It's enormously satisfying to see conservative media reaping what they sow. Those who tell lies ought to face consequences, and now they have.

Fox Corporation said in a statement that "we acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion [that were made on Fox News] to be false. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues."

Hopefully the "moving forward" part of Fox's statement means that Fox will learn from its mistakes. But I wouldn't count on it.

@blablarg18

Why am I not surprised that Tim Pool, the videographer from the Occupy Wall Street protests who started and owns timcast.com, would have stories on his website discussing journal articles written by researchers 30 years ago? I would have thought that Tim being a little "behind" on his research would certainly have been a given.

At the end of that article, Tim Pool writes:

"As a result of the findings (from 1994), researchers called for additional studies to shed light on the familial contribution to gender identity disorders."

Surely there's been countless studies over the past 30 years on this topic. Perhaps Tim will be prepared to read some of them 30 years from now!

@raphjd

The Post Millennial, co-founded in 2017 by Matthew Azrieli and Ali S. Taghva, and owned and operated by the Après le Millénaire, is rated "Right Biased" on story selection that favors the right and "Mixed" in reporting due to publishing unsubstantiated claims and having failed several fact checks.

Failed Fact Checks from Post Millennial com:

Rainbow poppies not mandatory for Remembrance Day at Manitoba school – False

“almost nobody showed up” to Kamala Harris’ campaign stop in Asheville, North Carolina, on October 21 – Mostly False

“FLASHBACK: Final debate moderator busted on hot mic coaching Clinton campaign director.” – Mostly False

Harris Hasn’t Called Biden a ‘Racist’ or a ‘Rapist’ – False

Greta Thunberg predicted the ‘World Will End In 2023’ – False

Sounds like a bunch of Canadian hokum to me.

On 18 October 1956, Earl Kennedy, a 1941 Morehouse graduate and Detroit Republican activist, asked King about his position "relative to Negro people voting for Democratic candidates nationally.” MLK Jr's reply to Earl Kennedy's question is shown below.

Mr. Earl Kennedy, Chairman
First Congressional District
Michigan Citizens for Eisenhower
400 North Capitol Avenue
Lansing, Michigan

Dear Mr. Kennedy:

Thanks for your very kind letter of October 18, making inquiry concerning my political position. Actually, I am not taking any public position in this election. In private opinion I find something to be desired from both parties. The Negro has been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Party. The Democrats have betrayed us by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the southern dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed us by capitulating to the blatent hypocrisy of conservative right wing northerners. This coalition of southern dixiecrats and right wing northern Republicans defeats every move toward liberal legislation in Congress. So we confront the problem of choosing the lesser of two evils. At this point I might say however, that I feel that the Negro must remain an independent voter, not becoming unduly tied to either party. He should seek to vote for the party which is more concerned with the welfare of all the people.

I was more than happy to hear from you, and of course I was very happy to know that you are an alumnus of Morehouse College. I hope it will be possible to meet you personally sometime in the near future.

Sincerely yours,
M. L. King, Jr.,

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/earl-kennedy

@blablarg18 It seems the better argument to be made would be how the whole world wasted its energies focusing on the plight of five rich people being lost at sea while totally ignoring the plight of 700 poor people who died when their ship capsized off the coast of Greece.

The co-director of a Maryland-based research group who claims to have damaging information about Hunter Biden has been charged with arms trafficking, sanctions violations and acting as an unregistered agent for China, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Monday.

In an eight-count indictment, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York accused Gal Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, of violating the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act in brokering arms deals between Chinese companies, Iran and countries in the Middle East.

Mr. Luft, promoted by some congressional Republicans as a keystone witness in their efforts to show corruption by the Biden family, is a fugitive from justice. He was detained by law enforcement officials in Cyprus in February in connection with the indictment, but fled after being freed on bond while awaiting extradition. If convicted, he faces up to 100 years in prison.

Full story here.

