Sometimes the alibi just makes the crime worse. Trump on his “declassifying” prowess:

In his first TV appearance since a court-authorized search of his Florida home last month, Donald Trump reasserted Wednesday that any documents taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were declassified while he was in office, adding that a president can carry that out “even by thinking about it.”

“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Well, as he understands things isn’t a very good measure of the things. Also it’s the kind of thing he should have been very sure about, not the kind of thing he qualifies with a “could be wrong” disclaimer.

“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified,” the former president added.

“You’re the president — you make that decision.”

Yeeaahh no that’s not it. It’s not a perk, like you get to use the pool whenever you want to. It’s not something you get to do so that you can brag to your friends. It’s not something you get to do just because you want to take the documents with you in the golf cart.

The 11th Circuit ruled:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday freed the Justice Department to resume using documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald J. Trump, blocking for now a lower court’s order that had strictly limited the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of government materials.

In a strongly worded 29-page decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit set aside key parts of an order by a Florida federal judge that has kept the department from using about 100 files with classification markings in its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally retained national defense documents and obstructed repeated efforts to recover them.

By a Florida federal judge who was made a federal judge by Trump despite her striking lack of the usual experience or expertise, and who issued a ruling so bad that lawyers everywhere ran out of words to say how bad it was.

The appeals court also agreed with the Justice Department that Mr. Trump’s lawyers — and an independent arbiter recently appointed to review the seized materials — need not look at the classified documents that the F.B.I. carted away from Mr. Trump’s estate, Mar-a-Lago, on Aug. 8.

…

The decision by the Atlanta-based court was a repudiation of the decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, whom Mr. Trump appointed to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, to broadly intervene in the Justice Department’s investigation. The appellate ruling will permit the arbiter, known as a special master, to review most of the more than 11,000 files seized from Mar-a-Lago, but allow prosecutors unfettered access to the smaller batch of classified records.

Two of the three judges who issued the ruling are Trump appointees.

The dispute over the files traces back to Judge Cannon’s decision to install a special master to filter the documents seized in the search of Mar-a-Lago for any that were potentially privileged. She also barred criminal investigators from using the materials until the review was completed, and rejected the Justice Department’s request to exempt the 100 or so records marked as classified from that process.

In short she acted like a Trump plant, or robot.

[I]n an interview that aired late Wednesday, Mr. Trump made the extraordinary claim — not advanced by his own lawyers or supported by prior practice or legal precedent — that he had the right as president to declassify documents by wordlessly willing it to be so.

He did. He thinks it’s a kind of magic. He really is that stupid.

“You can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it,” Mr. Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

…

Mr. Trump “has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the appeals court wrote. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”

The talking heads leaned heavily on that need to know point. Trump has zero need to know anything about those documents because he is just another fella now. He seems to think he’s a kind of shadow president in perpetuity, but he’s not, he’s a private citizen, and a very corrupt law-breaking in deep shit one at that.

Mr. Trump has claimed publicly that he declassified everything he took from the Oval Office, but no credible evidence has emerged to support that claim and his representatives have stopped short of repeating it in court, where it is a crime to lie.

If you’re a lawyer for Trump: be careful. Be very very careful.

Oh puhleeze.

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blasted New York State Attorney General Letitia James for involving the children of former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit.

They were involved in the business. Why wouldn’t they be involved in the lawsuit?

Also they’re bent, and corrupt, and evil, and they have profited hugely from their father’s many crimes. Of course they’re involved.

Barr, who resigned from the Trump administration amid attempts to overturn the 2020 election and has been at odds with the former president since, denounced James’ lawsuit as a “political hit job” and an example of “abuse of office.”

But he’s a crook. Should he be left alone simply because he won an election (despite losing the popular vote)? Why? He’s not above the law.

“It’s hard for me not to conclude it’s a political hit job,” Barr said during a Fox News interview on Wednesday. “[James] is a woman who campaigned for office promising she was going to go after Trump, which I think is a tremendous abuse of office, to go headhunting and targeting individuals.”

