<...."The so-called party of 'family values' has just contributed to erosion of the institution of marriage in Florida," Jan Killilea, 63, told the Orlando Weekly.

As feminists have often patiently explained, "family values" is just code for male domination. If protecting male privilege conflicts with protecting families, Republicans will choose the former. That's why Trump's status as a thrice-married chronic adulterer has never been a problem for the party of "family values."

Yet, the GOP continues to successfully bamboozle shocking numbers of women with promises that complicity will protect them. Witness the rise of Moms for Liberty, a group like many before it that sells conservative women on the idea that they can somehow gain power through embracing submissive gender roles.

Moms for Liberty "have to be understood as a core part of a broader and longstanding reactionary movement centered on restoring traditional hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality — a movement in which conservative mothers have always played a particularly powerful role," historian Nicole Hemmer wrote for CNN last week.

Marjorie Taylor Greene will always find there's a hard limit to how high the men in her party will let her fly, no matter how much lip service she pays to their sexist values.

The group recently drew national attention when one chapter in Indiana ran a quote from Adolph Hitler in a newsletter: "He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future."

Initially, Moms for Liberty tried to justify this by claiming they quoted Hitler to oppose his views. The excuse never made sense, since they clearly do believe owning the youth equals gaining the future. More to the point, the group's views reflect what Hitler was advocating at the time, which is a claim that women's "power" runs through home and hearth, instead of the "men's" realm of public power. (This was captured in the German slogan "Kinder, Küche, Kirche," which means "children, kitchen, church," a shorthand to describe a right-wing view of women's proper role.)

North Carolina lieutenant governor tells Moms for Liberty "it's time" to start reading Hitler quotes

Sure enough, after a few mealy-mouthed disavowals of the Hitler quote to the press, there was "a marked shift in tone around the Hitler" quote at the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia late last month, Kiera Butler, who reported on the convention for Mother Jones, wrote. Speakers lamented that anyone had ever apologized for publishing a quote from Hitler, insisting the group should stand by the choice. By the end of the summit, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, R-N.C., was hollering about how "it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes."

In clinging defensively to this quote, the Moms for Liberty are missing the point. This isn't just about Hitler being a genocidal maniac, though that really should be reason enough. He was also, crucially, lying to women. The "soft power" that women are promised through the dutiful performance of traditional roles isn't real power. That's why women spend decades being obedient housewives, only to be slapped in the face when they want fair compensation. It's why someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene will always find there's a hard limit to how high the men in her party will let her fly, no matter how much lip service she pays to their sexist values. Republicans may center hate of blue state feminists in their propaganda, but when Roe was overturned, it was those Republican-voting populations who saw their access to abortions taken first. But, as the popularity of Moms for Liberty shows, there's always a bunch of Republican women ready to fall for the lie that there's strength through submission. >

<On Election Night 2020, television news veteran Chris Stirewalt — who was in charge of Fox News' decision desk — dropped a major bombshell: Democratic now-President Joe Biden had defeated Republican then-President Donald Trump in Arizona. A state that had been closely identified with the conservatism of Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) and his successor, Sen. John McCain, had gone Democrat in a presidential election.

Stirewalt's accurate reporting, however, infuriated Trump and his devotees, and Fox News subsequently fired him. Stirewalt scooped the competition, and it cost him his job.

MAGA Republicans spent months falsely claiming that Arizona had been stolen from Trump. But that claim was repeatedly debunked, and Stirewalt's Election Night reporting was held up as factual time and time again.

Regardless, the Arizona Republican Party went all-in on Trump's Big Lie, and in a Daily Beast opinion column published on July 10, Never Trump conservative Matt Lewis stresses that they have paid a heavy price for it financially.

"For Republicans who are worried the Trump Party is turning into a rump party," Lewis argues, "the Arizona GOP serves as a cautionary warning: Things can always get worse…. The obvious conclusion is that election denial hurts the deniers."

Lewis lays out some reasons why election denialism can be bad for a state GOP financially.

"First, obsessively worrying about having a future election stolen from you can divert energy away from voter-contact programs that might actually prevent, you know, losing elections in the first place," the conservative columnist explains. "Second, in the aftermath of a loss, pretending you won guarantees zero lessons are learned, even as it continues eating up money — in, say, legal fees — and diverts attention from future elections."

Lewis continues, "Third, donors don't want to give money to a crazy party.... This is a national problem for Republicans, but Arizona has had it twice as bad — first when Trump claimed he won the state in 2020, and next, when Trump's disciple Kari Lake followed his same script in 2022."

Arizona hasn't turned deep blue like Massachusetts, Maryland or California, but it is much more of a swing state than it was 30 or 40 years ago. And the state now has a Democratic U.S. senator (Mark Kelly), a formerly Democratic U.S. senator turned independent (Kyrsten Sinema), a Democratic secretary of state (Adrian Fontes) and a Democratic governor: Katie Hobbs.

"Despite Lake's subsequent loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs," Lewis laments, "there is no reason to believe that Arizona Republicans — or any other Republicans, for that matter — are tired of losing, yet. As John McCain used to always say, 'It’s always darkest.... before it turns pitch black.">

<A recurring dynamic of the Trump era is that his opponents warn darkly about his secret motives or actions, and then he bluntly confirms their hunches in public.

For years, Democrats insisted that Trump had secret, illicit ties to Russia. Then, in the summer of 2017, Donald Trump Jr. abruptly disclosed a 2016 meeting he’d held with Russians promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. “I … worked on this story for a year … and … he just … he tweeted it out,” one writer famously lamented. Two years later, congressional Democrats launched an investigation to prove that the president was privately pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; Trump promptly asked China, publicly, to do so. He was accused of interfering secretly in the 2020 election; he started just doing it by tweet. More recently, claims spread that Trump was sifting through boxes of documents he’d removed from the White House; when Sean Hannity gave Trump a chance to deny the suggestion, he confirmed it instead.