A drag performer in Idaho won more than $1.1 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit against a blogger who falsely claimed that he had exposed himself to a crowd that included children at an event two years ago.

On Friday May 24th, 2024, the jury unanimously decided that the blogger, Summer Bushnell, had defamed the artist, Eric Posey, when she claimed in videos and comments online that Posey exposed his genitalia while dancing onstage during a pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, even though he had not. It awarded Posey $926,000 in compensatory damages for defamation and another $250,000 in punitive damages.

Posey, who performed under the name Mona Liza Million, agreed to participate in the Coeur d’Alene event on June 11, 2022. That event, called Pride in the Park, prompted national news media coverage after 31 members of a white nationalist group called Patriot Front were arrested nearby.

Summer Bushnell, who runs a website called The Bushnell Report, posted a video about the arrests in June 2022. In it, she claimed that Posey had “flashed his genitalia to minors and people in the crowd.” She later posted another video, of Posey dancing onstage, that was edited to blur his pelvic area, suggesting it was censoring nudity. But law enforcement officials later concluded that the unedited videos showed that Posey was clothed and did not expose himself.

In September 2022, shortly after Posey filed his lawsuit, Bushnell told a reporter at The Idaho Statesman that she had not attended the pride event herself but had received footage of the performance from someone she declined to identify.

• NYTimes coverage

Project 2025, a compendium of Trump's plan to "lay out hundreds of clear and concrete policy recommendations for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress, and agencies, commissions, and boards" for use in the chance that he wins in 2024, describes how his administration would handle pornography:

• Promise #1: Restore the Family as the Centerpiece of American Life and Protect Our Children

• Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime.

• Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

There are some interesting choices of words there that need to be unpacked:

"Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance...." Why the mention of "transgender ideology"? Is it only transgender porn that they are against, and not mainstream porn? Transgender "ideology" makes me think of educational literature put out by the medical community, which conservatives might sarcastically refer to as "pornography". Either way, I think the mention of transgender is a red herring, an attempt to tar all of pornography by merely highlighting one word they know will trigger people. Besides, if they are referring to transgender literature, they themselves qualify that by stating "for instance", which clearly means "as one example of" many other forms, including hetero porn.

"Educators and public librarians who purvey it..." I'm certain that porn is not meant to be made available at public libraries. This might be an additional red herring to make us think they are referring to trans literature, which ostensibly might be found at a public library. In any event, the passage does suggest that maybe the people who wrote it have never stepped into a public library before.

"Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women." This passage clears up the earlier confusion by making it clear they are referring to all pornography, which includes women. Why else mention "women" if referring to only transgender literature? I believe that motivations such as these are chilling to consider.

Read the entire Project 2025 manifesto here.

from Liam Stack of The New York Times
4/21/2025

Pope Francis made headlines early in his pontificate when he responded to a reporter’s question about gay priests with a phrase that became shorthand for his pastoral style: “Who am I to judge?”

On Monday after his death, Francis’ admirers remembered him for his openness to members of the LGBTQ community, for his support for those who provided them with ministry and spiritual guidance and for the ways that he changed the church’s tone — if not always its doctrine — on LGBTQ issues.

“What he did for the Community is more than all of his predecessors combined,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit writer.

“Just acknowledging them, recognizing them, accompanying them, advocating for them, listening to them. He was the first pope to ever use the word 'gay' publicly, and he met regularly with transgender Catholics, even toward the end of his life. No pope has ever done that,” Martin said.

Sexuality was one of many issues in which Catholic conservatives disagreed with Pope Francis, and it contributed to the emergence of an influential and well-organized conservative opposition to his papacy in the United States.

But in other countries, especially those where homosexuality is more widely stigmatized, some saw Francis’ accepting attitude as a breath of fresh air.

But Francis’ change in tone did not reflect a deeper reconsideration of church doctrine, and his record on those issues included perhaps as many traditional retrenchments as it did pastoral leaps forward.