Speaking of abuse of office, Bill…

Crimebusters in Ireland

Oh no, a county council and a county library system are following…what, WrongThinkers? And a councillor is going to…what, try to get other council officials to punish them or defund them or report them to the police?

At least she’s proud of her work.

Another banning is in progress.

What resource? What organization?

We know how this is going to go.

You don’t get to “argue” that a law is not a law. At least, you do if you’re a lawyer and in the appropriate court, but you don’t get to if you’re just some asshole who wants to get away with stuff.

The senior federal judge tasked with reviewing the materials seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sharply questioned the former president’s attorneys Tuesday during their first hearing in his courtroom.

Judge Raymond Dearie repeatedly challenged Trump’s lawyers for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence.

…

Trump has argued that the 11,000 documents taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI pursuant to a search warrant last month were rightfully in his possession, including about 100 bearing classification markings that suggest they contain some of the nation’s most closely guarded intelligence.

But there’s a law that says those documents are government property, not his personal property. We don’t get to steal people’s cars and then “argue” that they’re rightfully in our possession. That’s not arguing, it’s bullshitting.

I’m doubtless wrong about that legally speaking; I’m just ranting. Sometimes one has to rant.

Trump has been threatening Big Problems if he is indicted. Nice little country ya got here type of thing.

Trump warned that if he were indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.”

Perhaps. Then again perhaps pigs can fly.

Trump, speaking Thursday to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, added, “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”

We would stand for it, sit for it, jump up and down for it, turn cartwheels for it, ride a bicycle from New York to San Francisco for it.

Hewitt, who is also a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, then noted that critics would describe the comment as inciting violence, and he asked Trump to respond to the claim. “That’s not inciting — I’m just saying what my opinion is. I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it,” Trump said.

Definitely not inciting, just as “it would be a shame if this nice country ya got here burned down one night” is not inciting.

When pressed by Hewitt, Trump said he thought there would be “big problems, big problems.”

Ah. I do love getting clarification.

Trump’s comments Thursday came hours before officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security briefed Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee about threats against federal officials. After the briefing, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairman, described Trump’s rhetoric as dangerous.

“Inviting the mob to return to the streets is exactly what happened here on January 6th, 2021,” Durbin told reporters. After noting that five people died as a result of the attack and 149 law enforcement agents were injured that day, the senator said Trump’s “careless and inflammatory rhetoric has its consequences.”

Oh it’s not careless. Oh god no. Careless is the opposite of what it is. It’s very deliberate and calculated. He’s not playing. He wasn’t playing on January 6 and he’s not playing now.

And it’s on.

The New York state attorney general filed a sweeping lawsuit Wednesday against former President Donald Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself.

In the more than 200-page lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, alleges the fraud touched all aspects of the Trump business, including its properties and golf courses. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

“These acts of fraud and misrepresentation were similar in nature, were committed by upper management at the Trump Organization as part of a common endeavor for each annual Statement, and were approved at the highest levels of the Trump Organization — including by Mr. Trump himself,” the lawsuit states.

Trump and his children, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Along with a couple of non-family hacks.

James is seeking $250 million in allegedly ill-gotten funds and to permanently bar Trump and the children named in the lawsuit from serving as the director of a business registered in New York state. She is also seeking to cancel the Trump Organization’s corporate certificate, which, if granted by a judge, could effectively force the company to cease operations in New York state.

New York state includes Manhattan. They won’t like that. Let’s hope it happens.

In addition to the new fraud lawsuit, the Trump Organization is going on trial next month on charges it was engaged in a 15-year tax fraud scheme and its long-time chief financial officer has agreed to testify against the company.

Weisselberg, who served as chief financial officer at the Trump Organization for decades, pleaded guilty in August to his role in a 15-year-long tax fraud scheme, and as part of the deal, he had agreed to testify against Trump’s real estate company at trial.

In recent weeks, the Trump Organization had offered to settle to ward off the lawsuit even as they denied any wrongdoing, but James’ office made it clear it wasn’t interested in a deal, people familiar with the matter said.

No doubt this will do wonders for Trump’s plans to run for president again.

