<Christmas is coming early to America, but in the form of a warning, not a gift.

Just as Ebenezer Scrooge was shown his future, enabling him to change his ways, America is seeing its own future in China’s ongoing economic collapse. This specter from across the Pacific should scare us into correcting course before it’s too late.

China’s state-dominated economy is going the way of all centrally-planned economies — down the drain. With many in the media loudly proclaiming that “China’s 40-year boom is over,” it’s worth contemplating why this is happening, if for no other reason than to avoid the catastrophe here at home.

China’s manufacturing base, the mainstay of its economy for decades, is hemorrhaging. Its trillion-dollar homebuilding industry is collapsing under unsustainable debt levels. And its unprecedented infrastructure campaign has been a crash course in malinvestment.

The Chinese Communist Party’s panicked response has been to order banks to buy stocks in an attempt to buoy falling stock prices and the Chinese yuan. For its own part, the CCP has finally given up on publishing phony economic statistics and now just refuses to publish them at all. One way to deal with historically high youth unemployment is to ignore the problem.

For perspective, China’s economy was about 77 percent the size of America’s in March 2022. Today, it is closer to 68 percent. What began as anemic growth is becoming a full implosion.

The cause, in short, is an incompetent government that routes trillions to politically-favored industries and state-owned enterprises, all while suppressing the very entrepreneurs and markets that began launching China’s rise to prominence 40 years ago.

But the CCP has taken a decidedly dark turn of late, with ever more government intrusion in the economy. The regulatory state has even clamped down on internet and financial companies, such as Alibaba and Ant, whose billionaire founders were seen as challenging the CCP’s authority.

The average Chinese citizen has effectively had an unspoken deal with the CCP for 40 years: As long as economic times are good and the people get richer, the party can do whatever it wants, personal liberty be damned. That meant turning a blind eye to the imprisonment of dissidents and the enrichment of party bosses. But it was a small price to pay, so long as the economy kept growing at light speed.

But now that the CCP is losing its economic “mandate of heaven,” regular Chinese folks are losing confidence in their government’s handling of the economy for the first time since the global financial crisis.

President Xi Jinping is now achieving barely 5 percent growth in China, which is mediocre for a “developing” country and deeply disappointing to Chinese, who have gotten used to miracle growth.

Mediocrity is not enough compensation for a population that has endured some of the most notorious COVID lockdowns, only to see them ended almost overnight without explanation. That clarified for many Chinese that Beijing doesn’t know what it’s doing, and that government’s failures can be — and often are — catastrophic.

The CCP’s mishandling of everything, but especially the economy, has left it facing an increasingly skeptical citizenry that is pulling back on spending and investment as it loses confidence. Foreign investors and private enterprise are retreating. China’s labor force is shrinking.

The CCP’s attempts to stimulate the economy will likely just flip the current deflation to more inflation, which could drive massive capital flight overseas while piling more debt on top of China’s $50 trillion mountain.

The situation is bleak, yet one cannot help but notice the striking parallels between China’s mistakes and increasing U.S. government intervention in our own economy.

The Biden administration’s preference for higher taxes and more regulation of business, as well as the pouring of trillions into politically favored businesses and voting blocs, should set off alarm bells. Further, attempts to stimulate the economy by pouring in freshly printed money have resulted in 40-year-high inflation, while anemic growth has left Americans frustrated. The result is stagflation — the combination of high prices and slow growth.

Productive investment hasn’t grown under President Biden, whose approval rating on the economy is a paltry 36 percent. A recent poll shows that most people (58 percent) believe that his policies have specifically made things worse. Home affordability is at a 34-year low. Americans have accumulated record credit-card debt amid skyrocketing grocery bills. Paychecks are bigger on paper, yet people are poorer.

<Wisconsin's Republican Assembly leader announced Wednesday that he's created a panel to investigate the criteria for impeachment as he mulls taking that unprecedented step against a liberal state Supreme Court justice.

Republicans are targeting Justice Janet Protasiewicz over comments she made during her winning campaign about redistricting and nearly $10 million in donations she received from the state Democratic Party.

The impeachment criteria panel being created by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos will consist of three former Wisconsin Supreme Court justices whom Vos told The Associated Press he would not name until after their work is done. Vos said they were not being paid and he expected their work to be complete in the “next few weeks.”

The move to further investigate possible impeachment against Protasiewicz comes the day after Vos and Republicans introduced a bill, modeled after the law in Iowa, where new maps would be drawn by nonpartisan legislative staff and be approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature for 2024.

But Gov. Tony Evers said he would veto the plan and advocates criticized it because it gives the Legislature the ability to draw maps if those created by the nonpartisan staff are rejected two times. Vos called that argument a “red herring.”

“If somehow you think we’re going to sneak through a Republican map that has some kind of favor and get Tony Evers’ signature on it, I think you’re smoking something," Vos said Wednesday on WisconsinEye. ”It’s not going to happen."

Vos said that offering the redistricting bill was an “off-ramp” to impeachment, which he called a “last option.”

“They're making it seem like I’m foaming at the mouth to have an impeachment process," Vos said on WISN-AM where he announced the formation of the impeachment review panel. "But that is the last thing I want to have happen which is why we have taken what I would say is a pretty radical step to offer a different path.”

Protasiewicz joined the court on Aug. 1, flipping majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from conservative to liberal for the first time in 15 years.

Republicans have called on Protasiewicz to recuse herself from a pair of Democratic-backed redistricting lawsuits seeking to overturn GOP-drawn maps. Republicans argue that she can't fairly hear the cases because she called the current maps “unfair” and “rigged” during the campaign and accepted nearly $10 million from the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

She has yet to decide on recusal in those cases. But she did recuse from another lawsuit filed this week asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to block any attempts by the Legislature to impeach Protasiewicz. It is up to each justice to decide whether to recuse from a case....>

<.....The state’s judicial code prohibits justices and judicial candidates from making promises or commitments to ruling a certain way on any issue, and Protasiewicz adhered to that during her campaign. Earlier this year, the state commission that investigates complaints against judges dismissed ones it had received related to her comments on redistricting.

All but one justice on the Supreme Court has accepted money from political parties and has been outspoken on hot-button issues before winning an election.

Vos said it was his “constitutional duty” to look into impeachment. He told the AP that former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who Vos hired to lead an investigation into the 2020 election and then called an “embarrassment” and fired, would not be one of them.

Dan Kelly, a former justice whom Protasiewicz defeated in April, told the AP that he was not on the panel either.

That leaves just seven living former justices from Vos to pick from. Former conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, whose retirement created the vacancy Protasiewicz filled, did not return a message asking if she was on the panel.

Impeachment is permitted under the Wisconsin Constitution only for corrupt conduct in office or for the commission of a crime. It takes a simple majority in the Assembly to impeach and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict.