He allowed priests to bless gay couples, but he also reaffirmed church teaching that marriage could only be between a man and a woman.

He used a slur for gay men when he complained about the number of gay seminarians to a group of 250 bishops in Rome, then apologized when the incident was reported in the news media.

He then repeated the church’s instruction that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not enter the priesthood.

@manhandler
A good analogy for Critical Race Theory is the film THX 1138.

Many films follow the format of good person versus bad person to establish their narratives. Most films that use this make the two sides easy to identify. If you've seen THX 1138, ask yourself who the "bad guy" in that film is. It's not an easy question to answer.

While the protagonist, THX 1138, can easily be seen as the good guy, it's more difficult to spot who the real enemy is in the film. Some might argue that SEN 5241 is the bad character -- and he certainly does do bad things -- but he is able to do those things because of the system.

Others might argue that the police androids are the enemy. But they are really just following orders from a system. The agents of that system make life impossible for THX, from the characters who mistakenly operate the mindblock scene that gets THX arrested, to the characters arguing in THX's trial scene. No one character is really the absolute enemy. The entire system is rigged to make THX 1138 an outsider through no fault of his own.

Established views of racism would hold SEN 5241 or the police androids or many other singular actors are the bad of a system that needs to be singularly addressed/punished/handled. But critical race theory says that these individual parts are not really the focus and that punishing them does not really correct anything. The system is to blame.

from Liam Stack of The New York Times
4/21/2025

Pope Francis made headlines early in his pontificate when he responded to a reporter’s question about gay priests with a phrase that became shorthand for his pastoral style: “Who am I to judge?”

On Monday after his death, Francis’ admirers remembered him for his openness to members of the LGBTQ community, for his support for those who provided them with ministry and spiritual guidance and for the ways that he changed the church’s tone — if not always its doctrine — on LGBTQ issues.

“What he did for the Community is more than all of his predecessors combined,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit writer.

“Just acknowledging them, recognizing them, accompanying them, advocating for them, listening to them. He was the first pope to ever use the word 'gay' publicly, and he met regularly with transgender Catholics, even toward the end of his life. No pope has ever done that,” Martin said.

Sexuality was one of many issues in which Catholic conservatives disagreed with Pope Francis, and it contributed to the emergence of an influential and well-organized conservative opposition to his papacy in the United States.

But in other countries, especially those where homosexuality is more widely stigmatized, some saw Francis’ accepting attitude as a breath of fresh air.

But Francis’ change in tone did not reflect a deeper reconsideration of church doctrine, and his record on those issues included perhaps as many traditional retrenchments as it did pastoral leaps forward.

He allowed priests to bless gay couples, but he also reaffirmed church teaching that marriage could only be between a man and a woman.

He used a slur for gay men when he complained about the number of gay seminarians to a group of 250 bishops in Rome, then apologized when the incident was reported in the news media.

He then repeated the church’s instruction that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not enter the priesthood.

@blablarg18 That's because even though the House adopted a resolution citing Lerner for criminal contempt of Congress, they did not choose to approve a resolution authorizing the committee to pursue civil enforcement of the subpoena in federal court, as had been done in the past. Thus, it was handled by US attorneys in the District of Columbia.

@blablarg18 I mispoke, in the Lerner case it wasn't the DOJ that made that decision, it was actually the US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

@blablarg18 said in Appeals Court Refuses to Delay Steve Bannon's 4-Month Contempt Prison Sentence:

so badly, that, in fairness, or if Obama were honorable.... yes he would indeed go "I'm going to go out of my way NOT to [sheild Lois Lerner]"

Yes.

It's his lack of honor or his Uniparty loyalty (same thing), that made him not do it.

But Obama DID go out of his way NOT to exert privilege. He refused, and she ended up taking the 5th.

@raphjd said in Appeals Court Refuses to Delay Steve Bannon's 4-Month Contempt Prison Sentence:

@Spintendo
Eric Holder was told by a court that he did not enjoy exec privilege. Did you intentionally leave that out or didn't your media tell you about that?