“Offensive” isn’t really the issue.

Met officers guilty of sharing offensive messages with Wayne Couzens

A serving Metropolitan police officer and a former officer accused of sharing racist and misogynistic messages in a WhatsApp group with Sarah Everard’s killer have been found guilty of what a judge described as “sickening” and “abhorrent” behaviour.

Those are the issue – racist and misogynist. They’re the issue because of their relevance to how the police treat people and how they investigate crimes against people.

PC Jonathon Cobban, 35, and Joel Borders, 45, had joked about beating and sexually assaulting women, raping a colleague and using Taser weapons on children, their trial had been told.

I’m sure cops need to let off steam, but doing so by expressing contempt and loathing toward women is not ideal.

The district judge, Sarah Turnock, said WhatsApp, an encrypted social media platform, had been used as a “safe space” where the guilty men believed they had “free rein” to share the grossly offensive comments.

Again – it isn’t the “offensive” part that matters, it’s the focused hatred and contempt. Lots of things are considered grossly offensive that aren’t about focused hatred of particular categories of people.

I did a couple of posts about “Giulia” Valentino last month: he’s a man who plays football on women’s teams. The Guardian had a Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Trans Ladies piece earlier this month about how mean everyone is to men who compete against women.

Five weeks later, speaking to the Guardian in a first media interview since the controversy, Valentino sought to set the record straight about the tournament final and make the case for including trans people in sports.

Issue isn’t sports. Issue is men muscling into women’s sports.

Commentators had suggested the game they played in, called the Dublin Junior J Shield football final, was for teenagers whereas it was for adults, with junior signifying a lower skill level, said Valentino. “A lot of the misinformation was clearly intentional; they wanted to give the public a specific angle. This is the well-known toxic narrative against trans people we know so well.”

Not trans people; men. This is the well-known dishonesty and manipulation we know so well.

An Italian tech worker who moved to Ireland two years ago, Valentino is a newcomer to Gaelic sports and by her own account not especially skilled, yet she may leave a lasting mark if the GAA and LGFA allow trans players to compete – she has been consulted by the policy review. “I will never be remembered for my sporting results but I’d like to be remembered for leaving a legacy of inclusion for other trans players.”

He may be not especially skilled but he still has a man’s body. Just drop the whole Steal Women’s Sports campaign and that will solve the problem.

For opponents of such inclusion, the photograph of Valentino closing in on an opponent appeared to tell its own story: a bigger, stronger athlete with an unfair physical advantage from having undergone male puberty.

The Guardian agreed not to publish this or any photograph that identified Valentino, who has been harassed. “Safety is a privilege that doesn’t belong to trans people,” she said.

He said. Why is the Guardian so tenderly concerned about this man and so callously unconcerned about the woman he displaced and the women he put at risk?

I have no such qualms about publishing the photo: here you go:

We get the usual gabble about how he’s lost power yadda yadda.

Valentino said that since starting to play Gaelic football in February she had heard no objections from other players in the ladies’ league. “Cisgender women players are our main supporters. I never had an issue on the pitch.”

Gee I wonder why. Could it possibly be because of the massive amount of abuse and bullying women face if they do object? Could it be that he heard no objections not because the women didn’t object but because they didn’t feel free or able to object? Could it be that he should know that and should never have seized the unfair advantage in the first place?

I’m so tired of these cheats and the guardians that enable them.

The National Review has more information on Fred Sargeant:

Fred Sargeant, 74, an early advocate for gay rights in the U.S. who participated in the 1969 Stonewall riots, said trans activists at Sunday’s parade in Burlington grabbed his signs, shoved him, poured coffee on his head, smacked him, knocked him to the ground, and stole his property because he held a sign and handed out pamphlets critical of the trans movement.

Sargeant told National Review that after the attack he was briefly sent to the hospital, where he underwent a CT scan, but is now home in central Vermont and “on the mend.”

That’s good to know.

In recent years, Sargeant has become an outspoken critic of the gender identity movement that he believes has taken over the gay rights movement. On Sunday, he said, he attended the Burlington  Pride parade to protest what he believes has become “an exclusionary parade and a venue for groups dedicated to discrimination within the same-sex community.”