One common anti-Trump belief—one might even call it a conspiracy theory—post-2020 is that Trump is running for president again in 2024 mostly as a way of trying to avoid prosecution in the several current and possible cases against him. He frequently talks about how annoying it was for him to leave behind his comfortable life to be president, and he didn’t really seem to enjoy the job much. His 2024 campaign has so far been mostly about bad personal vibes, not building walls and making Mexico pay for them. Almost exactly a year ago, Rolling Stone reported that Trump was “leaving confidants with the impression that, as his criminal exposure has increased, so has his focus on the legal protections of the executive branch.”

True to form, the former president’s lawyers have now confirmed all these suspicions, contending in a court document that his status as presidential contender ought to indefinitely spare him a trial. In a filing last night to Judge Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing his indictment for mishandling classified documents, they asked that a trial be delayed at least until after the 2024 election....>

<....For one thing, they write, he’s just too busy. “President Trump is running for President of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee. This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on November 5, 2024.” As for his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, his “job requires him to accompany President Trump during most campaign trips around the country. This schedule makes trial preparation with both of the Defendants challenging.” Many defendants in criminal cases would prefer to pursue other opportunities instead of face charges, but that doesn’t usually entitle them to indefinite delay. Although some commentators have argued that a current or prospective president ought to be held to a higher standard of behavior, Trump’s lawyers are effectively arguing the reverse, saying he should receive extra forbearance because of the job he’s seeking.

They go on to argue that he simply can’t go through the judicial system now because he is running for president: “There is simply no question any trial of this action during the pendency of a Presidential election will impact both the outcome of that election and, importantly, the ability of the Defendants to obtain a fair trial.” (They do, however, nod to his other legal troubles, adding, “Previously scheduled trials in other matters for both President Trump and

defense counsel make it nearly impossible to prepare for this trial by December 2023.”)

The logistical and political hurdles the Trump team identifies aren’t imaginary. No comparable situation has ever occurred in U.S. history, a fact that Trump attributes to persecution but that’s better chalked up to his uniquely aberrant behavior. But the justice system has to balance interests, and the implications of being able to punt the trial just because he has voluntarily decided to run for president are troubling. It would suggest that as long as you are credibly seeking the most powerful position in the land, you can’t be held accountable for your actions.

If Trump wins, he would have the effective power to shut down any federal case against him. He and his allies are already laying the groundwork for further eroding the political insulation of the Department of Justice, which brought the documents case against him. (He would also presumably argue that, once he was president-elect or president, he would be too busy to stand trial.) If he does not win the election, his legal prospects are bleaker—which gives him additional incentives to subvert the election, just as he tried to do in 2020.

Cannon originally proposed an August trial date. Federal prosecutors have requested a delay until December. Cannon’s rulings will be closely scrutinized, not only because of the stakes of the case but because she is a Trump appointee whose procedural rulings before the indictment were widely blasted as too friendly to him.

Her response to the filing will give some indication of the prospects for the case. In the meantime, though, Trump’s critics for years spread the innuendo that he was running to avoid prosecution, and … his legal team … just filed it in federal court.>

<When the NCAA changed its rules to allow college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness, it was met with celebration from college athletes across the country who could now receive compensation from the multi-billion dollar industry that makes money off their labor. But it seems not everyone was happy with that decision.

During a recent hearing on the merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky made it clear that he is against college athletes profiting form [sic] their name, image, and likness [sic].

“The court ruled unanimously that the NCAA can’t invoke their rules. And so they’ve completely screwed up college athletes. We used to be proud – many of us loved watching amateur athletes who weren’t paid,” Paul lamented. “Now everybody that plays basketball in college is gonna be driving a Bentley or a Rolls. I mean, we’re gonna be seeing rap stars instead of basketball stars. I mean, this is crazy.”

“And you know why it happened?” Paul asked. “Cause Congress sat around and said ‘Oh, well because of antitrust we can’t let the NCAA do it. It went to the court, and the court made the ruling – unfortunately, a unanimous ruling based on the law. So the law’s got to change.”

They were certainly some controversial comments, and they generated plenty of reactions on social media.

It’s certainly a controversial opinion, and Paul was blasted for it.>

<One view from Twitter:

Ah the classic libertarian position that only those we deem morally worthy get to do free markets.>

We have some of those moralistic types hereabout, even lurking here.

<Ever since radio host Charlie Kirk, now 29, and the late Tea Party activist Bill Montgomery founded Turning Point USA in 2012, the group has been encouraging young Americans — first Millennials, now Generation Z — to not only vote Republican, but also, to vote for the GOP's most extreme members. TPUSA had strong Tea Party leanings in the beginning and later embraced Donald Trump's presidency and the far-right MAGA movement wholeheartedly.

Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business gave TPUSA plenty of favorable coverage in the past. But according to Daily Beast reporter Justin Baragona, Fox News "appears to have distanced itself" from the group — although not out of the goodness of its heart.

A Fox News insider, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Beast, "Fox's relationship with Turning Point is basically over. They don't want their talent associated with them anymore."

Baragona describes Turning Point's past events as "Fox-heavy affairs" that featured speeches from Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, Jesse Watters and other Fox hosts. But Fox News is distancing itself from TPUSA, according to Baragona, because it is "wary about letting its stars appear at conservative events with known election deniers and conspiracy theorists in the wake of Fox's massive $787.5-million settlement" with Dominion Voting Systems. That includes the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference, abbreviated ActCon.

After the 2020 presidential election, Fox News promoted the false, thoroughly debunked claim that Dominion's equipment had been used to help now-President Joe Biden steal the election from then-President Donald Trump. Dominion responded with a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, and Fox News avoided a trial by agreeing to pay the company $787.5 million. Fox News is still facing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion competitor Smartmatic.

"Further suggesting a link between Dominion and Fox's break-up with TPUSA is the fact that ActCon 2023's keynote speaker is Donald Trump, whose election lies directly led to Fox's Dominion mess," Baragona reports. "Trump will appear this weekend on Fox's air, however, in a more controlled environment, via a sit-down interview with Maria Bartiromo."