Republicans hold a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a two-thirds 22-11 majority in the Senate. They built those large majorities on the maps they drew in 2011, viewed as among the most gerrymandered in the country, which have been upheld by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by conservatives.

If the Assembly impeached her, Protasiewicz would be barred from any duties as a justice until the Senate acted. That could effectively stop her from voting on redistricting without removing her from office and creating a vacancy that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would fill.

If she is convicted by the Senate or resigns, and there is a vacancy before Dec. 1, that would trigger an April election to fill out the remainder of her 10-year term. Protasiewicz won the election in April by 11 points.>

<A multi-millionaire property developer from Australia has sparked fury for calling for unemployment to rise to 50 per cent while claiming workers became “arrogant” during Covid.

Gurner Group CEO Tim Gurner told the Australian Financial Review’s Property Summit that productivity had plummeted during the global pandemic as “people decided they didn't really want to work so much”.

“We need to see pain in the economy,” Mr Gurner told the summit on Tuesday, taking particular aim at the post-Covid work rates of construction labourers.

“We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

The inflammatory comments quickly went viral on social media as politicians and commentators lined up to condemn the CEO.

“Reminder that major CEOs have skyrocketed their own pay so much that the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay is now at some of the highest levels *ever* recorded,” Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on X.

“This Gurner character personifies everything that is wrong with unfettered capitalism and the cult of the super-CEO: rampant greed and an arrogant contempt for working people,” Australian media commentator Mike Carlton wrote.

Spence Rodgers, CEO of Ihm Luxury, wrote that Mr Gurner’s assertion that he would rather “level personal pain on millions of workers in order to keep his own money flowing is the epitome of class warfare”.

“What words could I possibly use to describe someone so incredibly stupid, callous, fragile, and worthless?” Mr Rodgers added.

During the panel discussion, Mr Gurner went on to claim that a “40 to 50 per cent increase” in unemployment would reverse the lingering productivity impact Covid had left on the workforce.

“There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around,” he said.

“We’ve got to kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy.”

Mr Gurner, who has an estimated personal net wealth of US$600m, is no stranger to controversial statements.

In 2017, he told millennials to stop buying “smashed avocados” if they wanted to be able to afford their first home.

The unemployment rate in Australia is 3.6 per cent, or roughly 500,000 people, meaning an estimated 250,000 workers would lose their jobs in a 50 per cent increase.

Mr Gurner’s company has a property and development portfolio valued at US$6.4bn.

The Australian Financial Review pointed out that he got his start in property development with a loan from his grandfather.>

<U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned that President Xi Jinping is amplifying China’s military strength and gearing up for a potential conflict with the U.S.

Kendall, speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association Warfighter Symposium in National Harbor, issued a stern warning about U.S.-China relations on Monday, The Hill reported.

He underscored that although war is not a certainty, the U.S. must brace itself for a “kind of war we have no modern experience with.”

China is swiftly bolstering its forces and has established two new military branches, Kendall stated, adding, “China has been reoptimizing its forces for great power competition and to prevail against the U.S. in the Western Pacific for over 20 years.”

Kendall’s comments came amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, an autonomous island nation that Beijing considers a part of its mainland.

The relations between Beijing and Washington have reached a low point, with the Air Force Secretary warning of the possibility of the Chinese President taking Taiwan by force. President Joe Biden has previously asserted that the U.S. would dispatch troops to defend the island if necessary.

In June, a senior White House official expressed concern over the “real and growing” risk of a military miscalculation between the U.S. and the Chinese army led by Xi.

Other Pentagon and U.S. military officials also echo Kendall’s apprehensions of a potential conflict with China, possibly within this decade. He emphasized the need for the Air Force and Space Force to reoptimize for enhanced power projection and competition.>

<Former President Donald Trump faces four criminal indictments, but one of them has gone largely unremarked on in recent weeks – the business fraud case in Manhattan in which he's accused of falsifying records to obscure a hush payment to x-rated film star Stormy Daniels.

And while focus has been on the other trials, District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been quietly outmaneuvering Trump, wrote legal experts Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, and Josh Kolb for MSNBC.

Bragg, noted the experts, was an unlikely figure to be the first to bring a case. His office famously was in conflict after he initially closed out an investigation into Trump without charges, with a prosecutor from his own office resigning in protest. But he revived the case, focusing on the Daniels payment — and in so doing, created a simple, easy-to-prove case that "sidestepped" the thornier issues Trump's legal team might be able to bring up had Bragg gone after anything else in his business empire.

And if he is convicted, he could face 34 counts that each can bring up to four years in prison.

"Not only are these types of charges regarding false business records the bread and butter of the Manhattan DA’s office, but this case is also, at its heart, a democracy case," they wrote, saying the central allegation is that Trump used the payment to block news of an affair from going public during the 2016 election, depriving voters of important information.

But Bragg has done more than build a solid case, Eisen, Weissmann, and Kolb argue — he is also deftly coordinating with prosecutors in other cases, filing motions in court to time his trial in a way that won't interfere with the federal election conspiracy case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

"This is only the latest in a series of shrewd and successful moves by Bragg that have largely gone unnoticed by the media and the public," the said. "

From the moment he took office, he has faced significant public criticism related to his handling of Trump investigations. It appeared to some (including one of the authors) that he was moving too slowly — or even tacitly deep-sixing the Trump investigation."

And he has done this all in the face of constant threats and attacks from Trump – including a post featuring an image of the former president facing down Bragg with a baseball bat – and efforts by Republicans in Congress to harass and probe his office.

"Bragg has demonstrated true statesmanship — staying the course, continuing the investigation, pushing forward in spite of external (and some internal) sniping and, ultimately, stepping aside temporarily," they concluded, adding that he has "transcended parochialism and politics, focusing only on the public good" and "deserves our thanks.">

<United States Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) deflected during an MSNBC segment on Wednesday when The Beat host Ari Melber grilled him about a supposed policy agreement Gaetz struck with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) back in January.

The conversation stemmed from the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden that McCarthy initiated on Tuesday. Republicans allege that Biden engaged in "bribery" but have offered no evidence to support those accusations.

"Wouldn't it be better to finally and fully, transparently release the whole thing so both your constituents, Republicans, and the public could see what now you claim is his violation of these assorted pledges?" Melber asked.

"Yeah, I have no problem with that," Gaetz replied, claiming that Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas) "keeps my copy. Tim Reitz of the Freedom Caucus has copies as well. But keep this in mind, Ari. No one is disputing the authenticity of the terms that I have laid out. You know, Kevin McCarthy has two hundred allies in Congress."

Melber cut Gaetz off.

"I'll let you finish on that..." he said.

"It's important. It's really important..." Gaetz fired back.

"I'll let you get it. But Chip Roy? This is up to Chip Roy release your agreement?" Melber reiterated.

