But at least the documents are totally secure at Mar-a-Lago, because it’s not as if anyone can just waltz in off the street.

According to an article from the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a Ukrainian woman posing as a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty is under [FBI] investigation after infiltrating the private members club under a false pretense.

Inna Yashchyshyn, 33, allegedly lied to members that she was a Rothschild heiress and mingled with Trump, US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others at Mar-a-Lago functions.

OCCRP, in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Gazette, reported that Yashchyshyn had demonstrated “the ease with which someone with a fake identity and shadowy background” could bypass security at

Typical Willoughby: taunting women with his ability to invade their spaces.

Hur hur heehee smirk smirk.

Update: Now he’s blocking everyone so I’ll add a grab.

Another battle between/among a children’s hospital and Libs of TikTok/Chaya Raichik:

Children’s National Hospital has been inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after an influential right-wing Twitter account published a recording that falsely suggested the hospital is performing hysterectomies on transgender children, a hospital spokeswoman said…

The recording, made by Libs of TikTok founderChaya Raichik, features twotelephone operatorsat the renowned D.C. medical facility stating — in response to Raichik’squestions — that a 16-year-old trans boy would be eligible for a hysterectomy at the hospital’s gender development clinic. Children’s has not disputed the authenticity of the recording but said the employees provided inaccurate information.

“None of the people who were secretly recorded by this activist group deliver care

It seems the police removed lesbians from a Pride Cymru march today.

Lesbians are being removed by police from Pride Cymru. This is utterly unacceptable and even more so on account of being perpetrated by the police, who should be PROTECTING them, and their right to march. Stand with lesbians! https://t.co/WoEohkPIbA

— Vanessa McCulloch (@NeedaGin) August 27, 2022

Just the lesbians. Not the men threatening the lesbians, just the lesbians.

Police have removed lesbians from Pride Cymru (Wales) because their presence was 'causing confrontation' with men at the march who identify as women https://t.co/outF8zryYU

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 27, 2022

Pride Cymru is proud of expelling lesbians.

Pride Cymru: lesbians not welcome https://t.co/PBVnRMInqK

— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) August 27, 2022

Oh really? What historians?

Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body. (6/7) pic.twitter.com/x8KZ5rEaeW

— Scientific American (@sciam) August 24, 2022

That’s an ambiguous, not to say sneaky, thing to say. Even if there are some historians who talk about a “two-sex model,” it’s absurd to claim that all historians do as a matter of course – it’s absurd to treat it as universally accepted professional jargon.

It’s actually one Thomas Laqueur, who made the claim in a book titled Making Sex: Body and Gender … Read the rest

The Washington Post has an interesting detail:

Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart read the affidavit and approved the search on Aug. 5. Three days later, FBI agents dressed in polos and khakis executed the search warrant at the Palm Beach estate, carting away an additional 20 boxes of items from a bedroom, office and a first-floor storage room, according to an inventory of what was retrieved from the property that was made public earlier this month.

A bedroom and an office. I guess we should rejoice they didn’t find any in the lobby or the hotel dining room?

The affidavit says federal agents sought permission to conduct the search after reviewing the contents of 15 boxes Trump returned

Former Trump people tell us he never did bother to learn how to handle documents.

A former Trump official told CNN that they were not surprised to hear that the National Archives found boxes with classified records that “were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly (sic) identified.”

According to this source, the former President was known to walk around both the White House and Mar-a-Lago and pull documents out of boxes and look at them, then put them in other boxes or to the side, often with no method or reasoning to it. One source said that Trump was constantly putting things into stacks and leaving them around his office to go through later. These stacks often

Ah isn’t that adorable.

(He didn’t really get it from Marks & Sparks.)

Can you imagine if a female MBE behaved like this and publicly boasted about it?

But doing this under the protective label "trans" means you can get away with anything. pic.twitter.com/hqWImyW7Vh

— gender is harmful (@genderisharmful) August 26, 2022

Hur hur.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on 9 a.m. Pacific time.

After reviewing the affidavit (it’s here, the link @6 is to something else), I would say it’s not a completely uninformative nothingburger, but not terribly illuminating or new.

My notes:

— A criminal investigation was opened after the return of the 15 boxes. In other words, it’s not just the discovery that Trump continued to withhold documents that triggered a criminal inquiry.

— Of the 15 boxes that Trump voluntarily turned over, there were 67 documents marked confidential, 92 marked secret, and 25 top secret. Many also carried other designations, including those relating to human intelligence (i.e. sources)

— According to the FBI agent, many of the … Read the rest

The BBC offers some summaries:

The Department of Justice – which obtained the search warrant – described its work as a criminal investigation over the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorised spaces.

A criminal investigation of Trump, that is.

The 38-page affidavit said there was “probable cause” to believe that “evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” breaking federal laws would be found at Trump’s home.

Not a coincidence.

Trump is truth socialing his views.

Affidavit heavily redacted!!! Nothing mentioned on “Nuclear,” a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover – WE GAVE THEM MUCH. Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the

What Judicial Watch had to do with it:

Not long after the National Archives acknowledged in February that it had retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump began fielding calls from Tom Fitton, a prominent conservative activist.

Fitton, the longtime head of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, had a simple message for Trump — it was a mistake to give the records to the Archives, and his team should never have let the Archives “strong-arm” him into returning them, according to three sources familiar with the matter.Those records belonged to Trump, Fitton argued, citing a 2012 court case involving his organization that he said gave the former President authority

Hmmmm.

Hungary’s state audit office has issued a report about the risks of the country’s education system being “too feminine”, saying it could hurt the development of boys and create demographic problems.

…

“The phenomenon called ‘pink education’ has numerous economic and social consequences,” states the report by the state body, which is seen as close to the nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Why is it called that though? What color is “masculine” education? Does “masculine” education also have numerous economic and social consequences?

“If education favours feminine traits” such as “emotional and social maturity” and “provokes the overrepresentation of women in universities, equality (of the sexes) will be considerably weakened”, the report concludes.

Seriously? They’re going with … Read the rest

Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence be unsealed by noon on Friday — paving the way for the disclosure of potentially revelatory details about a search with enormous legal and political implications.

It will be heavily redacted to protect people Trump is going to want to have killed.

Justice Department officials had previously suggested they will abide by [the judges’] general guidance but push hard to scrub anything that could expose witnesses in the case to intimidation or retribution by Mr. Trump’s supporters. After the search at Mar-a-Lago, the F.B.I. reported

Following up on Screechy Monkey’s tip about a target letter – Google turns up nothing current but Twitter is more helpful.

If Trump didn't get a target letter, I'm not sure how much further he can melt down if he does get one.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 25, 2022

https://twitter.com/PrincessBravato/status/1562843489372499968 … Read the rest

Trump is melting down on his pretend-twitter. I took a deep breath and went directly to the source to collect his exclamations.

Even though I am as innocent as a person can be, and despite MY campaign being spied on by the Radical Left, the FISA COURT being lied to and defrauded, all of the many Hoaxes and Scams that were illegally placed on me by very sick & demented people, and without even mentioning the many crimes of Joe and Hunter Biden, all revealed in great detail in the Laptop From Hell, it looks more and more like the Fake News Media is pushing hard for the Sleaze to do something that should not be done!

All very convincing.… Read the rest

People are having a lot of innocent fun with this –

We support everyone across the gender spectrum. If you're transphobic, please feel free to block. Thanks!

— Popular Science (@PopSci) August 25, 2022

Ah, that's how avocado babies are made! pic.twitter.com/MYs0YSjjEB

— Rachel Rooney (@RooneyRachel) August 25, 2022

I’m just a girl, standing before a popular science magazine, begging it to accept humans aren’t actually avocados

— Frances Weetman (@francesweetman) August 25, 2022

… Read the rest

Prepare to shed a tear.

Alix Fitzgerald takes a deep breath, conscious of articulating* her point in the clearest possible terms. “The only way I can describe this,” she begins, her voice tinged with sadness, “is that it’s like grief. “It’s like something has been ripped away.”

*[conscious of the need to articulate]

Fitzgerald, a proud trans woman, is mourning the loss of rugby. She had been an active member of East London RFC women’s team, but the Rugby Football Union’s ban on players “assigned male at birth” in female contact rugby last month prematurely spelt the end of her career.

I don’t give one single teeny tiny shit. Why should I? What about the woman who isn’t on … Read the rest

Same old smoke and mirrors:

Trans golfer sparks outrage as she attempts to qualify for ladies PGA tour

Outrage why? Because the golfer is not a “she.” Lying in the headline is not a good look for a newspaper.

A Scottish golfer who is attempting to qualify for the ladies’ PGA tour has sparked a fresh row over whether transgender athletes should compete in women’s events.

The row is over whether men should compete in women’s events.

Hailey Davidson, who became the first trans golfer to win a professional tournament last year, is trying to earn a Ladies Professional Gold Association (LPGA) tour card.

If successful, Davidson will become the first trans golfer to earn the card.

He’s not a … Read the rest

Jon makes an important point.

Observation: This is so often couched in terms of a kind/cruel or virtue/vice dichotomy. That's so obviously wrong & misdirected.
Obvious example: I'm not remotely interested in being '*kind*' to female athletes.
This is about fairness.
Deal with it.
Stop mis-translating

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) August 24, 2022

Politics, justice, freedom struggles, equal rights campaigns – none of that is about “kindness.” Keep your damn kindness and just give us what’s rightfully ours.

Kindness is a good thing in its place, but expanded out of its place it can be intrusive and patronizing and ultimately infuriating. Give us our due and then don’t bother us.… Read the rest

Helen Lewis says social justice crusades are a kind of substitute religion for The Young.

In the U.S., the nonreligious are younger and more liberal than the population as a whole. Perhaps, then, it isn’t a coincidence that they are also the group most likely to be involved in high-profile social-justice blowups, particularly the type found on college campuses. They’ve substituted one religion for another…

…Many common social-justice phrases have echoes of a catechism: announcing your pronouns or performing a land acknowledgment shows allegiance to a common belief, reassuring a group that everyone present shares the same values.

See also: those annoying yard signs (I bet you don’t have them in the UK – you luckies) that advertise the … Read the rest