For the terminally curious, may I offer a few crumbs for thought: this month's contribution to Writer Unboxed. It's titled, "The Elusive 'I' in Identity (link in comments), in which I describe recent research that establishes you are not who you think you are, and neither am I.

Those who know him best warn the rest.

The scenes out of Chicago should outrage us all. These federal agents are out of control, committing senseless acts of violence & putting everyone at risk.   American citizens are being detained & brutalized.   This kind of immigration "enforcement" shouldn't be acceptable to anyone.

2027 SuperBowl to feature a puppy-shooting contest at halftime?

One more reason time travel novels seldom feel convincing.

Arkansas police pulled over an Indian GrubHub driver wh ois married to a U.S. citizen. They found a bottle of Opium-brand perfume, arrested him for narcotics possession, and turned him over to ICE, where he was held for 30 days. He has now been stripped of his immigration status.

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Adolf Hitler's lead legal advisor Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since as he seeks to topple modern democracy and replace it with something very authoritarian.

Lindsey Halligan, the attorney selected by Donald Trump to bring criminal charges against James Comey, has never prosecuted a case. But, like Trump, she did get her start in reality TV — with a brief cameo on South Beach Tow. Here is Halligan’s newly resurfaced TV moment:

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans forced a government shutdown tonight. Rather than address the health care crisis that they created just earlier this year, they refuse to come to the table and do their jobs. What happened to the art of the deal?

When you do your holiday catalogue shopping, you'll find prices are sharply higher. That's because of Trump's tariffs. But vendors are working hard to disguise this fact, for instance by more than doubling the shipping costs to make up for it.

Kamala Harris: "We also need to remember those 107 days around some other stuff that he said -- mass deportations, that he would weaponize the DOJ against his political enemies, that he would silence critics. And he has done that consistently."

ABC says Jimmy Kimmel will return to its airwaves tomorrow, ending an impasse that began last week and touched off a furor over the Trump administration's attacks on media institutions. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/b...

Every major outlet bent the knee today, giving wall-to-wall coverage to Kirk's funeral like it was state decree. This is how propaganda works: normalize the fascist, erase the truth. Don't let them gaslight you. Find independent journalism and fight back.

“In nearly four decades of reporting and writing, I have never seen commanders so concerned about issues that could tarnish the U.S. military’s independence and standing. They swear an oath to the Constitution, not a president, and they don’t want to break it.” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

The canceling of Kimmel is definitely a new phase in the war on democracy, but let's not forget that MAGA bgean bullying comedians in Trump's first term. Remember when Michelle Wolf got canceled in 2018 for joking about Sarah Huckabee Sander's eyeshadow? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“His ambition is fueled by the money of others who would never deign to live in the Midwest. And like other populist charlatans, he has convinced himself that he should be anointed to lead the rubes out of their misery.” www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

Remember when someone got mad at me for calling the Post a Trump rag recently? Well.

MAGA www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/b...

This is an essential read on the political thought of JD Vance. The notion of Unhumans (in German Untermenschen) is a core concept of fascist thought in late-20s and 30s Germany. Its best exposition comes in Carl Schmitt's Begriff des Politischen (1927). www.thenerdreich.com/unhumans-jd-...

Pami Bondi spouting lies about the assassination of prominent Democrats in Minnesota.

Firing a Black woman for quoting Kirk’s horrific statements about Black women is insane. It seems the Washington Post would rather perform politeness (and demand that the people Kirk harmed do it too) that tell the truth: karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washin...

Yes, Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade really said this about homeless people: “Involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill 'em."

Just to be clear: Brian Kilmeade *did not* endorse euthanizing homeless people. He advocated MURDERING over 700,000 of them. And on a network that has been *beside itself* over the murder of just one man this week.

My monthly joint on Writer Unboxed, in which I address the increasing rate of AI-generated scams directed at writers. @writerunboxed.bsky.social #AI #scams #writingcommunity

Here’s a story that’s becoming all too common: federal immigration agents using racial and ethnic profiling as a rationale for stopping, questioning and detaining U.S. citizens who they suspect are undocumented.

