Tag: politics

A Judge Of Her Peers? Judge Dugan Assigned A Judge Previously Rebuked For Political Comments

Five years ago, I wrote about a federal judge who, in my view, had discarded any resemblance of judicial restraint and judgment in a public screed against Republicans, Donald Trump, and the Supreme Court. The Wisconsin judge represented the final death of irony: a jurist who failed to see the conflict in lashing out at what he called judicial bias in a political diatribe that would have made MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell blush.

His name is Lynn Adelman.

I was wrong in 2020. Irony is very much alive.

This week, a judge was randomly selected to preside at the trial of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan. A critic of Trump’s immigration policies, Dugan is accused of obstructing federal law enforcement and facilitating the escape of an unlawful immigrant.

The judge assigned to the Dugan case? You guessed it. Lynn Adelman, 85.

A judge is expected to come to a case like this one without the burden of his own baggage.

Judge Adelman is carrying more baggage than Amtrak in Wisconsin.

The selection of Adelman shows how political commentary by judges undermines the legitimacy of the court system. Now, in a case that has divided the nation, the public will have to rely on a judge who discarded his own obligations as a judge to lash out at conservatives, Trump, and conservative jurists.

Adelman was a long-standing Democratic politician who tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to run for Congress during his 20-year tenure in the Wisconsin Senate. For critics, Adelman never set aside his political agenda after President Bill Clinton nominated him for the federal bench.

Adelman was sharply rebuked for ignoring controlling Supreme Court precedent to rule in favor of a Democratic challenge over voting identification rules just before a critical election.  Adelman blocked the law before the election despite a Supreme Court case issued years earlier in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008), rejecting a similar challenge.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a stinging reversal, explaining to Adelman that in “our hierarchical judicial system, a district court cannot declare a statute unconstitutional just because he thinks (with or without the support of a political scientist) that the dissent was right and the majority wrong.”

Adelman, however, was apparently undeterred. In 2020, he wrote a law review article for Harvard Law & Policy Review, titled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.”

Adelman attacked what he described as a “hard-right majority” that is “actively participating in undermining American democracy.” He also struck out at Trump as “an autocrat… disinclined to buck the wealthy individuals and corporations who control his party.”

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Senate Republicans Won’t Work 5 Days A Week To Confirm Trump’s Key Nominees

The first American-born pope, Leo XIV, celebrated his inaugural Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square before a large crowd that included Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, two prominent Catholics in the Trump administration. Missing, however, was our country’s official envoy. When the new pope met with the Vatican’s diplomatic corps on Friday, America’s ambassador wasn’t there. We don’t have one right now. 

Brian Burch has been nominated by President Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, but his is one of nearly 80 nominations now languishing on the Senate’s Executive Calendar. Last week, Senate Republicans tried to fast-track Burch’s nomination in time for Pope Leo’s inauguration. Democrats objected. So Republicans, despite having the power to overcome that objection simply by scheduling the vote on a Friday, shrugged and skipped town.

This is becoming a habit. After confirming Trump’s Cabinet in record time, the Republican-led Senate has returned to its traditional two-and-a-half-day work week and lackadaisical work ethic.

The Trump administration is waiting on all manner of assistant secretaries, under secretaries, deputy secretaries, general counsels, and financial officers. As of this writing, the comptroller of the currency and assistant secretary of the Treasury are both awaiting confirmation, as is the director of the Office of Personnel Management, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the deputy secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, and the general counsels for the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development — among more than 50 others. The nominee to be the deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency has been sitting on the calendar since mid-March.

Cabinet secretaries are certainly important and often famous. But everyone in Washington knows agencies’ sub-Cabinet-level officers and below are just as critical to executing the president’s agenda. 

The entire country watched the permanent bureaucracy subvert President Trump’s first term. And most Republican voters now understand how critical these appointees are — everyone, it seems, except the people whose job it is to confirm them.

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The Covid-19 Crisis: How Political Meddling Threatens Your Health and Medical Freedom.