The Beast reporter adds, "Other 2020 deniers and January 6 organizers scheduled for ActCon speeches include Mike Lindell, Patrick Byrne, and Steve Bannon. Furthermore, Kirk himself has been outspoken in his belief that the 2020 vote was 'stolen' from Trump.">

<Let me start with the most important point: it is not a crime to misgender someone in Michigan. Debates over whether misgendering someone should be against the law are really beside the point. Recent reports have claimed that the Michigan legislature has passed new legislation that criminalizes using a person's wrong gender pronouns, making such misgendering a felony punishable by law. These reports have created quite a brouhaha. But here's the thing: They are not true.

Unreliable, extremist-right media outlets (deemed "low credibility" by the Media Bias/Fact Check website) are manufacturing a crisis where there is none, with the express intent to raise the ire of people who may not have a good, fact-based understanding of the nature of gender and gender identity. The proposed law is not in fact law yet, it is a bill that was passed by the Michigan House of Representatives, but the state Senate still needs to pass it. If it does, the bill would then need to go to the governor for approval.

What the Michigan legislature actually does propose is to add categories to an existing law against ethnic intimidation. It would add sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, physical or mental disability, age, and ethnicity to the already included categories of race, color, religion, gender, and national origin. Nothing else would change. Gender pronouns are not even mentioned in the bill.

As a philosopher who specializes in ethics and equity, I find the legislators' instinct here to be morally right and good. They should not be getting grief for trying to keep vulnerable people safe. The problem with the Michigan bill is not its content, but rather the way it is being distorted and used by extremist-right groups to fuel misunderstanding by falsely alleging that misgendering someone would be a felony.

This is part of a larger social and political moment in some U.S. states to restrict people's human rights. I repeat: The problem with the Michigan bill is not its content; the problem is what the backlash against the fabricated version of the bill, along with other widespread disinformation campaigns are doing to U.S. politics.

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, June marvels at how quickly the U.S. morphed into the repressive totalitarian nation of Gilead by allowing, even if tacitly, the extremist far-Right to become mainstream. "We lived, as usual," she says, "by ignoring... Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it."

Societies undergoing democratic decline usually erode gradually. We begin to see things like the proliferation of disinformation; the facile dismissal of facts, evidence, and the free press; and the degradation of civil liberties, just as we are witnessing across the US.

Connected to this is an overall assault on truth. There should not be any debate about whether gender identity is binary. (It's not.) There is no "other side" of an issue if topics have been settled, with a right answer emerging through scientific and ethical inquiry—which is the case with gender identity.

But who gets to decide what's true? Won't it just depend on your political views?

That's the thing about truth: It is not partisan. We can rely on the evidence generated from scientific and ethical inquiry to help us distinguish between what's reasonable and true from what's not. What is important here is where the preponderance of the evidence lies, which ideas and perspectives are tenable and which are not, and whether the speech and ideas we are contesting are true or false.

Rebecca Solnit points out that political liberals and moderates simply cannot meet far-right extremists halfway, as if each political platform is equally worthy of consideration. There can be a right answer and people can still disagree about it.

The extremist far-right's lies about the Michigan bill—and more broadly about gender identity—quite literally place transgender people in harm's way, not to mention how they exact a toll on the overall health and wellbeing of trans persons. Good for Michigan legislators for trying to do something positive in the name of truth and human dignity.>

<Clarity is hardly ever heard, just glittering generalities from the absurd.

Caruana's 'preference for rapid and blitz' statement is rubbish. He plays slower than a 63-year-old fart. He's just following the money, unable to beat Carlsen at any time control (well, that depends upon what time MC got in the night before).

So who's Fabi hanging out with in Madrid, Spain?>

<Freshman Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) was booted off Wikipedia after violating guidelines by repeatedly editing the site's article about himself, reported The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

"The longtime GOP operative was a prolific editor of his own Wikipedia content. Lawler made 26 changes in total — which earned him a warning from site administrators that he was violating policy by editing his own content, and then an outright ban when Lawler did not heed the warning," reported Ursula Perano. "A spokesperson for Lawler did not respond to multiple requests for comment or to confirm the account personally belonged to Lawler."

However, per the report, the name of the acccount, MichaelVLawler, matches the personal username Lawler has on Facebook and the one he used to use on Twitter.

Among other things, Lawler added himself as a notable alumnus of Manhattan College, wrote that he “serves as the Ranker of the Government Operations Committee and as a member of the Aging, Banks, Education, and Housing Committees,” and updated his name from “Mike Lawler” to “Michael V. Lawler” on one section.

Lawler was elected in 2022 in an upset, defeating Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who served as the chair of the Democrats' congressional fundraising arm — one of many casualties in New York, where Democrats suffered some of their heaviest losses of the cycle. It is unusual for members of congressional leadership to lose re-election; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee poured large amounts of money into the race as it became clear their chairman was in danger of an embarrassing defeat.

All of this comes as the GOP also faces scrutiny over Rep. George Santos, another freshman New York lawmaker who was revealed to have lied about almost every aspect of his life and credentials on the campaign trail, and has been indicted on federal wire fraud and money laundering charges.>

<Republican legislatures have been imposing new restrictions on voting access, but new research suggests those laws aren't tilting the odds in their favor quite as much as feared.

Barack Obama's presidential election win nearly 15 years ago sparked a drive by Republicans to roll back voting rights that gained momentum with the 2013 Supreme Court decision striking down portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and half of all states have enacted new restrictions since 2010.

But researchers have found little evidence of any impact, wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall.

“Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes,” wrote political scientists Justin Grimmer and Eitan Hersh in their June paper, “How Election Rules Affect Who Wins.”

“Contrary to heated political rhetoric, election policies have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship," Grimmer and Hersh wrote.

The same goes for partisan gerrymandering, which became even more prevalent in the wake of the court's ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.