"Well, I don't have a copy of it," Gaetz said. "I know it exists, and no one is disputing the terms. So, you are, you are picking a fight here that not even Kevin McCarthy and his top allies quibble about. Someone in the press should ask Kevin McCarthy, 'Did you commit to a term limits vote? Did you commit to a balanced budget vote?'"

Melber responded. "We'll, we're asking everybody who will come on. Are you calling on Congressman Chip Roy to release the agreement tonight?"

Gaetz continued, "Well, I leave that up to him. I have no problem with it. If Chip Roy releases the agreement, you will find it is entirely consistent with what I've said. Matter of fact, Chip Roy was asked about the agreement at a press conference earlier this week, and he said, in fact, that all of the claims that I'd made about term limits, balanced budgets, and single-subject spending bills were, in fact, reduced to writing. Again, you're, you're, let's get to something that you, that people are actually quibbling about so we can have a more interesting discussion."

Melber answered, "Well, we're, yeah, we're going back and forth, but if it's your copy, as you say, if it's part of the agreement, you and this group reached, and we showed the sound, and you're talking about how important this all has been, why don't you get your copy released again?"

Gaetz said, "I just told you I don't have a copy. But no one is disputing this. And by the way, you don't even have to look at a written agreement because back in January of this year, these things didn't just emerge.">

<In a 2006 episode of the television show “Boston Legal,” conservative lawyer Denny Crane asserted that he had a constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm: “And the Supreme Court is going to say so, just as soon as they overturn Roe v. Wade.”

That was a joke, an unimaginable event, when the show aired 17 years ago. Then in 2022, the court announced both changes, shifting the butt of a joke to the law of the land in a brief span of years – and signaling the start of what is sometimes called a “constitutional revolution.”

Scholars describe a constitutional revolution as “a historic constitutional course correction,” or a “deep change in constitutional meaning.”

As Constitution Day is celebrated this year on Sept. 17 – the anniversary of the signing of America’s basic law in 1787 – I believe a shift of that magnitude is clearly occurring in the recent rulings of the Supreme Court.

Revolutionary rulings

In the 2021-22 term, the Supreme Court’s dramatic rulings focused on abortion, guns, religion and the power of federal agencies. In a nutshell, the justices removed the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and religious rights, and restricted the power of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to craft regulations.

In the recent 2022-2023 term, the court again addressed religion and the power of the federal bureaucracy, also adding race as a major area of controversy in a decision that ended affirmative action in college admissions.

The core rulings on these disputes were all 6-3, with the court’s new supermajority of conservative justices on one side and the three remaining liberals in dissent.

Here are the three major cases from the past term expanding the constitutional revolution:

Race: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College

This case challenged the constitutionality of affirmative action programs at American universities. Unlike previous affirmative action cases, which featured white applicants who claimed to have been discriminated against in favor of minority students, this lawsuit focused on another minority – Asians – who believed they were treated worse than other minorities and whites in the Harvard admissions process.

The heart of the controversy is about the meaning of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: “No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The court ruled that the equal protection principle means public institutions may not take race into account, even when they are using racial preferences to the advantage of minority groups who suffered a history of oppression.

The Harvard case effectively overrules a prior decision in 2003 that allowed universities to use racial preferences in order to achieve a degree of diversity on campus.

The new constitutional rule is that the equal protection clause is a promise to treat all citizens of all races the same, rather than the alternative understanding of the clause’s promise to move society toward equity among racial groups, which allows or even encourages the differential treatment of some groups in order to make up for past injustices....>

<.....Religion: 303 Creative v. Elenis

This case asked whether the First Amendment’s protections of religion and speech override the protections for LGBT citizens in state laws. Does a business owner who wants to provide only wedding websites for celebrations that comport with their religious convictions have to provide the same service for couples whose unions they do not endorse?

The court ruled that regardless of the religious component, it is a violation of free speech for the government to compel the expression of any messages inconsistent with one’s beliefs, even in the context of a business transaction.

While technically a ruling on speech, this is a controversy about religious citizens demanding exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. The ruling is part of a long trend expanding religious liberty.

The new rule in this case extended the previous term’s dramatic change in the constitutional law of religion in the praying coach case, Kennedy v. Bremerton. In that case, the court ruled that the religion clauses at the beginning of the First Amendment have a clear meaning: The government may not coerce any citizen when it comes to religion – either toward or away from religious beliefs. If any action of the government is pushing someone to abandon or embrace religious behavior, that is not allowable.

In the case of the praying coach, this meant a public school could not block his display of prayer at a sporting event, something that would have been seen as an unconstitutional entanglement of government with religion under previous courts. The new interpretation of the First Amendment explained in this line of rulings – giving the benefit of the doubt to religious believers whenever there is a judgment call – dramatically increases the protections for religious citizens.

The administrative state: Biden v. Nebraska

The justices in this case struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which would have eliminated up to US$20,000 of debt for millions of Americans, with a total price tag of approximately $430 billion. The decision to bar the administration’s program was grounded in a new principle known as the “major questions doctrine.”

This principle diminishes the power of many federal agencies. It first appeared in the court’s rulings during the pandemic, halting the Biden administration’s eviction moratorium and vaccine mandate. The clearest statement of the doctrine came in 2022 in West Virginia v. EPA, limiting the agency’s ability to introduce new regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions and shifting energy production toward cleaner sources.

The doctrine asserts that an administrative agency – like the Department of Education, which initiated the loan forgiveness program – cannot decide what the court sees as a major political question, which includes doing something with a large price tag or making a dramatic change in policy, unless the agency has explicit authorization from Congress.

The justification for the new doctrine, expressed most clearly by Justice Neil Gorsuch, is that only Congress wields the authority delegated by the voters, who can reward or punish those members of Congress in the next election. Federal agencies are not limited by the same control through elections, and are wielding the delegated authority of Congress rather than their own inherent power. The major question doctrine argues that if agencies are allowed to make major policy decisions, we do not have representative government as demanded by the Constitution.

Destination unknown

This constitutional revolution could lead far beyond abortion, guns, race, religion or the administrative state. What is known on this Constitution Day is that the revolution will likely continue, expressed in Supreme Court opinions crafted by the new supermajority of conservative justices.>

<“Americans don’t want to live in a nation where big government has the power to silence free speech.” These are the words of House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, who recently began an inquiry into tax-exempt philanthropic and advocacy organizations.

I was surprised to see this effort from a Republican-led committee, since conservatives have often opposed government scrutiny of tax-exempt organizations and transparency in campaign finance systems. My former colleagues at the House Oversight Committee, for instance, launched a major investigation into the Obama administration for “targeting” conservative tax-exempt organizations.

The current black-box campaign finance system is, of course, the brainchild of conservatives. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision was the product of a conservative campaign to roll back campaign finance regulations and opened the door to untraceable spending in elections.

Since then, 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups, which can spend money advocating on policy and don’t have to disclose their donors, have taken on central roles in the political landscape. In fact, according to the research group OpenSecrets, organizations on the left and right that don’t have to disclose their donors spent $963 million in elections in the decade after Citizens United, dwarfing the $129 million spent over the previous decade.