“The concern I have is that the movement that I knew, the gay liberation movement, has metamorphosized into a gender identity movement that is quite misogynistic, homophobic – values that I can’t share,” he told National Review. “I don’t recognize it any longer.”

Sargeant, who is now affiliated with the LGB Alliance – a gay rights group critical of transgender and queer ideology – said he was at the parade holding a sign that compared people presenting as the opposite gender to people in black face. “For some reason in society today, while no one would dare go in black face and expect to be taken seriously in the future, drag is celebrated, and I think that’s wrong,” Sargeant said. “I think it’s disrespectful for women.”

This is what I keep wondering, endlessly. Why is it acceptable for men to cosplay women while other versions of appropriation like that would be loudly denounced?

Fred stood facing the march holding the sign, and a trans woman came up to him and took it. He got it back, but then more people confronted him.

Video posted to Sargeant’s Facebook page shows a woman fighting with him, trying to take his sign. “Somebody dumped coffee on my head. A number of people were smacking me on the back of the head,” said Sargeant, who has been kicked off Twitter for allegedly misgendering trans people. “Eventually, toward the end of the march they knocked me to the ground.”

Solidarity forever eh?

Among the “counter-protesters” bullying feminists in Brighton on Sunday was one Carly-May Kavanagh, a “journalist” and staffer to misogynist MP for Brighton Lloyd Russell-Moyle. She won her 30 seconds of fame by yelling in the face of a man carrying a baby. (I don’t think I would take a baby to a protest, to be honest, but that’s a quibble.)

Kavanagh, along with another woman who has not been identified, hounded a father holding his small baby, taunting him and saying “you’re raising a little fascist.”

You can watch (and listen to) her doing it.

“You fucking fascist,” Kavanagh said to the man, a few feet from the face of his child. “You think that’s a good idea, to raise a child who believes this filth? To raise a child that doesn’t accept trans people? It’s 2022, you’re disgusting!”

MP Russell-Moyle, who did not respond to a request for comment, has previously been in hot water over his own extreme trans-activism, when he accused author JK Rowling of “using her own sexual assault” as “justification” for discriminating against trans people.

According to The Guardian, this was in response to a blog post from Rowling in which she said she is deeply protective of women-only spaces as a result of being sexually assaulted.

Kavanagh says she is embarrassed by her “actions” but she’s not so embarrassed that she says what they were and then apologizes.

There’s a second tweet in which she regrets the effect on trans people, but her tweets are protected so I don’t know exactly what she said. But this first installment is quite an object lesson in how not to talk about one’s bad behavior. The issue isn’t that she “got angry,” it’s that she confronted him and yelled in his face, and that she’s wrong about everything she says. It doesn’t matter whether she’s “embarrassed” or not, let alone whether it’s deeply or not – what matters is whether she understands what an asshole she is and intends to stop being one. Above all nobody needs to hear any guff about “acting rashly” in any “heat of the moment” – what people need to hear is “I was an asshole and I’m very sorry.”

I really hate notpologies. I hate all that tedious evasive circling around the issue without ever confronting it. I hate the pretending to apologize while never actually doing it. I hate the cowardice, the selfishness, the self-admiration, the indifference to others. I hate all of it.

But…

Why, yes…every teenager deserves the same development opportunity as every other teenager. So why is Dr Helen Webberley so hell-bent on destroying such development opportunities? Why does she promote the fad for terminating such opportunities and replacing them with gender parodies?

Reduxx has more on the Ontario teacher with the giant tits prosthetic:

The Ontario High School at the center of controversy for having a male teaching young students while donning a large prosthetic bust has issued a full defense of the teacher in a newly-leaked email sent to parents.

I wonder what they would say if a female teacher wore a comparably massive prosthetic penis while teaching.

Following the viral news, [Oakville Trafalgar High School] has now issued an email statement to parents in which they defend Lemieux’s employment status in the name of inclusivity.

