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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Doughty’s sharp criticism of the Trump administration is particularly notable because he issued a series of major decisions in favor of Trump and his allies in recent years, most notably backing conservatives in legal challenges to the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in what it claimed was misinformation on social media platforms about vaccines and certain politically charged topics.

    Indeed, some conservatives considered Doughty so likely to be in their camp that they filed lawsuits in his judicial division in order to have a strong chance the cases would be assigned to him.

    Even as Doughty made clear that he was disturbed by the government’s actions, in his order Friday the judge seemed to tip his hat to the president, adopting the term “Gulf of America” for the body of water traditionally known as the Gulf of Mexico.

    100% fucking coward energy


  • Born and raised in a rural area of it where redneck assholes bullied me for being a neurodiverse little weirdo, but my parents were super supportive and let me keep to myself (well, after their well meaning efforts to push me into a few extra curriculars went badly for everyone) and just spend hours and hours at my local library where I read every history and sci fi book I could get my hands on. The librarians noticed and recommended more books, showed me how to request things from big city libraries that had way better collections, and let me know that some libraries even carried cassettes, which let me get into punk and folk and alternative music that really opened my eyes to what the world could be outside of my small little town.

    So, yeah, anytime I manage to say something cogent or insightful or funny or good in whatever way thank librarians authors musicians and parents who support and protect their kids (even when those kids embarrass them in front of the neighbors by, like, driving the station wagon into the hedges because I was distracted thinking about what a Joe Strummer character would do in the Star Wars expanded universe).


  • I don’t think it was a single presidential election that did this, the Republican party has been working towards this at least since they ran Goldwater on an anti-civil rights and anti-new deal platform in 1964. Democracy is a pain in the ass for bigots and oligarchs, so the Republican party united them in opposition against it and now their very long game is paying off. Nixon being pardoned for Watergate, Reagan getting zero blame for Iran Contra, the Supreme Court stealing the 2000 election, Bush lying about WMDs to start a bullshit war to win reelection, McConnell refusing to accept Obama’s judicial nominees - all of these attacks on anything that would hold them accountable for their theft of public resources and violence against marginalized people brought us to this point. Trump is just the worst symptom of a disease that’s been festering for decades.



  • Yeah, I mean among other things once ICE kidnapped this guy there was no way she was going to be able to finish holding a proper trial on the charges that actually brought him there, so she just took a series of fully legal steps (i.e. she’s allowed to access that private hallway and grant other people access to it) to protect the judicial process of her trial same as any judge should want to do.

    I think in light of this development it’s now perfectly reasonable for judges to just instantly order the arrest of any ICE agents that show up to their court rooms on a charge of attempted justice obstruction. Put them in a jail cell and make them defend their actions and intentions before they do that to you, nothing less is going to be sufficient for protecting the orderly process of trials from ICE’s obstruction.





















  • If someone from the Trump administration says the sky is blue you should look outside to confirm

    This is a pretty striking statement.

    For starters the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency within the US Department of Transportation Duffy leads, has previously said it will take no part in determining whether people who fly on suborbital flights are astronauts. The agency makes this clear on its human spaceflight page, stating: “The FAA no longer designates anyone as an ‘astronaut.’ In addition, the FAA does not define where space begins.”

    To step back just a little bit, the FAA created a commercial “Astronaut Wings” program back in 2004 to recognize the two pilots of SpaceShipOne, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, who flew the vehicle above 50 statute miles (80 km). After that time, the program recognized private citizens who flew on Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s orbital Crew Dragon vehicle. You flew, and you got astronaut wings.

    Then, in December 2021, the agency stopped issuing wings. “With the advent of the commercial space tourism era, starting in 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration will now recognize individuals who reach space on its website instead of issuing Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,” the agency said. “Any individual who is on an FAA-licensed or permitted launch and reaches 50 statute miles above the surface of the Earth will be listed on the site.”

    Sanchez, Perry, and the others are recognized on this site today.








  • The problem is these are Republicans were dealing with. Unless somebody on this site has a few million dollars to throw at them there’s nothing tangible we can offer them personally, and we wouldn’t have gotten here in the first place if they had any basic sense of right and wrong we could appeal to.

    However, the good news is that we can honestly point out the very simple situation they’re obviously in, and if enough of us do that often enough reality might finally break through to them. The situation is that Donald Trump has a list of people he wants to hurt and they’re all definitely on it because they could threaten his power. Being nice to him might move their name down the list but it won’t get them off of it. The only way they can protect themselves is by taking Donald Trump’s power from him before he gets to them.

    We don’t need Republicans to be good people to deal with this situation (which is good because they absolutely are not and haven’t been for decades and decades), we just need them to be slightly less stupid than they’re currently being.