House Republicans claim to be concerned about this growing influence, but only when it is in support of progressive causes. For all the energy Republicans have spent decrying the weaponization of the government to attack political opponents, Rep. Smith of Missouri appears to be doing exactly that. Until now, Republicans have vigorously blocked every campaign finance reform effort over the last decade and voted unanimously to block the Democratic-led Disclose Act last year, which would have provided some transparency.

House Republicans, however, lined up behind their American Confidence in Elections Act, a laundry list of election changes that would make voting harder — and, yes, make dark money spending easier. They say dark money on the left is a problem, and yet they’re pushing legislation that would eliminate many of the few disclosure requirements that still exist.

Smith and the committee also claim that nonprofits are becoming conduits for “foreign influence,” citing misleading xenophobic reports from right-wing media to make their case. But Republicans have minimized and downright denied Russian interference in our elections for years despite bipartisan findings that Russia organized an aggressive campaign to influence the 2016 elections.

Republicans are also ignoring foreign-owned and foreign-influenced corporations pumping money into our elections. Look no further than Rudolph W. Giuliani’s business associate Lev Parnas, who was recently sentenced to 20 months in prison for using a shell company to funnel Russian oligarch money into American elections.

There’s a lot of outrage about the political activities of progressive nonprofits, but Smith’s committee seems to have no desire to look into conservative nonprofits such as Turning Point USA, which helped fund the rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, or the Public Interest Legal Foundation, whose leaders were involved in disputing the results of the 2020 election.

Dozens of conservative nonprofits, including the Honest Elections Project, led by Leonard Leo, co-chair of the Federalist Society, work to restrict voting rights, with great harm inflicted on voters of color. I can think of nothing more wrong than using tax-exempt groups to spread the "Big Lie," suppress voting rights or fuel an assault on the U.S. Capitol, yet that does not seem to be a concern for House Republicans. (Leo is reportedly under investigation for allegedly misusing his web of nonprofits to enrich himself; it would be surprising if Republicans decided to examine his case.)

There’s more that the Internal Revenue Service should do to ensure that tax-exempt organizations are following the laws. But Republicans have refused to give the IRS the resources it needs to conduct proper oversight of nonprofit organizations and even voted to rescind more than $80 billion in IRS funding this year. Yet they’re eager to investigate progressive groups when the biggest abuses are coming from their own camp.>

<The People's Republic of China (PRC) flew 68 warplanes over Taiwan as 10 of its Navy vessels circled the island in one of its biggest displays of force so far this year.

China's grandstanding comes only weeks after the United States sent equipment to the self-ruled island for the first time in history.

Beijing has continued to claim Taiwan as an integral part of its territory ever since the island declared its independence in 1949 during the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party.

Relations have been tense since and President Xi Jinping's committing to bringing Taipei back under Chinese control have only exacerbated the division.

The deployment of the 68 warplanes came less than 24 hours after the Taiwanese Government reported another 35 Chinese aircraft had been spotted in its airspace.

On Thursday, Taipei's Defense Ministry reported several J-10 fighters had flown into the country's air defense identification zone.

"This year, the Chinese Communist Party has aggressively expanded its armaments and continued to build various types of fighter jets and drones," Major General Huang Wen-Chi said in a statement.

Taiwan added that some of the warplanes had crossed the Bashi Channel and joined the Chinese carrier Shandong for military drills in the Pacific.

Japan later added that its Navy had spotted the Shandong sailing approximately 400 miles south of Miyakojima island alongside six ships, including destroyers and frigates.

The US has long maintained a neutral position on Taiwan, following the One China position that recognizes the island as part of mainland China.

But the Biden administration has thawed its stance, with Joe Biden expressing his support for Taipei and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visiting the island officially last year.

Taiwan said it will continue to monitor the Chinese activities around the island and bolster its defenses in response.

Over the past year, Beijing has stepped up military activities around Taiwan, including by sending warships and warplanes on a near-daily basis.

The latest dispatch of Chinese warplanes and warships came after the United States and Canada sailed warships through the Taiwan Strait in a challenge to Beijing's territorial claims.

On Monday, the PRC sailed its own naval formation led by the aircraft carrier Shandong about 70 miles southeast of Taiwan.

The vessel was expected to conduct drills simulating aircraft, submarine, warship and land attacks, according to Chinese state media.

And this week, Beijing unveiled its blueprint for the integration of Taiwan in its latest warning shot to the island about an upcoming invasion.

The directive was touted in a special press conference in which officials stressed Xi and the Communist Party leadership "attach great importance to the unique role of Fujian in the overall strategy on Taiwan."

Fujian is the Chinese province that directly faces the Strait of Taiwan, and a region Beijing says it wants to become the first port of call for Taiwanese residents settling in the PRC.

Pan Xianzhang, the Vice Director of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said: "We will ... support the construction of (the demonstration zone) as a major initiative to deepen cross-strait integrated development and consolidate the foundation for peaceful reunification.">

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) interrupted a Democratic congresswoman accusing her Republican colleagues of hypocrisy on the issue of abortion, during a coronavirus subcommittee hearing on the erosion of the doctor-patient relationship during the pandemic.

“It is truly hypocritical that my Republican colleagues are convening a hearing on government overreach into the doctor-patient relationship when their party is literally writing the playbook across our country on how to do exactly that,” Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) said at the hearing Thursday.

“Since the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court overturned Roe, extreme Republican lawmakers have been tripping over themselves to pass dangerous bans and restrictions, defying the will of the majority of Americans,” Tokuda added.

Tokuda, during the hearing, cited a medical journal that said “abortion is an essential component of women’s health care.” She continued, “abortion is health care. When we criminalize —,“ before she was cut off.

“It’s murdering babies,” Greene said in an off-mic remark, interrupting Tokuda during her allotted speaking time. Greene continued, in sometimes unintelligible comments, before adding, “It’s murdering the unborn.”

The Republican subcommittee chair called for order and said, “I will expect that Ms. Tokuda has her right to make her comments. Everyone will get their time.”

Greene remained silent for the rest of Tokuda’s remarks, but she reiterated her position when it was her turn to speak minutes later.

“I find it pretty appalling that the Democrats on our committee are using this hearing to talk about the murder of unborn children, babies, people who have rights in our country due to the Constitution,” Greene said.

“Abortion is not health care. It’s not. It’s murder. Health care saves lives. And that’s what many doctors tried to do during the COVID tyrannical shutdowns,” Greene continued.>

Her constituents will doubtless reelect Mouth next year, meaning she gets to infest the House for at least another two years.

Pity.

<In an interim victory for President Donald Trump, his family, and his real-estate company, an appellate judge in Manhattan on Thursday put a temporary hold on a massive, civil fraud trial that had been set to begin October 2.

