Monday allowing President Donald Trump’s Department of Education to resume efforts to slash its workforce in half. The decision reverses a lower court ruling ordering the reinstatement of Department of Education employees cut loose in mass layoffs, and ultimately allows Education Secretary Linda McMahon to continue her mission of winding down the department. 

The abolition of the agency itself would be ideal yet that would I believe require an act of congress and considering the Democrats reaction would be that of Dracula being doused with a vat of holy water, while the GOP would be aghast at losing an opportunity for grift. So Linda McMahon taking an axe to this viper's nest of perversion and bolshevism from within is fine by me, and hopefully all the other heads of all the other agencies and bureaucracies will follow suit. The fact that much if not all of the bureaucracy created during and after the accursed New Deal is antithetical to the Constitution and the Republic as founded, all of it is supposed to operate under the aegis and as a part of the Executive branch, and so it should stand to reason that the President has the authority to direct his duly appointed and congressionally confirmed department heads to do as he sees fit. But of course, since it's Donald Trump that is POTUS it's a different story with our so-called Democrat "defenders of our precious democracy" (vomit).

On a negative note:

Late Friday, Massachusetts federal judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, dissolved the TRO she had entered earlier in the week against the Trump Administration. Mere hours after Planned Parenthood filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services, challenging Congress’s decision in the Big, Beautiful Bill to no longer fund abortion providers, Judge Talwani issued a TRO. That 5:15 p.m. Monday TRO failed to provide any legal justification for her decision requiring the Trump Administration to continue disbursing Medicaid funding to all Planned Parenthood organizations. The Trump Administration responded with a Motion to Dissolve the TRO, stressing that “a TRO cannot issue without complying with a series of mandatory procedural requirements” and that Judge Talwani “ignored those most basic criteria.” Accordingly, the Trump Administration argued in its Motion, “[t]he Court must therefore dissolve its TRO as soon as possible.”

Federal rules also require a judge who enters an ex parte TRO to “describe the [movant’s] injury and state why it is irreparable [and] state why the order was issued without notice.” Again, Judge Talwani blatantly violated that mandatory rule, by failing to explain the purported irreparable harm. Judge Talwani attempted to rectify her errors on Friday by dissolving her initial TRO and entering an amended TRO that “provide[d] the court’s reasons for the emergency order.” But rather than remedy the defective TRO, Judge Talwani’s reasoning confirms that she never should have entered a TRO in the first instance.


So this polliwog hack-in-black botched her first completely illegal TRO which got smacked down so in the name of glorious baby-butchery issues another one.

It is high time for President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump to finally drive a stake through the heart of Marbury v. Madison and unilaterally declare this hack's actions illegal, irrelevant, null and void, and strip Planned Mengele-hood of the money. Period full stop. On top of that, let's see Congress impeach this evil hag and see that she is never allowed within a thousand miles of any courthouse, unless it is as a defendant wearing an orange jumpsuit, mantacles and leg-irons.

And while Stacy Abrams is a literal shit-stain human or otherwise is TBD, as explained in the Culture Wars section, Barack Obama said what?


Obama Tells Whining Democrats: Drop the ‘Fetal Position’ and Start Fighting

You mean like with Molotov cocktails against ICE agents or by verbally assaulting J.D. Vance and his children or by shooting up churches and synagogues? Oh wait, they're already doing that!

"Fetal" is an interesting if not ironic word for him to use, considering Kermit Gosnell et al...


Detestable, despicable lout. The Angel of Death cannot come in a swoop him and everyone like him up fast enough for me.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

Have a great day!


Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:39 AM | Comments (395) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 15 July 2025

Top Story

  • Cognition AI just bought Windsurf for $NAN. (New York Times)

    This comes after Google hired away key staff and then paid $2.4 billion to license the company's technology, which comes after OpenAI offered $3 billion to buy the company outright.


  • Speaking of AI, Grok is currently acting like a split-brain patient. It swears it can see your avatar image, but if you ask it to draw something similar it always draws a twenty-something man in a tee-shirt and jacket standing by a tree.

    If you describe your avatar it will accept that, and then insist it could always see that.


Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:47 AM | Comments (228) | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 14, 2025

Monday Overnight Open Thread - July 14, 2025 [scampydog]

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image credit: leftcoastclassics.com

Good evening and welcome to the bordering on world famous ONT. Our esteemed Monday host, Disco Doof is unable to attend. He is in parts unknown - and possibly untoward. Four-legged canine blogging this evening. Let's get to it!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (330) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Legs & Eggs Cafe

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Superstition Mountains, Arizona

Had to do a quick swap. I got a better look at the first pic I posted, of "Sleeping Lady Mountain," and realized it was faker than Jasmine Ratchet's blaccent.