Whether it’s Republican politicians joking about the murder of Melissa Hortman or Democratic politicians expressing their condolences after the murder of Charlie Kirk, both parties have a extreme rhetoric problem.

Sonia Sotomayor: Read my dissent please - Stephen Colbert: I will: "We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks latino speaks Spanish and appears to work in a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our Constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent."

Don't give an inch to Trump, MAGA, Republicans, corporate media, or finger-wagging establishment hacks right now. Not an inch. You can condemn murder and violence and remind the world about Kirk's hateful legacy and the utter hypocrisy of MAGA that celebrates violence against the rest of us.

BREAKING: Federal judge in Los Angeles issues preliminary injunction against Department of Homeland Security to restrict use of force against press, legal observers and protesters. Judge in LA Press Club v. Noem calls out "surprising savagery" of DHS officers: "The First Amendment demands better."

MAGA 3 days ago: Chicago is about to find out the meaning of WAR MAGA today: the left needs to stop condoning violence

SEN. CASSIDY (R) : “Do you agree Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for Operation Warp speed?” RFK JR.: “Absolutely.” SEN. CASSIDY: “But you just told Senator Bennet the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.” RFK JR.: “….”😬 🤷🏻‍♂️

Holy shit: Stateline spoke to nearly a dozen firefighters, agency staffers and contractors, who said that top officials assigned to the fire deployed the crews to a remote location under false pretenses so federal agents could check their immigration status. www.hcn.org/articles/fir...

The Trump administration is openly bent on AI dominance. But its aggressive stance could push some countries away from American tech, making China’s cheaper, flexible approach more attractive

Ossoff on RFK Jr: "Absolutely he should resign. And he never should've been confirmed to begin with... in any normal Senate, he never would've gotten so much as a hearing. This is someone who throughout his public life has embraced just about every piece of quackery & pseudoscience he's come across"

As a gov shutdown looms, the GOP is in the House engaging in more politics of the absurd and helping to cover up the Epstein files for a WH that is threatening Members if they sign on to a discharge petition. To my colleagues across the aisle—do what is right. The petition is there at the desk.

You can read the letter here: www.savehhs.org The scale of public dissent from federal employees is extraordinary, even as the threats against them are unprecedented. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/your-gover...

Why didn’t some of the Epstein survivors speak out earlier? “I thought someone was going to kill me,” one explained. As another asked, “Why did the government work so hard to protect Jeffrey Epstein and not victims like me?”

Under Dr. Oz, Medicare is launching a pilot program that will use AI to determine whether patients would be covered for certain procedures. Companies running the program will be paid a share of the savings from rejecting claims. Who in their right mind voted for this? No one.

We are watching, in real time, the destruction of the CDC. Our kids' and families' health is going to be put at risk because Trump and RFK Jr. are running a money-making conspiracy racket instead of a public health agency. Another result of Trump's corruption machine.

Leaked White House prospectus pitches 'Gaza Riviera' as glitzy megacities, mandating forced exodus of 2 million Palestinians into US trusteeship—a deranged facade for ethnic cleansing, peddled with Trumpian bravado and AI gloss. #Gaza

Chicago mayor says National Guard must unmask if deployed. Mayor Johnson issued an executive order that Chicago Police answer to City Hall, not the National Guard. The directive urges officers “to refrain from wearing masks”, identify themselves by agency & badge number share.google/SI1eMWepeG2x...

Why I love @groundnews.bsky.social -- check out the factuality and political leaning ratings at the top RH corner of each listing. I appreciate the chance to compare what I'm reading from MSM or my more left-leaning sources with what's reverberating inside the RW bubble w/o having to "go there."

Make Americans Heroin Addicts

Pritzker: This is not about fighting crime. This is about the President and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.

kitchen table issue: stop kidnapping my neighbors!

Andrew McCabe casts doubt on Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with DOJ: “It‘s so suspicious. When you listen to the tapes, you get the sense that Ghislaine Maxwell went into that room knowing what information she had to deliver…to get some sort of benefit that she is pursuing from the administration.”

Journalists writing about Trump's plans to send the National Guard to cities in blue states have to think carefully about how to frame it. The federal government (including the National Guard) call it an anti-crime narrative. But it increasingly feels like that's a pretext for military occupation.