The judge, Associate Justice David Friedman, put the trial start date on ice, at least for now, until a full appellate panel can consider Trump's contention that New York's fraud allegations, which include financial documents stretching back to 2011, are too old, and that any trial must be severely limited in scope if not canceled outright.

The appellate-level, eleventh-hour monkey wrench in the $250 million civil trial was first reported by the Daily Beast. Four legal sources confirmed the new litigation sideshow and Thursday's trial date stay for Insider.

The new matter will be handled on an expedited schedule, with all legal arguments filed by September 25, followed by yet-scheduled oral arguments, the sources said.

It's unclear how, or even whether, it will affect the October 2 trial date.

State Attorney General Letitia James contends that over the course of a decade, Trump lied about the value of his assets in official financial documents by as much as $3.6 billion a year, calculated misstatements that let him pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits from banks, insurers, and tax officials.

She is seeking to revoke Trump Org's charter to operate as a New York corporation and to permanently bar the former president, his sons, Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump, and two top Trump Org executives from ever running a business in the state again, among other sought penalties.

Trump has countered, including in a face-to-face deposition before James, that asset appraisal is a subjective art, and that his financial filings contained disclaimers warning banks and insurers to double-check his accountants' math.

The judge who will preside over the trial, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, has repeatedly vowed that the October 2 date will be kept "come hell or high water."

Trump's new appellate gambit aims directly over the head of Engoron, who has rejected all of Trump's previous efforts to limit the case on statute-of-limitations and other grounds, deeming Trump's last attempt to delay the trial "completely without merit."

But New York's Appellate Division in Manhattan has been more receptive, earlier this year freeing Ivanka Trump from the lawsuit because her work as a Trump Organization vice president came to a stop when she moved to Washington, DC, in 2017, as her father became president of the United States.

Under New York statute of limitations law, it doesn't matter how far back alleged fraud stretches, so long as it is all part of a continuing course of fraudulent action.

"We are confident in our case and will be ready for trial," a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office said late Thursday.

The parties are due back in Engoron's court on September 22, when the sides will argue over each other's competing bids to decide trial issues early and in their own favor.

They'll also argue over the attorney general request that Trump's side be hit with $10,000 sanctions all around – including the lawyers – for repeating the same "frivolous" arguments in court papers.>

<This week, a full six courts showed the importance of the rule of law and accountability for former president Donald Trump.

The rulings came from the federal courts in Georgia and Florida, from state courts in New York and Georgia, and from multiple appellate courts. The six decisions are cause for optimism about the state of our system of justice.

They demonstrate that judges from every jurisdiction and ideological bent finally appear to be on to Trump’s favorite litigation tactic—delay, delay, delay—and that they are through with it. It’s worth digging into each case individually to see the full picture.

First, on Tuesday, Judge Steve Jones rejected Mark Meadows’ emergency motion to stay his order from last week returning the RICO case against Meadows to state court. As I wrote earlier this week, Meadows is essentially serving as a stalking horse for Trump, which means that when he loses motion after motion to delay his case, Trump also loses.

In last week’s ruling, Jones held that when Meadows participated in the acts alleged in the indictment, he was not acting in his official federal government role as White House chief of staff. Rather, Jones ruled, Meadows was acting as an adjunct of Trump’s personal reelection campaign.

Then this week, it took the judge all of one day to turn aside Meadows’ request for an emergency stay of that ruling pending appeal. In doing so, he issued a 10-page opinion finding that Meadows had shown “no substantial likelihood of success on appeal.”

The court also held that “the state and federal interests at issue in Meadows’s action”—as well as the public interest—“actually favor the resolution of his case in state court, rather than in federal court.”

Those findings will not help Meadows’ appeal.

Jones’ denial in 24 hours of Meadows’ emergency motion was the mark of a court unwilling to tolerate any dallying in the search of justice.

In that impatience, Judge Jones was not alone, as demonstrated by our second key court decision. Meadows appealed on Tuesday, immediately after Jones rejected his emergency motion.

The same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit expedited both Meadows’ request to stay Jones’ ruling and briefing on the substantive issues.

Meadows withdrew the motion for the stay on Thursday after state court Judge Scott McAfee made clear that the case would not be tried with defendants who had sought a speedy trial on Oct. 23. On the substantive appeal, the court ordered all briefing to be completed within two weeks.

This is a court in a hurry.

It wasn’t the first time the same court had moved swiftly in a Trump-related matter. Last year, it took only eight days for the higher court to stay District Court Judge Aileen Cannon’s aberrant ruling favoring Trump in the Mar-a-Lago obstruction and national security case.

Ludicrously, she had appointed a special master to oversee the review of the documents seized in the FBI’s court-approved Aug. 8, 2020, search.

There was no precedent for such a ruling. It made no sense to have a special master expend judicial resources reviewing seized documents before anyone even knew whether Trump would be charged.

The 11th Circuit’s expeditious handling last year of this matter involving Trump was not an isolated incident among federal appeals courts. In January 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit took but three months—warp speed in appellate court time—to reject a different Trump appeal.

In that case, the former president lost his claim that executive privilege shielded his White House documents from the House Jan. 6 committee.

Like Judge Jones’ one-day ruling, the quick action of the two courts of appeals in prior cases indicate that federal judges are well aware of, and unwilling to tolerate, Trump’s well-documented attempts to delay judicial proceedings against him.

That matters going forward. As his criminal cases proceed, Trump will almost certainly have one or two pretrial appeals to higher courts when trial judges deny Trump’s legal motions. Such appeals can stall the trials....>

<.....In those pretrial appeals, the quicker the higher courts act, the sooner his cases will be resolved. Prompt, well-considered resolution of his claims will be good for the public and for justice.

The third instance this week of a court treating the business of Trump’s trials seriously and expeditiously came on Monday, when New York Judge Juan Merchan released a Sept. 1 letter signaling that he might be willing to delay Trump’s current March 25 trial date on the Manhattan case in order to allow federal officials to expedite his more serious Jan. 6 charges.

He wrote: “We will have a much better sense [in February] whether there are any actual conflicts [with other Trump cases] and if so, what the best adjourn date might be for trial.”

Openness to a later date based upon trials in special counsel Jack Smith’s D.C. case and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case—both of which allege Trump criminally conspiring to overturn the 2020 election—reflect a judge who understands the big picture of public need for the resolution of more significant cases.

The fourth instance is actually a surprise. In Trump’s classified documents case, Judge Cannon—previously seen as overly favorable to the former president—issued a protective order safeguarding national security.

On Wednesday, Judge Cannon granted the DOJ’s request for a protective order to potentially limit Trump’s ability to receive classified materials in discovery.

Significantly, the order specifically authorizes prosecutors to ask “the court for an order to prohibit the classified information [turned over to Trump’s lawyers] from being disclosed to [him].”