Doctors who successfully used early COVID-19 treatments like ivermectin faced severe backlash and censorship from medical and government authorities

Hospitals repeatedly blocked effective interventions, putting patients at unnecessary risk by ignoring treatments that could have prevented severe illness

Over 38,000 deaths linked to COVID shots were reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), yet health authorities downplayed these numbers

Health care professionals experienced threats to their medical licenses simply for advocating patient-centered treatments and sharing honest clinical results

Taking control of your medical freedom means knowing your rights, documenting your decisions, and actively choosing doctors who prioritize your health over politics

Trust in hospitals and health institutions is sharply declining because of how the health care industry has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. From forced treatments to draconic lockdown mandates, people all over the world suffered greatly. Even doctors who figured out effective treatments that helped save lives were vilified for spreading “misinformation.”

One such case is Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a Texas-based physician who has treated COVID-19 patients during the height of the pandemic. During her time working in a hospital setting, she observed firsthand how patients recovered quickly using treatments such as ivermectin and monoclonal antibodies. All of this, and more, was discussed in her interview with Tucker Carlson featured above.

Why Vaccine Safety Suddenly Became a Political Battlefield

Getting vaccinated was once viewed as a straightforward part of health care. You’d go your doctor, get your shot, and move on with life, confident you’d done the right thing for your health. While many have criticized vaccinations and their adverse effects on human health, the arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus put the entire field under the watchful eyes of the public.

Now, getting the shot isn’t just a health care choice — it’s deeply entwined with politics. Doctors who tried treating their patients with methods outside the official rules faced intense backlash. Bowden shares her side of the story:

• Early treatment is crucial — Using drugs like ivermectin and monoclonal antibodies, she successfully helped thousands of patients recover quickly and fully. Recounting her experience in 2021:

“[M]onoclonal antibodies came about, and those worked great. I mean, I could get as many doses I wanted. I’d get them the next day. I’d just contact the manufacturer, say, I need 200 doses to be at my doorstep. Great. They worked wonderfully. People turned around very quickly.”

• Authorities pushed back against treatments that worked — One reason is that these early treatments undermined the vaccine-focused public health strategy. Powerful organizations insisted vaccines were the only real solution, dismissing alternatives. If patients could recover fully without the vaccine, fewer people would rush to get vaccinated, and Big Pharma wouldn’t like that.

“So this is following the rollout of the COVID shots. The government is upset because people are not buying it. People are not getting them. There’s very low uptake, very low interest. There’s suspicion of these shots,” Bowden says.

“So in March, they started their PR campaign. The government, they went after ivermectin. The FDA put something on their website about, you can’t use ivermectin for COVID. Biden doled out $11.5 billion to groups around the country. Initially, it started with 275.

It went up to 17,000 influencers, church groups, sports leagues, all sorts of people just funneling out taxpayer money to go after doctors like myself that were spreading ‘misinformation’ and to push people to get these COVID shots.”

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Why Is The Secret German Spy Report On The AfD Party Only Filled With Public Statements?

The German domestic spy service, the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has released a 1,100-page report on the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which it used to label the party a “confirmed” right-wing extremist party. The report is huge and reads like it was written by Antifa, but that was to be expected. However, one interesting point is that it contains only public statements, including quotes made by AfD politicians and a lot of memes.

Why is that?

We already know that the BfV is secretly surveilling AfD members in certain German states, mostly in the east, where the party is “confirmed right-wing extremist” already. This designation allows for the BfV in those states to partake in extraordinary surveillance powers over AfD members, including reading their chats and emails. Presumably, they can also track their browsing history, and perhaps they are even listening in on their conversations at home.

What this means is that the BfV has plenty of statements, memes and content to use based on private statements, but it is purposefully choosing not to use them. After all, a certain number of those AfD members, in private moments, probably also express opinions, post memes, or share thoughts that the BfV would love to include in a secret report on the party, which many hope will eventually justify an outright ban.

Again, why is the BfV not using these private statements?

There are multiple reasons.

For one, a big part of the apparatus of spy agencies is to obtain information, but not release it to the public. The public may not be able to stomach such personal and private information and the means that were used to obtain it. Since the Edward Snowden revelations, and even before then, we have become acutely aware that we have accepted devices into our lives and homes that can be used to spy on us on a scale never seen before in history. However, even now — even after all this information has been revealed — I believe nearly all of us still cannot quite grasp what this means — nor do we want to.