“Our primary finding is that there was little retrogression in formerly covered states," wrote researchers Nicholas Stephanopolous of Harvard Law School, Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California and Christopher Warshaw of George Washington University. "In sum, the number of minority opportunity districts in these states actually rose slightly. We also show that formerly covered states were largely indistinguishable from formerly uncovered states in terms of retrogression. If anything, states unaffected by Shelby County retrogressed marginally more than did states impacted by the ruling."

However, the researchers agree that voting rights should continue to be expanded, saying despite the minimal impact they've measured to this point, restrictions could help tip close elections and go against democratic principles, and Edsall concluded that Republicans must broaden their message rather than suppress who can actually vote.

"What this suggests is that the American electorate is determined to exercise the franchise and is resistant to legislated hindrances — more so than many would expect," Edsall wrote. "This does not bode well for a Republican Party that for the moment has applied its money, energy and strategic skill to reducing Democratic turnout and suppressing Democratic votes.">

Come get it, <stalker>!

<Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, who infamously peddled false claims about Dominion Voting Systems based on the musings of a woman who claims to have conversations with the wind, started pushing a new conspiracy theory on Wednesday.

During an interview with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Bartiromo complained that House Republicans are getting "stonewalled" in their investigations of President Joe Biden, and suggested that there was something nefarious about the fact that Republicans' purported "whistleblower" had been indicted as an unauthorized agent of the Chinese government.

"Gal Luft was just indicted!" Bartiromo said. "This was one of your key whistleblowers. I want to get your take on what you're going to do about it, because how many more whistleblowers are going to come forward after this guy, who tried telling the FBI and DOJ what he knew the transactions and business deals of the Biden family, now he had to go on the run and now he's getting indicted!"

In fact, Gal Luft was indicted back in November, before Republicans officially took control of Congress and launched their Biden probes.

And as Washington Post reporter Philip Bump notes on Twitter, Bartiromo's description of Luft as "on the run" is highly dubious given the circumstances surrounding his indictment.

"Bartiromo has been completely unmoored for some time, but this is dumb even by that standard," he wrote in reaction to the Fox Business segment. "Why do you think he is on the run, Maria? He skipped bail!">

Maria the Credulous in full flower....

<Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.

The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.

Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.

However, it remains unclear what the funds were for.

The lawyers who made the Venmo transactions were: Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy who recently successfully argued that affirmative action violated the US constitution; Kate Todd, who served as White House deputy counsel under Donald Trump at the time of the payment and is now a managing party of Ellis George Cipollone’s law office; Elbert Lin, the former solicitor general of West Virginia who played a key role in a supreme court case that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; and Brian Schmalzbach, a partner at McGuire Woods who has argued multiple cases before the supreme court.

Other lawyers who made payments include Manuel Valle, a graduate of Hillsdale College and the University of Chicago Law School who clerked for Thomas last year and is currently working as a managing associate at Sidley, and Liam Hardy, who was working at the Department of Justice’s office of legal counsel at the time the payment was made and now serves as a appeals court judge for the armed forces.

Will Consovoy, who died earlier this year, also made a payment. Consovoy clerked for Thomas during the 2008-09 term and was considered a rising star in conservative legal circles. After his death, the New York Times reported that Consovoy had come away from his time working for Thomas “with the conviction that the court was poised to tilt further to the right – and that constitutional rulings that had once been considered out of reach by conservatives, on issues like voting rights, abortion and affirmative action, would suddenly be within grasp”.

None of the lawyers who made payments responded to emailed questions from the Guardian....>

<....According to his résumé, Vasisht’s duties included assisting the justice with the administrative functioning of his chambers, including personal correspondence and his personal and office schedule.

Vasisht did not respond to an emailed list of questions from the Guardian, including questions about who solicited the payments, how much individuals paid, and what the purpose of the payments were. The Guardian also asked questions about the nature of Thomas’s Christmas party, how many guests were invited, and where the event took place.

Reached via WhatsApp and asked if he would make a statement, Vasisht replied: “No thank you, I do not want to be contacted.”

Legal experts said the payments to Vasisht raised red flags.

Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W Bush administration and has been a vocal critic of the role of dark money in politics, said is was “not appropriate” for former Thomas law clerks who were established in private practice to – in effect – send money to the supreme court via Venmo.

“There is no excuse for it. Thomas could invite them to his Christmas party and he could attend Christmas parties, as long as they are not discussing any cases. His Christmas party should not be paid for by lawyers,” Painter said. “A federal government employee collecting money from lawyers for any reason … I don’t see how that works.”

Painter said he would possibly make an exception if recent law clerks were paying their own way for a party. But almost all of the lawyers who made the payments are senior litigators at big law firms.

Kedric Payne, the general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said that – based on available information – it was possible that the former clerks were paying their own party expenses, and not expenses for Thomas, which he believed was different than random lawyers in effect paying admission to an exclusive event to influence the judge.

He added: “But the point remains that the public is owed an explanation so they don’t have to speculate.”

Thomas has been embroiled in ethics scandals for weeks following bombshell revelations by ProPublica, the investigative outlet which published new revelations about how the billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow has paid for lavish holidays for the justice, bought Thomas’s mother’s home, and paid for the judge’s grandnephew’s private school education. The stories have prompted an outcry on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have called for the passage of new ethics rules.

Thomas is known for having close relationships with his former clerks. A 2019 article in the Atlantic noted that the rightwing justice has a “vast network” of former clerks and mentees who are now serving as federal judges and served in senior positions throughout the Trump administration. The large presence of former Thomas clerks, the Atlantic noted, meant that the “notoriously silent justice may end up with an outsize voice in the legal system for years to come”.

Thomas’s chamber did not respond to a request for comment.>

<Two Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday sent a scathing letter to committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) for seemingly being tricked by man who was indicted months ago for being an unregistered agent for the Chinese government.

The letter, written by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Dan Goldman (D-NY), took Comer to task for hyping up Gal Luft as a whistleblower seemingly without doing basic work to verify his claims or explore whether he may have had an ulterior motive for coming forward.