That strongly suggests that the judge understands that in the past, Trump has, at best, been reckless with the nation’s sensitive secrets and possibly something far worse.

Though this is only one sound ruling from Cannon so far, it’s important to note. No one can say for sure that she has learned from the court of appeals slapping down her mystifying pro-Trump decision appointing a special master last year.

For now, even if her pace in ruling was not up to the standard of the other courts, she appears to understand the potential need to protect certain national security materials from someone like Trump. That’s progress.

The fifth example of the courts demonstrating the need for speed when it comes to Trump came on Thursday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit accepted the request from Joshua Matz, E. Jean Carroll’s attorney, to expedite Trump’s appeal of the May jury verdict against him for defaming Carroll in 2019.

Trump claims that he is immune because he was president when he made the defamatory statements denying that he knew her and sexually assaulted her back in the mid-1990s. Attorney General Merrick Garland originally supported that claim, but in July, changed his mind.

In reversing himself, Garland decided that “he lacked sufficient evidence to conclude” that Trump’s defamatory statements about Carroll were within the scope of his presidential duties. Federal courts often defer to an attorney general’s decision about such matters.

On Thursday, the appellate court set a rapid briefing schedule of one month, signaling yet again that federal judges are not indulging Trump’s strategy of delay.

Finally, on Thursday, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee denied the motions of Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell to separate their trials from each other. This is a good sign for the judge’s appreciation of efficiency and joint trials for the other defendants who did not move for a speedy trial, including Trump.

Those other defendants will not be tried with Chesebro and Powell on Oct. 23. Not having requested a speedy trial, they are entitled to more time to prepare, as McAfee recognized in severing their cases from that of Chesebro and Powell.

When it comes time to deal with the anticipated motion of the remaining 17 defendants—or however many do not enter guilty pleas with plans to cooperate—McAfee’s ruling Thursday signals he will be inclined to try many, if not all, remaining defendants together.

Add this decision to the other five and you have a solid foundation for believing that the rule of law is asserting itself against a would-be reelected president bent on destroying it.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday dubbed the House Freedom Caucus the “burn-it-all-down caucus,” a swipe at the conservative group that ousted her from its ranks over the summer.

“I’m not a member of the burn-it-all-down caucus anymore,” Greene told reporters. “I’m a greatly, very happily a free agent and I want to do my job here.”

Members of the caucus voted to boot Greene from their ranks over the summer after the Georgia Republican supported the debt limit bill that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden crafted to avoid a default, which drew ire from many in the right flank — some of whom are members of the caucus.

Her ouster also came after she clashed with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a member of the caucus. Greene called Boebert a “little b—-” after the Colorado Republican unexpectedly forced a vote on her articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Greene criticized Boebert for not explaining her decision to the House GOP conference, and she said her Colorado colleague copied her articles of impeachment targeting Mayorkas.

Greene’s removal from the conservative group marked a significant moment in her evolution on Capitol Hill. The Georgia Republican came to Congress in 2021 as a rabble rouser, quickly becoming a conservative thorn in the side of GOP leadership.

But last year she emerged as a close ally of McCarthy, supporting his bid for the Speakership and urging against any internal challenge — a stark difference from many of her colleagues in the Freedom Caucus, whose demands of McCarthy and support for other members led to the historic 15-ballot election.

Greene’s swipe at the Freedom Caucus came one day after a coalition of conservatives — some of whom are members of the conservative group — said they would withhold support from a procedural vote on legislation to fund the Pentagon over demands on spending, which led GOP leadership in the House to punt the vote.

Greene on Thursday suggested in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that she would not support the spending bill because it includes funding for Ukraine, which she opposes. But the congresswoman nonetheless expresses frustration with her conservative colleagues following a closed-door GOP conference meeting.

“A lot of my colleagues that are saying those things weren’t even in that room, so they weren’t there to hear any of the conversation nor raise their concerns,” Greene said after emerging from the meeting. “They can’t stand out and hold press conferences but not attend our conference meetings and expect to work things out.”

Asked if she is frustrated with their participation on the appropriations process, Greene said she was no longer a member of the “burn-it-all-down” caucus.

In July, after news broke of Greene’s ouster from the Freedom Caucus, the congresswoman called the group “the drama club.”

“I’m not really concerned about it,” Greene said of the news.

“I don’t have time for the drama club,” she added at the time.>

<Donald Trump "cherry-picks" out-of-context quotes from Judge Chutkan in order to justify his effort to get her to recuse herself, Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a Thursday night filing.

Trump was indicted in Washington D.C. in connection with his purportedly unlawful efforts to overturn the results of the election in 2020. He has since then railed against Smith, as well as against Chutkan and the region itself.

Trump previously sought to get Chutkan to recuse herself from the case, pointing to vague statements made about Trump in other Jan. 6-related cases.

Now, Smith has filed a reply to Trump's request. The news comes from a reporter named Brandi Buchman.

"Special Counsel Jack Smith responds to Donald Trump's motion to recuse Judge Chutkan: there is no 'valid reason' to recuse Judge Chutkan," Buchman wrote, adding more quotes from the government filing. "'Wrong recusal standard' Defendant 'cherrypicks' 'Manufactures allegations out of bias.'"

The filing itself makes the argument that Chutkan was merely responding to Jan. 6 defendants' claims that Trump himself was responsible for their aggressive behaviors.

"There is no valid basis," Smith writes, for Chutkan "to disqualify herself in this proceeding."

"The Court's statements addressing this sentencing mitigation argument were factually accurate, responsive to arguments presented to the Court, and evidence no improper bias or prejudgment of the current case," the filing states.>

Hope the sumbitch gets locked away for a good long while--no more silver spoon or retinue to play arse-licker at every turn.

<According to a disclaimer on Wikipedia, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, paid to alter the information shown on his page. On his Wikipedia, there are certain warnings, like, 'this article has multiple issues' and 'may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia’s content policies, particularly neutral point of view.'

While everyone has the ability to edit Wikipedia articles, it is against the rules for someone to update information about themselves. It is not against the rules to pay someone to edit an article on Wikipedia, so long as the payment is disclosed. According to Mediaite, a user going by the name of 'Jhofferman' was paid to edit Ramaswamy's Wikipedia and revealed the information. The article's history shows that the editor deleted material that mentioned Ramaswamy's 2011 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

The late Paul Soros' brother, George Soros, is a Democratic megadonor who far-right leaders frequently criticize. However, Ramaswamy famously made his presidential run public on Tucker Carlson's broadcast before Carlson was fired from Fox News. In addition, Carlson was also the one who often criticized Soros on his program.

Not only was the Soros fellowship judged to be an 'extraneous material' by the editor, but he also deleted references to Ramaswamy's membership of the Ohio COVID-19 Response Team; the reasoning behind this is unclear. However, some Republicans may view discussions about the government's response to the outbreak as political poison.