Little bear waving.

Half-assing your workout. We're all guilty.

Low-T dog regrets eating so much soy.

He's the Aquaman of cockatoos.

Big puppy wants affection.

Big cat plotting in a tree.

Sea otter convention.

It was like this when I came in.

Stormy weather.

Bottom feeder.

How to clean your hooters.

Keeping your kid on a short leash.

Bringing up an orphaned crow.

Seal wants to surf.

Duckling horde.

Sultry pigeons show off their gams.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (269) | Trackbacks (Suck)

JusttheNews: FBI Now Investigating the Deep State and Democrat Party's Weaponization of Government and Attempted Coup Against Trump

They don't call it a "coup." I'm saying that. It obviously was an attempted coup by bureaucrats against the duly elected president.


The FBI has quietly launched an investigation into a decade of Democratic party and deep-state antics from Russia collusion to Jack Smith, opening the door for the appointment of a special prosecutor to examine whether the well-documented episodes amount to a criminal conspiracy to meddle in three U.S. elections to the benefit of Democrats and the detriment of President Donald Trump, Just the News has learned.

The "grand conspiracy" case was opened several weeks ago after new FBI Director Kash Patel took over, and it could get a significant boost if Trump were to declassify two secret tranches of evidence that identify a potential ignition point to the alleged conspiracy in the summer of 2016, according to several people directly familiar with the inquiry, who spoke to Just the News on a condition of anonymity.

The first piece of evidence is a classified annex to a years-old inspector general probe of Hillary Clinton's improper email server sought by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. That annex is believed to show that credible information about possible wrongdoing was intentionally ignored by the FBI.

The second tranche of evidence was identified by former Russiagate Special Counsel John Durham in his final report. The evidence was dubbed in the report as the "Clinton plan intelligence," and it was also placed in a classified annex kept from the American public and even many members of Congress.

John Solomon says MAGA will be pleased by this.


"I think next week, over the next 10 days... the base, who's been wondering, 'Where is all that accountability?'--they're gonna get some big surprises," Solomon said. He claimed the case reaches back to the summer of 2016, before Crossfire Hurricane was launched, and extends all the way through to 2024, encompassing "a large series of events" aimed at stopping Trump from winning the presidency.

Solomon said the massive case has been built largely out of the public eye, obscured by media theatrics and political infighting. "It's been masked by a lot of this infighting and drama and soap opera stuff," he said. "But the truth of the matter is, MAGA base Americans are gonna be happy when they see where this is all heading."

...

Bannon pressed Solomon to clarify whether this was, in fact, a formal investigation by federal authorities. Solomon didn't hesitate. "There is a conspiracy case that was opened that looks at this window as a very large window," he confirmed. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a special prosecutor named by Pam Bondi in the next week or two."


This might have been leaked by Patel or Bongino (or people close to them) to let MAGA know they're still doing the jobs they were appointed to do, and reduce any anger about the Epstein matter. Everyone's reporting they're both very angry about Bondi hanging them out to dry over that.

But that wouldn't make the leak false, it would just explain why they sought fit to give the leak to a reporter.

I could see people sniffing "promises, promises," though.

Posted by: Ace at 06:31 PM | Comments (260) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Tries to Quell MAGA Frustration Over Jeffrey Epstein Files

A lot of leftwingers are enjoying this. I saw longtime Nothing-to-See-Here Fake Reporter Jake Tapper doing a sudden 180 and demanding a full and vigorous investigation into the Epstein files.


But the left is fishing in already-troubled waters, as MAGA influencers -- political entrepreneurs, mostly -- like Laura Loomer, Steven Bannon, and Tucker Carlson continue stoking suspicions and making insinuations.

Politico:


President Donald Trump faces a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion amid fallout over his administration's handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

And some of his closest allies are cautioning the situation for the president will get worse before it gets better -- even as it threatens to derail his megabill victory lap and continues to divide parts of his administration and, more broadly, his supporters.

Trump has tried twice in as many days to tamp down his base's anger, posting to Truth Social Saturday that he didn't "like what's happening" among his own supporters. He also threw his support behind Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has taken the brunt of much of the right's ire over the Epstein files. Several news organizations have also reported that Bondi clashed with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino over the files.

After disembarking Air Force One Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, Trump faced a question about Bongino, who skipped work Friday. Trump insisted that he's "a very good guy. ... He sounded terrific, actually. No, I think he's in good shape."

Mike Davis, the MAGA legal brawler and occasional Oval Office visitor, has taken up defending Trump's DOJ, said in an interview that "the Trump Justice Department wanted to be fully transparent, but can't." He added: "This is a case of no good deed going unpunished."