"We are concerned that an official committee of the House of Representatives has been manipulated by an apparent con man who, while a fugitive from justice, attempted to fortify his defense by laundering unfounded and potentially false allegations through Congress," they wrote. "Although Mr. Luft has been on the run for months, you touted him as a 'potential witness' and even prepared to interview him as part of your investigation. As recently as Friday, you described Mr. Luft as 'a very credible witness' about matters relating to the President’s son’s financial dealings with Chinese companies."

The congressmen also take Comer to task for opening the door to allow Luft to potentially manipulate his investigation "not only for his own self-interest but perhaps also in furtherance of the [Chinese Communist Party's] efforts to undermine U.S. security interests."

The Democrats concluded the letter by asking Comer to "immediately initiate an investigation into whether the Committee may have been unwittingly duped by Mr. Luft in furtherance of the CCP’s interests, as well as any potentially false statements made by Mr. Luft to Members of Congress or congressional staff.">

Let me explain how to spell 'stalking horse' to Comer the Credulous. If that fails, guess we can revert to 'dupe'.

<Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., accused a local NBC affiliate journalist of "misogyny" during a tense exchange on Wednesday after the reporter noted that Hawley's wife worked on the legal team that represented the Christian graphic designer at the center of a recent Supreme Court landmark ruling.

Video obtained by Fox News Digital showed Mark Maxwell, the political editor for St. Louis' KSDK News, ask Hawley for his reaction to the Supreme Court ruling which upheld Colorado graphic designer Lorie Smith's legal challenge to the state's anti-discrimination law. Smith was represented by the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, where Hawley's wife Erin works as senior counsel to the appellate team.

"We haven't been able to hear from you since the Supreme Court made a number of rulings, we know your interests sitting on the Judiciary Committee, there was this one coming from Colorado where a graphic designer—your wife is supposedly involved in this case—helping to bring that lawsuit through Alliance Defending Freedom," Maxwell began during the remote taped interview.

The journalist proceeded to ask the senator whether he believes the Christian legal group that employs his wife has "credibility" issues, citing reports that the customer named in the lawsuit as requesting the same-sex wedding website appeared to be fake.

"So what, you're asking me now about my wife's case?" Hawley responded. "Is that the deal, Mark?

"Right, but a case you've commented on, a case that's of significant importance to the country," Maxwell replied.

Hawley, who has clashed with Maxwell in the past, said the journalist was trying to "rope my wife" into the interview before defending his wife's professional credibility.

"My wife is a working professional. She is an attorney who is every bit if not more qualified than me, and you can ask her if you want to ask questions. Let's not try and use my wife as a political ploy, Mark," the senator said.

Maxwell said it was not intended as "a political ploy at all," and began repeating his question before Hawley interjected, "Here's the deal. Let me just set you straight on this and help you get it through your head."

"My wife doesn't work for me. I'm not the spokesperson for my wife, and you know why? Because my wife has her own career, she's got her own job, she's a lawyer in her own right. So if you want comments from my wife, you can reach out to her," Hawley said. "But don't come to me and ask me to comment on my wife and speak for my wife."

The senator then accused Maxwell of being "misogynistic."

"I'm not surprised you're doing it, but it's disgraceful… you ought to be ashamed," Hawley said.

Maxwell argued that the senator was misframing his question.

"Oh no I'm not, You asked me to comment on my wife's work. You asked me about Alliance Defending Freedom where my wife works. I am not my wife's minder. My wife is not a minion who works for me," Hawley fired back. "So if you want to ask her someone who is an incredibly accomplished attorney and has argued cases all over this country in federal courts, I am incredibly proud of her, don't try to denigrate her work by coming to me and saying oh well you come in, you clean it up, you say this or that."

When Maxwell suggested they move on from the question to complete the interview, Hawley responded, "Let's not move on from your misogyny, Mark.

"I just want it noted that I'm gonna call you out on this every single time that you're misogynistic," the senator continued. "Every time that you try to imply that my wife somehow answers for me or that I should be the spokesperson for my wife or that there is some issue with my wife's litigation…I am going to call you out on it every single time. So just mark it down that I'm not going to allow this to pass. I think that it is grossly inappropriate, I think it is grossly misogynistic and if you think you can get away with it just because she's a conservative and is married to me, you are absolutely dead wrong."

The exchange marked the end of the interview.

Maxwell tweeted about his conversation with the senator later Wednesday with a link to an AP report titled "Legitimacy of ‘customer’ in Supreme Court gay rights case raises ethical and legal flags."....

<...."Instead of engaging the question about pretty glaring errors winding up in significant cases before the Supreme Court, Hawley had a meltdown and suggested I was asking him to speak for his wife. I wasn't. I was asking a sitting member of the Judiciary Committee about his job," Maxwell wrote.

Hawley's communications director, Abigail Marone fired back, arguing that Maxwell was pushing "debunked lefty talking points."

"No, Mark. You brought up Josh's wife, Erin. Then you repeated a bunch of debunked lefty talking points and asked a question about the organization where Erin works. You must be forgetting we have this on tape," Marone tweeted.

"Hardly think the recorded statements of people in the court record are ‘lefty talking points.’ As the tape will show (whenever you send it over), I asked the Senator to respond to credibility issues raised in the AP report, and how errors could arrive at the Supreme Court at all," Maxwell replied.

Maxwell's question centered around reports that a customer requesting a same-sex wedding mentioned in court filings appeared to be fake, which according to an NBC News article, prompted "complaints on social media that the case should never have made it as far as the Supreme Court, with many arguing that Smith didn't have legal standing to bring the case if there weren't any customers seeking her services."

The Alliance Defending Freedom shot down the allegations circulating in the press, hailing the Court's ruling a "landmark victory for free speech."