A little under two weeks after the alterations were made, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the White House. Eventually, however, Wikipedia users and editors discussed the editor's potential conflict of interest. The reference to Ramaswamy's fellowship was reinstated, but his time spent with the Ohio Covid Team was removed.

This is not the only time Ramaswamy has been accused of attempting to change his past. He was later accused of paying to have his Wikipedia page revised to provide a more 'flattering' biography in a highly circulated post on Twitter. @depthsofwiki, which documents humorous edits and additions to the online encyclopedia, revealed on August 24, 2023, that Ramaswamy had hired a freelancer via the website Upwork to alter his Wikipedia entry in his favor. There was a screenshot in the message that seemed to be a log of updates made to Ramaswamy's profile between February 14 and March 9, 2023.

There is a current disagreement flag on Ramaswamy's Wikipedia because it lacks objectivity. The paid donations may or may not have triggered the flagging of his page. There has been some discussion among Wikipedia's editors over whether Ramaswamy's article should be protected.

The campaign for Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy insisted that rumors regarding his Wikipedia page are untrue. According to a text message from senior advisor Tricia McLaughlin to HuffPost, the adjustments rectify 'factual distortions' on 'a number of topics, including family members' names.' According to McLaughlin, Ramaswamy isn't attempting to keep any secrets from anybody. She added, "The point is getting accurate information on his Wikipedia... it makes sense to clear up lies and deception planted by the very folks who appear to have planted this story.">

<A federal judge has blocked two Arizona laws that sought to impose new voting restrictions – and has cleared the way for civil rights groups to examine the reasons Republican legislators tried to push them through, according to a report.

The U.S. Department of Justice and seven civil rights groups sued the state over the laws signed by Republican former governor Doug Ducey that banned certain people from voting by mail or in state elections. District Court Judge Susan Bolton found that federal laws govern the requirement of proof of citizenship, not local ones, reported AZCentral.

“These laws … smack of discriminatory intent against voters who have been historically disenfranchised in Arizona," said attorney Danielle Lang, who represents Campaign Legal Center, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Democrats Kris Mayes and Adrian Fontes now serve as state attorney general and secretary of state, following November's election, so Republican Senate president Warren Petersen and House speaker Ben Toma would have to intervene to defend the laws.

However, Bolton's ruling would require them to submit to depositions and turn over any communications that would explain legislators' intentions in creating the laws.>

Ducey and his minions come up loser this round; time to appeal and waste more resources on frivolous twaddle.

<California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland paused proceedings during Trump’s former attorney John Eastman’s disbarment trial on September 14 to admonish Steve Bannon for livestreaming it.

During expert witness testimony, Judge Roland said to the court, “I’m going to take just a minute to inform everyone about something that I just learned about, and that is that I’ve been informed that the Bannon War Room is live-streaming this proceeding.”

He continued: “And I think I made it very clear at the outset that no one is to live stream the proceeding, that individuals may have access through a public link on the State Bar Court website.”

Steve Bannon has yet to respond to Judge Roland’s comments. Mr Eastman’s own attorneys stated that had “no knowledge” it was being broadcast.

He is currently facing 11 disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California for allegedly writing a six-page memo strategising how former Vice President Mike Pence could interfere with the 2020 presidential election.

Prosecutors are also seeking to prove that he “engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results”.

Mr Eastman has disputed claims made by prosecutors that he told Mr Pence he could reject slates of electors in Georgia during a meeting on 4 January 2021, between the two men and former President Donald Trump.

This is despite Greg Jacobs, counsel to Mr Pence and Marc Short, former chief of staff for Mr Pence’s office, testifying that Mr Eastman did in fact recommend this to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Duncan Carling, trial counsel for the California State Bar, has stated that Mr Eastman “claimed there is historical precedent in early American history” to justify his actions. However, Mr Trumps’ [sic] former lawyer said he “does not recall” making a statement. Eastman has voluntarily waived his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Expert witness Matthew Seligman, a lawyer who specialises in election law, has testified that “there is no historical precedent”.

Mr Eastman also made headlines following a TV interview with Fox News on 30 August in which he appeared to admit live on air that he is guilty of one of the 11 charges he is currently facing.

While he insisted he and the former president are innocent, when asked by host Laura Ingraham asked what his “constitutional” plan was on 6 January 2021, he said he tried to stop the certification of the election results and encourage Mr Pence to prevent Congress from certifying them for a further week.>

<Special counsel Jack Smith earlier this year convinced Judge Beryl Howell that former President Donald Trump should not know about a subpoena for his Twitter account data on the grounds that he "presents a significant risk of tampering with evidence."

As reported by Politico's Kyle Cheney, Smith argued to Howell that letting Trump know about the warrant could "precipitate violence" and lead to Trump engaging in "obstructive conduct" aimed at derailing the investigation.

In making their case to Howell, Smith and his team of attorneys cited Trump's conduct after losing the 2020 presidential election as evidence that he was liable to commit crimes in order to hide evidence from investigators.

"Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6," they wrote.

Smith's attorneys also cited Trump being "determined to pay the legal fees of potential witnesses against him" and his "repeatedly [disparaging] the lead prosecutor on his Truth Social platform" as evidence that he should be kept in the dark about the warrant.

This was enough to convince Howell.

"The Court finds reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation," the judge wrote, according to The Messenger.>

<As Putin’s invasion grinds on, the risk of escalation has drifted away from headlines. People seem to view the war as the “new normal”. They shouldn’t. This is still an incredibly dangerous situation, ripe with potential for tragedy. This was brought home sharply yesterday, when we learned that almost exactly a year ago we came within a single technological failure of war between Nato and Russia.

An unarmed RAF surveillance aircraft, operating in international airspace over the Black Sea, was fired on by an incompetent – or deranged – Russian pilot. The first missile failed to achieve target lock; the second fell harmlessly into the sea.

If either missile had worked as intended, we would have entered a crisis of staggering consequence. It is no exaggeration to say that it could easily have started World War Three; up to thirty British crewmen, and their aircraft, incapable of hostile action, killed in cold blood in neutral airspace. Nato would have had no choice but to respond with overwhelming force. And as we’ve learned in the last year, Russia’s army is paper thin; a modern Western army would punch through their defences without a second thought.

In fact, it wouldn’t have to. Overwhelming missile and jet strikes would eliminate every Russian asset outside of its borders within hours of the decision being made to wipe the Kremlin’s forces from the earth. What would have been left would have had no choice but to surrender, or – a chilling thought – go nuclear.

Given the potentially apocalyptic nature of the consequences, it’s easy to understand why the UK – and no doubt the US – tried to suppress the true nature of the event for so long. But it is also a reminder of the total incompetence of the Russian Air Force. This is unlikely to have been the only time where their pilots have made mistakes or misjudgments. Perhaps most worrying is the revelation that Russian pilots seem unwilling to follow orders, or are at the least being given confusing and vague instructions. The risk of a repeat is far too high.