The committee did file a lawsuit, authorized by House resolution, seeking judicial enforcement of the subpoena. The D.C. District Court held that it had jurisdiction to hear the dispute in 2013 and denied the committee’s motion for summary judgment in 2014.

But it was not until 2016—in a new Congress and after Attorney General Holder had left his position—that the D.C. District Court issued an opinion in Committee on Oversight and Government Reform v. Lynch instructing the new Attorney General to comply with the subpoena. Despite the committee’s victory, two aspects of the court’s reasoning affected Congress’s ability to obtain similar documents from Holder. Although the committee won the case, it still appealed the decision to the D.C. Circuit out of concern for the reasoning applied.

The case was held in abeyance pending a potential settlement between the committee and the Trump Administration. Although the parties reportedly reached a negotiated settlement in March 2018, that settlement was contingent upon the vacation of two specific orders issued by the district court earlier in the case.

In October 2018, the district court declined to vacate those decisions, leaving the fate of the negotiated settlement uncertain.

@blablarg18 A bigger question is whether or not your blame might be misplaced.

In several of these instances, you blame the sitting president--"Obama didn't prosecute" or "Biden didn't prosecute". But those presidents and the others I mentioned were working off of a framework -- that of executive privilege-- that existed long before they came into power, one which has been confirmed by the Congress and Courts.

It's as if you're expecting a president to suddenly say "You know what? Even though I have this ability to protect my administration, one that other presidents have used--I'm going to go out of my way NOT to use it, and hopefully no one else in my party will think I'm crazy for not doing it." You actually believe that is possible, that a president would do that?

When you're driving down the street, and you have legal abilities provided to you by the law (an ability to say, turn right on red, or change lanes in an intersection, or other privileges like taking certain tax exemptions) you're going to ignore those long-standing privileges and go out of your way to go the harder route by not taking them?

Your expectation that Obama and Biden should not avail themselves of the same rights Reagan and Bush took advatage of seems, at best, naive.

@blablarg18 said in Appeals Court Refuses to Delay Steve Bannon's 4-Month Contempt Prison Sentence:

@Spintendo

Then again you think NYT is real, so......

I'm sorry we don't all appreciate the superior journalistic qualities of Seyed Ali Taghva quite like you do.

Which makes me wonder, is there a country on earth that you do respect their government?

Which county, in your estimation, practices in a fair manner that is opposite to your "uniparty regime" structure?

My guess would be one of the rare collective-head-of-state-type governments, like Switzerland.

blablarg18's response (when unchallenged by facts) : "It's Democrats to blame!"

blablarg18's response (when challenged by facts): "It's BOTH (Uniparty regime) to blame!"

You just go whichever way the wind blows, don't ya?

Who woulda guessed youre an anarchist at heart.

@blablarg18 Since it's evident you need a history lesson, allow me to provide one for you.

• 1982 Burford Contempt: Democrat-controlled House sought contempt charges against EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford. OUTCOME: Reagan asserts privilege. DOJ decides NOT to prosecute.

• 2007 Miers & Bolten Contempts: Democrat controlled House sought contempt charges against Miers and Bolton. OUTCOME: Bush asserts privilege. DOJ decides NOT to prosecute.

• 2012 Holder Contempt: Republican-controlled House sought contempt charges against AG Eric Holder. OUTCOME: Obama asserts privilege. DOJ decides NOT to prosecute.

• 2013 Lerner Contempt: Republican-controlled House sought contempt charges against IRS official Lois Lerner. OUTCOME: Obama DID NOT assert privilege; instead, Lerner invoked her 5th amendment right not to incriminate herself. DOJ decides NOT to prosecute.

If there's bias there (being pro-democrat or pro-republican), I don't see it. If anything, I see a bias towards whichever president asserts the privilege. The DOJ takes their word for it, no matter what party they come from.