Kristen Waggoner, Smith’s attorney, and Erin Hawley personally dismissed the premise of the allegations in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday writing, "The permanent political campaign against the Supreme Court has expanded to target successful litigants…some on the left—including many in the press—have responded with a disinformation effort against Ms. Smith."

"This is nonsense, and Mr. Katyal should know better. It’s undisputed and electronic records confirm that Ms. Smith received the request from a third party in September 2016—the day after she filed her lawsuit. A party has to have legal standing when he files a case, so it would make no sense to invent such claims the day after the suit began. Though the request appears to have come from a troll, perhaps falsely using Stewart’s name and number, that doesn’t change the fact that Ms. Smith received it."

"Lorie Smith is part of a long line of litigants who prevailed on their claims and secured liberty for themselves and others. Her case marks the 15th victory that Alliance Defending Freedom has won at the Supreme Court in the past 12 years. The manufactured sideshow about one request Ms. Smith received is an attempt to punish defenders of free speech, undermine a landmark victory and intimidate the Supreme Court and the public into ideological conformity," the attorney's wrote.

In a phone interview with the Daily Signal, Erin Hawley said that furious leftist activists are "grasping at straws" to try to discredit the court’s ruling.

Hawley and his wife Erin met and Yale Law School and both clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. The couple has been married since 2010. In the past, the media have seized on the opportunity to link Erin Hawley to her husband, often describing the accomplished attorney as "Josh Hawley's wife" when reporting on her legal victories.

After Newsweek published an article titled "Josh Hawley's Wife faces calls to be sanctioned over Supreme Court case," the senator's team accused the media of trying "to downplay her success & only talk about who she’s married to.

"They hate strong women," Marone wrote on Twitter alongside the article.

A separate Vanity Fair article also noted that Erin was "Josh Hawley's Wife" in a headline about her push to "ban abortion medication."

"It's actually unbelievable @VanityFair doesn't think to include that Erin is a lawyer in their headline. Unless, of course, they intentionally excluded that very important piece of information," Marone wrote at the time.>

<Donald Trump is arguably the most high-profile defendant to allege he’s the victim of political persecution, but he’s not the only right-wing figure to play that card, Mother Jones reports.

The report notes that at the time of Trump’s Manhattan court appearance for his April arraignment on charges in connection with alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, disgraced Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) and exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui, who had been arrested on fraud charges weeks earlier, among others, were outside the courtroom making the same unsubstantiated claims of political persecution as the former president.

Mother Jones’ Dan Friedman writes that, “It was clear then what was going on. Anyone with a legal problem and a fleeting link to Trump would attempt to claim that they, too, were victims of the vast Deep State conspiracy that the former president insists is targeting him and his backers.”

The latest right-wing defendant to claim political persecution is Gal Luft, the fugitive co-director of a Maryland-based think tank who according to the Department of Justice was indicted Monday in connection with violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act in brokering arms deals between Chinese companies, Iran and several Middle East countries.

House Republicans have promoted Luft as a potential star witness against the Biden family.

Friedman writes that Luft “contends the Justice Department is prosecuting him in an effort to shut down his allegations that a Chinese company paid Biden family members in 2017 for political influence.”

Luft in a video published last week in The New York Post suggested without evidence that his prosecution was a retaliatory measure by the DOJ after he informed the agency and the FBI of wrongdoing by the Biden family, The New York Times reports.

He’s found a receptive audience in a GOP that has embraced his conspiracy theories, Friedman writes, noting that the recent by Oversight Committee chair Jim Comer (R-Ky.) that the DOJ unsealed the indictment against Luft to prevent him from testifying before Congress neglects the fact that as a fugitive it’s unlikely Luft would be making public appearances in Washington D.C. anytime soon.>

<The Georgia State Election Board is asking a judge to order a conservative voting organization to produce information to help investigate its claims of ballot trafficking in the state.

The Texas-based True the Vote group filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2021, including one saying it had received “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the 2020 general election and in a runoff election in January 2021.

True the Vote’s assertions were relied upon heavily for the film “2000 Mules,” a widely debunked film by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. The film featured surveillance video from drop boxes in Atlanta’s suburbs showing people depositing multiple ballots. A State Election Board investigation found that those people were submitting ballots for themselves and family members who lived with them, which is allowed under Georgia law.

In the court filing Tuesday, the state attorney general’s office asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge to order True the Vote to comply with its subpoena.

“After multiple good faith efforts by the SEB (State Election Board) and its counsel to obtain the requested information and documents, True the Vote continues to indifferently vacillate between statements of assured compliance and blanket refusals,” leaving the election board with no choice but to turn to the courts, the filing says.

True the Vote's complaint said its investigators “spoke with several individuals regarding personal knowledge, methods, and organizations involved in ballot trafficking in Georgia.” One of those people, referred to in the complaint only as John Doe, “admitted to personally participating and provided specific information about the ballot trafficking process.” Doe is alleged to have outlined a “network of non-governmental organizations” that paid people to collect and deliver absentee ballots.

The group said it was able to confirm patterns of activity to support the allegations using surveillance video and geospatial mobile device information. In a September 2021 letter, Vic Reynolds, who was director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at the time, said the evidence produced did not amount to proof of ballot harvesting.

After receiving the group's complaints two months later, Raffensperger's office opened an investigation. Investigators in April 2022 issued subpoenas to True the Vote for relevant documents and information, including the identity and contact information for people who True the Vote said provided details about the alleged ballot trafficking.

A lawyer for True the Vote in May 2023 wrote a letter to a state attorney saying that a complete response to the subpoenas would require the organization to identify people to whom it had promised confidentiality and that it could not do that. The lawyer wrote that True the Vote was withdrawing its complaints.

State Election Board Chair William Duffey responded in a letter two weeks later, saying that the board's investigation into True the Vote's “serious allegations” was ongoing. Therefore, he wrote, he would not allow the complaints to be withdrawn and asked the state attorney general's office to seek enforcement of the subpoenas.