Given this, the best way to avoid a repeat would be to blow the Russians out of the sky. If they can’t hit a massive target at point blank range, they certainly wouldn’t stand a chance against F-16s. If we speed up the delivery of modern aircraft, Western fighter jets can end any prospect of Russian air-superiority within days, giving Ukrainian armoured formations the room to manoeuvre so key to generating breakthroughs.

It would also allow UK intelligence to continue its critical role in this fight. It is clear that Moscow is willing to do almost anything to suppress Britain’s information-gathering activities. Our “spies in the skies” over the Black Sea see everything the Russian fleet is up to, and no doubt a great deal more – allowing British Storm Shadow missiles to target with pinpoint accuracy critical naval assets.

This must be driving Putin absolutely mad. It’s no wonder he’s dragged himself far to the east to meet the plump tinpot dictator of North Korea: his forces are desperate for any edge they can get. Russian troops are getting through biblical quantities of ammunition without any real effect. Now he’s reduced to begging for ancient Soviet era shells, while modern Western armaments continue to flood into Ukraine. And a desperate man is a dangerous one.

Nato, and Britain, must be at the top of their game to ensure that another “accident” isn’t used as a pretext to demand we step back – or that the increasingly reclusive occupant of the Kremlin doesn’t drag the world into armageddon.>

<After Donald Trump and his lawyer (now perpetual companion) Alina Habba were sanctioned along with others for $1 million by US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks for filing their frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, they tried again and re-filed the lawsuit with a newly minted lawyer fresh out of law school.

In denying this latest challenge, Judge Middlebrooks began his Order by noting that "this case exemplifies Mr. Trump's history of abusing the judicial process."

It didn't get much better from there. The conclusion of his Order was straight fire:

"Movants pursued this lawsuit in bad faith for the improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative. Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on his political adversaries. This case is straight out of that playbook. Nothing in the Durham Report changes that."

The refiled lawsuit claimed that the Durham Report constituted "newly discovered evidence" that conclusively proved their case. Trump is always looking for new lawyers willing to incinerate their reputations and law licenses, and this time he found young rube Jared Roberts. Roberts graduated law school in 2021, became a member of the Florida Bar in May 2022, and was next in line for the latest Trump attorney humiliation.

Roberts argued that the Durham Report "seismically altered the landscape of the case." The Court ruled that "even if the Durham Report can be said to have uncovered the sort of vast conspiracy alleged by plaintiff (it plainly did not) it would not change the many legal conclusions I made in the Order dismissing plaintiff's lawsuit."

Judge Middlebrooks took issue with many of the claims that the filed lawsuit made about the contents of the Durham Report. He noted that Roberts "relied on the contents of the Ratcliffe letter without noting that it was based on Russian intelligence."

He then noted that in his previous order for sanctions, "I called Movants out for consistently misrepresenting and cherry-picking portions of public reports and filings to support a false factual narrative."

Judge Middlebrooks also noted how he had previously "concluded, after walking through Plaintiff's incoherent allegations for four pages, that it was categorically absurd to believe that Comey conspired with Clinton."

In short, this was about as harsh of a takedown as I have ever seen in an ruling from a federal judge.

Hell of a way to start your legal career, young Jared.>

<Federal prosecutors in the case charging Donald Trump with scheming to overturn the 2020 presidential election are seeking an order that would restrict the former president from “inflammatory” and “intimidating” comments about witnesses, lawyers and the judge.

Special counsel Jack Smith's team said in a motion filed Friday that such a “narrow, well-defined” order was necessary to preserve the integrity of the case and to avoid prejudicing potential jurors.

“Since the grand jury returned an indictment in this case, the defendant has repeatedly and widely disseminated public statements attacking the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses,” prosecutors wrote. “Through his statements, the defendant threatens to undermine the integrity of these proceedings and prejudice the jury pool.”

They said Trump's efforts to weaken faith in the court system and the administration of justice mirror his attacks on the 2020 election, which he falsely claimed that he had won.

“The defendant is now attempting to do the same thing in this criminal case — to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses,” they wrote.

Among the statements cited by prosecutors in their motion is a a post on his Truth Social platform days after the indictment in which Trump wrote, in all capital letters, “If you go after me, I'm coming after you!” He has also repeatedly alleged on social media that the case against him is “rigged” and that he cannot receive a fair trial. And he has attacked in personal terms the prosecutors bringing the case — calling Smith “deranged” and his team “thugs” — as well as the judge presiding over the case, Tanya Chutkan.

A Trump spokesperson said in a statement that prosecutors were "corruptly and cynically continuing to attempt to deprive President Trump of his First Amendment rights.

“This is nothing more than blatant election interference because President Trump is by far the leading candidate in this race. The American people — the voters — see right through this un-Constitutional charade and will send President Trump back to the White House,” the spokesperson said.

The issue surfaced last week with the disclosure by the Justice Department that it sought to file a motion related to “daily” public statements by Trump that it said it feared would taint the jury pool. Chutkan on Friday granted permission to prosecutors to file a redacted motion publicly, with names and identifying information of individuals who say they've been harassed as a result of Trump's attacks blacked out.

Also Friday, Smith's team pushed back against the Trump team request to have Chutkan recuse herself from the case. Defense lawyers had cited prior comments from Chutkan that they say cast doubt on her ability to be fair, but prosecutors responded that there was no valid basis for her to step aside.>

<Former President Donald Trump has created a "MAGA doom loop" for himself that will come to cripple his efforts to win the White House next year, argues Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent.

Sargent begins by arguing that Trump and Republicans' efforts to stifle democratic processes -- whether by inciting a riot to prevent the certification of a presidential election or nominating candidates for secretary of state who had vowed not to certify 2024 election results if Trump didn't win -- have proven to be unpopular with voters.

However, Sargent says that Trump and the GOP have only doubled down on such anti-democratic maneuverings, and he points to some of the party's recent actions in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.

When it comes to Michigan, writes Sargent, the state Republican Party "is in shambles" thanks to its devotion to propping up Trump's lies about a "stolen" 2020 election.

"Just this month, the chairman again called for scrutiny of supposed 2020 fraud, prompting infighting over debunked conspiracy theories," he writes. "And as the New York Times reports, the party’s descent into MAGA mania is alienating donors, draining volunteer enthusiasm and driving away swing voters."

Things are getting even more drastic in Wisconsin, where Republicans this week voted to oust a top elections official over conspiracy theories that she "rigged" the election against Trump three years ago.

Added to this, the Wisconsin GOP is threatening to impeach a Supreme Court justice who was elected earlier this year before she's even issued a single ruling on a single case.

"Democrats will surely be able to use those MAGA-approved tactics to mobilize voters against Trump and Republicans in 2024," predicts Sargent.>

How's <your> candidate today, <fredthejackal>? He giving you that swift thrill that even stalking this poster cannot fulfil?