choose your fighter

lmao

The executive jet that DHS says it needs has a “bedroom with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, four large flat-screen TVs and even a bar ..” @nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

The WSJ reports that the Trump administration has massed "significant" air power in striking distance of Iran, but hasn't yet decided what the purpose of an attack would be. www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Always the creepiest guy in the room.

El jefe del Comando Sur y el subsecretario de Defensa de Estados Unidos visitan Venezuela en “un día histórico” dozz.es/oij9z19

I first traveled to Colombia in January 2001 just as the aerial spraying campaign began under Plan Colombia. My first and best Colombian friend was Nancy Sanchez. Yesterday Nancy died in a Bogota hospital. She was my guide on many trips to Colombia. She was a fearless advocate for women & civilians.

So after Trump pardoned Honduras's narco-president, the admin didn't just let him out--they canceled an immigration hold and sent a specialized team to **chauffeur him to the $1k/night Waldorf Astoria.** “It's "absolutely fucking nuts,” said one official www.propublica.org/article/trum...

It seems nuts to me that CNN has partnered with an online gambling site (Kalshi) and hypes their betting lines as “news” to report.

There is no coherent historical legacy that directly links Athens and Rome to Christian Europe and the United States while leaving out the Islamic world. This is such ahistorical nonsense.

How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job. Imagine if you’re a family member or a shipmate of this guardsman. www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

Things have been going great since we adopted "Piracy on the High Seas" as our foreign, economic, and counternarcotics policy.

Really interesting treatise from @mcuban.bsky.social, making the case FOR tanking, and doing so openly. Unfortunately, he only posted it to the other site (maybe because of character limits here?).

Peru will someday need a prison just for former presidents. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/w...

RFK Jr.: ‘Time In Hot Cars Helps Babies To Sweat Out Toxins’ https://theonion.com/rfk-jr-time-in-hot-cars-helps-babies-to-sweat-out-toxins/

Nobody ever asks me, but Hollywood needs to do a movie about the Carter Family and their relationship with Lesley Riddle.

Wow.

This is such a tragedy.

Bill Siemering, founding program director of NPR, author of its mission statement, has asked me to inquire if any profs might be interested in a Zoom class visit? No honorarium necessary. Bill founded All Things Considered, Fresh Air, won a MacArthur, etc.

This message from the US State Department about "not wanting allies to be shackled by guilt and shame" is a pretty direct call-out to the German far-right argument that Germany has spent too long feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and needs to move on and stop doing remembrance.

you can't be a good publication if you have mostly brilliant writers but also some hypervisible reactionary bullshitters just for balance.

Physically incapable of analyzing politics outside of this insipid frame. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Goldman’s Top Lawyer Departs Amid Revelations About Her Ties to Epstein www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/b...

Pam Bondi Thought That Went Pretty Well

She is an empty suit, of course. And an absolute nasty piece of cornbread. She is also, to my somewhat trained ear, absolutely, positively terrified here. She is either intimidated by the process or deeply anxious about her relationship with her boss. Or both. But she is terrified.

NEW: “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey sends a bombshell farewell note: Stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

This is some genuinely psycho shit...

NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from J6 yelling 'kill them!' at cops. His name is Jared Wise. BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardoned NEGUSE: And you expect hard-working police officers to believe you take law enforcement seriously?

Rep. Jayapal: "Attorney General Bondi…will you turn to [Epstein's survivors] and apologize for what your DOJ has put them through?" Pam Bondi: *refuses to answer*

Swalwell plays Bondi a clip of Kash Patel *lying under oath* about how many times Trump's name appears in the Epstein files

Lieu plays Bondi the infamous clip of Trump & Epstein partying together & asks her if there were underaged girls at any party the two attended "This is so ridiculous," Bondi says. "There's no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime" "I believe you just lied under oath," Lieu replies

A dresser inside a museum in New York City has been discovered as a secret stop on the Underground Railroad — the first of its kind discovered in Manhattan in over 100 years

how many times are they going to ask this thing if it's alive and get scared when it says yes

JFC, this is so embarrassing.

Apropos of nothing much, a reminder that Nixon’s Attorney General served 19 months in prison.

My two cents: If the government actually wanted effective, large-scale declassification of docs in the public interest, it would empower the National Declassification Center (housed at the National Archives) to declassify OTHER agency records, like those that belong to the CIA, FBI etc.

Tulsi Gabbard shut down her nakedly partisan directors initiative group late last year. The group, which touted declassification of docs in the public interest as a main goal, succeeded in releasing a grand total of...215 pages of documents. What an epic waste of time and resources.

U.S. employers added 130,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% in December. Annual revisions show that job growth last year was far weaker than initially reported. n.pr/46HdbOo

And … now ban is lifted?

Kind of wild that this jobs report is being framed so positively when it also says this “the annual benchmark revisions sharply lowered estimates for job growth in earlier months. The new estimates show that the U.S. economy added just 181,000 jobs in 2025, down from the earlier estimate of 584,000”

"Now there are no boats."

in fact you do not have to show your ID when you board a train in the united states, you only need to show your ticket (which can be purchased without an ID)

Got to meet bluegrass legend Alice Gerrard last night at Politics & Prose. Her records with Hazel Dickens are among my favorite bluegrass albums ever.

If the Democrats came out against judicial warrants we would never hear the end of it.

FAA Closes Air Space Over El Paso, Texas for ‘Special Security Reasons’ www.newsweek.com/notam-texas-...

Why am I not surprised to learn that ICE has imported its policing tactics from Central America?

Good morning. The President of the United States was in the middle of the most serious child sex trafficking ring of the last quarter century. He is referenced not a dozen times in the case files. Not 100 times. Not 1,000 times. He’s referenced 38,000 times.

Over 28 years, 140 people died at the Berlin Wall from all causes (intentional shooting, drowning, accidents, etc.). #comparativeborderregimes