A lawyer for True the Vote in June wrote in a letter that True the Vote had already provided some of the information requested to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation but declined to provide the identities and contact information for people described in its complaints “because doing so may put those persons in physical or personal jeopardy.”

One man falsely accused in the film of committing ballot fraud has filed a still-pending federal lawsuit against True the Vote, D'Souza and others. Surveillance video in the film shows Mark Andrews, his face blurred, depositing five ballots in a drop box in downtown Lawrenceville, a suburb northeast of Atlanta, ahead of the 2020 election. A voiceover by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.”

A state investigation found that Andrews was dropping off ballots for himself and his three adult children.>

<Former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder is appealing his 20-year prison sentence after serving his second week behind bars.

The Republican former lawmaker was found to be the "mob boss" by a judge in the....largest bribery scheme in state history, but he filed a one-sentence appeal of his sentence to the United States Court of Appeals, reported the Associated Press.

Householder's attorneys had asked for a sentence of 12 to 18 months but federal prosecutors sought 16 to 20 years for racketeering, and U.S. District Court judge Tim Black imposed the maximum penalty because he said the 64-year-old former lawmaker failed tow [sic] show remorse.

A jury convicted Householder of orchestrating a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by Akron-based utility company FirstEnergy Corp. to help him secure power and pass a....$1.3 billion nuclear plant bailout.

He was convicted along with former state Republican chair Matt Borges in the scheme, which also involved a dirty tricks campaign to shut down a voter referendum to overturn the bailout.>

<CNN’s Chris Wallace grappled with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel as to whether the 2020 presidential election was on the level. Former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed the contest was rigged against him by Joe Biden supporters.

Trump is seeking to GOP nomination to run against Biden in the general election.

Wallace joined Laura Coates as a guest on Wednesday’s CNN Primetime, where they previewed an excerpt of his interview with McDaniel, which will air on Friday:

WALLACE: When did you stop being an election denier?

MCDANIEL: I think saying there were problems with 202020 [sic] is very real. I don’t think that’s election-denying. I mean, Chris, I am from Wayne County. We had a woman send a note saying, “I’m being told to backdate ballots.” We had to look into that. That’s deeply concerning. When you have friends who are poll-watching and get kicked out, that’s deeply concerning. We have every right to look at that. And I think everybody should have a little more concern about, listen–

WALLACE: Wait a minute. Are you saying as the chair of the Republican Party that you still have questions as to whether or not Joe Biden was the duly elected president in 2020?

MCDANIEL: Joe Biden’s the president–

WALLACE: No, I didn’t ask you whether he’s the president.

MCDANIEL: I don’t think that–I think there were lots of problems–

WALLACE: Do you think he won the election?

MCDANIEL: I think there were lots of problems with question 2020. Ultimately, he won the election.

WALLACE: Pardon?

MCDANIEL: Ultimately he won the election but there were lots of problems with the 2020 election, 100%.

WALLACE: And that’s fair.

MCDANIEL: But I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not gonna say that.

WALLACE: You’re saying you’re not sure – as the Republican Party chair – that he was the legitimately elected president?

MCDANIEL: I’m saying there were lots of problems with the 2020 election and we need to fix it going forward.

Coates then asked Wallace about what the RNC chair’s response means for the 2024 Republican primary.

“Chris, I understand the value of a yes-or-no response,” she said. “You didn’t get one there. So, what does that portend for the tone of this entire race now?”

“There are an awful lot of people, an awful lot of Republicans who don’t think Joe Biden won the election fairly in 2020 – even though he did,” he replied. “And you’ve also got the frontrunner, the overwhelming frontrunner – Donald Trump – who flatly says that he won 2020. So I think as counterintuitive, counter-logical, counterfactual as it may be, it’s hard for the chair of the Republican National Committee to come out and say flatly, ‘No, it was a fair election and Joe Biden won it.'”>

<Taylor Taranto, the Seattle man who was arrested after he was allegedly found walking toward former President Barack Obama‘s home must remain in jail before trial, a federal magistrate judge said Wednesday, CNN reports. A former U.S. Attorney responding to news about Taranto, including a list of weapons and other items found in a van reportedly belonging to him that had been parked near the Obamas’ Washington, D.C. home, called the report “truly chilling.”

That list of items included “guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition,” according to the Associated Press.

NBC News has described him as a “conspiracy-minded Donald Trump supporter who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,” and says he was “arrested June 29 after prosecutors say he showed up in Obama’s neighborhood on the same day that former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was Obama’s home address.”

“Prosecutors detailed a litany of what they said were examples of Taranto’s erratic behavior before his arrest, including threatening statements about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and claims on his YouTube livestream that he intended to blow up the National Institute of Standards and Technology in suburban Maryland,” the AP adds.

Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff on Thursday posted the “just released search inventory of J6er Taylor Taranto’s van outside Obama’s home, after he got Obama’s address from a Trump social media post.”

He writes it includes two pistols, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, 13 magazines, a machete, and pills and powders:

In response, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, called it “truly chilling,” and appeared stunned at the lack of response from Republicans.

“If someone did this to Trump it would be a national emergency,” Vance wrote. “Instead, Republicans continue to ignore the obvious problem coming from inside of their own house. This is truly chilling & it happened because Trump posted President Obama’s address.”

Washington state’s Tri-City Herald has reported Taranto is a “former Franklin County Republican Party official,” a U.S. Navy veteran, and a former school board candidate.

Taranto “was in the Tri-Cities as recently as April participating in a protest against a drag brunch at Emerald of Siam.”

Last week MSNBC reported prosecutors are “honing in on one particularly strange incident, where Taranto entered an elementary school, near Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin’s home…and projected a movie about January 6 on the wall.">

<Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) struggled to respond to a question from Sean Hannity and claimed an echo in his earpiece was causing him to deliver one of the most disjointed answers in cable news history.

On Wednesday, Jordan led a House Judiciary Committee hearing where Republicans took turns grilling and blasting FBI Director Christopher Wray over the alleged “weaponization” of the bureau against Republicans.