Davis argues DOJ can't release more, including that there is grand jury material involved, court records under seal, child pornography involved, the need to protect victims of "heinous crimes," and "unsubstantiated, bogus claims, like we saw during the Kavanaugh proceedings, where you had double and even triple hearsay."

...

The split over Epstein represents one of the biggest rifts within Trump's supporters since the president took office for his second term. On one side are MAGA supporters who push claims that Epstein was murdered in his jail cell and that the disgraced financier had kept a list of high-profile clients. But Trump's DOJ and FBI have concluded that there's no evidence for either.

On Monday morning, the conservative influencer Benny Johnson outlined a four-pronged approach for Trump to fix what he called "the Epstein memo crisis," including calling for a press conference and bringing in former President Bill Clinton for "questioning."

Laura Loomer, the MAGA activist who is influential in Trump's inner circle and visits everyone from Vice President JD Vance to Trump himself, isn't convinced that the president has sufficiently quelled MAGA's frustrations.

"I don't think that just putting out a Truth Social post is going to make this issue go away. It's kind of had a Streisand effect, actually, where people are focusing on this topic a lot more than they were before he posted a Truth Social," Loomer told POLITICO. "I think that it would be wise for the White House to develop some type of a strategy in addressing the base's concerns, so that we can mitigate any fallout or damage done to the Trump administration.

Loomer is also calling for a special counsel appointed to do an independent investigation of the handling of the Epstein files so that people can feel like this issue is being investigated, and perhaps take it out of [Bondi's] hands, because I don't think that she has been transparent or done a good job handling this issue."

ABC "News" was never interested in the Epstein case... until now.


Former New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie says President Trump has "benefited" from and "encouraged" conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein and therefore bears responsibility for the fallout about the now-closed Justice Department probe into the deceased financier and convicted sex-offender.

Trump vowed during his winning 2024 to look into Epstein's death while in jail, now ruled a suicide, and whether he indeed has an incriminating "client list," which the Trump administration says, in fact, does not exist.

Trump MAGA base feels misled and has the largely heaped the criticsm on Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"Well, look, what Donald Trump is learning is when you start the fire, sometimes you can't put it out," Christie, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate and on-again-off-again Trump supporter, told ABC News on Sunday.

"Now, he started this Epstein fire during the campaign and prior to that by alleging that this was all some, you know, Democratic plot, that he was perhaps murdered by former Democratic officeholders, that there were a lot of Democrats who had been down to Jeffrey Epstein's island and all the rest.

"He used that to fire his own base, and he was going to get to the bottom of it, and he was going to release it because he's in -- absolutely in favor of transparency," Christie continued. "Well, now you get into the job and you realize -- you know, 'maybe I don't want to do that.'"

Christie said that Bondi is doing what Trump wants her to.

"And let's be clear about this: Pam Bondi -- there's no chance, in my opinion, that Pam Bondi made this decision on her own. No chance. She was instructed by the White House that we're not releasing this stuff. And that's why he's defending her," Christie said.

Christie also pushed back on the suggestion that it was mostly the people around Trump who were encouraging the conspiracy theories about Epstein.

"We cannot let the president off that easily. He benefited directly from it. He fueled it. He encouraged it. And he certainly didn't stop it," Christie said.

Gislaine Maxwell says she's willing to testify about Epstein's ring.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend and madame to the late Jeffrey Epstein, is willing to testify before Congress about the Epstein Files, the Daily Mail reported Monday, citing "sources."

"Despite the rumors, Ghislaine was never offered any kind of plea deal. She would be more than happy to sit before Congress and tell her story," a source told the outlet. "She remains the only person to be jailed in connection to Epstein and she would welcome the chance to tell the American public the truth."

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking and array of other charges in connection with her procurement of minors for Epstein's pleasure.

She has further cast doubt on the official narrative surrounding Epstein's death, asserting that he was murdered and did not kill himself.

I believe she continues insisting that she did nothing wrong. So I'm not sure how candid her testimony would be.


Trump posted on Truth Social, making the claim -- which cannot be supported -- that the whole Epstein scandal was created by the Clintons and Deep State operatives as some kind of op against him.

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This is an ill-advised post by Trump, and a futile effort. Trump has had great sway over his voters, and they have accepted some preposterous claims from him, like that Ron DeSantis was actually a Covid Panican and is a Deep State stooge, just because Trump needed that storyline to be believed for his own purposes.

But he's not going to be able to reverse people's decades-old suspicions about Jeffrey Epstein just by posting "These aren't the files you're looking for." It's a bridge too far.

Obviously it's not true that we're only talking about Epstein because the left invented the scandal -- this has been a major story on the right for years, and Trump has pushed it as a story.