Yes, we know that AfD members are being spied on across Germany. Their emails are read, their phone calls are recorded. AI is being used to sort out keywords of interest to the security services. However, nobody really knows how this information is being processed and what it is being used for, or even who is reading it. The spies who control this information have extraordinary power. As a significant portion of them are now far left, at least in Germany, they believe they are acting as a bulwark against the rise of Nazism, and the ends justify the means when it comes to the AfD. There are other psychological motives at work, of course, as spy agencies are on the whole very good at keeping their secrets, not even necessarily because of internal controls, but because the spies are dedicated to their mission. There is, also, the sense of power that comes with being the watcher, and for many spies, this is a powerful intoxicant. They know, while you are in the dark.

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German Conservative Media Leak Secret Police Dossier Used to Ban and Spy on AfD: Criticizing Mass Migration is “Far Right”

Several conservative German media have published the allegedly “secret” dossier the German intel service used to justify classifying the largest German opposition party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as “confirmed far-right”. The 1100-page dossier contains mainly public statements by party members which criticize open borders and mass immigration.

“Cicero“, “Tichy’s Einblick” and “Junge Freiheit” obtained the 1,100 page dossier which ex-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser used to drop a bomb on the AfD on her last day in office. The German secret political police (Office for the Protection of the Constitution – Verfassungsschutz / BfV) has since retracted its classification of the AfD as “far-right” after the AfD sued in court and US Senator Tom Cotton wrote to DNI Tulsi Gabbard to ask US intel agencies to stop exchanging information with German secret services that spy on the political opposition.

The dossier released by the conservative media did not contain any new revelations, but consists entirely of public statements by AfD politcians that most US conservatives will find completely normal sentiments, such as a Facebook post by the party from September 25, 2023:

Instead of a pointless housing summit: Deportation for more housing! If hundreds of thousands or even millions enter Germany every year without the same number of apartments being built, there won’t be enough housing. So due to rising demand, rents also increase. The result: According to calculations by the housing industry association, up to one million apartments may be missing by 2025. But instead of even talking about how this problem can be reduced through consistent deportations and protected borders, the established parties organize a pointless housing summit and decide on brutal regulations at the expense of the Germans.

Pretty extreme, huh?

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Terrifying moment Mexican mayoral candidate is shot dead alongside three supporters including her daughter during live broadcast

A Mexican mayoral candidate was tragically shot dead alongside three of her supporters including her daughter during a live broadcast of her campaign rally.

Yesenia Lara Gutierrez, representing Mexico‘s ruling Morena party, was gunned down in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz on Sunday night as she greeted residents in the streets of Texistepec.

The horrifying incident was captured on a Facebook livestream, showing people running and screaming as gunshots rang out off camera. Mexican newspaper Reforma reported that the candidate was greeting ‘women with children in their arms’ when the gunfire began.

Footage posted online depicted the chaos, with at least 20 shots head in the clip that was still available on Gutierrez’s Facebook page the following day. Other images shared online appeared to show bodies in the street.

Veracruz Governor Rocio Nahle, also of the Morena party of President Claudia Sheinbaum, said Monday that Gutierrez’s daughter was among those killed by gunmen. 

‘No office or position is worth a person’s life,’ Nahle said in a press conference Monday, where she promised justice.  

Gutierrez had posted several images on Facebook, showing her campaigning throughout the region. ‘The strength of our youth is the vitality that motivates me to keep walking day by day,’ she wrote just hours before the shooting.

This marks the second killing of a mayoral candidate in Veracruz during the current election cycle, following the April 29 murder of German Anuar Valencia, also from Morena. 

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Germany arrests leaders of ‘kingdom’ linked to far-right plot, prosecutors say

Police arrested four people on Tuesday linked to a radical group seeking to replace the modern German state, prosecutors said, in the latest operation against a movement flagged as a potential threat to democracy.

The arrests took place as part of raids against the Koenigreich Deutschland, or ‘Kingdom of Germany’, after the interior ministry banned the group, which prosecutors said had established shadow institutions for a new state in line with a far-right ideology known as the ‘Reichsbuerger’ movement.

One of the four people arrested was the movement’s self-declared sovereign, the prosecutors said.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service put the Reichsbuerger movement under observation in 2016, shortly after one of its members shot dead a policeman during a raid at his home.

Scrutiny of the movement, which is broad and covers a number of conspiratorial theories questioning the legitimacy of the modern German state, intensified in December 2022 when authorities thwarted advanced plans for an armed coup.

Its adherents believe that today’s German democracy is an illegitimate facade and that they are citizens of a monarchy which, they maintain, endured after Germany’s defeat in World War One, despite its formal abolition.

