1. I'd reply directly, but you disabled replies, @ryanlcooper.com I'll add, short of summary execution, everything else durable/structural unavoidably required some combination of a: -willing electorate; -willing Congress elected by voters;

i don't understand how Old Spice's marketing team landed on this ad for their Super Mario Galaxy Movie tie-in where an astronaut smells a stick of deodorant, thinks about Mario, and then kills himself. i don't understand how that's not a joke, it's exactly what happens in the ad

I'd go further. This SCOTUS isn't democratically legitimate, but there are other sources of legitimacy: legal/rational legitimacy is also available to courts that abide by the rule of law. But the Roberts Court doesn't even have that. It is *categorically illegitimate.*

FDR’s Fireside chat on March 9, 1937 explaining his proposal to expand the Supreme Court stands up surprisingly well. “We have reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.”/1

The Columbine massacre was on this date in 1999. Instead of energizing our country to get gun violence under control, it kicked off a new normal. One of the best explanations ever of journalism's destructive impact on mass shootings came from Roger Ebert in his review of Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant.”

Why do the Japanese like their buns askew (2026)

This is more than legislation. This work is personal to me. theonion.com/illinois-bec...

NEW: Virginia just passed a law to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, giving it 222 of 270 electoral votes needed to activate. This map and spreadsheet show which states could join to activate it by 2028 depending on the outcome of the 2026 elections docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Since we’ve stumbled backwards into a naval strategy and this is getting reskeeted, I want to clarify: 1) Best option was not to start the war in the first place; 2) this is the least bad option now: 3) it still might not work!

If leaders abuse the rule of law to make themselves immune to it, so that they can undermine the rights of others with impunity, by what moral or philosophical argument are they entitled to its protections, once they lose power? By what grace should they be sorted by law instead of by other means?

Contrary to public perception a huge % of pregnant teenagers in the 1990s were impregnated by adult men. The younger they were, the larger the average age gap between mother and father was. Fixing teen pregnancy was in part a clampdown on statutory rape. That's what conservatives want to reverse.

In an active lawsuit against the FDA, the state of Missouri is arguing that access to the abortion drug mifepristone has reduced teen birth rates, thereby harming its political representation in Congress. It’s an argument being made in federal court not just on Fox

Just saw a high school friend post "I stand with Iran" on Facebook and do you have any idea how bad you have to fuck up as president of the United States to get middle American normies on Facebook to type out "I stand with Iran"

I would like to send a hearty fuck you to everyone who voted for this man. Miss me with the “I didn’t know he was crazy and would hurt so many people.” Yes, you did. It’s why you voted for him. His appeal is the pain he inflicts on people you don’t like. Fuck you.

Republican leaders are a cancer that has to be eliminated from American society.

“Lay down your weapons now or I will have no choice but to ask you to lay down your weapons later,” the commander in chief wrote on Truth Social

This Reddit post is formatted like a joke but it’s actually a very dry recitation - at times, direct quotes - of America’s public war strategy over the last month. This can’t go on. This is deranged. Impeach and imprison.

Constitutional lawyer here. I don't think it would violate the Constitution for the VP/Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, but the intended constitutional remedy for this behavior is impeachment & removal. The fact that that remedy is politically impossible is a scandal and a crisis.

This is largely by design. If we stop thinking about AI as simply technology and instead as part of a political and economic program, its chief function become easier to see: namely to erode interpersonal trust so that ultimately we give up on forms of agreement & negotiation arbitrated by people.

"Reality TV star Sean Duffy thought it was a good idea to have only a single Air Traffic Controller in the tower at one of the busiest airports in the world. This is the tragic result when Trump picks unqualified cronies for big roles, deadly crashes and chaos in our airports." is how I'd draw it up

Quite possibly the best commentary on Trump’s imbecilic planning to date.

The strait of Hormuz is open for transit

*sobs*

every time you miss a crosswalk in a captcha, a waymo runs over a child

✋ Former USG war crimes lawyer here. Apropos of SecDef's remarks this morning: Denial of quarter—even the declaration of no quarter—is a war crime. And recognized as such by the US Government. From DoD's Manual for Military Commissions.

NEW: Believe it or not, it’s that time of year: the Wisconsin Supreme Court election is next month. Liberals have a huge opportunity: if they win, they can lock down the majority of this court thru 2030. That means they’d have it in the next presidential race, a big democracy guardrail. Share:

🚨 American citizens in UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel: to receive departure assistance from the Department of State about available aviation and ground transportation options, please fill out the following form: mytravel.state.gov/s/crisis-intake

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve"

On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast. The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me. But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it. I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.” 1/

Anyways, dear reader, this congress has been wildly unproductive, and that includes things like appointments. The democrats have literally been as obstructive as possible in the senate and forced Thune to change the votes multiple times -after- wasting tons of time.

Having served in multiple countries run by ruthless dictators, I am accustomed to their tactics for keeping their populations under control. One of them is to employ a legion of fake opposition figures who promote the false narrative that "all parties are the same, so why bother voting?"

read online that someone set-up a premium rate phone number where callers get charged $3.99/ min. then they posted flyers in their neighborhood that said "call this number to report illegal aliens," but the number just puts them on hold with music. so far, they've made $17,000

I found the first investigative file from the first complainant against Epstein in 2005. There are descriptions from the officer, over several interviews of the girl, of her pulling her knees up on the chair, drawing doodles, & the officer high-fiving her to keep her calm as she speaks of horror.

❤️

(1/3) Working to explain here: ICE and CBP continue to run during a shutdown. Because of OBBBA, they continue to run w/ pay. But even without OBBBA, they'd run w/out pay. That makes leverage weak, but not nothing. The funding deal splits off DHS from the other parts. This provides maximum leverage.

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

“I watched him die… then I watched them maneuver his body like a rag doll— only to discover it was because they wanted to count the bullet wounds and see how many they ‘got’, like he was a deer.”

Wow. The front page of tomorrow’s Charlie Hebdo magazine in France.

they disagree on who's responsible; we should have a senate investigation where they can all testify and incriminate each other!

“Get it all on record now — get the films — get the witnesses — because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, after visiting liberated concentration camps in April 1945

Democrats can and must make it clear there will be trials and anyone even somewhat associated with ICE will face them. Maybe give a quit-your-job deadline on appeasement and give people 72 hours. I don't know. But currently the plan is to let them murder us in the street and get away with it.

The whole interview is worth it

If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

You can tell things are going well in America because accounts with names like MovieTVFunZone are posting things like, "THE PIGS ARE KIDNAPPING CHILDREN AND PRIESTS. THE TREE OF LIBERTY DEMANDS TO BE WATERED"

This is a photo of someone being tortured, not someone being restrained

pulling this reflection on white silence/fear over here, too:

It will become increasingly important for people to take video and protect and save that video so that when there is finally an accounting for what’s happening, there will be evidence.