“Let me ask you about another line, Jim Jordan, that the FBI director used today – that the FBI does not moderate content,” Hannity began, referring to a lawsuit brought by the Missouri attorney general against the Biden administration.

Last week, a judge ruled in Missouri’s favor and issued a temporary injunction prohibiting federal agencies from contacting social media companies “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Before the 2020 election, the FBI said a story making the rounds about Hunter Biden’s laptop could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. That turned out to be untrue.

“What did we learn in the Missouri case in terms of Yoel Roth – former integrity site head – who told us in those weekly meetings with big tech, in this case, Twitter but other big tech weekly as well, that the misinformation, you have to be on the lookout for, maybe about Hunter Biden,” Hannity said. “Didn’t he say that?”

This was Jordan’s response:

JORDAN: Yeah, a federal judge disagreed with what Christopher Wray testified to today and he did that decision on July 4th – just eight days ago for goodness sake.

That’s exactly what happened with, yeah, with the decision, the, uh, when it came to the uh, the, the decision with, um, Mr. uh, I drew a blank there, Sean. I apologize. I got a huge echo in my ear and I can’t, I can’t even hear.

HANNITY: Sorry about that. Go ahead. pick up.

JORDAN: But, but yeah, that’s exactly what, what happened. They uh, they pre-bunked this story and Facebook specifically asked the FBI, is the Hunter Biden story Russian misinformation? And the FBI said, no comment. This is after they had the laptop for the entire year after they’d been telling all the big tech companies, get ready for a hack-and-dump operation. It’s coming and it’s gonna involve Hunter Biden. And then it happens and they get that fundamental question. No comment. And this is from the foreign influence task force director, the lead on that, that foreign influence task force that Christopher Wray created.

Later in the show, Hannity aired what he called “another bizarre word salad” from Vice President Kamala Harris.>

<To advance their anti-Biden crusade, congressional Republicans were heavily invested in an elusive “informant,” who purportedly had evidence against the president. As it turns out, the GOP’s witness appears to have a bit of a credibility problem.

As we discussed yesterday, the man in question is Gal Luft, a director at a D.C.-area think tank who’s been charged with being an unregistered agent for China, trying to broker secret arms deals, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, and lying to federal agents.

In theory, this should probably be the point at which Republicans either look for new witnesses or find a different obsession. In practice, as The Washington Post reported, GOP lawmakers are undeterred.

I suppose this was inevitable. After learning that federal prosecutors have evidence of several felonies allegedly committed by their “informant,” Republicans did what they now do routinely: They concluded that federal law enforcement is part of an elaborate conspiracy — that only GOP officials and their allies can see — that doesn’t make any sense.

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, by way of Donald Trump’s social media platform, responded to Luft’s indictment by arguing, “The corruption of Biden’s DOJ runs deep.”

Similarly, GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, having abandoned her earlier persona as a mainstream gadfly in her party, told Fox Business yesterday, “They are trying to silence our witnesses.”

At this point, I could spend a paragraph or two marveling at Republicans’ willingness to peddle such claims without evidence. I could also explain, again, that we already know that these GOP claims are wrong: The indictment against Luft was apparently handed down last fall — before the House GOP majority was even elected, and before the party was on the prowl for anti-Biden witnesses.

But just as important is the unfortunate fact that the Republican campaign against the U.S. justice system has become reflexive. It’s simply assumed in too many GOP circles that if federal prosecutors have evidence against a criminal suspect that the party wants, likes, or needs, then the case must be the result of politically motivated corruption.

As we’ve discussed, the United States only has two major political parties. When one of them tries to convince its base that the justice system is not to be trusted — in effect, delegitimizing federal law enforcement — the consequences are worth worrying about.>

<Jeff Tiedrich
@itsJeffTiedrich· Nov 9
"the red wave has begun!" — Lauren Boebert, yesterday "you want fries with that?" — Lauren Boebert, tomorrow>

<People express grief or sadness in many ways, and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay chose to express his regarding the death of Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown by declaring he was the greatest player in NFL history.

Irsay, who turns 64 on June 13, listing Brown as the greatest football player ever is a common refrain from people of his generation who were able to see Brown play live instead of through YouTube clips. Putting Tom Brady, who is the consensus NFL G.O.A.T, as the second-greatest of all-time checks out. However, numbers three and four on Irsay's list stick out like sore thumb. Irsay put Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, who refused to play for the Colts after being selected by them first overall in the 1983 NFL Draft, ahead of the best player in franchise history, Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning. Manning, by just about every metric had a better NFL career than Elway.

Peyton Manning vs. John Elway career comparison

MANNING ELWAY
Seasons

1998-2015 (17)

1983-1998 (16)

Super Bowl wins

2

2

NFL MVPs

5* (2003-2004, 2008-2009, 2013)

1 (1987)

First-Team All-Pro selections

7

0

Pro Bowl selections

14

9

Passing yards

71,940**

51,475

Passing TDs

539**

300

* NFL all-time record
** Stood as NFL all-time record at the time of Manning's retirement

Maybe Irsay put Elway ahead of Manning because he's a player he couldn't have. Maybe it's because Manning went on to have his best NFL season (2013) and win another Super Bowl with a different team, Elway's Denver Broncos, after releasing the longtime Colt because he missed an entire season with a neck injury. Irsay insists it's because of the talent gap between Elway's and Manning's supporting casts. An intriguing argument, but one could just as easily posit the success of Colts Hall of Famers like wide receiver Marvin Harrison and running back Edgerrin James, not to mention a borderline Hall of Famer in wideout Reggie Wayne, doesn't happen without Manning's continuous All-Pro level play. Manning's clean footwork and throwing mechanics were the standard in pro football for over a decade, yet the Colts owner who witnessed it all said Elway's movements were better.

Irsay did also put another clearly lesser player ahead of a clearly superior one at the end of his top five when he put Hall of Fame defensive lineman Deacon Jones over Hall of Fame defensive lineman Reggie White.