Police acted on four arrest warrants on Tuesday for suspects identified as Mathias B., Peter F., Benjamin M. and Martin S., omitting their surnames in line with German privacy laws.

Prosecutors said they are the ringleaders of a criminal organisation that had set up “pseudo-state-like structures and institutions”, including a bank and insurance system, an authority printing “fictional documents” and its own currency.

Peter F. was the group’s “supreme sovereign”, with oversight and decision-making powers over the group’s key areas, a statement from the prosecutors said.

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Feeding the Narrative: How School Lunch Became Political Theater

There’s a huge debate playing out on X and in Congress over school lunch. The basic framing goes like this: the good, caring Democrats want kids to eat and learn, so they argue there must be free, federally funded school lunch for all students. Meanwhile, under the biased narrative, the evil, stingy Republicans supposedly want kids to go hungry, to stay ignorant, and for the money that would have funded school lunches to somehow end up in Elon Musk’s pocket.

As is often the case, about 80% of the people arguing about school lunch don’t even understand what the real issue is, what the Democrats are actually proposing and why the Republicans oppose it. The current debate in Congress, rather than on Twitter, centers on whether school meals should be made universally free for all students or remain limited to low-income children, and, importantly, how “low-income” should be defined.

The current debate is just one more negative consequence of the destructive COVID lockdowns that robbed American children of two years of education and social development. During the pandemic, Congress made school lunches universally free, regardless of family income. That temporary policy expired in 2022, sparking a national debate. Supporters of making free meals permanent argue that universal access removes stigma, supports families struggling with economic hardship, and ensures that children are well-fed and ready to learn.

Opponents, mostly Republicans, argue that universal free school lunch is too expensive, subsidizes meals for those who can afford it, and shifts responsibility for feeding children from parents to the federal government. Additionally, supporters of these programs rarely address basic questions: How were children eating before the COVID-era lunch program? And if that system worked, why can’t we return to it?

Democrats support legislation like the Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ilhan Omar, and the No Hungry Kids in Schools Act. While these bills sound appealing—who wants hungry kids in school?—they assume a level of need that isn’t supported by data. Were 51 million children really going without lunch before the pandemic? The way Democrats frame the issue, you’d think the U.S. is Calcutta, with malnourished children collapsing on their way to school.

The reality is quite different. The United States has far more of a problem with obesity than hunger. Nearly 20% of American children between the ages of 2 and 19 are classified as obese. Obesity in the U.S. is inversely correlated with wealth. Poorer communities tend to have higher obesity rates. In fact, the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world where the poor are more likely to be overweight than underfed.

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House report slams FBI for ignoring political motives in 2017 congressional baseball shooting

The FBI used a “biased and butchered analysis” to conclude that a left-wing gunman who shot Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and three others at a GOP baseball practice in 2017 wasn’t motivated by political hatred, according to a House GOP report released Tuesday.

The scathing report challenged the FBI’s initial findings that shooter James Hodgkinson, 66, who died in a shootout with law enforcement, had been trying to commit “suicide by cop.” It said the FBI had handwritten evidence from the shooter about his political motives, including the names of six GOP lawmakers, and photographs he took while casing the ball field, but didn’t fully disclose all the details at the time.

The gunman shot Mr. Scalise, Louisiana Republican, who was then House majority whip. He nearly died; three others were also wounded.

The 3,000-page report by the majority staff of the House Intelligence Committee criticizes the FBI’s investigation under then-acting Director Andrew McCabe, saying the agency had “predetermined” Hodgkinson’s motives were “suicide by cop” as opposed to a “premeditated assassination attempt on Republican congressmen by a radical, left-wing political extremist.” 

The committee is led by Chairman Rick Crawford, Arkansas Republican, who said the FBI had acted with  “a complete disregard and lack of investigative integrity.” Committee Democrats largely agreed with the report’s findings.

Hodgkinson had proclaimed left-wing ideology and opposition to President Trump before the shooting. He traveled from Illinois to open fire with a rifle at the ball field in Alexandria, Va., where GOP lawmakers were practicing for the annual congressional baseball game.

A 10-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers fatally shot Hodgkinson.

The committee noted that the FBI, in its press release at the time, withheld information from the public that would have undermined its “suicide by cop” narrative.

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