Trump's personal lawyer, then promoted to be US Attorney for NJ, promised "accountability" and the release of all the flight logs, etc.

Megyn Kelly floated the speculation that Biden's people (Obama's people, in other words) rewrote and edited the Epstein files so that they "drew a straight arrow towards Trump," in an effort to booby-trap the files so that Trump would blow himself up were he to release them.

I dunno about that. Ben Shapiro, in that clip, says that he hears from sources close to Bongino and Patel that everything that can be released has been released, and there's just not the evidence of Epstein blackmailing Democrats that we'd all like to see.

Shapiro feels the same way I do: Patel and Bongino have proven themselves completely trustworthy as regards their efforts against the Deep State, and if they say there's no there there (or at least not the "there" we all expected/wanted), then it's hard to conclude they've suddenly become liars in the service of the Deep State.

He also calls for those with suspicions that Trump is covering up to save himself to stop hinting about it, get some balls, and just say it instead of insinuating it.

Posted by: Ace at 05:32 PM | Comments (278) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Supreme Court Okays Trump's Restructuring of the Department of Education, Clearing the Way for 1,400 Firings

Sarah Arnold at Townhall:

In a significant victory for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Donald Trump's push to overhaul the Department of Education, allowing the termination of nearly 1,400 federal employees. The decision clears the way for Trump's long-promised effort to rein in what many conservatives see as a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy that pushes left-wing agendas.
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In an unsigned decision, the Supreme Court temporarily set aside a lower court's ruling that had stopped President Trump's plan from taking effect. This means the plan can proceed for now, even as the legal battle over it continues. Three liberal justices opposed the order, and the court halted an order from U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston, who had blocked the layoffs and challenged the overall plan. Judge Joun warned that the layoffs "will likely cripple the department."

However, a federal appeals court declined to pause his order while the administration pursued its appeal.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the majority effectively gave Trump the authority to undo laws passed by Congress simply by dismissing the employees responsible for enforcing them.


Sotomayor's dissent: The Supreme Court must impose a no-firing rule on federal bureaucrats, forever. Once a Democrat hires them, they can never be let go.

It's in The Constitution (TM), you see.

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On Friday, State Department "workers" applauded each other as they were escorted from the building.

Note that Trump is mostly just rolling back Biden's hiring bonanza.

It was embarrassing. No one else acts like this when they're fired. They really believe they have a right to cushy, no-show federal jobs fucking up the world for everyone else.

Posted by: Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (361) | Trackbacks (Suck)

ICE Prepares Plan to Deport Illegals to Third-Party Countries With As Little As Six Hours Notice

I'm sure a lowly district court judge is preparing a national injunction even before the plan is formalized.


Illegal immigrants could be given as little as six hours notice before they are deported to a country other than their homeland, according to a new memo.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a top Trump administration lieutenant, issued a directive to agency staff on Wednesday, July 9, outlining the direction of deportations moving forward.

He said migrants could be deported to a 'third country' with as little as six hours notice 'in exigent circumstances' -- so long as the person had been given an opportunity to speak with an attorney.

Generally, an immigrant will be given 24 hours notice before they are sent to a country other than their homeland.

The memo states that migrants could be sent to nations that have pledged not to persecute or torture them 'without the need for further procedures.'

The United States has sent hundreds of migrants to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, while South Sudan recently accepted eight third--country deportees.

These deportees were from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam.

A Biden-appointed judge, "Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong," has just declared the Home Depots, car washes, and other places that illegal aliens hide are safe havens that ICE agents are forbidden to enter.

She also ruled that before anyone can even ask about an illegal's status, he must first have a "reasonable suspicion" that he's illegal.

In other words: She's demanding that judges approve all arrests of illegals ahead-of-time.

President Donald Trump's administration suffered a blow on Friday when a federal judge concluded that federal agents had been "unlawfully" arresting suspected illegal migrants in Los Angeles and six surrounding counties.

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, imposed two temporary restraining orders banning law enforcement from detaining suspected illegal migrants in the area without reasonable suspicion and insisting those arrested must have access to legal counsel.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek in a statement: "A district judge is undermining the will of the American people."

...


On Friday Judge Frimpong concluded there was "a mountain of evidence" that federal agents had been arresting people solely based on characteristics such as race, employment and accent, which she termed a violation of the Fourth Amendment that prohibits unreasonable seizures by the government.

Referring to some arrests in Los Angeles and the six counties Frimpong said: "The seizures at issue occurred unlawfully."

Two temporary restraining orders were issued by the judge banning federal agents in Los Angeles and surrounding counties from making arrests without reasonable suspicion those detained were in the country illegally, and requiring arrestees to get swift access to lawyers.


Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (420) | Trackbacks (Suck)

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