Again the degree to which the <entire> media's coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign was detached from fundamental realities about the two parties & the two candidates is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you aren't terminally online or follow politics closely like us here, what did you hear?

The administration was hoping for the theater of its paramilitaries squaring off against black bloc street fighters. And instead it got this. Hard to label the lady in a bathrobe as a “terrorist.”

AG Pam Bondi brought a portfolio of degrading insults before the House Judiciary Committee today, but failed to bring evidence, answers, or accountability. Today’s hearing confirmed that this DOJ protects pedophiles and sex offenders in power, not the American people.

A ProPublica investigation found that > 170 U.S. citizens have been arrested or detained by immigration agents, including cases where agents ignored or dismissed REAL ID–compliant driver’s licenses and other proof of legal status during enforcement operations. www.propublica.org/article/immi...

The federal agent who shot Marimar Martinez and joked about it has been placed on leave. This wouldn't have happened if everyone had accepted Homeland Security's blatant lies in this case.

CNN: "Another photograph - these are notes AG Bondi brought to the hearing today. This shows a list of Rep. Jayapal's search history. Lawmakers are allowed to go to a DOJ facility to search unredacted files. We learned from this photo that the searches are apparently being tracked & read by the DOJ"

NEW: With a final House vote expected Wednesday, Republicans are intensifying a coordinated push to pass the SAVE America Act, which experts say would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed and could disenfranchise millions. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Pam Bondi sounded a little different before she started doing Trump's bidding.

A majority of cases will never be reported, either. Hundreds of immigrants have reported sexual abuse at ICE facilities. Most cases aren't investigated www.pbs.org/newshour/amp...

I tend to agree with House Dems here. Bondi’s performance was historically, epically, virally bad. She threw a big log onto America’s angry fire today. www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

The boilerplate. Michael's check next week covers rent but not quite all of the gas bill, so this would be a good time to fill the tip jar! Thank you to my readers, more writing is coming soon! www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

Poor children come and go like ghosts. They move from dilapidated house to dilapidated house, from eviction to eviction, from one mentally ill caregiver to another and then to foster care and back, never staying anywhere long enough to feel safe. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

When you are raised a certain kind of Catholic, you’re told that that wicked heretic Martin Luther claimed the grace of God was like snow covering dunghills. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

I don’t want to believe the things I’ve just written. I want to believe that most people are basically good and would never do something like that. But this is the world we live in, and this is how I’ve learned it works. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

At bedtime, I thought I could at least take refuge in a hot shower. But that was when the pipe at the back of the downstairs toilet exploded. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

When I was a little girl, I didn’t know whether to say that I liked history or not. I didn’t like to memorize names and dates. I didn’t like battles or political campaigns. But I liked to hear about how people lived. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

This is America. Both the thugs in police gear and the heroes in bathrobes are America.

These people make me proud to be an American

The lady passing around the megaphone handed it to me. The next heckler to yell from his pickup truck got me, reciting “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” into the bullhorn at him, and didn’t seem to know what to make of it. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

One one side of the road, there was a great gray rectangle with towers and battlements on top, like a castle from a fairy tale, decorated with the Seal of the State of West Virginia. On the other side was a cone-shaped grassy hill, and a little brick museum. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

I wondered what America was, besides a piece of land with hospitals and shopping centers and graves on top of it. I decided that America is people: many terrible people and many, many wonderful people, and history will remember only a few of us. But we were here. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

I shook myself out of my reverie. There was no snow, no sled, no boys, no angry townsfolk; just a tiny odd quadrangle of a graveyard in the midst of residential houses, with a mound in the middle. There was no tree on the hill, only a stump. www.patheos.com/blogs/steelm...

Trump & his goons are weaponizing the DOJ against anyone who disagrees with them. They're trying to silence any dissent. But the tide is turning. The American people are speaking up and fighting back.

Jonathan V Last: "In 2023, the economy added 3 million jobs. In 2024, still under Biden, it added 2.2 million jobs. In 2025, under Trump, it added just 181,000 jobs. This is a story about an economy getting throttled by one man's capricious, destructive governance."

Make it DOA! Our only hope is to hold Schumer to this!

Today in the after school geography club, a friend brought the children fried chiacchiere in powdered sugar, we made Carnevale masks, I got to read "Strega Nonna," and it was just about the best class ever.

If American journalism isn't capable of calling what we just watched unprecedented, unprofessional, intemperate, profoundly unsettling, contrary to the Oath of Office an Attorney General takes, and a colossal sign of disrespect for the constitutional separation of powers, what are we even doing here

Thank you, Julie Johnson, for speaking out against the grotesquely misnamed SAVE act. We need you to keep fighting for us in the House.

She is out of her depth is more ways than one.

AOC on Trump’s oil embargo of Cuba: “What has transpired is that now it’s kind of become acceptable that the entire Western world will look the other way as they starve & deprive a people because they find political actors or political regimes in that country to be objectionable”

Insane levels of corruption. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

This was a very important vote tonight. Here's why. For the past year Trump’s illegal tariffs have crushed our economic growth, hit American families with higher costs, killed the very manufacturing jobs we were told they would multiply, and alienated our closest allies. 1/

Idiot.

manufacturing and trade job loss during 2025 is even worse than it looked (already really bad)

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said at a fraud subcommittee meeting that the exodus of federal prosecutors, who left after prosecutors moved to investigate Renee Good's partner rather than the shooting itself, will set back the fight against fraud. minnesotareformer.com/2026/02/10/k...

Members of the Buddhist Walk for Peace, leaving the National United Methodist Church, beginning their walk to the National Cathedral this afternoon. DC Metro police—with name tags, badges, masks only as needed for the cold—accompanied the procession on a fleet of bicycles.

Chris Murphy: "I sat with the kids for an hour. They saw things in these prisons they'll never forget. The bottom line is we have a constitutional obligation to only fund an administration that's operating lawfully. We cannot, we should not fund DHS if it committing these crimes."

The Alabama Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would require all health benefit plans to cover breast cancer screenings for women over 40 years old. via @alabamareflector.com

A NATO official said Russia’s losses since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine have reached 1.3 million personnel, including 350,000 killed. According to the official, 400,000 Russian troops were killed or wounded in 2025 alone. The statement was made during a briefing reported by DW.

NEW in Bolts: How seat-switching, plus a new state law, helps gubernatorial appointees in Arkansas reap the benefits of incumbency before they’ve earned it from voters.

US state department’s Sarah B Rogers publicly attacks policies on hate speech and immigration in other countries

The FAA has now abruptly reversed course and says the air space closure over El Paso has been lifted.

“Cut ICE’s budget to restore federal health care funding” is an extremely popular message www.politico.com/f/?id=000001...

Go blue.

The most blatantly corrupt gangster government in American history. Where are congressional Republicans on this stuff? Nowhere to be found. Vote them ALL out.

Minutes into House Judiciary Committee hearing with Pam Bondi, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) blasts Bondi for "shockingly" not redacting private information about Epstein survivors