The key to getting mainstream media on board with an illegal war is making them feel like an important part of it.

“We thought we were living in a politically neutral slave state.”

Anita Brookner, Iris Murdoch, Barbara Pym, Janwillem van de Wetering

Nice

After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the tools to correct literally all of this nonsense are sitting in the toolbox just the distance of a couple of spines to uphold a sworn oath away.

Of course isn’t just driving. It’s voting. Working. Travelling. Picking up a package. Applying for credit. Applying for a job. Renting a room. Filling prescriptions. Visiting loved ones in the hospital. Not expired either, but legally invalid.

The Washington Post writes -30- on its fully staffed Ukraine bureau. In related news, Jeff Bezos’s net worth is estimated at $223,900,000,000.00.

It will be tough for America’s global reputation to recover after this absolutely shameful vote.

Indiana University's football crown was the feel-good story of the year. Off the field...not so much Ranked last for free speech, DEI cuts, slashing the humanities while paying its coach $13M under MAGA trustees My column on how IU ranks No. 1 in moral bankruptcy www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...

UN General Assembly resolution in support of Ukraine adopted today. Out of all EU member states, only Hungary abstained... as did the US.

A+ State of the Union counterprogramming by TCM.

We are deciding right now whether we want to be a country with ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.

Only 47 weeks of winter left!

Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen: “President Trump's idea of ​​sending an American hospital ship here to Greenland has been noted — But we have a public healthcare system where treatment is free for citizens. It is a deliberate choice"

"El Paso's airport is closed for ten days." "No, wait, it's open now." "TSA PreCheck is suspended." "No, wait, it's back up now."

I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.

"Always, always, always concentration camps are an end run around the existing legal system. These people that are getting rounded up because whoever’s in power wants to do something that they can’t do using the letter of the law..." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/o...

Yoopers do not let a little snow keep them indoors.

Think of how bad things must be for a Supreme Court Justice to feel he has to explain why it's a good idea to have laws enacted by legislators instead of decreed by wannabe dictators

Republicans in 2025: Let's kill children and seniors.

ICE killed a US citizen last March. Their involvement wasn’t reported until now. How many more stories have yet to be revealed?

Judge Goodwin: "An anonymous government is no government at all. It cannot be held accountable. A masked agent freely uses force without justifying his actions, and the public cannot name him to challenge his conduct. A regime of secret policing has no place in our society."

I work in an academic library where patrons can chat with a human librarian 24/7. We use a co-op so librarians across the world help each other when your specific staff are off duty. This is a pretty common service, and it generally provides better info than AI for reference questions. Jusy FYI 🤷🏻‍♀️

Trump has perverted the Department of Justice, turning it into his own personal law firm, so this is just acknowledging in the crudest terms what they've done to it.

We've been trying to tell you all that 17th century English history is still relevant...

England is arresting people and the White House press isn’t even asking questions about Epstein.

250 years later in the UK, from the King: “the law must take its course.”

Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance. And you know why? Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.

But honestly, I'm not holding my breath. Gonna double down on the union work, b/c our national union(s) have been deeply involved in the work of repelling these Godawful orders. DON'T GIVE IN TO BULLIES

1. The President of the Heritage Foundation took to the influential PBD podcast today to announce his intent when it comes to transgender ADULT care: "You outlaw it." He stated that the foundation is working precisely on a plan to ban all trans adult care. Subscribe to support our journalism.

In honor of Lunar New Year, one of my all-time favorite maps: How dumplings spread around the world (tl;dr: It was largely, though not exclusively, the Mongol invasions!)

joyce is going after elon again

“.. The fundamental problem is that corporations are institutionally ill-equipped to take center stage in policy debates. They are inherently self-interested economic actors with goals that often conflict with those of society.” @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Related to this: bookshelf browsing is effectively dead.

And then there were those pesky women….

This is what ICE does every day. Hunt little kids who are here legally. They get sent to a place called the “baby jail” in Texas. Very little of it ends up on video like this. But it’s routine. And disgusting.

In fascist regimes, nothing works because everyone is too scared to report issues or problems. The dear leader is surrounded by a group of yes men. That's why fascist regimes become so mediocre and stagnant.

Tom Ricks used to have a joke that the Army wanted officers white, male, southern, and Republican. Just captures Hegseth's own ignorance & prizing thereof. Even with Rumsfeld v. FAIR allowing foisting of recruiters, it's really building an edifice of ignorance. And to fuck over FLEPs.

You didn’t think all those concentration camps they want to build are only for immigrants, did you? (Gift article)

Not sure who needs to hear this but the voter fraud rate is a mere 0.000003%. Anyone telling you otherwise is making shit up so they can take away your right to vote.

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.

Another spelling error from the silly Grauniad. For "detention center" they surely meant "concentration camp."

Merz at MSC: Europe will not adopt MAGA vision of free speech. It does not support tariffs and protectionism. It believes in climate change and the need for the WHO. "The US will run up against its own limits if it tries to go it alone"

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

There are so many fucked up things with the current administration that it's hard to focus on one but this recent move is basically a death sentence for the planet. I've been involved with more boots on the ground actions over the years than I can count and this really bums me out.

There has been no draw down today. ICE snatched someone off Central Ave out of his car because he looked Latino before then letting him go a couple hours later. They were stopping people in Blaine on highway 65, they were all around Fridley, and were in the parking lot of the St Anthony liquor store

it really can't be said enough that this is a person who has dined with the president of the united states

From the court’s opinion today blocking Hegseth’s attempt to discipline Mark Kelly: “As Bob Dylan once famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’ Our retired vets deserve more respect from our govt, and our Constitution demands they receive it!”