Hokies Suck!

Sen Elissa Slotkin's lawyer Preet Bharara asked prosecutor to explain theory of criminal liability. "No answer was forthcoming," source tells me. Prosecutors even suggested process was very preliminary. Then *something* happened and suddenly they rushed to indict. newrepublic.com/article/2066...

Oh, man. Tom Noonan died? His performance as Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter is one of the most terrifying, mesmerizing I've ever seen in a film.

You Make Me is my age appropriate response. maybe I Wanna New Duck

Except Trump unilaterally eliminated agencies and cut hundreds of billions of dollars of appropriated funds, forcing the judiciary to expend monumental effort to get things restored (which hasn't been fully successful). This idea that Congress secretly vanquished Trump doesn't fit with these facts.

67 votes

Elon’s outside the juke joint in Sinners

ICE using the same ruse that Ted Bundy used to kidnap people should tell you something.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Not sure the writers could come up with a more hackneyed way to demonstrate that inside Trump's brain it is, and forever will be, 1985 than having him devote attention right now to pardoning Joe Klecko. Dream president for anyone who's name was in the NY Post more than twice in the 80s.

😅🔫

6/ SpaceX has genuinely revolutionized orbital delivery. But it's mostly making cheap and efficient something humans have been doing for more than 60 years. Critically, it's something there's a market for. You need satellites for a lot of things. People will pay money for it.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the America Crisis is how under Trump much of the US Homeland security apparatus seems to understand places like Minnesota or Maine as little as the US National security apparatus under Bush understood places like Anbar or Herat

ICYMI what would happen if Dems suddenly hold the House majority? And what shenanigans could Republicans pull?

oh

So what would happen if Democrats suddenly had a majority in this Congress? Former House Parliamentarian staffer Max Spitzer explains.

What the absolute fuck

Please note that she's READING this. She PREPARED this as a rebuttal for questions about Epstein. She planned this, had someone write it down, and read it.

Glad someone said Kris Benson because in my narrow experience he’s the runaway winner. Covered his start against Seth Greisinger at UVa and the weak contact he induced was bonkers

My dog wrote this song

Clinton's victory in 1992 is the canonical example that supposedly proves Dems win by moving to the center. There's only one problem: The data disagrees. Voters saw Clinton as more liberal than Dukakis, & simulations show even a solid progressive would have won www.gelliottmorris.com/p/what-the-d...

"A threat to anyone’s constitutional rights is a threat to us all. Today, immigrants are being detained without due process. Tomorrow, under the Government’s [view], American citizens could be subject to the same treatment. This Court will not allow such an unraveling of the Constitution."

worth noting that Sen Schumer's reasoning for not developing a shutdown resistance strategy in February of last year was the courts would be an effective check.

1/ This type of government spending is well within my area of expertise, so let me offer my two cents. Long story short, there's a very important and somewhat dangerous way in which this pattern of spending isn't normal, and a one interesting way in which it is very normal. 🧵

3/ What's unusual here is the opaqueness of the process & the finality of ICE's decisions. Bureaucratic spending is typically marked by pretty open decision-making which takes place over a relatively long period of time. Congress structures the law this way on purpose.

NEW RESOURCE: The CivilServiceArchive.org is an online searchable database that captures Trump-era changes to policies governing the federal workforce and makes them accessible to the policymakers, journalists & advocates. Learn more about it, threaded below ⬇️ 🧵

It would be hard to summarize what has happened to the GOP this last decade more succinctly than this pic.

Lots of moving parts re: ICE this week (and probably beyond)

The Champions League final in Germany last year opened with Linkin Park

*Ian Curtis voice * DANCE DANCE DANCE!

I really thought/was hoping the bushes were gonna dance

I've written about the overarching post story, causes, underlying pattern. But the failure of Lewis or Bezos to even show up, literally or figuratively, on a day of devastating cuts epitomizes the profound lack of character and accountability that is so common place today within the American elite.

If I were a MN legislator I’d introduce a bill to make Low’s “I’m Nothing But Heart” the state song

No disrespect to @booker.senate.gov, but have any members of Congress gone to Minneapolis to function as observers and put their bodies on the line?

JD Vance getting lip fillers is so fucking funny

Just exhausted by the number of important things turned to shit during my adult life

Not a dad movie but my best dad move movie in that my kid loved it is Donnie Darko

basically yglesias, jain, jentleson, WelcomePAC donors etc all base their prescriptions for Dems on a statistical model that nobody can replicate, and refuse to acknowledge (a) that uncertainty dwarfs the detectable effect of moderation & (b) that the last year has proved their views wrong!!

take a peek above the process news and consider what really is at the center of debate in Congress. The people of MSP get it.

What's really at stake with this government shutdown remains out of frame - and it's only happening because regular people forced the action

This! We talked to a former House Parliamentarian staffer about how the start of a new Congress is really just people following norms.

If I was a billionaire I would not take trips to Crime Island. I would own The Simpsons arcade machine

now this is fucking thinking like an appropriator. speaking as a federal bureaucrat, do you know how many completely fucking absurd rules there are making it next to impossible to do our jobs? how many forms I have to file to hire anyone? put a few dozen of those restrictions on ICE...

I keep coming back to this clip as a symbol of the Democratic Party’s challenges. Murphy correctly says ICE “is not about safety or immigration, but a pretext for Trump to take over.” Given this fact, Democratic leadership’s reform and fund plan makes no sense.

America has a taste for means-testing safety net policies, and not investing in state capacity to manage the resulting complexity. We focus a lot on how this makes life harder for clients, but it also creates the conditions where private actors who offer to solve this problem can extract rents.

Dug out and got to the Worst Whole Foods (Pentagon City) and they store music played Bobby Brown’s track from Ghostbusters II.