Always exciting to see the Avignon Papacy in the news

Rep. Ted Lieu isn't backing down.

It is, of course, a one-way ratchet. If Mark Carney or Emmanuel Macron cut ads and gave stump speeches saying vote for Democrats, they'd wail and gnash their teeth about how it was the second Pearl Harbor.

This has been an issue the military avoided confronting for decades. It was asked in the 70s. "What if I believe the person issuing a command to use nuclear weapons is not sane?" The answer was to drum the questioner from the service. slate.com/human-intere...

This is a far simpler answer than people would like to believe. Trump issues the order via the National Military Command Center to the commander of Strategic Command, and then STRATCOM carries it out directly. There is no second vote, no veto, no check-and-balance.

The world not screeching to a halt when the US killed more than 100 little school girls on the very first day of this "liberating war" led us exactly to this moment

JOHN BROWN: if I burn in righteous hellfire so be it. But I believe it is my sacred duty to cleave you in two with this here blade. JOHN BROWN AVATAR GUYS: being impolite to the police is the main problem in the country

It’s pretty interesting to compare Easter messages from political leaders and then consider which ones the media treats as being out of the mainstream or dangerous

this is pretty fucked up

What the fuck. None of this was necessary.

Talking of banger tweets

Destroying civilian infrastructure - power plants, bridges, water treatment facilities, hospitals, medical research facilities, schools and universities - is a WAR CRIME. If a foreign power were doing this to the US, we would probably declare a 1,000 year crusade of vengeance.

This quote from Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has been in my head the last few days

The New York Times rolling up its sleeves to do the hard work of normalizing the idea that women should not have the right to vote.

I hope this is driving home to folks that anti-DEI/anti-woke are functioning mostly as a way to make racism more palatable by framing it as a kind of defensive reaction to an imagined unfairness.

Let's praise the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Sure, lots of people are losing health insurance, disabled folks will be forced back into institutions, and state budgets will be devastated, but at least Deloitte, Accenture, and Optum can laugh all the way to the bank. www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-m...

This movement has never been about violent criminal aliens, undocumented immigrants writ large, or even immigration in general, but about the country’s changing ethnic and religious makeup. It has always been about white Christian nationalism.

This is how the admin is fighting antisemitism.

It was just 24 days between when Zuck went on Rogan and talked about how "never again" would he suppress info based on gov't demands (misrepresenting those demands) and when he texted top gov't employee Elon Musk to say "we're all set up to take down info you want removed." I wrote about it here.

The Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman gave a speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday and made some wild claims about the killing of journalists which we can’t quite let go to the keeper.

I got banned from twitter in 2023 for this drawing. They called it "violent speech". It had over 40K likes and too many comments for me to read before my ban, but I still see it floating around here and there. Save a copy, and use it freely. No attribution needed. Love u #transdayofvisibility #tdov

Israel abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes in 1954. Today they voted to bring it back — exclusively for Palestinians.

Changes in March temperatures in the #Arctic by decade... (now updated through 2025 data) Data from @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social ERA5 reanalysis.

Average union soldier memoir: "at first I was like I signed up for this war, but is it really worth it? Then I saw the reality of chattel slavery and I had to be physically restrained from slaughtering every white southerner I encountered"

Something worth considering: it is incredibly radicalizing to hear the media lie about something you personally saw 9 million people are at home right now going "what the fuck, tens of thousands of people marched in my city alone" Some percentage are gonna wonder what else the media is lying about

Murder under the color of law.

(1) agreed (2) crazy that Republicans brag about getting rid of Chuck “false-equivalency/access-journalist” Todd who loved to platform Republicans lying to him for 5+ min then thank them profusely for giving him access.

This should be an impeachable offense. I understand that we’re way past any of that, but that shouldn’t stop us from naming it.

seems like it should be a big deal?

Oudone Lothirath missed four out of five chemotherapy appointments while in ICE detention and received no medical care there. Now he will likely die in a matter of days. www.startribune.com/how-ice-deta...

Still wondering if inequality is out of control?

It’s so hard to square these two things together lol

That's not how it is supposed to work. But the Constitution is a dead document these days, only useful to be misinterpreted by SCOTUS to super-legislate a GOP priority.

In questioning the validity of mail-in ballots this week, Samuel Alito - a master of bad-faith legalism - sounded no different than an online conspiracy theorist. https://badfaithtimes.com/email/f0d11366-0f25-4588-bf4c-12f11622d4e4/?ref=bad-faith-times-newsletter

“We are losing a war we didn’t need to fight because we are led by idiots and crooks. And the longer it goes on, the further our position will deteriorate.” open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Incredible scenes here, it looks like the US is effectively suing for peace and Iran is saying "no thanks" while Israel is most concerned that the US might actually succeed. www.axios.com/2026/03/24/i...

Just heard a clip of Sam Alito talking about mail in ballots today and he sounds **indistinguishable** from a run of the mill YouTube conspiracy theorist. You can tell his mind is basting in right wing propaganda all day long.

Don't ever tell me this worthless fucking country is a meritocracy ever again.

They’re crossing party lines to renew Section 702 of FISA. Jamie Raskin asks, “What could go wrong with that?”

Punchbowl confirms what I suspected in a post last night. Thune reached a deal with Dems to fund DHS except for ICE and Trump rejected it. DONALD TRUMP is to blame for airport chaos - not Democrats.

A 13-year-old girl tried to take her life by cutting her wrists with a plastic knife from the cafeteria after guards took away drawing materials, and was put into isolation without seeing a doctor. The teen was deported to Colombia after nearly two months in confinement

Hochul has been foreshadowing some sort of attack on the climate law for months. Now it’s clear: she wants to entirely gut it, by ending the obligation on her to take any action before 2030. It’s this year’s late-breaking top demand from her in the budget. It’s appalling. And also dead serious🧵

Bassem Youssef.

As I keep saying, this is easily one of the most anomalous out-of-season heatwaves that I’ve observed. Its impacts will be far-reaching after an already historic snow drought this winter. Without a pattern change, water concerns will then amplify this summer.

Overnight: The Trump administration is making a renewed push to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, telling a judge they've sorted out logistics to send him to Liberia (and rejected his proposal to go to Costa Rica) assets.bwbx.io/documents/us...

Remember when people were fired for *reposting* accurate quotes from Charlie Kirk after he was killed.

The multiple 112° readings today are just 1° short of the national April record, which happened in Death Valley with 113° on April 24, 1946 and also on April 22, 2012. Note that those occurred in late April (h/t to weather historian Chris Burt).

This horrific story gets worse when you find out how this young woman originally came to the US: as a 17-year-old on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane