In related news –

Police in the United States are three times more likely to use force against leftwing protesters than rightwing protesters, according to new data from a non-profit that monitors political violence around the world.

In the past 10 months, US law enforcement agencies have used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher percentage at Black Lives Matter demonstrations than at pro-Trump or other rightwing protests.

As we saw just last week.

The statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests across the United States since April 2020, show a clear disparity in how agencies have responded to the historic wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence, compared with

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Surprise surprise, there’s a surge in trumpish ideologies in the US military.

The Pentagon is confronting a resurgence of white supremacy and other right-wing ideologies in the ranks and is scrambling to track how acute the problem has become in the Trump era.

It’s an issue that has simmered in the military for years, but is now front and center following signs that former military personnel played a role in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.

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In another sign of the challenge, the Army on Monday announced it was ousting a junior officer who was investigated for posting a video to his 3 million TikTok followers joking about Jews being exterminated in Nazi concentration camps.

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Giuliani did his bit to rile up the insurrectionists.

Donald Trump has fallen out with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and is refusing to pay the former New York mayor’s legal bills, it was reported, with the president feeling abandoned and frustrated during his last days in office.

Giuliani played a key role in Trump’s failed attempts to overturn the results of November’s presidential election through the courts. The lawyer mounted numerous spurious legal challenges, travelling to swing states won by Joe Biden, and spread false claims the vote was rigged.

Claims he has to have known were false.

Trump’s refusal to pay Giuliani’s bills is another blow to the former federal prosecutor. Giuliani is already under fire

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They’ve found the guy with the treason flag.

A man who carried the Confederate battle flag into the U.S. Capitol as part of an invasion by a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump surrendered with his son Thursday after arrest warrants were issued for their roles in the riot, the FBI said.

Kevin Seefried, who was carrying the flag that he later told authorities had been displayed outside his Delaware home, and his son Hunter Seefried are expected to be arraigned later Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

They helped with the breaking and entering part.

The document also says that video footage on Twitter shows Hunter Seefried punching out glass in a window at the

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The princess and prince don’t let underlings use their toilets. So what do underlings do? Hold it, of course. Yes for eight hours! What are you, some kind of bleeding heart do-gooder?

In a multi-bylined article one of America’s top investigative news outlets has chronicled in leg-crossing detail the apparently extreme difficulty that the Secret Service detail assigned to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have had in finding a place to go to the bathroom.

According to the Washington Post the president’s daughter and her top White House adviser spouse have apparently exiled the squad of men and women assigned to keep them from harm’s way from using the toilets in their sprawling Washington DC mansion.

“Instructed not to

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How about no?

As in, no, no, no, no, NO.

The Daily Beast:

In an interview with BBC News to promote his new book Saving Justice, former FBI Director James Comey said President-elect Joe Biden should “consider” pardoning his predecessor Donald Trump when he takes office on Jan. 20th.

No, he really shouldn’t. Not for a second.

Asked if Biden should take a page from Gerald Ford, who pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974, Comey replied, “I don’t know. He should consider it.” While he said he’s not sure Trump—who has reportedly floated the idea of pardoning himself—would accept such a pardon, he added, “As part of healing the country and getting us to a place where we

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Chase Strangio is explaining how sex is a matter of choice and decided in the head rather than the body.

A few notes on women and girls who are trans in sports. There is a relentless effort to situation trans people as a threat to cis people in sport and elsewhere. There simply is no threat.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) January 14, 2021

To situation? I suppose she meant ” to situate” but that’s a stupid word for that too. “To describe” would have done the job perfectly well. She’s straining to sound authoritative and scholarly, but the “scholarship” here is bogus. Anyway – yes there damn well is a threat. There’s a threat of women not being able to … Read the rest

There may have been some collaborationist activities from some legislators the day before the coup attempt. Investigations are under way.

More than 30 House Democrats are demanding information from Capitol security officials about “suspicious” visitors at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5 — a day before violent insurrectionists swarmed the building — that would only have been permitted entry by a member of Congress or a staffer.

“Many of the Members who signed this letter … witnessed an extremely high number of outside groups in the complex on Tuesday, January 5,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), in a letter to the acting House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, as well as the acting head of the Capitol Police.

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The Post reports that Trump is in a bad mood. You don’t say.

With less than seven days remaining in his presidency, Trump’s inner circle is shrinking, offices in his White House are emptying, and the president is lashing out at some of those who remain. He is angry that his allies have not mounted a more forceful defense of his incitement of the mob that stormed the Capitol last week, advisers and associates said.

Really. All he wanted to do was slaughter all the Democrats in Congress and install himself as dictator. What’s the big deal?

He’s in a rage at Pence, and souring on Giuliani.

Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, two officials

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I guess this is making America great again too.

So were we in the House. @laurenboebert was told by the Sergeant of Arms in the chamber to not make any social media posts. It was said repeatedly. She defied it because she is more closely aligned with the terrorists than the patriots.

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) January 12, 2021

It's very clear she was communicating with the insurrectionists. During her speech on the floor when she was screaming at the top of her lungs, she said she had constituents right outside, as the Insurrectionists were trying to break down the doors

— Solomon E.K. (@ESKatsky) January 12, 2021

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Originally a comment by Arnaud on 10 beans a day.

I am so angry that I… I don’t know what to say.

Every time this government acts, or fails to act far too often, I swear that they have reached rock bottom; surely they can’t go lower than this? And every time they do.

But in truth I mean, we should have been prepared for this fiasco, after this intervention by a Tory MP a couple of months ago complaining that food vouchers effectively went to crack dens and brothels! This was clearly preparing the ground for later moves!

In the wider scheme of things this is part of a trend to basically assess-strip the UK; the pandemic has … Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on 10 beans a day.

I read that Chartwells made £2bn profit last year and paid tax on about 2% of that. Needless to say, they are big Tory donors, their CEO is friends with ex Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, and there was no tender process for this contract. This is rife. It’s nowhere close to exaggeration to say that the Tories are using the current catastrophe to divert very large amounts of money to themselves and their friends. At last count there were exactly umpteen companies with no prior experience in the provision of PPE or meals or whatever, and which were losing money, who were suddenly awarded contracts worth tens of … Read the rest

One Democrat pointed out that they were debating impeachment in the crime scene.

“We are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said Wednesday morning, discussing House Resolution 24, the measure that would impeach President Trump for the second time. He was speaking in the same chamber that was evacuated one week ago as a mob of pro-Trump extremists breached security and flooded into the halls of Congress.

The chamber where members crouched on the floor when the police started shouting “Get down, get down!” Which must have been pretty terrifying.

Recalling the events of last Wednesday, McGovern said Congress was disrupted as it was performing one of its core duties in

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Mofo is impeached, AGAIN. First ever to be impeached TWICE, because he’s such an evil monstrosity.

The Democratic-led U.S. House delivered the historic rebuke to Trump on Wednesday afternoon — exactly one week after his supporters stormed the Capitol building in a rampage that led to five deaths, including that of a Capitol police officer.

The article of impeachment charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection.”

Some 13 months ago, all House Republicans voted against the president’s first impeachment. On Wednesday, 10 GOP members joined with all Democrats to impeach Trump.

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Ten Republicans broke party ranks to vote in favor of impeachment, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who chairs the House Republican Conference.

“None of this would have

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More on the plans for next week:

Thousands of armed pro-Donald Trump extremists are plotting to surround the US Capitol ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to a member of Congress who was among those briefed late Monday on a series of new threats against lawmakers and the Capitol itself.

Then they were kind of silly to tip their hand last week. Law enforcement is awake now, so I don’t think their plotting will translate to a triumphant encirclement of the Capitol.

Two Democratic lawmakers who participated in the briefing told CNN that they were walked through several scenarios on a call Monday and officers were sober about the threats. An effort was made to emphasize how different

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Meanwhile there is also the future to worry about – the future as in next week. The Feds are seriously alarmed.

(I still wonder why they failed to be alarmed last week.)

Meanwhile Tuesday on Capitol Hill, representatives from the Secret Service and the Defense and Homeland Security departments briefed lawmakers on security concerns.

Afterward, a group of Democratic House chairs issued a statement, saying they “have grave concerns about ongoing and violent threats to our democracy. It is clear that more must be done to preempt, penetrate, and prevent deadly and seditious assaults by domestic violent extremists in the days ahead.”

The chairs — including the Oversight Committee’s Carolyn Maloney and the Judiciary Committee’s Jerrold Nadler, among others

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Consequences:

Last week’s storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has already resulted in charges against 70 people, according to the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who said he expects the number “will grow into the hundreds.”

In the first public briefing by the Justice Department and the FBI since Wednesday’s riot, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin and Steven D’Antuono, director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, outlined what Sherwin called a long-term investigation.

“Everyone is in for the long haul,” Sherwin said.

He said his office has already opened 170 subject files of people who potentially committed crimes in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds.

You mean it’s illegal to smash windows, batter … Read the rest

Rs still going out of their way to be bad malevolent people. I guess that’s their brand now and they’re happy with it?

Several Republican members of Congress grew angry on Tuesday over new security systems implemented at the Capitol. The safety measures, which included metal detectors and physical pat-downs in some instances, were introduced after last week’s deadly insurrection at the complex.

And it wasn’t the Democrats who cheered that on, or inspired it in the first place.

“You are creating a problem you do not understand the ramifications of,” Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas was heard yelling at police who were conducting the check, according to a press pool report.

Yelling at police??? What is he, antifa?… Read the rest

Kathleen Stock asks what’s going on here when academics sign an open letter “which wouldn’t look out of place in the Salem Witch Trial archive.”

How can these academics look at the parts of the gender identity debate that concern me – for instance, vulnerable female prisoners being housed with male sex offenders; young lesbian women like Keira Bell regretting the effects of puberty blockers and voluntary mastectomies by the time they are 20; a loss of academic data about sex-associated patterns of discrimination, and so on – and conclude that I’m not only wrong, but that I should be publicly shamed?

That is, not only wrong but wicked, malevolent, deliberately harm-doing, cruel, witchy. I wonder that too. How … Read the rest

I saw that Jack Monroe was raising the roof yesterday on the subject of insultingly meager and worthless lunch parcels for children to replace school lunches during lockdown, handed out by people who pocket far more money than the parcels can have cost. The subject exploded and now it’s all over the UK news, with good results.

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1348944771226755073 https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1348935927943602177

Clearly the plan is the children will eat the sandwich of one piece of nasty processed “cheese” between two pieces of nasty processed sponge bread, and a potato. On banner days they will be allowed an apple.

The Guardian has more:

The government and the catering companies it has hired have come under fire after photographs of free school meal

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