Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

The New York Times Lauded The ‘Political Ascendancy’ Of a Democrat Mayor Now Facing Over 10 Felony Child Sex Assault Charges.

ADemocratic Mayor for the city of Sebastopol, California will stand trial following an indictment for nearly a dozen felony crimes in connection to a child sex assault investigation.

Robert Jacob, 44, was arrested in April 2021 on 11 felony and one misdemeanor sexual assault charges against a minor.

The charges against the Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporter and “defund the police” advocate included committing lewd acts with a child ages 14 to 15, participating in sexual penetration of a child under 16, making a child under 16 available to another person for lewd or lascivious acts, and distribution of child pornography.

At the conclusion of a three-hour preliminary hearing on March 7th, Judge Christopher Honigsberg found that the prosecution had presented enough evidence to establish that a crime had occurred.

“There is sufficient cause to believe the defendant is guilty,” he asserted.

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How Much Are Taxpayers Paying Climate Czar John Kerry? He Won’t Say, But One GOP Senator Is Demanding Answers.

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s White House climate czar, flies around the globe in a gas-guzzling jet warning refugees that the worst is yet to come if the world does not stop emitting carbon dioxide into the air. It is unclear how much he is paid or who is on his office’s staff — which is odd, because the United States taxpayer is footing the bill for his travel and salary. After the Boston Herald was told by the government to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to find out that information, Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is demanding answers.

On Thursday, Boston radio legend Howie Carr interviewed Sullivan on his daily radio show. Carr informed the senator that Kerry’s office told the Herald — where Carr also writes a column — that they would have to submit a FOIA request and could expect to hear back by 2024 to find out how much money Kerry is taking in from government coffers.

“What? … That should be public. My salary is online,” Sullivan responded. “The Secretary of State’s is online, and the president is, too.”

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The Foilies 2022

Each year during Sunshine Week (March 13-19), The Foilies serve up tongue-in-cheek “awards” for government agencies and assorted institutions that stand in the way of access to information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock combine forces to collect horror stories about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state-level public records requests from journalists and transparency advocates across the United States and beyond. Our goal is to identify the most surreal document redactions, the most aggravating copy fees, the most outrageous retaliation attempts, and all the other ridicule-worthy attacks on the public’s right to know.

And every year since 2015, as we’re about to crown these dubious winners, something new comes to light that makes us consider stopping the presses.

As we were writing up this year’s faux awards, news broke that officials from the National Archives and Records Administration had to lug away boxes upon boxes of Trump administration records from Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private resort. At best, it was an inappropriate move; at worst, a potential violation of laws governing the retention of presidential records and the handling of classified materials. And while Politico had reported that when Trump was still in the White House, he liked to tear up documents, we also just learned from journalist Maggie Haberman’s new book that staff claimed to find toilets clogged up with paper scraps, which were potentially torn-up government records. Trump has dismissed the allegations, of course. 

This was all too deliciously ironic considering how much Trump had raged about his opponent (and 2016 Foilies winner) Hillary Clinton’s practice of storing State Department communications on a private server. Is storing potentially classified correspondence on a personal email system any worse than hoarding top secret documents at a golf club? Is “acid washing” records, as Trump accused Clinton, any less farcical than flushing them down the john? 

Ultimately, we decided not to give Trump his seventh Foilie. Technically, he isn’t eligible: his presidential records won’t be subject to FOIA until he’s been out of office for five years (releasing classified records could take years, or decades, if ever).

Instead, we’re sticking with our original 16 winners, from federal agencies to small-town police departments to a couple of corporations, who are all shameworthy in their own rights and, at least metaphorically, have no problem tossing government transparency in the crapper.

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