“We are aware of discussion on social media and in the media regarding Oakville Trafalgar High School. We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate to our community that we are committed to establishing and maintaining a safe, caring, inclusive, equitable and welcoming learning and working environment for all students and staff,” the email reads.

Wait.

That doesn’t work.

Allowing that guy to ponce around with fake tits the size of an armchair down his sweater rules out a safe, caring, and welcoming environment for girl students at the very least. It may make some of the male students uncomfortable too, I don’t know, but for girls it’s basically a punch in the face. It’s what you might call a hostile learning environment. I don’t think your average male office drone would be allowed to wear a blimp down his shirt at work, because it would so obviously be an insulting parody of women. Don’t insult our intelligence with blather about a welcoming learning environment.

The school defers to the Ontario Human Rights Code, suggesting that any concerns about Lemieux would be akin to discrimination.

“We strive to promote a positive learning environment in schools consistent with the values of the HDSB and to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all students, staff and the community, regardless of race, age, ability, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, cultural observance, socioeconomic circumstances or body type/size.”

That’s another issue – body type or size. How are girls with large breasts going to feel in that school? How are large girls going to feel? Large girls with large breasts?

That school needs to strive better.

Hot damn Women’s March is confused.

Six days ago:

Yesterday:

Are we talking about people who can get pregnant, or women?

Which is it?

Trump can’t claim Honest Mistake.

A onetime White House lawyer under President Donald J. Trump warned him late last year that Mr. Trump could face legal liability if he did not return government materials he had taken with him when he left office, three people familiar with the matter said.

That means Trump can’t claim “Oh I didn’t realize, sorry, my mistake.”

The lawyer, Eric Herschmann, sought to impress upon Mr. Trump the seriousness of the issue and the potential for investigations and legal exposure if he did not return the documents, particularly any classified material, the people said.

The account of the conversation is the latest evidence that Mr. Trump had been informed of the legal perils of holding onto material that is now at the heart of a Justice Department criminal investigation into his handling of the documents and the possibility that he or his aides engaged in obstruction.

I suppose Trump’s lawyers could say yes but he’s so deeply stupid and solipsistic that being informed of something doesn’t mean he pays any attention or understands or remembers or cares…but then out comes all the evidence of lying and concealment.

Trump handed over some of the boxes soon after the chat with Hershmann, but he hung on to others. He returned some more under subpoena, but hung on to others. He lost more when the FBI raided Maralago. He’s Jerry Lundegaard being dragged out of the motel room in his underwear screaming.

The meeting between Mr. Herschmann and Mr. Trump has not been previously reported, and it adds to the picture of Mr. Trump’s interactions with several people about returning the documents in the months before the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of material in January of this year. 

In other words it adds to the picture of Trump knowing perfectly well the documents were not his to keep.

Hmm. Heavily disguised Activist burns lesbian strength poster while gesturing “fuck you.” Somehow I don’t find that particularly persuasive.

Aha, a festival for International Day of the Girl.

What is Shona?

Nice, so all this is about empowering girls. Fair play to them.

So much for empowering girls and International Day of the Girl.

Updating to add: There’s another one, because of course there is.

It seems she is a woman, but considers herself too special and interesting to be called a woman.

‘I think I might be genderqueer, or non-binary,” I said to my kids. They looked nonplussed. “I might have a hard time not calling you Mum,” one replied, “But I’ll try.”

“I’ll always be Mum,” I assured her.

But I’ll be Mum who is too special to be called a woman.

Another confused group that claims to be feminist but also likes to omit and erase women.

What a pity they made the mistake of calling themselves Women’s March way back in January 2017. So typical of women not to think such things through.

Trans men are women. Intersex women are women. Women who call themselves nonbinary are women. Women are women.

Say women and girls by all means, but don’t say “people” when you mean female people.

Inclusive of what? Intersectional with what?

Right side of history?

That threat-image is disgusting. The threat to knock you down and injure or perhaps kill you. The scowling threatening yet waiflike anime figure – cute and murderous at once. It’s all grotesque and sadistic and utterly disgusting. There is nothing “progressive” about any of this.

Bullying and lying are not progressive.